“Burn everything! Burn everything!” At first the soldiers hesitate. They look at each other as if to see who will obey, but Sheridan exults. He points to the farm where they have just stopped, in the Shenandoah Valley, and he yells, “Burn it!” So they go ahead and do as he asks, somewhat shamefully. They will quickly get used to this and before long won’t even think about it. All the farms they come upon along their way will suffer the same fate, and they will do as they are told without even noticing. “The Burning.” This is what Grant asked Sheridan for: total war, make the villages weep. Before long they will lose all trace of their rather awkward hesitation, before long they won’t even get off their horses. They will shoot them in the stomach without hesitating, those farmers who reach for a pitchfork to protect their harvest, and they’ll put to the sword any wife who tries to intervene. Soon they will burn everything, systematically. For months. And Sheridan will no longer have to say it, to shout as he stands in his stirrups: “Burn everything!” They will have learned what to do. Grant often thinks he will have to seek forgiveness for these orders of his, because he knows the reality that hides behind them. And when he orders “the Burning” he can see the blackened farms and the crying children. So he turns in his mind to Julia, when he is drinking, unable to sleep, forgive me, Julia, women and children have been destroyed, he would like to say it, shout it: it is madness, what he is telling his men to do. “When I’m finished,” Sheridan writes to him, “the valley will be unfit for man or beast,” and that is what he does: the cattle are eviscerated, or, to go faster, burned alive in their barns, sometimes with the farmers, forgive me, Julia, don’t ever look at me again with love. Victory is coming closer and the war is getting dirtier, more penetrating. It’s been a long time since the men dreamt of nobility, they know that war is waged with a grimace and that they have lost their souls. This is what has been asked of them: to agree to bid themselves farewell and go into that vile place. And they do. Sheridan writes that the Shenandoah Valley is nothing but ashes, and Grant, upon reading him, feels no disgust; he has no right to. He is the one who required this of his men. If he must feel disgust, then let it be for himself, and that is what he does, but who can hear him? Julia goes on loving him, even as he is haunted by Sheridan’s cries. “Burn! Burn everything!,” and he has no right to consider this loathsome, for he is the one who is calling for it, and so he responds by ordering a salute of a thousand shots to be fired at Petersburg, in honor of those who have bled the earth of Shenandoah, “Burn . . . burn,” and when he folds away his letter and looks up, he knows that a new manner of waging war has been born.
Defeated. He gazes out at the sea from the terraces of Carthage, the round harbor at his feet, with all its warships, and further out, the Mediterranean, this sea he never could master. Defeated. He says the word to himself again, and still he cannot quite believe it, but he saw the departure of the peace ship the Carthaginians had sent to Scipio, a boat covered in olive branches and white streamers, he saw it slowly, majestically pulling away from the harbor, heading west. He saw the faces of the Carthaginians in the street, and they know now that they are at the mercy of the victors. Is it really over? He had always thought that if he were to lose face to the Romans it would be at the cost of his life, like his brothers Mago and Hasdrubal. But here he is, alive, on the day Carthage must bow her head. The peace treaty has been signed. Everything is sealed. Carthage has handed over her war elephants. Carthage has agreed to have her fleet reduced to ten ships. Carthage has sent one hundred hostages to Rome, the sons of noble families, and they will be executed if she fails to honor her commitments. Carthage has agreed to pay the war indemnity, so that Rome will once again be prosperous. Rome will reign over this entire coast of the Mediterranean. From the terrace where he is standing he can hear the leader of the Punic fleet shouting his orders: “Burn!” and then, all at once, all the warships anchored off the harbor are in flames. Initially it is not visible. Perhaps he might have to repeat his order, “Burn!”, but no, it is not necessary, the soldiers did obey him, under the gleeful gaze of the Roman envoys, who will later describe the scene in minute detail. He can hear it, the voice shouting, “Let it burn!”, first smoke rises from the hulls, then the flames can be seen, “Let it burn!” It is as if the entire Mediterranean were on fire, there before his eyes, and along with it the memories of victory—Cannae, Trasimene, all pointless—burn the Barcids, who failed to bring the empire to her knees, burn Capua, cursed Capua, for opening her gates, and Masinissa the traitor with his entire Numidian cavalry, burn joy, something that will vanish from their lives, burn the sun, too, from tomorrow on freedom will be gone, and now it is the sails of the eighty warships that are burning, the wind carries the smell of fire and it is as if he had ashes in his mouth, burn, Rome has won and our elephants have died, an entire nation of soldiers watches in silence as the fleet burns, they have gathered from wherever they fell—the Iberian campaigns, the crossing of the Alps, the guerrilla warfare in the hills of Calabria—those who died in battle or those who died of thirst along the roads, burn, you are the army of the defeated and henceforth wherever you go you will bow your heads, burn, offshore the vessels are cracking, splitting, sinking: slowly, almost gently.
