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how great is the God of holy martyrs!
then he ran and threw himself at their feet and kissed their chains,
courage
, he said to them,
martyrs of Jesus Christ
and the judge Simplician, who saw Boniface, had him approach his court and asked him who he was,
I am a Christian
, he replied,
and Boniface is my name
then the angry judge had him strung up and ordered his body to be flayed, until his bare bones could be seen then he had sharpened reeds pushed under his fingernails, the holy martyr, his eyes lifted to heaven, bore his sufferings with joy, then the fierce judge ordered molten led to be poured into his mouth, but the saint said
thanks be to you, Lord Jesus, Son of the living God
, after which Simplician called for a cauldron filled with boiling pitch and Boniface was thrown into it head-first, the saint still didn’t suffer, then the judge ordered his head to be cut off: immediately there came a terrible earthquake and many infidels, who had been able to appreciate Boniface’s courage, converted, his comrades bought his body and they embalmed it and wrapped it in costly linens and then, having put it on a litter, they returned to Rome where an angel of the Lord appeared to Aglaida and revealed to her what had happened to Boniface, she went over to the holy body and had a tomb worthy of it built in its honor—as for Aglaida, she renounced the world and its pomp, after having distributed all her worldly goods to the poor and the monasteries she freed her slaves and spent the rest of her life in fasting and prayer, before being buried next to Saint Boniface tortured and beheaded, during the homily I thought about Maks Luburić the Croatian butcher, about those whom he had decapitated, flayed, impaled, burned because they were infidels, how many times had he heard the Mass of Saint Boniface martyr patron saint of Carcaixent, under the name Vicente Pérez was he still thinking about Jasenovac or Ante Pavelić great collector of human eyes when his assassin smashed his skull with a log before stabbing him twenty times with a kitchen knife, one warm April night, in the heady perfume of the flowering orange tree, I down my gin to the health of Boniface the little martyr from Tarsus in Cilicia, Tarsus city of Saint Paul and of the Armenians massacred in turn by the infidel Turks under the eyes of Doughty-Wylie the consul fallen in the Dardanelles, my head is spinning, my head is spinning I feel suddenly nauseous I cling to the window jamb, I need some air, the bartender is looking at me, the gin didn’t do me any good I’ll go splash some water on my face, I stagger in the train’s movements over to the nearby john, I close the door behind me sprinkle myself with water as if for a baptism I sit down in the comfort of the brushed steel alcohol was a mistake I haven’t eaten anything all day, what the hell am I doing here in the train toilets I’m beat I’ll go back and sit down try to sleep a little but first I’ll light a cigarette, too bad for the anti-cancer laws, soon Florence, soon Florence and then Rome, what slowness despite the speed, the dryness of the tobacco relaxes me, the tiny toilet is immediately filled with smoke, like the square in Carcaixent after the
mascletà
, as we left the Mass of the martyr Boniface a band was playing local tunes on short wind instruments that sounded shrill and piercing, a horrible sound that bored into our eardrums as mercilessly as the firecrackers, the faithful followed the fanfare while out on the square they were setting off fireworks that exploded in a fountain over the night sky, it was like Naples on New Year’s Eve, Naples or Palermo, a tie in pyrotechnical excess, along with Barcelona in the summer on Saint John’s Day, a trinity of cities in love with noise, Carcaixent put all its good will into it, the festival was in full swing, after three or four more drinks and a quick dinner Stéphanie wanted to go to bed, I let her go back alone to the hotel I had business to attend to at 25 Avinguda Blasco-Ibáñez the author of
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
and
Mare Nostrum
, what an address, with his advanced age I was pretty sure the man I was looking for would be home, maybe even asleep, if he could find sleep, a little outside of the center of town I spotted a telephone booth, I dialed his number, after four rings a man’s voice replied
si?
