The Bosporus is getting closer. I’ve never arrived in Istanbul from this side, and it is the right side, because Hagia Sophia is the perfect head of the line of a Byzantine world that from Constantinople—the Second Rome—has reached Kiev, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg, going up as far as Murmansk, to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. The port where this Slavic and Orthodox journey through Europe began.
A milk-white dawn opens up, and I don’t notice right away that the Caledonia is sailing between mountains. Gray mountains, suspended over the water. Not until phantasms of immense ships glide by and slip away into the distance do I discover, as my heart skips a beat, that we’re in the channel between Asia and Europe. Lighthouses, villages shining with rainwater. In an armchair, a rotund blond woman with her eyes closed is nursing her baby. Maybe she’s asleep, exhausted. The little guy follows me with his eyes, never losing his concentration on that act that guarantees his survival.
My journey along the new Iron Curtain is over. I went looking for a real frontier, and I found it. At times it coincided with national borders; at other times, not. In Ukraine I had the impression that it was dangerously threatening to split the country in two, and now in Istanbul I have the impression that this white line runs right through me and is cutting through my soul like barbed wire.
I wonder what will become of the old Europe, of its martyred peasant and Jewish heart swept away by too many wars. The train for Belgrade is waiting for me at the Sirkeci Station. I’ve got very little time to close the circle.
Only the Turk and the Circassian seem not to pay any heed to the clock, not even to the calendar. They kiss, oblivious to the city, the people, the rain.
Praise for The Fault Line
“There’s an unlikely poetic beauty to his flowery, indulgent prose, in which every moment takes on transcendent meaning… He lovingly describes his escapades and experiences, conjuring up places few tourists ever visit, exposing the dichotomy between the modernity of the EU and the time-lost ways of the old world, and illuminating a much-overlooked region of the world in a thoroughly fascinating manner…. There’s no denying the allure and appeal of his European odyssey.”
“A richly detailed journey into Europe’s dark past and vulnerable present.”
“Rumiz reveals his strength in his travels, in the journey that slowly builds up as each and every page is turned…. It would be difficult to find another writer who is as well-equipped to adapt and enter into the world that he is passing through with such simplicity.”
“[B]eautiful writing suffused with shadows and sun, bathed in love and melancholia, steeped in delicate and powerful fragrances.”
Copyright
First published in hardcover in the United States of America in 2015
by Rizzoli Ex Libris, an imprint of
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
Originally published in Italy as Trans Europa Express
Copyright © 2012 by Paolo Rumiz
Published by arrangement with Marco Vigevani & Associati Agenzia Letteraria
Translation copyright © 2015 Gregory Conti
This ebook edition © 2015 Paolo Rumiz
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publishers.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8478-4545-3
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