Zone

by Mathias Enard

  XI

  like train tracks at night straight lines infinite networks of relays and us, usually silent, strangers who don’t open up to each other any more than we do to ourselves, obscure, obstinate, lost in the countless tracks that surround the inextricable railroad knot of the Bologna station, endless shuntings, circuits, sidings, a station divided into two equal parts where unlike Milan the gigantic size of the building is replaced by the profusion of the tracks, the verticality of columns by the number of crossties, a station that has no need of any architectural excessiveness because it is in itself excessive, the last great crossroads in Europe before the Italian cul-de-sac, everything passes through here, bottles of Nero d’Avola from the slopes of Aetna that Lowry drank in Taormina, marble from the quarries of Carrara, Fiats and Lancias meet dried vegetables here, sand, cement, oil, peperoncini from Apulia, tourists, workers, emigrants, Albanians who landed in Bari speed through here on their way to Milan, Turin or Paris: they’ve all come through Bologna, they’ve seen their train slip from one track to the other according to the shuntings, they didn’t get out to visit the basilica, they didn’t take advantage of any of the charms of a pleasant bourgeois city, suave and cultivated, the kind of city where you like to settle, the kind that offers you an early retirement and where you awaken, without anything particularly special having happened, on the threshold of death forty years later, a city like Parma, a nice place to live, a place where you die pleasantly and in a civilized way, with enough distractions so that boredom becomes the habitual caress of a mother putting her child to sleep, a city whose labyrinthine train station protects you from the uncertain world, from outside trains from the throb of the irregular from speed and from foreign places, a station I’m entering now the platform is sliding by in an orangey light, the pneumatic locks wheeze, the doors open, my neighbor a little surprised a little sleepy gets up picks up a little suitcase takes his magazine and goes out, ciao now I’m alone, wondering if someone’s going to sit down opposite me or if, when the loudspeaker announces a three-minute stop, I’ll be left to myself for ever and ever, like the little medieval wooden crucifix that somehow survived the twelfth century lost in an obscure chapel in San Petronio the magnificent basilica not far from here, solitary in the midst of flamboyant suffering Christs, this one has a little half-smile, the first time I saw it it was pouring out the rain was coming down in buckets it was the deluge and the church was full of people taking shelter from the rain, including a group of Senegalese sellers of fake Versaces looking towards the door at the rain coming down without a care in the world for what there was behind them, the splendor of the Church and the magnificence of its history were nothing to them and they were right they were selling bags to tourists and African statues Made in Indonesia, what could this pagan temple overloaded with figurines possibly do for them aside from shelter them for a while from the storm, like me, who knows, probably I went into the temple so as not to get soaked, or out of curiosity, or out of idleness, I was in transit, I was headed for Bari to board one of those Greek tubs that crisscross the Adriatic, when the storm broke I found shelter in the cathedral facing the little polychrome wooden crucifix so simple and so contrite it looked like the fetish from Tintin’s The Broken Ear, what did I do to see it, in that dark corner where you couldn’t even turn a light on for a 500-lire coin, those light-up fixtures typical of Italian churches must pay all the electricity bills for all the churches including the Vatican, back then only about half of them worked, the length of time the light stayed on was in inverse proportion to the fame of the work of art, two minutes for a Caravaggio, five for a somber Virgin with or without Child, but my little crucifix stayed in the dark, it has the beauty of primitive things, the thick face, the almond-shaped eyes, and the craftsman I sense behind it—a cobbler, a carpenter—must have cherished this little magical being in the same way a child adores his doll, with devotion and tenderness, like the anecdote about Moses and the shepherd by Rumi the mystic from Konya: the little shepherd was singing for God, he wanted to caress Him, comb Him, wash His feet, cuddle Him, make Him beautiful, the severe bearded horned Prophet hooked on His transcendence scolded him for his disrespect before he in turn was reprimanded by the Lord Himself, let the simple worship me simply He said and I imagine the medieval sculptor scrubbing his little crucifix to paint it, singing hymns, smelling the red odor of the wood that’s more alive than marble, God at that time was everywhere, in the trees, in the cabinetmaker’s chisel, in the sky, the clouds and especially in the dense chapels dark as caves that you entered with terrified respect, where the thick incense penetrated a real curtain of smoke masking the beyond, and when you went home you were ready to have your feet nibbled by the devil in your bed, you were ready to be cured by a saint and blinded by the apparition of an angel, in San Petronio Basilica in Bologna the Italians not long ago thought they could avert one of the strangest Islamist attacks ever, an artistic one, the alleged terrorists supposedly wanted to destroy a fresco by Giovanni da Modena, painted in the early fifteenth century and representing hell according to Dante, a horrible demon devours and tortures sinners in it, and among them, in the ninth trench of the eighth circle, Mohammad the prophet of Islam, lying suffering on a rock, under Dante’s eyes, as he tells it, in I forget which canto in the Inferno, “cracked from chin to where it farts, between his legs hung his entrails; his heart and all around it showed, and the sad bag that makes shit from whatever is swallowed . . . He looked at me, and with his hands opened his chest, saying ‘See how I rip myself apart. See how mangled is Mahomet,’” poor Prophet, and the painter from Modena has represented him thus, his chest open, which must have aroused the wrath, almost 600 years later, of the so-called Islamists whom the zealous carabinieri had arrested in the noble basilica, sincerely believing they were thwarting an attack of the most odious kind, against Art and civilization—once again the Italian alarm was false, the terrorists were simple tourists they had to release a few days later, the church hadn’t blown up, the impious fresco was still in place and the torn-apart Prophet still prey to demons, until the end of time in the Christians’ hell, and now the train is starting off again from Bologna, little by little the train advances along the platform headed for Florence, the longest part is over, the longest part was crossing the long plain of the Po just as in the war you had to cross the open space between two hills, chased by the shelter you’ve just left, hurried on by the one you’re going to reach, running all the while expecting the bullet that’s going to stop you or the shell that’s going to hurl you head over heels launch your limbs your things your guts into the skies split you in half like the Prophet in the shifted earth that dirt of reddened clay where here an eye stuck out, a stray, gelatinous ball, useless in its skull, bound to the mud to nothingness by an absurd filament a trace of brain, there a hand the chance of the explosion left it three whole fingers but not its arm not its shoulder not the head and this extremity with its vanished ring finger lay near a gurgling torso and still as you ran you wondered stupidly what use could a hand be without an arm to jerk off with and without a face to shave, in those leaps of unexpected male humor that make you survive, and yet you ran hard enough to shit in your pants the shells the tanks on your heels just as now the train runs in the dark barely a thousand kilometers away from the slopes that I hurtled down with the Serbs and then the Bosnians hard on my tail: soon the civil gentleness of Tuscany, soon Florence then the direttissima line straight to Rome, the suburbs of Bologna stretch out, long grey intestines pierced by the tracks and the train as if by a spear, Dante understood men, sacci merdae forever, just as you see them in hell, cut up, dismembered, opened up by an explosion in war, spread apart, in pieces, scattered like an infantry man by a grenade—like the grenade I exchanged in Trieste in 1993 in a bar for three bottles of vodka, I had a grenade in my bag, I don’t remember why I’d taken such a risk at the border, the bar owner had talked to us about the “Yugoslav conflict” and what with one thing leading to another we made a dea
