He walks a little way, swinging his cane. On a small square next to the tower of La Merced, he comes upon a lantern made of card and green paper and in its faint glow he spies a woman pacing up and down; she wears no hat, only a shawl thrown over her shoulders. As the policeman passes, she stops and tantalizingly adjusts her shawl to offer a peek of her low-cut bodice. The green light illuminates her face. She is young; very young. Sixteen, perhaps seventeen. Tizón does not recognize her; the girl must be one of the flood of refugees recently arrived in the city, driven here by war and starvation. The good thing about being a woman in times such as these, he thinks cynically, is you can always make enough money to eat.
“You want a good time, señor?”
“Can I see your papers?”
The girl’s expression changes; she can tell from his tone and his manner he is a policeman. With a weary gesture, she slips a hand into her bodice and takes out her papers bearing an official stamp. Tizón does not bother to look at them. He is looking at her: she has a pale complexion, blond hair, pleasing curves. There are dark circles under her eyes. He or one of his subordinates probably stamped the documents in exchange for the usual fee, or as payment for some service from her madame or pimp. Live, take your cut, and let live, that is the way. The girl puts away her papers and looks across the street, waiting for the policeman to be on his way. The comisario looks at her coolly. Close up, she looks even younger, and more fragile. She may be only fifteen years old.
“Where do you do it?”
A weary shrug. Resigned. Still looking toward the far end of the street, the girl reluctantly points to a nearby doorway.
“In there.”
“Let’s go.”
Rogelio Tizón does not pay whores. He sleeps with them whenever he chooses. For free. This is one of the privileges of his position in the city: he has official impunity. Sometimes he calls in at old widow Madrazo’s bawdy house—an elegant establishment on the Calle Cobos—or Doña Rosa’s place, or the whorehouse run by an elderly Englishwoman behind the Mentidero. When the mood takes him, he also pays infrequent visits to the most sordid places in the city, to Santa María and the dark alleys opposite the Puerta de la Caleta. When it comes to such women, the comisario is anything but gracious. Or when it comes to women in general. It is common knowledge among those who sell their bodies in Cádiz that an encounter with Rogelio Tizón is never pleasant. Every woman who knows him, regardless of whether or not she is a whore, eyes him warily when he crosses her path. Not that he gives a tinker’s curse. Whores are meant to be whores, as far as he is concerned—something he is prepared to teach them if they don’t already know it. There are many ways to impose respect. Fear is traditionally one of these, and often a staunch ally of efficiency.
A seedy ground-floor room. A woman in widow’s weeds standing by the door who disappears as soon as she recognizes the policeman. A straw mattress, a pillow and some sheets, a jug and washbasin, a crooked candlestick with a single candle lit. The overpowering dank, stale smell of all the naked bodies who have been here before him.
“What do you want me to do, señor?”
Tizón is standing, motionless, studying her. He is still wearing his hat, clutching his cane, smoking the meager cigar stub that is burning away between his fingers. He tries again to understand, and fails. Like a musician listening for an unfamiliar, jarring note. A hunter when he hears a beating of wings nearby or a rustle in the undergrowth. The comisario does not take his eyes off the young girl, trying to divine in her some key to those horrors of which even he is incapable, pressing helplessly against a wall of mystery and silence.
Automatically, unself-consciously, she undresses. It is obvious that, in spite of her youth, she is accustomed to her work. The bodice laces, the petticoat, the stockings, the long blouse that covers her modesty since she has no underskirt. Eventually she stands naked, motionless, the candle casting a glow on her slim, shapely body, the heft of her small, pale breasts, the curve of her hip, her slender legs. She looks even more fragile. She stares at the policeman, as though waiting for instructions, as though she finds his passivity and his silence unsettling. Tizón sees a flicker of panic in her eyes that seems to say, Oh dear God, he’s mad … He’s one of those.
“Lie on the bed, facedown.”
Her sigh is barely audible, as she imagines—or knows—what lies ahead. Obediently, she crosses over to the straw mattress and lies down, legs together, arms outstretched. She buries her face in the pillow. This will not be the first time someone has made her scream, Tizón thinks, and not out of pleasure. When he tosses away the stub of his cigar and moves toward her, he sees the purple marks, the bruises on her thighs, her hips. The work of a particularly passionate customer, perhaps. Or her pimp letting her know who’s boss.
“The other he lashes upright to a pillar, and seizing a thick strap from a heavy horse-harness, flogs with a whistling double lash, mouthing such insults as no mortal man but some demon had taught him …” The lines from Ajax run through the policeman’s mind with menacing precision. So this is how it happened, he thinks, looking at the girl’s naked body. This is how he has them lie when he flays their body to the bone, when he murders them. He raises his cane and traces a line from the nape of the whore’s neck down her back. He does it slowly, conscious of every inch of flesh. Trying to understand, even as he teeters over the abyss, the motives of the murderer he is hunting down.
“Spread your legs.”
