XXIV
when Stéphanie shouted you are a monster I should have guessed, she knew all that of course, she knew, since when I don’t know, since the beginning maybe she wanted me to tell her to confess to her to admit everything to her sobbing on her shoulder, she wanted me to ask for her compassion to reveal my mortal sins to her, she wanted to forgive me, she thought she had the strength to forgive me, but it was necessary for me to confess, the burden had become too heavy, I imagine it’s curiosity that spurred her to find out, after the business of the British documentary probably, after the violence of that night, she asked one of her high-placed friends for my personal file, she must have voiced anxieties, she must have moved them, manipulated them, Stéphanie couldn’t imagine being affected herself by the shadows she handled, couldn’t imagine being contaminated by Hades where the lower-echelon spies live, I imagine her expression, her tears, her sadness, is anyone prepared for official truth, for cold reports on the well-guarded Table of the gods, Stéphanie was too much like me, reading the conclusions to the investigation on Francis Servain Miković she saw herself, she saw herself living beside this life, jealous frightened and disgusted, Dream had told her too much, I imagine she must have made some efforts, as she waited, as she waited for me to tell her, to confess the unsayable to her, without daring to speak to me about it, out of fear, at the same time, of making the monster rise up, seeing without seeing, knowing without knowing, and I myself was particularly idiotic for not guessing, not understanding that my fate was weighty, that the shadows had swallowed me whole and that it would not be easy to get out, if you can get out, in Istanbul the sublime a few days on the Bosporus between two worlds, the journey of the last chance, between two or even three worlds, the Ottoman capital was the center of the Mediterranean for so long, the Bosporus scarcely wider than the Danube, the city divided by the waterways floats beyond the well-guarded Dardanelles, beyond Troy the martyred, on the lips of the Black Sea that bathes Sebastopol and the Caucasus, from Tangiers to Stamboul there were cubic meters of corpses, corpses ruins and fates, in Constantinople Roza Eskenazi the Jewess was triumphing in the 1930s, Roza was born around 1900, her real name was Sarah, she spoke Ladino, Turkish, and Greek, her father wore a handsome tarboosh and was the owner of a warehouse in Scutari, Stéphanie wasn’t interested in the life of Roza Eskenazi the great diva, singer of rebetika, songs of the tavern, of hashish opium alcohol love solitude and despair, she did not even care that we had first met in Constantinople, New Rome, she was tormented, irritable, and alternated very somber moments with a great tenderness, an almost desperate love for my person, I thought of Roza Eskenazi the provocative, of Leon Saltiel and of that song where Roza talks about the pleasure of having a hookah in your mouth, the twofold excitation it provokes, that of the drug and that of love, Stéphanie preferred Christ Pantocrators Byzantine churches Sinan’s mosques to smoke-filled meyhanes, she was desperate because I always signed to the musicians to come over and play at our table, and immediately her face shut down, she scowled into her glass of raki of course I didn’t understand why, the fiddler and his assistant played “When You Go to Uskudar” or some other song I didn’t understand a word of and I was delighted, Stéphanie groaned, I can’t bear this screeching, true it wasn’t Paganini, it was a nice fat bald mustachioed Turk, but the repertoire and the place suited him perfectly, how can you bear this music? or else I wonder what your mother would think of this, what did Marija Mirković have to do with it, I didn’t understand what she was leading up to, I didn’t say anything in reply, then we went back on foot from Beyoğlu to our hotel in front of the Hagia Sophia, she coiled around me like a snake to escape the cold as we crossed the Golden Horn, the floating bridge moved a little underfoot and emphasized the effects of the raki, I imagined the Turkish boats right up against the outsized chain that closed access to the harbor of Byzantium, the bombardes and the Greek fire shot by panic-stricken Greeks from the hills, the night streaked with flames, a beautiful clear night, the dawn of May 29, 1453, the naval diversion to prepare for the final attack on the city walls, at that hour the Janissaries were coming to open a breach near the postern of Blachernae, the attack lasted from midnight on, the old Emperor Constantine the nobility and the clerics had prayed for a long time in Hagia Sophia, prayed to the Lord, that He have pity on the second Rome, the Lord and his Holy Mother, Áxion estín os alethós, everyone terrified