l, he was very happy to have the little khaki object, a deadly pear of a pretty green color and we, we were delighted to have obtained three transparent bottles, we were going to open ourselves up and spread our souls rather than our entrails, Andi and Vlaho and I drank straight from the unhoped-for bottles, we got completely plastered, the alcohol made me lose my balance in the violent wind, in Trieste they affix ropes in the streets so that children old people and drunkards can hold on to them when the bora blows, and it blows from the very mouth of the devil up to a 120 kmh, no kidding, that night despite the improvised handrail I fell down in the force of the gale, I fell down, down, down and Vlaho and Andrija along with me, we laughed like anything when Andrija threw up in the wind and splattered us, Vlaho, me, and a female passerby who wondered for a fraction of a second what these wet smelly drops could be that were suddenly speckling her jacket, before she saw, understood, retched and began running and stumbling away, Andrija didn’t need to wipe himself off the wind was so strong, he was a Triton, a fountain spitting out a huge spray of puke that flew back and lapped all over the walls, all over us as we laughed, all over our friendship well-sealed in all fluids, in the stupidity of fluids, in our souls and bodies torn apart by alcohol and war, in blood the debris of life against death like throwing up against a wall, a wall of rifle bullets and Orthodox knives our enemies at the time and now I’m heading towards Rome the Catholic, Rome that Andrija and Vlaho have never seen, never have you seen the chains of Saint Peter in Monti or Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain, neither you Andrija farmer from Slavonia even though you’re an ardent believer, nor you Vlaho from Split, nor the little clean-shaven crazy Muslim I killed with my own hands with a knife, with pleasure the way you have a drink, I recognize him, in a rage after unbearable injustice, between the shaky noises from the train, my bayonet an improvised knife in his young Bosnian throat, the joy of his innocent blood bubbling onto my hands, just as Andrija vomited in Trieste in the wind, so vomited the blood of the Serbs eaters of children, or not, what do the reasons for killing matter they’re all good reasons in war, after that over-the-border drinking binge between two fronts we went back to Croatia to go to Bosnia, came back to the Slovenians who had made such trouble for us on the way out, much more than the Italians whom we could soften up with my French identity papers and a few pretty banknotes, German of course, from the standpoint of the Europe to come, sitting on weapons and currency like a grandmother on her savings, I was being paid to fight I forget the salary, there are things you didn’t do for money, not for the price of a train ticket or the distance in kilometers, I fidget in my seat it’s time to go to the bar time to stretch my legs time to take a break in these travels, maybe the only advantage of first class is that the restaurant car is often quite close, I get up, the countryside is still just as dark you can’t see a thing outside that’s all the better these landscapes say nothing important to me—the little decapitated Muslim, Andrija killed by the shore of the Lašva, Vlaho the easygoing cripple, all of us lined up in our terrible shirts that might as well have been brown, neck cut but no sun, no Apollinaire’s soleil cou coupé, my pleasure as I sliced the flesh that palpitated with despair of an innocent madman, that salutary vomit on the coat of the haughty lady in Trieste, last acid trace of a disappearing man, that camouflage outfit that brings together soldiers and chaplains, I’ll drink them all in one gulp between Bologna and Rome, on the tracks that are so straight, guided, constrained by the rails to another fate, or my own, like the locomotive engineer the only kind of driver who can’t decide the route of his machine, forced by metal like one’s hand in war towards the victim’s throat, he can’t deviate, he knows his job, he knows where he has to go, I stumble in the train, with the blade you ignore the slight resistance on the cartilaginous rings of the trachea, asphyxia in blood, the pink and red bubbles of air in his bubbling spray and that reflex of the condemned man, that movement of hands to neck, followed by that contortion of the whole body, it overjoys the one cutting that artery and that vena cava, that pleasure of the executioner, content, he observes the immense puddle grow even bigger beneath the inert head I’m passing through another first-class car, the train seems to have emptied out in Bologna, the restaurant car looks like a provincial brothel, the same red velvet, in Muslim villages I saw handsome male virgins have a sudden rapist’s rage in their dark eyes, after coming they would have massacred anyone approaching their prey like hyenas, they wanted to keep for themselves the woman they’d just tortured, giving love in pain a Biblical gesture of an infinite childlike solitary beauty, some cried as they finished off their own victims, who knows where their mothers’, lovers’ remains were hidden to whom they sent telegrams just as ardent as my own, they wrote letters that no one can ever read since they contain the disappeared gazes of those farm girls torn apart in the mud, sometimes it was funny, Andrija was a champion at making us laugh he had no equal to put a daisy in an ass dripping with cum, shouting Za dom spremni! as with an inspired look he penetrated a resistant vagina, sometimes bloody, sometimes scabby, but usually neat, as he said socialism has done a lot for intimate hygiene, thanks be to the devil, still he managed to catch crabs, but it’s hard to say if they came from a body, from the straw or from generalized filth, impossible to determine, the louse comes with the soldier and the prisoner, precocious parasites, organisms foretelling the putrescence to come, the real creatures that will truly eat you and that can’t be treated with any ointment: bacteria, fungi, larvae, or dogs foxes and crows if you have the bad luck to fall in an out-of-the-way place where no one comes to bury you, to limit to something slow and minuscule the eraser-effect of carrion feeders, which make up the majority of the living organism, just like soldiers, the traveling bartender has a uniform too, he’s alone behind the shaking bar that’s crossing Italy at full tilt, what’ll I get drunk on, how many mini-bottles will I have to gulp down, whiskey would smack too much of a depressed tattletale, of the barracks, I’ll choose something more bucolic, some gin, closer to herbal infusion and hence to nature, hedges, thickets, the shores of the Lašva, of Vitez, the plum or grape brandies they make there, like Xoriguer of Minorca terrible juniper concoction of British ancestry, I’ll have a gin, dry and warm with a halberdier on the label, in a transparent plastic glass, to the health of Great Britain, to the health of its Queen and of the black horses of Minorca, to Saint John patron of the city of Ciutadella in Minorca, patron of eagles and lost islands, Saint John the Evangelist the Eagle of Patmos first novelist of the end of the world, the bartender is sizing me up, what kind of madman can swallow gin neat with no ice, in a train what’s more and I’d be the last one to argue, it’s disgusting, it burns and leaves a taste of potion in the mouth, a remedy prescribed by Bardamu himself to cure who knows what somber disease of poverty, we’re entering a tunnel, my eardrums are blocked, I feel as if I’m in a cage, I need air, if I could I’d open a window, I’d stick my head out to have my hair tousled by the icy December wind—Stéphanie the brunette her Céline under her arm would lecture me if she were here, she’d say you’re not going to drink now, you’re not going to get inebriated again, she used the term inebriated funny term God knows what book she took it from, I’d choose not to reply, to say nothing, to order my drink or pour myself one calmly without arguing, Stéphanie Muller comes from a family of teachers in Strasbourg, the kind who bleed themselves dry so their children can succeed, they had been so proud of her getting into Sciences-Po, that’s where we met before I saw her again a few years later in one of the dark hallways on the Boulevard Mortier, where I was working under the authority of Lebihan lover of oysters—Stéphanie’s parents knew she was working as an analyst for the Ministry of Defense, but didn’t know where exactly, we all had our secrets, curiously she hated violence so much, weapons and war (odd, given her employer) that I had never really told her about my activities as a Balkan conscript, out of cowardice: for her that whole period of my life was very vague, hazy, a few photos, nothing more, she had never gone to Croatia, she was
