Zone (5 page)

Bouvet
strike a floating mine and disappear with all hands in less than six minutes, 550 men carried down in an armor-plated coffin, eighty meters deep among the jellyfish, the gunner Seyit and his comrades hammered the seaboard with huge shells until a volley aimed at the
HMS Ocean
damaged the gun: the handcar that brought ammunition up to the breech is hit, impossible to transport the warheads, but artilleryman Seyit is a lumberjack from the slopes of Mount Ida, a descendant of the Mysians of Troy, he takes the 200 kilos of metal and explosives on his back he suffers he bends beneath it Zeus himself helps him and encourages him Seyit carries his burden into the still burning soul of the cannon loads the gun that the firing officer points at the
HMS Ocean
motionless in the middle of the strait, it too has just hit a mine: Apollo guides the Turkish arrow towards the British destroyer, the 400 pounds explode on the stern of the English battleship which loses its rudder and springs a giant leak, the entire aft is flooded in a few seconds: drifting, threatened by mines, the
Ocean
would sink a few hours later, making
Koca
Seyit from Havran lumberjack of Mount Ida a hero—
Koca
the giant has served since 1912 as a simple soldier, he fought the Serbs and the Bulgarians in the Balkans, his head shaved, with a proud mustache, the Turkish army desperate for glory immediately promoted him to
onbaşi
, corporal, I wonder what the giant of Mysia thought when the journalists from Istanbul arrived to photograph him, in a photo from then he looks embarrassed, modest, not very big either, the propaganda reporters want to immortalize him with a mortar shell in his arms, they try but Seyit can’t manage to repeat the exploit, Zeus is no longer there to help him, the shell weighs too much, fear not, they make a wooden replica that the little corporal takes on his back, the photographer triggers his apparatus and forever humiliates Seyit of Havran by transforming him into a liar for posterity, into a circus strong man: demobilized in 1918 Seyit returns to his forest, now they call him Seyit “Çabuk,” “swift-footed”—he goes on to work in the somber coal mines where he will come down with what is probably lung cancer from which he will die at the age of fifty, absolutely forgotten, until a beautiful bronze statue is erected in his honor near the fortress of Kilitbahir, his burden on his back, 200 kilos of explosives on its way to send destruction onto the battleships of the Argives—it was nice out and the sea was beautiful, from the Gallipoli peninsula on a clear day you can see as far as the hills near Troy, Asia, the narrow sea wound of the Dardanelles opens onto the Sea of Marmara a few leagues away from Constantinople, with Marianne on vacation in a resort in July 1991 I stay glued to the TV, trying to get news of Croatia, this vacation was an engagement gift from her parents if I remember right, in the end we didn’t get engaged I left to hunt pig and meet Andrija in Osijek I got engaged to death as the marching song of the Spanish legionnaires says,
soy el novio de la muerte
, but Marianne still wore a ring with a diamond and gold earrings I had given her maybe the same as Helen of Lacedaemon’s under her veil, in that boring resort one could take advantage of organized excursions, one to the Dardanelles one to Troy that’s all Marianne managed to get me to agree to, the statue of Seyit the army bearer was brand new the guide told us the story with sobs in his voice, then he had us visit the house where Mustafa Kemal lived father of the Turks when he commanded the defense of the peninsula I remember I had an erection in the tour bus I began caressing Marianne under her skirt she blushed but went along, the Italian tourist across the aisle didn’t miss a thing, he had taken umpteen pictures of the corporal and the shell and the Atatürk Museum I wondered if he was going to get out his camera to immortalize the taut thighs of Marianne who was looking out the window as if nothing were happening, the return trip on the ferry seemed very long to us and scarcely had we arrived back than we threw ourselves on each other in the bedroom, I saw the sea the sunset through the white curtains and Marianne too leaning over bent double her chest on the bed maybe she said
how beautiful it is
, it was certainly beautiful, pleasure seized us, a beam over the blazing Mediterranean—the expedition to Troy was an ordeal of dust and heat, walls, stones, pathways, no guided visit to the tomb of Achilles or Hector’s pyre or Priam’s treasure, tourists, not a spot of shade to be alone with Marianne in, I remember a very ugly giant wooden horse that would have made Ulysses ashamed, I remember too the adventures of Heinrich Schliemann the passionate, the Arsène Lupin of archaeology smitten with women, foreign languages and mythical narratives: poor, self-educated, son of a pastor in the duchy of Mecklenburg on the Baltic, perhaps it was because he was a man of the North that he passionately loved money and the Mediterranean—the little herring merchant sets off for California to make his fortune selling supplies to gold dust miners, then tired of America he becomes a smuggler and arms trafficker during the Crimean War, using his Russian wife to make the necessary contacts, finally his fortune made he develops a passion for archeology and takes as his second wife a Greek woman of great beauty they say, he buys