Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Bazoches had taught me about all the possible ways out for a garrison under siege, and this must have been among the most audacious, imaginative, and well planned I’d come across. Or it would have been, if there did not exist on this earth a race of pernicious, gluttonous dilettantes known as the Red Pelts!

Waltraud beseeches me to calm down, to carry on, but I don’t want to calm down, I don’t have the slightest interest in calming down. For the French and Spanish — they had to be killed mercilessly — they were the enemy. But the Red Pelts, those lordlings with their powdered cheeks, turned everything we were fighting for into an empty husk. Deep down, they didn’t believe in Catalan liberties, or in our constitutions. In the end, they were faced with an enemy who sought to exterminate their people, something so unprecedented and ferocious that they did carry on fighting, but only because there was no choice. Out of earshot, their motto was: “Chaos before slavery.” I’ll describe everything that happened! How they hindered General Villarroel, how they managed to make defeat out of our victories. For until now, only the victor’s version has been told, or that of the complicit Catalan upper class: empty lies, the lot. And as everyone knows, an empty cup makes more noise than a full one.

Schnapps, bring me more schnapps. May the harshness of it strip our throats but never quench our hearts! Chin up, Martí!

Back to the story. Where were we? Ah, yes. The expedition.

The government wanted it led by the deputy of the military estate, the very noble, and also profoundly Pelt-y, Antoni Berenguer. Not the ideal man for such a complex and risky venture: In spite of his title, he was a politician, not a soldier, and he was also very old. He was confined to a wheelchair, complete with a chamber pot attached underneath. His lower eyelids hung down like wet bloody tongues. Yes, credit where it’s due, his white eyebrows and beard, cut by one of the city’s finest barbers, did confer upon him an air of venerability.

Deputy Berenguer had a retinue of upstanding citizens to underline the solemnity of his post. They were nothing more than a crew of bootlickers, and very quickly, our name for them—“Berenguer’s oafs”—stuck. There was no point to them unless they were with the deputy; away from him, they were nothing but a herd dressed in silk.

I wasn’t sure about Berenguer from the start. True, as deputy of the military estate, he was the institutional incarnation of the spirit of the struggle. He, and only he, had the sacred right to bear the silver mace symbolizing the Catalans’ right to oppose any invader. This was a large silver truncheon with baroque inlay, affectionately referred to by the people as “The Club.” Any neighborhood the deputy passed through with this in hand, all the local inhabitants over the age of sixteen were obliged to drop what they were doing, to leave their lives behind, and to give everything in defense of their country. But, so my thinking went, was it really necessary to put this sanctimonious old fart aboard a ship? And that isn’t a metaphor, by the way; his guts really were in poor order.

As for Colonel Sebastià Dalmau, who was also part of the expedition, words cannot describe the talents of that giant of a man. Of all the anonymous heroes of this century, Dalmau was one of the greatest.

He descended from one of Barcelona’s grandest families. When the Allies withdrew from Catalonia, he immediately came in on the Generalitat’s side. In fact, he was one of the few in the upper classes who responded to the Crida . His whole fortune went to underwriting the Catalan War, every last peso. The Sebastià Regiment was financed entirely by his family; the soldiers’ wages, weapons, provisions, and uniforms all came out of his pocket. The infantry on the expedition was to be formed of this regiment, which consisted of non-nobles and non-guild members. Tavern and brothel dwellers, scum — the government trusted them less than they would a converted Jew. From my point of view as an engineer, I didn’t judge them on where they came from or their prestige but on their military effectiveness, and in that respect, they struck me as an altogether magnificent unit. The Red Pelts worked by a different logic and were relieved to see the back of Dalmau’s troop. (Why risk decent young men when the dregs were offering themselves up?)

Some men are born to be happy, just as others might be born lame or with blue eyes. Dalmau had one of those smiling “all will be well” countenances, and coming from him, it seemed like certainty rather than wishful thinking. He had a very Barcelonan way of looking at things. War, to him, was at root a transaction, with one’s homeland as a business and one’s family as shareholders. Properly considered, in a civilian army, he was the ideal kind of commander.

As for the other officials who boarded ships on that expedition, we need mention only one other, a German colonel. And the less said about him, the better. In siege situations, dark things happen.

This colonel was one of the few, the very few, who chose to come over and serve the Generalitat when the Allies withdrew. But he wasn’t motivated by any noble cause. Various common crimes — including looting from dead bodies — meant his reputation preceded him. Word had it, he’d led a troop who had stripped dead soldiers of their possessions before burying them en masse.

His position in the Allied army had therefore become untenable, and when the Crida went out, he defected, claiming that the Catalan cause was close to his heart. For the Generalitat’s part, it was short of officers and admitted him without asking questions. Even so, he was such a scoundrel that the German volunteers in Barcelona refused to serve under him. Don Antonio set out for him, in no uncertain terms, his choices: Either he could restore his reputation when the bloodiest fighting came, or pack his bags for Vienna, where the hangman would be waiting. He had no choice but to join the expedition.

His favorite word was Scheisse . He said it so often, the men ended up calling him Scheissez. Just so you know, my dear vile Waltraud, in Spanish surnames, the ending — ez means “son of.” Perez, son of Pere; Fernandez, son of Fernando, et cetera. What the Barcelonans didn’t know was that Scheisse means “shit” in German. So every time they addressed him, they were calling their superior officer “Shitson.” Shitson himself wasn’t amused, but since Don Antonio had made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate the man abusing his authority, he had to grin and bear it. He was always looking at you out of the corner of his eye. During the voyage, we were constantly glancing at each other. He was like any of the other rats on board, the one difference being that rats are the first to abandon a sinking ship, whereas Shitson was looking for a way off as soon as possible, whether the vessel was seaworthy or not.

For my part, I couldn’t seem to shake that look Don Antonio had given me just before the order to join the expedition. Now the outcome of the war depended on the thousand men sailing with me. Perhaps I was on my way to learning the definitive lesson. That of The Word.

Ballester and his crew of ten were also with us. They’d be sure to come in handy as scouts. As for the French flotilla blocking our exit, that was the least of our worries. Our ships were dodgers, built to hug the shore; theirs had deep hulls and could never get anywhere near the coast. The journey to Arenys wouldn’t take long, not over six hours if the winds were favorable, and we wanted to be swift so we could travel under cover of dark. As for the embarkation, I’ll save the details: forty-seven ships of all different sizes, a thousand infantry, and several cavalry squadrons boarding them. The voyage I’ll skip as well — owing to my rank, I spent the duration alongside Berenguer, his farts, and his oafs.