XXIII
the icy water of the canal, I had a fever when I reached my place trembling like anything it was light out I took two aspirin a scalding shower and I went to shiver right up against Marianne still wondering who could have dragged me out of the water, my clothes stank of old fishing nets, Marianne asked me jokingly if I had fallen in a canal, without meaning it, I didn’t say anything, she was afraid when she saw my face, sick exhausted and frightened, it was one straw too many for her personal camel’s back, I wasn’t going to tell her on top of that that I was practicing swimming with the rats in the waterways of La Serenissima, in the middle of the night, I had pity, I kept this story to myself, I coughed for two weeks, I was surprised at having wanted to die, at having stopped struggling, so it was that easy then, you just had to stop floundering, let yourself slip to the bottom, the way you entrust your body to a train, more tunnels, Sette Bagni says the signpost, Seven Baths station, funny coincidence, we’re a few kilometers away from Rome, not far to go now, I’m a little afraid of arriving, I’m afraid that Sashka the blonde won’t be able to do anything for me, it’s too late, she is far away, far away in the midst of her saints, in the whiteness of the levkas you soak the wood of icons in, she thinks that Francis Servain is a respectable entomologist who wouldn’t hurt a fly, I’m going to have to confront the world alone, alone, having gotten rid of the weight of the dead, Yvan old pal I have a strong feeling that we’ve made something of a mess of it all, drinking like fish slapping our thighs avenging each other for centuries, the gods have toyed with us, they’ve tricked us, and now we’re going to die alone with no hope of resurrection, in Jerusalem the Holy Sepulcher is bathed in incense, Golgotha and the tomb gleam, among the priests’ squabbles and all the liturgical languages, men patiently filed down the mountain and rock to build their house around the tomb, John the Eagle of Patmos writes that Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Christ, asked Pilate for permission to take down the remains from the crucifix, and Pilate, surprised that the Nazarene was already dead, gave his assent, so Joseph of Arimathea came, removed the heavy body in the company of Nicodemus who brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about twenty pounds, they took the emaciated Christ and wrapped him in strips of cloth with the aromatics, according to the way the Jews are buried: in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulcher, where no one had been placed, and that’s where they put Jesus, wrapped up prepared his body protected from putrefaction by the aromatic resins, like Sarpedon valiant son of Zeus washed in the Scamander and anointed with ambrosia, fathers can do nothing to save their sons, neither the One God nor thundering Zeus, all they can do is prevent corruption, rot and flies, just as Thetis fills the nostrils of the divine Patroclus with red nectar to protect his body from the myriad worms, Jesus son of God carried away by Sleep and Death far from mortals, embalmed like the animals in the Cairo museum, wrapped in strips of cloth in a rock tomb, which Nathan Strasberg regarded as one of the treasures of Jerusalem, one of the tourist attractions, among the gleaming mosques, the Western Wall and the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem was an accumulation of histories, dead people, destructions and reconstructions, ever since the cannibalistic Crusades the Knights Hospitaller with the fine tunics Saladin and his ponies, all great killers of infidels, Jerusalem thrice holy shone like a beacon in the depths of the Mediterranean, waiting for the Second Coming and the Apocalypse, about which the three religions present were pretty much in agreement, the whole thing was to know when, and how, and who would preside over the Last Judgment, when they all return, Matthew of Ethiopia, Mark of Alexandria, Luke of Antioch, John of Ephesus, they will all come, the saints the madmen the angels the bellringers the corpses hacked by swords scimitars arrows will rise up in a perfume of spices, Mohammed the bearded mounted on Buraq the eternal mare will travel across the heavens, Bilal the Abyssinian voice of Islam will sing, Omar the Wise, Ali with the his two-bladed sword, all will rise in a fine commotion, the severe prophets, Abraham the sacrificer, beautiful Hagar the humiliated, Ishmael the predestined, Isaac the blind, Jacob the fighter, Esau in love with lentils, the gods will feast on the smoke of rams and ewes that all these lovely people will offer them, on the Temple Mount three times promised, there where the heads of Palestinian suicide bombers take off for the skies, corks of divine champagne, during the celebration of the end of days, the last fireworks, prefigured by the explosions of war, and it’s no doubt only a question of patience before the universe decides to become infinitesimal again and sucks all these burning memories into nothingness: in Jerusalem you met lots of messianic lunatics, fanatics of the ineffable God, of Christ or Allah the transcendent, with bells in their hands homespun robes or immense beards, ready to preach to you and announce the Last Judgment, in the world capital of eschatology, land too of hatred of the other of resentment and mystical illusion, where Nathan the son of survivors from Łódź looked at this whole circus with amusement, it’s folklore, he said, you know, it’s the folklore of Jerusalem, Megève has skiing, here we have religions, Jerusalem has lived on this income for millennia it’s not going to change overnight, the tomb of the Crucified One seemed very small in the end in the midst of this huge debauch of Faith, I brought back to my mother some holy oil blessed by some patriarch or other, a little icon and slides of the Sepulcher, the glass flask began oozing in my suitcase and I had a pair of socks that could have cured quite a few plague victims or convert the most perverted of atheists they smelled so strongly of the balm, which didn’t at all amuse Marija Mirković the serious,