very surprised to learn that I had spent some months in Venice, in between things, floating like a corpse in the fetid-smelling lagoon, Stéphanie beautiful and brunette wanted to go there, more than once she mounted a fresh attack: why not Venice, she had found a beautiful hotel not too expensive, a vacation would do us good, I had to explain to her that I didn’t want to go back there, that I didn’t want to see Venice La Serenissima again queen of fog and tourism, not yet, it was too soon, she found that strange, why, why, but ended up agreeing to a change of destination, Barcelona was just as Mediterranean and attractive, in Venice I had been very sick and very miserable I was always cold even rolled up in my rug, I hadn’t been able to go back to France, not enough strength, not enough courage and I hid myself right in the middle of the lagoon as I read all night and went out at daybreak one night I gathered together my outfits my uniforms I made a big ball of them that I burned in the shower after soaking it in cooking rum, everything, including the badges: I kept only the dagger, its sheath, and a few plastic crucifixes, knickknacks that they handed out to us by the handful like the keys to paradise that were given to the Iranian volunteers under Khomeini, a reality had to be given to the barbarity that was the beginning of a new life the cloth burned with a thick smoke smelling of crêpes, you don’t escape your homeland, I was flambéing my homeland with rum along with my soldier’s gear and I was leaving my mother in silence she who had given me this knife and these crucifixes without realizing it it was probably her I wanted to preserve with the war trinkets, the flames of my bathroom holocaust destroyed the illusion of having once had a country with the same ease you down a glass of strong alcohol it’s disagreeable at the time you feel its journey down your esophagus and all alone in this bar tearing through the countryside I’ll have another, a gin to the health of my zealous Croatian mother, a gin za dom, the bartender has guessed my intentions, he smiles at me and gets out another mini-bottle, spremni, a gin to the health of the firemen of Venice alerted by the neighbors who took me for a madman, a patriotic gin, my second lukewarm gin, I’d do better to go sit down and go to sleep, not much longer before Florence and not much longer before Rome, if I had gotten out in Bologna I could have gone back to Venice, to the Paradise Lost or the Flying Dutchman to drink spritzes with Ghassan, his crucifix tattooed on his Lebanese biceps, or take a boat to Burano and look at the little fishing houses slant their blues and ochers over the canals, observe the incongruous angle of the bell-tower and spin round in circles the way I’m spinning round in this train that’s suddenly going very slowly, we’re crossing the black night, even with my eyes glued to the window I can’t see a thing, aside from the regular poles of the power lines, aside from a dark shape in the landscape, a mountainous undulation that might be imaginary, might be due to the gin, I have my dose of alcohol I’m slowly calming down, a cigarette and everything will be much better, I’ll get to Rome—as if I had a choice, even dead on my seat this train would lead me to my destination, there is an obstinacy in railroads that’s close to that of life, now I’m getting idiotic and philosophical, the gin probably, I’ll go smoke illegally between two cars, or in the toilet, at least in trains they don’t threaten you with a thousand deaths if you smoke in the toilets, it’s one of the rare advantages for offenders like me, you can smoke sitting down, which has become a luxury these days, they worry about our health, regardless of who we are, innocent, sinners, victims, executioners, chaste, fornicators we all have a right to the consideration of public health, they’re interested in our lungs our liver our genitals with a real solicitude, and it’s nice to feel loved desired protected by the State the way those women used to, who said don’t drink so much, don’t smoke so much, don’t look at pretty girls so much, probably the men, my father, my grandfather had to hide for a drop of the stuff in the same way I’m going to take cover to smoke, my grandfather locksmith son of a locksmith made keys and repaired agricultural implements and tools, and that’s impossible to imagine today when no one has ever seen a forge, except maybe the bartender, he looks rural, almost like a miner, thickset, rugged forehead, short dense curly very dark hair over fifty I imagine he was born in early 1946 after his father had been busy with his Mussolini adventure his arm raised in salute from Rome to Athens passing through Tirana, a farmer from Campania or Calabria rough but with the big heart of those who make the best soldiers and the best fascists, used to the order of the seasons God family and nature, I picture him freezing in Epirus, pushing a howitzer with no ammunition dragged by two scrawny donkeys, fascinated by the glory of the bersaglieri and the genius of Il Duce, confident in victory before taking to his heels facing starving barefooted Greeks who were going to cut off his ears, did he know pleasure with a tall negress in Ethiopia or a coarse Albanian woman with a square face, did he swallow sand in Libya, did he suffer in a Fiat tank where the temperature often exceeds 150 degrees in the full sun, when thirst killed more than the English claymores strewn throughout the desert, pebbles among pebbles, I wonder where the news of Mussolini’s fall surprised him, the end of one adventure, the beginning of another, did he know that his village had been liberated a long time ago and that his wife had eyes only for the handsome Yanks, who were young farmers too, from Oregon or North Dakota, his wife forced by her family and her religion to wait for a man about whom she’d heard nothing for almost three years—maybe it was a great love, one of those almost ancient passions that are played out in absence, in illusion, he traveled the war from Greece to Egypt and Russia his ass in the snow his feet frozen while she embroidered her jacket for their wedding day, I’m close to asking the bartender his father’s first name, Antonio maybe, he’s watching me observe him as I sip the last of my gin, the train suddenly slows down, brakes to approach a curve, probably the train that brought him home in June 1945 had paused here too, a red light between the world that had just been erased and the one that still remained to be destroyed, a woman was waiting for him at the end of the journey, in man’s estate when everything is harder, more underhanded, more violent he desired her so without knowing her, Antonio deep down his heart was heavy sad to leave the war he desired this memory with a fervor that sickened him, and I hope he got out of the train I hope that he ran across the mountains until he ran out of breath, sneezing in the blossoming wheat fields, that he let the coolness of the moon caress his shoulder the better to enjoy his unsettling solitude slumped beneath an olive tree I hope he dared to run away during this unhoped-for stop, the train immobilized in the middle of the tracks sometimes you sense you have a chance, there are doors to escape through—Antonio back from the Eastern Front runs through the countryside to escape the fate of Ulysses, the village, his sewing wife, the good hunting dog who will sniff between his legs, he flees the future that he guesses at, sweating blood to support a large family in poverty, emigrate, settle into the suburban raw-cement buildings that emergency services have strewn around cities in the North, where the dog will die first without ever running down a single hare: Antonio back from the war lying near a Tuscan fig tree at night listens to the train start up again, he did well to get out, he thinks, he did well, it’s such a beautiful spring night, the first one that smells of hay after years of grease and cordite and stretched out thus between two lives, between two worlds, I imagine it’s the perfume of his peasant girl that comes back to him first, if he has already smelled it, leaving Mass, or during the harvest, around Easter time, as she struck the olive trees with a long pole, that mixture of sweat and flowers, that wafting hair under the sun, he speaks to the stars I doubt it, he’s not a shepherd out of Pirandello, he’s a man coming home from the war, lying there in a field because the train has just stopped, an incident on the tracks, maybe there are many of these soldiers wondering if they want to go back home, trembling still from the German defeat under the caress of green wheat, a little afraid, disarmed, in ragged outfits or in civilian clothes, in a coarse shirt, heavy boots on their feet, he has never seen Tuscany before, has always gone through it in a train or in a truck he�
