B0040702LQ EBOK (9 page)

When this third period was over, the king again summoned his general and urged him to begin the campaign
immediately, for not only were the troops becoming
demoralised, the soldiers' wages were beginning to exhaust
the treasury. The general thus decided to begin the campaign, though there was one detail - just one - still to be
resolved. In any case, it was a minor detail - the capture of a
distant fortress, where an exhausted enemy would take refuge
after being beaten on every occasion - and the general took
the liberty of concealing from his officers the fact that he had
not resolved it, hastening to open hostilities and confident that he would contrive a solution in the course of the short
war.

The campaign proceeded with such admirable conformity
to the general's plans that, in the end, it proved even shorter
than anticipated. In battle after battle his forces were victorious, and the enemy, subjugated by his implacable advance,
were reduced to a few heterogeneous companies, deprived
almost entirely of weapons and leaders, and fled to take refuge
in that isolated fortress, a long way from the border. So rapid
was their flight that the general had time only to pursue them,
but none to stop and think about how to conquer that last
redoubt.

When his army set up camp before the fortress, the general
summoned his captains and harangued them in the following
manner:

`Gentlemen, we are approaching the end of this war. You
have obeyed my orders implicitly and followed my plans
down to the last detail, and here you see the result: observe
our enemies, reduced to a hundredth part of what they were,
confined to a miserable fortress, unable to offer a dignified
resistance to the force of our arms. Miserable wretches, all that
awaits them is destruction. Go ahead, then, and consummate
it. This is the reward for your fortitude, your valour and your
skill in battle. Do not ask how it is to be achieved. I do not
wish to know; that is your decision. I wish to avert my gaze
from this bloody conclusion, and, moreover, I fear I underestimated the effort I would be forced to make and feel the
need for a rest, a long rest. So tomorrow when I rise - and I
shall rise late - I wish to see our flag flying from yonder tower.
That is all, gentlemen. Good night to you. I do not believe it
any part of my soldier's duty to wish you luck, for you have
no need of it. Yet good luck all the same, gentlemen. And
good night.'

Such was the general's ascendancy over his men that none
of his captains felt a need for his orders; his last word was
accepted as such and they prepared without hesitation to
place, at dawn, their country's flag on the tower in question.

At this point, the fable divides into two versions which in the end will become one; the most widely-known version
records the words of the general when he emerged from his
tent at noon the following day, refreshed by sleep. Seeing his
country's flag fluttering from the tower against a bright blue
sky, he exclaimed:

`It could not have been otherwise.'

The second version, more private and mysterious, also
records the words of the general when he emerged from his
tent at noon the following day, after a fitful night, to be confronted by the remnants of his defeated army lying at the foot
of the walls, and the enemy flag fluttering from the tower
against a bright blue sky.

He murmured to himself.

`It could not have been otherwise.'

© Herederos de Juan Benet

Translated by Annella McDermott

After a week without sun, September had once more opened
its sampler of colours and tints, and the weather, from on high,
had made a selection for that fleeting season which is the
prelude to autumn. The rains of the preceding week had
managed to obliterate all traces of summer, closing down the
refreshment stalls, carrying off the remains of picnics and
emptying the beach and its surroundings - the promontory
and the road left hanging in the pause of that sudden solitude,
like a schoolyard after the bell has gone, abruptly deprived of
the children's cries that give it its identity, the sea restored to
its eternal progress to nowhere, the constant commotion with
which it had attempted to stamp itself on the present now
stilled.

`This is one of the few privileges left to us.'

They strolled along the entire length of the road, arm in
arm, stopping at the places from which they had absented
themselves during the summer invasion, like people taking an
inventory of a property they had let out for the season. And
though not a day passed without their celebrating the benefits
of the calm that was restored to them every year at the end of
September, in their heart of hearts there persisted an overwhelming sense of being locked away and abandoned, with
the more or less simultaneous departure of the crowds that
had caused so much inconvenience.

One holiday-maker lingered, a middle-aged man who
walked his dog and whom initially they had welcomed as
company until the end of the Indian summer; but due to his
melancholy appearance, he would become instead the perfect
illustration of a bleakness for which they could find no other
consolation than gratitude - expressed over and over again,
without enthusiasm, but with the confidence that maturity brings, with the prudent certainty of people who, for the sake
of their mental balance and composure, need to attribute to
free and voluntary choice the acceptance of a solution for
which there is no alternative - for an isolation forced upon
them for reasons of health and finance.

Every afternoon they went out for a walk, towards the
promontory and the river if the sky was clear, beyond the
beach and towards the village if it looked like rain; every day
they had to communicate to each other the little changes they
noticed (always in respect of their neighbours or surroundings) and the small surprises that their life, though sedentary
and monotonous, still provided. Because for them nothing
could change, and there was no possible room for novelty,
since they had been telling each other for years that they
would grow old together.

