hands that were not like any fisherman’s. In addition, he liked to embellish his speech with expressions that would make a hussar blush, then return to the absolute gravity that is the custodian of noble causes.
On the fifth day of the war, Alejandro’s troops were caught in a pincer movement; the lieutenant from Yepes was witnessing the moment when his men no longer understood him and, in panic, began to do everything back to front. And then, thanks to one of history’s false miracles, Jesús Rocamora was suddenly at his side, begging for an order, gazing at him like a dog at its master.
“We’ve got to wheel the artillery round on the north flank,” cried Alejandro, for whom the appearance of a man ready to listen was a godsend.
Then he looked at him and suddenly realized that Jesús should have been with the third unit, six kilometers from there.
“And retreat through the southern pass?” shouted Jesús in turn.
Alejandro had given those precise instructions earlier, and several times over, but no one had wanted or known how to follow them. Jesús Rocamora, however, saw to it that followed they were. Better still, he did not leave his lieutenant for a second—no sooner had he set things in motion than he came back, the way a dog returns to his master, to wait for the next order, which he already knew. After two hours of this, they found themselves on the summit of an ineffable ridge, where an angel’s fart would suffice to either precipitate them into the abyss or show them the pathway down the mountain. Alejandro shouted to Jesús: Go, go, stop asking for orders! Jesús looked at him blankly and Alejandro said again, Go, away with you! So the other man cleared off like a nasty cur and showered his men with orders, no longer even taking the time to return to his superior.
They survived. Then they talked. Every evening they would speak and their acquaintance grew in a brotherly mood that precluded any sense of hierarchy. Then at dawn, lieutenant and soldier would put on their insignia and fight side by side with respect for their ranks. When Alejandro ventured to admit that he would have liked a more enviable status for Jesús, the soldier said: Fishing is the only hell I will ever know on this planet.
It was also Jesús who taught Alejandro his greatest lesson about war, and turned him from a mere tactician into a strategist.
“It’ll be a long war,” he told his lieutenant, the evening they were bivouacking on the shady little plateau.
“So you don’t think we’ll end up surrendering fairly soon?” asked Alejandro.
“We are the lords of these lands, we won’t lose them as soon as all that. But winning is another matter. It will take time for our leaders to comprehend that while the forms of war may have changed, the essence has remained the same. Once the fronts are stable—vast fronts, sir, the likes of which we’ve never seen—and the generals see that no one will carry the day any time soon, it will become obvious that everything has been staked upon tactics—outdated tactics at that—but that war is still just what it has always been.”
“A duel,” said Alejandro.
“A duel to the death,” said Jesús. “Tactics can be adapted, but in the end the winner will be whoever is the best strategist.”
“And what makes for the best strategist?” asked Alejandro.
“Ideas always triumph over weapons,” said Jesús. “Who would entrust an engineer with the keys to paradise? It is the divine part in us that determines our fate. The best strategist is the one who looks death in the eye and reads there that he must not be afraid of losing. And with every war this changes.”
“The real lords are the fishermen,” said Alejandro with a smile.
And then Jesús told him the story of his moment of revelation.
“I’m the son of a fisherman, but from the moment I set eyes on the lake, at an age when I couldn’t even walk or talk yet, I knew I wouldn’t become one. After that, I forgot what I knew. When I was a boy, I followed in my father’s footsteps. I knew how to set the nets and bring them in, how to mend them, and all the things you need to know for the job. My first fourteen years were spent between ropes and walking, and I didn’t want to remember that first sight of the lake. But on the morning of my