Simon Desfosseux has no difficulty hearing every word of the tirade that the colonel from Chiclana unleashes on the lieutenant, or the one he in turn lets loose on the sheepish firing squad. The soldiers gathered around the ravine look at each other or blatantly curse their senior officers. No one knows what to do. After a brief hesitation, the lieutenant draws his pistol from under his cloak, stumbles past the prisoner kneeling in the mud and pulls the trigger on the man crawling away, but the spark merely scorches the damp gunpowder and the gun fails to fire. Flustered, the lieutenant fumbles with his weapon, then turns to the firing squad and orders them to reload their rifles. However, everyone, including Desfosseux, knows that with the rain and the wind this is pointless.
“You’ll see, they’ll end up butchering them with bayonets …” mutters an officer.
Bitter laughter ripples through the group. Down below, in the gully, the situation is settled by a sergeant in the gendarmes, a heavyset officer with a thick mustache. With great composure—and without waiting for orders—he takes a rifle from one of his men, strides over to the wounded man crawling through the mud and shoots him at point-blank range; he exchanges the rifle with another, then marches over to the redhead sitting on the ground and puts a bullet through his head. The boy slumps forward, his body hunched like a rabbit. The sergeant hands back the rifle and tramps through the mud, without so much as a glance at the bewildered lieutenant, then salutes the colonel from general staff, who—equally confused—returns the salute.
Slowly the men drift back to their posts, some muttering darkly, or glancing back at the three corpses on the bank.
Lieutenant Bertoldi stands watching as the two Spanish naval officers are led back into the barracks. “I don’t like the fact that the manolos got to see that,” he says.
Pulling up the wet collar of his cloak and ducking his head down against the driving rain, Simon Desfosseux reassures his adjutant.
“Don’t worry … they do the same on their side. No one can outdo the Spanish when it comes to cruelty.”
The captain tramps through the muddy trench, heading toward the waterlogged footbridge, hoping that the fire in his hut is still burning so he can dry his clothes a little and warm his numbed hands. Perhaps they’ll be lucky, he thinks with a smile: perhaps the coffee will still be warm. It seems incredible to him that in such desperate circumstances, a sip of coffee, a hunk of stale bread or—the height of luxury these days—a pipe or a cigar can seem so important. He sometimes wonders if he will ever be able to adapt to ordinary life, if he should survive: seeing the faces of his wife and his children every day; gazing at a landscape without instinctively calculating trajectories and points of impact; lying in a meadow and closing his eyes without a nagging dread that a guerrillero might creep up on him and cut his throat.
As he trudges on through the muddy water, he hears behind him the squelching and muttering of Maurizio Bertoldi.
“You know what I think, Captain?”
“No. And I don’t want to know.”
More squelching. After a long pause, as though he has taken the time to consider his commanding officer’s words, the lieutenant speaks again. “Well … If you don’t mind, I’m going to tell you anyway.”
Another brutal gust of rain. Simon Desfosseux presses his hat down firmly and bows his head. “I do mind. Just shut up.”
“This war is a piece of shit, Captain.”
THE NAKED MAN, huddled in a corner of the cell, raises a hand to shield his face as Rogelio Tizón bends down and peers at him. Lips split and swollen, face bruised from the beatings, eyes ringed with dark circles from pain and lack of sleep, the man cowering in front of him is barely recognizable as the one he arrested five days ago in the house on the Calle de las Escuelas. With a practiced eye, the comisario evaluates the injuries and considers the possibilities of the situation, which are reasonably elastic. Some time ago he summoned a relatively trustworthy doctor—a drunken quack who spends most of his time doing medical examinations for the whores in Santa María and La Merced—whose professional diagnosis was that the suspect could withstand further interrogation. “His pulse is strong, his breathing normal, given the circumstances. In moderate doses and with a little caution you can keep up the good work, I think.” Then, with another half ounce weighing down the pocket of his smock, the doctor—Casimiro Escudillo, better known in the brothels of Cádiz as “Dr. Wormer”*—went straight to the nearest wine merchant to convert his remuneration into liquid form. And so Tizón is still here, aided by the ubiquitous Cadalso and another agent, “keeping up the good work”—interrogating Gregorio Fumagal, or what is left of him.
