Zone (30 page)

Ahmad picks up the corpse by the arms, Habib by the feet. One is missing a boot, which fell off in the middle of the street. The milky-white foot seems to gleam in the night.

She follows them as she surveys the rear, no more noise, no more anything, the Israelis have spared them, that’s for sure, they didn’t aim their fire. They were impossible to miss, in the line of sight, almost motionless, the machine gun could have cut them in half. They let them carry the body away. Little by little, as they walk, Intissar calms down. Ahmad and Habib are struggling. They stop regularly to catch their breath. She feels empty. Her tears have disappeared. The return trip is always shorter. They reach the post safely. The three fighters cheer them. They saw the light of the flare, heard the gunfire.

Habib and Ahmad set the body down in a corner and wrap it in a dirty blanket that had been lying there. Ahmad avoids Habib’s gaze. Contacted probably by radio, Abu Nasser and two other guys whose names Intissar has forgotten arrive. Abu Nasser lifts the blanket to look at the corpse. He gathers himself in silence, replaces the shroud, his eyes clouded with tears.

“Marwan was the best of us all. The bravest.”

She feels tears rising again. Marwan is so far away.

Ahmad’s wound has re-opened. A bloodstain is growing on his T-shirt.

Abu Nasser takes Intissar tenderly by the arm.

“What do you want to do, Intissar? We have a car. I’ll take you wherever you like.”

Habib and the other three have lit up another joint and have begun playing cards again. Habib the impenetrable fighter. Courageous and loyal. He waits. He hasn’t even mentioned the incident of the machine gun and Ahmad’s cowardliness. Noble. She walks over to the little group and holds out her hand to Habib.

“Thank you. See you soon.”

“It’s nothing. Marwan was my friend. Take care of yourself.”

It’s almost 1:00 in the morning. Intissar feels exhausted. She can’t even manage to think. Marwan is dead. His body is there. Abu Nasser has exchanged the dirty blanket for a dark-green plastic tarp found in the car. Intissar wants to be alone. Alone with Marwan. She asks Abu Nasser if he can drop her off at her place in Hamra.

“And Marwan? You want . . . You want us to leave him at the hospital?”

“No. At my place. At our place. Tomorrow morning I’ll bury him.”

“You . . . you’re sure?”

“Yes, Abu Nasser.”

“OK, it’s up to you. Tomorrow morning I’ll come back with a car. The day should be calm. Or, if you like, we can take care of it now.”

“No. Tomorrow morning. Thank you, Abu Nasser.”

“Let’s go, then.”

The soldiers who are escorting Abu Nasser carefully place Marwan in the back of the Jeep. Ahmad gets in too. Abu Nasser has Intissar get in in front. He likes to drive. Despite being a higher-ranking officer, he always drives his own vehicle. He sets off noisily. Drive fast, without stopping. Even at night, you have to be careful. Abu Nasser is an important link in the military command of the PLO. You never know. Behind, his two bodyguards are holding their weapons at the ready.

They pass the checkpoints without any problems; everyone knows Abu Nasser, even the Lebanese militia in the Murabitun, the PNSP, or the People’s Party. At night, when the danger of Israeli attacks is a little more remote, Beirut seems to have a tiny burst of energy. The flickering butane lights in the rare open shops, the fighters at the streetcorners—all the last spasms of a dying animal.

Having reached Hamra, the Jeep stops in front of the dark apartment building where Intissar lives. Abu Nasser cuts the engine.

“In back of the car there’s a crate of bottled water. Take it. Tomorrow morning I’ll be there.”

Her voice trembles a little.

“Thank you, Abu Nasser. Thank you very much.”

The soldiers get out of the Jeep, except for Ahmad. He nods to her, one hand clutched over his wound. She takes the carton of water. The bodyguards follow her with the heavy green tarp.

She climbs up to her floor, opens the door. The little apartment is plunged into darkness.

The soldiers set down the corpse; she lights the first candle she sees. She thanks them. She sits down next to the yellowish flame and immediately starts crying. She is exhausted. The strange smell of the body invades the room little by little. She thinks. She goes into the bedroom to get the gas lamp.

