Zone

by Mathias Enard

  XXII

  Sashka, painter of the soul like Saint Luke, Sashka the distant, Sashka blond angel of Jerusalem is not of this world, Nathan Strasberg gloomy secret agent told me that in Jersualem you always find a mystical energy, a spiritual breath, whether you’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, in the gold leaf the incense and the memories of that heart pierced by intransigent monotheism, Intissar the Palestinian fighter if she exists might be in Palestine today, now, by the tomb of Arafat the pale, the father of the Palestinian nation, who was forgiven everything, even his millions of dollars, even his wife, even his countless political and military mistakes, because he was the Father, who died mysteriously in almost Soviet circumstances of secrecy and lies, pushed down the stairs by his children, for the times change, the sons wanted power in turn, power and money, money especially, Arafat Abu Ammar the brave sent to Hades by the zeal of his lieutenants, by fierce history, Nathan was happy and sad at the same time to lose such an enemy, happy that time had managed what the Mossad had so often fumbled, but sad too, sad, for Arafat, he said, we knew him, after all, we had locked him up like a monkey in the zoo, today everything’s going to be more difficult, more violent, Gaza’s piles of trash catch fire, the tires, the rockets, Gaza the lowest depths of the Zone the only place in the Mediterranean where you won’t find a single tourist on the immense beaches cluttered with rusty barbed wire plastic bottles sadness misery Gaza the insane continues on its way to the end of the world in hatred and cries for vengeance, abandoned, and the only comforts that reach it are the few missiles that absentminded pilots launch from time to time from the sky always blue onto a car the courtyard of a mosque a house a street in Rafah in Khan Younis in Gaza everything is so close together it’s impossible to aim said Nathan sighing, civilian victims were the Israeli army’s cross to bear, pursued by the ghosts of dead children, despite its handsome olive tanks its airplanes its elite troops, what can you do, you have to defend yourself avenge yourself fight against your enemies it’s like that, Gaza immense Indian reservation with no alcohol where a million and a half Palestinians are waiting, waiting for a job a government a country in that capital of sadness adrift, Waste Land with no ruler, the only fallow land in the Mediterranean, rubble with no owner where the population is fed through a judas hole gouged open in a wall—in Paris I saw in an exhibition Stéphanie had dragged me to an installation by an artist named Hugo Orlandini, the replica of one of the detention cages in Guantánamo, life-sized, a parallelepiped of wire fencing with a cot a Turkish-style toilet in gleaming steel a fluorescent orange pajama carefully folded on the mattress slippers an elegant black cloth bag for the head, so this is where the guys we had given to the CIA ended up, the United States of America was getting its revenge by slowly and scientifically torturing everyone who fell into its clutches, charter flights of suspects took off from Egypt from Greece from Israel from Spain from Pakistan from France from England to populate these metal aquariums in a law-free zone in eastern Cuba the island of Communist hope of rum and salsa, prisoners of war with no war no lawyers and no names, Muslim suspects made to confess anything at all by water-boarding them left to rot in the sun depriving them of sleep of food beaten by guards who were having a great time with these orange half-starved insects, Hugo Orlandini’s cage spat out music, the music that the humiliated ones of Guantánamo endured all night long in their hutch, music therapy, an eternal pop tune came out of the shiny hole of the john, a voice from beyond the grave intoned “My Way” to them in a loop, Sinatra was supposed to interfere with their guts through their tortured anus and convert them from within to good taste and Western culture, Hugo Orlandini’s replica fascinated the visitors who tested the solidity of the walls, and they all, all, including Stéphanie, fiddled with the narrow door to see if it was open or locked and played with the lock, one particularly interested onlooker couldn’t resist the temptation and stole the pajama and the slippers, I picture him dominated by his wife, all the night long, dressed in orange with a black cloth over his head, Sinatra in the background on the record player, his