Zone (9 page)

Lebanon is a market stall by the sea
, said Kamal Jumblatt,
and everything’s for sale
, everything’s for sale, especially information and the lives of the undesirable, Kamal the father of Walid Jumblatt prince of the Druzes the funniest the cleverest the cruelest of the lords of the Lebanese war, secluded in his palace in Mukhtara to escape the Syrian bombs and the car bombs, Walid the killer of Christians from the Shouf is a witty, cultivated and very wealthy man, his warriors were the toughest, the boldest, the craziest, the bloodiest, they infuriated their leader because they were incapable of marching in step, but they had no equals in leaving 200 dead on a village square in less time than it takes to say so, and in that tiny country where everything is known or everything happens among family they tell the most unlikely stories about the warlord Walid, they make you smile and tremble at the same time, like all of Lebanon, country of laughs and shudders: one night he invited a cousin and his wife Nora to dinner, up there in his mountain, and at the end of the meal, as the couple was about to leave, Walid, without even getting up from the table they say, told his relative that he could leave but that his wife was staying, and so there were two possible solutions, either she got an immediate divorce, or she became a widow, this Helen of Phoenicia, always the passion for the wives of others, just as frequent among the kings of Lebanon as those elsewhere, witness Ghazi Kanaan the Syrian colonel who used all the terror of power in Damascus not only to get rich, but also to sleep with well-placed ladies in high Lebanese society, and they say—of Kings, of Warriors—that he was capable of summoning a minister in the middle of the night and telling him to send his mistress straightaway, so she could come give him head, him the leader of the Syrian forces, his revolver at his minister’s temple: ogres want everything, take everything, eat everything, power, money, weapons, and females, in that order, and these stories of monsters reminded me of my own ogres, Serbian, Croatian, who could unleash all their rage and quench all their thirst for mythic humanity, violence and desire, these stories were the delights of the man in the street, the children, the meek, happy to see the powerful get humiliated in turn in front of someone more powerful, lose their honor their wives as the poor had lost their houses their children or their legs in a bombardment, which after all seemed less serious than dishonor and humiliation, the defeat of the powerful is tremendous, beautiful and loud, a hero always makes noise when he collapses, a hundred kilos of muscle strike the ground in one huge dull thud, the public is on its feet to see Hector tied to the chariot, see his head wobble and his blood spurt, the ogre conquered by an even bigger ogre: Ghassan couldn’t help but be fascinated by these heroes, the Jumblatts, Kanaans, or Geageas, admire their feats of arms and their escapades that he recounted like good jokes, slapping his thighs, smiling from ear to ear, over a
spritz
or a Campari and soda on one of those Venetian squares that themselves seemed the opposite of all violence, on the other side of the world, a piece of history floating on the motionless lagoon, one of the centers of the political and economic Mediterranean cut off from reality and eaten away by tourists as well as by vermin and moss, slowly but surely, the army of underlings has taken the city, they stroll among the dead palaces, invade the sumptuous churches, happy to contemplate the corpse of the giant up close, the empty shell of the dried-out snail—with Ghassan we were absolutely insensitive to all the beauties of Venice, he the emigrant, the worker, I the depressive who in La Serenissima probably appreciated only the silence of the deserted streets invaded by night and fog, disoriented, incapable of making a step towards firm land, Marianne had to leave me one fine morning on the Ponte delle Guglie for me to wake up, we were coming back drunk from a night of endless talk, Ghassan and I, it must be six or seven in the morning, I almost haven’t seen Marianne at all the two or three preceding days, she in light and I in darkness and there she was on the bridge, in the grey dawn, pajamas on under her coat, her hair loose, pale, rings under her eyes, and when I go up to her worried she lands me a furious kick right in the balls which doubles me over cuts off my breath and she disappears, she leaves right in front of the dumbfounded eyes of Ghassan who doesn’t even dare laugh for a few minutes, astonished as I clutch my abdomen my head against the parapet not understanding what’s just happened not realizing that my aching testicles are sounding the alarm, that this unexpected shot from Marianne is propelling me out of Venice, I’ll never see her again, she took the first train, she left, and I did too, shaken all of a sudden by her despair the pain makes me come to my senses, at daybreak, Ghassan stunned watches Marianne walk away without believing