Zone Read online

  Praise for Zone

  “The novel of the decade, if not of the century.”

  —Christophe Claro

  “A modern Iliad. . . . You turn the pages as if it were a great thriller. . . . A great novel. You must read it!”

  —François Busnel, TV5, France

  “Zone is a major and compelling work, a work that will keep you in its grip from its first utterance to its last.”

  —Brian Evenson

  “A powerful read, a novel for the ages.”

  —François Monti, Quarterly Conversation

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2008 by Mathias Énard

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Charlotte Mandell

  Introduction copyright © 2010 by Brian Evenson

  Originally published in France as Zone by Actes Sud, 2008

  First edition, 2010

  First digital edition, 2013

  All rights reserved

  This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-83-2

  ISBN-10: 1-934824-83-6

  Design by N. J. Furl

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  To the world of A’s

  Introduction

  I first learned about Zone in September of 2008 when I was in France for a literary festival. Looking for something new to read, each time I’d meet with a journalist or reviewer, I’d ask what they’d read recently that they’d liked. The book that came up most often, and most enthusiastically, was one published just a few weeks earlier, Mathias Énard’s Zone.

  On first glance, Zone seems an unlikely choice for best-loved novel, even among critics. Not only is it not a plot-driven book, it’s a book that takes place entirely during a train journey from Milan to Rome. In one sense, very little actually happens: a man boards a train on his way to Rome after having a deranged individual hold out his hand to him and say “comrade one last handshake before the end of the world.” Shaken, he proceeds on to Rome. While in transit, he smokes in the bathroom, he goes to the bar and has several drinks, he watches people get on and off the train, he dozes a little. But, most of all, he thinks, turning over and over in his head the details of his own life as well as very specific and often very troubling obscurities from the wars and conflicts of the twentieth century. This, in fact, is where the action and the tension of the book lie: within a single human skull. The man is, we quickly learn, an amateur historian of atrocity—or, rather, someone able to pass as an amateur historian. In actuality he is an ex-soldier from the Balkans, where he both witnessed and participated in atrocity, and a spy for the French intelligence service. Or, as he phrases it, a “warrior, spy, archeologist of madness, lost now with an assumed name between Milan and Rome, in the company of living ghosts . . .” He is bringing to Rome a briefcase full of secrets that he intends to sell and, afterward, to abandon his real identity for good. Along the way, his mind will touch on Ezra Pound and Dalton Trumbo, Eduardo Rózsa and the song “My Way” (in multilingual versions), the Spanish fascist Millán-Astray and the autoerotic asphixiator William Burroughs, the Armenian genocide and the crimes of Croat terrorists, the Black Hand and the Holocaust, on girlfriends and comrades he left behind. Indeed, his time on the train is the moment in which Francis Servain Mirković, exhausted and drunk and a little frantic, begins to take all the different things that have led him to this moment and synthesize them in a way that is at once brilliant and terrifyingly disturbing.

  The swirl of information, the confusion of Francis’s own mind, is augmented by the way the novel represents his thoughts; Zone, 517 pages long, is written as a single run-on sentence in which everything is allowed to jostle up against everything else. Énard does show a little mercy: this sentence is broken up into twenty-four chapters (not un-coincidentally the same number as in The Iliad—“I wanted to do a contemporary epic,” Énard told Robert Solé in Le Monde des Livres) and in addition is disrupted three times by excerpts from a Lebanese book that Francis is reading. But what’s remarkable is how quickly a reader’s mind can adapt to this, how the rhythms of Énard’s text and his sometimes slightly eccentric use of commas end up carrying one swiftly forward. There’s a remarkable flow and rhythm to the sentences, partly imitating the rocking rhythm of a train, which almost allows you to forget that you’re reading a book that’s a single sentence long. Zone rarely if ever feels artificial; its form, as Beckett suggests of Joyce’s “Anna Livia Plurabel,” is its content, its content its form: “His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.” (Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno . Vico . . Joyce”).

