Hear Our Defeats

by Laurent Gaudé

  Outpourings of joy, everywhere. Custer raises his hat and his smile is triumphant. The men cheer him; he radiates pride. Grant waits for them to give him the news. He doesn’t like Custer, never has. He’s always found him too pretentious, and unnecessarily cruel. How strange, in fact: there are, among the Confederate officers, men he respects infinitely more than some of those on his own side . . . At last they bring him the news: Custer and his men have seized a supply train and twenty-five cannon. The noose is tightening. Lee’s column is being strangled. Grant shakes Custer’s hand. This is good news, but that, too, is strange: men are going to starve to death and it is good news. Men who have already had nothing to eat for days, who are gaunt, who are deserting, staggering through fields, men who have become emaciated shadows, yet still they walk westward to try to escape from Grant and Sherman’s armies: those men will have even less to eat. Men are going to die of hunger and Custer is raising his arms in victory. Grant hates him for doing that, but why shouldn’t he? Why should he be sad in the midst of victory? Isn’t this what they’ve been hoping for, for months, for years? The end is near. Perhaps this was the final blow. Yesterday he sent a letter to the Confederate leader to request his surrender. Lee hasn’t replied. Now he knows that he will have to write another letter. What the last thirty thousand men of the Confederate column are going through is a nightmare. After the siege at Petersburg, after the great deadly attacks, the war looks like nothing so much now as a pursuit. The Confederate forces of Virginia are fleeing, they have nothing left. They cannot eat, they have no ammunition. They have been bled dry. That is the face of this war, the ugliest of all: a slow dying. There can be no more doubt: Lee has lost, and Grant wants there to be silence, deep silence so he can go back into his tent and write a new letter, but the men are shouting, tossing their caps into the air, singing and swearing to each other about how they will go and celebrate the victory in one of Washington’s fifty brothels.

  “Your Excellency . . . ” He has been waiting for news but remains impassive. “The rebels have murdered the hostages.” He remains upright, asks no questions. He is picturing the blood-soaked carpets in the palace, the moans of the victims, their entrails oozing, the disgusting stench of gunpowder and viscera. He knows he will be pitiless, he will punish the rebels, and that is what he does. When the soldiers find them, they spray Germame with bullets. Mengistu is wounded in the eye but still alive. They drag him off like an animal carcass. Haile Selassie has asked to see him. Just to stare at him calmly. He looks at him with scorn and orders for him to be hanged in the Mercato marketplace. Then for the remains of the conspirators to be put on display in Menelik Square, opposite Saint George’s cathedral, where he himself was crowned. Flies will land on Mengistu’s crushed eyebrow, on the gaping hole of dried blood, his tongue hanging out. Children will point at the strange, stiff, twisted bodies—how only a few days ago they caused the entire city to tremble. Everyone will see that the emperor has returned, and that he is strong. The people will know that those who oppose him end up with wretched, disjointed bodies that drip with blood. He knows that from now on everything will be distrust and whispering. Where is victory in a life of struggle, of coups d’état? When has he ever been victorious? Was it when he walked through the streets of Addis Ababa, upon his return, with Wingate by his side and the members of the Gideon Force behind them? That day when he was too hot, when he was eager to reach the palace so he could breathe at last? Was that the highest point in his life, a moment he should have managed to prolong somehow? Or was it earlier? His coronation? When he could still believe he would be the king of kings his whole life long? Now there is no longer any question of that. The war may have been long ago but from now on the threat to his throne will be everywhere. He looks at the flies on Mengistu’s dead eyes and he knows that henceforth everything will be solitude and underhanded scheming.

