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inebriated
funny term God knows what book she took it from, I’d choose not to reply, to say nothing, to order my drink or pour myself one calmly without arguing, Stéphanie Muller comes from a family of teachers in Strasbourg, the kind who bleed themselves dry so their children can succeed, they had been so proud of her getting into Sciences-Po, that’s where we met before I saw her again a few years later in one of the dark hallways on the Boulevard Mortier, where I was working under the authority of Lebihan lover of oysters—Stéphanie’s parents knew she was working as an analyst for the Ministry of Defense, but didn’t know where exactly, we all had our secrets, curiously she hated violence so much, weapons and war (odd, given her employer) that I had never really told her about my activities as a Balkan conscript, out of cowardice: for her that whole period of my life was very vague, hazy, a few photos, nothing more, she had never gone to Croatia, she was very surprised to learn that I had spent some months in Venice, in between things, floating like a corpse in the fetid-smelling lagoon, Stéphanie beautiful and brunette wanted to go there, more than once she mounted a fresh attack: why not Venice, she had found a beautiful hotel not too expensive, a vacation would do us good, I had to explain to her that I didn’t want to go back there, that I didn’t want to see Venice La Serenissima again queen of fog and tourism, not yet, it was too soon, she found that strange, why, why, but ended up agreeing to a change of destination, Barcelona was just as Mediterranean and attractive, in Venice I had been very sick and very miserable I was always cold even rolled up in my rug, I hadn’t been able to go back to France, not enough strength, not enough courage and I hid myself right in the middle of the lagoon as I read all night and went out at daybreak one night I gathered together my outfits my uniforms I made a big ball of them that I burned in the shower after soaking it in cooking rum, everything, including the badges: I kept only the dagger, its sheath, and a few plastic crucifixes, knickknacks that they handed out to us by the handful like the keys to paradise that were given to the Iranian volunteers under Khomeini, a reality had to be given to the barbarity that was the beginning of a new life the cloth burned with a thick smoke smelling of crêpes, you don’t escape your homeland, I was flambéing my homeland with rum along with my soldier’s gear and I was leaving my mother in silence she who had given me this knife and these crucifixes without realizing it it was probably her I wanted to preserve with the war trinkets, the flames of my bathroom holocaust destroyed the illusion of having once had a country with the same ease you down a glass of strong alcohol it’s disagreeable at the time you feel its journey down your esophagus and all alone in this bar tearing through the countryside I’ll have another, a gin to the health of my zealous Croatian mother, a gin
za dom
, the bartender has guessed my intentions, he smiles at me and gets out another mini-bottle,
spremni
, a gin to the health of the firemen of Venice alerted by the neighbors who took me for a madman, a patriotic gin, my second lukewarm gin, I’d do better to go sit down and go to sleep, not much longer before Florence and not much longer before Rome, if I had gotten out in Bologna I could have gone back to Venice, to the Paradise Lost or the Flying Dutchman to drink spritzes with Ghassan, his crucifix tattooed on his Lebanese biceps, or take a boat to Burano and look at the little fishing houses slant their blues and ochers over the canals, observe the incongruous angle of the bell-tower and spin round in circles the way I’m spinning round in this train that’s suddenly going very slowly, we’re crossing the black night, even with my eyes glued to the window I can’t see a thing, aside from the regular poles of the power lines, aside from a dark shape in the landscape, a mountainous undulation that might be imaginary, might be due to the gin, I have my dose of alcohol I’m slowly calming down, a cigarette and everything will be much better, I’ll get to Rome—as if I had a choice, even dead on my seat this train would lead me to my destination, there is an obstinacy in railroads that’s close to that of life, now I’m getting idiotic and philosophical, the gin probably, I’ll go smoke illegally between two cars, or in the toilet, at least in trains they don’t threaten you with a thousand deaths if you smoke in the toilets, it’s one of the rare advantages for offenders like me, you can smoke sitting down, which has become a luxury these days, they worry about our health, regardless of who we are, innocent, sinners, victims, executioners, chaste, fornicators we all have a right to the consideration of public health, they’re interested in our lungs our liver our genitals with a real solicitude, and it’s nice to feel loved desired protected by the State the way those women used to, who said don’t drink so much, don’t smoke so much, don’t look at pretty girls so much, probably the men, my father, my grandfather had to hide for a drop of the stuff in the same way I’m going to take cover to smoke, my grandfather locksmith son of a locksmith made keys and repaired agricultural implements and tools, and that’s impossible to imagine today when no one has ever seen a forge, except maybe the bartender, he looks rural, almost like a miner, thickset, rugged forehead, short dense curly very dark hair over fifty I imagine he was born in early 1946 after his father had been busy with his Mussolini adventure his arm raised in salute from Rome to Athens passing through Tirana, a farmer from Campania or Calabria rough but with the big heart of those who make the best soldiers and the best fascists, used to the order of the seasons God family and nature, I picture him freezing in Epirus, pushing a howitzer with no ammunition dragged by two scrawny donkeys, fascinated by the glory of the
