If there is truth to the adage that “all good fiction is about things going wrong,” Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Spanish best seller, “Captain Alatriste,” might just qualify for the rank of great. Having sold more than 1 million copies within its home country and many more all over the world, the much-awaited English translation is now hitting American soil to captivate a new audience.
Pérez-Reverte’s pacing is swift and suspenseful, the narrative voice both crisply cinematic and true to the setting of 17th-century imperial Spain – an accomplishment in its own right. The tale is a feast of dark historical detail and believable danger in which celebrated historical figures, such as poet Francisco de Quevedo and painter Velázquez, are mixed in for authentic flavor. “Captain Alatriste” serves up the goods and whets the appetite for the rest of the five-book series to come.
The captain’s story plays out with cloak-and-dagger intrigue in a declining empire led by King Felipe IV, a gullible monarch seemingly devoid of a backbone, and amid a corrupt and deceit-riddled court. After a checkered but honorable 20-plus years of service as a soldier, Capt. Diego Alatriste y Tenorio is forced to retire from the army, the only life he’s known. Now almost 40, Alatriste ekes out a life in the ugly underbelly of Madrid as a swordsman for hire, sharing a dilapidated apartment with his 13-year-old page, Iñigo, the son of a fellow soldier killed in battle and the narrator of the almost folkloric story.
Alatriste is the quintessential smart, honorable and wily protagonist, with just enough rebel in his character to rescue him from dreary superhero perfection. Alatriste’s split-second decisions, gutsy moves and narrow escapes drive the riveting twists of the story to a satisfying conclusion, leaving just enough questions unanswered so the reader remains hungry for more.
The plot is straightforward: Alatriste and a shady Italian swordsman are called to a deserted house in the dark of night and commissioned to ambush a pair of English travelers. The two masked men arranging the midnight attack instruct
Alatriste and the Italian to stage a robbery and rough up the travelers just enough to frighten them. They may wound one of the Englishmen, but nothing more.
The job, naturally, is not what it seems.
After the less senior masked man leaves the room, a third and more sinister player sidles from behind a tapestry where he’d been hiding and changes the rules of the game. He orders Alatriste and the Italian to kill the English travelers outright. They recognize the man as Fray Emilio Bocanegra, president of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition, an evil, self-serving man whose orders cannot be denied.
In Iñigo’s words, “It is the adventure of masked men and two Englishmen, which caused not a little talk at court, and in which the captain not only came close to losing the patched-up hide he had managed to save in Flanders, and in battling Turkish and Barbary corsairs, but also made himself a pair of enemies who would harass him for the rest of his life. I am referring to the secretary of our lord and king, Luis de Alquezar, and to his sinister Italian assassin, the silent and dangerous swordsman named Gualterio Malatesta, a man so accustomed to killing his victims from behind that when by chance he faced them, he sank into deep depressions, imagining that he was losing his touch.”
Indeed, it is Iñigo’s storytelling that adds depth to an already well-layered story. Seeing the captain through his eyes allows for full-bodied honesty and leads, ultimately, to a tale far richer than the average swashbuckling fare. It’s apparent from the beginning that the boy both idolized the captain and saw him for the man he was, faults and all.
“He was not the most honest or pious of men, but he was courageous. His name was Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, and he had fought in the ranks during the Flemish wars. When I met him he was barely making ends meet in Madrid, hiring himself out for four maravedis in employ of little glory, often as a swordsman for those who had neither the skill nor the daring to settle their own quarrels. You know the sort I mean: a cuckolded husband here, outstanding gambling debts there, a petty lawsuit or questionable inheritance, and more troubles of that kind. It is easy to criticize now, but in those days the capital of all the Spains was a place where a man had to fight for his life on a street corner lighted by the gleam of two blades.”
Pérez-Reverte is one of Spain’s most translated contemporary authors, with most of his novels available in English and several having been adapted for film. It’s no surprise that “Captain Alatriste” is finding its way to the big screen, as Pérez-Reverte’s visual imagery and the swashbuckling story seem tailor-made for that medium. The forthcoming film version, “Alatriste,” is being directed by Agustin Diaz Yanes and will feature Viggo Mortensen as el Capitan. Pérez- Reverte, however, has been known to say his books don’t translate well into movies.
Luckily, we don’t have to wait until the picture’s projected U.S. release in 2006 to fall in love with Alatriste. The book is available now, and worth every turn – and twist – of the page.
Lynda Sandoval is an author and freelance reviewer. Visit her on the Web at LyndaSandoval.com.
Captain Alatriste
By Arturo Pérez-Reverte; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
Putnam’s, 272 pages, $23.95
