Zone (25 page)

I was there, I was there,
with the benefit of old age she could assure us that she herself shot the bullet at the Montenegrin in the cocked hat, or that she’d run the scarfaced assassin through with her saber, she hesitates, in any case the kind old Marseillaise with the singsong accent is positive, the King was very handsome, very young, he smiled to the assembled crowd as he passed by on that October 9, 1934, which is in a way my birthdate, I killed for the homeland sixty years later, would I have assassinated the hieratic sovereign in cold blood in his motorized coach, maybe, convinced of the necessity of killing the head of the hydra of oppression, I would have found my accomplices in Lausanne, they would have let me in on the plan, the instructions, Mijo Kralj the coarse brute and Ivo Rajić the cunning, if I fail they’ll make an attempt on Karageorgevitch with a bomb in Paris everything’s ready the dictator just has to behave himself, a toast of gin to the health of Vlado the bloodthirsty “Chauffeur,” his face slashed by a knife during a brawl in Skopje the somber, would I have had his cool, his courage, confronted the horses and the dragoons’ swords without wavering, in a hotel on the Côte d’Azur, the day before, a young blond Croatian woman would have given me the weapons, a handsome brand-new Mauser C96 she got in Trieste, kindly provided by Mussolini’s agents, with two boxes of cartridges and a backup revolver, in the improbable case that the Mauser jams, she is beautiful and dangerous, she knows there’s not much chance I’ll come back alive, that there’s even every chance I’ll croak, killed or arrested by the French police, for the Cause, for Croatia, Franjo Mirković Mama’s father has been in exile since 1931, in Hungary at first, then Italy, with Pavelić and the other big-name “insurgents,” those Ustashis for whom the assassination of the monarch constitutes the first coup and it will earn Pavelić his first condemnation to death in absentia, in France, it’s strange that my grandfather chose this country for his exile, a coincidence, he was never bothered outside of Yugoslavia, nor was he even, so far as I know, pursued by Tito’s agents who will end up wounding Ante Pavelić with three gunshots in his Argentine refuge, my grandfather was a simple intellectual without any great political responsibilities in the final analysis, unlike his friend Mile Budak, the rural writer great killer of Serbs, a bogus ideologue and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the NDH—Budak won’t escape the partisans, he’ll end up with twelve bullets in his flesh after a lightning-fast trial, his family massacred near Maribor, the mustachioed pen-pusher didn’t have the luck of my grandfather, who had left a little earlier with Mama and her brother for Austria through the Croatian and German lines, in that end-of-April 1945 month of dust, lies, and panic, at the Slovenian border you have to choose between two routes, the one to Italy and the one to Carinthia held by the British, Franjo Mirković with wife and children is arrested by the English then released immediately, he has money, cousins in France he arrives in Paris at the same time that my paternal grandfather comes back from deportation, in a train, all the trains are leaving in the other direction, southwards now, the soldiers the deported the conquered the conquerors are taking the same route in the opposite direction, just as Antonio the father of my busy bartender goes back to Calabria or Campania and pauses by the train tracks in the middle of a field, will I go back home, what’s waiting for me in peace Ulysses is afraid of his wife his dog his son he doesn’t want to go back to Ithaca he doesn’t want me to down my gin set the cup on the counter I want a cigarette the bartender smiles at me he asks “
un altro?