“Let’s start again from the beginning, camarada,” says Tizón, “if you don’t mind.”
The taxidermist whimpers as he is lifted and carried across the windowless dungeon, feet dragging on the floor, to the table, where he is laid face up. His grimy, almost hairless skin, slick with sweat, shimmers in the dim glow of the tallow candle. While one of the henchmen sits on the suspect’s legs, holding him in place, Rogelio Tizón sits with his arms resting on the back of a chair he has placed close to Gregorio Fumagal’s head which, like his upper body, is dangling over the table edge into the void. The prisoner’s mouth gapes as he struggles to breathe, his face flushed purple as the blood rushes to his head. Over the past five days, he has confessed to so many crimes that he could be garroted as a spy ten times over, but none of them truly interests the comisario. Tizón leans closer and in a hushed, almost intimate tone, he recites the list:
“María Luisa Rodríguez, sixteen, Puerta de Tierra … Bernarda Garre, fourteen, Lame Paco’s Tavern … Jacinta Herrero, seventeen, Calle de Amoladores …”
He carries on: six names, six ages (none older than nineteen), six places in Cádiz. He leaves long pauses between the victims, giving Fumagal a chance to fill in the gaps. Tizón finishes his list and sits, motionless, his mouth still inches from the taxidermist’s ear.
“And the fucking bombs,” he adds finally.
Suspended upside-down, his features racked with pain, Fumagal’s gaze is blank. “Bombs,” he whispers feebly.
“That’s right. The marks on your map, remember? The places where they landed. Special places. Cádiz.”
“I’ve already told you everything … about the bombs …”
“I’m afraid you haven’t. Take my word for it. Come on, try to remember. I’m worn out and so are you … All of this is just a waste of time.”
Fumagal flinches as though expecting a blow. Another one. “I’ve told you everything I know,” he whines. “The Mulatto …”
“The Mulatto is dead and buried. He was garroted, remember?”
“I … The bombs …”
“Exactly. The bombs that exploded, the murdered girls. Tell me about it.”
“I don’t know … anything … about the girls.”
“Too bad.” Tizón’s lips curl into a smile, though his face is grim. “With me, it’s always better to know than not to know.”
The taxidermist shakes his head wildly, desperately. After a moment he shudders and lets out a long, guttural howl. With professional curiosity, the comisario watches a thread of spittle trickle from the corner of Fumagal’s mouth.
“Where have you hidden the whip?”
Fumagal moves his lips ineffectually, as though unable to form the words. “The … the whip?” he says eventually.
“Exactly. The whip made of braided wire. The tool you used to flay them.”
Fumagal shakes his head again. Tizón quickly glances up at his assistant, who stands beside the table holding a bull’s pizzle. Cadalso administers a single lash, hard and fast, between Fumagal’s thighs. The suspect’s wail becomes an agonized howl.
“It’s not worth it,” Tizón says with savage gentleness. “Take my word for it.”
He pauses momentarily, studying the prisoner’s face. Then he glances up at Cadalso; the whip cracks again and Fumagal’s howl rises to a shriek of terror and desp
air. The comisario’s trained ear analyzes it, straining to hear the precise note he is expecting—and which, he realizes angrily, is not there.
“María Luisa Rodríguez, sixteen, Puerta de Tierra …” he patiently begins again.
More groans. More lashes and screams. More carefully calculated pauses. The liberal gentlemen of the Cortes would do well to see this, thinks Tizón during one such pause, with their prattle about Utopia, national sovereignty, habeas corpus and all that drivel.
“I’m not interested in why you killed them,” he says after a pause. “At least, not yet … I just want you to confirm the place where each girl died … And also the point about the bombs falling before or after … Do you follow me?”
The taxidermist’s eyes, bulging from their sockets, stare at him. In them, Tizón thinks he can see a flicker of understanding. Or of madness.
“Tell me, and you’ll finally be able to get some rest too. Our friends here will get some rest too. Everyone will be able to rest.”