Marwan is a hero. A martyr for the cause. A great soldier. Respected of course by Abu Nasser, but also by Abu Jihad and the others. He refused to surrender. He wanted to fight until his last breath. He died shot in the back by a machine gun during a reconnaissance mission to plan an operation. To continue the resistance. Fortify the city. Not let it fall into the enemy’s hands. Now, in the middle of the night, in the silence, all that seems laughable. Even to her, the fights she has fought, the expeditions into the South, the battles against the Phalangists, the men she’s killed, all that is very far away. Useless, pointless. She realizes that she forgot her weapon at the post on the front. It’s a sign. That never could have happened during the last two years. Marwan has no more weapons, she will not have any either. The city is suspended in air. After seven years of battle. Tears of rage and sadness fill her eyes. She takes off her jacket. In her closet, everything is khaki, dark green, camouflage. She finds a grey nightgown. She’ll take care of the corpse. She sets the lamp up in the little bathroom. There is no shower stall, just a plug in the middle of the tiled, slightly sloping floor. She carries in the crate of bottled water. Abu Nasser is thoughtful. Without this gift she could never have washed the body. She will put it on the bed, in a white sheet, and she will watch over it until the car arrives tomorrow morning. Then they’ll come pick it up and bury it. Somewhere. If the Israelis leave us alone. She gathers her courage and drags the tarp into the bathroom. She pulls off the plastic, uncovers the stained outfit. The deformed face. The dark beard. She trembles, she has tears in her eyes. Kneeling next to Marwan, it really is him, all of a sudden. She sees him there despite the distance of death. He has returned into his body. She has trouble taking off the jacket and T-shirt, the arms are stiff, she cuts the clothes off with scissors. His torso. There are four black wounds on his torso. Where the bullets came out. Big, well-defined, fatal. Made to go through armored tanks and walls. They surely continued their trajectory without even slowing down. The smell of meat, of death. She cuts off the pants, takes off the single boot. She takes all the bloody clothes, on the verge of nausea, throws them into the kitchen sink, pours a little lamp alcohol on them and sets them on fire. Who will worry about smoke in besieged Beirut? She has a brief bout of nausea. She makes sure nothing can catch fire around the sink and closes the door.

Marwan, naked in front of her on the bathroom tile. His eyes closed, his faced hardened by the contraction of the jaw. The surprise of death, the surprise of the 12.7 caliber projectiles that went through his chest, perforated his heart, his lungs, broke his ribs. She takes a sponge and pours a bottle of water onto Marwan. Intissar is no longer trembling. She is no longer crying. She caresses him gently. Little by little she erases the traces of coagulated blood on the torso, around the mouth, the nose, on the stomach, delicately. Marwan the warrior. The first time they fought together, along the boundary line, her training was scarcely over. She wasn’t afraid, she had confidence in herself, and confidence in Marwan to guide her. Marwan was one of the most respected officers. A brave man. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the amateurism and anarchy of the Lebanese militia. Once the artillery had fallen silent, they had prepared a perfect trap for the fascists, a pincer that had crushed them. She remembers the final assault perfectly: the taste of brass in her mouth, the noise, the running between buildings, she sees again the first volley she shot at a moving human target, and her surprise when she saw it killed, she remembers the excitement of combat, powerful, sexual, fierce, which was appeased, late at night, in Marwan’s arms. The pleasure of victory. Intissar is the only woman to have destroyed a vehicle and its occupants with an anti-tank rocket. She watched for a long time as the blackened corpses were consumed in the flames of the overturned car, full of a mixture of satisfaction, fascination and disgust. She knows that her cause is just. She didn’t start the war. It was the Zionists. Then the Lebanese allied with the Israelis. Then again the Israelis. And now, defeat, the heavy boots that no longer move forward. Marwan who could no longer run fast enough to avoid the bullets. Martyrs abandoned on a sidewalk corner. Bodies washed in apartment bathrooms. The city that’s falling and, on top of it all, exile.