everyone reconciled to the end, to destruction death or slavery, Constantine the Last dies at the ninth hour the next day, he takes off his purple and descends the walls to fight in the street, in his city, he knows all is lost, he is not trying to flee, he throws himself into combat to die, on his shoulders he has the weight of his ancestors since Constantine the Great since Augustus since the powerful Achaeans and the conquered Trojans, Priam prods him in the back with his example, Constantine is pierced in the side by a Turkish spear, then by an arrow, then by a sword and the black veil falls over his eyes, he does not know that Apollo is carrying his body far away from the fury of combat, to wash it in the sweet waters of Europe and entrust it to the White Island, at that instant the Ottomans reach the magnificent Hagia Sophia, among the tears of families who have taken refuge there, with Stéphanie I look at the illuminated basilica from the window of our room, an oil tanker is going down the Bosporus, it is coming from the Black Sea, it will cross the Sea of Marmara, slip through the wild Dardanelles, pass by Kilitbahir the impregnable, go down to the south, follow the shores of Troy, pass the Morea peninsula and steer for the west, due west along the pelagic plain smooth as a tombstone, in three days it will be within sight of Messina, a strait just slightly wider than the Bosporus, if it’s going to Marseille or Barcelona, otherwise it will cross in front of the Barbary coasts over to Tangier or Gibraltar, where the apes of the Rock will give it a final salute before it’s lost in the Atlantic frontier to the world—Stéphanie stood right against me, I smelled the perfume of her hair, gazing at the lights of the blue Mosque and the twinkling glimmers from the ship’s stays, the kamances of the taverns still ringing in my ears, relaxed by the raki and the warm presence of the woman beside me, sometimes there are instants held suspended, between two moments, in the air, in eternity, a dance shoulder against shoulder, the movement of a hand, the wake of a boat, humanity in pursuit of happiness, and everything falls down, everything falls down, Stéphanie became savage again, moody, I know why, she saw in the cupolas the perfumes the hookahs the violins a barbaric side, my barbaric side, she imagined the deadly savage refinement of the Orient, stakes, decapitations, she was afraid of me when I summoned the violinists, of what there was in me that escaped her, the inexhaustible other, and she identified with my mother guardian of Western order, with Louis-Ferdinand Céline the cowardly sworn enemy of otherness, she glimpsed like a romantic Orientalist the deleterious influences of drugs and violent cruelty, I thought of the poem by Cavafy the living-dead, the civil servant of Alexandria, “On the Night of the Fall,” cities fall so often, the world spins so often, is there room for sorrows, is there room to miss Dionysos when you’re no longer drunk, the Turks had made Constantinople the greatest city in the Mediterranean, a beacon, a miracle of beauty and culture, Stéphanie was sad because she saw in me the warrior the murderer she locked me up in my violence with no forgiveness, I know what she had read, Lebihan the bald with the Wepler oysters also had a gift for me, he was about to retire happily, Lebihan, anxious but happy to be able to devote himself to biking to oysters and to café conversations, he looked at me kindly, after thanking me for the 7.65 Zastava that touched him especially, he said to me Francis I took these pages out for you, read them, it’s instructive, and take note of them, it was my personal file, the preliminary investigation, my various grades, my assignments, my requests for leave, my absences, my parents, my teenage political friendships, my stages of military service, my life, including the Croatian and Bosnian activities, words like war crimes, violent acts, torture, the names of my superiors at the time, the parts of the file f
rom the International Court of Justice about the valley of the Lašva that concerned me, these notes were dated long after my entry into the Agency, the forces of the shadows are never wrong, to be supervised, a psychological profile defined me recently as tending towards alcoholism and depression, to be spared from responsibilities, nevertheless I was credited with fidelity, patriotism, and integrity, not liable to be manipulated from outside, not interested in money, only known hobby: amateur historian, that was ironic, the last investigation was dated last year, who had authorized it, I knew of course what code I was going to discover on the bottom of the page, what excuse could she have found, for a possible assignment, she had pretended to want to recruit me, the cunning one, to learn as much as possible about me, the request was