shock Muslims one saw only mountains of boxes of tissues, blue, pink, or green whereas inside old wooden shelves were bent beneath the Metaxa, the Bordon’s gin and Whack Daniels made in the Arab Republic of Egypt probably all made from the same source alcohol the immense majority of which was then used as additives in cleaning products, to polish metals or clean windows, the Egyptians didn’t risk it, my military men drank only imported drinks bought in duty-free shops, the Greek poisoners must not have made much, in fact they sold mostly beer to people in the neighborhood and a little anis to adventurers either idiotic or amused by the labels, they wrapped the bottles up in the pages of an old issue of Ta Nea from Athens, then in a pink plastic bag taking care to explain to you in flowery French that it was better not to use the handles, always without a smile, which instantly reminded me of the Balkans and the old joke according to which you needed a knife to make a Serb smile, Hellenes are without a doubt Balkan, if only for the stinginess of their smile—among the Greeks of Qasr el-Ayni there was always an oldish man sitting there in a corner of the store on a wooden chair bearing the effigy of Cleopatra, he spoke French to the shopkeepers with a strange accent, he held a quarter liter of Metaxa or “Ami Martin” cognac wrapped up in newspaper and thus discreetly and methodically got drunk while making conversation with his hosts, the first time I heard him he was copiously insulting Nasser and the Arabists, as he said, twenty-five years late, Nasser had died a long time ago and pan-Arabism with him or mostly, it was quite surprising to hear that old drunkard with his face marked by the sun of Cairo, thin in a dark-grey suit that was too big for him, seeming like a local, to have such vindictiveness against the father of the nation, he reminded me of the grandfather of my wartime comrade Vlaho, an old Dalmatian wine-grower who spent his time bad-mouthing Tuđman and calling him a fascist bigot, because he had been a partisan, the grandfather, and had fought on the Neretva with Tito, he insulted us freely, calling us little Nazis and other nice things, he must have been part of the seven or nine percent of the population who called themselves “Yugoslavs,” and was probably the only peasant in that fraction, the only peasant and the only Dalmatian, and in that Greek liquor store in Cairo I remembered the old man this strange guy calling Nasser a thief and a pimp without pulling his punches as he knocked back his firewater that had apparently not managed to make him blind, but maybe mad, he was Dutch, his name was Harmen Gerbens, he was seventy-seven years old and had lived in Egypt since 1947, a force of nature, as they say, to have so long resisted adulterated drink, born in 1921 in Groningen—he might be dead now, as a few drops of melted snow streak the Milanese countryside behind the window, did he die in his bed, by surprise, or after a long illness, a diseased liver or a heart that gave up, or else run over by a taxi as he crossed the Avenue Qasr el-Ayni to go visit his Greek friends, who knows, maybe he’s still alive, somewhere in a home for old people or still in his immense gloomy apartment in Garden City, what could he live on, he got a little Egyptian pension fund as mechanical “engineer,” a big word for someone who had been enlisted in 1943 as a mechanic in the 4th Brigade of Panzergrenadier SS “Nederland” the last elements of which surrendered to the Americans in May 1945 west of Berlin after two years on several fronts, Gerbens is a talkative man, one afternoon he tells me his life story, in his dark, empty lair on the second floor of a dilapidated building, above all he tries to explain to me why Nasser was a son of a bitch—what made me think of the old cantankerous Batavian off Lodi, at the time I didn’t know the “Nederland” brigade had been posted for a few months in Croatia to fight against the partisans after the Italian surrender in fall 1943, maybe he had fought against Vlaho’s grandfather, maybe, maybe I thought about Harmen at a time of choice, of my own departure for another life like him after a year of privations and indignities in a country destroyed ravaged by war had gone to seek his fortune elsewhere through the intermediary of a cousin who since the days before the war had been working in the port of Alexandria, now that Egypt is one of the images of poverty it seems strange that anyone would emigrate there as a supervisor to improve his lot, I ask Harmen if his past in the Waffen-SS had something to do with his decision to leave, he says no, or yes, or maybe, after the defeat he had spent many months in a military prison, after all I was just a mechanic, he said, and not a Nazi, I repaired caterpillar tanks and trucks, that’s