XI
CYRENAICA
Omar al-Dhour aged in only a few years. His face filled with lines, his eyes lost their sparkle. A deep fatigue burdens his gestures, even his smile. Assem remembers the first time they met. It was during the initial contacts that preceded the Franco-British attack in 2011. They fought side by side during the battle of Benghazi. Omar coordinated the redeployment of the city’s defenders, while Assem provided information about ground strikes to the French fighter planes. How long ago it all seems . . . The elation over the fall of Gaddafi quickly subsided and gave way to a violent conflict over who would control the oil-producing zones. Islamic State arose. The country disintegrated, foundered in civil war. The fatigue is as legible on his friend’s face as it is on the streets of Benghazi. Gone is all lightheartedness. Why has there never been a victory? Never a moment of full-hearted joy, followed by nothing more than quiet devotion to a peaceful life? Omar asks nothing of him. No questions regarding the reasons for his visit. He must have sensed that this is not an official mission. He takes Assem out onto the roof to the place where, in the days when they were defending Benghazi, they used to observe the city and the progression of the fighting, and he hands him a cigarette. Silence. That is what they need. No words can help them, not a single one. Then Omar tells him that tomorrow at five o’clock in the afternoon a man who has his complete trust will drive Assem to Sirte and even Tripoli if he can, as far as possible along the coastal road.
When did he cease to be the man who gave the speech at the League of Nations? His courtiers surround him, obsequiously. His courtiers smile at him and every day the palace is abuzz with hundreds of ridiculous little plots. They come to him to murmur of servile acts and ambition—some they warn against, others they seek to promote. He listens, never batting an eyelid. He never lets anything show. When did he stop being the brave man in Geneva, facing down the entire world, to become what he is today: a sad incarnation of privilege? He is the king of kings, the descendant of the Queen of Sheba. He does not have to be loved, he thinks, nor does he have to please. He just is, that is all. And they ask for nothing else, these men who conspire and whisper and walk on tiptoes, these men who scurry every morning to learn who is being denounced. So when did the common people begin to view things differently? Not his twenty-seven Rolls Royces, the luxury, the excess, not the panthers in their cages, the precious jewels; the hunger. Famine is widespread and he does not see it, or he thinks it will pass. The people are dying on their feet and no one seems to think it is urgent to try to save them.
