Guano (14 page)

They got the battle they had been looking for. The
Virgen
extended its cannons. They were lined up along its side like decaying teeth. They countered the attack, subtracting a few Chileans, although mainly adding new waves to the sea. The
Virgen
's cannons weren't rusty, but its artillerymen were.

Simón ran. He tried to help the injured and buoy the spirits of the despairing. A bit of blood spattered the sails and his hands, got lodged under his nails; that would be harder to clean. Spain's aim wasn't very good. It was firing like an old man coughing: no consistency, no power. They were missing the enemy a great deal given how little they were firing.

The captain gave the order to cease fire. The
Virgen
was having a hard time responding. Gunfire had taken chunks out of its masts. The holds were swallowing fish. It was like a casualty clawing its way through the sea, and behind it, the long stream of debris was its entrails. The
Esmeralda
was soon at its side. The two ships were so close that it was as if one were holding the other up. The order was given to board the ship. The
Virgen
's crew surrendered as a matter of course. A battle with cannons was all well and good, but fighting like pirates, no thank you. The Chilean engineers tried to save the ship. They would take it over; they would take good care of it. They took as prisoners 115 sailors, whom they would take less good care of. And six officers, whom they would treat decently.

Simón was one of them. He was ordered to hand over all of his papers. These included part of Pareja's correspondence; Simón had prettied it up with a few rewrites and embellishments. The writing was flowery, the writing of love letters. It was over.

The prisoners were brought to Valparaíso.

After negotiations, the Spanish ships blocking the port gave passage to the
Esmeralda
, which honourably unloaded the captives and would leave the harbour again only at its risk and peril. The Chileans had also promised good conditions for the officers' detention: meals served with wine and, in the cells, if possible, a window that looked out onto something other than a wall. The others would get whatever could be found.

The Spaniards had promised not to fire as they went by, nothing more.

That was already something, given the humiliation, the insult, Isabelle's coming wrath. It was noble of them not to send the Esmeralda to the bottom of the sea, thought a ruminating Pareja, who was watching the Chilean ship go by from aboard the
Villa de Madrid
. That coconut shell was laughing at Spain. Spain would crush it.

Pareja's annoyance was interrupted by a mail petty officer who had come to announce the prisoner count and the names of the officers. The admiral seemed worried once Lieutenant Claro was mentioned. Had any papers had been taken from him?

Your Excellency's personal correspondence, Your Excellency.

Very well, dismissed. Come back here.

Close the door at least.

Pareja paced the deck, his head bowed, all night. He didn't return the sailors' salutes, contemplating his future and his boots more than his troops. Then he stopped for a moment near the main mast and stroked it gently before returning to his quarters.

Once there, he wrote a note. He put on his best uniform, with frogging and buttons on the cuff carved with manticores, with roller coasters at the wrists. He lay down on his bed. He loaded his revolver, thought to himself that he really didn't want to go through with it – but the others would suggest it. As much to avoid their looks, the viscountess's disgrace, her husband's face turning red, the general
discomfort in the court, he put a bullet in his brain. The pillow was livid, turned red, soaked up the blood until its thirst was quenched and – it was a lot of fluid – spilled a little onto the bedding, which in turn saturated the Persian carpet. The carpet was burgundy, so the blood blended in, and to the innocent observer it added two or three patterns at the most. The stains would hardly show.

Pareja's eyes stayed open. They were calm and yet haunted by reflections. Valparaíso; the sea; you, dear reader. Like fossils or sediment, memories seemed to have been deposited in them, minuscule speckles in the pupil like the last bubbles released by a drowning man.

His parting note read that honour demanded suicide. His final wish was to be buried at sea, but for pity's sake, not in Chilean waters. Adieu.

After the
Triunfo
was sunk by the seagulls, the
Virgen
had fallen into enemy hands, and Pareja had committed suicide, it was clear that the war was a serious affair. There were whispers in Madrid that the admiral's correspondence had contained intimate details. Smutty fakes circulated; they were in hot demand. The war was finally heating up.

It had also driven Pezet from power in Peru. It had hurt the Chilean economy and the pride of the president of the National Ballet. It had irritated the Americans and the British. They still had their eye on the Spanish fleet. They were patrolling the surrounding waters and diplomatic corridors. They were looking disapprovingly at Isabelle II.

And yet of all of these players, none were concerned about the fate of Simón, who had fallen into enemy hands, except for the enemy himself, who took the time to find him an adequate cell where he could rot, and you, dear reader, of course, concerned about his fate, worried about his loneliness, to the point that you are willing to rot with him for a while – but only a while, because you will escape.

Here's how.