With a quiver, the girl obeys. The tip of his walking stick continues its slow descent to her buttocks, the violent shudders racking the young girl’s body, sending tremors up the wooden cane to the brass pommel. Her face is still buried in the pillow. Her knuckles are white, her fingers clutching the sheets. She is trembling with fear.
“No, please …” she whimpers, her voice muffled. “Please!”
A shudder of horror runs through Tizón, making his skin crawl, shaking him from head to foot, as if he truly were on the edge of an abyss. He feels dazed, like someone has just hit him; all he can see is a boundless, terrifying darkness that makes him stumble backward, bumping into the washstand, sending the jug crashing to the floor, splashing water everywhere. The crash brings him to himself again. For a moment he stands stock-still, cane in hand, staring insensibly at the naked body in the candlelight. Finally, from the pocket of his jacket he takes a doubloon worth two escudos—his fingers are colder than the gold—and tosses it onto the sheets next to the girl. Then, moving almost soundlessly, he turns on his heel and disappears into the night.
THE SKY IS filled with plumes of black smoke from the Trocadero all the way to Puntales, following the curve of the bay. It has been thirty-two hours since Simon Desfosseux dared raise his head above the parapet, since there is fighting all along the line. This is not targeted shelling of Cádiz or the advance positions at Puntales, La Carraca and the Zuazo Bridge, but a duel between the massed artillery of every French and Spanish gun battery and bastion, a furious exchange with both sides returning shot for shot. It began early yesterday morning when, after a slew of bad news including the Spanish landing at Algeciras and forays by irregular forces along the coast near Ronda, the guerrillas crossed the main channel of the Isla de Léon at various points, attacking the French advance posts near Chiclana. The fighting, centered chiefly on the Olivar tavern and the Casa de la Soledad, was supported by gunboats from Zurraque, Gallineras and Sancti Petri which sailed up the narrow channels while maintaining their fire. The shelling spread along the line, tit-for-tat fire degenerating into wholesale bombardment, even after the Spanish retreat. Having slaughtered or laid waste to everything in sight, they pulled back, taking armaments and prisoners, spiking cannons and blowing up munitions dumps. According to the outriders delivering messages along the front line, the guerrillas crossed back over the main canal in the early hours of this morning, attacking the advance posts on the salt flats at Polvera and the mills at Almansa and Montecorto; they were still fighting there when the easte
rn section of the bay erupted in cannonfire. The situation is so desperate that Captain Desfosseux, under orders from his superiors, has been dispatched to supervise the conventional shelling from the Cabezuela and Fort Luis against the Spanish fort at Puntales, less than a thousand toises away, on the outcrop of the reef at the narrowest point of the bay, directly opposite the Trocadero.
The blasts shake the ground and send shudders through the gabions, the fascines and the wooden parapets. Huddled in one of these bastions, Desfosseux points his spyglass through an embrasure, but prudently keeps the lens some distance from his right eye, since the shock of a previous explosion almost embedded it in the socket. He has not slept for a day and a half, and has eaten nothing but dry bread and drunk nothing but muddy water—given that the shelling has left a number of soldiers disemboweled, none of the sutlers is prepared to leave their shelter. The captain is filthy and sweaty. The explosions have left a layer of dust over his hair, face and clothes—not that he can see himself, but a look at any of the men around him informs him that he too must appear haggard, starving, miserable; red-rimmed eyes spilling dusty tears down mud-spattered faces.
The captain trains the spyglass on Puntales, small and squat behind its defensive walls set among the reef’s black rocks, now exposed at low tide. Seen from this side of the water—flanked to the right by the immense fortification of the Puerta de Tierra a mile and a half away, and to the left by the no less solid and imposing Cortadura—the Spanish fortress looks like the prow of a stubborn ship, the six field guns set in their embrasures aimed exactly at Desfosseux’s vantage point. At intervals of methodical regularity, one of the embrasures is lit up by a flash, and some moments after the howitzer’s boom comes the sound of an enemy projectile, grenade or solid iron cannonball exploding near the French battery. Nor are the French artillerymen sitting around idly; the shells from the 18-pound and 24-pound cannons and the 8-inch howitzers crash upon the Spanish fortress, raising clouds of dust that sometimes blot out the defiant flag fluttering above it—every four or five days the defenders hoist a new flag, the previous one having been ripped to shreds by shrapnel. For some time now, the captain has admired—as one professional to another—the solid expertise of the artillerymen on the other side. Over the past eighteen months of shelling, they have developed unfailing skill and tenacity. To Desfosseux, this is entirely in keeping with the Spanish character: though lazy, ill-disciplined and faltering on the battlefield, they can be very daring when swept along by pride or the urge to kill, and their proud, long-suffering nature makes them formidable in defense. They veer constantly between military incompetence, political farce and religious fanaticism on the one hand, and on the other fierce, senseless patriotism, almost suicidal loyalty and a bitter hatred of the enemy. The Puntales fortress is an obvious example. The troops garrisoned there live under the constant shelling of the French, but constantly, implacably, they return fire, shell for shell.