I hung up immediately, according to my map the avenue was a scant hundred meters to the south, Ljubo Runjas isn’t expecting me, what’s more his name is Barnabas Köditz now, he has lived in Spain since 1947, in Madrid at first and then, when Ante Pavelić died ten years later, he settled in Carcaixent, for years he informed Yugoslav intelligence about the activities of Luburić the butcher and other Ustashis protected by Franco, he gave them everything, in exchange for his own immunity—from whom could he be hiding, Ljubo Runjas the sergeant from Jasenovac, at twenty years of age he was a man of base deeds, murdering women and children, by poison by gas by club or knife, he had the hot blood of youth, Ljubo, born in 1922 he will die in his bed, unlike his mentor Maks Luburić whom he betrayed, he helped his assassin flee to France and I suspect him too of having planted one or two knife wounds in his friend’s body, out of pleasure, prudently he then left Carcaixent for Valencia, before returning and settling there over twenty years after the fact, for reasons I know nothing of, sentimental ones maybe, maybe financial ones, he’s still there at almost eighty years of age when I head for Avenue Blasco-Ibáñez the duel-loving writer, the whole village is at the festival the streets are deserted, dark, the avenue is lined with buildings on one side on the other a few villas looking out onto the orchards by the banks of the Júcar, the night is very dark, no moon, not one star, the stars must not have shone often in Jasenovac on the Sava which the inmates crossed in a ferry to go to Gradina where most of the executions took place, they say that Ljubo Runjas killed almost a hundred people with his own hands in a field in one evening, with a knife, impossible to believe that the condemned ones stayed quietly in their field, he must have had to run after them like chickens, women children old men, Ljubo Runjas had invented a method so as not to have cramps in his fingers he attached the weapon with a piece of leather directly to his palm like a glove, his hand just had a few jobs to do, just direct the blade, the whole movement was in the arm like a tennis player, forehand stroke, backhand, how many humans did he sacrifice in three years in Jasenovac, many more than the animals in his father’s slaughterhouse, more than all the lambs of Bosnia on the day of Kurban Bajram, even the Nazis were horrified by the Ustashi methods, the Nazis who sought to protect their soldiers from proximity to the victims, who used technology for massacres ever since Himmler himself, by a ditch near Riga, had been splattered by Jewish blood: in Jasenovac there were no rules no technology no order in death, it came according to the murderers’ own sweet whims, firearms, knives, clubs especially, one by one the inmates went through the double door, behind which they got a big hammer blow on the back of the head, next, next, the executioners relieved each other every thirty or forty victims, an amateur business, amateur or at most an eighteenth-century technique—I ring the bell at number 25, the villa is white, with a covered porch, a tiny garden where a short palm tree holds court, no lights, I try again, it’s 10:30, a festival day, the porch lights up, the intercom crackles, the same
si?
as on the telephone, I say very loudly
Dobar večer, gospon Runjas, kako ste?
there is a long silence, has he changed his mind, I picture my old man hesitating in his bathrobe, a buzz suddenly comes through the gate, I push it, there is a man with his back to the light on the porch on top of the steps, I go up to him, I have in front of me Ljubo Runjas the little, 5’4” and shrunk by age, white hair, wrinkled face, prominent nose, large ears, his suspicious and even menacing gaze contrasts with the reedy voice that says to me
I was expecting you much earlier, I’d gone to bed you know
, I don’t reply, he signs to me to come in, I talk for a few minutes with Ljubomir Runjas the brutal whom the years have bent, Ljubo the underling, the little murderer will die in his bed, in Carcaixent, without anyone taking the trouble to find him, he asks me how my grandfather is doing, I tell him that Franjo Mirković died in 1982 in Paris, he says
ah, we’re all leaving, the patriots are all dying one after the other
, farewell first independent State of Croatia, the black NDH, savage great killer of Serbs, farewell, bon voyage, the false
señor
Köditz looks a little sad, the living room he receives me in is typically Spanish, full of knickknacks, colors, a Virgin with Child on a wall, a silver icon on the 1960s sideboard, here you’d think Barnabas Köditz was a retired German, I ask him why he came back to live in Carcaixent, he answers with a shrug, he looks nervous, in a hurry to get it over with—he slowly gets up, goes over to the sideboard, opens a drawer, takes out a square package wrapped in brown paper, hands it to me, my name is on the outside, written in a fine hand in blue ink, old-style,
Mirkovi
ć
Francis
, I take the package, thank him, Ljubo remains standing to convey to me that the interview is over, farewell, farewell,
bog, bog