  Of course he has aged. Forty years of war have gone by. Forty years of being nothing but a warrior. A life of encampments, battlefields, rising at dawn, and long columns of horses. That is all he has ever known. He has never enjoyed his wife, his children, his country, the pleasures in life—or so rarely. He has devoted his entire existence to fighting Rome. And now, yet again. He is an old man now, but the soldiers in his presence still admire him. Hannibal. He has become that magical name, that nom de guerre that overthrows empires. Can the outcome still be reversed? He thinks it can. When he landed in Tyre, Antiochus received him with honors. Everything will change dramatically if the battle is won. Greece is not dead. She is playing her last card. She came for Hannibal because he is the man Rome fears most, the man who can help to overturn everything. A man of war, of experience. The Romans know that a threat is arising in the East. They know that they must crush this eastern front as quickly as possible. Now the two fleets are facing each other and everything will be decided. Hannibal watches as the ships are deployed. What is he thinking about just now? That he has never liked the sea? That Rome has always been able to rely on her fleet? That the world will tremble again, and that despite his age, he will once again be a master of war, no longer merely an opponent? What is he thinking? Perhaps deep down he knows he will not win . . . History does not give second chances. He is sixty years old now, and his war was lost when the gates of Capua were opened, or when the elephants at Zama went too far into the Roman lines. And what if today does not matter, in the end? What if the dead who fall today will fall in vain?

  She leafs through the pages of a newspaper, in this little restaurant where she has come to eat by herself. The news is very distressing. The world is still reeling from the attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunisia. Many heads of state came to Tunis to march in protest. “Ktema eis aei.” She thinks of how Thucydides used this expression to define the historian’s process. Her professor, Ahmed al-Houry, drummed it into them, in Damascus, the year she spent at the Syrian university. To create “a possession for eternity.” By describing the Peloponnesian wars, Thucydides hoped to leave humankind just such a possession: a definitive body of knowledge. Centuries have gone by. Historians have written, again and again, about every massacre, every genocide, every convulsion of History. “Never again.” Every generation has uttered these words. Does History really serve no purpose? They had asked the old professor, she remembers it well, and Al-Houry had narrowed his eyes mischievously above his glasses, recovering for an instant his Lebanese lust for life. “I understand your disappointment,” he said to his young students; she was one of them. “But don’t reject Thucydides too quickly. Think about love . . . ” And in the rows of the auditorium the young people leaned forward in surprise. “When you are about to declare your love, it is forever, isn’t it? Never mind that there’s a risk you might fall out of love, never mind your mothers and aunts and grandmothers who will tell you about the faithlessness of men and the erosion of time: in that moment when you are in love, it is forever, and it is the truth. So let us say, simply, that historians are young lovers . . . ” And of course everyone in the auditorium had smiled, and the professor had savored the impact of his words before returning, gravely, to their study of The History of the Peloponnesian War. All her life she has been fighting, gathering artifacts, trying to rebuild the country’s heritage. She has always viewed museums as sanctuaries offered to the generations to come, containing the vestiges humanity has collected for eternity, relics that will not know the void. But are they really sanctuaries? She doesn’t know anymore. She thinks again of old Professor Al-Khoury’s mischievousness. Love. And then that face there before her: Assem. She knows she may never see him again, but in her innermost self she knows that she will possess that night in Zurich, for eternity . . .

  In no time the battle begins to turn against them. Cursed ships . . . He will never manage to beat Rome on the sea. The Empire has fire ships. They are setting the sails of Antiochus’s fleet alight, there are fires starting everywhere. The sea begins to glow. Hannibal clenches his teeth. Rome will win. Images are superimposed.
He sees the Punic fleet burning in the harbor of Carthage, while Antiochus’s ships crack apart and disintegrate. He is going to lose again. And the only question anyone will ask tonight, when they have withdrawn to Tyre, will be, should Antiochus hand him over to the Romans or not. Because they will ask, beyond a doubt. Will his ally hand him over for the sake of the treaty he’ll negotiate, the peace deal he will wrest from them? That is the only question Hannibal takes with him as the ships turn around, abandoning the ones that have been hit, letting them burn, leaving the men to scream at the sea for rescue, to scream unto exhaustion, until they founder.

