kamances of the taverns still ringing in my ears, relaxed by the raki and the warm presence of the woman beside me, sometimes there are instants held suspended, between two moments, in the air, in eternity, a dance shoulder against shoulder, the movement of a hand, the wake of a boat, humanity in pursuit of happiness, and everything falls down, everything falls down, Stéphanie became savage again, moody, I know why, she saw in the cupolas the perfumes the hookahs the violins a barbaric side, my barbaric side, she imagined the deadly savage refinement of the Orient, stakes, decapitations, she was afraid of me when I summoned the violinists, of what there was in me that escaped her, the inexhaustible other, and she identified with my mother guardian of Western order, with Louis-Ferdinand Céline the cowardly sworn enemy of otherness, she glimpsed like a romantic Orientalist the deleterious influences of drugs and violent cruelty, I thought of the poem by Cavafy the living-dead, the civil servant of Alexandria, “On the Night of the Fall,” cities fall so often, the world spins so often, is there room for sorrows, is there room to miss Dionysos when you’re no longer drunk, the Turks had made Constantinople the greatest city in the Mediterranean, a beacon, a miracle of beauty and culture, Stéphanie was sad because she saw in me the warrior the murderer she locked me up in my violence with no forgiveness, I know what she had read, Lebihan the bald with the Wepler oysters also had a gift for me, he was about to retire happily, Lebihan, anxious but happy to be able to devote himself to biking to oysters and to café conversations, he looked at me kindly, after thanking me for the 7.65 Zastava that touched him especially, he said to me Francis I took these pages out for you, read them, it’s instructive, and take note of them, it was my personal file, the preliminary investigation, my various grades, my assignments, my requests for leave, my absences, my parents, my teenage political friendships, my stages of military service, my life, including the Croatian and Bosnian activities, words like war crimes, violent acts, torture, the names of my superiors at the time, the parts of the file from the International Court of Justice about the valley of the Lašva that concerned me, these notes were dated long after my entry into the Agency, the forces of the shadows are never wrong, to be supervised, a psychological profile defined me recently as tending towards alcoholism and depression, to be spared from responsibilities, nevertheless I was credited with fidelity, patriotism, and integrity, not liable to be manipulated from outside, not interested in money, only known hobby: amateur historian, that was ironic, the last investigation was dated last year, who had authorized it, I knew of course what code I was going to discover on the bottom of the page, what excuse could she have found, for a possible assignment, she had pretended to want to recruit me, the cunning one, to learn as much as possible about me, the request was initialed by her and bore the number of her department, all was fair in love and war, all was fair in love and war she couldn’t bear any more she wanted to know, was she going to be able to bear the result, in Istanbul she alternated between passion and disgust, in Paris she discovered she was pregnant, one last chance and farewell, farewell Francis the terrible, I took note, as Lebihan said, I checked that the results of the investigation didn’t mention Yvan Deroy the mad, lost in my adolescence, I easily usurped his identity, liquidated my apartment and farewell, now I’m in a train approaching Rome, approaching the end of the world and Sashka the golden, she is not interested in the truth, she is not affected by the outside she is detached, she is floating tenderly in the practice of sacred illumination, desirable and unreachable, a magical body for a soulless presence, one more illusion, Sashka never went to the Bosporus, Nikogda ja ne byl na Bosfore, Ty menya ne sprashivai o nem, her eyes so blue that they don’t need it, she has the Tiber the churches and the memory of the white sea, and today Stéphanie is working somewhere in Moscow, is she thinking about Yesenin in the city of the thousand and one bells and the thousand and three towers, farewell, I have a suitcase full of dead men a borrowed name a few kilometers before me and farewell, the calm after revenge, I salute you, Andrija, even in the innermost depths of Hades, I’m going to join you, everything flees like the colorful houses in the Roman suburbs, yellowed by the sad December streetlights, the last lights Yesenin sees before hanging himself or before being hanged, the cathedral lit up like the Hagia Sophia opposite his hotel room, Ya v tvoikh glazakh uvidel more, there is nothing to see in Sashka’s eyes, hopeless as the sea, Polykhaiuchee golubym ognem, I know where I’d like to go back to, now, far from the cold night of Russia, I would like to find a warm day between Agamy and Mersa Matruh, a few kilometers away from Alexandria, on the immense beach, it’s evening the Mediterranean is metallic the sky rosy the sand soft, I look out to sea the pure phosphorus of the sea makes your eyes blink in the slanting light, two shapes slip out of the water, they leap one behind the other and sparkle, two iridescent sprays of water come towards the coast in little leaps, two dolphins, two dolphins are playing in the lukewarm sea not far from the shore, I’ve never seen them before, I get up, they’re so close you can see their backs sparkling, they are leaping in front of me, there is no one else, so of course I run they seem so real seen just above the waves, I have tears in my eyes, never have I seen such a sight, a sight for no one, they were gamboling for me alone, in the evening on a deserted coast, a gift of chance or of Thetis the generous, I threw myself into the water, a shroud of coolness covered me, the two silver shapes were outlined against the pink sky, the taste of salt filled my mouth, I swam slowly toward them, it was beauty calling me, beauty calm and pure happiness harmony of the world, I swam toward the two dolphins, slowly so as not to frighten them, I wanted to follow them, I wanted to follow them, I would have followed them to the home of Poseidon with the azure hair, it was a fine sunset to disappear, a fine evening to die or live eternally in the wake of marine mammals, they sensed me coming, perceived my vibrations in the waves, I was not worthy of them, I was not worthy of them they moved away with a leap, one last flash in the dying sun and I was alone again on the infinite beach, we are going to get out soon, Yvan, but not in the kingdom of the god of the sea, get out of the train, the passengers are already restless, they are looking out the window seeing Rome approach with lights in the darkness, I know now, Yvan, it’s time to organize a funeral, a pyre for Francis Servain Mirković whom his mother and sister will miss, everything is more difficult once you reach man’s estate, everything rings falser, but sometimes the gods offer you flashes of clairvoyance, moments when you contemplate the whole universe, the infinite wheel of worlds, you see yourself, from high up, for a few instants truly before leaving, propelled into the next thing, toward the end, propelled toward the woman waiting for me there, the one who opens the door to me, in front of whom I stagger with shame and drunkenness, my eyes blinking, my breath fetid, my head beating like a decapitated sun, the woman who looks at me without seeing me, so profound is the fracture, my chest open deep, the one who doesn’t seem to recognize me, for life has little weight, as little as the bodies struggling in it, this woman is doubtful about me in the alcoholic fumes my clothes give off, and I, who have crossed the sea to join her, who have crossed without feeling it the space that separated me from Paris, I for whom a stewardess on the Middle East Airlines had to come outside for an instant of drunkenness to help me get into the plane, I whom a flick of a finger could push out of the world, I who desire nothing more, not even sleep whose awakening I fear, not even the woman who is not waiting for me and whose presence I wanted so strongly, before engulfing myself in drink and flight, stiff, dead drunk man entrusted to the heavens like an angel, sleeping a leaden sleep, snoring probably at 30,000 feet up, far above the clouds where the night is always clear, there where you can contemplate the star clusters and the galaxies, one July 14