�s never really taken advantage of these landscapes so civil, so tame, so noble, so human that already the Etruscans and Romans had planted there, barbarians with golden bears romped about in its vines like children, on these hills where Napoleon’s soldiers ran laughing after girls, I picture Antonio between two shadowy mountains trying to rid himself of war as he rolls in the grass, with those Italian soldiers forced by Salò’s RSI to fight for the Germans, at the end of 1943 all those who refused to go to Russia were deported, they ended up on other trains, headed for Mauthausen after a stay in the Bolzano camp, Bozen the Austrian that is no longer Italy, where they speak German—others escaped the SS and joined the partisans, i banditi as Radio Milan called them, many got arrested and deported in turn, Antonio marches in the debacle of the Eastern Front the Red steamroller at his heels while my grandfather, leaving the keys, the forge, the village also becomes a bandit, drawn by weapons and the power they give he learns how to blow up railroad tracks around Marseille, before being arrested by a squad of French Gestapo at the end of 1943, tortured with water and deported to Thuringia to a camp that’s part of Buchenwald, how did he escape summary execution in the yard, by the firing squad at dawn, I can guess, I think he denounced all his comrades to escape the pain, he is ashamed, he cracked under torture and handed over his friends, he’ll go expiate his treason in Germany as a slave in a REIMAHG underground weapons factory, he’ll make ME-262 jet fighters until April 1945—he’ll never go back to Marseille, he’ll settle down in a Parisian suburb, send for his family, work in a little mechanic’s workshop until his death in 1963, he died young, of guilt or the sufferings he endured in the underground camp, where thousands of Italian civilians arrived, deportees from the province of Bologna, rounded up during “anti-partisan” operations—in the mountains we’re crossing blindly tunnel after tunnel made by the Germans, mid-1944, killing two birds with one stone, they evacuated the civilian population that supported the partisans and provided a contingent of slaves for the weapons factories, almost 20,000 people were deported from all over Emilia, men and women, only a third saw Italy again, completely forgotten today the Italians died of exhaustion, hunger, beatings or they were poured alive into the cement, which made their mischievous guards laugh so hard they cried, Spaniards Frenchmen Italians Yugoslavs Greeks the whole Mediterranean shore took the path North to go die beneath Teutonic soil soil seeded with all those bones from the South, constrained and forced at first then more or less voluntarily for economic reasons, Spaniards Italians North Africans Turks all those people will go populate the sprawling outskirts of Paris or Munich, like Antonio the father of my phlegmatic bartender who’s cleaning his espresso machine, all these men crossed each other’s paths in Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, in the return convoys, in regiments on the march, some victorious others vanquished, in 1945 there landed in Marseille the French colonial troops demobilized after the victory, goumiers from the mountains and troops from Morocco, Algerian corps, and ten years later it will be the French contingent’s turn to set off from there to fight the fellaghas in Algeria, a to-and-fro of war that takes the place of the tide, Marseille the well-guarded port, magical and secret, where, a little before 4:00 in the afternoon, on October 9, 1934, a motorboat from the cruiser Dubrovnik berths with Alexander I on board, the long warship dropped anchor offshore, everything is ready to welcome the King of Yugoslavia, the city is decked with bunting, the officials are waiting, the parade horses paw the ground around the touring car that will take the sovereign to the prefecture, it is nice out, my grandfather is twenty-two, he has come out with his very young wife along with a good part of the population of Marseille to watch the monarch pass by on the Avenue Canebière, Alexander Karageorgevitch the elegant is alone, Queen Maria will join him by train straight from Paris, for she is prone to seasickness, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Barthou has come to meet him, distinguished, bearded, wearing glasses, they both take their places in the car that goes up the Canebière, my grandmother has told this story more than once, the two guards on horseback flank the vehicle, the squadron in front, the policemen behind, and suddenly, at the corner of the Square Puget just past the Stock Exchange building a man rushes towards the royal automobile, he climbs onto the left running board, he’s carrying a heavy Mauser, he shoots at the surprised Karageorgevitch who faints, a strange little smile on his mouth, the horse guard makes an about-face and slashes the attacker, the policemen on the sidewalk shoot in turn, passersby fall, mown down by the bullets of the constabulary, the assassin cut up by the saber, riddled with lead trampled by the panicking crowd and the escort horses is transported to the nearby police station, the king to the city hall, and the minister to the hospital: all three die almost instantly, Alexander from the cartridges from the giant Mauser, Barthou from a policeman’s bullet, and Velichko Kerin the man with a thousand pseudonyms and dozens of different wounds—Kerin or Chernozemski alias Georguiev or Kelemen called Vlado “the Chauffeur” is a Macedonian, that’s about all we know about him, he assassinated the King on the joint orders of a revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Ustashi Croatian activists based in Hungary and Italy, three agents of which are arrested in France a few days after the attack and confess to having taken part in it, Mijo Kralj, Ivo Rajić, and Zvonimir Pospisil, on orders of Ustashi leaders including the future Poglavnik Ante Pavelić himself, whom Mussolini would incarcerate a few days later, in order to keep him safe—Kralj and Rajić die of tuberculosis in the Toulon prison in 1939, like Gavrilo Princip their Bosnian colleague some twenty years before, just before seeing the cause of Croatian insurgents triumph in 1941 and the establishment of the NDH under the authority of Pavelić: Kralj and Rajić died without seeing the triumph, but Pospisil, condemned to life in prison, will be handed over to the new Nazi Croatia by Vichy, irony of fate, as they say, my paternal grandfather was a witness, on the Canebière in Marseille, to the assassination of King Alexander I the worst enemy of my maternal grandfather Franjo Mirković, a functionary in the NDH and one of the first Ustashis, who owed his salvation only to a prompt exile in France via Austria in 1945, my family was formed around this royal death on the Canebière, and my grandmother since then has espoused the cause of her daughter-in-law so well that she tells this adventure to anyone who will listen, I was there, I was there, with the benefit of old age she could assure us that she herself shot the bullet at the Montenegrin in the cocked hat, or that she’d run the scarfaced assassin through with her saber, she hesitates, in any case the kind old Marseillaise with the singsong accent is positive, the King was very handsome, very young, he smiled to the assembled crowd as he passed by on that October 9, 1934, which is in a way my birthdate, I killed for the homeland sixty years later, would I have assassinated the hieratic sovereign in cold blood in his motorized coach, maybe, convinced of the necessity of killing the head of the hydra of oppression, I would have found my accomplices in Lausanne, they would have let me in on the plan, the instructions, Mijo Kralj the coarse brute and Ivo Rajić the cunning, if I fail they’ll make an attempt on Karageorgevitch with a bomb in Paris everything’s ready the dictator just has to behave himself, a toast of gin to the health of Vlado the bloodthirsty “Chauffeur,” his face slashed by a knife during a brawl in Skopje the somber, would I have had his cool, his courage, confronted the horses and the dragoons’ swords without wavering, in a hotel on the Côte d’Azur, the day before, a young blond Croatian woman would have given me the weapons, a handsome brand-new Mauser C96 she got in Trieste, kindly provided by Mussolini’s agents, with two boxes of cartridges and a backup revolver, in the improbable case that the Mauser jams, she is beautiful and dangerous, she knows there’s not much chance I’ll come back alive, that there’s even every chance I’ll croak, killed or arrested by the French police, for the Cause, for Croatia, Franjo Mirković Mama’s father has been in exile since 1931, in Hungary at first, then Italy, with Pavelić and the other big-name “insurgents,” those Ustashis for whom the assassination of the monarch constitutes the first coup
