Felipe Mojarra, who has just charged his rifle when he hears this voice, clips the ramrod into place beneath the long barrel and glances left and right. Time to get the hell out of here, he thinks. On all fours, the salters and the soldiers posted around the Montecorto mill begin to retreat, pausing now and then to fire at the plumes of smoke made by the muskets along the French line.
“Move back to the boats in an orderly manner … Easy does it …”
Whup. A bullet raises a cloud of sand among the wild asparagus on the bank. Mojarra does not pause to work out where it came from, but reckons that the enemy fusiliers are no more than fifty paces away. To keep them from showing their faces, he draws himself up a little, aims and squeezes the trigger. Then he fumbles for another round in his cartridge belt, rips the wax paper with his teeth, and tips the powder and bullet into his musket and tamps it again with the ramrod as he continues to retreat, squelching through the mud that oozes between the toes of his bare feet. Another shot, poorly aimed this time, whizzes over his head. The sun is already high, and everywhere crystals of salt—forming thin crusts over the pools, ringing the swamps, the tidal creeks and the runnels—glitter like tiny diamonds. Next to one of the creeks, sprawled on the muddy bank, are the bodies of two French soldiers he noticed when they first landed at dawn. He passed them when he and his comrades were ordered to form an advance party and guard the position they had just captured against an enemy counterattack while the sappers tore down the mud fortifications and the shelters of Montecorto, spiked the French cannons and torched everything that would burn.
The raid today is the third Felipe Mojarra has been involved in since the battle for Chiclana. From what he knows, although the French recovered their positions, Spanish and English incursions have continued all along the front line. Raids and landings in the tidal creeks and all along the coast from Sancti Petri to the Trocadero up to the cape at Rota, which was captured three days ago by Spanish forces. They destroyed the fortifications, tossed the field guns into the bay and harangued the local populace about King Fernando VII, before retreating safely to their boats. Rumor has it that the battle at the Cerro del Puerco was not as successful as first claimed, though the English fought valiantly as always, and that General Graham, incensed by the behavior of General Lapeña during the battle, refused the title which the Cortes wanted to confer on him: Count or Duke or perhaps Marqués de Pueco—Mojarra knows little about aristocratic titles. Some say he refused because of his quarrel with Lapeña, others because someone foolishly mistranslated the title as Count of Pig. At all events, there has been much friction between the allies: the Spanish accusing the English of arrogance and they in turn accusing the Spanish of being ill-disciplined. And both parties have a point as Felipe Mojarra himself discovered a week ago during a raid on the French gun emplacement. Half a company of English marines led by eight salters acting as guides came ashore at El Coto where they were forced to fight for almost three hours in hand-to-hand combat because the Spanish reinforcement—seventy men from the Málaga regiment—did not show up until midday, by which time the raiding party was already leaving. Even Mojarra was cursing his compatriots as he trudged back to the boats, half-carrying an English officer whose arm had been blown off by a shell. Mojarra had risked his life to save this man because, before the raid, the “red mullet”—as islanders have nicknamed the British because of their red frockcoats—had made disparaging comments about the guides. In English, obviously, though his remarks required no translation. And Mojarra was determined that, if the English officer survived, every time he looked at his stump he would be reminded of the filthy dago to whom he owed his pink skin.
The two French corpses lie almost one on top of the other, their blood staining the salt-crusted edges of the creek. Mojarra does not know who killed them. He assumes that they were advance guards who fell during the first minutes of the fighting when fifty-four sailors and Spanish marines, twelve sappers and twenty-two volunteer salters sailed across the Borriquera channel and landed on the enemy shore under cover of darkness. One of the dead men is gray haired, his face half-pressed into the mud; the other, dark haired with mustaches in the French style, is sprawled on his back, eyes wide, mouth open, half his face blown off by the bullet that killed him. The salter notices that someone has already stolen their rifles, swords and cartridge belts, but not the gold earrings the gabacho soldiers always wear. Felipe Mojarra respects the dead. In other circumstances, he would carefully remove the earrings, not rip them out or hack them off with a knife like some men would do. He is not a brute, he is a Christian. But in the heat of the moment, with troops retreating to the channel and the gabachos closing in, there is no time for fine sentiments. So he deals with the matter in a few hard tugs, wraps the earrings in his kerchief and is tucking it into his belt when a sweaty marine grenadier rushes up, bent double and gasping for breath.