it, what was she doing outside at that hour half dressed I guess she was looking for me, she was looking for me to tell me she was leaving, it was over, she couldn’t say anything she aimed her shoe at my privates I hurt all the way up to my ears, my eyes full of tears, I took note: I took note, I woke up, shaken, pulled out of waiting and drunkenness, I packed my bags in the shadow of Marianne’s vanished perfume, Achilles the proud warrior gathers his spoils, his shining greaves, and his bronze weapons into hollow vessels, I said goodbye to Ghassan knowing full well I probably would never see him again and three days later, more than six months after my arrival, I took a train almost like this one headed north passing through Milan: there are geographical points about which you realize, once the route has been traveled, that they were crossroads, cruxes perhaps, detours, required passages without your being able to guess—trains and their blind progress always lead you there—that they harbor an important part of the journey, that they define it as well as contain it, modest, those train stations you travel through without ever going outside them, for me it’s the Milan station, a city actually unknown but where, at every change of my existence, I passed through to get into a new train, from Paris to Zagreb, from Venice to Paris, and today from Paris to Rome to go deliver—like any merchandise, pizza, flowers—fifty-year-old secrets and other more recent ones to trembling prelates, in return for hard cash, I set the amount at $300,000, thinking that the irony wouldn’t escape men of the Church, thirty pieces of silver, they didn’t breathe a word, agreed without a murmur, without daring to bargain with the sinner over the price of treason, Rome is still Rome, whoever its master is, I turn round in my seat and close my eyes, Milan, at every bend in life, without ever really pausing there: I’ve never seen the Duomo, or da Vinci’s
Last Supper
, or the Victor Emmanuel Gallery, or the gallows where they exposed the dead Mussolini, hanging by the ankles like a common pig, giving his porcine face the homage due to it, that face with the immense forehead that today adorns so many weird objects in all the markets in Italy, T-shirts aprons playing cards penknives with engraved handles collectible matchboxes alcohol flasks or soccer balls, the economy of fascism seems to be doing well and just recently I saw, after a meeting at the Vatican, on the other side of the river, on People’s Square, a Mussolini ceremony in proper form, for some kind of general election maybe, the new fascists were there with the old fascists, brown shirts, black, songs flags arms raised eagles unfurled Latin inscriptions shouts into microphones authoritarian loudspeakers violence cars swerving tires screeching around the square and immediately I thought of Croatia of course but especially of the end of Salò, the Italian Social Republic, worn away little by little by the partisans who themselves were exterminated en masse from Bolzano to Mauthausen, sent by train beyond the Brenner Pass to die in Teutonic land, whenever the SS didn’t bother finishing them off themselves by clubbing them to death in cells from La Risiera to Trieste—trains carry soldiers and the deported, murderers and victims, weapons and ammunition and for now in the darkness of the countryside that I guess at by dint of the movements of the car behind my closed eyes, the desert of factories sky of fireflies of apocalypse in the dust of the immense industrial zone that hides, to the west, the foothills of Piedmont, rocked by memories as well as by the rails, I left Venice as Marianne left me and I fell asleep, I fell asleep in an Intercity train that was going to Milan to bring me to Paris, everything’s mixed up everything’s muddled I get younger in my sleep disturbed by the memory of Marianne I see again her underwear always white sometimes lacy her curves heavy at the hips and breasts the simplicity of her smile her slightly naïve generosity or the naïvety that we attribute today to generosity, the abyss between us dug with the soldier’s shovel of my departure for Croatia, the first night in Alexandria that always returns with the vividness of a beacon, in that room facing the Mediterranean, it was raining, a yellow lamp illumined the streaks of rain that was the only light she got undressed in the dark, she was on vacation with her parents at the Cairo Club Mediterranean and had treated herself to an excursion to Alexandria on her own, treated herself to adventure, I met her by chance in the train that goes from Cairo to Alexandria, in a luxurious first-class and extraordinarily slow car, a real cliché of Oriental laziness, and along the Nile delta, so green, I ogled the sheer white of her cotton blouse, already, more moved by lust than by any real interest in her soul, drawn by her prehistoric Venus curves, seeking a refuge in tender shapes, the way a child sucks his thumb, a maternal baby bottle in those breasts of hers I couldn’t manage to tear my eyes away from, we lived in the