A Strange Country - Muriel Barbery Page 0,2

a degree that one day in December, he immobilized the gunners for nearly half an hour. The enemy shells fell like rain and Alejandro’s men prayed to the Madre, but when the enemy general, convinced all he had to do now was wipe up a handful of ghosts, launched his infantry on them, the same men who not that long ago had been praying now blessed their lieutenant for saving their fine ammunition from being too hastily deployed. They were spread through the valley in loosely-knit groups, and not as many men perished as the concentrated enemy fire would have liked. In the end, retreating once again to a place where they could withstand a long siege, they inflicted heavy losses on the other side. As day fell, the stunned adversary could not understand why they had not prevailed, and they realized that they had neither won nor lost the battle.

At the request of Alejandro—now promoted to major—Ybáñez appointed a man from the ranks as lieutenant, who would later become a major himself when Alejandro was made general. His name was Jesús Rocamora and, by his own admission, he hailed from the asshole of Spain, a little town in Extremadura lost between two deserted expanses of earth to the southwest of Cáceres. A large lake was the only source of subsistence for the poor wretches in the region, who were fishermen and went to sell their catch on the Portuguese border, which meant that their lives were spent between fishing and an equally exhausting walk beneath the evil summer sun and the biblical cold of winter. There was a priest there who made a similarly meager living, and a mayor who fished all day long. The curse of the times, for a decade now the lake had been shrinking. Prayers and processions did no good: the waters were evaporating and, whether it was the wrath of God or of Mother Nature, the subsequent generations would be reduced to leaving or to perishing. And now, through that irony of fate that transforms suffering into desire, those who once cursed their village came to feel a wrenching attachment to it, and although there was not much to like about their life, they had chosen to die there with the last fish.

“Most men prefer death to change,” said Jesús to Alejandro one evening when they were bivouacked on a shady little plateau, musing that they themselves would probably be dead by the next day.

“But you left,” said Alejandro.

“It wasn’t because I was afraid to die,” said Jesús.

“What other reason did you have?”

“It is my fate to know nakedness and to suffer for mankind. It started in the village, and so it must go on in the outside world.”

Alejandro de Yepes kept Jesús Rocamora by his side throughout the entire war. This son of hell’s fishing grounds was one of the few men to whom he would have entrusted his life without flinching. The other was General Miguel Ybáñez. Chief of staff of the king’s army, a little man so bow-legged that people said he’d been born on horseback, he was reputed to be the best horseman in the realm, a rider who leapt rather than climbed into the saddle. From his perch, he would stare down at you with his shining eyes and nothing could matter more than pleasing him. From what fabric is the skill for command cut? Yet in his gaze there was weariness and sadness. Most of the time he listened attentively, made few remarks, and gave his orders as if complimenting a friend, his voice devoid of all military sharpness—in response to which his men went out ready to die for him or for Spain, it was all the same, because the specter of fear had vanished, for a time.

One must imagine what it means to inhabit the province of life and death. It is a strange country and its only strategists are those who speak the language. They are called on to address the living and the dead as if they were all one, and Alejandro was well versed in that idiom. As a child, no matter the path he took, he was irresistibly drawn to the walls of the cemetery at Yepes. There, among the stones and crosses, he felt he was once again among his people. He did not know how to speak to them, but the peacefulness of the place rustled with words for him. What’s more, even when it meant nothing, the music of

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