One of those shells has just landed in the adjacent bastion, near the 18-pound cannons. A black grenade—almost visible as it whizzed through the air—hit the upper parapet, bounced, then rolled down next to a barricade of earth and gabions, smoke trailing from the fuse, about to explode. The captain, kneeling up to see where it fell, hears the screams of the gun crew as they throw themselves on to the deck supporting the gun carriage, or take shelter as best they can. Then, as Desfosseux huddles inside his embrasure, an explosion shakes the bastion; dirt, shards of wood and rubble rain down all around. It is still raining earth when he hears a long, blood-curdling howl. When the captain puts his head above the parapet again, he sees several soldiers carrying the screaming artilleryman, the stump of his thigh—the rest of his leg has been blown away—gushing blood.
“Kill those bastard dagos!” yells Lieutenant Bertoldi, who is already on his feet, goading his men, urging them on. “An eye for an eye! Avenge your fallen comrade!”
They’re good lads, thinks Desfosseux, as he watches the men rush back to their field guns, then load, aim and fire. After everything that has happened, and everything that awaits them, they are still capable of urging each other on—proud of the gallant resignation in the face of the inevitable that characterizes the French soldier. Even after a year and a half buried in the cesspit that is Cádiz, the arse end of Europe and canker of the Empire, with the rump of rebel Spain reduced to one impregnable island.
The roar of cannonfire resumes, with mounting intensity—the men have to keep their mouths open so their eardrums do not burst. It is almost impossible to see Puntales for the clouds of dust raised by the shells exploding, one after another, temporarily silencing the Spanish guns.
“We’re doing the best we can, Captain.”
Brushing the dust from his jacket, his head uncovered, his skeptical smile framed by his grubby blond whiskers, Lieutenant Bertoldi comes and stands next to the embrasure where Desfosseux is perched with his spyglass. He tilts his head slightly to peer at the enemy positions, then leans back against the parapet, facing the opposite direction.
“This is stupid … all this noise and dust for nothing.”
“Our orders are to shell the dagos all along the lines,” says Desfosseux resignedly.
“And that’s what we’re doing, Captain. But it’s a waste of time.”
“One day you’re going to get yourself court-martialled, Bertoldi …”
The two officers exchange a look of hopeless complicity. Then Desfosseux asks how things are going and the lieutenant, just back from an inspection, playing the dashing hero amid the shelling—the captain did the last inspection at daybreak—gives his report: one dead and three injured in La Cabezuela. Five wounded, two of them gravely at Fort Luis, and a 16-pound cannon destroyed. As for the enemy positions, he has no idea.
“They’re probably giving us the finger,” he says.
Desfosseux has gone back to his telescope. Along the reef, between Puntales and Cádiz, he notices a convoy of carts and people on foot—almost certainly delivering provisions to the Isla de Léon under heavy escort. Or perhaps reinforcements. He passes the spyglass to Bertoldi and indicates where he should look. The lieutenant winks and puts the lens to his other eye.
“I want you to fire on them,” says the captain, “if you would be so kind.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bertoldi hands back the spyglass and walks over to the 24-pound cannons. Simon Desfosseux does not permit his precious Villantroys-Rutys to play a part in this thunderous maelstrom—like his adjutant, he believes it to be utterly absurd. Like an attentive parent keeping his children safe from the perils of the world, the captain keeps Fanfan and the other 10-inch howitzers he fires on Cádiz out of this duel. These magnificent, delicate guns are reserved for the specific task of extending his range, toise by toise, into the heart of the city. He is not prepared to squander their carefully cast bronze, their condition or their operational lifespan—which in field guns of this caliber is limited, and constantly at risk from some tiny chink, some minor defect in the alloy—on a military exercise utterly unrelated to the reason for their creation. Therefore, as soon as the general shelling began, Sergeant Labiche and his men immediately implemented Captain Desfosseux’s orders for such situations: pile up more earth, gabions and fascines around the howitzers and cover them with thick tarpaulins to protect them from dust, stones and ricochets. Every time a shell falls nearby, or looks as though it might score a direct hit on the redoubt, Desfosseux feels his heart tighten, terrified at the idea of even one gun being put out of operation. He wants this absurd, chaotic bombing to end, for the lives of besiegers and besieged to return to their customary routine, leaving him to deal with the only thing that matters: gaining the two hundred toises which, according to the map in his hut, still separates the shells that have attained the greatest range in Cádiz—exploding near the Tavira Tower and on the Calle de San Francisco—from the steeple of the church on the Plaza de San Antonio.
CHAPTER NINE
A gray, leaden sky. Th
e temperature is mild. Above the watchtowers of the city, the autumn breeze trails ragged, murky clouds from the west.
“I’ve got a problem,” says the Mulatto.