Later, Florian was unable to remember the crash, the violent collision, the aggressive sound of crunching metal, the bang of exploding tyres, only one very fleeting moment in which he felt – with an astonishment greater than the shock and the pain – like a prisoner in a confined capsule being hurled about by an incredible force. Jammed in, he saw himself careening along past blurred images, an incoherent film, strangely without any sound.
He first regained consciousness, but only briefly, in the hospital when his clothes were cut from his body with a large pair of scissors. He opened his eyes, the scissors were moving up his torso, cleaving his polo shirt, as if he were being opened up, he saw a face above his, heard the words: Do you understand? Can you understand me?
He said something about pigs, the pigs, it was incomprehensible, then he passed out.
A taxi driver from the Burgenland, who had raced to the border crossing at Nickelsdorf several times already that day to bring refugees to the Westbahnhof in Vienna, from where they could travel on by train to Munich, had been in a hurry to collect his next fare. It was good, fast money – those poor bastards didn’t bat an eyelid at paying three times the usual fare. In his rush, his greed, his frenzy, he hadn’t noticed that the traffic in front of him had come to a standstill, and so without even touching the brakes he ploughed straight into Florian Susman’s car.
The woman, who with the help of her son carefully lifted Florian from the wreck, laid him in her lap and held his head still, she was his salvation. Florian had a broken vertebra, but the delicate extrication and stabilisation had prevented damage to his spinal cord – otherwise he would have been paralysed. Florian realised this only when Martin came to the hospital with the papers that carried the Pietà photograph. You’re on the front page!
Because of this photograph the Christian Occident, fearful of the inrush of Muslims, was touched to the core for one historic second. The Muslim woman who had saved Florian was a Madonna.
How might things have turned out differently if Florian hadn’t had the accident? Had Martin Susman stayed in Brussels rather than flying straight to Vienna to be with his brother, he might have been able to prevent, or at least keep in check the turmoil that his Jubilee paper unleashed. But while Martin looked after his brother, conflicts and arguments broke out in the European Commission back in Brussels, escalating very rapidly and in such a way as to render any rational solution impossible. There wasn’t even the option of a compromise. Who was to blame for this uproar, who had come up with this mad idea? Mrs Atkinson? Xeno? Martin.
But if everybody is merely doing their duty, can there be culprits? And what is “duty”? Abiding by the bureaucratic rules, the stipulated procedures? Or defending interests to which one is beholden, or feels beholden? Everything is ground between the big wheels above and the little wheels below, and in the end nothing has happened, even if the crashing and crunching of the milling process causes jumpiness and agitation to begin with. And yet before Martin’s departure for Vienna, he and Xeno had been confident that the Jubilee Project would now smoothly run its course. They had interpreted the calm before the storm as the absence of objections, as silent acquiescence. And they felt reassured and protected by the encouragement and protection from “the very top”.
Xeno had at last had her meeting with the Commission president, two days before the Inter-Service Meeting she had called on account of the Jubilee Project. Well, not actually with the president himself, but with his private secretary. Even this was an honour, an acknowledgement of her work and an unmistakable show of interest in her as an individual, for officials of Xeno’s status were usually granted a meeting with a staff member from the president’s office at best. Was this privilege perhaps the result of an intervention by Fridsch, who had strongly recommended her for higher accolades? Then again, hadn’t she expected even more than this, a meeting with the president himself? Wasn’t that why she had prepared so meticulously for him, studying his biography, his likes and dislikes, even reading his favourite book? But she must have realised when, after she had been promised a meeting (“What’s it about?”, “We’ll try our best!”), they kept putting her off until finally Fridsch said, A meeting with the president is merely a meeting with someone from his office! Especially if you’re from Culture.
He smiled.
Imagine, he said, that the president doesn’t really exist. That there haven’t been any presidents since Jacques Delors! Only puppets. The strings are being pulled by the office. Every word the president utters is being spoken by his ventriloquists. Everything he says has long been decided and whenever he signs something his hand is guided. Have you seen the president on television, when he meets heads of state? How he pulls on the tie of one and gives another a little nudge? These are the only snippets of improvisation, the only autonomy he can permit himself, his personal note in this mechanism of power, so to speak – his ironic game: he, who is hanging by so many threads, pokes fun at it all by pulling and nudging as if he were the puppet master himself. So, Fridsch had said, you will get your meeting with the president, but don’t expect a meeting with the puppet himself.
