Hear Our Defeats

by Laurent Gaudé

  When he anchors off the Punic coast he senses the men’s fear at once. The Roman fleet is a few days ahead of him. It is huge, and he’s been told it has anchored a bit further to the west, near the Strait of Gibraltar. Carthage has locked its gates. He can see the fear in people’s eyes, in the way they greet him. Everyone is thinking the same thing: the wind has turned, and if they did not make Rome yield it is Rome, now, that will devour them. There is talk of an immense armada. Four hundred cargo ships carrying men, horses, food, and arms, escorted by forty warships. No one has ever seen such a thing. Rome has raised her head and is coming to strike. He says nothing, clenches his jaw. Those who believe that everything is preordained are wrong. He must get home as quickly as possible to prevent Hanno from spreading doubt, and convince the men that nothing has been lost. For thirteen years they have been waging a war of empire. Did Carthage really think they could go to war without suffering? Or subjecting only their soldiers to suffering? Now it is their turn to feel the sting of attack on their territory. And why shouldn’t they? Their villages will burn the way the villages in Tuscany burned. Civilians will tremble, hoping never to be in the path of the armies. War will be everywhere. But he knows how to wage it. They have suffered so much already, enduring ordeals that no one could have imagined—forced marches, nights spent shivering, the Alps and the dark massifs of Calabria, they have been through so much, but there is one thing he is not accustomed to: seeing fear in the faces around him. Every time someone comes up to him, greets him, that is what he sees—not the fear that goes before a battle, not the fear of pain or death, no, but a darker fear: the fear that all these months and years of battle will end in defeat.

  Sherman catches his breath at last. The Confederates have finally yielded. They have retreated and are entrenched in Atlanta. What begins now is something else. To make a city fall is an ugly matter. It is like strangling someone with your bare hands. It takes time but there is no more uncertainty, because however much the victim thrashes and flails, he can no longer save himself. You see the mouth of your enemy open and gasping for air. You see his eyes grow wider, you feel life, muscular and nervous, struggling, trying to get away, to escape the pressure. He knows how to do this. And so he is choking Atlanta, bombarding buildings and streets, cutting off supply routes until the city falls. At last. A great calm pulses through him. Is there still room for joy? Does Grant in his tent outside Petersburg shout with relief when he gets the telegram bearing the news? Only silence is possible, a great silence of exhaustion. Sherman walks among his men, curtly congratulating the artillerymen, and he makes ready to enter the ruined city. In a few days he will receive a letter from Grant, who is perhaps the only one who knows how much he has willingly given of himself to this war: “Dear General Sherman, Your victory is the most important any general has been able to obtain throughout this war. History will acknowledge that your campaign was led with incomparable—if not to say, unequalled—talent and skill,” and he will think these are strange words to describe strangulation. But he does not need to read this letter to know that with the fall of Atlanta Lincoln has just been reelected. He does not need to know that Grant has ordered a salute of one hundred rifle shots to be fired from the walls of Petersburg in his honor to hear the joy of his camp and the first signs of victory. He says nothing, but that is because he knows it’s not over yet, even that, strangely, the worst is yet to come. He will have to hound the enemy, harass them. Something is under way now and they are closer to victory, but—he knows this and he is sure that Grant knows it too—it will be ugly, even uglier than anything they have accomplished thus far.