Simón disembarked in Valparaíso. As an officer, he was entitled to smiles from the young ladies. He was able to keep his gold pen and was even given a window. In the longest moments of the day, he held the former between his fingers, sitting before the latter. He wrote four lines of a journal, hunched over a tiny desk, and wore himself out. Then he found his motivation: this would sell in Madrid, where tales of prisoners sent the duchesses into a tizzy.

In between vainglorious daydreams, he watched the city through the window and tried to remember his walks. He hardly recognized the streets he had wandered. He got tired of writing badly and reliving nothing, and asked for some newspapers. Some of them were unreadable. Others reported on the progress of the war and a rancher's wedding, where the best sires were on show, because the bovine world never sleeps. As far as the war went, the Spanish fleet had a new admiral, Casto Méndez Núñez. He didn't have a moustache, but he had full sideburns that he regularly scratched, both when he was thinking and when he wasn't. He was credited with ideas of coastal bombardments and Galician superiority. He would have to succeed where his predecessors Pinzón and Pareja had failed. Striking harder summed up his strategy. He dreamed of a statue in Madrid, Plaza de Cibeles.

Simón wanted to meet him. Another character for his writing, perhaps. Stature, nerve, ego, all suggestive of genius. Or potential for deception. We shall see.

But to meet the strange character, he would first have to escape from Valparaíso. Opportunities to run off – already limited in Simón's optimistic flights of fancy – were near zero once he came back down to the ground. Crossing a footbridge during exercise time, he could catch a glimpse over the walls of the fleet's masts pitching; an optical illusion turned the barbed wire and the parapets into sails. But soon
a branch or a cloud would restore perspective – creating a sad, distant realm – and dash hope.

Simón observed, analyzed and questioned his jailer, who doubled as a manservant. A banal name, Ramón, for an average, disappointed man,. They ended up fraternizing: I would love to visit Madrid. The city is overrated. My wife is mad at me. It's far worse to be alone. Once they patted each other on the shoulder. Simón wound up telling him his story: their meeting, the war being waged and his own smaller skirmish. Ramón felt sorry for him. He was reminded of the romance he never had, but that he had dreamed of from age twelve to sixteen. Most men expect someone else to act for them in areas where they lack expertise, be it politics, or clock-making, or love. Ramón felt he was finally getting his chance, by proxy, to express his emotions and – in a flight of fancy – to write. So he found some paper. Write that letter, go on – I'll make sure it gets to her. Simón hesitated. Confinement makes you soft, and to keep stirring up all these feelings? No, such melancholy. I mean, it's not as though we're orphans.

Ramón swore he wouldn't say another word until Simón had written the letter right in front of him, and signed it, and polished it. As polished as the lady you describe.

Were her nipples really so hard they could make a sword quiver?

So Simón withdrew inside himself for a few days. He tried to find a letter in there. He had to look higher, lower, in the middle of his chest. He wanted to express his feelings. To find the exact, singular words that Montse would understand. He sweated over it. Since the future was uncertain – what with prison, the war and Ramón's good will – Simón wanted to promise nothing, hope for little and express only his feelings stripped bare of fiction.

In short, he wanted to add words to his silences in Callao.

But he went back and forth between what he wanted to do and fawning: I put my arm around your waist, I long for your mouth,
you smell like exotic flowers. He wanted the impossible, a raft. He said too much, your ankle. He crossed out words.

Then one evening when he was thinking back to the theatre, the menu, their walk and Montse's hair, it all came together. He got up to put down on paper the words that were jostling around inside him, but as if in slow motion, clear and right and soft as slow tears that the eye lets fall after they have rested a time on the eyelashes.

It was a short, simple letter. A beautiful letter. It said what men couldn't manage to say – women either, as a matter of fact. Not you. Not me.

Simón learned the fine art of waiting. Since writing the letter, he had found new ways of twiddling his thumbs: clockwise, counterclockwise, alternating, revolutionary. Hope was his only true escape. Ramón had promised to come up with a plan. Something safe.

Night watchmen lingering over a cigarette near the west wall, a sergeant passed out from too much wine at nine o'clock, a small boat in the port to reach the Spanish fleet. And for the road, cookies made by his wife. Something comforting.

But the smell of the cookies always ended up waking the sergeant or attracting the smokers. Conversations dragged on. Oh, how lucky to have a wife, damn Ramonito and his epicurean ways, and before you knew it Simón was asleep in his cell. The cigarette break was over. They would wait until tomorrow, next week and, without saying it, for destiny to point the way.

It did more than just point. The Chilean government first gave them the finger by refusing to open its ports to ships from neutral nations having dealings with the Spaniards. Spain gave the finger back; Chilean policy was completely insane.

What an insult! Núñez cried. It's like a child not playing fair. We will burn Valparaíso to the ground. We will bombard them, you'll see. Come come, the Americans weighed in, let's try to stay calm, come on, let's not get carried away. War goes where it will, Núñez said at last.