  He has traveled all night from Misrata to Tripoli, prone in the back of the car so he won’t be seen. When they reach the center of Tripoli the car leaves him on a street corner. He thanks the driver and heads into the city. He is alone now, walking quickly. No one seems to notice him. If they say anything, he’ll pass himself off as a businessman or banker from Tunisia. He doesn’t stop outside the façade of the former Radisson hotel, he has no need to catch his breath or assess the danger. He is in a hurry. So he steps on it. He goes into the hotel’s spacious lounge where tired armchairs seem to be waiting for people who will come no more. The curtains have been drawn, to prevent shooting from the outside, no doubt . . . His eyes take a moment to adjust to the gloom. There is a man behind a counter that must have been the reception back in the days when the building was still used as a hotel, but he is absorbed in his newspaper and doesn’t even look up. Assem walks ahead. On his right four men around a table are talking in low voices. Businessmen. A fifth one is standing slightly to one side with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Assem turns to the left, toward the other lounge, and there he sees him, recognizes him immediately, he is alone and ensconced in an armchair, his eyes trying to penetrate the gloom, perhaps smiling, or grimacing, and the voice that greets him as soon as he appears is exactly the same as the voice in Beirut, as if it were merely the continuation of the same night: “I’m glad you found me, lieutenant . . . ” And Assem has to confess that he is glad, too, and this unsettles him, because what can he be glad about just now?

  XII

  LIBYSSA

  Grant has had a headache since dawn. If he had his druthers, he’d drink the whole bottle until he collapsed on his bunk and forgot the entire day. But he can’t. He doesn’t leave his tent. The light hurts his eyes. But they are calling for him. A voice full of urgency. “General Lee’s reply, sir . . . ” So he leaps to his feet. There’s a man there, handing him an envelope. All the officers from his staff gather closely around the envoy and wait to hear the answer. He takes the envelope. Time stands still. Everything is slow. He hasn’t opened the letter yet. He wonders if he has the strength. The officers are looking at him. Four years of conflict are weighing upon him. Dead men from all sides are craning their necks to read over his shoulder. So finally he opens it, and somehow finds the strength to read without his vision blurring: Lee is surrendering. He says as much, in just a few words. It’s all over. Grant raises his head, impassive, hands the letter to those who are eager to read it. They take it from him—he doesn’t even know who, exactly. He says nothing. Around him men are beginning to weep. Not to sing, or shout for joy: to weep over their own victory.

  Antiochus did not betray him, but Hannibal has had to flee. From now on life will seem like little else: flight. He left Tyre for Crete, then Crete for the kingdom of Prusias. Every time, his life is in the hands of his host. Every time, the sovereign who takes him in must contend with Rome’s displeasure. And he knows that someday he will be sold, or bartered in exchange for a peace treaty. He will be sacrificed as a pledge of goodwill, or surrendered as the final step in a long negotiation. What can he do about it? He is a fugitive along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, from one country to the next, and until it ends his life will be nothing else.

  There has been another coup d’état. Is it the same perpetrators? Have Mengistu and Germame come back from the dead to harass him again? No. They say it is something else this time. Not a man, but a sort of secret society: the Derg. He feels weary. So many years gone by . . . In his mind, the eras are beginning to overlap. The assaults on his throne are all superimposed. There have been so many conspiracies. Every two to four years. And now this one. They are firing at the palace and the people have not gone down into the street to protect him? Something has changed. Is he losing? He feels a sort of long-traveled fatigue take possession of him. It prevents him from leaping up, shouting orders, reacting vigorously. He senses that from now on his country looks on him with hatred, this man with his twenty-seven Rolls Royces, this man with his useless courtiers, this man with all his wealth in a country that is dying with its mouth open.