  On leaving Dr. Hallouche’s building she obeys an urge to stop in a café to catch her breath and relax. She sits at a table and orders an espresso. She doesn’t think about anything, tries simply to empty her mind, pays no attention to the passersby. Then suddenly her gaze is caught by the TV screen at the back of the room. Images from her country. She cannot hear the sound but she recognizes the place. Hatra. So it is still going on. The museum in Mosul was not enough for them. They are advancing, and wherever they go, they smash statues and dynamite ruins. She never thought she would live to see something like this. They are advancing and obliterating the sites one by one. Nimrud. Hatra. With mallets and bulldozers they are pounding ancient walls, toppling stones that had resisted, all this time. And when there are still temples or palaces standing, they mine them with dynamite and it all goes up in smoke. She looks at the images on television. It is all getting mixed up. The eras, the shouting, too. The shadows of Nimrud’s Assyrian princesses wandering through the dust, holding their heads like wailing women at a wake. The archeologists of the past beat their breasts and heap insults on the barbarians. She can see them—Hormuzd Rassam, Max Mallowan, all those who spent days digging in this dry earth. They are torn apart by the force of the blasts. The dust settles and what remains is a catastrophe. The statues’ faces are disfigured, columns lie on the ground. Not archeological sites anymore, but vacant lots. The earth has submerged the vestiges. And suddenly she remembers that little artifact from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, covered in cuneiform writing. Her stupefaction on seeing it for the first time, as a young woman. The label on the display window gave a rough translation of the ancient inscription: “If you should find this object, put it back into the earth, put it back and go on your way, it is not made for the light but for the kingdom of eternity.” It had stunned her. That object, which begged the living not to take it, was now on display in a museum showcase. Was this her profession? To steal items from the void? To go against the will of those who had conceived them? The temple at Hatra: would it not have been better to have left it under the earth? Like the tombs of Philip of Macedon or the Valley of the Kings? We break and enter into the world of the dead, we seize artifacts and offer them up to the carnage of the living—shovels, bulldozers, dynamite . . . It’s unbearable, she doesn’t know what to do anymore. The tears come. And rage. The thought occurs to her that the next site will be Palmyra and it makes her sick, so she tries to calm down, thinks again of Dr. Hallouche’s question: “Do you have support?” Less and less. That is what she should have answered. Less and less if they burn Hatra and Nimrud. Less and less if they take these antiquities from her, this legacy that until now had no fear of time.

  He has waited so long for this moment. Three long years of cold, damp English weather, and walking through cloud and fog, and he’s thought of nothing else. At last he is on his way home and for the first time since he fled he will be walking upon the African continent. And yet he is overcome by melancholy: it is not the uncertainty of the struggle that lies ahead, it is not the fear that he might fail to retake Addis Ababa, it is the question that has been haunting him: has he ever been anything other than the plaything of nations? From the window of the hotel where he registered as Mr. Strong he looks down at the Alexandria street below him, teeming with vibrant urgency, and he feels sad. He is on his way home, but it is thanks to the war. The European nations, which had scorned him, have suddenly changed their minds. France and Britain are at war with Germany and Italy, and all of a sudden certain experts have come up with the idea that an exiled king might prove useful, if he can incite his country to rise up . . . He knows that is exactly what is being said in the halls of embassies and consulates. That’s the way it has always been. When has he ever been the master of his fate, or his country’s? His defeat against Italy was decided when Britain and France refused to lift the blockade. Everything since then has been predetermined and his warriors’ courage could change nothing. Now he is making the most of the vagaries of the great war engulfing Europe. Has he ever decided anything? Before long he will reach Khartoum and try to go as soon as possible to Ethiopia, so that people will know the emperor has returned. Every day he is getting closer, but now he has France and Britain to accompany him. Colonel Monnier has gone on ahead, but Wingate is traveling with him like a chaperone. How could he fail to see that he decides nothing? He w
ill regain his country and his throne if the Allies win the war against Germany; therefore, essentially, his fate has always been tied to this: the goodwill of Europe, and the interplay of nations. Ever since he gave his speech in Geneva he has felt nothing but hatred for these diplomatic contortions. He will not say as much; he will remain impassive and behave in a friendly manner toward Wingate, but when he looks down at the Alexandria street below him he knows that his alibi is not appropriate. He should have been called Mr. Weak, because that is what he is: weak, and dependent on Great Britain for his hopes that he might, someday, return to his homeland in triumph.