XIV

destitute magnificent those Palestinians with the heavy boots what a story I wonder if it’s true Intissar washes Marwan’s body it’s very sad all that so sad, I’d have liked to wash Andrija’s body caress it with a sponge one last time, the stories intersect, Marwan’s clothes burning in the Beirut sink like my uniforms in my Venetian bathroom, one more coincidence, poor Intissar, despite the victory cries of some people the summer of 1982 must not have been one of the more cheerful ones, I wonder if Rafael Kahla the author of the story was in Beirut then, no doubt, it’s likely, how old is he, fifty-four says the back cover, yes it’s possible he was just going on thirty at the time, Marwan’s age perhaps, September 1982 the shadow is looming heavily over the Palestinians, they’ll take refuge in Algiers then in Tunis, all those fighters scattered in the Zone—Rafael Kahla about whom I know nothing left Lebanon maybe at the same time as Intissar, maybe to go into self-imposed exile in Tangier, Tingis of the Phoenicians where he will meet Jean Genet, with whom he will talk again about the Palestinians: in September 1982 Jean Genet spends a few days in Beirut in the company of Leila Shahid the diplomat for the Cause, the very active representative of the PLO in Paris who had a file with us as long as your arm, I forget how but the two lightheartedly send Genet to Shatila on Sunday, September 21
^st
, the first day of autumn and the day after the massacre, Jean Genet the heavenly gravedigger strokes the bluish corpses swollen from flies in the narrow streets of the death camp, he walks around, his gaze follows the deceased over to the common grave, he discovers silence and stillness, the smell of flesh in the scent of the sea, maybe that’s the meaning of Rafael Kahla’s story, Marwan’s body abandoned at a crossroads, unreachable, Intissar washes Marwan’s body just as Genet washed the bodies of the old men and children who were killed in Shatila, in front of the eyes of Israeli soldiers who provided the bulldozers to erase the blunder—Andi old friend I couldn’t go look for you, I couldn’t, we heard the volley of gunfire we saw you there, lying in your excrement, and we began fighting, the shots whistled around us, the same bullets that had just gone through your chest, I didn’t have time to cry, no time to caress you, ten seconds after seeing you and hurrying towards you I was stretched out on the ground weapon in hand forced to crawl to escape, to run away leaving you there because we were almost surrounded, trapped, outnumbered, overwhelmed by the pack of mujahideen around us, the last time I saw you your eyes were wide open to the Bosnian sky a smile on your face a contraction I didn’t have Intissar’s luck, I fled in a cowardly way maybe because I didn’t love you enough maybe my own life mattered more than yours maybe life isn’t like it is in books, I was a crawling animal frightened by the sight of blood I had often thought that I could die but not you, we thought you were immortal like Ares himself, I was afraid, all of a sudden, I fled in a cowardly way, an insect trying to escape a boot, we all ran away abandoning you there in the countryside quivering with spring, but don’t worry you are avenged, you are doubly avenged for Francis the coward is in the process of disappearing, after his long journey among the shadows of the Zone he is erasing himself, I will become Yvan Deroy, I owe you this new life, Andi, it’s over, I’m off, we’ll see each other again on the White Island at the mouth of the Danube, when the time comes, farewell Marwan farewell Andrija and shit now I’m crying, this story made me cry I wasn’t expecting this, it’s unfair I rub my eyes turn my head to the window so no one sees me I’m not in very good shape I’m exhausted probably I can’t manage to stop the tears it’s ridiculous now all I need is the conductor to show up, how foolish I’d look, crying like Mary Magdalene a few kilometers outside Florence, it must be the effect of the gin, a trick of perfidious Albion, no, that story is taking me back without my realizing it, too many details, too many things in common, better set the book down for now, even in Venice in limbo in the depths of the lagoon I didn’t cry much and now almost ten years later I’m weeping like a schoolgirl, the weight of years, the weight of the suitcase, the weight of all those bodies collected right and left preserved embalmed in photography with the endless lists of their lives their deaths I’ll bury them now, bury the briefcase and all it contains and farewell, I’ll go join Caravaggio in a pretty harbor at the foot of a little mountain, stuff myself with pasta till it’s coming out of my nose, learn the
The Divine Comedy
by heart and write my Memoirs and poems like Eduardo
Che
Rózsa the international warrior, just after Iraq I saw him again on TV, by chance, in a British documentary that Stéphanie almost forced me to watch, she wanted to know, Stéphanie wanted to know what I had seen what I had done in the war, for her those two years of my existence were the key, the heart of the mystery, she wanted to cure me of it, she was convinced I had to talk about it, that I had to empty myself of my memories and confess and she’d listen to me and everything would be all better, of course I knew she wasn’t ready to hear me, so I said nothing, but she returned to the attack trying by every means possible to make me speak, she invented pretexts,