initialed by her and bore the number of her department, all was fair in love and war, all was fair in love and war she couldn’t bear any more she wanted to know, was she going to be able to bear the result, in Istanbul she alternated between passion and disgust, in Paris she discovered she was pregnant, one last chance and farewell, farewell Francis the terrible, I took note, as Lebihan said, I checked that the results of the investigation didn’t mention Yvan Deroy the mad, lost in my adolescence, I easily usurped his identity, liquidated my apartment and farewell, now I’m in a train approaching Rome, approaching the end of the world and Sashka the golden, she is not interested in the truth, she is not affected by the outside she is detached, she is floating tenderly in the practice of sacred illumination, desirable and unreachable, a magical body for a soulless presence, one more illusion, Sashka never went to the Bosporus, Nikogda ja ne byl na Bosfore, Ty menya ne sprashivai o nem, her eyes so blue that they don’t need it, she has the Tiber the churches and the memory of the white sea, and today Stéphanie is working somewhere in Moscow, is she thinking about Yesenin in the city of the thousand and one bells and the thousand and three towers, farewell, I have a suitcase full of dead men a borrowed name a few kilometers before me and farewell, the calm after revenge, I salute you, Andrija, even in the innermost depths of Hades, I’m going to join you, everything flees like the colorful houses in the Roman suburbs, yellowed by the sad December streetlights, the last lights Yesenin sees before hanging himself or before being hanged, the cathedral lit up like the Hagia Sophia opposite his hotel room, Ya v tvoikh glazakh uvidel more, there is nothing to see in Sashka’s eyes, hopeless as the sea, Polykhaiuchee golubym ognem, I know where I’d like to go back to, now, far from the cold night of Russia, I would like to find a warm day between Agamy and Mersa Matruh, a few kilometers away from Alexandria, on the immense beach, it’s evening the Mediterranean is metallic the sky rosy the sand soft, I look out to sea the pure phosphorus of the sea makes your eyes blink in the slanting light, two shapes slip out of the water, they leap one behind the other and sparkle, two iridescent sprays of water come towards the coast in little leaps, two dolphins, two dolphins are playing in the lukewarm sea not far from the shore, I’ve never seen them before, I get up, they’re so close you can see their backs sparkling, they are leaping in front of me, there is no one else, so of course I run they seem so real seen just above the waves, I have tears in my eyes, never have I seen such a sight, a sight for no one, they were gamboling for me alone, in the evening on a deserted coast, a gift of chance or of Thetis the generous, I threw myself into the water, a shroud of coolness covered me, the two silver shapes were outlined against the pink sky, the taste of salt filled my mouth, I swam slowly toward them, it was beauty calling me, beauty calm and pure happiness harmony of the world, I swam toward the two dolphins, slowly so as not to frighten them, I wanted to follow them, I wanted to follow them, I would have followed them to the home of Poseidon with the azure hair, it was a fine sunset to disappear, a fine evening to die or live eternally in the wake of marine mammals, they sensed me coming, perceived my vibrations in the waves, I was not worthy of them, I was not worthy of them they moved away with a leap, one last flash in the dying sun and I was alone again on the infinite beach, we are going to get out soon, Yvan, but not in the kingdom of the god of the sea, get out of the train, the passengers are already restless, they are looking out the window seeing Rome approach with lights in the darkness, I know now, Yvan, it’s time to organize a funeral, a pyre for Francis Servain Mirković whom his mother and sister will miss, everything is more difficult once you reach man’s estate, everything rings falser, but sometimes the gods offer you flashes of clairvoyance, moments when you contemplate the whole universe, the infinite wheel of worlds, you see yourself, from high up, for a few instants truly before leaving, propelled into the next thing, toward the end, propelled toward the woman waiting for me there, the one who opens the door to me, in front of whom I stagger with shame and drunkenness, my eyes blinking, my breath fetid, my head beating like a decapitated sun, the woman who looks at me without seeing me, so profound is the fracture, my chest open deep, the one who doesn’t seem to recognize me, for life has little weight, as little as the bodies struggling in it, this woman is doubtful about me in the alcoholic fumes my clothes give off, and I, who have crossed the sea to join her, who have crossed