and it will earn Pavelić his first condemnation to death in absentia, in France, it’s strange that my grandfather chose this country for his exile, a coincidence, he was never bothered outside of Yugoslavia, nor was he even, so far as I know, pursued by Tito’s agents who will end up wounding Ante Pavelić with three gunshots in his Argentine refuge, my grandfather was a simple intellectual without any great political responsibilities in the final analysis, unlike his friend Mile Budak, the rural writer great killer of Serbs, a bogus ideologue and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the NDH—Budak won’t escape the partisans, he’ll end up with twelve bullets in his flesh after a lightning-fast trial, his family massacred near Maribor, the mustachioed pen-pusher didn’t have the luck of my grandfather, who had left a little earlier with Mama and her brother for Austria through the Croatian and German lines, in that end-of-April 1945 month of dust, lies, and panic, at the Slovenian border you have to choose between two routes, the one to Italy and the one to Carinthia held by the British, Franjo Mirković with wife and children is arrested by the English then released immediately, he has money, cousins in France he arrives in Paris at the same time that my paternal grandfather comes back from deportation, in a train, all the trains are leaving in the other direction, southwards now, the soldiers the deported the conquered the conquerors are taking the same route in the opposite direction, just as Antonio the father of my busy bartender goes back to Calabria or Campania and pauses by the train tracks in the middle of a field, will I go back home, what’s waiting for me in peace Ulysses is afraid of his wife his dog his son he doesn’t want to go back to Ithaca he doesn’t want me to down my gin set the cup on the counter I want a cigarette the bartender smiles at me he asks “un altro?” I hesitate but I’ll get blind-drunk if I have a third, inebriated as the beautiful Stéphanie the sorrowful said, a couple enters the bar they ask for a mineral water and a beer before going back to second class, I hesitate I hesitate I’d like to go out get some air like Antonio back from the war, go on, two’s a crowd but three’s company I say va bene, un altro, what weakness, what weakness, to guzzle lukewarm gin at six euros apiece in a train car, è la ultima, that’s the last mini-bottle whatever happens I’ll have to change drinks, move on to Campari and soda, the last time I got drunk in a train was in the night express that took me to Croatia with Vlaho and Andi, we had taken the bus from Trieste to a tiny no-account village on the Slovenian border to catch the Venice-Budapest stopping in Zagreb around 4:00 in the morning, the steward in our car was a Hungarian he had astronomical supplies of firewater in his cabin, sweet-smelling stuff real eau de Cologne alcohol made from cloves or God knows what Magyar horror, but he was funny and generous, he complained to us about having to go back to war, he spoke a funny Latino-Germanic-Hungarian gobbledygook embellished with a few Slavic words, a tubby guy who smoked like a steam-engine in his cubbyhole, I remember his face clearly as I will remember the tanned face of the bartender of the Pendolino Milan-Rome, three drummer boys on the way back from war, three drummer boys on the way back from war, rat and tat, ratatatat, on the way back from waaar, I taught Vlaho and Andrija that song in Trieste, they sang it over and over, in the Budapest train, in the mountains of Bosnia, I’m singing it softly now, three drummer boys, not so young anymore, the last able-bodied drummer boy, the king’s daughter forsaken on the road, in my country there are prettier girls said the song, Stéphanie posted abroad, I’d like to meet her by chance, or not, so she’d come back, but no, I’m heading for a new life, I’m separating from myself, I’m no longer Francis Servain the spy I am Yvan Deroy promised a new fate a brilliant future paid for with the dead the disappeared the secrets in this suitcase that’s getting heavier and heavier, this guilt that doesn’t let me go, poor Stéphanie whom I crushed despite myself, I drink a gulp of gin, she didn’t suspect anything, she liked plays, cinema, books, she liked to stay in bed for hours caressing me gently, whereas I was sinking into the Zone, I was disappearing not beneath the sheets but into the briefcase and my memories, between missions, contacts, reports, I brought Stéphanie along during my private investigations, “my hobby,” as she said, without really understanding either the nature or the interest of the work, she thought I wanted to turn into Simon Wiesenthal or an amateur Serge Klarsfeld, I didn’t tell her otherwise—out of laziness, out of an obsession for secrecy, the less she knew the better, after Barcelona she accompanied me to Valencia with the smell of gunpowder and flowering orange trees, she had insisted on coming, always this obsession with vacations, in Carcaixent forty kilometers away Maks Luburić had lived until his assassination in 1969, Luburić the butcher from the Jasenovac camp was also one of the first Ustashis, a companion in arms of my grandfather, so to speak, who especially appreciated murder with a club, enucleation, and dismemberment, which he practiced on an indeterminate number of Serbs, Jews, gypsies, and Croatian opponents—80,000 victims have been identified, how many are still waiting to be discovered, probably four times that many, killed in every possible way, shot hanged drowned starved decapitated with an axe or knocked out with a hammer, Luburić who escaped via Rome found refuge in Spain whence he coordinated post-war Ustashi “activities,” I have a letter from him, he is asking my grandfather if he would agree to be the head of the French cell, which the latter probably hurried to refuse, above all not wanting to draw Tito’s secret services onto his trail, Luburić’s corpse will be found in April 1969 at his home in Carcaixent his skull bashed in and his torso pierced with knife wounds, revenge, revenge, in that village in the outskirts of Valencia where he had decided to settle, on the road to Xàtiva, in the middle of orange trees and ceramics factories, a few kilometers away from the rice fields of Albufera where we stopped to wolf down a delicious paella and stewed eel, Stéphanie was driving the rented Citroën, the landscapes of early October didn’t look anything like what I had imagined, the fertile plain along the banks of the Júcar, the mountains began a little further south, the place names often Moorish, Algemesi, Benimuslem, Guadasuar, so many hamlets emptied of their inhabitants by Philip III and the Inquisition in 1609 during the deportation of the Mudejars, the poor Moors transported in galleys from all the ports of the kingdom to African coasts, peasants who had converted to Christianity several generations ago but who persisted in speaking and writing Arabic in secret, the first mass deportation in the Mediterranean, to please the Church and the strict Spanish bishops: many of the 500,000 expelled died on forced marches to the sea, some were thrown into the water by ship’s captains who thus spared themselves the journey to the barbarian coasts and others ended up massacred by the unwelcoming Berbers upon their arrival—the kingdom of Valencia thus lost a quarter of its population, leaving certain rural zones completely deserted, only the village names of these descendants of Andalusian Arabs remain, gone are the Moors, as in Alzira that I traveled through with Stéphanie on our way to Carcaixent, Alzira the beautiful homeland of the Arabic poet Ibn Khafaja is now nothing but a block of hideous buildings encircling the remains of an old city once surrounded by ramparts, we stopped to drink an orxata on a pleasant square planted with palm trees, one fine early fall afternoon, a little further on a section of the Arab wall survived and some more palm trees, all this bore the ironic name “Square of Saudi Arabia,” we started off again for Carcaixent where a surprise was waiting for us: the village was in the middle of a fiesta, decked with bunting thronged with a jubilant crowd that Saturday, we had reserved a room in the only hotel around without knowing it, the receptionist was surprised, you didn’t know it was fiesta? as if her native town didn’t deserve to be visited outside of these crucial dates, the patron’s festivals, on the main square a “medieval” market was set up, where nice Valencians impersonated the vanished Arabs in colorful outfits and the knights of El Cid Campeador in armor beneath our windows, we were still in the room when a series of explosions paralyzed me shaving kit in hand, a terrible volley that resonated in your heart and made the open windows shake, a bombardment, I had a second of total panic, my muscles tense, my e
