Since most of those present were educated people, when they heard “the inheritance from my father,” they interpreted this as a reference to “the inheritance of our forefathers,” a frequent theme of these debates. Those who were not yet on their feet were spurred on by my attack.
“The lad is right! Enough is enough! A hundred generations of Catalan heroes are looking down upon us from heaven. It’s time we drew up the Crida!”
Despite the high passion, the two sides had been jeering from their seats. But now, following my example, dozens of people piled in around Casanova, either to rebuke him with me or to shield him from me. Casanova, losing his balance, tried to straighten his red velvet cap, but I got away from Peret, and from everybody who was getting in my way, and I went back to jostling him.
“But this is violence!” protested Casanova, like Caesar receiving the first stab wound.
“Violence my foot!” I cried, indignant. “We pay you to defend our interests, and all you do is fob us off!”
“He’s right! Enough of this delay! The lad is right!” shouted all those opposed to submission. “We should be ashamed that we need a kid to show us the way. The enemy is approaching at a forced march, and we’re wasting our time on useless debates!”
At this point, Emmanuel Ferrer took the initiative. And it was a shrewd, brilliant initiative, as he was the first person to notice that the decision was hanging by a thread, a thread that was within reach of only the boldest. He walked away from the commotion and over to the bespectacled secretary with the little bell, who had remained in his place, with a haggard expression, and ordered him, pointing a finger, imperiously: “Write!”
The man needed to choose between chaos and a firm guiding spirit. For a moment the secretary thought about it. Then he dipped his pen in the inkwell.
Ferrer dictated a few hurried lines. Before the ink had dried, Ferrer stamped it with the government seal, grabbed the piece of paper from the secretary, and raised it in the air, proclaiming: “The Crida! I have it!”
Debate over. Ferrer was lifted into the air and carried out into the street. Outside, he was given an ovation from the crowd, frenzied and ecstatic. I could see this all perfectly, because rather than following them out into the Plaza Sant Jaume, I stepped out onto the balcony.
I saw Ferrer carried aloft on someone’s shoulders, showing the paper with the Crida to the crowd, who swirled around him like a wheel on its axis. I simply couldn’t understand it: They were weeping for joy because now they could go to a desperate war.
All those people carried off Ferrer—or, rather, the Crida—plunging into the city streets. The square was left deserted, covered in debris after the prolonged encampment.
The mentality of your average Catalan shelters one single moral principle, which is as flawed as it is endearing: They are always certain of having right on their side. They aren’t the only people to feel this way. What is extraordinary about the case of the Catalans, however, is what they deduce from this: Given that they are in the right, the world will end up realizing this. Naturally, things aren’t like that. The movement of a train of artillery depends not on truths but on interests, and they are not up for debate: They impose themselves on you, they crush you.
I remember that there were just two sentences. The first of them, to my mind, being the most exquisite, limpid, and beautiful yet written in the Catalan language.
Having on this sixth day of the present month advised this city council to resolve to defend the Liberties, Privileges and Prerogatives of the Catalan people, which our ancestors gloriously achieved at the cost of their own blood, we shall on the ninth day of the present month make order of the public proclamation for our defence
Marshal Starhemberg was surprised to hear the call to arms when he was right on the beach, just about to set sail. From the mouth of the Besòs River, he could see Barcelona’s western walls. He asked the reason for such a ruckus of shouts, drums, and trumpets. “A reckless enterprise,” he said, apparently, “but brave.”
He struck the ground twice with his walking stick and boarded his ship.
He ought to have formulated his words the other way around: a brave enterprise but reckless. And how! Or, rather, he should have said what he was really thinking: “You’re staying here, poor bastards.”
11
The historians tell us that at the start of the Third Punic War, the city of Carthage went through a military fever. All alone, with no friends and hurtling toward a certain end, the entire might of the Roman Empire was hurled upon them. And yet its citizens threw themselves into laboring for their defense with frantic ardor.
Something similar happened in Barcelona in 1713. A warrior passion overtook the whole city. The foundries beat out a frenzied rhythm. The workshops were turning out rifles, bayonets, projectiles of every size. Most surprising of all: The Barcelonans faced up to their dangers with a happiness that was quite in opposition to their circumstances. Children ran about the battalions, and—in an inversion of the natural order of things—women threw compliments to the soldiers.
There was a reason for this new mood. Barcelona’s popular classes had always felt that dynastic war between Austrians and Bourbons was something basically apart from them. But now war was approaching their walls and threatening to destroy the regimen of freedoms they had maintained for as long as they had been Catalans.
I’d add one more thing besides: By attacking the Barcelona of people like Amelis, Philip V was committing the most unforgivable mistake a tyrant can make: attacking the houses of people who have no houses. They will defend home tooth and nail, for that is the final redoubt of those who have nothing else. My Amelis had spent her life as a wanderer, her sex as her only refuge, and now that she finally had a home, this lunatic despot was threatening to cut her future short. And not just my Amelis; Barcelona was the refuge for the dispossessed from all over. The place where they had at last found four walls and a wage. How many of the heroes born in our siege were foreigners! And now that all the doubts about whether the fight was just and necessary had been dispelled, Barcelonans of all kinds were throwing themselves into this war, their war, with the kind of revelry that doesn’t happen even during carnivals. Just this once, rich and poor, men and women, were united in common cause. The happy were fighting for their happiness, while the unfortunate joined this common cause hoping that, in the struggle, their afflictions would disappear.