a palace in Athens and travels the ancient world in search of lost cities, Ithaca, Mycenae, and then Troy: in 1868 he acquires the hill of Hissarlik where his faith in the blind poet makes him situate the site of Ilion with solid walls, he begins to excavate it with the help of a hundred or so Turkish laborers, comes across the traces of several superimposed cities and an immense treasure of vases and jewelry, the treasure of Priam and the jewels of Helen which he quickly steals to bring back to Athens, thinking thus to close the circle begun 3,000 years earlier when Paris carried off the woman of unbearable beauty with the sweet sojourn in Lacedaemon, he is restoring to Attica and Menelaus these jewels that the Ottomans, by his lights, had no right to—before offering them to the brand-new Germany in exchange for various influences and favors, especially because Schliemann had understood that these pieces, beautiful as they were, post-dated the Trojan War by quite a bit, that the “mask of Agamemnon” had never touched the rough skin of the king of the Achaeans, that Helen with the beautiful
peplos
had never placed these fabulous necklaces on her perfect neck, which caused a scandal when people realized it, Schliemann died soon after in Naples, near Pompeii whose paintings he had admired, the gods had assured his posterity as they had for the Turkish artilleryman a few leagues to the east, his name will remain linked to the Scaean Gates along with Homer’s, both inspired by the goddess who protects smugglers poets workers of the night warriors and I see again all the names in my briefcase, the photos, the documents the thousands of pages contained on the computer disks carefully arranged in their covers classified by date and number, year of investigation, of theft, of more or less secret pillaging of the archives, done on the fringes of my job as informer, case officer as they say, my job as secret pen-pusher, poet with the silent epos,
sing, goddess, of the memories of the wanderers among the shades in the depths of Hades
—Casalpusterlengo, strange name, we’re going at top speed through the white neon-illuminated station, the well-wrapped travelers watch the express go by my neighbor glances absentmindedly out the window then continues his reading, I could read a little too, I have a little book in my bag, three stories by a Lebanese writer named Rafael Kahla recommended to me by the bookseller on the Places des Abbesses, a handsome book on slightly ochre laid paper, barely a hundred pages, how much time would I need to read them let’s say a page a kilometer that would take up a good part of the 500 milestones left to travel, the little book is about Lebanon, the back cover situates the three stories at three distinct times of the civil war, another cheerful book, it’s strange the bookseller recommended it to me, she couldn’t have known about my connections with the Zone and armed conflict, maybe it’s an omen, one more demiurge placed there in Montmartre like a sign, I put the little book on my fold-out tray, don’t have the courage, I feel feverish exhausted by the drugs and the day before, I have a pain in my right temple, I’m sweating and there’s a slight trembling in my hands—I close my eyes, might as well return to the Dardanelles or to Venice, to Cairo or Alexandria, I wonder what has become of Marianne where could she be now I picture her as a mother of five children who made her quit teaching, almost ten years after our separation I’m on my way to Sashka now better not think about the painful interval between one and the other about Stéphanie the sorrow of Stéphanie the headache intensifies, it’s normal go forward go forward with the train that carries you eyes closed blindfolded like a hostage by his kidnappers Yvan Deroy confined in a railroad car by his alter ego prey to the hangover of the century, yesterday I celebrated the departure the end of a life I so want this interlude to be over, the kilometers that separate me from my new existence to have already traveled, everything comes to him who knows how to wait says the proverb, Marianne’s body haunts me despite the years and the bodies that succeeded hers, when I see Sashka before I kiss her I’ll say shh, my name is Yvan now, she’ll wonder why a researcher who specializes in the ethology of insects suddenly changes his name, maybe Sashka’s body is like Marianne’s, her underwear always virgin white on the dark skin of her slightly heavy breasts the top of the back of her neck hollowed out like a second sex with the fine hair of a newborn child Marianne was
serious
, as she said, she took her time before she slept with me, at the time I saw it as a proof of commitment, a truth a passion in Turkey it was the explosion of desire the experimentation of pleasure the pelagic plain was very blue very erotic very salty it gave off a warm smell at nightfall in that vacation club there were games organized by the residents, after the dinner buffet there was multilingual bingo, the MCs announced the number first in Turkish then repeated it in English German French and Italian,
yirmi dört, twenty-four, vier und zwanzig, vingt-quatre, venti quattro
, this absurd and regular threnody slid over the sea for hours on end, hypnotic interminable poem I didn’t miss a thing from the bedroom balcony, I watched the international incantation shine on the Aegean,
on yedi, seventeen, siebzehn, dix-sept, diciasette
