Zone by Mathias Enard

Author:Mathias Enard [Mathias Enard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780992974701
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

XII.

back to my seat, my moving cage, eyelids closed: there’s nothing to be done, it doesn’t matter that I’m exhausted pathetic half-drunk bladder emptied I still can’t manage to persuade Morpheus to carry me far away from this train for a while, to find Andrija in a heroic dream, Stéphanie in an erotic dream, or even a nightmare inspired by the thousands of dead in my suitcase with the horror photos, I open my eyes, the little crossword-puzzle couple is quiet, calm, she’s sleeping with her head on her companion’s shoulder, he’s reading, that’s what I should do, go back to my book, find Intissar and the heavenly Palestinians, I remember as a child with my sister in order to pass the time during long car trips we’d play at guessing the starting point and final destination of the cars we passed, where does the little crossword-loving couple on the other side of the aisle come from, where are they going, it’s too simple in a train I know they got on in Milan and are going to Florence or Rome, but to do what, I have the feeling he’s a professor, a teacher of something, of the violin why not—yes, that’s it, he’s a violin teacher, he looks like a fiddler he reminds me of a friend of my mother’s she played chamber music with, his companion had been his student, that’s for sure, although she looks more like a harpist or a flautist: corduroy slacks, flowered blouse, long hair not too clean, or at least not as clean as it would be if this woman had been, let’s say, a pianist or a violist, being a spy makes you observant—plunged into the Boulevard Mortier in the headquarters of darkness and secrecy, of strategic or trivial information, often you forget where you are, the job becomes routine, the investigations, the crosschecking, the files, the summaries, the reports, the correspondents, the secret agents, the middlemen, the friends, the enemies, the propaganda, the sources, the manipulation, the human or technological information, all that blends in with normality, with the everyday, the way a civil servant makes entries in the big register of births, marriages and deaths, without them affecting him in the slightest, their births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, marginalia: the passion that was there in the beginning evaporated quickly, Lebihan the man of oysters and pelada was right, he said to me scratching himself you’ll see, it’ll pass, like an itch, I guess, the curiosity the joy of learning evaporate in time—the first two years I was convinced my recruitment had been an error, that the administration would realize very quickly it had made a mistake, that my past and my family’s past disqualified me as a spy in the service of the Republic, surely the director of the preliminary security clearance had done his job poorly, despite the three months or so of various investigations after the result of the recruitment exam, I wondered how the Agency could have

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