not what gives you the Ritterkreuz, is it? I don’t remember anymore, they let us leave pretty quickly, it was the first time I’d been in prison—for three years he worked in the port of Alexandria, repairing and maintaining the cranes, the fork-lifts, and all the harbor machinery, he had two children, two daughters, with a woman from Groningen, in the beginning she liked Egypt fine, he said, at the outset, and I think of my mother also displaced, growing up far from her country she almost doesn’t know, my neighbor with the Pronto has folded up his magazine, he gets up and goes to the bar or the toilet, who knows where his own parents were born, maybe they emigrated from Naples or Lecce, still young, to try their fortune in the prosperous North, Harmen Gerbens had gone to the prosperous South—he had then left Alexandria for a better job in Helwan near Cairo in the brand-new weapons factory that made Hakim rifles, heavy 8mm adapted from a Swedish model, all the equipment and the machines came directly from Malmö, including the engineers: I got on well with them, Harmen says, I was in charge of maintenance, the Hakim was a wonderful rifle, better than the original, almost without recoil despite the immense power of the Mauser cartridge, it could even survive sand getting in the ejection mechanism I was very proud to make it—after Nasser’s revolution everything began to go “sideways” Harmen tells me, I was the only foreigner left in the factory, everyone left, the Greeks, the Italians, the British and then one day war broke out: the English, the French, and the Israelis intervened in Suez—they arrested me for espionage on October 31st, 1956, the day after the bombing of the airport, and locked me up in the “foreigners’ section” of the Qanater prison, Harmen never knew either why or how, or for whom he was supposed to have spied, Harmen Gerbens was already seriously drunk when he told me this story, he was drooling a little, tea stuck to his drooping mustache then streamed into the corners of his mouth, his accent was increasingly pronounced and his chin trembled as much as his hands as the setting sun plunged the empty apartment into shadow, empty of the wife and two daughters who had been “deported” back to Holland soon after his arrest, Harmen Gerbens the alcoholic Batavian stayed in Qanater for eight years, forgotten by the gods and his embassy, afterwards I knew why, eight years in the foreigners’ section next to the jail where my Islamists rotted forty years later, he was the appointed mechanic of the prison director, Gerbens spits on the ground at the mere mention of his name, he pours a swig of hard stuff into the dregs of his tea utters terrible Dutch curses and I wonder if this story is true, if it’s actually possible that this man spent eight years in prison for some obscure reason, isn’t he just some lost guy, some old madman gnawed by solitude and rotgut—why don’t you go back to Holland, I can’t he replies, I can’t and that’s none of your business, I say nothing I take my leave of the old drunkard he has tears in his eyes he accompanies me to the door—the stairway is strewn with trash and I go down back into the red death throes of Cairo evenings that smell of mummies
III
Harmen Gerbens the Cairo Dutchman rests now in the briefcase above my seat—a name and a history, chronologically the first on the list, without my knowing at the time that the list had begun and that I’d end up carrying it to Rome five years later, all trembling with a terrible hangover exhausted feverish unable to sleep, would I have chosen the Vatican if Alexandra weren’t waiting for me at Trastevere, in that little ground-floor apartment by a pretty courtyard, Alexandra called Sashka a Russian painter with the face of an icon the worst is over now, the worst leaving everything behind quitting leaving my strange employer, ever since Venice after my two years of war I’ve never been so free, I own nothing now, not even my real name—I have an appropriated passport under the name of Yvan Deroy, born almost at the same as me in Paris and locked up a long time ago now in an institution for psychotics in the suburbs, he never had a passport and his doctors would be quite surprised to know that he’s wandering around Italy today, I got this document in the most legal way in the world with a record of civil status and a doctored electric company bill at the 18th arrondissement town hall: I’ve had so many different names these past years, on identity papers of all colors, I’ll become attached to Yvan Deroy, tonight the mute psychotic will sleep in the Grand Plaza in Rome, he reserved a room at an internet café on the Champs-Elysées, Yvan Deroy won’t go see his Roman lover right away, he’ll hand over his last suitcase to whomever has a right to it, as they say, someone will come