” I hesitate but I’ll get blind-drunk if I have a third, inebriated as the beautiful Stéphanie the sorrowful said, a couple enters the bar they ask for a mineral water and a beer before going back to second class, I hesitate I hesitate I’d like to go out get some air like Antonio back from the war, go on, two’s a crowd but three’s company I say
va bene, un altro
, what weakness, what weakness, to guzzle lukewarm gin at six euros apiece in a train car,
è la ultima
, that’s the last mini-bottle whatever happens I’ll have to change drinks, move on to Campari and soda, the last time I got drunk in a train was in the night express that took me to Croatia with Vlaho and Andi, we had taken the bus from Trieste to a tiny no-account village on the Slovenian border to catch the Venice-Budapest stopping in Zagreb around 4:00 in the morning, the steward in our car was a Hungarian he had astronomical supplies of firewater in his cabin, sweet-smelling stuff real eau de Cologne alcohol made from cloves or God knows what Magyar horror, but he was funny and generous, he complained to us about having to go back to war, he spoke a funny Latino-Germanic-Hungarian gobbledygook embellished with a few Slavic words, a tubby guy who smoked like a steam-engine in his cubbyhole, I remember his face clearly as I will remember the tanned face of the bartender of the Pendolino Milan-Rome,
three drummer boys on the way back from war, three drummer boys on the way back from war, rat and tat, ratatatat, on the way back from waaar
, I taught Vlaho and Andrija that song in Trieste, they sang it over and over, in the Budapest train, in the mountains of Bosnia, I’m singing it softly now,
three drummer boys
, not so young anymore, the last able-bodied drummer boy, the king’s daughter forsaken on the road, in my country there are prettier girls said the song, Stéphanie posted abroad, I’d like to meet her by chance, or not, so she’d come back, but no, I’m heading for a new life, I’m separating from myself, I’m no longer Francis Servain the spy I am Yvan Deroy promised a new fate a brilliant future paid for with the dead the disappeared the secrets in this suitcase that’s getting heavier and heavier, this guilt that doesn’t let me go, poor Stéphanie whom I crushed despite myself, I drink a gulp of gin, she didn’t suspect anything, she liked plays, cinema, books, she liked to stay in bed for hours caressing me gently, whereas I was sinking into the Zone, I was disappearing not beneath the sheets but into the briefcase and my memories, between missions, contacts, reports, I brought Stéphanie along during my private investigations, “my hobby,” as she said, without really understanding either the nature or the interest of the work, she thought I wanted to turn into Simon Wiesenthal or an amateur Serge Klarsfeld, I didn’t tell her otherwise—out of laziness, out of an obsession for secrecy, the less she knew the better, after Barcelona she accompanied me to Valencia with the smell of gunpowder and flowering orange trees, she had insisted on coming, always this obsession with vacations, in Carcaixent forty kilometers away Maks Luburić had lived until his assassination in 1969, Luburić the butcher from the Jasenovac camp was also one of the first Ustashis, a companion in arms of my grandfather, so to speak, who especially appreciated murder with a club, enucleation, and dismemberment, which he practiced on an indeterminate number of Serbs, Jews, gypsies, and Croatian opponents—80,000 victims have been identified, how many are still waiting to be discovered, probably four times that many, killed in every possible way, shot hanged drowned starved decapitated with an axe or knocked out with a hammer, Luburić who escaped via Rome found refuge in Spain whence he coordinated post-war Ustashi “activities,” I have a letter from him, he is asking my grandfather if he would agree to be the head of the French cell, which the latter probably hurried to refuse, above all not wanting to draw Tito’s secret services onto his trail, Luburić’s corpse will be found in April 1969 at his home in Carcaixent his skull bashed in and his torso pierced with knife wounds, revenge, revenge, in that village in the outskirts of Valencia where he had decided to settle, on the road to Xàtiva, in the middle of orange trees and ceramics factories, a few kilometers away from the rice fields of Albufera where we stopped to wolf down a delicious paella and stewed eel, Stéphanie was driving the rented Citroën, the landscapes of early October didn’t look anything like what I had imagined, the fertile plain along the banks of the Júcar, the mountains began a little further south, the place names often Moorish, Algemesi, Benimuslem, Guadasuar, so many hamlets emptied of their inhabitants by Philip III and the Inquisition in 1609 during the deportation of the Mudejars, the poor Moors transported in galleys from all the ports of the kingdom to African coasts, peasants who had converted to Christianity several generations ago but who persisted in speaking and writing Arabic in secret, the first mass deportation in the Mediterranean, to please the Church and the strict Spanish bishops: many of the 500,000 expelled died on forced marches to the sea, some were thrown into the water by ship’s captains who thus spared themselves the journey to the barbarian coasts and others ended up massacred by the unwelcoming Berbers upon their arrival—the kingdom of Valencia thus lost a quarter of its population, leaving certain rural zones completely deserted, only the village names of these descendants of Andalusian Arabs remain, gone are the Moors, as in Alzira that I traveled through with Stéphanie on our way to Carcaixent, Alzira the beautiful homeland of the Arabic poet Ibn Khafaja is now nothing but a block of hideous buildings encircling the remains of an old city once surrounded by ramparts, we stopped to drink an
orxata
on a pleasant square planted with palm trees, one fine early fall afternoon, a little further on a section of the Arab wall survived and some more palm trees, all this bore the ironic name “Square of Saudi Arabia,” we started off again for Carcaixent where a surprise was waiting for us: the village was in the middle of a fiesta, decked with bunting thronged with a jubilant crowd that Saturday, we had reserved a room in the only hotel around without knowing it, the receptionist was surprised,
you didn’t know it was fiesta?
