Guano (17 page)

Callao awaited. Many pairs of eyes looked on from relatively few windows. They were fixed first on the Spanish fleet, which, in V formation, with the small ships at the back, made for a dramatic approach, but they also looked at the streets below, where troops and militias now fidgeted, galvanized into action by President Prado. They shored up the barricades and hauled additional batteries up into the hills near the strongholds, taking advantage of the tatters of fog to hide their movements.

The mayor was holding forth about past exploits: that time when they had driven back Francis Drake, that other time when John Hawkins had waved the white flag, that time when …

Standing on a case of shells in front of city hall, he explained to the small but courageous crowd that they had Armstrongs and Blakelys, revolutionary cannons that were monuments to the genius of the human mind. They had arranged them in two armoured batteries, Junín and La Merced. Of course, they would do maximum damage to the enemy. They could start whetting their pride.

They also had ships (
Colón, Tumbes, Sachaca
), along with confederate-style ships with rams (
Loa, Victoria
), all currently in harbour. They were just waiting for Spain to attack to set sail and respond. And of course troops were positioned here, and there, and there. He pointed.

A sergeant and three men came running. The bayonets pointed the way home to the crowd, and then they grabbed the mayor. He
was talking too much, there were spies hiding behind the curtains, plants and cases of shells. He was congratulated for his war effort, but that would do. They took him to his beige and brown office at city hall, where he looked at the round portrait, and it moved him. His wife and his son had already left for a safer location. Would he ever see them again?

He smoked.

The Spanish fleet tried to study the Peruvian positions through the fog and the distance. Once the charts were sufficiently filled in, they entered the Bay of Callao. It was May 2. The battle had begun.

Simón had come up with a plan:

1.
The
Villa de Madrid
was approaching the coast to engage the enemy in combat.

2.
Simón would reach said coast aboard a second vessel.

3.
He would get to Montse and deliver his letter.

4.
They would share a sweet kiss.

Of course Simón had first convinced the captain of the
Villa
to let him mount a sabotage expedition involving sailors as disreputable as in the times of illicit Peruvian-Spanish trade, with camouflages just as discreet, and a few minuscule dinghies. The captain was immediately won over by this strategic fantasy. Admiral Núñez would be impressed later, perhaps there would even be a few decorations – he would encourage Claro. Particularly given that the lieutenant was familiar with the city, its underground networks, its shifty characters, the lady at the bakery.

But keep the raping to a minimum.

The plan may have appeared laughably simple, but the official cover of fearlessness gave it some chance of success. They would have no problem reaching the coast, and since everything had been approved
by the captain, they avoided the bother of theft and desertion. Simón would then cleverly get lost in the chaos of combat, for which a heroic ‘leave me here, I'll catch up' should suffice.

Only a few of the men accompanying him suspected the true reason for the expedition. Simón had spoken too often of a women in recent days, taking advantage of the camaraderie that had developed between them. This required of them their silent support. They were going along essentially to help Simón in his adventure and maybe to find out how it ended, or how it began. His deception didn't bother them; they were romantics. They thought of the Spanish women, with their tears and their handkerchiefs, left behind on the docks of Cadix. The rest of the men thought more about Peruvian women, about the rape that didn't bother them any more than the deception bothered the others, when you came right down to it.

The Spanish fleet split in two: one assault group headed to the north of the bay, a second to the south. At twelve fifteen, Núñez gave the order to the
Numancia
, part of the northern group, to fire on the Santa Rosa fortifications. The order was executed, and fire was returned. The ship and the little fort put on a show for ten minutes, and then the entire watch of the Numancia was reduced to silence by an accurately aimed shell. Come about, yelled Núñez, come about!

He scratched his sideburns nervously.

While they tried to manoeuvre, a second projectile hit the Numancia. Núñez was not spared. An itching sensation started in his leg, and then the blood stained his pants.

Look, my shirt too.

The admiral was wounded. One side stopped firing, then the other, out of growing curiosity. The concern lasted fifteen minutes. Núñez made sure that everything was okay – minor scrapes resulting from two or three shards, come on, get up. He mopped a little sweat, and then the cannonfire again, sideburns again, everyone was reassured.

Ordering his men to row harder still, Simón looked on the ceasefire as bad news. The lull could allow for Peruvian vigilance to shift to the south side of the bay. They would spot the
Villa de Madrid
, and then – what's that? – an enemy dinghy floating a little beyond it. They would suspect a reconnaissance mission, a landing, a diversion – certainly not a futile desire to reach one's soulmate. A cannon would be adjusted, a dispatch sent to the coastal patrols, and that's the way love would end: with weapons.

When the
Numancia
resumed firing a few minutes later, Simón was relieved that they were getting back to the business of killing each other. They would have other things to do than to adjust cannons by so much as an inch or even to send a dispatch.