  When Grant arrives at the McLean house in the village of Appomattox Court House, Lee is already there, wearing an impeccable uniform. Grant didn’t bother to change. His uniform is caked with mud. It wasn’t deliberate, to humiliate his adversary, he merely came as he was, covered in mud from the encampment. When he arrives, an air of solemnity overwhelms the place, crushing everyone there. In that moment Grant’s face is strange. What it expresses, more than anything, is despondency. As if he were devastated by this victory. As if by putting an end to four years of bloodletting and carnage this moment were immersing him in the deepest sadness. Lee remains dignified, exemplary. To exchange a few words before the signing of the surrender, Grant reminds Lee that they have already met. It was during the Mexican campaign. He remembers well the aura around the Confederate general, already present in those days. He has evoked this memory to signal his respect, but that was in another life, and Lee doesn’t remember. So many men have died since then. They shake hands. Lincoln has authorized Grant to give Lee generous conditions for the surrender. The Confederate soldiers will be disarmed and fed. The officers will be free to go. They must already look to reconciliation. When they leave the house in Appomattox the Union soldiers break into spontaneous shouts of joy, but Grant silences them with his hand. You do not celebrate victory when you have fought a civil war. Yesterday’s enemy is tomorrow’s neighbor. The ranks fall silent. And the men form a guard of honor for the Confederate delegation, who depart, jaws clenched, to inform their troops that they have lost the war, but there will be food to eat that night.

  When he arrives in Libyssa, in Bithynia, Hannibal hears the news that Scipio has died. How strange . . . He has outlived the man who defeated him. Scipio was ten years his junior, but he has just died in Liternum, in his house overlooking the sea. Hannibal feels a peculiar sadness. As long as Scipio was alive he knew he could be sure nothing would happen to him. Scipio would not have wanted an unworthy fate for Hannibal. He had already protected him after the defeat at Zama, using his influence so that Hannibal could stay in Carthage. But now . . . When the time seems ripe nothing will stop them cutting his throat like a dog. He is no longer a warrior, for he has no more army. He is no longer a lord, because he is in exile, and he is not even an opponent because he no longer frightens anyone. He is a scarecrow, and someday they will kill him, waving their arms about to show how strong they are. He is a puppet, and his assassination will serve the other puppet who ordered it. Nothing more. That will be his life from now on, in this house by the sea, while he waits for the day of his death. And he no longer has any doubts that the world to which he belongs has begun to die.

  What commanded respect yesterday is trampled underfoot today . . . Every morning the enemy comes to the door of his palace. Armed men in uniform climb the steps four at a time, with a list of names written on a scrap of paper. Every morning, the Derg comes and carries out its arrests: his ministers, his councilors, his courtiers, even his family. Bit by bit, day by day, he is being isolated, cut off. He says nothing, he looks at those who are led away, then he asks his valet to fetch him something to drink. He is less and less inclined to wander around the corridors. Everyone he meets wants something from him and he has nothing left to give. They beg him to react, to
get organized or let his daughter do the maneuvering. He doesn’t answer, he hurries out of the rooms when they approach him, leave me alone, he doesn’t say it but his eyes express it whenever he runs into someone, leave me alone, he doesn’t want anything anymore, he just asks his valet to come and help him get dressed at 4:45 every morning the way he always has, nothing else matters. Leave me alone, so what if there are arrests, and summary executions, and people strangled in barrack basements, provided they wake him up every day at 4:45. He no longer knows whether it is Mengistu or someone else who is attacking him, that strange society with a name but no leader . . . Leave me alone, he takes mincing steps like an old man in his embroidered dressing gown, sensing that his palace is humming with anxiety from the moment he gets up, because they all know that every day a delegation of military men with a list of names comes and knocks on his door, weapons in hand, and that every day men are disappearing, leave me alone, they tell him there is famine in the north of the country, they tell him there is corruption, the lists of names are getting longer and longer, and every day the palace is a little bit emptier, leave me alone, until the day he is the one the men in battle fatigues have come for.