Although they lived in the village (they were the only
people with book-learning, as the locals put it, to live there
all the year round), they had no contacts beyond those
necessary to their subsistence, except for a smallholder and
his wife who occasionally came to have tea at their home.
All they received from town were newspapers, magazines
and letters from the bank, and they had never been known,
in all the time they had been there, to leave the village for a
single day, despite the inconvenience caused by the summer
visitors. They were not unsociable, they could not be said
to live any differently from the better-off locals, and they
were extremely careful never to express, even in private, any
nostalgia for the city, nor voice the usual grumbles about
the lack of comfort or amusement in the environment in
which they had chosen to live, apparently for the rest of
their lives.

They appeared to have measured and weighed up everything with extreme care, to have taken into consideration
their age, their frailties, their income and tastes, and chosen
that isolation in order to eke out - without extravagance, or
waste, with no gesture of impatience, no costly indulgence in
enthusiasm - financial resources that must last exactly until
the day of their death; that was why they had to deprive themselves of any unnecessary luxuries, avoid even the most
innocent temptation; they could not afford to feel curious
about outsiders or visitors, they could not allow themselves
any feelings of envy, promptly stifled, nor any gesture of surprise over the appearance of the unknown which would allow
the irruption on to the stage, set for the last act of the play, of
those hidden elements and agents that every age keeps concealed in order to provide itself from time to time with the
possibility of a plot. Yet every day they must have hoped for
something unusual, though they did not confess it even to
each other. Because the refusal to accept novelty, the submission to routine and discipline in order to abort any sign of a
chimerical and unfounded hope, these - more than the village
with its two brief months of animation, to which one might
add the preparations for the summer and the last few faltering
stragglers - constituted the essence of their withdrawal from
the world.

They decided to go as far as the level crossing, a rather
longer walk than usual. When they first came across him, they
must have thought that the situation of the man with the dog
was not unlike their own. `Look, they've cut down the trees
that were there. Remember?' or `Heaven alone knows what
they'll put up here, maybe even a block of flats', or `The
baker's wife told me they're closing down the bakery and
opening up a shop selling souvenirs and knickknacks and sun
cream,' such was the repertoire of banal phrases with which,
day by day, they followed the course of a series of changes
which did not affect them and which afforded such a contrast
with the monastic austerity of their existence, where having
to discard a shirt or a duster posed a threat to the harsh vow of
endurance which they had firmly and staunchly undertaken,
in order to survive.

The rain and the disappearance of the summer visitors
provided everything else that they needed on that occasion;
in other words, they again blessed the day they had moved
there and gave thanks for the beauty of nature, returning in all
her splendour to reign over the place, after two months of
humiliating slavery to the demands of summer.

`Just smell the air: wonderful. All it takes is a few drops of
rain, and look at the difference it makes.'

A prayer of thanks with renewed faith and such sincere
conviction that they scarcely noticed their second encounter
with the dog and the summer straggler, a man dressed in halfmourning, whom they had overtaken earlier going in the
same direction, and who must, therefore, have followed the
same route as themselves, but covering the ground more
quickly and following a parallel path.

They stopped to listen to the song of some starlings, which,
perched on a line of leafy plane trees, were also preparing to
move on. They stood gazing at the sea from the road as it
bends round the promontory, huge, intermittent waves that
broke at their feet with a bow expressing reverence and submission to all those who, like themselves, had managed to rise
above everyday considerations and accept sacrifices at the end
of their lives, concerned only with what does not change.
They had seldom walked so far on an afternoon; it was one
of those days brimming over with trust and confidence, so
necessary for the coming six months of cold. They had often
commented on how those walks strengthened their spirit.

`We'll walk as far as the inn. It still doesn't get dark till late,
there's plenty of time. It's a splendid day.'

The inn was almost a kilometre away. Lately, they had only
gone that far, to sit in the shade drinking a beer or a lemonade,
when someone from the village gave them a lift in their car.

They had walked down the slope of the promontory and
started along the road at the end of which the inn could be
found, round a bend hidden amongst a grove of trees, when
she suddenly stopped, to listen to something which she had
heard indistinctly. `What was that?' she asked, looking up
at the sky? `Didn't you hear something? Didn't you feel
something odd?'

It was like an ordinary flash of lightning which, unaccompanied by thunder, and glimpsed only out of the corner
of the eye, requires confirmation to dispel the uneasy feeling
aroused by something seen but not heard. `I'm not sure ...
there, or perhaps over there. Didn't you see anything?'

`There must be a storm in the distance. The weather is
unsettled. Maybe we should turn back.'

`Let's go as far as the inn.'

They walked on, with frequent glances at the sky,
exchanging those reassuring phrases that optimists always
hope will reach the elements and persuade them to restrain
their stormy impulses.