“A pox on’t,” says the marine, “you got there before me.”
Mojarra says nothing, simply picks up his rifle and walks off leaving the other man to rummage through the dead men’s pockets and check their mouths for any gold teeth he might knock out with a rifle butt. Meanwhile, in the undergrowth along the salt marshes, the Spanish troops are still retreating, following the narrow creeks that wind through the swamp and the floodland that surrounds Montecorto toward the main channel. Reaching the shore, the salter sees smoke rising from the shacks and huts around the mill which have been set ablaze. Most of the Spanish boats have already pushed off, protected by two gunboats from Gallineras harbor that are shelling the French positions at regular intervals. Mojarra feels the shudder of the blasts in his eardrums and chest. There appear to be no Spanish fatalities, only walking wounded. They have taken two French prisoners.
“Watch out!” someone yells.
A French grenade drones past and explodes in the air, sending shrapnel slicing across the water. Hearing the blast, most of the men, Mojarra among them, immediately drop to the ground or huddle in the boats. Only a small group of officers remain standing—out of military decorum—next to the mud and stone wall of the sluice gate. Among them, Mojarra recognizes Lorenzo Virués, wearing his blue frockcoat and red collar, the broad hat with the red cockade, his leather bag slung over his shoulder. The Captain of Engineers landed early with the raiding party to get a look at the enemy fortifications. Mojarra assumes he took the opportunity to sketch them before the sappers razed them to the ground.
“Felipe!” Virués seems genuinely pleased to see the salter. “Good to see you in one piece. What’s been going on here?”
Mojarra picks at his teeth. He has been chewing wild fennel to ward off thirst—they were put ashore without food or water—and has a stem lodged in his gums.
“Not much, Don Lorenzo. The mosíus are gaining ground again, but slowly. Our lads are retreating in an orderly fashion … Did you need me for something?”
“No, I’m about to leave with these men. Go with your comrades. We’re finished here.”
Mojarra gives him a frank smile.
“Get any good sketches, Captain?”
“A few …” Virués returns the smile. “I managed to dash off one or two.”
The salter brings one finger up to his brow, a casual but respectful version of the military salute, then spits out the piece of fennel and coolly heads back to the boats. Mission accomplished: another one chalked up. King Fernando, in his prison cell in France or wherever he is, would be proud. Mojarra does not care. Just at that moment someone runs past him. A naval officer wearing a threadbare frockcoat darned at the elbows with two pistols tucked in his belt. He is clearly in a hurry.
“Move it! Let’s go! The whole place is about to blow.”
Before the salter can work out what he means, there is a thunderous explosion behind him and the force of the blast hits him like a fist in the back. Bewildered and terrified, he turns and sees a vast mushroom cloud of black smoke rising into the sky, showering everything with splintered beams and burning brus
hwood. The sappers have just blown up the Montecorto arsenal.
The easterly breeze blows the smoke across the channel as the last men scramble into boats. Huddled with his comrades in one launch, Mojarra smells a sulfurous reek acrid enough to make a man vomit. But it has been a long time since Mojarra last vomited.
IT IS SUNDAY and the cracked bell of San Antonio tolls the end of midday mass. Sitting at a table in the doorway of Burnel’s teashop, beneath the green wrought-iron balconies, the taxidermist Gregorio Fumagal sips a glass of warm milk and watches as the faithful emerge from the church and disperse, some to the marble benches among the orange trees, others to the wide area next to the square where a number of caleches and sedan chairs are waiting. These are for the ladies and the elderly, since in such balmy weather most people prefer to take the customary stroll toward the Calle Ancha or the Alameda. As on any Sunday at this hour, everyone who is anyone—or claims to be—is here: noblemen, eminent merchants, the cream of Cádiz society, distinguished immigrants, officers from the Army, the Navy and the local militias. The square is a pageant of brightly colored uniforms, stars, ribbons and medals, silk stockings, frockcoats and tailcoats, top hats and broad-brimmed hats, traditional redingotes, capes, bicorn hats, even a tricorne or two, since some of the more elderly parishioners prefer to dress in the old style. The times being what they are, even the little boys march in step, dressed in officer’s uniforms fashioned according to the whims or the professions of their parents, wearing frockcoats and dress swords and hats with red cockades emblazoned with the letters FVII, in honor of King Fernando.