today I read a very interesting article about Eastern Slavonia returning to Croatia
, I could see her coming a mile off, I’d say Oh? she’d insist
what is it like, over there?
and so on, I’d get irritated without understanding that at bottom her questions were legitimate, and also she was so beautiful I liked being with her so I was patient, at the time out of respect for the Agency we were living in hiding so to speak, obviously everyone must have known, Lebihan the paternal boss winked at me, he who was so discreet, so professional—I dry my tears, that’s it I’m not crying any more, thank you Mr. Lebihan, it’s over, nothing like your reddened face to soothe my aching heart, on the other side of the aisle the flautist is still sleeping, her husband apparently hasn’t noticed anything, he is looking out the window, trying to pierce the darkness of the countryside, soon Florence, then the train won’t stop any more, it will go fast now, I hope, in a little over two hours I’ll be at the Piazza lost in the crowd of tourists, when I think that I could have been there at ten in the morning if I hadn’t missed the plane, a trick of the gods without a doubt, a prank of Fate to punish me with twelve hours on the train, this morning scarcely had the TGV gotten underway than I fell asleep to awaken in the Alps, in the middle of snow and ice peaks around Megève, it’s the effect of the amphetamine that woke me up probably, I feel as if it’s been a constant night for forty-eight hours for days for years will I see the dawn will I see the dawn will Yvan Deroy the madman see the dawn tomorrow morning as he leaves his hotel room like a good tourist he’ll go to the Forum or to Saint Peter’s, Rome city of autocrats of assassins and sermonizers, I hope tomorrow it will be broad daylight, I hope daybreak will come too for Intissar, the rosy-fingered dawn will envelop Beirut and Tangier, Alexandria and Salonika, one after the other, will draw them out of the shadow, in our war there weren’t many women, a few cold savage ones and others who were tender and friendly, who came as nurses, as cooks, the women were mostly widows mothers sisters, victims, the others were just the exception to the rule, women were mainly images in wallets like the sister of Andi the brave, or Marianne whose photograph I too carried, like all soldiers since there have been painted images—I never looked at it, the photo, I never took it out of my pocket that image of Marianne taken in Turkey by the sea, it was slowly growing moldy along with my credit card, between the folds of leather bleached by sweat, in the beginning I wrote letters, we wrote letters, except Andrija whose parents were right nearby: unlike Marcel Maréchal and the
poilus
of 1914 I never knew what to say, I was ashamed maybe or afraid of frightening my family, I dished out commonplaces about the powerful enemy, about the courage of our troops, about victory and I said I was doing well, that I wasn’t taking any needless risks, that I had good comrades who were watching out for me, that’s it, then of course the letters became spaced farther apart, they were replaced by a few quick phone calls made for free from some operation HQ, more and more rarely, and quite certainly my parents and Marianne got used to the idea that nothing serious would happen to me, since I didn’t give them any news, either good or bad, but I knew afterwards that my mother was still pretty worried, that she went to church every morning at 7:00 to pray for me and that she burned a considerable number of candles, maybe that’s what saved me after all, all that smoke all that melted wax in the 15
^th
arrondissement in Paris, I find it hard to picture my sister in my place at the front like Intissar, who knows, she might have made an exceptional fighter, after all she is capable of deploying a wealth of contrariness, she is headstrong and patriotic—Marianne wrote to me often, she related her days as a Parisian student to me in detail, gave me the latest cultural and political news, told me she missed me and urged me to come home as soon as possible, she had assumed the role of the faithful fiancée, she would have made a magnificent widow, even more so than Stéphanie, Stéphanie would not have waited for me, she had too much of a feel for the current situation and for time, a taste for the present, much less Christian, in this sense, than Marianne the bourgeois, Stéphanie wanted to know, though, she was curious about the war she had seen the photo where we were all three of us holding court, Andrija and Vlaho and me in uniform, it had become an obsession, to understand and make me “clear the air” as she said, erase the trauma that she imagined, that’s why I saw Commander Eduardo Rózsa again in a documentary on Channel 4, Stéphanie showed up at my place one evening for dinner saying look I recorded this show yesterday, we could watch it, it might interest you, she was surely lying, the film was