turned-on housewife burying all sorts of incongruous objects inside him—men men men, Joyce would have said, Ezra Pound the mad in the Pisa concentration camp was subjected day and night to a bombardment of light and noise, the furious loudspeakers didn’t leave him in peace for a single second, from sunset to dawn the Andrews Sisters penetrated the poet’s brain, drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola / Go down Point Koomanah / Both mother and daughter / Workin’ for the Yankee dollar, and his mental health reeled, he tried to take refuge in his imagination in Rapallo the Genoese, in his pretty house facing the sea, facing the calm reassuring Mediterranean, at the place where a Dionysian Nietzsche had had the idea for his Zarathustra, imagining eagles and lions in the clouds above the fallow sea, Pound a few days before his death walks one last time in Burano and Torcello, he strolls in his death throes round the Venetian lagoon, near the leaning belltowers and the fishing boats, he thinks of the violin of Olga Rudge the faithful, of concertos by Vivaldi carefully copied out for years, Pound the silent has forgotten fascist Italy, he is looking for forgiveness and rest, farewell revenge, he has seen the light, the little light of Canto CXVI, to confess wrong without losing rightness: Charity have I had sometimes, I cannot make it flow thru being right for having been wrong, Pound goes toward the great void, a little light, like a rushlight, he sees a sliver of light, the swift glimmer of a match, to lead back to splendour, it guides him towards splendor, in the stagnant water of the lagoon, into which he would have plunged if Olga hadn’t so insisted on holding his hand at the moment of death—who will hold my hand, Sashka has her fingers full of martyrs, Stéphanie was right, I am a monster, a monster of selfishness and solitude, they should have locked me up in the cage of Hugo Orlandini the artist, condemned to hearing “My Way” for eternity, or “Lili Marleen,” or “Three Drummer Boys” sung by an infantry company, so much music in my life—in Syria Alois Brunner the butcher of the Jews of Austria Greece France and Slovakia had been sentenced to a similar punishment, forced to bear for forty years the quarter tones of Arabic melodies he hated, locked up in his little house on the road to Bloudan near Damascus, guarded like a deluxe hostage by different Syrian regimes, Nathan Strasberg had kindly given me his address, if you get a chance give him a bullet in the back of the neck for me, I didn’t get the opportunity, Brunner driven mad by the threnodies of Fairuz by the muezzin and the stridencies of eastern pop was devoured by hatred, prisoner of those who had saved him from the death sentence: like Franz Stangl before him Brunner went to Syria with a fake passport in 1954, he felt safe in Damascus, protected by the enemies of his enemies, pure transitivity, and time passed, time passed, Alois the hyperactive feels reclusion weighing on him, he doesn’t like Syria but there’s nothing to be done, emigrating to South America is already too dangerous and the Syrian governments have realized the potential interest of their captive, here’s someone who could play a part in a future negotiation with Israel, in 1970 the coup d’état of Hafez al-Assad makes the conditions of his stay a little rougher, placed under house arrest, forced to change his address constantly to avoid the revenge of the Mossad which sends him letter bombs several times, depriving him of a few fingers and an eye, Brunner takes refuge in hatred, hatred of the Jews whom he would love to kill again, hatred of the Arabs who are sheltering him and above all of their unbearable music and their vile food, Alois Brunner glued day and night to German TV along with his dog is bored, he gives a few interviews to the Austrian press, in which he asks to be thanked for having rid Vienna of the cumbersome Jews, he would like to speak more often, Brunner the mad, but the Syrians prevent him, they officially deny his presence on their soil, Nathan Strasberg was wrong, when I arrived in Damascus to see Alois the man responsible for the deportation of Leon Saltiel the Jew from Salonika he was already in his grave, dead in 1996 at the age of eighty-four, a little senile perhaps, at his home in the arid hills west of the Syrian capital, Brunner died no one knows how, with the television