We should be impartial: Enthusiasm makes it impossible to see anyone but enthusiasts, and not everybody shared that uncommon euphoria. The indifferent, the fearful, the uncertain, the reluctant, even the occasional pro-Bourbon would keep quiet or hide themselves away, in the hope that times would change. But all the same, what a sense of unity! Fear is contagious—but hope is, too. Because a man like Zuvi, whose senses were so alert, couldn’t but be moved when his Bazoches eyes fell on the smiles of the poor, the wretched, the hungry who—at last—had found a cause to give their whole lives meaning.
Nobody could be more aware than a Bazoches student of how miraculous such a transformation is. Those of us in the business of war, who end up wedded to violence, have always been a tiny minority. In normal conditions, you don’t see anyone bearing a rifle. Actually, human beings are such cowardly creatures that for the most part, they aren’t prepared to risk their lives, even if it’s in order to save them.
One of the days of greatest jubilation was when the reluctant rich abandoned the city. The wealthiest, as one might imagine, didn’t want anything to do with that madness. They’d rather get to the Bourbon lines and throw themselves on Little Philip’s mercy. He wouldn’t deny them. The rich are always welcome.
They gathered in a convoy, like a herd finding safety in numbers. What exactly were they afraid of? The government of Red Pelts had always protected them. They were abandoning their civic obligations; it was public knowledge that they were thinking about heading to the town of Mataró, a well-known refuge for botifleros. And after they were gone, the Red Pelt
s did not expropriate their homes—inexplicably—but posted guards outside to prevent them from being looted.
On the day of their flight, their opulent carriages gathered on Calle Comerç. Since the convoy had been preannounced, the people were congregating along the roads that led out of the city, jeering and bombarding the vehicles with rotten vegetables. Those crowding onto the balconies scoffed at them and mocked them. But that was all. No acts of violence, nothing more than sarcasm and blackening potatoes launched at the wigs of the poor coachmen. Had the situation been reversed, the Bourbons would not have hesitated to resort to summary executions.
I happened to meet the convoy in its slow progress. The city’s children were using their whole repertoire of taunts on it, which could be tremendous. But the whole thing was a social act in which the festive prevailed over the punitive, and there was three times as much laughter as there was insult.
I was filled with sorrow. Those people fleeing were going to be spared an imminent terrible siege, and I and mine should have been in those carriages, those life rafts amid the shipwreck. All of a sudden I noticed the last carriage stopping beside me.
“Martí!” I heard my name being called. “Well, if it isn’t you, Zuviría’s son!”
It was Joaquim Nadal, the richest investor in my father’s company. When he saw me, he ordered his coachmen to stop his carriage. He opened the door and leaned halfway out and said: “What are you still doing here? Come on, get in! You can see my carriage is the last. What luck I spotted you, lad!”
When he saw that I was hesitating, he looked at me, confused. Carrots and turnips bounced off the roof of the vehicle. “Botifleros, botifleros!” cried the crowd. “Foteu el camp! Bugger off!”
Nadal insisted: “Come on, kid! What’s up with you? This is your last chance. Come with me, or you’re staying here at the mercy of this rabble.”
I excused myself and said politely: “But this isn’t rabble, Señor Nadal. They are the same people they always were; they’re our neighbors.”
He stared at me as though I were a lunatic. “I see,” he said thoughtfully, as vegetables continued to rain down, and after a moment he said again, “I see.” He closed the door and told the coachmen to drive on.
That night, at home, Peret spent dinner praising the new battalions and their banners, which had been blessed in church. Some of the units were in blue uniforms, while others wore the most beautiful garnet. There were even some as yellow as lemons. When he started talking wonders about the works that had been carried out on the city walls, I could no longer contain myself. I interrupted him so sharply that he did indeed shut up.
“Has the entire city lost its mind?” I protested to him and Amelis. “Dreamers like you haven’t the slightest idea of what’s happening on the other side of the Pyrenees. None at all!” I banged the table. “How many Catalans are there in the world? Half a million, give or take a few. There are more people living in Paris alone. The French are born with a bayonet under their arm; they are the most aggressive people in the world. And they’re heading this way, the army of the Spanish empire reinforced by battalions from France. And we have been abandoned by all our allies—all of them! Oh, well, that’s just splendid!” I exclaimed, applauding my own sarcasm. “So, now tell me: If the city arms itself and closes the door, can you imagine for one moment what the consequences of such lunacy would be? Spain can devastate the city by land and France by sea, but I’m not going to let them destroy my house.”
An uncomfortable silence fell. I didn’t expect Amelis to be the one to speak. Quietly, in a voice that for her was unusually subdued, she asked: “And if the city were to give itself up, would everything be all right then?”
I rubbed the back of my neck and answered: “I don’t know. No one can know. That’s why we’re going to go. The five of us. You, me, Nan, Anfán, and Peret. We’ll come back when things have calmed down. It’s decided.”