as if her native town didn’t deserve to be visited outside of these crucial dates, the patron’s festivals, on the main square a “medieval” market was set up, where nice Valencians impersonated the vanished Arabs in colorful outfits and the knights of El Cid Campeador in armor beneath our windows, we were still in the room when a series of explosions paralyzed me shaving kit in hand, a terrible volley that resonated in your heart and made the open windows shake, a bombardment, I had a second of total panic, my muscles tense, my ears whistling, ready to dive onto the bedroom floor, I didn’t recognize that weapon, my brain didn’t identify that danger it wasn’t a machine gun not mortar shells not grenades it was brutal muffled echoing rapid interminable Stéphanie was petrified facing me I understood firecrackers enormous firecrackers linked to each other under our windows they made the rounds of the whole square an explosion every half-second the little room filled up with enough blue smoke to suffocate us Stéphanie began laughing the pounding didn’t stop boom boom boom regularly the stench was infernal and to cap it all off a giant cannonball went off a huge explosion made us double over in fright leaving a strained acute silence followed immediately by joyful shouts applause and bravos, I was so tense that my neck and shoulders hurt, Stéphanie had tears in her eyes, maybe the smoke, my mouth was dry from the taste of gunpowder, in the street more cheerful shouts rose up, what could this extraordinarily savage ceremony be, to what god of thunder were they sacrificing these kilos of firecrackers, Stéphanie and I began laughing at our fear as we sought a little air at the window, the receptionist told us that this ritual was called
mascletà
, and that it was very frequent in Valencia, homeland of fireworks, noise, and fury, Zeus himself must preside over these young pagans, we went out to take a little walk, who knows maybe Maks Luburić the butcher had chosen this corner of Spain because of this martial tradition, which reminded him of the children, old men, and sick people he lined up in a ditch before blowing them up with dynamite or a grenade in Jasenovac on the Sava, peaceful Croatian village where the Ustashis, always concerned with doing things well, had established their contribution to the death camps, in order to kill the Serbs, gypsies, and Jews in the midst of the storks, by the water’s edge, in an old brickworks whose ovens turned out to be very practical for getting rid of bodies, Luburić had been the commander of the network of camps around Jasenovac, witnesses described him as a sadist and a coarse brute, in Carcaixent he went by the name of Vicente Pérez owner of a little printing press on Santa Ana Street where he printed anti-Tito propaganda, a fervent Catholic he was well-liked by the people in the village, Stéphanie listened to me, in a crowded bar, glass of red wine in hand, eating salt cod fishcakes, she opened her eyes wide, how is that possible, she found it hard to believe that this little festive hamlet had hidden such a criminal for over twenty years, in the midst of the orange trees, Luburić had even married a Spanish woman and had three children in the 1950s, did they go like me to fight to free Croatia from the Yugoslav yoke that’s possible, the little shady streets of Carcaixent smelled of sulfur, around eight o’clock a large part of the crowd headed for the church where Maks Luburić had done so much praying, a Mass was celebrated there in honor of Saint Boniface the martyr, I went in with Stéphanie who even blessed herself with holy water, Boniface according to the martyrology we were given was the steward of a noble matron named Aglaida, they lived in sin together but when each was touched by the grace of God they decided that Boniface would go look for martyrs’ relics in the hope of earning, through their intercession, the happiness of salvation—after walking a few days, Boniface arrived in the city of Tarsus and, addressing those who were accompanying him, he said to them
go look for a place for us to stay: meantime I’ll go see the martyrs struggling, that’s what I wish to do first of all
, he went in all haste to the place of executions and he saw the fortunate martyrs, one suspended by his feet over a bonfire, another stretched on four pieces of wood and subjected to slow torture, a third lacerated with iron nails, a fourth whose hands had been cut off, and the last raised into the air and choked by logs fastened to his neck, as he viewed these different tortures the executioner was carrying out pitilessly, Boniface felt his courage and his love for Jesus Christ grow and he cried out