bersaglieri
and the genius of Il Duce, confident in victory before taking to his heels facing starving barefooted Greeks who were going to cut off his ears, did he know pleasure with a tall negress in Ethiopia or a coarse Albanian woman with a square face, did he swallow sand in Libya, did he suffer in a Fiat tank where the temperature often exceeds 150 degrees in the full sun, when thirst killed more than the English claymores strewn throughout the desert, pebbles among pebbles, I wonder where the news of Mussolini’s fall surprised him, the end of one adventure, the beginning of another, did he know that his village had been liberated a long time ago and that his wife had eyes only for the handsome Yanks, who were young farmers too, from Oregon or North Dakota, his wife forced by her family and her religion to wait for a man about whom she’d heard nothing for almost three years—maybe it was a great love, one of those almost ancient passions that are played out in absence, in illusion, he traveled the war from Greece to Egypt and Russia his ass in the snow his feet frozen while she embroidered her jacket for their wedding day, I’m close to asking the bartender his father’s first name, Antonio maybe, he’s watching me observe him as I sip the last of my gin, the train suddenly slows down, brakes to approach a curve, probably the train that brought him home in June 1945 had paused here too, a red light between the world that had just been erased and the one that still remained to be destroyed, a woman was waiting for him at the end of the journey, in man’s estate when everything is harder, more underhanded, more violent he desired her so without knowing her, Antonio deep down his heart was heavy sad to leave the war he desired this memory with a fervor that sickened him, and I hope he got out of the train I hope that he ran across the mountains until he ran out of breath, sneezing in the blossoming wheat fields, that he let the coolness of the moon caress his shoulder the better to enjoy his unsettling solitude slumped beneath an olive tree I hope he dared to run away during this unhoped-for stop, the train immobilized in the middle of the tracks sometimes you sense you have a chance, there are doors to escape through—Antonio back from the Eastern Front runs through the countryside to escape the fate of Ulysses, the village, his sewing wife, the good hunting dog who will sniff between his legs, he flees the future that he guesses at, sweating blood to support a large family in poverty, emigrate, settle into the suburban raw-cement buildings that emergency services have strewn around cities in the North, where the dog will die first without ever running down a single hare: Antonio back from the war lying near a Tuscan fig tree at night listens to the train start up again, he did well to get out, he thinks, he did well, it’s such a beautiful spring night, the first one that smells of hay after years of grease and cordite and stretched out thus between two lives, between two worlds, I imagine it’s the perfume of his peasant girl that comes back to him first, if he has already smelled it, leaving Mass, or during the harvest, around Easter time, as she struck the olive trees with a long pole, that mixture of sweat and flowers, that wafting hair under the sun, he speaks to the stars I doubt it, he’s not a shepherd out of Pirandello, he’s a man coming home from the war, lying there in a field because the train has just stopped, an incident on the tracks, maybe there are many of these soldiers wondering if they want to go back home, trembling still from the German defeat under the caress of green wheat, a little afraid, disarmed, in ragged outfits or in civilian clothes, in a coarse shirt, heavy boots on their feet, he has never seen Tuscany before, has always gone through it in a train or in a truck he’s never really taken advantage of these landscapes so civil, so tame, so noble, so human that already the Etruscans and Romans had planted there, barbarians with golden bears romped about in its vines like children, on these hills where Napoleon’s soldiers ran laughing after girls, I picture Antonio between two shadowy mountains trying to rid himself of war as he rolls in the grass, with those Italian soldiers forced by Salò’s RSI to fight for the Germans, at the end of 1943 all those who refused to go to Russia were deported, they ended up on other trains, headed for Mauthausen after a stay in the Bolzano camp, Bozen the Austrian that is no longer Italy, where they speak German—others escaped the SS and joined the partisans,
i banditi