same neighborhood in Paris, bought our bread at the same bakery, and although we had never seen each other there this coincidence seemed, in an Egyptian train jolting along 4,000 kilometers away from the Rue de la Convention, like a divine sign and triggered our complicity, the immediate friendship of people foreign countries push towards each other, corralling them in closeness thanks to the circle of otherness and the unknown that surrounds them: she was on vacation, and so was I, I was seeking in adolescent flight a sense to my life that I thought I could find in Marianne’s imposing breasts, in her white lingerie that illusion, that gift of Aphrodite the dissembler, it hides from desire itself the identity of the flesh it covers, its banality, a false transparency a game of hide-and-seek and asleep daydreaming outside of what I imagine to be Piacenza I see her again once more undressing in the pool of humid half-light, I leave her she leaves me with a resounding kick in the balls, in those organs the cause of our meeting, the circle was closed, my testicles source of my passion ended up getting their comeuppance, crushed under Marianne’s shoe until they shot up and hid at the bottom of my throat, she had punished the ones responsible for the initial mistake and we each took a different train a much faster train than the one that gamboled through the Egyptian countryside between those thin downy cows called
gamous
, in the midst of dovecotes and farmers whose swing-ploughs and hoes haven’t changed since Ramses, one more train, in Venice I had begun reading, reading passionately, withdrawing from the world and burying myself in the pages, whereas in two years of war I hadn’t held one book in my hand not even a Bible in Venetian apathy I stuffed myself with adventure novels, maritime novels, stories about corsairs pirates naval battles whatever the Francophone tourists abandoned in hotels on the lagoon and ended up at the little bookseller’s behind the Campo Santa Margarita, thrillers, spy novels, historical novels and aside from my nocturnal expeditions and my conversations with Ghassan I spent the best part of my time lying on the sofa reading, Marianne was obsessed with the war, more than me maybe, she wanted to know, questioned me endlessly, read treatises about the former Yugoslavia, she had even started learning Croatian which infuriated me, I don’t know why, her accent, her pronunciation irritated me, I needed silence, I needed her body and silence, the only person I managed to talk about the war with was Ghassan: indirectly, little by little, by commenting on the qualities of some rifle, a certain brand of rocket-launcher we began, the way lovers create intimacy little by little, exchanging anecdotes, war stories, and comparing our lives as soldiers, they were nothing alike—Ghassan the handsome warrior, sunglasses, new outfit, M16 in hand, sat in state at a roadblock or hung out at the beach in Jounieh with his comrades, the confrontations were violent and quick, the war lasted for ten years and was well-run, as he said, the only real battle in which he took part was against the Lebanese army in February 1990 in the Metn and at the Nahr al-Kalb, bloody final butchery, from one hill to the other the artillery massacred the fleeing civilians, the fighters threw themselves at each other in a furious melee: Ghassan told me how he had killed his own cousin, a private in the army, with a grenade thrown at his Jeep that was transporting ammunition, the three occupants were blown away in a spray of flesh, metal and fire, over there no one knows that I’m the one that threw that grenade, said Ghassan, how am I supposed to talk normally to my aunt after that, he remembered hurtling down hills shouting to give himself courage, pissing on the barrel of a machine gun to cool it down, without success, putting an armored vehicle out of commission with a LAW 200 meters away and seeing the commander of the tank manage to extricate himself from the carcass but burn like an old blackened shoe bent double over the barrel, crying for hours on end (he said laughing) after a horse died, accidentally knocked down by a volley of fire, and above all, above all he told how he had been wounded, how he had thought himself dead, cut up all of a sudden by dozens of pieces of shrapnel after a bomb exploded, he had seen the jacket of his uniform burst open with machine gun fire, he was suddenly covered in blood pierced from ankle to shoulder by countless bites, a foul viscous substance covered his entire right side, Ghassan had collapsed in spasms of pain and panic, convinced it was the end, the shell had fallen just a few meters away, the doctors removed eight foreign teeth and seventeen bone fragments from his body, debris of the poor guy in front of him volatilized by the explosion and transformed into a human grenade, pieces of smoking skull propelled in a plume of blood, the only metallic shard of which was a gold premolar, Ghassan did come out of it, he still got shivers up his spine and bouts of nausea from disgust, he said,