When did they begin to win? The captain salutes him proudly as, with a slight, scarcely perceptible pressure of his thighs, he orders his horse to come to a halt: “Here they are, sir.” He is proud of his catch, you
can tell. He smiles and cannot help but add, “They’re all along the roads. Lee can’t hang onto his men.” And the horse moves to one side to let the column of fugitives and deserters go by. They are not men anymore. They shuffle forward, their eyes wild, skeletal, weighing no more than half their original weight. Grant remembers the bodies in the trenches at Petersburg, when the town finally surrendered after nine months of siege. There were thirteen-year-old kids, barefoot, lying there in the mud. Shame on the Confederates who had armed them; shame on the soldiers who had killed them. They aren’t men anymore. Neither those who are staggering there before him, who haven’t eaten for days—just blades of grass, roots—nor he himself, standing here ramrod straight, upset by so much wretchedness, when it is he who decided to center the war on the supply routes, in order to starve the soldiers. He sees the young captain smiling at his side, happy with the day’s catch, not at all bothered by the sight of a man with bleeding gums who has turned into a bag of bones. “War is hell,” says his friend Sherman. Civilians must be punished and the enemy must be cut off from their bases. “I can make Georgia howl with pain,” he wrote, and that is what he has done, destroying everything in his path. Here they are, the defeated, before his eyes, with their hollowed-out bodies, their white lips, their hallucinations of hunger. Should he be glad? Yes, because they are the emblem of his victory. Lee’s army is melting away before his eyes. There cannot be more than thirty thousand left, and they are all starving. “War is cruel.” He keeps thinking about Sherman, because only Sherman is lucid, only Sherman says things with all the brutality they contain. “The crueler the war, the sooner it will be over.” The villages are burning. Men are dying of hunger on the road. Nothing can stop Sherman’s advance. He goes through mud, forests. He is ransacking everything and the South is howling with pain. Should he, Grant, be glad? Just now he is thinking that victory is a test. He lets the ragged Confederates go by, and it seems to him that he is the one who has been humiliated—worse, he feels that this humiliation will never leave him, that he will have to learn to live with it, even when the shouts of victory sound out—for they will sound out—even then, it will be inside him, dull, penetrating, he won’t be able to get away from it, and until his dying day it is something he will share with the enemy troops: this moment when, head bowed, man has sunk so low that he is no longer a man.
He will remember these moments for a long time, without knowing exactly whether he actually experienced them or whether they were some long dream inhabited by the sound of the sea and automatic rifle fire in the distance. He will remember this endless road for a long time, taking him from Benghazi to Tripoli, two days by car, two days of dust, across this battered country that smells of oil and fear. They drove for hours, trying to avoid junctions and checkpoints, hours of letting the countryside flash by, his face against the windowpane, looking for familiar signs of the place he had known a few years earlier. He remembers how the crowd shouted during the uprising, the groups of young men ready for anything, sometimes they had one rifle among four or five of them, and they swore not to give an inch to the troops that had remained loyal to Gaddafi. Now in the cities along the coast the streets are empty, and there is no jubilation. The young men climb into pickups in the morning and head off to terrorize the villages to the west. The country is falling apart. It is right that it should all end in Tripoli, because there is no doubt that everything will end. There will not be a third meeting. Job has summoned him one last time, and that will be the end.
Why does she keep thinking about him all the time? This man she will probably never see again, this man she spent only one night with? Why does her mind keep wheeling back to Zurich? His smell, the texture of his skin, it is all still inside her. She is thinking about him. And she could swear—she is deeply convinced—that wherever he might be, he is also thinking about her. Perhaps in the end that is why she got up and walked away from the man in the Hôtel Pullman. Not because she wanted to flee from his pathetic self-pity, as she initially believed she had done, not because it got her down, no, but because after Zurich she did not want to end up spending an awkward night of lovemaking—without conviction, pleasure more taken than given. Where is he right now? In what burning place on the planet?
The trip is long. And that is fine. He needs this time. They were not able to stop off at Leptis Magna as he had hoped: to see again those great Roman ruins above the sea, convinced of their eternity, defying the restlessness of humankind. He would have liked to stop there, because he senses it has something to do with Job. Once again he is on the road between Sirte and Misrata, this road where he met his shadow-line. Is it really a shadow-line? What Job felt in the helicopter coming back from Abbottabad, with bin Laden’s body in a plastic tarp at his feet: this detachment from the world, this feeling that nothing can ever concern him after this: is that what he too felt on this road, three years ago, amid the crowd that sought to lynch the dictator?
