Zone (28 page)

Kaputt
to Stéphanie, her pout said a lot about what she thought about that sort of author, I the uncultivated neo-fascist dared to give her books, I didn’t have the good fortune to be admitted into the circle of culture, Stéphanie who however loved me passionately couldn’t bear what I was, someone who had begun to read late in life, out of boredom, out of despair, out of passion, and perhaps it was out of jealousy that she looked down on my reading, she wanted to convert me to her, I had to study, to pass a test to advance in rank, she kept reassuring me
you graduated from Sciences-Po you can pass, in-house it’s just a formality
, I secretly thought that I would then have to combine Proust with Céline, that all of a sudden I’d have an orgasm as I dipped my croissant into my coffee and I’d become a doctor, I prefer Lebihan his bike and his oysters, indeed my job was subordinate from the salary point of view but I was fine, I was able to devote myself to drinking, to mourning, to my notes, to my shadows, of course I didn’t play in the adults’ playground as she did, I didn’t have the no doubt pleasant sensation of controlling the planet, or at least a piece of it, drawing maps of prospects and possibilities for change in other words all the prestige that comes with the future and with anticipation in a world of pen-pushers, that illusion of decision, I had enough experience to know that there’s always someone higher up, a lieutenant general above the major general, or vice-versa, I don’t know anymore but maybe since Stéphanie was a woman of responsibilities in an extraordinarily macho world she couldn’t understand why I threw in the towel before even reaching the rungs of the Agency ladder, she who, ever since the age of twenty-seven, dealt with the Defense Minister’s cabinet, the directors, the heads of God knows what party in the Elysée or the Ministry of the Interior—Stéphanie felt poor, the more she glimpsed the world higher up the more her own means and income seemed laughable to her, whereas what with the many and various bonuses I myself always had the impression of being rich, the tenant of a not too tiny top-floor two-room apartment, owner of three shirts a package of photographs and a Zastava 1970-model pistol with no firing pin so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it, I never deprived myself of anything, she spent all her time asking me but how do you do it? how do you manage to get by financially? I had no idea, for Stéphanie money was above all there to be hoarded, accumulated, amassed, deposited, for later on, for God knows when, for God knows what, she already owned her own apartment, every month she deposited a fortune in the bank and still found a way to economize—we were in love, inseparable as the blind man and the cripple of Jerusalem: she saw for me, she guided me in the dark and I carried her, or vice-versa, we loved the missing part of the other, the part that wasn’t there and this attraction to absence was as strong as anti-matter doomed to destruction to explosion and to great silence, a real romantic novel, apparently love is one of the constants of universal literature—as strange as that may seem I remember that phrase of Lebihan’s the lover of mollusks and bicycles, the man able to expedite a contingent of suspects to Guantánamo and to wolf down two dozen oysters, once he talked to me about love, but it wasn’t about him or me or the secretary, it was
Les Misérables
, in his semi-detached house in the suburbs (I picture a semi-detached house in the suburbs, but maybe after all he lived in a sumptuous apartment on the Quai Voltaire) he regularly watched a serial adaptation of the novel on television, with delight, and every morning commented on the actions and gestures of the characters as if, for him, there was a real
suspense
there: Lebihan actually didn’t know the end of the
Les Misérables
, he’d say Francis, Francis, yesterday Marius kissed Cosette, or something like that, and I’d reply
ah, love, Monsieur Lebihan,
and then he’d say
love is one of the constants of universal literature
,
Francis
, which made me speechless, I must say, I had never thought about it, Lebihan no doubt was right, Rafael Kahla speaks well about love, between Beirut and Tangiers, in his elegant little book, a Palestinian passion of heavy-booted fighters, what will happen to the noble Intissar, where was I, I earmarked a page, here:

XIII

Now Marwan is dead, his body turning black in the Beirut sun near the airport, barely a hundred kilometers away from where he was born.

