The Colonial Conquest: The Confines of the Shadow Volume I

by Alessandro Spina

  Once it was time to move on, the regiment was put on a state of alert. They looked everywhere for Captain Martello, but in vain: he’d either fled, been kidnapped, or killed. He’d been seen in the vicinity of the amphitheatre in the afternoon, and then in the camp. The shadow of an officer had passed by a window frame, but nobody had left the camp after that hour. Serious doubts fell on Fathi, who’d been spotted talking to the officer, and repeated searches for Fathi also ended in failure. The prostitutes were driven from the tombs and interrogated. The soldiers rummaged around the tombs like thieves. It was getting late, and they returned empty-handed.

  II

  The fiancée wept over the loss of her handsome officer, his effortless elegance, how the fatuity of his words contrasted with the windows of his eyes, which opened onto a landscape where lights and shadows formed into patterns that were utterly incomprehensible to her, as they defied all the rules taught her by her education. General Delle Stelle had gone to offer his condolences, and after a tearful display, she formulated a few shy, awkward questions.

  Her mother was present throughout the conversation.

  ‘That man was a mystery,’ the general said in a kindly tone. ‘What was his life in Italy like before he arrived in the colony? It constitutes a preliminary chapter, perhaps an unnecessary one, in our attempt to understand the incident from his perspective. After all, we already know what our collective past was like: the education we received and the laws of our society. Martello felt he was disconnected from the “other,” from our unruly colonial subjects, who would never welcome him as he wanted them to. Martello could never accept the solitude forced upon him by his role as a master, as a powerful man. One can’t be a real character if one can’t accept one’s limitations!’

  ‘But what estranged him from us? Encountering a world governed by different laws, the legitimacy of such a society, the irredeemable sin of our attempt to destroy it? It’s as if he’d stumbled into an opera house for the first time in his life and was confronted with a reality that followed its own rules, and instead of sitting back and enjoying the show, he suffered an identity crisis, and could no longer draw any comfort from being a spectator. Any willed attempt to metamorphose oneself is both naïve and arrogant, and in the case of our dear captain, it ended in tragedy. Like a gambler who doubles his bets with each hand, he progressed from an indulgent feeling of curiosity to one of restlessness, and having thus fallen into a downward spiral of guilt, he wound up being crucified on the wall of despair. He believed in change, which demands a steep price: desertion, betrayal, honesty and self-criticism, a currency only valued in the environment he was running away from – those people have no idea what to do with our kindness and goodwill, or with our pity or honesty. Martello’s sacrifice was as pointless to them as our sense of goodwill. They don’t want to free themselves from us, they want to either make us run away or kill us: in their eyes, we can only ever be either guilty or foreigners, nothing else. Just look at that Semereth Effendi – he was indifferent to our presence there, refused to heed our summons, was indifferent to our respectful visits, or even our military tribunals, and eventually the gallows too. He never looked us in the eye. My dear girl, we’ll never know what fate befell our brave captain: if he was kidnapped, or if he ran away, or is still alive. The secret sequel to this story proves too much for the spectator’s impatience. This entire drama is missing an act. I wouldn’t presume to write it myself, it would be a sacrilege, a counterfeit.’

  Forgetting he was in the girl’s presence and not chatting with one of his cohorts, the general let slip a smile, but then regained his composure.

  ‘Martello’s suicidal instinct was caused by his piety: he was incapable of giving his life any meaning, and lacked the willpower to find it, which flung open the doors of the occult. He was tormented by the quest to find the meaning to the sum of all these elements. This was the question that plagued him, and he found the other side alluring simply because it offered him the false promise of an answer – even though the other side, by which Martello was both charmed and repelled, confusing that backwater society with a terrestrial paradise, only offered a sure path to death. What good did it serve to keep obsessively poring over all those insignificant events, like when he visited Semereth Effendi in prison, and, as he himself put it, “wasn’t greeted at all”? That monster was already on the other side of the river. Martello’s desire to possess that child bride, the tears he shed over that young servant’s death, the giant’s robe which he wanted to wear after getting rid of his uniform, the bitter jealousy he felt when the Venetian woman preferred to remain in the giant’s service, all this proves the vain hopes he entertained of reaching the other side, but all they did was bind him in chains.’