  Zone owes something to Michel Butor’s La Modification (1957), a novel in which a man takes a train from Paris to Rome to unexpectedly visit his lover, intending to inform her that he is leaving his wife for her but changing his mind along the way. Like Zone, the frame of the story proper is the train ride, though the nature of each narrator’s thoughts are rather different. In addition, Butor writes in second person using standard punctuation and paragraphing. One might think as well, in passing, of other nouveau romanists such as Claude Simon (for the non-paragraphing he uses in Conducting Bodies, not dissimilar to Énard’s own non-paragraphing) or Alain Robbe-Grillet (because of his interest in detectives and spies and because of the importance of a train journey in La Reprise). Yet at the same time it would be as appropriate to mention either Samuel Beckett’s trilogy or Thomas Bernhard’s Gargoyles in the place of Simon, or Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow in the place of Robbe-Grillet. Not to mention Patrik Ouředník’s Europeana. Or countless other books. Indeed, Zone is a book aware of, and carrying on a conversation with, many different literary traditions.

  On a political level, Zone is engaged but very far from being partisan—it’s a very different book from, say, Peter Handke’s polemical A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia. Francis is neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable, and it is difficult for the reader to ever feel fully at ease with him. He is implicated and not particularly trying to hide it, but he can reveal himself only gradually, only slowly, as a way of trying to free himself from himself so that he can start over. In his mind, the line between victim and murderer comes to seem as confused and arbitrary as the lines we draw between nations and then fight to the death to protect. For him “there are lots of innocent men among the killers in the suitcase, as many as there are among the victims, murderers rapists throat-slitters ritual decapitators . . .” Strains of innocence and guilt run through both sides. Someone’s views can shift as easily as a gun can be aimed, and individuals begin to fall into roles out of fear or hate, almost against their will. This is a book about trying—and probably failing—to escape the aftershocks of one’s own trauma, about trying to shake one’s ghosts.

  Indeed, for me, Zone is ultimately a book about collective and individual trauma, the way trauma bleeds its way up and down between the individual and the larger collective groups to which he belongs. It is at once about bad faith and about the absurdity that terms such as bad faith take on in the face of decapitation, atrocity, and overwhelming fear. A little push, almost nothing—a bullet that breaks one’s car window, say—may well be enough to tilt the scales and make one begin to become inhuman.

  After its publication Zone went on to win several major p
rizes, including the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix Décembre (whose other recipients include such greats as Pierre Guyotat, Pierre Michon, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint), and the Prix Initiales, and to be a finalist for several others. “What is amazing in this horrible and sublime book,” Anne Brigaudeau suggests, “is the magnificent use of language, an uncommon erudition, a meticulous know-how for narrating the worst atrocities of the century, down to little known or forgotten details.” Does Zone live up to such praise? I think it does. It is a profoundly (and complexly) ethical book, satisfying both as a work of prose and in its incisive interpretation of our times. Zone is a major and compelling work, a work that will keep you in its grip from its first utterance to its last.

  Brian Evenson

  2010

  Milestones

  Milan

  Lodi

  Parma

  Reggio Emilia

  Modena

  Bologna

  Prato

  Florence

  Rome

  And then went down to the ship,

  Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and

  We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,

  Board sheep aboard her, and our bodies also

  —Ezra Pound

  Jerusalem and I are like a blind man and a cripple:

  She sees for me

  As far as the Dead Sea, as far as the end of days.

  I carry her on my shoulders

  And, under her, I walk in the shadows.

