The Colonial Conquest: The Confines of the Shadow Volume I

by Alessandro Spina

  ÉMILE: Three years ago I travelled with him from Alexandria to Benghazi. While we were still at sea, he expressed an interest in the goods I’d brought with me. He then kindly introduced me to other merchants in Benghazi. Captain, I’m assuming you’re aware of the tragedy that struck his family?

  MARTELLO: Ferdinando, the Venetian woman, Zulfa … yes, I’m well aware of that tragedy. But I’m also aware that Semereth abandoned his remote, fairy-tale niche and became the leader of a rebel band. I would like all the details on your commercial dealings with Semereth since his escape.

  ÉMILE: Everyone knows Semereth’s uncle has been managing his estate, which seems fairly normal to me.

  MARTELLO: You wouldn’t have specified that, thereby compromising Semereth’s uncle, unless you knew the latter had died in the meanwhile. I’m well informed. Carry on.

  ÉMILE: At the time of his escape, Semereth and I had been involved in a number of business deals, which I was then forced to liquidate. Tying up those loose ends was probably what gave rise to all that chatter about me and Hajji Semereth having gone into business together.

  MARTELLO: Mr Chébas, your business has expanded rapidly. You’re capable, intelligent, full of drive, and people say you run the tightest ship in the city. But you would never have been able to get to this point as quickly as you have without Semereth Effendi’s help. The authorities have always known this. In the midst of a civil war, ascertaining the provenance of one’s capital might seem excessive and pointless. The possible seizure of such assets based on suspicions rather than proof would also have damaging political repercussions. We’ve kept the knowledge of Semereth’s fortune to ourselves, and are pretending not to notice. The decree issued on 15 July 1912 allows us to confiscate what goods we see fit. The rice, sugar, tea and cloth you sell are used by both the rebels and those loyal to us. It would be very difficult for us to split your customers into categories, since the government’s efforts to tell them apart from one another have been fruitless thus far. Cyrenaica is no longer the front line of the conflict, and commerce is following its own course. It’s a third army that pursues its own agenda regardless of the warring parties involved. Do you think there aren’t any Italian officers who would have set the entire market on fire with the same fury as the rebels?

  ÉMILE: Captain, in that case do you think my shop would have been spared? If you had led such an attack, would you have caused me harm? I’m not trying to defend myself by asking that question, I’m simply curious, just like you are.

  MARTELLO: I came to see you twice when that tragic affair involving Semereth Effendi was happening. I certainly wasn’t there in any official capacity on those occasions, and besides, the authorities didn’t even know who you were at the time. You ask me if I would have spared your shop. Why not? It would of course have depended on whether I had the time to spare it some thought, and give the appropriate order in the midst of all that mayhem.

  ÉMILE: Why would you have spared me? Perhaps if we knew the answer, we might better understand the rebels’ intentions. It might even be that they spared me for the same reason you might have done – or if their reasons are different, knowing yours would still be enlightening.

  MARTELLO: There, you’ve trapped me! I like the way you talk, Mr Chébas. You wisely calculate the risks involved in all your moves. I would have stopped my men in front of your shop – as I would have stopped what happened to Ferdinando, the handsome boy I once met at your shop. Although I didn’t have any luck, I did try to do something for him. If he’d appeared through the whirlwind of that attack, his hand would’ve stayed mine and your shop would be safe.

  ÉMILE: It’s all clear now. But how could I have guessed? Instead of being part of a wider plan, couldn’t the fact my shop was spared be due, so to speak, to a preternatural dialogue like the one that took place between you and Ferdinando?

  MARTELLO: Did you leave the shop while the looting was happening?

  ÉMILE: Of course not.

  MARTELLO: Who led the attack? People said there was a very tall knight, a giant who was running riot everywhere. Shadows make people bigger than they are. Fear exaggerates. But I can’t understand why the people’s collective imagination conjured the same spectre: the giant figure of a knight, as though a statue had suddenly sprung to life. I think imagination had nothing to do with it; the giant was there. It was Semereth Effendi. Why don’t you speak? Didn’t you suspect he might have been behind it? Mr Chébas, it would mean a lot to me if you could confirm or dispel that suspicion, and in return I would promise to do all I can to dispel the suspicions against you.

  ÉMILE: I never left the shop during the looting and as I don’t know who led the attack, I can’t say anything at all. I’m sorry to disappoint you.