  Martello’s fiancée looked as though she had stumbled blindfolded onto the scene. Moved to pity by how the general was pointlessly tormenting her daughter, the mother asked: ‘General, do you think the captain loved my daughter? I believe that’s what Anita asked you.’

  The general protectively placed his hand on the girl’s. Anita sobbed shyly.

  ‘The walk Martello took through the necropolis which houses the women in colourful dresses,’ the general continued, ‘is a dead-end road he didn’t hesitate to start on – I’m taking the liberty to mention this because it’s public knowledge,’ he added, turning to Anita’s mother, as though to overrule any objection. ‘It was inevitable he would make that step once he knew the peace negotiations were about to be concluded, thus dashing all his hopes. Had he finally found the irredeemable gesture he had long been searching for? Having linked his destiny to that giant, he followed his footprints. Semereth Effendi attacked the garrison in what was a suicide mission, and as Martello himself put it, all because he was “afraid of the light,” meaning that the conclusion of the negotiations would undoubtedly have a peaceful outcome, and that everyone would therefore return to their mundane roles in their respective societies. Finding himself at the same critical juncture, Martello opted to head into a cave: who knows what tribunal was responsible for his execution? Finally, his resistance was overcome by a combination of misery and luxury, of human warmth and sepulchral dust. The harlot who called out to him from that tomb’s abyss satisfied his passionate longing for an event that would forever mark his destiny, a phenomenon foretold by the Libyan non-commissioned officer who was Martello’s guide from Benghazi to the ancient heart of that land. The captain’s complicity in the colonial venture robbed all he’d been taught and believed in of any meaning. Are all of us bound to reach that insoluble conclusion once we firmly conclude our education is ultimately useless? What an exaggeration! To employ the same metaphor, it’s as if a theatre-goer convinced himself he had to spend the rest of his life under those lights!’

  ‘An encounter with a society governed by different laws is an allegory for the encounter with an otherworldly reality, which inevitably leads to an immediate devaluation of one’s original society and makes the newcomer anxious to prove himself worthy of the other society and flee into it in order to save himself. By entering that tomb, Captain Martello fulfilled his desire to imitate that monster who’d led an attack on our fortifications at the wrong time and refused to take up all those opportunities to escape, launching that assault under cover of night, when shadows snatch men away and make weapons completely useless, a final judgement that had been a long time coming. It’s a duel: except that one’s opponent is death, even if it does appear in the guise of a knight.’

  The general interrupted his speech to pay Anita’s mother a few compliments. He then stroked the girl’s hair. Although she was very young, she was already a widow. Her hair was soft and silky, almost like a wig, and she looked just like one of those dolls that only make a sound when they’re turned upside down. Anita broke into another sob. The general made a gesture, as though to pick her up again. He lingered motionless and perplexed.

  ‘Instead of enlightening him, the events around him eventually destroyed him.’ The gener
al concluded, becoming suddenly impatient to leave, as though he were the last character left on stage. He stood, kissed the mother’s hand, clasped Anita to his chest as though posing for a souvenir photograph, and left.

  III

  Saverio Delle Stelle thought the inquiry into Captain Martello’s disappearance had been carried out very obtusely: so long as they continued in that manner, they would never follow the captain’s tracks. He filed requests to receive the interrogators’ reports and sought out different informers. The reports were full of fallacious testimonies and squalid, meaningless scrawlings. In the end he grew bored with them and sent them back.

