XXIV
when Stéphanie shouted you are a monster I should have guessed, she knew all that of course, she knew, since when I don’t know, since the beginning maybe she wanted me to tell her to confess to her to admit everything to her sobbing on her shoulder, she wanted me to ask for her compassion to reveal my mortal sins to her, she wanted to forgive me, she thought she had the strength to forgive me, but it was necessary for me to confess, the burden had become too heavy, I imagine it’s curiosity that spurred her to find out, after the business of the British documentary probably, after the violence of that night, she asked one of her high-placed friends for my personal file, she must have voiced anxieties, she must have moved them, manipulated them, Stéphanie couldn’t imagine being affected herself by the shadows she handled, couldn’t imagine being contaminated by Hades where the lower-echelon spies live, I imagine her expression, her tears, her sadness, is anyone prepared for official truth, for cold reports on the well-guarded Table of the gods, Stéphanie was too much like me, reading the conclusions to the investigation on Francis Servain Miković she saw herself, she saw herself living beside this life, jealous frightened and disgusted, Dream had told her too much, I imagine she must have made some efforts, as she waited, as she waited for me to tell her, to confess the unsayable to her, without daring to speak to me about it, out of fear, at the same time, of making the monster rise up, seeing without seeing, knowing without knowing, and I myself was particularly idiotic for not guessing, not understanding that my fate was weighty, that the shadows had swallowed me whole and that it would not be easy to get out, if you can get out, in Istanbul the sublime a few days on the Bosporus between two worlds, the journey of the last chance, between two or even three worlds, the Ottoman capital was the center of the Mediterranean for so long, the Bosporus scarcely wider than the Danube, the city divided by the waterways floats beyond the well-guarded Dardanelles, beyond Troy the martyred, on the lips of the Black Sea that bathes Sebastopol and the Caucasus, from Tangiers to Stamboul there were cubic meters of corpses, corpses ruins and fates, in Constantinople Roza Eskenazi the Jewess was triumphing in the 1930s, Roza was born around 1900, her real name was Sarah, she spoke Ladino, Turkish, and Greek, her father wore a handsome tarboosh and was the owner of a warehouse in Scutari, Stéphanie wasn’t interested in the life of Roza Eskenazi the great diva, singer of
rebetika, songs of the tavern, of hashish opium alcohol love solitude and despair, she did not even care that we had first met in Constantinople, New Rome, she was tormented, irritable, and alternated very somber moments with a great tenderness, an almost desperate love for my person, I thought of Roza Eskenazi the provocative, of Leon Saltiel and of that song where Roza talks about the pleasure of having a hookah in your mouth, the twofold excitation it provokes, that of the drug and that of love, Stéphanie preferred Christ Pantocrators Byzantine churches Sinan’s mosques to smoke-filled meyhanes, she was desperate because I always signed to the musicians to come over and play at our table, and immediately her face shut down, she scowled into her glass of raki of course I didn’t understand why, the fiddler and his assistant played “When You Go to Uskudar” or some other song I didn’t understand a word of and I was delighted, Stéphanie groaned, I can’t bear this screeching, true it wasn’t Paganini, it was a nice fat bald mustachioed Turk, but the repertoire and the place suited him perfectly, how can you bear this music? or else I wonder what your mother would think of this, what did Marija Mirković have to do with it, I didn’t understand what she was leading up to, I didn’t say anything in reply, then we went back on foot from Beyoğlu to our hotel in front of the Hagia Sophia, she coiled around me like a snake to escape the cold as we crossed the Golden Horn, the floating bridge moved a little underfoot and emphasized the effects of the raki, I imagined the Turkish boats right up against the outsized chain that closed access to the harbor of Byzantium, the bombardes and the Greek fire shot by panic-stricken Greeks from the hills, the night streaked with flames, a beautiful clear night, the dawn of May 29, 1453, the naval diversion to prepare for the final attack on the city walls, at that hour the Janissaries were coming to open a breach near the postern of Blachernae, the attack lasted from midnight on, the old Emperor Constantine the nobility and the clerics had prayed for a long time in Hagia Sophia, prayed to the Lord, that He have pity on the second Rome, the Lord and his Holy Mother, Áxion estín os alethós, everyone terrified everyone reconciled to the end, to destruction death or slavery, Constantine the Last dies at the ninth hour the next day, he takes off his purple and descends the walls to fight in the street, in his city, he knows all is lost, he is not trying to flee, he throws himself into combat to die, on his shoulders he has the weight of his ancestors since Constantine the Great since Augustus since the powerful Achaeans and the conquered Trojans, Priam prods him in the back with his example, Constantine is pierced in the side by a Turkish spear, then by an arrow, then by a sword and the black veil falls over his eyes, he does not know that Apollo is carrying his body far away from the fury of combat, to wash it in the sweet waters of Europe and entrust it to the White Island, at that instant the Ottomans reach the magnificent Hagia Sophia, among the tears of families who have taken refuge there, with Stéphanie I look at the illuminated basilica from the window of our room, an oil tanker is going down the Bosporus, it is coming from the Black Sea, it will cross the Sea of Marmara, slip through the wild Dardanelles, pass by Kilitbahir the impregnable, go down to the south, follow the shores of Troy, pass the Morea peninsula and steer for the west, due west along the pelagic plain smooth as a tombstone, in three days it will be within sight of Messina, a strait just slightly wider than the Bosporus, if it’s going to Marseille or Barcelona, otherwise it will cross in front of the Barbary coasts over to Tangier or Gibraltar, where the apes of the Rock will give it a final salute before it’s lost in the Atlantic frontier to the world — Stéphanie stood right against me, I smelled the perfume of her hair, gazing at the lights of the blue Mosque and the twinkling glimmers from the ship’s stays, the