  MARTELLO: If you do know the truth and are keeping it from me, you’ve lost an opportunity to benefit from my help. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that it was Semereth Effendi. If that’s the case, then everything becomes explicable: Semereth simply spared the shop that belonged to someone who is either his friend or his business associate.

  ÉMILE: So the fact I survived means I’m guilty? No one forgets who their real friends are despite the faction they’ve chosen or the ideals that inspire them.

  MARTELLO: That’s not necessarily true. At least as far as feelings go – whereas I have my doubts when it comes to money, which always confuses the situation. But withholding information is a crime, and I am a representative of the law, which expressly punishes reluctant witnesses.

  ÉMILE: Perhaps there is a secret at the heart of the matter: but why must one always translate everything into political terms? Someone decided to spare my shop. I don’t know who it was, nor do I know why they favoured me above others. Maybe it’s someone unknown to me, maybe it was simply fate and maybe it was Semereth Effendi – or maybe it was divine providence. Even you, Captain, might fail to find the real reason. But the fact that there wasn’t a political reason should give you all the certainty you need. Life is dictated by a number of factors that always remain indeterminable and obscure.

  MARTELLO: And who would furnish me with such guarantees? The accused? The situation appears to refuse any explanation that doesn’t have a political dimension, especially considering you’re stringing together facts that don’t belong together: it’s the rules of the game. I’ve been here for three years, and my aims are to pierce through the secrets of this country and the people that live in it: to observe, to understand. Semereth’s tragedy gave me the inclination to do so. I say inclination to emphasise that it wasn’t strictly a choice. At the time, I tried to intervene in order to save Ferdinando’s life, but I achieved nothing. I envied that giant, and everything he owned. I offered him my friendship, and even offered to visit him. He welcomed me courteously, gave me a tour of his house, but didn’t pay me a return visit or invite me back. When Colonel Romanino and I asked the Venetian to come and work for us, she said she’d never swap her master for another. This was when the troops had just disembarked. This repudiated woman dared to prefer a simple merchant to those officers in shining uniforms who’d just landed on these beaches like gods. People say the Venetian was a witch. I can certainly vouch for the fact I’ve been haunted by a demon ever since: I want to take the giant’s place. It’s as though the people and objects Semereth owned were like hieroglyphs concealing a secret human language – I’m trying to decode this script with a scholar’s obstinacy and a lover’s passion. I know that you danced at Abdelkarim’s wedding last week. Why are you getting so nervous? Our informers’ eyes see everything. Do you know what my first reaction was? To sing! Yes, go ahead and laugh, our most deep-seated impulses share the same root as laughter. If I’d known about the wedding and that you’d be attending, I’d have mounted my horse, left the fort, and entered the room where you were assembled. To either offer you my presence, or to destroy it all, just like Semereth’s house! Everything that denies our presence here must be destroyed, and the Expeditionary Force will act w
ith the same determination as my willpower commands. Does this horrify you? But my destiny is following the same patterns as your friend Semereth Effendi. I’m also unloved and my presence here – the captain locked up in his fort – horrifies the people. Once again, the balance is skewed! Time cast the spell of distance between Semereth and Zulfa: but everything that actually matters is completely out of the ordinary, and distances add up to nothing but constraints. I frequented various merchants’ homes and businesses, was on familiar terms with servants, read the Qur’an, as well as all the other texts Italy’s lethargic culture bothered to translate from Arabic, read the memoirs of ancient travellers, and even kept an Arabic grammar book by my bed while I slept in a tent. But all I did was display the worst I could find in me and the civilisation to which I belong, as though I could only find salvation by reciting my sins. All my efforts were proved as vain as any desire. All they do is feed one’s impatience, they do nothing to shorten the distance between oneself and everything that matters, not even by a single step. It seems Semereth Effendi gave his young bride a new gift every day: our willpower and strength are the violent gifts with which we officers are pointlessly trying to seduce the naïve lives of this country’s inhabitants. Semereth’s destiny reached its climax in his vain efforts to turn his monologue into a dialogue with the people he loved the most: Zulfa and Ferdinando. Yet all he managed to do was keep them locked up in his house, and they betrayed him by falling in love. Thus thwarted, and a prisoner of himself, he then watched them being murdered in front of his very eyes. But a dramatic change of scene took place in Semereth’s parable, which saw him flee from Benghazi to join the rebels’ ranks. What test does life have in store for me? The attack on the market utilised the element of surprise, and occurred at night. The natives are all against us, they know every escape route in and out of the camp: if I’d left the fort with my soldiers, we wouldn’t have made it back. Of course, we could have easily resisted a siege at the fort: but they didn’t attack us. They passed right by us, keeping at a distance that made shooting pointless, scampering here and there to show us that they are the masters of this place, then loaded their goods onto a few camels, sent them on their way, and finally vanished at dawn. Then the suffocating desert winds picked up. I watched them charge excitedly into the winds and vanish into the sandstorm. It recalled that famous passage in Herodotus where he narrates how the men of this country would transform into sword-wielding sandstorms. Semereth has vanished. I carry his death like a debt. One day, he won’t find the wind in front of him, but a knight, at which point we’ll duel. You can go, Mr Chébas: I wasn’t trying to turn you into an informer or to punish you in that monster’s stead. I simply thought you could understand my reasons for wanting to verify the identity of the person who led the assault on the market. Semereth’s presence here was a provocation – and I left him unchallenged on the field. As a soldier, that is a stain on my honour.