  She has always loved Paris. She remembers afternoons in Alexandria when she would walk naked across the sun-washed room where they had just made love, and she would ask Marwan, ingenuously, “When do we buy a little apartment in Paris?” And they would laugh like two young lovers at the thought of seeing themselves strolling with their arms around each other on the Pont des Arts or down the narrow streets of the fifth arrondissement. Marwan with his slow pace, and she clinging to his arm as if to let herself be carried by her giant, who would often stop and turn around when a Parisian woman walked by, and she would have to scold him with a tap on the hand for showing such a lusty appetite, reminding him that he was married, and that would make them laugh . . . Yes, they had often thought about it. This was before that day when Marwan came and didn’t stay, when he looked like a punished child and spoke in a dull voice. He was sick. She had found out later, through colleagues. So that was it, then? Simply this: with the approach of suffering and death he was going back to his wife? Was that it? All the rest was swept away. All the rest had been nothing but entertainment? Would she not be allowed to share in his suffering in some way? By supporting him? And what about her, now, who can she turn to? And is this why she is thinking about him just now? Because if she could, if he is still alive, would she want to go to him? She walks down the avenue d’Iéna, enjoying the beauty of the facades lit by that gray light that turns Paris into a palace of zinc. She is determined to make the city her home. She will work out a schedule with the British Museum. She has just passed the Musée Guimet on her left. She hesitates for a moment, thinks about going in, just to see the Gandhara statues again, in the big room on the ground floor, the astonishing beauty of the buddha with the moustache, his chest covered with necklaces, but then she decides against it, she wants to be in Paris, in the street, without the statue, without history, just in the present moment as she strolls, letting Dr. Hallouche’s face fade away, along with his words, “protocol,” “fight,” “chemotherapy” . . . She wants other words, words that will bring comfort. And then all of a sudden she thinks about last night, and the man who came up to her in the bar at the Hôtel Pullman. It was eleven o’clock. She’d gone down for that reason, because she couldn’t stay in her room. She felt like shouting, or running away. She got dressed, put on makeup, wondered if a man would come up to her, and she was both disgusted by what she was doing and eager to do it, a man, any man, just so she wouldn’t be alone with her demons, as they say, but there are no demons, just crushing solitude. The man came. She didn’t have to wait for long. They began talking. The kind of things you say at times like this, things that are nothing but a rather hasty prelude, because you are embarrassed by the imminent encounter of your bodies, and among the questions that weren’t really questions she had said, “What do you do in life?” and there, instead of giving any old answer, he could have said what he liked—passed himself off as an architect or a doctor, it hardly mattered—he went pale and said, “I’m a failure.” And she knew at once that from then on it would be awkward and difficult. She knew there would be no night in bed, no pleasure, but it was too late: the man was talking, explaining how he had failed at everything, in every domain, I’ve been cheating on my wife and she found out, I have a shit job, and on he went, nothing could stop him, a complete outpouring of self, and she had to get out of there, she couldn’t take it anymore, she left him sobbing on his barstool with yet another glass of whisky that would eventually put him to sleep, only then would he stop talking. Now she remembers the man and the violent disgust she felt toward him, to the point where she had to get up and leave, without even letting him finish what he was saying . . . She was afraid she might be like him. Losing, failing at everything she does. Her love life, all things considered, has left her on her own; her profession has her running after artifacts that the world simply submerges. Is that what it means, to fail at everything? She fled because it felt like someone was holding up a mirror, that she was the one sitting on that leather barstool, muttering to herself as if she were talking to her whisky glass, her back rounded to hide from the gaze of the world, but that wasn’t it, she was mistaken. She is walking, crossing the Seine on the Pont de l’Alma. The light on the water sparkles as if reflecting the rooftops. Paris is there before her, light and silvery, and she knows she has not experienced failure the way that man has. Things have not played out like that. Success or failure: that’s not the point. She has succeeded in what she set out to do, where she has applied herself. She has immersed herself in life, passionately, she has struggled and fought . . . Where is the failure? What she does know is defeat, but that is something else. Back there in Dr. Hallouche’s office: that was defeat. The feeling that something has arisen before you and it will submerge you and you cannot get away from it. To be confronted with the chaos in the streets of Erbil, that is defeat. And the destruction in Hatra and Nimrud, too. Life is damaging her, destroying what she has built, toppling everything that seemed solid, defeat, yes, when Marwan left her, going back to his wife like a lame dog going back to his kennel, but this isn’t failure, and she takes a deep breath because she knows that what she is going through, this physical fatigue, this feeling of being depleted, this loss of the plenitude one can only feel when one is twenty years old, this tiny, imperceptible fractioning of the self that inhibits passion, makes it impossible to feel, makes you less graceful, less euphoric, and without even realizing it now you seem more fearful, more fragile: this is the deep arc of life and not some personal weakness. This defeat is not the result of any wrong choice or error or cowardice, she could let the man in the bar go on saying “I’m a failure, I’m a failure,” she has lived and has not failed at anything. But then one day there is the moment of capitulation, and leading up to this, progressively, is the tipping into loss, that second period of life when strength is diminished, where sudden bursts of enthusiasm and astonishment and surprise grow rarer, nothing more, an entrance into a period of defeat that is nevertheless part of all the rest, and which she is going to try and experience wholly, without failing there either, she will try to remain herself, Mariam, right to the end. And while she is walking along the Esplanade des Invalides, she smiles and recites to herself, always the same: “Body, remember . . . ,” these words that do her good because they connect her to that man, Assem, whom she loves, a man she may be on the verge of loving more than all the others, because as the months go by his image is expanding inside her, and even if they only met that once during her stay in Zurich, even if they never meet again, he is the one, she knows, who gave her the words she was looking for.