on, his corpse was discovered fifteen days later half eaten by the Doberman who had stayed too long without food, then buried secretly in an unmarked grave—the Syrian from Homs who sold me copies of police photographs thought it absolutely unfair that one could end up half decomposed and eaten by your own mutt, in a bathrobe, alone, in a foreign country what’s more, deplorable, I asked him what had become of the dog, he made a face of complete disgust, I have no idea, I suppose they killed it on the spot, the last victim of Alois Brunner, a black canine with sharp teeth, forced to eat the thin calves of his master to survive a few more days, Brunner one-eyed hate-filled amputee had clung to existence until the end, with rage in his body, Nathan was very happy with the photos and the information, he bought me a bottle of champagne at the King David Hotel, while a beautiful Russian pianist with long blond hair played “My Way” on a gleaming Steinway—there was no one to hold Brunner’s hand at the instant of death, no one aside from a female Teutonic announcer live from Munich via satellite, the gods had abandoned him, the Syrians didn’t know anymore what to do with this awkward guest, time passes, Rome is approaching, I’d almost ask the violinist who looks like Hemingway to play a little tune for me, the way Olga played for Pound from time to time, erbarme Dich, mein Gott from the St. Matthew Passion, have pity, Lord, or some other tearful thing, and his companion would sing the evangelist’s words, Matthew dead of a sword in the back in Ethiopia, as he was praying, his arms raised to heaven, facing the altar, Matthew whom Sashka paints leaning over his writing desk or in front of his tax gatherer’s scales, Matthew whom Caravaggio in love with decapitation represents in the process of counting his money, I am nearing Rome, I am nearing Rome the eternal light, what am I going to do, Yvan old pal what are we going to do in Rome visit the churches look for an unlikely redemption in the images of the martyrs, get drunk, chase the whores on Via Salaria, a stone’s throw from the catacombs, the little suitcase discreetly handcuffed is still above my seat, what does it contain really, what did I put in it, all those dead, all those intersecting fates, the whole world, a fetus in a jar of formaldehyde, the essence of tragedy, the energy of revenge, erbarme Dich, mein Gott, mother, cry for your missing son, mother, cry for your son who is gone, my parents, my grandparents, my countries, my victims, the sordid photos of Harmen Gerbens concentration-camp pornographer, the terrified faces of Dutch resistants whom he made pose in Westerbork, the black dust of Cairo, the light of Alexandria the unforgettable, everything is closing, everything is closing as the train emerges from the tunnel to rush into the suburbs, slowly, now, slowly step by step I’m almost there, the railroad is rolling corpses like the impetuous Scamander, the elegant woman in front of me has taken out the Corriere della Sera from her bag, the young Italian businessman grandson of Agnelli apparently spent the night in the company of several transsexuals and took a mixture of cocaine and opium, brave little man, he’s out of danger according to the evening paper, Turin must be radiating joy, Agnelli the grandfather historic head of Fiat had driven a tank of the same brand in North Africa in 1942, what irony, he could test the quality of his materiel himself, did he sing “Lili Marleen” as he drove like Vlaho, i znaj da čekam te, I’m tired, I’m so tired, if I close my eyes now I’ll wake up in Rome that’s for sure once there I’ll take the briefcase and my bag not forgetting the book by Rafael Kahla Marwan’s body and Intissar’s sorrow, I’ll wait for a taxi at Termini or I’ll go on foot by the deserted Via Nazionale the countless tie stores closed like my eyelids, three drummer boys on the way back from war, three drummer boys, I sang this song to my sister to put her to sleep, I loved singing her songs when she was little I wasn’t much bigger myself but I felt as if I were a giant in comparison, Leda sucked her thumb in her crib I stroked her cheek through the bars, king’s daughter, give me your heart, king’s daughter, and rat and tat, ratatatat, that’s very far away all that’s very far, Leda is in the fog, unreachable, incomprehensible, Catholic housewife with whom I share only genes and silent reproaches, my family is very far away now, my mother the weeping widow, my father in the flesh-eating coffin, in Ivry, from him I’ve kept memories of electric trains and photographs of torture, in silence, a great figure a Napoleon at Saint Helena poisoned by his