The Siege Read online

  Rogelio Tizón takes his leave of the professor, picks up his hat and his cane and steps outside into the waning afternoon where the sun on the horizon is painting the white towers and terraces red. There are still some people on their balconies, looking toward the place where the latest bomb fell. A bedraggled woman reeking of cheap wine steps aside muttering curses as Tizón passes by; she clearly knows him. Old grievances. Pretending not to hear her, the comisario walks off down the street.

  Black pawns, white pawns, he thinks. That is what this is about. And Cádiz as the chessboard.

  TAXIDERMY IS NOT simply a matter of dissection, it involves re-creating the illusion of life. Keenly aware of this fact, the man in the gray smock and the oilskin apron, his measuring tape in hand, takes the necessary precautions, those prescribed by science and by art. In small, neat, careful handwriting he jots down each measurement in a notepad: distance from ear to ear and from head to tail. Then, with a pair of compasses, he measures the internal and external angles of each eye, notes their color, dark brown. Closing the notebook, he looks around and notices that the light streaming through the colored panes of the half-open door that leads on to the terrace is beginning to fade. He lights a paraffin lamp, slots the glass tulip into place and turns up the flame so that it illuminates the body of the dead dog splayed on the marble table.

  It is a delicate moment. Very delicate. A false start now might ruin everything. Animal hair can be shed over time; an insect larva or egg in the wadding or seagrass stuffing might destroy his work. These are the limits of his art. Some of the specimens in the workshop now lit up by the oil lamp have been marred by the passage of time: mistakes in re-creating a lifelike pose, damage caused by sunlight, by dust or damp, colors distorted by the use of too much tartar and lime or some inferior varnish. These are the limits of science. And yet these failed works, these sins of youth and inexperience are still here: proof, perhaps, or reminders of how dangerous mistakes can be, in taxidermy as in so many things: contracted muscles distorting the natural form of the animals, poses that are less than lifelike, poorly finished mouths or beaks, errors in the positioning of the internal framework, crude suturing … Every detail matters in this workshop where the war and the state of affairs in the city make it difficult to do serious work. It is increasingly difficult to obtain worthwhile animal specimens and he has to make do with what he can find. Make do and mend. Improvising tools and equipment.

  The taxidermist goes over to the black woodstove that sits between the door and the stairs leading to the terrace. Next to it is a display cabinet from which a lynx, an owl and a squirrel monkey peer down with lifeless glass eyes. From among the tools, he selects a pair of steel tweezers and an ivory-handled scalpel, brings them back to the table and bends over the animal: a young dog of medium size with a white patch on its belly and another on its forehead. Beautiful canine teeth. A fine specimen, the animal’s pelt unmarked by the poison used to kill it. By the lamplight, with great care and skill, the taxidermist extracts the eyes with the tweezers, severs the optic nerve with the scalpel, cleans the empty sockets and sprinkles them with the mixture of alum, tannin and mineral soap he has prepared in a mortar. Then he stuffs the sockets with cotton wool. Finally, having checked that all is well, he turns the animal on to its back, stops its orifices with wadding, spreads the paws and makes an incision from the sternum over the abdomen and begins to skin it.

  To one side of the workshop, beneath perches fixed to the wall on which sit a pheasant, a hawk and a bearded vulture, is a desk on which a map of the city is spread out, a large, printed map with a double scale at the bottom indicating both French toises and Spanish varas. On it lies a pair of dividers, assorted rulers and set squares. The map is crisscrossed by curious penciled lines which fan out from the east, and dotted with crosses and circles that resemble the symptoms of some malignant pox. It looks like a spider’s web spread across the city, each dot an insect that has been caught and devoured.

  Slowly, night draws in. While the taxidermist flays the dog by the lamplight, carefully easing the skin away from flesh and bones, he hears the sound of pigeons cooing from the stairs leading to the terrace.