Ahmad. Ahmad’s presence beside Marwan disturbs Intissar. Ahmad the cruel. Ahmad the coward. What were they doing together? Ever since the incident they were linked solely because of a shared cause and a cold hatred. The first time she saw Ahmad, though, something in her trembled. It was on the front line, a year earlier, when some fighters were returning from the South. Ahmad was almost carried high in triumph. He was handsome, with an aura of victory. A group of Fedayeen had gotten into the security zone, confronted a unit of the Israeli army, and destroyed a vehicle. Even Marwan admired their courage. Intissar had shaken Ahmad’s hand and congratulated him. Men change. Weapons transform them. Weapons and the illusion they create. The false power they give. What you think you can get because you have them.

What use could the weapon lying on her lap like a newborn possibly be? What is she going to get because of it, three olive trees and four stones? A kilo of Jaffa oranges? Revenge. She is going to win peace of soul. Avenge the man she loves. Then defeat will be consummate, the city will collapse into the sea, and everything will disappear.

•

“Hello, boys.”

“
Ahleeeeeen ya Ahmad
,” the card-players reply.

Ahmad has one arm in a sling, he is smiling. He hasn’t seen Intissar. Habib congratulates him on his discharge from the hospital and, with a move of his head, draws his attention to the young woman sitting on the floor.

She feels her throat go tight.

Ahmad goes over to her. She gets up. He looks her sadly in the eyes.

“Intissar . . .”

He puts on an appropriate look, a look of mourning. He lays down his weapon to express his condolences to the widow.

“Intissar, there was nothing to be done . . .”

She feels a flood of tears rising but she tries to control them. She’s a fighter. Fighters do not cry in public.

“We were on reconnaissance, just before. One of their tanks was hidden behind a wall, with its engine switched off, dawn was just breaking, they got us in their sights with the machine gun, Marwan fell, I was hit by a ricochet. A scratch, thank God. Him, he was . . . he was in the line of fire, you understand? Impossible to pull him away.”

She remains impassive.

“And now? And now? You think it’s possible to go look for him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, they probably moved the tank right after, but . . .”

“Tonight?”

“You . . . You want to see him?”

“How?”

“Maybe we can get a glimpse of him, from up there. Habib, you think I can let her climb up onto the roof? It’s quiet, isn’t it?”

Habib gives a slight, strained smile, and says: “Yes, if you want, but be careful, if they spot you they’ll think you’re snipers and bomb us for sure. Watch out for reflections off weapons and binoculars, OK?”

She feels her stomach churn. Hunger. Or the prospect of seeing the body in the afternoon sun. She wonders if Habib knew that Marwan might be visible from the roof of the building. Probably. That’s defeat. You don’t go looking for the dead anymore. You don’t want to see them anymore. Ahmad has hung a pair of binoculars around his neck. She lets him go first, because she knows he has a tendency to stare at her buttocks in her canvas pants at the slightest opportunity. He tries to see through them. That made Marwan furious, that Ahmad can’t peel his eyes away from her ass. The climb is complicated. To reach the second floor, you have to go out of the building and go in again through a rocket hole by the staircase, a staircase that no longer exists, replaced by a pile of rubble and debris where a rickety ladder has been set up. Ahmad climbs, she grabs the ladder in her turn, he holds out his hand to help her, she pretends she hasn’t seen him and, athletic, jumps up onto the landing. The first five or six steps are missing from the stairway to the third floor; you have to hoist yourself up with your arms. Once again, Ahmad offers his help. She doesn’t want to touch him. She jumps, then drags her hip up onto the step. She is in good shape. She begins sweating in her canvas but doesn’t want to wear just a T-shirt, even though underneath it she’s wearing, chaste carapace, a thick bra, almost a bustier. She confines herself to unbuttoning two buttons of her jacket. The floors in between are easier to reach, but the top two are mostly destroyed, most of the roof has collapsed, you have to climb onto tilted slabs of concrete, keeping clear of the iron bars sticking out. The sun is relentless. The dust, effort, and heat make her terribly thirsty. Her throat is totally dry; she can’t manage to utter a word. They crawl through a passage on the terrace cluttered with rubble and cartridge cases. The sun pins them to the cement. Around her, Beirut lies in haze. To the right the mercury of the sea and the immense wasteland of the airport; to the left, the sports arena and the Shatila camp. In front, the grid of ruined little streets, cut into four by two large streets strewn with burnt cars, trash, and the dark spots, like puddles of oil, of asphalt melted by phosphorus. So that’s what’s left of the city. Ramshackle remains, rubble, stardust. And in the middle Marwan’s body.