The taxidermist has his own opinion of the spectacle he is witnessing. He is a man of science, of learning, and considers himself as such. His gaze—analytical and as cold as that of the stuffed animals in his display cases—is devoid of all compassion. As far as Gregorio Fumagal is concerned, the pigeons on his terrace that weave—or help to weave—the tracery of lines and curves across the map of the city are the antithesis of these pheasants, these peacocks strutting and flaunting their plumage, wallowing in a cesspit of depravity and corruption, in this antiquated world that is doomed by the inexorable tide of nature and of history. Gregorio Fumagal firmly believes that this is a tide which even the Cortes in its sessions at San Felipe Neri cannot stop. For the hand that will sweep all of this away will not come from some future Magna Carta, drawn up by priests—the clergy account for half of the deputies in the Cortes—and aristocrats still clinging to the Ancien Régime. If things continue as they are then with or without a new Constitution, and regardless of the trappings used to dress it up, the Spaniard will become a worthless slave, devoid of soul, of reason, of virtue; forbidden by his inhuman jailers from ever seeing the light. An unfortunate wretch subjugated by men who are his equals but who, in his stupidity, his laziness, his superstition, he believes to be anointed by some higher power: these gods among men, wearing ermine and purple, black capes and cassocks, who under every sun and at every latitude will always exploit a man’s foolishness in order to enslave him, to make him brutish and miserable, to sap his valor and his courage. Fumagal, whose taste in books tends toward the foreign and the revolutionary—Baron Holbach, known as “Mirabaud,” has been his spiritual mentor ever since he first laid hands on a French edition of System of Nature some twenty years ago—is of the opinion that Spain has missed the perfect opportunity to adopt the guillotine: a river of blood that, in accordance with universal laws, would have swept clean the Stygian stables of this miserable, ignorant country, eternally in thrall to fanatical clerics, corrupt aristocrats and ineffectual, dissolute monarchs. But he believes it is still possible to throw the windows open, to allow light and air to flood in. The solution, he believes, lies half a league away on the far shore of the bay, in the form of the Imperial eagle, whose magnificent claws are even now crushing the forces of darkness that hold parts of Europe enchained.
Fumagal sips absentmindedly from his glass of goat’s milk. A group of ladies, each carrying a rosary and a missal bound in calfskin or mother-of-pearl, stop in front of the teashop. While their husbands remain standing, lighting cigars and toying with their watch chains, greeting passersby and ogling women, the ladies sit, order cold drinks and little cakes and talk about the things that interest them: weddings, births, baptisms, funerals. In short, domestic or social matters. They do not talk about the war except perhaps to complain about its effect on the price of this or that, and the fact it means they have no ice—before the French occupation, ice was brought in by the cartload from Ronda—to cool their drinks. Gregorio Fumagal watches them disdainfully out of the corner of his eye. His contempt is long-standing, one that irrevocably cuts him off from the lives of ordinary men, a physical malaise that even now is making him squirm in his seat. The ladies wear black or dark tones, with bright accent colors provided by gloves and handbags and fans; mantillas of fine lace cover hair piled up in chignons, topknots and corkscrew curls. The fashion is for women to wear rows of buttons that run from wrist to elbow. Lower-class women have buttons of gilded brass; but the ladies here have buttons of solid gold studded with diamonds like those their husbands wear on their waistcoats. Each button, Fumagal calculates, costing no less than two hundred pesos.
“What was that?” asks one of the ladies, gesturing for her friends to be silent.
“I don’t hear anything, Piedita,” says another.
“Hush and listen. In the distance.”