ars whistling, ready to dive onto the bedroom floor, I didn’t recognize that weapon, my brain didn’t identify that danger it wasn’t a machine gun not mortar shells not grenades it was brutal muffled echoing rapid interminable Stéphanie was petrified facing me I understood firecrackers enormous firecrackers linked to each other under our windows they made the rounds of the whole square an explosion every half-second the little room filled up with enough blue smoke to suffocate us Stéphanie began laughing the pounding didn’t stop boom boom boom regularly the stench was infernal and to cap it all off a giant cannonball went off a huge explosion made us double over in fright leaving a strained acute silence followed immediately by joyful shouts applause and bravos, I was so tense that my neck and shoulders hurt, Stéphanie had tears in her eyes, maybe the smoke, my mouth was dry from the taste of gunpowder, in the street more cheerful shouts rose up, what could this extraordinarily savage ceremony be, to what god of thunder were they sacrificing these kilos of firecrackers, Stéphanie and I began laughing at our fear as we sought a little air at the window, the receptionist told us that this ritual was called mascletà, and that it was very frequent in Valencia, homeland of fireworks, noise, and fury, Zeus himself must preside over these young pagans, we went out to take a little walk, who knows maybe Maks Luburić the butcher had chosen this corner of Spain because of this martial tradition, which reminded him of the children, old men, and sick people he lined up in a ditch before blowing them up with dynamite or a grenade in Jasenovac on the Sava, peaceful Croatian village where the Ustashis, always concerned with doing things well, had established their contribution to the death camps, in order to kill the Serbs, gypsies, and Jews in the midst of the storks, by the water’s edge, in an old brickworks whose ovens turned out to be very practical for getting rid of bodies, Luburić had been the commander of the network of camps around Jasenovac, witnesses described him as a sadist and a coarse brute, in Carcaixent he went by the name of Vicente Pérez owner of a little printing press on Santa Ana Street where he printed anti-Tito propaganda, a fervent Catholic he was well-liked by the people in the village, Stéphanie listened to me, in a crowded bar, glass of red wine in hand, eating salt cod fishcakes, she opened her eyes wide, how is that possible, she found it hard to believe that this little festive hamlet had hidden such a criminal for over twenty years, in the midst of the orange trees, Luburić had even married a Spanish woman and had three children in the 1950s, did they go like me to fight to free Croatia from the Yugoslav yoke that’s possible, the little shady streets of Carcaixent smelled of sulfur, around eight o’clock a large part of the crowd headed for the church where Maks Luburić had done so much praying, a Mass was celebrated there in honor of Saint Boniface the martyr, I went in with Stéphanie who even blessed herself with holy water, Boniface according to the martyrology we were given was the steward of a noble matron named Aglaida, they lived in sin together but when each was touched by the grace of God they decided that Boniface would go look for martyrs’ relics in the hope of earning, through their intercession, the happiness of salvation—after walking a few days, Boniface arrived in the city of Tarsus and, addressing those who were accompanying him, he said to them go look for a place for us to stay: meantime I’ll go see the martyrs struggling, that’s what I wish to do first of all, he went in all haste to the place of executions and he saw the fortunate martyrs, one suspended by his feet over a bonfire, another stretched on four pieces of wood and subjected to slow torture, a third lacerated with iron nails, a fourth whose hands had been cut off, and the last raised into the air and choked by logs fastened to his neck, as he viewed these different tortures the executioner was carrying out pitilessly, Boniface felt his courage and his love for Jesus Christ grow and he cried out how great is the God of holy martyrs! then he ran and threw himself at their feet and kissed their chains, courage, he said to them, martyrs of Jesus Christ and the judge Simplician, who saw Boniface, had him approach his court and asked him who he was, I am a Christian, he replied, and Boniface is my name then the angry judge had him strung up and ordered his body to be flayed, until his bare bones could be seen then he had sharpened reeds pushed under his fingernails, the holy martyr, his eyes lifted to heaven, bore his sufferings with joy, then the fierce judge ordered molten led to be poured into his mouth, but the saint said thanks be to you, Lord Jesus, Son of the living God, after which Simplician called for a cauldron filled with boiling pitch and Boniface was thrown into it head-first, the saint still didn’t suffer, then the judge ordered his head to be cut off: immediately there came a terrible earthquake and many infidels, who had been able to appreciate Boniface’s courage, converted, his comrades bought his body and they embalmed it and wrapped it in costly linens and then, having put it on a litter, they returned to Rome where an angel of the Lord appeared to Aglaida and revealed to her what had happened to Boniface, she went over to the holy body and had a tomb worthy of it built in its honor—as for Aglaida, she renounced the world and its pomp, after having distributed all her worldly goods to the poor and the monasteries she freed her slaves and spent the rest of her life in fasting and prayer, before being buried next to Saint Boniface tortured and beheaded, during the homily I thought about Maks Luburić the Croatian butcher, about those whom he had decapitated, flayed, impaled, burned because they were infidels, how many times had he heard the Mass of Saint Boniface martyr patron saint of Carcaixent, under the name Vicente Pérez was he still thinking about Jasenovac or Ante Pavelić great collector of human eyes when his assassin smashed his skull with a log before stabbing him twenty times with a kitchen knife, one warm April night, in the heady perfume of the flowering orange tree, I down my gin to the health of Boniface the little martyr from Tarsus in Cilicia, Tarsus city of Saint Paul and of the Armenians massacred in turn by the infidel Turks under the eyes of Doughty-Wylie the consul fallen in the Dardanelles, my head is spinning, my head is spinning I feel suddenly nauseous I cling to the window jamb, I need some air, the bartender is looking at me, the gin didn’t do me any good I’ll go splash some water on my face, I stagger in the train’s movements over to the nearby john, I close the door behind me sprinkle myself with water as if for a baptism I sit down in the comfort of the brushed steel alcohol was a mistake I haven’t eaten anything all day, what the hell am I doing here in the train toilets I’m beat I’ll go back and sit down try to sleep a little but first I’ll light a cigarette, too bad for the anti-cancer laws, soon Florence, soon Florence and then Rome, what slowness despite the speed, the dryness of the tobacco relaxes me, the tiny toilet is immediately filled with smoke, like the square in Carcaixent after the mascletà, as we left the Mass of the martyr Boniface a band was playing local tunes on short wind instruments that sounded shrill and piercing, a horrible sound that bored into our eardrums as mercilessly as the firecrackers, the faithful followed the fanfare while out on the square they were setting off fireworks that exploded in a fountain over the night sky, it was like Naples on New Year’s Eve, Naples or Palermo, a tie in pyrotechnical excess, along with Barcelona in the summer on Saint John’s Day, a trinity of cities in love with noise, Carcaixent put all its good will into it, the festival was in full swing, after three or four more drinks and a quick dinner Stéphanie wanted to go to bed, I let her go back alone to the hotel I had business to attend to at 25 Avinguda Blasco-Ibáñez the author of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Mare Nostrum, what an address, with his advanced age I was pretty sure the man I was looking for would be home, maybe even asleep, if he could find sleep, a little outside of the center of town I spotted a telephone booth, I dialed his number, after four rings a man’s voice replied si? I hung up immediately, according to my map the avenue was a scant hundred meters to the south, Ljubo Runjas isn’t expecting me, what’s more his name is Barnabas Köditz now, he has lived in Spain since 1947, in Madrid at first and then, when Ante Pavelić died ten years later, he settled in Carcaixent, for years he informed Yugoslav intelligence about the activities of Luburić the butcher and other Ustashis prote