  * * *

  * “He who moves slowly goes far; he who goes quickly goes to his death.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Buenos días. How are you today? Good morning. Give my regards to your wife. Goodbye, so nice to see you. My best to the family. Countless fleeting, friendly exchanges, smiles from acquaintances, brief conversations inquiring about a wife’s health, a child’s studies, a son-in-law’s business. Lolita Palma moves between the groups of people chatting or gazes in the windows of the shops. It is mid-morning on Calle Ancha in Cádiz. The beating heart of the city. Offices, agencies, consulates, ship brokers. It is easy to distinguish the natives of Cádiz from recently arrived foreigners through their manner and their conversation: the latter, who have temporarily taken up residence in hostelries on the Calle Nueva, posadas on the Calle Flamencos Borrachos and private houses in the Avemaría district, peer into the windows of the expensive shops and cafés while the natives of the city go about their business, clutching attaché cases, documents and newspapers. Some discuss military campaigns and strategies, defeats and improbable victories while others worry about the price of nankeen cloth, of indigo or cocoa and whether the price of Cuban cigars might rise above 48 reales a pound. As for the members of the Cortes, they are not to be found in the streets at this hour. Parliament is in session a few short steps from here at the Oratorio de San Francisco, the galleries filled with an idle public many of whom have been left unemployed by the French siege, and with diplomats eager for news of the Cortes’ machinations—the British ambassador sends dispatches to London with every ship leaving port. Shortly after 2 p.m. when the session breaks, the parliamentary deputies will go in search of inns and cafés, discussing points raised during the morning session and, as always, castigating other deputies based on their ideology, affinity and antipathy: clerical, secular, communal, liberal and royalists, from reactionary old stick-in-the-muds to angry young radicals and all shades in between, each with their own cliques and newspapers. A microcosm of Spain and her overseas colonies—many of which are taking advantage of the chaos created by the war to foment revolution.

  Lolita Palma has just stepped out of the boutique opposite the Café Apolo on the Plaza de San Antonio. Formerly known as La Mode de Paris, now aptly renamed La Moda Española, it is the most elegant shop in the city, its fabrics and designs prized by the cream of Cádiz society. Despite this fact, the proprietor of Palma e Hijos does not buy her dresses here; instead she has them run up by a dressmaker and an embroideress working from patterns she herself sketches based on ideas from French and English magazines. She visits La Moda Española to keep abreast of fashion and to buy fabrics and accessories; the maid-servant walking three paces behind her is carrying two carefully wrapped boxes containing six pairs of gloves, as many pairs of stockings and some lace for trimming underclothes.

  “God be with you, Lolita.”

  “Buenos días. My respects to your lady wife.”

  The main street in Cádiz is a bustle of faces, mostly familiar, mostly men who doff their hats to her as they pass. This is the Calle Ancha after all. That there are few women about at this early hour earns Lolita more admiring glances from the men. Pleasantries, hats doffed, polite nods of the head. Anyone who is anyone recognizes this woman who, though she is of the weaker sex, prudently and skillfully manages the company that belonged to her late father and her grandfather before him. All life in Cádiz is here: trade with the Indies, shipping, investments, maritime insurance. Lolita is utterly unlike the other women in business, widows for the most part who are content to be mere moneylenders, charging commission and interest. Lolita Palma takes risks, she gambles, sometimes she wins, sometimes she loses. She works hard and makes money. Unencumbered assets, an irreproachable life. Respectable. Solvent, in credit and held in high esteem. Capital amounting to
a million and a half pesos. At least. She is clearly one of us. One of the twelve or fifteen families that matter. A good head on what people say are rather pretty shoulders; though this is something no one can know for certain. Still a spinster at the age of thirty-two, she has been left on the shelf.

  “Adíos. Lovely to see you.”