“The bombs …” Fumagal whispers hoarsely.
“That’s it, camarada, the bombs …”
The lips continue to move, but no sounds come. Tizón leans closer, listening carefully.
“Come on. Just tell me … Six bombs, six murdered girls. Let’s get this over with.”
Up close, the prisoner reeks of sweat and putrefaction, of clammy, bloated flesh. As they all do after a few days of treatment, or “keeping up the good work,” in the words of Dr. Wormer.
“I don’t know … anything … about any girls.”
The whisper bursts forth like a death rattle. It is followed by a jet of vomit. The comisario, who had his ear almost pressed to Fumagal’s lips, jumps back in disgust.
“It’s a pity you don’t know.”
Brutish, devoid of any imagination or initiative, Tizón’s assistant stands gripping the whip, waiting for the order to flog the prisoner again. The comisario dissuades him with a glance.
“Take it easy, Cadalso. It looks as though this may take some time.”
A RAY OF sunlight pierces the blanket of low cloud that still hangs above the hills of Chiclana on the far side of the Saporito channel, the Sancti Petri canal and the maze of tidal creeks and salt flats. As Felipe Mojarra steps out of his house, the dawn light breaks through the mist and glitters on the gray waters, swollen by the rains and the high tide. Walking past the low vine—its gnarled branches now leafless for the winter—Mojarra stares at the tangle of sludge, brushwood and reeds that the storms have washed up against the nearby embankment and the walls of his shack, laying waste to the vegetable garden.
The damp, bitter cold gnaws at his bones. With a broad-brimmed hat over the kerchief tied about his head, a blanket worn like a poncho and his rope sandals strung around his neck, Mojarra leans down, strikes the flint of his tinderbox and lights a hand-rolled cigar. Then he takes the long French rifle from his shoulder and leans on it, smoking, while he waits for his daughter. Too many women in the house, he thinks. Though if he had had a son—he sometimes envies his friend Curro Panizo for having a son—the war would probably have killed him by now, as it has so many. No one can predict when fortune or misfortune will strike, all the more so with the gabachos around. The truth of the matter is that Mojarra cannot bear goodbyes; this morning he wanted to spare himself the sight of his daughter Mari Paz weeping and hugging her mother, her grandmother, her little sisters. She is heading back to Cádiz, after spending Christmas on the Isla de Léon. “You should all be thankful that her mistress gave her time off,” he’d said angrily, suddenly abandoning his breakfast—a hunk of stale bread dipped in wine—and going outside to wait for her. It is not as if the girl is going to the ends of the earth. War or no war, whether here on the island or anywhere else in Spain, now is not the time for mawkishness and tearful goodbyes. Tears are for funerals, and life has to be lived wherever you find yourself: in a fine house in Cádiz or in hell itself.
“Whenever you’re ready, Father.”
Mojarra looks at his daughter as she walks down the path; her bundle in one hand, wearing a dark skirt and a shawl that covers her head, accentuating her big, dark, soulful eyes. She is as delicate as her mother was at that age, before the cares of work and childbirth ground her down. She is almost seventeen. An age when he should be thinking of marrying her off as God intended, if he can find a suitable man, someone serious and decent, someone able to take care of her. The sooner the better, were it not for their current circumstances. But Mari Paz working as Señora Palma’s maidservant is what keeps the family going at present; Mojarra cannot afford to support everyone on the little he gets as a volunteer with the local fusiliers: a little meat for the stewpot and a few coins when there is money to pay him. There is still no news of the reward for the gunboat they brought back from Santa Cruz. The various appeals he and Curro Panizo have made have proved fruitless; Cárdenas, his brother-in-law, died in hospital two weeks ago without seeing a penny of it, only to be tossed out of his bed like a dog while his fellow patients stole his tobacco. Mojarra takes comfort in the fact that at least Cárdenas had no family to take care of. He left no widow, no orphans. Sometimes Mojarra thinks ideally a man should leave nothing behind him. Freed of such worries, he would act more decisively. Less cautiously, less fearfully.
