“But your work hindered the devil,” he said in my defense. “Obstructing the trench, you won us a few more days in this city.”
“And for what? Look around you. If I do survive, it will always be hanging over me that I was the architect of its demise.” Ballester shook his head, but I refused to listen. “Where is truth, the authentic truth? In our deeds or in the feelings that guide them? I know I didn’t design this trench based on love or patriotism but out of vanity. Now the death of my family bears my signature.”
I cried so hard, I thought my eyes would drop from my head. Ballester knelt down beside me and, crushing my cheeks in his hands, gave me a hateful look. The world was sinking, and Ballester, I now understand, knew these would be the last words spoken between us.
“Know your problem?” he said. “That you only fight for the living. Between them, the French, the Spanish, and the Red Pelts killed my father, my mother, and my brothers. So many of my people are dead, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t be able to avenge them all. Don’t fight for the living, and don’t fight for the dead, either. People in the future might speak ill of acts we’ve committed — because we got things wrong or because we failed. Fine. I’d rather be looked down on for the things I did do than the things I never did.”
I was still on my knees, shaken, weeping. He stood up. Ballester standing at his full height made me feel like a child. He added: “Do you truly think the world revolves around your damned trench? Know what I say to that? I hope it was the greatest work of your life. Because if not, what would have been the point in having taken on that bunch of braggarts dressed in white?”
Ballester then did the most loving thing one man can do for another: He lifted me to my feet.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” he entreated me. And we returned to the fray. I followed him, I think, because at that moment I hadn’t the slightest desire to outlive Amelis and Anfán. Or my trench.
A number of units from the Coronela, during their retreat, had taken up positions on the absurd unfinished cutting, the ditch inside the ramparts that had been intended to contain the Bourbon assault. Dozens of the militiamen, covered in mud after all the rain, had taken shelter in it and were leaning out and firing at floor height. The wave of Bourbon soldiers was crashing down on them — they’d end up trapped if they stayed down there. Ballester and I leaped down into the six-foot cutting and began shoving and urging them to get out. “Out of the cutting!” we cried. “Fall back!” Ballester and his men forced them up and out.
I went along shouting, pointing the way to the first line of streets behind us. “To the buildings! Occupy them and shoot from the windows!”
We carried on, forcing them out of the cutting. Before we knew it, the Bourbons were upon us. Dozens, hundreds, of white uniforms jumped down, brandishing their bayonets. They had come from the captured ramparts; it was at least a regiment. Down in the ditch and around it, Barcelonans and Frenchmen gored one another. I now tried to scrabble out myself, but as I was doing so, someone grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the ground. I remember, as I sank into the mud, thinking disparagingly: Why not just knife me in the back? The answer was that the person who had yanked me back down was no other than my good friend Don Antoine Bardonenche.
He’d been tasked with clearing the cutting; the Frenchmen around us wreaking havoc with their bayonets were his escort. It had turned out to be a devastating day even for him. His pristine white uniform was dirty for once, and his face smeared. There were blood spatters all over his chest.
He pointed his sword at my nose and said: “Mon ami, mon ennemi. Rendez-vous.”
“Ah, non!” I replied in the offended tone of someone asked to pay a debt he does not owe. “Ça jamais!”
That’s right: Longlegs Zuvi, the rat, refusing the very thing that had been in motion since the siege began. I didn’t even have Peret’s sword about my person, so, very nobly, I threw a handful of mud in Bardonenche’s eyes, turned, and ran. While his and Ballester’s men continued laying into one another with bayonets, Bardonenche wiped the mud from his eyes and raced after me. I tripped over a rut, landing face-to-face with a dead soldier. I grabbed the man’s rifle and, gasping, turned the bayonet on myself like a spear. Halting, Bardonenche sighed. “Don’t,” he said.
Pity for Bardonenche — pity for me — pity for all of us. His expression was more than merely downcast: It was commiseration itself. I, of course, felt like a rat cornered by a tiger. Imagine a zero the size of the moon: That was how likely I was to overcome Bardonenche, Europe’s finest swordsman.
I still think Martí Zuviría should, by rights, have died that September 11, in that waterlogged cutting. But just then Ballester leaped like a panther from the edge of the ditch, and he and Bardonenche set to tussling in the mud. I wasn’t stupid enough to let such a chance go begging, and flexing my long legs, I launched myself out of the cutting.
White uniforms were everywhere; the entire cutting was being overrun by hundreds of Frenchmen. The men accompanying Bardonenche tried to protect their captain, and the Miquelets theirs. Ballester’s men fired and thrust their blades in a frenzy, but the cascade of Bourbons intensified. The clamor of the battle was appalling: Across the city, more than forty thousand rifles were exchanging fire, so disorderly and at such a pace that it sounded like a constant drumroll. We had to fall back immediately.
For the second time, I addressed Ballester by his first name. “Esteve!” I howled, on all fours at the edge of the cutting. “Get out, for the love of God, get up here now! You don’t know who you’re dealing with! Surti!”
Ballester had bargained on a French captain being more skilled in martial arts than he was, but by turning it into a brawl in the confines of the cutting, he’d hoped to level the field. Bardonenche’s long arms kept hitting up against the walls, preventing him from using his skills. They punched, bit, and scratched each other like wild animals.
Still, not even Ballester could withstand a swordsman like Bardonenche for long. The latter eventually managed to force some space between them and, with a lightning-fast thrust, ran Ballester through at stomach height. The blade entered up to the hilt. Ballester, with half the sword projecting from his lower back, turned his head, looked up, saw me, and said something that I’ll take to my grave: “Go! You’re more important than we are!”
His last words. Next came a deafening guttural cry that could be heard over and above the din of the battle. His fingers sank into the ground like grappling hooks, and he looked Bardonenche in the eye. Bardonenche threw back his head, but — and this was his error — didn’t move away. His most sensible option would have been to let his saber go and kick Ballester’s body clear. In Bardonenche’s world, I suppose, it was bad form to drop your weapon in such a fashion. Honor was the death of him.
Bardonenche cried out, his chin high, as Ballester, summoning what little strength remained in him, sank his teeth into the Frenchman’s neck. They both toppled into the mud. They writhed together, and Ballester’s hands came upon something Bardonenche was carrying. A small leather pouch containing used bullets: the pouch of Busquets, the old Miquelet from Mataró. Ballester took it and forced it into his enemy’s mouth, ramming it down his throat with bloodied fingers. Bardonenche, his body in spasms, struggled to get clear.