  Chin up, high heels clacking, Lolita strolls coolly down the middle of the Calle Ancha. This is her street, her city. She is dressed in dark gray, with a dash of color provided by a cotton mantilla trimmed in pale blue ribbon. She carries a small matching handbag. Her mantilla, the hair swept back from her temples into a bun at the nape of her neck, and linen pumps trimmed with silver are her only concessions to this outing; her dress is the simple, comfortable, rather formal one she wears when working or receiving clients in her office. Usually she is in her office at this hour, but has come out because she has a delicate financial matter to deal with: some questionable letters of exchange she acquired three weeks ago but which, fortunately, she successfully negotiated an hour ago at the San Carlos Exchange for a reasonable commission. The gloves, stockings and lace she bought at La Moda Española are by way of a celebration. Restrained. As she is in all her thoughts and deeds.

  “Congratulations on the Marco Bruto. I read in El Vigía that she arrived safely.”

  It is Alfonso, her brother-in-law, of Solé y Asociados, wholesalers of English fabric and merchandise from Gibraltar. He is cold and aloof as usual, dressed in brown with a mauve jacket, silk stockings and carrying a walking stick from the Indies. He does not doff his hat, merely touches the brim with two fingers, raising it an inch or so. Lolita Palma still finds him as disagreeable as she did six years ago when he married her sister Caridad. Their relationship with the family is strained. Visits to her mother once a week but little more. Alfonso Solé has never been truly satisfied with the dowry of 90,000 pesos settled on him by his late father-in-law; for their part, the Palma family are far from happy about the incompetent manner in which the money has been invested for little return. Aside from commercial disagreements, there is the matter of the Puerto Real estate which Alfonso believes is rightfully his by marriage. He has contested the last will and testament of Tomás Palma, which is now in the hands of lawyers and notaries, though any resolution is in abeyance as a result of the war.

  “The vessel did arrive, thank the Lord. We had given the cargo up for lost.”

  She knows that Alfonso cares little about the fate of the Marco Bruto, it would not matter to him if the ship were at the bottom of the sea or in a French port. But this is Cádiz, and appearances matter. When in-laws meet on the Calle Ancha, they have to talk about something, however briefly, since the whole city is watching. No business can survive here without the respect and trust of the citizens; even they must observe the proprieties or lose that trust.

  “How is Cari?”

  “Well, thank you. We shall see you on Friday.”

  Alfonso touches the brim of his hat again and, taking his leave, walks on down the street. Ramrod straight to the tip of his walking stick. Lolita Palma’s relationship with her sister Caridad is also less than cordial. They were never close, even as children. Lolita considers her sister frivolous and selfish, all too happy to live off the hard work of others. Even the death of their father and their brother, Francisco de Paula, has done nothing to bring them closer: they grieved, they mourned, each in private. Their mother is now the only link between them, though even this is a formality; a weekly visit to the family home on the Calle del Baluarte, chocolate, coffee and pastries, a conversation that does not stray beyond the weather, the French bombs and the plants decorating the patio. Visits enlivened only by the arrival of their cousin Toño, a cheerful, affable bachelor.

  Caridad’s marriage to Alfonso Solé—ambitious, unscrupulous, his father an importer of textiles for the local volunteer corps, his mother haughty and foolish—has only served to increase the distance between the two sisters. Neither Caridad nor her husband will ever forgive Tomás Palma for refusing to take his son-in-law into the family business, nor for limiting his younger daughter’s expectations to a simple dowry and the house on the Calle Guanteros where the Solés now live: a magnificent three-story residence valued at 350,000 reales. With that, her father said, they’ll have money to burn. As for my daughter Lolita, she has all the qualities necessary to make her own way in the world. Look at her. She’s clever, determined. She can stand on her own two feet, and I trust her more than I trust anyone; she knows more than anyone about how to make money, or how not to lose it. Even as a girl. If one day she decides to marry, she is not the kind of woman who will spend her time reading novels or gossiping in the teahouses while her husband breaks his back, take my word for it. She is made of sterner stuff.

  “Beautiful as ever, Lolita. Such a pleasure to see you … And how is your mother?”