“Be careful when you get to Chato’s tavern,” the salter says sternly between puffs on his cigar. “Don’t talk to anyone, and keep yourself covered with your shawl, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Father.”
“When you arrive in Cádiz, go straight to your mistress’s house before it gets dark. I don’t want you stopping off anywhere … I don’t like the rumors that have been going around.”
“Don’t worry.”
Mojarra belches smoke, making his face appear sterner than he feels.
“That’s exactly what I want. Not to worry … The coach driver is trustworthy, but he has enough to worry about already, what with his horses and so forth.”
The girl protests, a little mockingly. “Perico the cooper is coming too, Father—remember? I’m not a fool, and I won’t be traveling alone.”
How grown up she is, thinks Mojarra. All this time working in Cádiz, and here she is almost defying me. “Even so,” he grunts.
Father and daughter walk through the village toward the main square. The streets are lined with houses whose windows are protected by bars embedded in the narrow pavements. Women kneel on their doorsteps with buckets and cloths, or wash the dirt path outside their houses with dishwater.
“You do what I tell you. And don’t trust anyone.”
On the main street, between the Carmelite convent and the parish church, merchants and innkeepers are opening up and queues are beginning to form for bread, wine and oil. Opposite the Imprenta Real de Marina, a blind man with a loud voice is hawking copies of the Regency Gazette hot off the press. Carters and mule drivers come and go, making deliveries, and here and there amid the somber colors of civilian clothes is a garish flash of uniform: local militiamen in round hats and short jackets, ordinary soldiers in tight breeches, elaborately trimmed frockcoats with cuffs and lapels in various colors, pointed hats, leather helmets or shakos with red cockades. Since the French arrived, the island has seemed more like a barracks. As they walk, Mojarra greets the occasional neighbor or acquaintance, but he does not stop. Next to the Zimbrelo house is a fritter stand with a pan of smoking oil.
“Did you have any breakfast?”
“No. What with my sisters crying, I didn’t have time.”
After a brief hesitation, Mojarra shifts his rifle to his other shoulder, slips a hand into his meager purse, takes out a copper coin and buys two penny fritters wrapped in greasy paper. He gives them to his daughter; one for now, one for the journey, he says as she protests. He tells her to fasten her shawl tighter, then taking her arm, he leads her away from the stall, directing a furious glare at two Engineering Cadets in purple frockcoats and bearskin helmets who are staring shamelessly at the gi
rl while they queue to buy fritters.
“My mistress says I should learn to read and write, and count too … She says I’m bright enough.”
“That costs money, hija.”
“She says if I want to and I study hard, she’ll pay. There’s an old widow who lives above the apothecary on the Calle del Sacramento, a decent woman—she teaches reading and writing and sums for five duros a month.”
“Five duros?” Mojarra splutters, outraged. “That’s a small fortune.”
“I told you, she said she would pay. And she will give me an hour off every afternoon to study, if you agree. Even cousin Toño says I should make the most of the opportunity.”
“Tell your mistress to mind her own business. And tell this cousin of hers to watch his step … Tell him a knife in the belly and a quick flick of the wrist will dispatch a poor man as quickly as a gentleman with a gold watch in his pocket.”
“My God, Father. You know that Don Toño is a perfect gentleman, even if he is always joking around. And he’s very charming.”
The salter glowers angrily at the ground. “I know what I’m talking about.”
Leaving the town hall square behind, father and daughter come to the avenue that leads down from the Convento de San Francisco. It is here, next to the watering trough outside the blacksmith’s forge, between the Naval Observatory and the municipal slaughterhouse, that the carriages bound for Cádiz stop. The journey takes less than three hours by landau or caleche, but that is expensive. It will take six to eight hours for Mari Paz to get there on the slow cart, which is scheduled to stop at Torregorda, at Chato’s tavern and at the Cortadura barricade—two and a half leagues along the reef from the sea to the far end of the bay, with stretches of it lying within cannon shot of the enemy. The very thought that the French might fire at his daughter fills Felipe Mojarra with murderous rage, an urge to make his way through the tidal creeks and slit the throat of the first gabacho he finds.