  —Yehuda Amichai

  I

  everything is harder once you reach man’s estate, everything rings falser a little metallic like the sound of two bronze weapons clashing they make you come back to yourself without letting you get out of anything it’s a fine prison, you travel with a lot of things, a child you didn’t bear a little Czech crystal star a talisman beside the snow you watch melting, after the re-routing of the Gulf Stream prelude to the Ice Age, stalactites in Rome and icebergs in Egypt, it keeps raining in Milan I missed my plane I had 1,500 kilometers on the train ahead of me now I have six hundred still to go, this morning the Alps sparkled like knives, I was trembling with exhaustion in my seat couldn’t close my eyes like an aching drug addict, I talked to myself out loud on the train, or under my breath, I feel very old I want the train to go on go on let it go to Istanbul or Syracuse let it go to the end at least let it know how to go to the end of the journey I thought oh I should be pitied I took pity on myself on that train its rhythm opens your soul more deftly than a scalpel, I let everything flow by everything flees everything is more difficult these days along rail lines I’d like to let myself be led simply from one place to another as is logical for a passenger like a blind man led by the arm when he crosses a dangerous street but I’m just going from Paris to Rome, and to the main train station in Milan, to that Temple of Akhenaton for locomotives where a few traces of snow remain despite the rain I turn round and round, I look at the immense Egyptian columns supporting the ceiling, I have a little drink out of boredom, at a café overlooking the tracks the way others overlook the sea, it doesn’t do me any good it wasn’t the time for libations there are so many things that divert you from the path, that lead you astray and alcohol is one of them it makes the wounds deeper when you find yourself alone in an immense freezing train station obsessed by a destination that is in front of you and behind you at the same time: but a train isn’t circular, it goes from one point to another whereas I am in orbit I gravitate like a chunk of rock, I felt like a measly pebble when the man approached me on the platform, I know I attract madmen and deranged people these days they rush into my fragility they find a mirror for themselves or a companion in arms and that is truly crazy, priest of an unknown divinity he has an impish cap and a small bell in his left hand, he holds out his right hand and shouts in Italian “comrade one last handshake before the end of the world” I don’t dare shake it afraid he’s right, he must be forty, no older, and he has that keen prying gaze of fanatics who ask you questions because they’ve just discovered an instant brother in you, I hesitate before the outstretched arm terrified by that screwy smile and I answer “no thanks” as if he were selling me a newspaper or offering me a smoke, then the madman rings his bell and begins laughing in a big doleful voice and pointing at me with the hand he offered me, then he spits on the ground, moves away and an immense almost desperate solitude sweeps the platform at that moment I would give anything for arms or shoulders even the train taking me to Rome I would give up everything for someone to appear there and stand in the middle of the station, among the shadows, among the men without men the travelers clinging to their telephones and their suitcases, all these people about to disappear and give up their bodies during the brief digression that will take them from Milano Centrale to Fossoli Bolzano or Trieste, a long time ago at the Gare de Lyon a deranged mystic had also announced the end of the world to me and he was right, I had been split in two then in the war and crushed like a tiny meteor, the kind that have stopped shining in the sky, a natural bombshell whose mass according to astronomers is laughable, the madman in the Milan station reminds me of the gentle screwball in the Gare de Lyon, a saint, who knows, maybe it was the same man, maybe we grew at the same rhythm each on his own side in our respective madnesses and find each other on platform number 14 in the train station in Milan, a city with the predatory Spanish military name, perched on the edge of the plain like a glacial crust slowly vomited by the Alps whose peaks I saw, flint blades ripping the sky and setting the tone of the apocalypse confirmed by the demon with the bell in that sanctuary of progress that is the Stazione di Milano Centrale lost in time like me here lost in space in the elegant city, with a patch on my eye like Millán-Astray the one-eyed general, a bird of prey, feverish, ready to rip vibrant flesh to shreds as soon as the light of flight and danger is found again: Millán-Astray would so have liked Madrid to become a new Rome, he served the Iberian Franco Il Duce his bald idol in that great warring prelude to the 1940s, that one-eyed belligerent officer was a legionnaire he shouted viva la muerte a good military prophet, and he was right, the fugue of death would be played as far as Poland, would raise a tall wave of corpses whose foam would end up licking the shores of the Adriatic, in Trieste or in Croatia: I think about Millán-Astray and his argument with Unamuno strict high priest of culture while