Ahmad has gotten as close as possible to the corner of the roof and gotten out the binoculars from their case. He is scrutinizing the battlefield to the south. Intissar has gone over to him, almost touching him, despite her disgust. Ahmad has frozen. He whispers: “Look, over there, the Israeli positions. Their tanks are hidden in those streets over there. At the corner of the big street you can see Marwan.”

She feels herself trembling. She needs to urinate, all of a sudden. She doesn’t know if she should take the binoculars Ahmad is handing her. The sun is a little behind them, they’re backlit, the Israelis can’t notice their presence. She looks. With her eyes blurred by tears or sweat, she sees nothing. She wipes them off with her sleeve. An indistinct, vague, rapid image, a concrete wall, a twisted streetlight. She gets her bearings. She is afraid of the instant the corpse will appear in close-up on a sidewalk. With her eyes, she follows the street Ahmad pointed out. She sees it. She goes past it. She comes back to it. She has a taste of bile in her mouth. A feeling of nausea. It’s Marwan. You can only see his arms outstretched, his head turned to the other side, his hair, his blackened back. His blackened back. The big dark stain on his jacket. The flies buzzing around him. She removes the binoculars to cry. It is really him, and he is really dead. She doesn’t cry. She picks up the binoculars again. She looks one more time, then, mentally, makes note of landmarks, to be able to reach him. That street, there, then right, then left and straight ahead, she should end up right at the corner where he’s outstretched. She checks the route with her naked eyes, almost 300 meters. The twisted streetlight like a tree to orient herself. It’s nothing, 300 meters. Ahmad is carefully wiping the lenses with a sketchy rag. She turns back and returns to the shelter of the roof at a crawl. Ahmad follows her. He watches her legs and buttocks sway. One thigh moves away from the other, her pants are stained with sweat. Intissar has only Marwan in mind. It is four o’clock. He was killed more or less twelve hours ago. She rifles through her horrible memories, imagines what a corpse that has been abandoned in the sun for twelve hours looks like. Flies on coagulated blood, in the mouth if it’s open, on the eyes if they’re open. Rigor mortis that might not yet have begun to pass off. And it must be sheltered a little by the shadow of the wall. She weeps hot tears. She suddenly wants to shout Marwan, Marwan, Marwan, she goes back down as fast as she can, she scratches her wrist on a rod in the concrete, almost sprains her ankle leaping onto the debris. Ahmad follows her with difficulty, in silence. After reaching the ground floor she goes back to the card-players and collapses in a corner. She is hot. She is thirsty. She is shivering with pain. Marwan the last dead man of the defeat. Marwan the corpse of the falling city.

•

A few days before, in the bedroom of the requisitioned apartment they were occupying in Hamra, Marwan was still saying: In 1975, all hopes were possible. The Movement was strong and unified, the Lebanese on the left were staunchly on our side, even Syria, we thought, the only traitors were the Jordanians, and maybe the Egyptians; the occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem was recent, not irreversible, the October war had shown that Israel was not invincible, the world was beginning to hear about the Palestinians, Beirut was beautiful, full of Marxist intellectuals and poets, and leftist Europeans who wore the keffiyeh and got drunk in the bars in Hamra, there were glorious actions in the South, money, Soviet weapons and Fedayeen who were training in armed combat. Can you believe we thought we could liberate the country? From our point of view, our thousands of soldiers seemed colossal. They were. They were for the Palestinians in the camps and for the Lebanese on our side. Our internal struggles, our disputes were shelved. We were stronger than ever. Look at us today, surrounded, betrayed, our last city reduced to nothing. The Lebanese are conking out on us. The Arabic world is going to root us out like a cyst, throw us back into the sea to who knows where. If we leave now we’ll never come back, Intissar, believe me. If Beirut falls, Palestine will be an Israeli garden, and we, if we’re lucky, will be their farmyard animals. We have to fight. Here you can see Galilee, smell it. It is there. Our people are there. I’d rather die for Beirut than rot slowly on a rock in the Mediterranean.