without feeling it the space that separated me from Paris, I for whom a stewardess on the Middle East Airlines had to come outside for an instant of drunkenness to help me get into the plane, I whom a flick of a finger could push out of the world, I who desire nothing more, not even sleep whose awakening I fear, not even the woman who is not waiting for me and whose presence I wanted so strongly, before engulfing myself in drink and flight, stiff, dead drunk man entrusted to the heavens like an angel, sleeping a leaden sleep, snoring probably at 30,000 feet up, far above the clouds where the night is always clear, there where you can contemplate the star clusters and the galaxies, one July 14th, one night of national celebration when I am crossing the Zone by plane, one night of leaving the embassy, as one must, almost on all fours I was so drunk: I had to be driven to the airport, I had to be driven to the departure area, I had to be awakened to be driven to the plane, I dozed off dead drunk in the international airport of the Lebanese Republic, I say it without vainglory, with a certain shame, I had to be awakened later when we arrived in the Roissy airport, I saw nothing of the mountains of Cyprus, the mountains of Italy or the coastal plain, I saw only a scoffing taxi that thought I was arriving at least from China or the other side of the world, to look so awful, and I was arriving from the end of the world, I was arriving from the end of the world as if from hell, which is in me, that’s what the woman who opens the door to me is thinking, and she is disappointed: she is disappointed, she looked at me like a wounded man, a sick man with my chest open, the Prophet in Dante’s Inferno, drunk the day before I shouted the Marseillaise, I think of it as I see her, I shouted qu’un sang impur and the genius of Berlioz, who did everything he could to rescue this military tune, Berlioz loved poor Ophelia as I love you, those are the thoughts of men still drunk in the morning, those are embassy celebrations, full of alcohol drunkards and cheap patriotism, the gardens were large, beautiful, there was champagne, wine, anise, and uniforms, the ambassador shouted long live France! Berlioz rang out and with him Rouget de Lisle and I heard Harold in Italy, I saw Harold, Romeo and Juliet, and the little Roman wood where Hector went to shoot at crows with a pistol to dispel the boredom of the Academy, of France, while now I’m crossing the Tiburtina train station, Berlioz describes the suffering of the proud Trojans and the wanderings of Aeneas, Berlioz despaired of Rome, he preferred the mountains of the Abruzzi and the brigands you find there, you needed a few days on horse to reach that region, I didn’t know what to say to Stéphanie I was still drunk I should have spoken to her about Berlioz and his Ophelia about his Trojans today what would I say to her I would say to her I loved you more than anything don’t be mad at me I would tell her the story of Intissar the Palestinian saved by Marwan’s ghost, all that is very far away, Stéphanie is very far away the child we didn’t have is very far away in limbo Astyanax thrown from the ramparts of Troy, Hector is dead, Hector tamer of mares is de
ad and it’s already Rome, it’s already Rome, in the midst of the beautiful gardens of the French Embassy in Lebanon I was lost, lost between worlds, floating in space without knowing it, already departed for Rome, for the missed plane, the documents, the databases, the lists in my briefcase, the cardinals and laymen the secretaries of the dicastery who are waiting for me, I am in the same state as when I left Beirut or when I arrived in Paris before the woman who opened the door to me, drunk from so much train-travel from so many kilometers and from the dead heaped up on the roads, the tracks, the memories of war, of Trieste, of Paris where Stéphanie opened to me, I had just awakened her, I could see her breasts under her T-shirt, her legs were bare, like Marianne’s in the hotel in Alexandria, like those of the Dutch women in Harmen Gerbens’s photos, like those of the corpses in the river in Jasenovac, those of Andrija covered with shit, the spread filthy legs of the girls in Bosnia, the legs of Intissar under Ahmad’s violence hundreds of bare legs, we’re already in Rome the last meters before Termini, the train is moving at a walking pace over the thousands of bodies placed one after the other, the wood of crossties, bodies are wood that’s what Stangl said in Treblinka, that’s what my father said too in Algeria, wood duty, crossbeam duty, noble wood that you make icons from with the logs of funeral pyres, line up the memories in a ditch to burn them, like goat thighs whose smoke makes the gods salivate, Stéphanie’s curves make me salivate in the early morning hours of Paris: it’s the beginning of the century, of