  He promised himself he’d take charge of the investigation as soon as an opportunity to go to Cyrene arrived. He was searching for the key to that officer’s destiny. Martello’s disappearance didn’t shed any light on the meaning of what had happened, at least in so far as the investigators had been able to reconstruct it. His death, which couldn’t be ascertained, could have meant either damnation or salvation. What’s certain is that once we cross over a secret, fatal line, there can be no coming back, he concluded ironically, as though he had been giving a lecture.

  But as his time was entirely occupied by following the progress of the peace negotiations, the general didn’t manage to go to Cyrene as soon as he would have liked.

  The memory of Martello drifted further and further from his mind.

  The general thought about him again in October 1917. Sitting at his desk, behind his head stood the sumptuously framed proclamation General Caneva had delivered ‘to the people of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and its adjacent provinces.’ Before the general’s eyes lay a dispatch reporting the Italians’ defeat at Caporetto. He stood up and sat back down several times, never managing to tear his gaze away from the dispatch. He would be the one to give the Expeditionary Force the news. Thanks to his penchant for the theatre, Captain Martello would have been quite amused by the sight of that proclamation on the wall still radiating its illusory splendour while the general stood in the square reading out the bitter communiqué informing his men that the motherland had suffered a humiliating defeat.

  By way of atonement, General Delle Stelle picked up the dispatch and re-read it:

  The absence of several divisions of the 2nd Army,

  which cowardly retreated without firing a single shot,

  or which ignominiously surrendered to the enemy,

  allowed the Austro-Hungarian forces

  to breach our left flanks on the Julian Alps.

  Our troops’ valiant efforts were not enough

  to prevent the enemy from setting foot

  on our motherland’s sacred soil.

  General Cadorna, 29 October 1917

  1920

  THE MARRIAGE OF OMAR

  Die Linien des Lebens sind verschieden,

  Wie Wege sind, und wie der Berge Grenzen.

  Was hier wir sind, kann dort ein Gott ergänzen

  Mit Harmonien und ewigen Lohn und Frieden.3

  3 Untitled poem by Friedrich Hölderlin

  I

  ‘I’m tormented by the presence of these servants.’

  ‘Those you call “servants,” we who govern call “indigenous people,” and their presence torments us too. But what should we do about it? Eliminate them? To live in this colony means we must accept their presence.’

  ‘I can’t understand why we must have them in our house,’ Countess Rosina said.

  ‘You want to exorcise their presence from these walls, turn the perimeter of the house into a magical barrier that guarantees our safety and keeps them at a distance,’ the deputy governor retorted. ‘Our conquest of this colony is based on the effect that the force of our faith, language, willpower and strength can have on their lives. We can’t allow them to get distracted, there’s even a Political Bureau that spends each day coming up with new ways to penetrate their thoughts. We want them to love us, but we don’t want to renounce our ability to make them fear us. However, our measures have generated an equal but opposite reaction, which is what afflicts us. The indigenous peoples’ presence is a shadow that pursues us and mimics our actions. Either we return to our ships, or we exterminate them and push them away to more distant borders. Or we could educate ourselves about them and try to make our presence here more acceptable to them. There are native servants in this house because the deputy governor wants to show their presence here doesn’t bother him – on the contrary, it soothes him! Which is why I also welcome the city’s notables into my house. Victor Emmanuel has granted the natives a Basic Charter guaranteeing their civil rights. But laws are useless unless they are put into practice. Khadija entering our room in the morning with a cup of coffee works on the same level as Parliament negotiating with a Cyrenaican tribal chief: a mutual recognition of each others’ presence in these lands.’

  General Caneva’s Expeditionary Force invaded the Libyan coast towards the end of September 1911. Having vanquished the Turkish garrison, the Italians concluded a peace treaty with the Sublime Porte in Lausanne in October 1912. However, by 1921 the Italians still hadn’t managed to break the back of the Libyan rebellion in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. After numerous military vicissitudes, colonial power was still confined to urban centres, while sovereignty over the boundless, mostly deserted hinterland was still ambiguous, with power alternating from one side to the other according to how the struggle was going.