I expected an argument, shouting, but they offered neither dissent nor agreement. Amelis shut herself up in the bedroom. Peret wandered over toward the fireplace, rekindled the fire, and started to roast peppers. Their docile behavior made me feel empty inside, as though I were throwing punches at the air. I followed Amelis and closed the bedroom door behind me.
“Anfán’s only a boy,” I said. “Nan is such a troubled little fellow. Peret has only ever left the city to go out on chocolatadas. But you know as well as I do what the advance of the Bourbon army really means. You’ve seen the woods filled with hanged men, the outrages perpetrated in the occupied towns. If I enlist, you know what difference there’ll be between your destiny and mine?” Before she could answer, I announced, “I’ll just be killed.”
If she had only resisted or replied. Whenever that particular sadness of hers took her over, I was rendered speechless. It was as though she were crying on the inside and I could not dry her tears.
She walked over to the music box and opened it. She looked up at the sky through our glass skylight and said: “Very well, you’re in charge. We’ll go. But tell me, Martí—where? The whole country’s at war. Are we going to set sail for Naples? And once we get there, what then? There’s war in Italy, too. Are we going to Turkey? Farther still?”
“No,” I replied, “there’s no need. We just have to get to Mataró. It’s not two days’ walk from here.”
“With the botifleros?”
There was no recrimination in her tone, but that didn’t stop me from feeling insulted. “With people who want nothing to do with any of this!” I replied.
“And how do you know they won’t attack Mataró? The pro-Austrians, the Bourbons, the Miquelets. And if, somehow or other, pro-Austrians do win the war, how will we come back to Barcelona then? Every finger will point at us and call us traitors.” Her gaze still fixed on the skylight, Amelis went on: “I told you I used to live by following armies on the march. I lied. It’s the armies who have always followed me. I lost my virginity to a French soldier when I was thirteen. I bled for eight days. On the ninth, there was a Spanish captain. The ones who came afterward, I don’t remember too well, I don’t want to. A lot of Miquelets. At least they would give me something to eat after doing it. After that, I just wandered.” She looked around her. “I’ve never had a home.”
For the first time since I’d come into the room, she looked at me, very sad. “Let’s go, then, Martí. But just tell me: Where? Where?”
I couldn’t bear that she agreed with me: Whenever she did, it disarmed me. As for me, the question I was asking myself was a different one. What right did a king have to change my life? Anyway, what did I really care about in this insignificant life, this paltry crumb of le Mystère?
The thing I most loved in the world was the sight of Amelis getting out of bed every morning, naked, squatting down over the washbasin to clean herself. Her black hair fell as far as her nipples. She always parted her knees wide. And she used a lot of water, perhaps because the place between her legs was the refuge for a thick black bush. From bed I would watch her, and we’d exchange a smile. Despite all my woes and all my impudence, nobody had the right to interrupt that sequence of everyday actions that allowed me to recognize happiness. Nobody.
A sigh. I raised four fingers till the tips touched the glass of the skylight. What would Ten Points have said? “Once you have grazed this sky with your fingers, you will never want to pull your hands back again.” There are moments when life positions us in just the right place where morality and necessity converge. Why would anyone decide to tackle a fight that would be desperate and fatal? For eternal glory? For the perpetual comfort of the human race? No, my friend, not that. Le Mystère has already told me.
People allow themselves to be killed at Thermopylae for an apartment with a skylight.
Having served under Don Antonio, I didn’t find it hard to secure an audience with him. Because, unbelievable though it may sound, the Red Pelts had chosen him as commander in chief of our forces. An unexpected decision. There were two other candid
ates from older families who were, thank God, rejected. They were Catalans, they had no shortage of military experience, and naturally, their titles in the nobility surpassed Don Antonio’s—he was, as we know, a Castilian national, born to our sworn enemies. Why, then, did they choose Villarroel? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps, out-and-out defeatists that they were, the Red Pelts were not all that optimistic and wanted to avoid one of their own being responsible for the disgrace of the inevitable disaster. Or perhaps the reason was simply that he was the best of the best, and having the option to choose such a competent general, even they could not deny him the position.
In truth, I approached his office with a mixture of contradictory feelings. My dear vile Waltraud asks me how it’s possible that I had never paid him a visit, given that he had been free for a year. The answer is very simple: because my joy at his return was combined with my shame at having abandoned him right before his capture.
He offered me a seat and was polite to me, too polite. In Don Antonio, this was not a good sign. Why? Well, because he was never, not ever, agreeable to those under his command.
“I am most grateful for your offer,” he said at last. “But I am going to turn it down.”
I stopped, frozen. Had we not shared the 1710 Retreat? Had I not proved my worth as an engineer? Within Barcelona’s walls, there were few qualified engineers. Did he not think me competent, as he had three years earlier, and then out in the open?
“Of course I do. Despite your youth, as an engineer, you have mastered techniques that are unprecedented and always effective.”
“But?”
He thought for a moment before answering in that booming voice of his: “I’m turning you down because you don’t have what you need to have.”