Go, Hannibal, the night will protect you and the Romans will not find you, go, one after the other your horses become exhausted, white with foam, short of breath, but all the relays are safe, and there will always be one more horse to gallop anew and take you far from Carthage.
It could have gone on. A lifetime of reigning. Amid the immemorial pomp of the descendants of the tribe of Judah. It could have gone on for centuries. But they look strange, the authorities who are greeting him now on the tarmac of this airport in Brazil, and their faces are sinister. His plane has just landed for a State visit. He has flown over a part of the planet, carefree, thinking about the speeches he will give, and now the ambassador who has come to welcome him stands before him, his voice shaking: “Your Excellency . . . ” He does not know how to say what he has come to tell him. He still cannot come to terms with the fact that he must inform his emperor that there has just been a coup d’état back home. The Negus freezes. He asks him to repeat what he has said, and to keep him informed of all the news they receive. The ambassador tells him what he knows: the two brothers Mengistu and Germame, whom he looked upon as sons, have seized power. They even entered the palace. Haile Selassie does not hesitate. He leaves again at once.
Go, Hannibal. Ten years ago Rome was victorious, Carthage bowed her head and has been paying her tribute to Rome ever since. And in spite of the conditions imposed by the Roman Senate, Carthage is doing well. When she offers to reimburse, forty years early, what she owes to Rome, the Senate trembles. They had not noticed that the vanquished city was so prosperous. Carthage is alive, Carthage is not dying. Hannibal is still there. Who is to say he might not have the means to go to war again? The Senate is finding it harder and harder to sleep. And this is vexing. They were the victors, after all. Why can they not enjoy the sleep of the just? Why are they afraid? Will it be enough for Hannibal, to spend his years overseeing the gilded mediocrity of his city, beneath the Roman yoke? Who can believe that? The senators know it, have felt it for a long time: nothing is over as long as Hannibal is alive. They were wrong to accept when Scipio interceded on the Barcid’s behalf, requesting that he be allowed to live freely in his city. Scipio wanted to seem noble and magnanimous, but now the senators are trembling. The Barcid must die. Carthage is too wealthy. Hannibal must die because his life alone is a threat. His life alone is an encouragement to all those who hate Rome and are waiting for their chance. So they have decided he must die, and Hannibal knows it. In one night he leaves everything. He will never see Carthage again. He will never set foot upon the soil of Africa again. Go, Hannibal, from relay to relay, tonight as you are escaping the knife, hurry to the ship they have made ready for you, leave the coast as quickly as possible. Everything is beginning again, Hannibal. You may be alone on this small boat taking you to Cercina, but you have made Rome tremble. For the army of the dead arose with you to seek their revenge, and the imminent shock of empires arose with you—go, Hannibal, during this night of flight you will be reborn to yourself, the opponent, the ever possible course of action against the
supremacy of Rome. It is all starting again. After the defeat at Zama, after ten years of silence paying the debts owed the victor, everything is beginning again, you know how to fight and you go in haste to the Orient, where you will find allies. The Seleucids are waiting for you. They want to overthrow the Roman empire, and with your name alone, with the blood you have caused to flow, you are enough to make that empire tremble.
The return flight is long, endless. He has had no news of his country. He does not know that to reassure the people his partisans have ordered one of his official cars to drive around the streets of Addis Ababa, and wherever it goes women ululate to salute the presence of the king of kings. He does not know that the two revolutionaries have occupied his palace and are holding eighteen people hostage. He knows he must get there as quickly as possible, that it is a matter of hours, that his presence in the city is vital, but the airplane can go no faster. And the second aircraft that is supposed to take him to the capital has a broken propeller. He decides to take off regardless, and he makes the trip tilted sideways in the sky, like his throne about to topple. He knows that from now on the joy that peace brings and the plenitude of power are things of the past. From now on there will be suspicion and solitude.
Hear Our Defeats Page 16