  IX

  ADDIS ABABA

  He decides to cross the avenue. Addis Ababa is a beehive of activity. He walks between two cars, their shock absorbers so worn down that the bumpers practically touch the ground; he immerses himself for a moment in the chaos of traffic, then comes out on the other side of the sluggish flow of vehicles. The Americans are in position. He has spotted them. Two outside the building. A third one a bit further along. There must be a few up on the roofs. There is surely a car somewhere, ready to intervene. They are there, the trap is set, and the statue of the lion of Judah looks down on the endless stream of cars and the conspiracies of man with equal indifference.

  Addis Ababa is jubilant. He enters his city with Wingate by his side. Behind them march the triumphant men of the Gideon Force: Ethiopians, Sud
anese, Kenyans, all mingled together, all in rags, but the crowd can’t see that, all destitute, but the crowd cheers them wildly. This war that surrounds them, this war that is causing the world to tremble: the Second World War is offering them victory. The Italians have withdrawn and once again Addis Ababa has its king of kings. They marched from the little village of Um Idla to Mount Belaya where the Gideon Force has its headquarters. They marched and their ranks swelled with each village they passed through, rousing the countryside. They marched to restore the dignity that the League of Nations had stolen from Ethiopia, and today the throngs in the streets are cheering for their Negus, home again at last.

  The gloom in the building is restful. Two young boys are sitting on the stairs, avidly exchanging notes or photographs. Scarcely looking up, they let him go by. He goes up the stairs. It is not as hot in here. The men from the commando will follow him before long, that much is certain. They will tell the two boys to go and play somewhere else—which they will do, scrambling to pick up their meager treasure. He knows all this. He has experienced similar moments so many times, in other cities. The car will park opposite the building, engine running, door open. The only thing he doesn’t know is whether it will be to take Job away, or to erase all trace of the men who have killed him.

  The crowd cheers as he goes by. The city is jubilant. Haile Selassie is back in Addis Ababa, and when he left a few years ago it was being ransacked, Addis Ababa that lived through the occupation and tried to fight back, as on that day when nine grenades were thrown at Graziani, nine grenades that should have killed him nine times over, but it is difficult to kill men who live by blood, and fate is oddly considerate sometimes. Graziani got to his feet, and Addis Ababa, which had been holding its breath, had to bow its head again. Today the city is singing, exulting in the passage of its emperor, with Wingate by his side—and he wonders what a victory is, when no battle has been won. It is thanks to the British that he has come back. He did not put the enemy’s armies to flight. Addis Ababa is cheering him but he can still hear the Italian journalists’ insults in Geneva: “Pickaninny!” The country may be celebrating the victory, but he feels as if some part of the defeat at Maychew was never effaced, nor will it ever be. Perhaps it was only by blood that he might have truly avenged the affront? Perhaps he will only truly smile the day Mussolini is hung by his feet on Piazzale Loreto in Milan, like a pig about to be slaughtered? He marches through the streets of Addis Ababa. The crowd screams with joy as he goes by. Now he will reign, he will recover his prerogatives, his court, his people, his power. He will no longer be a fugitive hiding in caves or an exile in the rain of Bath, he will live in grandeur and enjoy the respect of his subjects, and so he is trying to savor this city that is his once again, the warmth surrounding him and that he has missed so much. People everywhere are chanting his name, but he can feel no victory inside, or nothing in any case that is equal to the defeat he suffered, nothing to erase the humiliation at the League of Nations or the endless waiting in Bath, as if defeat always weighed more than victory, as if in the final analysis there could be nothing left in the hearts of men but defeat.