Thus Xeno was sitting face to face with the Commission president’s private secretary, Romolo Strozzi, whose full name, as she had gleaned from his Wikipedia entry, was Romolo Augusto Massimo Strozzi, the last and childless descendant of an ancient noble Italian family. Various anecdotes about him and his unconventional manner were doing the rounds of the European institutions. He was known as a “colourful figure”, and to her astonishment Xeno realised that this might be literally true: Strozzi wore a blue suit, a yellow handkerchief in the breast pocket and a red waistcoat that both emphasised his stomach and contained it. He wasn’t fat, just plump enough to demonstrate that he was no ascetic, a fact reinforced by the signal red of his waistcoat. Strozzi was an anomaly at this level of power, which was dominated by the “Énarques”, graduates of those elite schools such as the École Nationale d’Administration, slim men in discreet, not-too-expensive suits (ascetic in every respect) capable of negotiating for hours on end and all night long too. They appeared to need barely any food and as good as no sleep, they got by with few words, few gestures, they avoided sugaring their souls with the sweetness of empathy, they didn’t need a public arena (for them the metabolism within power was enough), they eschewed the outside gloss. In their lives and work there was no ornament; everything was as clear as it was invisible. Xeno was able to pass professional judgement on this type of man, having learned how to, having been prepared for it in her elite schools and having come across them throughout her career to date. Now she sat opposite this Baroque Italian count, who stuck out his red paunch at her and spoke with expansive gestures like an operetta conductor, his signet ring dancing before her eyes. It wasn’t ridiculous, it was thoroughly awe-inspiring and impressive, and anything else from a man in his position was inconceivable. Nevertheless, Xeno was bewildered by his manner and found it difficult to cope with. Not only did he speak perfect Italian, German, English and French, but he opened the conversation, licking his lips with relish, in Ancient Greek. When Xeno just stared at him blankly, he apologised: his modern Greek was so rudimentary, unfortunately, that it would pain her to hear it. And he was always forgetting that Ancient Greek was as foreign a language to Greeks as Swahili.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, he said, then added, Ἀλλ ὁ λόγος ἦν άμαρτοεπής. In the beginning was the word. But the word was wrong. Je suis désolé, he said with a chuckle.
Xeno felt intimidated by this jaunty assault. She had done her homework on Conte Strozzi in order to be able to gauge him, to avoid being caught off guard and to deliver the right responses in their negotiations as swiftly as possible. But only now – too late – did she grasp what it really meant, all that she had heard and read about him: the Strozzis had been elevated to the nobility centuries back, by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and they were related by blood and marriage to the Austrian, German and Czech aristoc
racy. Romolo Strozzi’s grandfather had been a war criminal as commander of a unit of the Italian 9th Army which carried out mass shootings in Montenegro in 1941 and 1942. In 1964, however, his father, a graduate of the diplomatic academy, became the youngest member of the negotiating team that prepared for the Italian government the European Community Merger Treaty, which led to the establishment of the European Council and Commission. His Austrian great-uncle, Nikolaus Graf Khevenhüller, was a fanatical National Socialist who became deputy Gauleiter of Carinthia in January 1945, but then vanished to Spain at the beginning of May that year, where until his death in 1967 he lived undisturbed as “advisor” to the Spanish secret police with an honorarium from Generalissimo Franco. By contrast his great-aunt Marion (née von Tirpitz) married the German resistance fighter Ulrich Hesse, became a local politician for the Social Democrats in Hannover and secretary of the Association of the Victims of National Socialism.
This family history was probably the reason for the most famous quotation attributed to Romolo Strozzi: “L’Europe, c’est moi!”
It was without doubt a fascinating family history, but it puzzled Xeno too. It was entirely alien to her that all this could have a continuing influence and put its stamp on a person’s biography. She had a notion of family in which ancestors were people you only knew about because of the existence of photography, and even then you knew little more than their names. In essence they were people who probably hadn’t lived much differently from her own parents, people who stuck together and helped each other, prisoners of their circumstances, that was how it must have been, for no stories existed about them, they didn’t give rise to any, just now and again a special case cropped up like Uncle Kostas – the one with the undying love – and then, in the end, the complete break: like hers – she had left everything behind. When Xeno finished reading the detailed Wikipedia entry about Romolo Strozzi, she wasn’t particularly impressed by this man’s origins and family. For her that was all window dressing – even though Strozzi was private secretary to the Commission president, the entry made it sound as if his main job was that of being a descendant, and Xeno found this insane. But another nugget of information had surprised and impressed her: at the 1980 Summer Olympics, Romolo Strozzi had won a fencing medal – bronze – in the individual sabre.
Did you know that? She had asked Fridsch.
Yes, he’d said, I heard. Those were the Moscow games. They say that Strozzi benefited from the fact that lots of countries – I don’t know how many – boycotted the games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So a number of world-class fencers weren’t there.
But he qualified, he fenced and he won a medal.
Yes, he did. And do you know what’s interesting? Queneau told me this one time: the Italians didn’t boycott the games, but they competed under the Olympic flag – the five rings on a white background – rather than their national one. And to honour the victorious Italian athletes they played “Ode to Joy” instead of the national anthem. At the time the Strozzi family was said to have had substantial influence over the Italian Olympic committee’s decision.
Xeno looked at Strozzi, the signet ring danced before her eyes and all she could think about this man with the red paunch was: an Olympic medal in fencing! She knew nothing about the sport. Why should she? Strozzi had won his medal for the sabre. That wasn’t the foil. Had Xeno known the difference she could have better gauged how their conversation would go.