  Emilio Sánchez Guinea is holding his hat in one hand and a thick sheaf of letters and documents in the other: he is a plump man of sixty, with thinning white hair. His eyes are wise. He dresses in the English style, with a double watch chain looped through the buttons of his waistcoat, and he has the almost imperceptible, slightly rumpled appearance of merchants of a certain age and standing. In Cádiz, where there is no greater social sin than idleness, to appear a little disheveled—tie or cravat loose, suit a little wrinkled—is considered evidence of having done a hard and honorable day’s work.

  “I heard your ship finally arrived. A relief for all concerned.”

  Emilio is an old and dear friend, someone she trusts implicitly. Having attended school with the late Tomás Palma, he has had many dealings with the family firm and indeed continues to share risky schemes and business opportunities with Lolita. In fact there was a time when he hoped she might become his daughter-in-law, might marry his son Miguel, who now works with him and is happily married to another young woman. However, the lack of a marital tie will never alter the excellent relations between the houses of Palma and Sánchez Guinea. It was Don Emilio who advised Lolita in her first business dealings after her father died. He still does so, when she seeks his opinion and experience.

  “Are you heading home?”

  “No, I’m going to Salcedo’s bookshop. I want to see if some books I ordered have arrived.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

  The elderly merchant gives a cheerful laugh.

  “Whenever I see you, I forget everything else. Shall we go?”

  He offers her his arm. On the way, they discuss the general state of affairs and also matters of particular interest to them both. The revolutions in the American colonies are causing serious problems; much more so, in fact, than the French siege. Exports of textiles across the Atlantic have plummeted alarmingly, revenues are minimal, there is a shortage of precious metals which has led to a scarcity of currency, leading some businessmen to rashly invest in vales reales—Royal bonds—which have proved difficult to convert into hard cash. Lolita Palma, however, has successfully compensated for the liquidity problem by opening up new markets: importing flour and cotton from the United States, exporting to Russia, promoting Cádiz as an ideally positioned repository for goods in transit. All these things have added to the steady revenue from prudent investments in Letters of Exchange and in marine insurance. The house of Sánchez Guinea specializes in marine insurance and Palma e Hijos regularly works with them, providing capital to finance commercial voyages against premiums and interest. It is a financial arrangement which Don Emilio’s blend of experience and common sense has made hugely profitable in a city constantly in need of hard currency.

  “You have to accept it, Lolita: one day the war will be over, and then our real problems will begin. By the time the freedom of the seas is restored, it will be too late. Our American colonies are already trading directly with the Yankees and the English. Meanwhile, we in Cádiz want them to go on paying us for something they can get for themselves. T
he current upheaval in Spain has taught them that they do not need us.”

  Her arm in his, Lolita Palma walks down the Calle Ancha. Imposing porticos, elegant shops and businesses. As always, Bonalto’s silver-smiths is crowded with customers. Tight knots of people chatting, greetings from strangers and acquaintances. Following some paces behind, carrying the packages, comes the young Mari Paz, the maid who sings snatches of songs in her bell-like voice as she waters the plants.

  “We will survive, Don Emilio … America is a big place and the ties of language and culture are not so easily broken. We will always have a presence there. Besides, there are new markets. Think about the Russians … If the Czar declares war on France, they will need everything we can supply.”

  Don Emilio shakes his head skeptically. “Too many years have passed,” he says, “too many gray hairs. Besides,” he adds, “this city has lost its authority, its raison d’être. The death knell was sounded when the monopoly on overseas trade ended in 1778. Whatever anyone might say, the independence of the American ports cannot be repealed. No one will be able to impose their authority on the Creoles now. Each new turn in this war has been another nail in the coffin for Cádiz.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic, Don Emilio.”

  “Pessimistic? How many catastrophes has the city suffered? England’s colonial war did us a great deal of harm. Then came our war with revolutionary France followed by the war with England … that was where we finally foundered. The Treaty of Amiens brought with it more risk than trade: remember the French houses that had been trading here since time immemorial that went bankrupt overnight? Since then, there’s been another war with the English, then the blockade and now the war with France … You think I’m being pessimistic, hija? For twenty-five years now, the city has been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”