cted by Franco, he gave them everything, in exchange for his own immunity—from whom could he be hiding, Ljubo Runjas the sergeant from Jasenovac, at twenty years of age he was a man of base deeds, murdering women and children, by poison by gas by club or knife, he had the hot blood of youth, Ljubo, born in 1922 he will die in his bed, unlike his mentor Maks Luburić whom he betrayed, he helped his assassin flee to France and I suspect him too of having planted one or two knife wounds in his friend’s body, out of pleasure, prudently he then left Carcaixent for Valencia, before returning and settling there over twenty years after the fact, for reasons I know nothing of, sentimental ones maybe, maybe financial ones, he’s still there at almost eighty years of age when I head for Avenue Blasco-Ibáñez the duel-loving writer, the whole village is at the festival the streets are deserted, dark, the avenue is lined with buildings on one side on the other a few villas looking out onto the orchards by the banks of the Júcar, the night is very dark, no moon, not one star, the stars must not have shone often in Jasenovac on the Sava which the inmates crossed in a ferry to go to Gradina where most of the executions took place, they say that Ljubo Runjas killed almost a hundred people with his own hands in a field in one evening, with a knife, impossible to believe that the condemned ones stayed quietly in their field, he must have had to run after them like chickens, women children old men, Ljubo Runjas had invented a method so as not to have cramps in his fingers he attached the weapon with a piece of leather directly to his palm like a glove, his hand just had a few jobs to do, just direct the blade, the whole movement was in the arm like a tennis player, forehand stroke, backhand, how many humans did he sacrifice in three years in Jasenovac, many more than the animals in his father’s slaughterhouse, more than all the lambs of Bosnia on the day of Kurban Bajram, even the Nazis were horrified by the Ustashi methods, the Nazis who sought to protect their soldiers from proximity to the victims, who used technology for massacres ever since Himmler himself, by a ditch near Riga, had been splattered by Jewish blood: in Jasenovac there were no rules no technology no order in death, it came according to the murderers’ own sweet whims, firearms, knives, clubs especially, one by one the inmates went through the double door, behind which they got a big hammer blow on the back of the head, next, next, the executioners relieved each other every thirty or forty victims, an amateur business, amateur or at most an eighteenth-century technique—I ring the bell at number 25, the villa is white, with a covered porch, a tiny garden where a short palm tree holds court, no lights, I try again, it’s 10:30, a festival day, the porch lights up, the intercom crackles, the same si? as on the telephone, I say very loudly Dobar večer, gospon Runjas, kako ste? there is a long silence, has he changed his mind, I picture my old man hesitating in his bathrobe, a buzz suddenly comes through the gate, I push it, there is a man with his back to the light on the porch on top of the steps, I go up to him, I have in front of me Ljubo Runjas the little, 5’4” and shrunk by age, white hair, wrinkled face, prominent nose, large ears, his suspicious and even menacing gaze contrasts with the reedy voice that says to me I was expecting you much earlier, I’d gone to bed you know, I don’t reply, he signs to me to come in, I talk for a few minutes with Ljubomir Runjas the brutal whom the years have bent, Ljubo the underling, the little murderer will die in his bed, in Carcaixent, without anyone taking the trouble to find him, he asks me how my grandfather is doing, I tell him that Franjo Mirković died in 1982 in Paris, he says ah, we’re all leaving, the patriots are all dying one after the other, farewell first independent State of Croatia, the black NDH, savage great killer of Serbs, farewell, bon voyage, the false señor Köditz looks a little sad, the living room he receives me in is typically Spanish, full of knickknacks, colors, a Virgin with Child on a wall, a silver icon on the 1960s sideboard, here you’d think Barnabas Köditz was a retired German, I ask him why he came back to live in Carcaixent, he answers with a shrug, he looks nervous, in a hurry to get it over with—he slowly gets up, goes over to the sideboard, opens a drawer, takes out a square package wrapped in brown paper, hands it to me, my name is on the outside, written in a fine hand in blue ink, old-style, Mirković Francis, I take the package, thank him, Ljubo remains standing to convey to me that the interview is over, farewell, farewell, bog, bog he does not hold out his hand, nor do I, there is nothing in his eyes, he leads me to the steps, waits till I’ve gone through the gate to close the door, and voilà, I’m in the street with a package under my arm, the fireworks are lighting up the night again, sprays of sparkles followed by a muffled explosion, whistling rockets flying over the rooftops, in the package there are a hundred or so annotated photographs from Jasenovac, letters, a long list of numbers, the inventory of the dead, with no names or origin, just the daily tally of deaths, from 1941 to 1945, 1,500 days, 1,500 lines of calculation, all the shot the poisoned the gassed the clubbed the disemboweled the drowned the ones with their throats cut the burned alive all grouped into a number and a date, for each of the sub-camps around the Sava, teeming with storks and carp—in Carcaixent near Valencia the festival is in full swing, an orchestra has taken possession of the square, from time to time a rocket is set off, a firecracker, it is early still it’s the old people and the children who are dancing, to the paso doble from long ago, two by two they dance, I pause to watch them for a bit, the couples are elegant, the men stick out their chests and lightly swing their shoulders, the women let themselves be led from one end to the other, the ones who are too old or too young to dance are leaning on the bar or sitting on folding chairs, Ljubo Runjas alias Barnabas Köditz is perhaps already asleep, I think of Jasenovac, I think of Maks Luburić, of Dinko Sakić whom the new Croatia has just sentenced to twenty years in prison at seventy-eight years of age, extradited from Argentina Dinko had been the chief of Jasenovac along with Maks Luburić his brother-in-law: they danced on the shores of the Sava, they danced in this forgotten village in Spain, I clutch the package I’ll go to bed now, the paso doble is over more rockets light up the sky, blue and red flowers celebratory explosions for the dead of Jasenovac, I climb the stairs and curl up against Stéphanie, listening to the murmur of the music, in the dark, mixed with the racket of the fireworks and with the breathing of the woman lying there, despite everything she’s asleep, she’s asleep and I find it very difficult, who knows why, to convince myself that she’s not dead, despite the regular breath that lifts her chest as the orchestra strikes up “A Mi Manera,” the gentle Iberian version of “My Way”—the next morning, after a sleep full of storks flying over swampy mass graves, after a quick breakfast in the midst of the festival debris, after recovering the Citroën from the parking lot we went to the Carcaixent cemetery to see the grave of Luburić-Pérez, beautiful and well-kept, Stéphanie couldn’t believe her eyes, the people around here liked him she said I replied that’s right, his children even went to the local school without the tiniest stone being thrown at them, farewell Maks the butcher, we continued on towards Xàtiva not knowing that a few days later Barnabas Köditz would die from a heart attack, farewell Ljubo the bloodthirsty sergeant, your documents have joined the others in the suitcase, the meticulous photographs, the numbers, the administrative letters from Zagreb, farewell—about twenty kilometers away the little town of Xàtiva hovered between the plain and the mountain, the palm trees and the orange trees, the little streets in the center of town were pleasant and the Renaissance palaces were reminiscent of the great families of the area especially the Borgias, who knew power and glory in Rome: the palace where Pope Alexander VI Borgia was born was dark and sumptuous, like the pontificate of its owner, his many children and his passions for coitus, scandal, and politics make him eminently likeable, Stéphanie the Alsatian was offended by the pontiff’s lack of respect for the papal institution, o tempora, o mores, the popes today want to be prudish mystical vapid and well-washed, the ones from before smelled of depravity and conspiracy, the Borgias spoke Valencian among themselves even in the heart of Rome which makes them historical heroes for the local cause, despite t