dated 1994 not very likely that any channel had shown it the day before, she must have moved heaven and earth to find images showing foreign fighters in Croatia, she thought I had fought in an international brigade, which could easily have been the case, I was in a good mood I said why not, if it makes you happy, after all we’d have to go there eventually, I was just back from Trieste I felt happy, it had rained all throughout my stay with Globocnik and Stangl, among the remains of Aktion Reinhardt scattered over the Adriatic, I was happy to see Stéphanie again, we had had dinner, I should never have let myself be persuaded to watch this film, it was in fact an investigation into the death of the British photographer Paul Jenks, dead from a bullet in the neck on the Osijek side, in mysterious circumstances, Paul was a photographer mainly for the
Guardian
his companion Sandra Balsells worked at the time for the London
Times
, she too had covered the war and in 1994 she made the journey to Croatia again with a television crew to try to figure out how Paul had been killed, the man she loved, that seems easy to say, she returned to the place where he died on the front where they had worked together in 1991, Stéphanie stared wide-eyed at the screen, she discovered flat desolate landscapes covered in snow, the immense Slavonic plain, she discovered the grey and khaki of war, as if she saw them for the first time, because she was in my presence, I should have known it would end badly, I should have understood from the way she clutched my arm, the way I was beginning to feel cold, in front of the television screen, I listened to what the Croatian soldiers were saying behind the English commentary, guys I thought I recognized sinister faces at every checkpoint, a blackened aluminum kettle that could have been Vlaho’s, a street in Osijek, mismatched uniforms, straight flat highways, muddy fields, destroyed farms, the smell of frost of gas of burnt rubber and the frozen face of Sandra Balsells in back of the car, her few words, the flowers she puts in the ditch where Paul Jenks fell, near the railroad a kilometer before Tenjski Antunovac a poor village that had been occupied by the Serbs, the journalists suspect that the bullet that hit him in the back of the skull didn’t come from that side but from closer by on the right, from the headquarters of the international brigade headed by Eduardo Rózsa the patriot, when I heard his name I started, he appeared on the screen, just the same, a little chubbier maybe, Rózsa the smiling, with his round mug his somber eyes and his humor, of course he denies everything, he says that’s impossible, that Paul Jenks was killed by a Serb sniper from Antunovac, that the other journalist found strangled during a patrol happened unfortunately upon a Chetnik scout, what could he say, Sandra Balsells observed all these soldiers who may have killed the man she loved, Stéphanie watched Sandra Balsells and then me, she looked as if she were asking, what about you, what do you think? who killed Paul Jenks? while my eyes were glued to the screen, in January 1994 when the journalists return to Croatia there is a permanent ceasefire on that part of the front, they get those white ice-cream trucks from the UN which help them get into occupied territory, where the Serbs are, they want to go see the four demolished houses of Tenjski Antunovac, the Serbs are friendly and cooperative, they agree to let them climb up to the highest point, a firing post in the ruins of one of the last houses in the village, a soldier even brings them a magnificent sniper’s brand-new M76 with a very handsome gunsight so they can see with their own eyes, and here Sandra Balsells takes the weapon, she presses her hand against the angle of the butt and puts her eye against the sight, under the black lens-hood, she looks straight north towards the ditch where Paul fell, what is she thinking at that instant, what is she thinking, she is in the exact same position as the shooter who may have killed Paul, beneath the same roof, an identical rifle against her shoulder, she observes the details of the Croatian post 800 meters away, so precise in the crosshairs it seems you just have to stretch out your arm to touch them, there is no longer a corpse in the ditch, she sees the spray of the frozen yellow flowers she put there, is she picturing Paul’s body, is she crying like Intissar the Palestinian I don’t think so, she keeps silent, her long golden hair caresses the varnished wood of the weapon, Athena the perverse has given her the possibility of seeing what no one has ever seen, the dark side, the very hand of death her eye pressed against the lens her breath precise, Sandra lets go of the rifle, a Serb soldier takes it, does he know who she is probably not, they go back down the ladder, get into their car again after thanking the Serbs for their hospitality, in the back seat Sandra doesn’t know anymore who killed Paul, if it was Rózsa’s mercenaries the Chetniks or the goddess herself, she has doubts, Stéphanie is moved to tears, I pour myself a big glass of hard stuff the investigation continues, John Sweeney is now questioning Frenchie, Eduardo