And so it was.

A Blakely cannon was silenced. Then a Spanish shell crushed the La Merced battery, killing its entire crew with one strike. Twisted iron created a column of black smoke and a lot of coughing. One of those coughing was the Peruvian Secretary of Defence, José Gálvez. The troops yelled to the heroes, and the clamour shored up the Peruvians' courage.

The future of the battle was looking bright.

It's going so well, Simón thought.

The dinghy reached the shore. It was greeted by a bit of gunfire from a villa on a promontory, a sort of advance post shrouded in vines. Fire was returned sporadically; they aimed for the windows, they hit the grapes. A corporal turned poet scribbled an ode to the landing in his notebook. They covered each other as they gradually made their way past the stronghold.

Simón advanced from rock to dune. He watched the villa, spotted the movement of Peruvian gunmen going window to window, spotted the lack of movement from the rattan chairs on the terrace. He dashed toward an overturned fishing boat that offered some cover,
then a pile of seaweed, then crab traps.

Callao drew nearer; Simón would soon be able to blend in with its crowds, or its rubble, and make his way to the Ortuño residence. He studied the city once more, the black islands (oh, the windows) between the green rivers (oh, the vines); the changing positions of the Peruvians and the indifference of the parasols. He ran toward the city. He was taken for a target. A bullet rendered the dinghy unseaworthy, another dispatched a seashell … a third the corporal (oh, the humanity).

Simón reached the cover of the streets, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and was surprised by how rough his sweat was. His palms didn't recognize the sandy skin: temples like sea urchins, rocky lips, pebbly beard leading to tragic questions, worry, anxiety – whose eyebrows of glistening ash are these? He took off his uniform, crept to the fountain near city hall and washed himself off. He looked twenty years younger. Still, in the water's reflection, he thought he looked old. So this is how it is, he thought. Love makes the heart young but the body old. And my mind is bouncing between sudden confidence and complete exhaustion. I have the fear, no the desire, wait, no, the fear of dying typical of adolescents and the elderly. It's what having too much time to think, or not enough time to think, can do to you.

Wounded a fifth time, Admiral Núñez gave the signal to continue firing. Carry on, that's it, or we'll never be done. He had to suffer through the surgeon's exam once more: arm up, arm down, lie down,
bicycle
– what on earth? Come on, the doctor continued: legs up, move them in circles, thank you.

What made him endure the humiliation of the exam and, it
occurred to him, of his own ignorance, was the Plaza de Cibeles statue, which every bit of suffering brought him closer to.

He got up, leaning his weight on a barrel, just in time to witness, to the south, the
Villa de Madrid
being taken out of battle by a Blakely cannon. The shell made the boilers cough, releasing two or three black puffs, a sort of distress signal. Men came up on deck and spit blood before collapsing. Don't go down there. There was the explosion, and then the rain of crushed coal that sullied the dead, stung the living, attacking sailors like a cloud of bizarrely petrified insects.

There were rumours: thirty-five victims, the ship immobilized, the captain of the
Villa de Madrid
losing an arm trying to save the leg of a seaman caught under a girder. Núñez feared that the competition could rob him of his statue.

City hall was engulfed in flames. A human chain was passing buckets filled at the fountain. The lobby of the gutted building was wide open to view, along with the rhododendrons shrivelled from the heat, the mayor's office and the round portrait the smoke was already eating away at.

Simón was able to wind his way through the volunteer firefighters. He offered to go inside and see whether anyone was unconscious, didn't bother, and instead, quickly crossing the entire burnt-out ruins, slipped out a window at the back of the building. That way he avoided several checkpoints, barricades and a long detour. But not the mayor.

He grabbed Simón by the ankle, begging for help. What are you doing on your knees in your office? The smoke? No. The pain?

My good man, please.

He wasn't injured.

It was too heavy for one man alone, you see.

He wanted to save the portrait.

As Núñez ordered the immobilized
Villa de Madrid
to be towed, a stray bullet wounded him for the sixth time. After the bicycle, he should have stayed lying on the deck. He was starting to worry his statue would be of the recumbent variety. He tried to get up using a barrel as support, tried again, fumed, in vain. Maybe this was how one earned immortality: looking up at the sky. He consoled himself. There must have been Roman emperors who had to think like him, lying prone and contemplative, no doubt less from the pain than from the laziness of the times.

His first mate described what Núñez couldn't see: two Spanish vessels retreating, at long last the dispatch of the Peruvian fleet that had started shelling. He made sure his commentary took the sting out of what he saw, to spare the wounded man. It was all without repercussions, inconsequential or purely routine. And Núñez watched the clouds, which looked like his silhouette, with his mount and his sword plain to see. The layer of clouds behind that depicted Madrid, or Rome.