own memory, pursued by the hundreds of thousands of souls of his Old Guard he sent to Hades, if you aren’t good Old Boney will carry you away they said to English toddlers to frighten them, my mother used the same tactics, watch out, I’ll tell your father everything, and the threat of informing was enough to make us swallow anything even lamb brain, why, my old man was neither violent nor tyrannical, just silent, I don’t remember him ever lifting a finger against me, ever, he never even threatened me, never one word louder than another: mothers attach us to them as much as they can, we think we look like them, we think we have their perfection their art their beauty their goodness then we see that’s a lie, we’re men, a portrait of the silent father, a copy, a moving statue, so we don’t know where we’re sent to, where we’re going, on invisible tracks, why we’re moving away so surely from mother and sister, a magnet is drawing us toward an abominable world of shouts in the night, Ghassan the Lebanese told me his father locked him up in a very narrow closet, complete darkness, he didn’t have room to sit down he stayed standing up paralyzed with fear without even daring to knock on the door, he cried in silence until someone came to free him an hour or two later: he feared this punishment so much that he was extraordinarily docile and obedient but despite everything they sent him from time to time to this storeroom to teach him how to live, to teach him injustice and the desire for revenge, so he’d be inhabited by a silent hatred, an energy in this world of suffering, Ghassan laughed as he told this story, as soon as he was of age to carry a rifle he enlisted in the nearest militia, he wanted his father to be proud of him, proud of him and a little frightened by the power of the gun, so he’d understand that it was his turn to be able to send him into the closet with a movement of the muzzle, revenge turns only rarely against fathers, it is expressed elsewhere, against strangers enemies traitors prisoners leftists Muslims Ghassan remembered mostly the smell of the cubbyhole, smell of Lysol cleaning fluids and rags, smell of a pharmacy an embalmer actually, or a taxidermist, he remembered it immediately when he was in the dark, he said, in complete darkness he instantly rediscovered the smell of the closet, Ghassan the warrior—Venice was once and for all plunged into the beyond, we were floating there in a long coma, an endless darkness, before the salutary kick in the balls I almost passed into it, one dark moonless night a broomcloset night or a night of the tomb drunk as a Chetnik with a crab-filled beard drunk as never before what came over me instead of crossing over to the Ghetto as I came out of the bar I went in the opposite direction, to the north, I arrived at the Square of the Two Moors, in front of the bas-relief of the little camel, stumbling I bounce against the walls I have a rifle in my hand my cap on my head bent double like in the war I go forward I come out onto the quay I see the tall brick façade of the Madonna dell’Orto what the hell am I doing here I live on the other side all of a sudden I have a flash of inspiration I have come to die I have come in front of this church to put an end to it it’s the middle of the night what idiocy I make a u-turn what could I have been thinking I missed the bridge, I missed the bridge and I ended up in the canal, aquatic silence, desperate movements of my arms, my legs, my clothes inflate like a trap my shoes get heavier the taste of water in my mouth no air, no air my feet in the black mud I’m going to die, that’s what you wanted well it’s a success, you’re going to croak, I suck in air on the surface I’m freezing my lungs are tiny my arms are abandoning me everything is heavy, the Scamander is going to carry me away, everything is heavy I’m sleepy and I’ve had enough I’m going to sink the river has won I let myself sink to the depths, I have the precise memory of letting myself go into the darkness, of stopping struggling, what happened then, Saint Christopher came down from his pedestal, the good giant of Chaldea put the child he was carrying on his shoulder down to come t
o my aid, he held out his immense hand, he dragged me out of the water, half unconscious, I don’t remember a thing, I woke up soaking sitting against the church door my shoes muddy my mouth full of salt my cap still glued to my skull bells were ringing in my head and my eyes were burning, with a fine bronchitis as my only viaticum for the new life