  BOOK IV

  CHAPTER 1

  I

  ‘Captain Martello, the Risorgimento belongs to our past and it therefore influences us: how can you say it serves no purpose?’ exclaimed Signora Betti, setting down the champagne goblet in her hand. They were toasting the New Year in General Saverio Delle Stelle’s house.

  ‘Anything valuable in our past and education,’ the captain curtly retorted, ‘has little to do with the Risorgimento.’

  ‘Patriotism is blackmail,’ Doctor Amilcare grumbled. The part he played in that conversation was to demystify: he was like a reef that stood in the way of reality’s efforts to ready itself for the tragic outcome that lay in sight.

  ‘Perhaps the old world had become corrupted and outlived its usefulness,’ the captain said, ‘but the new one was stillborn and so it never even reached adulthood.’

  ‘Whoever hasn’t lived and suffered through certain things, or wasn’t educated in the cult of certain memories, will be unable to understand them, and maybe not even able to put them to any use, either.’

  Signora Betti boldly scanned the room. Was there a chance the captain’s unfamiliarity had had a magical effect on the scene and could explain the inexplicable – or, considering the monotony of obviousness – could introduce the inexplicable into it? She feared Captain Martello as though she were staring into the abyss of the unknown.

  The captain acquiesced and furnished them with a story:

  ‘We once owned a spinning mill in the Lombardo-Veneto that went to ruin precisely because my grandfather took part in the uprisings during the Risorgimento.’

  ‘And?’ Signora Betti exclaimed.

  ‘It’s a very moving story, truly moving,’ Doctor Amilcare said reassuringly, as though wanting to encourage Captain Martello.

  ‘My grandfather’s fiery letters from the time are pathetic, and about as moving as a romance novel. But how can one organise life on the frail yarns spun by novels?’

  ‘Our past is rather wretched, especially our recent past. Perhaps this is what makes our present so melancholy,’ General Delle Stelle said. ‘I agree with you, Captain; the Risorgimento was just a bunch of fanfare, we can hear it pass us by with such pleasure because it’s so bright and optimistic, but it doesn’t even shake the dust off things.’

  ‘Men are so bizarre,’ Signora Betti commented, turning to face Signora Delle Stelle, who was seated at the other end of the table: defining something is a triumph, even if a fleeting one, over reality’s ambiguity.

  ‘The only thing that matters to a man is his outlook on life. As for the men who led the Risorgimento,’ Captain Martello said, ‘their outlook was stubbornly mediocre, and a banal oversimplification. The heirs of the Risorgimento turned that oversimplification, which was quite possibly dictated by circumstance, into a sacred book. Thus, the neoclassical era was the last time our history was adumbrated by the shadow of greatness.’

  ‘What about Manzoni?’ Signora Betti asked, alarmed.

  ‘The Betrothed is nothing but a bunch of ghosts dancing around insignificant stories told by two peasants. It entirely liquidates our past. After Manzoni, mediocrity stopped being the black hole that all dying stars gravitated towards, and instead became a wan beacon in the miserable prison the world has become. Renzo stops being “the geometrical locus of the destinies of others” and becomes the country’s destiny, or rather the yardstick we should measure it by.’

  ‘This is a farce,’ Signora Betti exclaimed as she stood, ‘nothing but a game, and one that doesn’t even amuse me!’