he pleasantly unorthodox whiff of their saga: so Xàtiva was pleasant and we ate well there, a kind of paella cooked in the oven, usually washed down with a mean wine produced in the region of Alicante, this beverage had something medieval and unorthodox about it too, the Jasenovac package was still wrapped in its brown paper and what with the good food and the fornication I forgot the dead and the butchers—four days of vacation, Valencia Carcaixent Xàtiva Dènia Valencia, Stéphanie was happy, she had the enviable ability to be able to forget Paris and the Boulevard Mortier as soon as the plane doors had shut, she erased her reports her analyses as a young secret agent in the wink of an eye, I felt as if she were even more beautiful because of it, with her sunglasses that she used as a headband to hold back her dark hair, she was calm, completely present to the world, armed with Proust and Céline and her convictions supported by high culture, I have the feeling that I miss her all of a sudden sitting on my train throne cigarette in hand, I miss her sometimes, better not think about her, better not think about the catastrophe of the end of our relationship, where is she now, posted to Moscow which she dreamed about, if I met her in the street I wouldn’t speak, neither would she, we would ignore each other just as we ignored each other at the end in the hallways on the Boulevard, we weren’t supposed to meet each other I was promised another fate I was living on borrowed time Stéphanie was just an illusion, three drummer boys on the way back from war, three drummer boys, and rat and tat ratatatat, on the way back from waaar, I have that tune in my head now, the suitcase is very heavy, and the gin does nothing for it—I splash more water on my face, the window in the toilet is opaque, I can only feel the pressure of endless tunnels on my eardrums, between Bologna and Florence, which must not be far now, are we already in Tuscany, what time is it, 7:15, another half-hour before Florence then 300 kilometers till Rome and the new life, if I don’t get out on the way, if I don’t take advantage of an unexpected stop to try to escape Fate, but the choices were already made a long time ago, I’ll hand over the suitcase, I’ll follow it through to the end, in the fall of 1990 I began the journey in a train from the Gare de Lyon, I was crossing Italy for the first time, determined, a little anxious still, strong from my military knowledge ready to place my sword at the service of my country, now it will go back in its sheath, farewell Francis Mirković the butcher from Bosnia, farewell, farewell Andrija the fierce, rest in peace, in the train to Zagreb we sang three drummer boys as we drank, now I’ve drunk alone and rat and tat, ratatatat, now I’m alone in the night locked up in this cubbyhole, I’ll have to find the courage to leave it, the strength, just as sometimes in war you’re afraid to go out, one night on the front in Bosnia two guys had to go reconnoiter the enemy lines, as close as possible to see where the Chetniks had set themselves up, Andi immediately volunteered and he chose me to go with him, in theory I had a higher rank than he but who cares, I agreed, we armed ourselves, weapons and ammunition, I remember I broke a shoelace as I tied my boots too forcefully which made Andrija laugh out loud but which seemed a bad omen to me, maybe Athena wouldn’t accompany us this time, the daughter of Zeus was looking elsewhere, we left in the darkest part of night around 2:00 A.M., we began to go down the hill between the trees, slipping on the wet earth, I was scared stiff, because of the darkness or the shoelace, I don’t know, my rifle clanked against the buttons on my jacket I was obsessed by this sound I was sure it was going to get us spotted Andrija skidded sideways sprawled onto his back swore like a trucker in a low voice, we should go back, I thought, we should go back right away before the real catastrophe, it seemed imminent, shit it’s like looking through an African’s asshole Andrija whispered that didn’t make me laugh but he was right we could be passing an entire regiment without realizing it, the lower down we got the steeper the slope became, we’d have to cling to the tree trunks to get back up, the Serbs must have been right below us—we stopped to listen we heard nothing, aside from an owl in the distance, maybe the goddess didn’t abandon us in the end, the night smelled of earth of grass and of the cold damp the calm was far from the racket of war Andrija looked at me as if to say should we climb back up? the valley was plunged in darkness there was no enemy around here that’s for sure just an irregular rustle of leaves like hesitant footsteps down below I grasped Andi’s shoulder put a finger to my mouth someone was approaching, the owl suddenly falls silent, someone was trying to climb the hill and panting, on our right—Andrija smiled, happy finally not to have schlepped all this way for nothing, my fear came back, what rotten luck, kilometers of hills and we come almost nose to nose with the Chetniks, how many of them were there, I strained my ears in vain I could hear just one of them, one single guy wheezing and breaking branches, this must be what deer and bucks feel when the hunter approaches, pieces of branches and a tightening of the chest Andrija signs to us to move to the right to intercept this noisy oaf, maybe a civilian, but what the hell would a civilian be doing in the middle of the night in the middle of the front, maybe one of our own, lost, was climbing back to our lines, Andi the brave moved away as quietly as possible veered off to the right the unknown man would find himself between the two of us in a few seconds I could hear him distinctly now the fat quarry was advancing slowly towards Andrija I hid behind a tree my mouth was dry I held my breath the Chetnik passed me I caught him by the legs he fell into the mud Andi jumped onto his back gagged him with his hand to stifle his cry of fear, I took his weapon, held him by the ear, aside from the panicked breathing of the Serb the hill was silent, Andi put his dagger under the petrified soldier’s neck and made him sit down opposite me he was in his forties with bulging eyes I whispered if you shout we slit your throat, ok? he nodded Andrija removed his hand but not his blade, what are you doing here? I asked, he stammered they sent me on reconnaissance he was so afraid he had difficulty speaking, his breath stank of onions, I asked where are the others? he replied I’m all alone, with an air of despair, liar are you jerking us around or what? the knife pressed a little harder on his Adam’s apple he blanched I swear to you, I swear, I’m all alone, I was supposed to go look at your lines, I got lost, I believed him, the front had shifted the previous day after their offensive, they wanted to know where we had withdrawn to, just as we wanted to know where they had stopped, I asked him the question, down below, on the other side of the river, that was logical, probably true, we’d be able to take our catch with us, this fish with the bulging eyes gone to spy on us alone in the night, Andi asked me in a low voice should we go? as I got up I noticed that our Serb had a game bag at his side, a canvas bag, I felt the weight of it the soldier rolled his frightened eyes, I opened it, it was full of bloody billfolds, gold chains, bracelets and wedding rings, a highwayman of corpses, he came back at night to strip the dead that we hadn’t had time to bury during the day, scattered around in no man’s land, maybe a spy but definitely a vulture with a panicked look, I heard the owl hoot in the distance, the Serb suddenly tried to free himself, to run away, Andrija the furious fell down swearing I pulled the trigger on my rifle by instinct two explosions ripped through the night followed by groans of pain I went over to the soldier he was writhing in the freezing mud I took his haversack his rifle Andi slit his throat in one enraged motion wiped his knife on the dead man’s jacket come on we’re going back up, we went back up, with difficulty, Andrija griping cursing the Chetniks I listened to the owl singing carrying the dead man’s soul to Hades, three drummer boys on the way back from war, the third was sleeping up above like a baby, he didn’t even wake up when we went to bed, after handing our somber booty over to an officer, the mortal remains, papers and jewelry of the abandoned dead—a few months before Andrija himself joined the underworld, Andrija shot down shitting behind a bush by a Muslim squadron that came out of nowhere died as he lived, ironically, fallen in his own shit like Robert Walser in the snow, three bullets in the chest thrown backwards into the smoking shit, pants around his knees, immobilized by the runs weapon in hand, no doubt he was laughing all alone and saying Za dom spremni
as he heaved, Andi I miss you, in the early morning the fog the taste of the bronze of combat I said to you in a low voice “you’re not going to go shit now, nećeš valjda sad da kenjaš do it here if you want,” that gave you a good laugh, poor stubborn proud Croatian fool, you had already thrown up on me one winter night I could have put up with your shit, I would have preferred it to your death, fallen in irony Andrija I press the black plastic button and the water that flows down the steel sides of the ultra-modern train toilet is a torrent, a thin river that carries everything away flushes my urine onto the tracks and crossties going by at 150 kmh to soil eternal Tuscany with an immense pleasure