travelers hurry to the platform to take off for the end of the world and the train leading them straight there, Unamuno was such a classical and noble philosopher that he didn’t see the massacre on its way, he couldn’t admit that the one-eyed general was right when he shouted long live death in front of his flock for that hawk had sensed (animals tremble before the storm) that the carrion would increase and multiply, that death would enjoy years of plenty, before also ending up in a train, a train between Bolzano and Birkenau, between Trieste and Klagenfurt or between Zagreb and Rome, where time stopped, as it stopped for me on that platform lined with railway cars, furious, panting engines, a pause between two deaths, between the Spanish soldier and the train station with a similar name, as crushing as Ares god of war himself—I light a last cigarette mechanically I have to get ready for the journey, for moving like all the people pacing up and down the platform in Milano Centrale in search of a love, a gaze, an event that will tear them from the endless circling, from the Wheel, a meeting, anything to escape yourself, or vital business, or the memory of emotions and crimes, it is strange that there are no women on the platform at this precise moment, motivated by the memory of Millán-Astray and his bandaged eye I climb into the trans-Italian express that must have been the zenith of progress and technology ten years ago for its doors were automatic and it went faster than 200 kilometers per hour in a straight line on a good day and today, a little closer to the end of the world, it’s just a train: the same goes for all things like trains and cars, embraces, faces, bodies their speed their beauty or their ugliness seems ridiculous a few years later, once they’re putrid or rusty, once up the step now I’m in a different world,
plush velour thickens everything, heat too, I left winter by getting into this train car, it’s a journey in time, it’s a day unlike the others, it’s a special day December 8th the day of the Immaculate Conception and I am missing the Pope’s homily on the Piazza di Spagna as a madman comes and announces the end of the world to me, I could have seen the pontiff one last time, seen the spiritual descendant of the first Palestinian leader the only one who got some results, but it wasn’t easy for that skinny whining Levantine who didn’t write a single line during his lifetime, outside on the next track a train is stopping and a pretty girl behind the window has intriguing eyes, I think she’s talking to someone I don’t see, she is very close to me actually a meter away at most we are separated by two dirtyish windows I have to be strong I can’t linger over the faces of young women I have to be resolute so I can gather momentum for the kilometers ahead of me then for the void and the terror of the world I’m changing my life my profession better not think about it, I placed the little suitcase over my seat and I discreetly handcuffed it to the luggage rack better close my eyes for a minute but on the platform policemen mounted on two-wheeled electric chariots like Achilles or Hector without a horse are chasing a young black man who’s running towards the tracks rousing surprise and concern among the travelers, blue angels, announcers of the Apocalypse maybe, astride a strange silent azure scooter, everyone gets out to take in the scene, Pallas Athena and the son of Tydeus rushing at the Trojans, a few dozen meters away from me one of the two policemen reaches the fugitive and with a gesture of rare violence aided by all the speed of his vehicle he hurls the man at bay up against one of the cement posts in the middle of the platform, the captive flattens against the concrete his head bangs into the column and he falls, he falls on his stomach right in the middle of the Milano Centrale station just in time for the second angel to jump on his back and immobilize him, sitting on his lower back the way a farmer or a wrangler ties up a fractious animal, then, back on his machine, he drags the criminal stumbling at the end of a chain to the admiring murmurs of the crowd, ancient scene of triumph, they parade the chained conquered ones behind the chariots of the conquerors, they drag them to the gaping galleys, the black man has a swollen face and a bloody nose his head held high a little incredulous everyone gets back into the car the incident is over justice has triumphed just a few minutes before departure, I glance at the suitcase, I’m afraid I won’t manage to sleep or I’ll be pursued as soon as I doze as soon as I lower my guard they’ll interfere with my sleep or get under my eyelids to raise them the way you open shutters or Venetian blinds, it’s been a long time since I thought of Venice, the green water by the Dogana, the fog of the Zattere and the intense cold when you look at the cemetery from the Fondamente Nuove, back from the war, hadn’t thought of the shadows, in Venice they’re made of wine and drunk in the winter starting at five o’clock in the evening, I see again the Slavic violinists who played for the Japanese, the French in full carnival masquerade, a rich hairdresser from Munich who bought himself a palace on the Grand Canal, and the train suddenly gets underway I lean my head back we’re off over 550 kilometers till the end of the world