, I conscientiously repeated all the numbers, which made Marianne furious, once is already unbearable enough, she said, close that window we’ll put the air-conditioning on, night was not her time, what with the bingo, the heat, and the mosquitoes I remember she read a lot, I read nothing at all, I meditated, I mentally played bingo I sipped Turkish Carlsbergs as I thought about Croatia, Slovenia had just declared its independence on June 25
^th
, 1991—on our side the Krajina Serbs had seceded in mid-February, the Yugoslav army didn’t seem in a mood to withdraw despite Tuđman’s declaration of sovereignty and things seemed to be going from bad to worse, I would have liked to bring Marianne to Opatija, Šibenik, or Dubrovnik but her parents preferred taking things into their own hands and sent us far away from the Adriatic, to the other side of the Balkans the tip of which, Thrace, we could glimpse on a clear day—the booklet about Troy explained in broken French that the Trojans were actually a tribe that originated in Kosovo,
a province of Yugoslavia
said the brochure, why not, that the Dardani with the beautiful mares were Albanian isn’t unlikely if you think about Skanderbeg, about the Mamluks of Egypt and other valiant warriors, with the swift sabers and the two-headed eagle, so by the shores of the Sea of Marmara I was closer to Yugoslavia than I thought, thanks to the belligerent Illyrians: listening to the Turkish MCs chanting bingo results in five languages I was far from imagining that I was about to go fight for a free and independent Croatia, then for a free and independent Herzegovina, and finally for a free and independent Croatian Bosnia,
Za dom
,
spremni
, said the pro-Nazi Ustashi government motto during the Second World War,
for the homeland, always ready
, without knowing it I was ready, I was ripe, Pallas Athena was about to whisper into my ear, and ten years later I would find myself in an overheated railway car holding my head in my hands my eyes closed under a borrowed name can one put an end to something really change your life as for Andrija he is quietly decomposing in Bosnian soil, thousands of white worms maggots bacteria are making sure he disappears, I survived the war and the Zone that followed, but I almost didn’t leave Venice, I was about to put an end to my days there as they say before Marianne sort of suddenly threw in the towel I drifted along the lagoon to the bitter end in the fog, I ended up falling drunk into a frozen canal, in the dark water severed limbs and faceless skulls were waiting for me, the crazy smile of a broken face bit my stomach a cut-off hand grabbed my hair torn-off filaments of skin slices of decomposed flesh sank into my mouth I instantly rotted in the briny liquid carried off towards the thick black mud and finally everything stopped, I stopped struggling, there were no more ripples on the surface, nothing but the movements of rats that threw themselves by the dozen onto my inert body in the Venice lagoon city of noble rot and rickety palaces, I never went back there, even when I was filling my suitcase in Trieste or Udine I carefully avoided it, I changed trains in Mestre so as not to be tempted to leave the Santa Lucia train station and return to the Ghetto, return to the Square of the Two Moors or to the well-named Quay of Oblivion where I knocked myself out on alcohol with Ghassan, you don’t forget much in the end, the wrinkled hands of Harmen Gerbens the Cairo Batavian, his trembling mustache, the faces of Islamists tortured in the Qanatar Prison, the photograph of the severed heads of the Tibhirine monks, the reflections on the cupolas in Jerusalem, Marianne naked facing the sea, the squeals of Andrija’s pig, the bodies piled up in the gas trucks of Chełmno, Stéphanie the sorrowful in front of Hagia Sophia, Sashka with her brushes and paints in Rome, my mother at the piano in Madrid, her Bach fugue in front of an audience of Croatian and Spanish patriots, so many images linked by an uninterrupted thread that snakes like a railroad bypassing a city, the possible connections between trains in a station: back from my investigation in Prague not long ago I take the night train for Paris via Frankfurt, last car, last compartment, a man in his fifties is already sitting there, he’s eating a sandwich, it is eight o’clock at night, his head is round and bald, he’s wearing a grey suit he looks like an accountant, he greets me politely in Czech between two mouthfuls, I reply just as politely, I settle in, the train leaves the Prague station on time, I mechanically play with a little crystal star prettily wrapped in red tissue paper, souvenir of Bohemia—once he’s finished his sandwich my companion extracts a thick paperback volume from his luggage, a kind of catalogue he begins consulting feverishly, jumping from one page to the other, one finger on columns of numbers, then back to the previous page, he looks at his watch before looking angrily out the window, it’s dark out, he can’t see anything, he goes back to his book, he often looks at me, questioningly, he’s burning to ask me a question, he asks me do you know if the train is stopping in Tetschen? or at least that’s what I understand him to say, I jabber in German that I have no idea, but it probably will, that’s the last Czech city before the border, on the Elbe, the man speaks German, he agrees with me, the train must stop in Tetschen, even if it doesn’t take on any passengers there,