the millennium, you have to rebuild everything and ride, ride with a train exhausted tense trembling aching swaying from shunt to shunt, revenge consummated, the dead accumulated and neatly lined up, Stéphanie’s legs were bare in the early Paris morning it was my turn to arrive at her place unannounced, back from a quick mission to Beirut, a few days before that she had informed me that I was a monster and that she never wanted to see me again, I’m trying my luck, I present myself at her place in the early morning with my eyes burning from sleep and alcohol, drunk and dangerous like Lowry in Taormina, like Joyce in Trieste, she looks at me, she looks at me without saying anything there’s no need she doesn’t sigh she just has to look at me in silence and I understand, I understand that the door is going to close, that Stéphanie’s legs are going to disappear behind it, farewell, the tomb closes again, farewell, I didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t know what to ask her, it was up to me to hold out my hand, now we’re going alongside the Roman aqueduct we are penetrating the walls then the dead end of the Termini station the travelers are thrown into turmoil, animals disturbed in their sleep, they all get up at the same time recover their luggage put away the books and newspapers I discreetly get out the little key I free the briefcase the suitcase that’s so light and so heavy, the train is coming up to the platform, it’s wheezing, it’s taking its time, I grab my bag now I’m standing in the aisle between my traveling companions we are going to separate, each will pursue his own fate, Yvan Deroy too I am going to go on foot to the hotel life is new life is alive I know it now, farewell wise Sashka, I can stand up all on my own, I don’t need this suitcase any more, don’t need the Vatican’s pieces of silver, I’m going to throw it all into the water, the wood accumulated for Hector’s pyre, on the tenth day, on the tenth day I will go by foot to the fatal Tiber right next to the Sixtus Bridge to throw these dead into the river, so it will take them to the sea, the blue cemetery, so everyone will go away, names and photographs will be eaten by the salt, then evaporated they will join the clouds, and farewell, Yvan Deroy will join the sky too, the New World, farewell Rome too eternal, by plane, in the Fiumicino airport I’ll wait for the last call for my flight, the passengers, the destination, I will be sitting there on my deluxe seat without being able to move anywhere there is no one else I belong to the space between to the world of the living-dead finally I have no more weight no more ties no more attachments I am in my tent near the hollow vessels I have given up I am in the universe of grey carpets of television screens and that will last everything will last there are no more wrathful gods no more warriors next to me the planes are resting the seagulls I live in the Zone where women are made up and wear a navy blue uniform beautiful peplos of a starry night there is no more desire no more flight no more anything a great floating a dead time where my name is repeated invades the air it’s the last call the last call for the last passengers for the last flight I won’t move from that airport seat, I won’t move anymore that’s it for journeys, for wars, next to me the guy with the sincere look will smile at me I will return his smile he’s been there for years suspended him too chained to his seat years he’s been there since long before the discovery of aviation he has a nice face, he’s dark-skinned, a giant, a giant from Chaldea who looks like he has carried the world on his shoulders, for centuries and centuries he has been between planes, between trains, as they are dispossessing me of my new name by breathing it into the loudspeakers, I think of the arms of the steel bird waiting for me, 150 companions in limbo have already boarded but I refuse, I am Achilles quieted the first man the last I have found a tent for myself it is mine now it’s this fireproof rug and this red plush it’s my name they’re shouting my space I won’t get up my neighbor is with me he’s the priest of Apollo he’s a demiurge he has seen war too he has seen war and the blinding sun of cut necks, he is waiting calmly for the end of the world, if I dared, if I dared I would perch on his shoulders like a ridiculous kid, I would ask him to take me across rivers, rivers three times three times round and other Scamanders lined with corpses, I would ask him to be my last train, my last plane my last weapon, the last glimmer of violence goes out of me and I turn to him to ask him, to beg him to carry me away he looks at me with infinite compassion, he looks at me, he suddenly offers me a cigarette he says so my friend one last smoke before the end? one last smoke before the end of the world.
Zone Page 25