as Radio Milan called them, many got arrested and deported in turn, Antonio marches in the debacle of the Eastern Front the Red steamroller at his heels while my grandfather, leaving the keys, the forge, the village also becomes a bandit, drawn by weapons and the power they give he learns how to blow up railroad tracks around Marseille, before being arrested by a squad of French Gestapo at the end of 1943, tortured with water and deported to Thuringia to a camp that’s part of Buchenwald, how did he escape summary execution in the yard, by the firing squad at dawn, I can guess, I think he denounced all his comrades to escape the pain, he is ashamed, he cracked under torture and handed over his friends, he’ll go expiate his treason in Germany as a slave in a REIMAHG underground weapons factory, he’ll make ME-262 jet fighters until April 1945—he’ll never go back to Marseille, he’ll settle down in a Parisian suburb, send for his family, work in a little mechanic’s workshop until his death in 1963, he died young, of guilt or the sufferings he endured in the underground camp, where thousands of Italian civilians arrived, deportees from the province of Bologna, rounded up during “anti-partisan” operations—in the mountains we’re crossing blindly tunnel after tunnel made by the Germans, mid-1944, killing two birds with one stone, they evacuated the civilian population that supported the partisans and provided a contingent of slaves for the weapons factories, almost 20,000 people were deported from all over Emilia, men and women, only a third saw Italy again, completely forgotten today the Italians died of exhaustion, hunger, beatings or they were poured alive into the cement, which made their mischievous guards laugh so hard they cried, Spaniards Frenchmen Italians Yugoslavs Greeks the whole Mediterranean shore took the path North to go die beneath Teutonic soil soil seeded with all those bones from the South, constrained and forced at first then more or less voluntarily for economic reasons, Spaniards Italians North Africans Turks all those people will go populate the sprawling outskirts of Paris or Munich, like Antonio the father of my phlegmatic bartender who’s cleaning his espresso machine, all these men crossed each other’s paths in Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, in the return convoys, in regiments on the march, some victorious others vanquished, in 1945 there landed in Marseille the French colonial troops demobilized after the victory, goumiers from the mountains and troops from Morocco, Algerian corps, and ten years later it will be the French contingent’s turn to set off from there to fight the fellaghas in Algeria, a to-and-fro of war that takes the place of the tide, Marseille the well-guarded port, magical and secret, where, a little before 4:00 in the afternoon, on October 9, 1934, a motorboat from the cruiser
Dubrovnik
berths with Alexander I on board, the long warship dropped anchor offshore, everything is ready to welcome the King of Yugoslavia, the city is decked with bunting, the officials are waiting, the parade horses paw the ground around the touring car that will take the sovereign to the prefecture, it is nice out, my grandfather is twenty-two, he has come out with his very young wife along with a good part of the population of Marseille to watch the monarch pass by on the Avenue Canebière, Alexander Karageorgevitch the elegant is alone, Queen Maria will join him by train straight from Paris, for she is prone to seasickness, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Barthou has come to meet him, distinguished, bearded, wearing glasses, they both take their places in the car that goes up the Canebière, my grandmother has told this story more than once, the two guards on horseback flank the vehicle, the squadron in front, the policemen behind, and suddenly, at the corner of the Square Puget just past the Stock Exchange building a man rushes towards the royal automobile, he climbs onto the left running board, he’s carrying a heavy Mauser, he shoots at the surprised Karageorgevitch who faints, a strange little smile on his mouth, the horse guard makes an about-face and slashes the attacker, the policemen on the sidewalk shoot in turn, passersby fall, mown down by the bullets of the constabulary, the assassin cut up by the saber, riddled with lead trampled by the panicking crowd and the escort horses is transported to the nearby police station, the king to the city hall, and the minister to the hospital: all three die almost instantly, Alexander from the cartridges from the giant Mauser, Barthou from a policeman’s bullet, and Velichko Kerin the man with a thousand pseudonyms and dozens of different wounds—Kerin or Chernozemski alias Georguiev or Kelemen called Vlado “the Chauffeur” is a Macedonian, that’s about all we know about him, he assassinated the King on the joint orders of a revolutionary movement in Macedonia and Ustashi Croatian activists based in Hungary and Italy, three agents of which are arrested in France a few days after the attack and confess to having taken part in it, Mijo Kralj, Ivo Rajić, and Zvonimir Pospisil, on orders of Ustashi leaders including the future Poglavnik Ante Pavelić himself, whom Mussolini would incarcerate a few days later, in order to keep him safe—Kralj and Rajić die of tuberculosis in the Toulon prison in 1939, like Gavrilo Princip their Bosnian colleague some twenty years before, just before seeing the cause of Croatian insurgents triumph in 1941 and the establishment of the NDH under the authority of Pavelić: Kralj and Rajić died without seeing the triumph, but Pospisil, condemned to life in prison, will be handed over to the new Nazi Croatia by Vichy, irony of fate, as they say, my paternal grandfather was a witness, on the Canebière in Marseille, to the assassination of King Alexander I the worst enemy of my maternal grandfather Franjo Mirković, a functionary in the NDH and one of the first Ustashis, who owed his salvation only to a prompt exile in France via Austria in 1945, my family was formed around this royal death on the Canebière, and my grandmother since then has espoused the cause of her daughter-in-law so well that she tells this adventure to anyone who will listen,