In spite of all, Peret was the only substitute for my mother whom I ever knew. It was impossible for me not to feel fond of the man who combed my hair, dressed me, and showed me affection — far more than my father ever did. I remember that Peret cried a lot — that being his only defense against my abuses and extortions.
When I turned twelve, my father considered what to do with me. The normal thing would have been to send me to one of the Carmelite colleges in Barcelona, but they persuaded him to send me to their headquarters in France, a far more adequate place. He agreed, as it truly was a good school for the son of a businessman; also, it would put me out of sight. I did not blame him. The mutual distance was a relief to us both. At twelve, I looked seventeen, and at some point soon it was going to come to blows between us.
I have already related what passed with the Carmelites in France. Given that for two years now, our only contact had been through letters, when I got to Bazoches I wrote to tell him the news and to let him know my new address. (The expulsion I kept to myself — it would only lead to further questions — I told him it had been a decision made with my future interests in mind, and so on.)
His reply arrived soon after.
What’s all this about castles and a marquis? What makes you want to be an engineer all of a sudden? The bridges over the sea are boats, and we have these in the company. You were supposed to be learning numbers. If I find you are playing tricks on me, young man, I’ll tear you limb from limb.
Next came the friendliest part of the letter:
Precocious boy that you are, you’re doubtless beginning to have feelings for girls now. Beware. Father a bastard, you’ll get not a single peso from the grandfather. Are we clear, cap de lluç?
Cap de lluç is impossible to translate; literally, it means head of hake, but in Catalan is more along the lines of hopeless idiot.
The good part was the surprising mildness of his tone. Being the man he was, if he had been truly angry, he would have ordered me to return immediately to Barcelona, where the belt and a blessed beating would await. As it was, he enclosed the money to cover my studies for several months to come. In my letter, I’d said that Bazoches was twice as expensive as the Carmelites, in theory to sound him out, but to my surprise, he let me have the money with no complaint.
Well, he hit the nail on the head in suspecting me of tricking him. On the first day, I had asked the Ducroix brothers what payment was expected for my schooling. It was the only time I ever saw them take offense.
“Cadet! What, think the marquis needs funding by you? It is he who shall remunerate you during your stay. Thereby, you will be seen as very knavish indeed should you ever choose to criticize this house once you have left its walls.”
A very noble stance — I couldn’t have agreed more. If an aristocrat’s honor proved lucrative to others, who was I to complain? While in Bazoches I’d receive money from Vauban and from my father, double what those Carmelite dolts were getting before. I could make a little corner for myself, as the Catalan saying goes. (Though, given my circumstances, there wouldn’t be much for me to spend it on!)
I’m feeling sorry for myself, and I would not want to be thought a complainer. Because Bazoches was a veritable Noah’s Ark, but one that was filled with guides to thinking instead of animals. And I was sufficiently clever to realize this.
Beneath the Burgundy sun, I grew into a good-looking, muscular youth. My efforts were tempered by the strains of pick and shovel (and lemon juice, gah!). After a few months in my pit, I was handling the sapper’s instruments like kitchen utensils. And most important: I was absorbing rare know-how.
There might have been one or two hundred people in all the world with a better knowledge than mine of the subjects pertaining to Bazoches. The Ducroix brothers, to their great credit, made my education involving for me, and soon it was me pestering them to tell me everything, everything. Tiredness converted to hunger; the more exhausted I was, the more keen to get on with the next lesson. Once I’d gotten my head around the rudiments of engineering, I began to seek alternatives and improvements myself. More than that: Love has the underappreciated merit of also spurring a desire to learn.
For Jeanne was the other thing motivating me, keeping me alive and awake. With regard to the educational value of desire, I here present an example:
I was walking in a small wood one day alongside Armand. In Bazoches, the cultivation of “attention” was by no means limited to sight. Sometimes, on walks in the countryside, I was made to list all the sounds I could hear. Until a person concentrates, the sheer amount of detail our ears offer us goes totally unnoticed. The air, the murmurs of hidden water sources, the noise of invisible insects, the ringing out of the tools of some faraway labor. .
Armand slapped my nape. “And the bird? You’ve missed that. Are you deaf?”
“But I’ve counted six different birdsongs!”
“What about the seventh?”
“Where?”
“Behind on your left, a hundred and fifty feet or so away.”
At times, I must say, his demands upset me. “How am I supposed to hear a tiny sound like that, coming from behind me, and at such a distance?”
“By focusing on it. This is why you were given ears.” Armand then turned his hearing in the direction of this invisible bird—“a hundred and fifty feet or so away”—and when I say “turned,” I mean physically moving his ears, as would a dog!
“Learn to use your muscles” was his answer to my look of surprise. “That they are atrophied does not mean their use may never be recuperated. Let’s go.”
He obliged me to do it. We spent a good while standing silently in those woods. I tried moving my ears under Armand’s watchful gaze. No easy thing — don’t believe me, try it for yourselves! What did move were my cheeks or my crinkled-up forehead. Nothing, only ridiculous expressions. I gave up.
I sat down at the foot of a tree with my hands on my head. There was a mushroom a foot to my right. It was the only time I came truly close to giving up. That which two months of hard disciplinary exercises had not managed, this infantile one nearly had.
What was I doing there, in that corner of France, taking orders from a couple of old lunatics? Breaking my back in some pointless trench, my brain chock-full of drawings, angles, geometry — and for what? To be duped out in the middle of some wood, pouring my all into the sublime, halfwit art of waggling my ears.
“I’ll never be an engineer, never,” I said to myself — thinking out loud, like the Ducroix brothers.
“Martí, lad,” Armand said, “you’ve made decent progress.”
He knelt down beside me. It was unusual for him to use my name and not the typical scathing “cadet” or “blind mole.” The Ducroix brothers knew when they’d gone too far, and then, only then, would they show me a little affection.
“Not true,” I protested like a child. “I see nothing and hear less. How am I ever going to build fortresses or defend them?”
“I said you’ve made decent progress,” he said. And putting on a sudden barracks tone, he gave me an order: “Cadet, on your feet!”
I had sufficient respect for the Ducroix brothers to jump up, desolate though I felt.
“What is behind you, immediately behind the tree you were sitting beneath?”
I described the vegetation, including every single branch: those snapped and hanging down, and those that stood straight up, including the number and colors of leaves on each. I didn’t think this any great thing.