A far-off rumble shakes the tables of the tearoom. The ladies and their husbands, and various passersby, glance worriedly toward the Café Apolo on the corner of the Calle Murguía. For a moment, the conversations die away as people try to decide whether this is simply the daily exchange of cannonfire between Puntales and the Trocadero or whether the French artillery—battle lines having been reestablished after Chiclana, their howitzers are once again trained on Cádiz—are attempting to hit the city center.
“It’s nothing.” Doña Piedita dismisses the matter and returns to her cakes.
With icy contempt, the taxidermist gazes toward the far shore. One day, he thinks, a blistering wind will come out of the east and restore order: the flaming sword of science is steadily advancing, growing stronger, spattering red stain across this city which stubbornly remains on the margins of history. That same sword will one day reach this plaza. He is certain it will come, indeed the work that might cost him his life is in the service of this sword. It is the key to the future. Sooner or later the sword will rule over this dreamlike space peopled by creatures that have long since ceased to be real. This whole pus-filled boil that cries out to be lanced by the surgeon’s scalpel. This obdurate, suicidal spoke that jams the wheel of reason and of progress.
The ladies carry on chattering, using their fans to shield their eyes from the sun. Still watching them furtively, Fumagal gives a savage smile. Realizing what he has done, he immediately hides his smile with another sip of milk. Bombs will rain down on their gold and diamond buttons, he gloats, on their silk shawls, their fans, their satin slippers. On their corkscrew curls.
Foolish animals, he thinks, the sick, worthless dross of the earth, condemned from birth to the contagion of error. How he would like to take one of these ladies home, what a singular trophy she would make among the more pedestrian examples of his art that decorate his studio, including the stray dog, his latest effort, which now stands, staring into the void with glittering glass eyes. There, in the warm, welcoming gloom of his workshop, he would dissect this naked lady on the marble table.
As he thinks this, the taxidermist experiences an ill-timed erection—he is wearing knitted breeches, an open frockcoat and a round hat—and to disguise it he is forced to shift in his seat and cross his legs. After all, he thinks, a man’s freedom is nothing more than the need he has within him.
A MURMUR OF conversations. No music, since this is Lent. For the rest, the mansion rented by the English ambassador for his party—reception is the more discreet term used, given the time of year—shimme
rs with the light of silver and crystal candelabras set between bouquets of flowers beneath chandeliers that hang from the ceilings. The event is to celebrate the English victory at Cerro del Puerco, though some say it is a diplomatic gesture intended to alleviate tensions between the allies after the spat between generals Graham and Lapeña. This might perhaps explain why Ambassador Wellesley is not hosting the party at his residence on the Calle de la Amargura but on neutral territory. He has rented this mansion for the night—such details fascinate the people of Cádiz—at a cost of 15,000 reales, paid into the coffers of the Regency since the building, once owned by the Marqués de Mazatlán, was seized when he pledged allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte. There is little in the way of refreshments: some Spanish and Portuguese wines, an English punch which no one but the British will touch, seafood canapés, fruit and soft drinks. The whole budget was spent on candles and lamps, which is why every salon and every stairwell is a blaze of light. On the street, lit by burning torches, liveried footmen greet the guests while the terrace, hung with lanterns, overlooks the city walls, the dark bay and the distant twinkle of lights from El Puerto de Santa María, the Puerto Real and the Trocadero.
“Here comes Colonel Ortega’s widow.”
“She looks less like a colonel’s widow than a sergeant’s bit of fancy.”
The assembled company laughs, the ladies discreetly behind their fans. The quip, as usual, came from cousin Toño. He is sitting on a sofa surrounded by armchairs and stools, next to the glass-fronted terrace; next to him are Lolita Palma and several other ladies of Cádiz, married and single. A dozen señoras and señoritas in total. They are accompanied by a number of gentlemen, holding glasses and cigars, wearing dress coats, white ties or lace ruffs and flamboyant waistcoats in the modern style. There are two Spanish officers in full-dress uniform and a young deputy from the Cortes, Jorge Fernández Cuchillero, the delegate for Buenos Aires and a friend of the Palma family.