  Both sides had been sorely tested and both sides were worn out, the conquistadors’ problems exacerbated by the growing disorder in the motherland after the end of the Great War in 1918, when all desire for colonial expansion was silenced in Rome. The atmosphere of mass disillusion and exhaustion at the time created the conditions for an attempt at a compromise. They even decided to grant the Libyan people some satisfaction with the so-called ‘treaty,’ which granted the natives the right to elect representatives to a consultative assembly with tightly limited powers. It also established the equality of natives and citizens of the kingdom of Italy before the law, guaranteed the inviolability of one’s home and property, and stipulated that the Italian Governor would have to submit all nomination for civil service posts before a council for approval.

  By 1921, a parliament had finally been elected in Cyrenaica, the eastern province.

  Since the army had failed to crush the patriotic resistance, the country had thus effectively been governed by a diarchy: on the one hand there was the colony’s governor, who was the Italian King’s representative in Libya and who resided in Benghazi, while on the other was Sidi Idris al-Sanussi, the Emir of Cyrenaica, who had his capital in dusty Ajdabiya, at the edge of the desert. Arms guaranteed the independence of the two powers.

  Count Alonzo looked out of the window, as though searching for comfort as well as the affirmation of his plans.

  He could see the entirety of the little colonial city, with its labyrinth of streets, its white terraces, and the odd garden. Beyond it lay the limitless desert plains, which were almost devoid of any vegetation or other signs of life. The house was surrounded by an ample loggia, and the windows that looked out onto it were always open, unless the sandy winds from the south happened to be blowing. Throughout most of the year, the sky wore the same expression: clear and uniform, just like the red earth, which was dusty and unvarying.

  Then there was the blue oasis of the sea, choppy and luminous.

  ‘Taking an active role in public life is your way of running away from family affections.’

  ‘If I have to renounce all interests outside these walls whenever I come home, and become someone else, then I must confess it’ll leave me wanting to spend as little time here as I possibly can. The Libyans are exhausted, they need tranquillity, but they’re keeping their eyes peeled for an opportunity to pick up arms again. The peace achieved by the Basic Charter must make the resumption of hostilities impossible.’

  ‘When the crisis in Rome is resolved, it’ll undoubtedly dictate a definitive solution for the colony – the Ba
sic Charter is nothing but a deferment. Your passion is disproportionate to the humble role you’ve been assigned,’ the Countess replied.

  The Countess hadn’t been in the colony for long, and she displayed the melancholy of those forced to live in exile.

  ‘Righteousness can turn the provisional agreement into a definitive one. Regardless, I’m unwilling to evaluate other options.’

  ‘You’ll ruin your career. But if this is the price we have to pay so that we can bring some serenity back to our marriage, then I’ll accept it.’

  There were no signs the pleasant North African autumn was drawing to a close. Just as when a sonata nears its denouement, picks up the plot and plays it out again in a pointless but delectable variation, the autumn was robbing the winter of part of its reign. Sometimes, the autumn even lasted as late as Christmas. Brief, torrential showers occasionally interrupted winter’s agonising delay.

  The window was like a frame designed to encase the Count’s portrait. The whiteness of the walls and the blue of the sea filled the rest of the canvas. Rosina looked at the portrait as though she wanted to snatch it off the wall and run away. But where could she go?

  ‘All travellers nurse the ambition to return to their native islands as strangers. Khadija matters more to my life than my Aunt Clotilde, and I’m more interested in colonial society’s two components, national and indigenous, than the ups and downs of Lombard manufacturing, even if that’s precisely where my fate lies, since Lombard industry might well determine how that ugly political game in Rome plays out.’

  ‘So I’m wrong because I don’t think of Khadija as my aunt?’ Rosina exclaimed impatiently. ‘These new kinships strike me as disloyal. Khadija is nothing but a servant and I don’t like her. She cooks well. But she’s so fat! She shakes the whole house when she walks.’