  ‘Life in this country is being snuffed out because there’s no more theatre!’ Captain Martello exclaimed, surging out of his chair so tempestuously that the shocked Signora Betti immediately sat back down. ‘Our problems today are identical to Renzo’s: for instance, how to marry off our dear peasant girl despite the high-handedness of the powerful. We only search for perfection in mediocrity.’

  ‘On the contrary, our life is full of theatre, so long as one isn’t prejudiced against it,’ Signora Betti snapped back.

  ‘The intrigue is there, but the characters are missing. The end result of mediocrity and vulgarity – intrigues are always vulgar. Only the right characters can redeem it.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,’ Signora Betti said defiantly.

  ‘We’re unable to go anywhere any more – all we manage to do is run away!’ Captain Martello thundered.

  II

  Having begun amidst such clamour in 1911, by the time the celebrations marking the golden jubilee of Italian reunification were over, the colonial venture had become a fetid wound.

  Whether acting on his own initiative or heeding the will of others, Semereth Effendi was captured during a night raid by the rebels on a garrison not far from the gates of Benghazi. Once his case was put before a military tribunal he was immediately condemned to hang, with the execution set to occur in the market square, so as to send a strong message. Émile Chébas, who usually took painstaking care not to let his impulses get the best of him, became prey to an ou
tright – and youthful – burst of wrath when he received the news. The peace treaty between Italy and the Ottoman Empire would be duly signed, the Libyan people were on the brink of exhaustion, and the Italian government, which had entered the Great War against the Central Powers, wanted to recover from the humiliation of that colonial business. Semereth Effendi’s death penalty exasperated everyone involved and was a sin that would have to be atoned for sooner or later, he thought. Émile noisily slammed the shutters of his shop and went to the High Command. The general in charge of the square treated that energetic young man with both kindness and respect, which Émile wanted to put to the test so as to negotiate for the prisoner’s release. He would be prepared to vouchsafe for either Semereth Effendi’s unconditional surrender or for his exile; in other words, he wanted to ask that the prisoner be released from the gallows and into his custody. By the time Saverio Delle Stelle received him in his spacious, high-windowed office, Émile had once again assumed control of his emotions. He spoke calmly, explained the dangers the military tribunal’s decision would engender, how this would be nothing but a setback, then talked about peace and mercy, offering the general the most exacting guarantees, and even going so far as to flatter him.

  When he heard the news of Semereth Effendi’s sudden attack on a garrison while a truce was being negotiated, Captain Martello’s first reaction was envy. It was resoundingly clear there would be no tomorrow for either the captain or Semereth Effendi. Semereth had done nothing to block the peace talks; on the contrary, he might even have organised the attack because he’d convinced himself the talks were close to being concluded. But what goal could he possibly have entertained, considering he’d seemed so afraid of watching those events pass him by? Ever since he’d been disgraced in Istanbul, that giant had been unable to see anything ahead of him; time no longer flowed towards a finishing line, but instead originated from a point of no return. Then Zulfa, that little critter, had happened: and for a short while, time had resumed its regular course, and Semereth Effendi had waited for it to free him and his child bride from the spell of disproportion. But he’d wound up being his beloved girl’s butcher instead. Locking her up in her room, he had sacrificed her to death. But aboard the boatman’s ferry, Zulfa had met that handsome servant, so that both could learn the joys of love before they met their inevitable end. Semereth had then fled to join the rebels. Now that the end of the peace was in sight, would he have to run away again? The giant was afraid of the light at the end of the tunnel! Thus, he had traitorously attacked the garrison near Benghazi to ensure his death. But a hand had intervened, and made him a prisoner instead. Death wouldn’t come to him gloriously on a battlefield, but would be meted out by a bureaucratic military tribunal; or perhaps Semereth Effendi had moved the tribunal to pity during the proceedings, meaning they would reward him with a death the Italian military had maliciously denied him. Having reached the terminus of the dead-end road he’d travelled in parallel with that filthy colonial war, Semereth had forced events to comply with his destiny and bring him closer to death, if not on the battlefield, then atop a dusty gallows in the middle of the market square. But what about me? Captain Martello’s wrath was growing. Without waiting to be announced, he entered the general’s office, where the merchant was pleading Semereth’s case, and speaking frankly and passionately, Martello tried to seduce the magnanimity of the King’s representative.