She had expected him to come straight to the point, without beating about the bush. Men like him have little time. He would ask Xeno directly what he could do for her, then either show or feign an interest, and she would have to present her case with great speed and precision to ensure his reaction would tend towards “being interested”. But to her astonishment he said, Do you know what interests me? And I’d like to hear your opinion on this. What do you think about the burkini ban? I’m asking you as a woman. I’d really like to know what you’ve got to say. Do you think men like the mayor of Nice should be allowed to determine what women wear or, more accurately in this case, what they should take off? A woman has to take off her clothes, is that our Christian culture? Yes? What do you think? You wouldn’t believe how many requests we’ve had for the Commission to take a position on this.
Xeno was speechless.
Strozzi smiled. Perhaps it’s an unfair question, he said. My personal opinion is that the burkini protects women from skin cancer.
Xeno didn’t know if Strozzi was seriously expecting her to —
But calls for a ban are growing louder by the day, he said. On what basis could we implement that? A war on fanaticism and orthodoxy? There is no policy that obliges us to go in that direction. Thank goodness. We could turn out the light in Europe and shut up shop. Because we’d have to ban the kaftan and the shtreimel too, and —
The what?
The shtreimel. It’s the huge round felt hat that Orthodox Jews wear.
But there is a difference, Xeno said, her voice almost non-existent.
Of course there’s a difference. There are differences in all things that are similar. And all things that differ from each other are also alike! Let me tell you something: we’d even have to ban business suits. In this building I’m surrounded by men in business suits. They’re like a uniform. They all look identical. It’s frightening. And believe you me, all these men are orthodox and fanatics in their own way. So would you say that they should take off their suits?
Xeno looked at Strozzi in disbelief. He laughed, leaned back and opened his arms wide. Then he bent forwards, still smiling, but languorously now, with a profoundly curious expression, and said, But I don’t wish to waste your precious time. Tell me straight out what I can do for you.
The fact that Strozzi said he didn’t want to waste her time was more than an ironic reversal of the situation; it was a classic doublé as a fencer would say. Xeno couldn’t break through his guard because she didn’t even know what a guard was. She had no idea how fencing can shape a man. Which was why she, who always prepared so thoroughly for every situation, was not at all prepared for Strozzi. Pre-empting the opponent’s clear intention, dodging and tricking, setting up the feints, doublé, feint thrust, feint cut and then the hit after a sudden, unexpected lunge. And before the opponent knows it, the whole thing is over, you shake hands with a show of respect and the greatest deference. Before she knew it Xeno was being shown to the lift by an intern and escorted to the foyer of the Berlaymont. She stepped out into the light of a virtually exploding sun and walked back, as if numbed, to her office in rue Joseph II. What had just happened?
Strozzi had already rattled Xeno with his unexpected overture in Ancient Greek, before catching her entirely off-guard by switching to French. She had accepted the challenge, even though she felt unsure in French; she would rather have spoken English, which they were both fluent in. Strozzi must have known this, he had been briefed down to the last detail. Conversing in French, Strozzi was able to move more freely and elegantly than she was, and dominate the bout at will. And the burkini story – was he serious? He can’t have been – it was the perfect deception. Xeno was so dumbfounded that she was no longer alert, she had lost her concentration. And now, on the way back to the office, she couldn’t be sure what the repercussions of the conversation would be. On the contrary, she kept telling herself that in the end she had put in a good performance; she kept reinterpreting the key moments of the meeting in her head as if playing a film clip, winding it back and playing it again until she was convinced: yes, it had been a triumph! She might have shown weakness, but ultimately it had been a victory!
She had known that he had known that her principal aim was to secure a transfer to a different Directorate-General. For this had been the original reason given for the meeting. It was also the reason it had taken so long to get one. That was not how things were done; without an intervention she would never have been granted the meeting. And she hadn’t even touched on the topic. She had presented t
he Jubilee Project. She thought it the perfect strategy. She would showcase the significance and merits of the Commission and improve its public image. It had been her idea, she had the vision and she could pull it off. In due course it would be evident that she deserved a more important position in this institution. That didn’t need to be articulated any more overtly for the time being; all she needed now was the president’s approval and formal support. If he were to express his wish that this Jubilee celebration take place, there would be no going back. Everybody would have to pull together. Xeno had handed Strozzi Martin’s paper and explained the idea in a nutshell, placing particular emphasis on the fact that this was about the Commission rather than “the E.U.”, it was about stripping the Commission of its image as an institution of unworldly bureaucrats and presenting it as guardian of the lessons of history and of human rights. For this reason too it was important that funding for the project came exclusively from the Commission’s budget, and of course what it needed most of all was the president’s support. Surely the project must be in the president’s interest, particularly now, when the Commission was suffering from a serious image problem. She pictured the Jubilee celebrations being opened with a keynote speech from the president and —
D’accord, Strozzi had said, d’accord. I don’t believe I’m overstretching the elasticity of my authority if I —
Pardon?
I believe, he said with a smile, that I have the authority to grant you my approval straight away, without need for consultation. The president supports this idea and will give a speech at the opening ceremony. I’ll have a protocol of our conversation with the approval drawn up immediately and you will receive it today.
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