he does not hold out his hand, nor do I, there is nothing in his eyes, he leads me to the steps, waits till I’ve gone through the gate to close the door, and voilà, I’m in the street with a package under my arm, the fireworks are lighting up the night again, sprays of sparkles followed by a muffled explosion, whistling rockets flying over the rooftops, in the package there are a hundred or so annotated photographs from Jasenovac, letters, a long list of numbers, the inventory of the dead, with no names or origin, just the daily tally of deaths, from 1941 to 1945, 1,500 days, 1,500 lines of calculation, all the shot the poisoned the gassed the clubbed the disemboweled the drowned the ones with their throats cut the burned alive all grouped into a number and a date, for each of the sub-camps around the Sava, teeming with storks and carp—in Carcaixent near Valencia the festival is in full swing, an orchestra has taken possession of the square, from time to time a rocket is set off, a firecracker, it is early still it’s the old people and the children who are dancing, to the paso doble from long ago, two by two they dance, I pause to watch them for a bit, the couples are elegant, the men stick out their chests and lightly swing their shoulders, the women let themselves be led from one end to the other, the ones who are too old or too young to dance are leaning on the bar or sitting on folding chairs, Ljubo Runjas alias Barnabas Köditz is perhaps already asleep, I think of Jasenovac, I think of Maks Luburić, of Dinko Sakić whom the new Croatia has just sentenced to twenty years in prison at seventy-eight years of age, extradited from Argentina Dinko had been the chief of Jasenovac along with Maks Luburić his brother-in-law: they danced on the shores of the Sava, they danced in this forgotten village in Spain, I clutch the package I’ll go to bed now, the paso doble is over more rockets light up the sky, blue and red flowers celebratory explosions for the dead of Jasenovac, I climb the stairs and curl up against Stéphanie, listening to the murmur of the music, in the dark, mixed with the racket of the fireworks and with the breathing of the woman lying there, despite everything she’s asleep, she’s asleep and I find it very difficult, who knows why, to convince myself that she’s not dead, despite the regular breath that lifts her chest as the orchestra strikes up “A Mi Manera,” the gentle Iberian version of “My Way”—the next morning, after a sleep full of storks flying over swampy mass graves, after a quick breakfast in the midst of the festival debris, after recovering the Citroën from the parking lot we went to the Carcaixent cemetery to see the grave of Luburić-Pérez, beautiful and well-kept, Stéphanie couldn’t believe her eyes, the people around here liked him she said I replied that’s right, his children even went to the local school without the tiniest stone being thrown at them, farewell Maks the butcher, we continued on towards Xàtiva not knowing that a few days later Barnabas Köditz would die from a heart attack, farewell Ljubo the bloodthirsty sergeant, your documents have joined the others in the suitcase, the meticulous photographs, the numbers, the administrative letters from Zagreb, farewell—about twenty kilometers away the little town of Xàtiva hovered between the plain and the mountain, the palm trees and the orange trees, the little streets in the center of town were pleasant and the Renaissance palaces were reminiscent of the great families of the area especially the Borgias, who knew power and glory in Rome: the palace where Pope Alexander VI Borgia was born was dark and sumptuous, like the pontificate of its owner, his many children and his passions for coitus, scandal, and politics make him eminently likeable, Stéphanie the Alsatian was offended by the pontiff’s lack of respect for the papal institution,
o tempora, o mores
, the popes today want to be prudish mystical vapid and well-washed, the ones from before smelled of depravity and conspiracy, the Borgias spoke Valencian among themselves even in the heart of Rome which makes them historical heroes for the local cause, despite the pleasantly unorthodox whiff of their saga: so Xàtiva was pleasant and we ate well there, a kind of paella cooked in the oven, usually washed down with a mean wine produced in the region of Alicante, this beverage had something medieval and unorthodox about it too, the Jasenovac package was still wrapped in its brown paper and what with the good food and the fornication I forgot the dead and the butchers—four days of vacation, Valencia Carcaixent Xàtiva Dènia Valencia, Stéphanie was happy, she had the enviable ability to be able to forget Paris and the Boulevard Mortier as soon as the plane doors had shut, she erased her reports her analyses as a young secret agent in the wink of an eye, I felt as if she were even more beautiful because of it, with her sunglasses that she used as a headband to hold back her dark hair, she was calm, completely present to the world, armed with Proust and Céline and her convictions supported by high culture, I have the feeling that I miss her all of a sudden sitting on my train throne cigarette in hand, I miss her sometimes, better not think about her, better not think about the catastrophe of the end of our relationship, where is she now, posted to Moscow which she dreamed about, if I met her in the street I wouldn’t speak, neither would she, we would ignore each other just as we ignored each other at the end in the hallways on the Boulevard, we weren’t supposed to meet each other I was promised another fate I was living on borrowed time Stéphanie was just an illusion,