The Sun Over Breda

It was a few days after the mutiny had calmed that I became embroiled in a singular altercation. It happened the same day the pay was distributed, a day of leave granted our tercio before we returned to the Ooster canal. All Oudkerk was one great Spanish fiesta. Even the faces of the surly Flemish, whom only months before we had slashed and gored, cleared before the rain of gold that showered over the town. The presence of soldiers with full purses had the effect of producing, as if by magic, victuals that had previously been swallowed up by the earth. Beer and wine—the latter more appreciated by our troops, who, like the great Lope de Vega before them, called the former “ass piss”—flowed like water, and even the sun, warm overhead, helped brighten the party and shed its rays upon dancing in the streets, music, and card games. Houses with a sign on the front displaying swans or calabashes—I am referring to brothels and taverns, of course; in Spain we used branches of laurel or pine—were, as the old saying goes, making hay while the sun shines. Blonde, pale-skinned women recovered their hospitable smiles, and that day no few husbands, fathers, and brothers looked, more or less willingly, the other way while their women starched the tail of your shirt. There is no stone so hard that it cannot be softened by the timely clink of that pimp and procuress gold. In addition, the Flemish women, liberal in their behavior and conversation, were not at all like our sanctimonious Spanish women. They willingly allowed you to take their hands and kiss them on the face, and it was not too great a challenge to strike up a friendship with one who claimed to be Catholic, evidenced by the fact that more than a few accompanied our soldiers on their return to Italy or Spain. Nevertheless, none was as perfect as Flora, the heroine of

El sitio de Bredá, The Siege of Breda

, whom the author, don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, undoubtedly exaggerating a little, endowed with laudable virtues: a Spanish sense of honor and a love for Spaniards that I never came across in any Flemish woman. Nor, I suspect, did Calderón.

But back to my story. I was telling Your Mercies that there in Oudkerk, the usual entourage of troops on campaign—soldiers’ wives, whores, sutlers, gamblers, and people of every ilk—had set up their stalls outside of town, and soldiers were coming and going between these attractions and the town, dressing up threadbare duds with new trifles, plumes on hats, and other fripperies—as the sacristan knows, easy come, easy go. There was wanton disregard of the Ten Commandments, and few theological or cardinal virtues were left inviolate. It was, in short, what the Flemish call kermesse and we Spaniards

jolgorio, a rowdy celebration. Or as the veterans put it, we could have been in Italy.

The happy-go-lucky youth in me took in everything that day, as youths will do. Along with Jaime Correas, I saw every sight from Micah to Mecca, and although I was not much of a drinker, I downed the precious grape along with everyone else, among other reasons because drinking and gambling were what soldiers did, and there was no shortage of acquaintances who offered me a quaff free of charge. As for gaming, I did none of that because we mochileros

had no pay to collect, past or current, so I had naught to play with. But I stood around watching the circles of soldiers gathered round the drumheads they used for throwing dice and playing cards. For if most of the miles gloriosus among our men were strangers to the Ten Commandments and scarcely knew how to read or write, had writing been based on the markings of a pack of cards, everyone would have been as familiar with the book of prayer as they were with their deck of forty-eight.