fascis of lictors, whose rods whipped the condemned and whose axes decapitated them, those same fasces from which Mussolini would make his and his empire’s emblem, the world surrounded by spikes rods and an axe, everywhere: I meet myself in Milan or in Parma, I check up on myself like my sources on the Boulevard Mortier, and yesterday, tidying up my desk for the last time before going to wander alone through deserted Paris and missing the plane, my empty desk in fact for you never leave anything trailing behind, the usage guide the dictionary a box of paper clips I thought of all the names I had encountered all the places all the affairs the files on site or abroad the long list of those I had observed for a while just as I am now observing the passengers in this oppressively hot train car, the crossword enthusiast and his wife, I could offer them my dictionary for their puzzles if they weren’t Italian, my neighbor the Pronto reader, in front of me the heads I can glimpse, a blond girl, a bald man, further on boy scouts or something similar with scarves and whistles on a chain, I can still see them with my eyes closed, a professional habit maybe, when the first thing they teach you, in a spy’s training, is the art of passing by unperceived while nothing escapes you, the theory of the butterfly net, said my instructor, you have to be transparent invisible discreet but with your net taut, information agencies are establishments of light-hearted and usually bucolic butterfly hunters, which greatly amused Sashka the first time she asked me my profession, I’m an entomologist, a natural historian, a hunter of insects I said, she replied laughing that I didn’t have the build, that I was much too serious for such an activity, but it’s a serious discipline, completely serious, I said, and I added that I divided my time between the office and research trips, like any good scientist, that I was a civil servant, like any good French scientist — she confessed that she hated insects, that they frightened her, an unreasonable fear, like lots of people, I said, lots of people are afraid of insects that’s because they’re not familiar with them I could have talked to her about the stick insect, the dormant kind that camouflages itself as a tree branch and waits for years before it acts, or about the Coleopteran, which you have to spot when it’s still a larva, before it flies away and becomes much harder to catch, about the suitcase-carrying dung beetles, the midges, tiny informers, the big blue carrion flies, the ants with or without wings, the army of cockroaches, we call informers cockroaches too, that whole invisible world in my office but I said nothing, and now in this train near Parma, so much for insects but the specialist’s reflexes still remain, the discretion of the professional observer, the information man, defense attaché, this Henri Fabre of shadows, who wants to hang up his net and his magnifying glass, stop seeing the faces of his travel companions, stop noticing the wine stain on the shirt of the crossword-solving Hemingway or the absolutely submissive air of his young companion, I can’t wait to arrive, I can’t wait to arrive now that I think of Sashka she’s not waiting for me or else not really what will I say to her I’m still all sticky from the night before still shaky from the alcohol, a little feverish, last night comes back to me with a big wave of shame, the door closed on the darkness on Hades devourer of warriors life in parentheses on a train taking me to Rome, to her clear gaze — she’ll look surprised when she sees me, seeing me in this state, transparent wide open from alcohol and night, from the meetings in the night, yesterday when I left the Boulevard Mortier for the last time I wandered from bar to bar in Montmartre until I ended up dead drunk ethereal like a soothsayer an oracle foreseeing the end of the world and all that follows, meetings hesitations wars global warming the cold colder the heat hotter Spaniards fleeing the desert to take refuge in Dunkirk the palm trees in Strasbourg but for now outside it’s freezing it’s raining the Alps were full of snow this morning I saw almost nothing I snoozed to the rhythm of the train from the Gare de Lyon after two hours of sleep a horrible awakening an aspirin and half an amphetamine to make the journey even harder — but I didn’t know I was going to miss the plane, that I’d run to catch the nine o’clock train, just barely and without a ticket, my breath must have frightened the conductor, always these difficulties in leaving, after Marianne’s kick in the balls ten years ago another kind of pain in my testicles today, shame makes me shiver, I squeeze my eyelids shut until I crush an angry tear of regret for last night, that night the absurd encounter of alcohol drugs and desire, at the Pomponette on the Rue Lepic the only bar in the neighborhood that’s open until 4:00 or 5:00 A.M., old Montmartre joint that you always leave staggering, yesterday aside from the regulars there was a woman in her sixties very thin with a long angular face what came over me, she was very surprised by my interest, mistrustful, I broke loosely into her solitude, smiling, she couldn’t make up her mind about me and I desired her, her name was Françoise, she was drinking a lot too, I don’t know why I went over to her, I’d rather not think about it, night entomologist pinning that insect maybe, I could have told her I want to pin you violently if I had thought about anything but I just kissed her out of mischievousness in fact as a dare out of joy at my last Parisian night her tongue was very thick and bitter she was drinking liqueur I turn my eyes away from the window I observe the companion of the crossword-Hemingway, there’s an elegant weariness in her features, she has lain her head on the man’s shoulder her hair loose now is slightly covering the crossword journal — Françoise didn’t talk about pinning, she said I want you to plow me, she talked to me about plowing her, in my ear, with a lot of modesty, she said I want you to plow me thinking it was a euphemism, because I want it she said, and that’s what happened, a plowing, nothing more, her eyes wide open onto nothing like a blind person, her wrinkles became furrows in the half-light, in the weak oblique light from the street, she wanted to stay in the dark, ground floor former concierge box on the Rue Marcadet a plowing without any preliminaries she went to the bathroom quickly without saying a word or even turning back, and once the stupor of orgasm was over I understood that she wasn’t going to come out again until I left, that she was just as ashamed as I was once desire was slaked I got dressed in a minute I slammed the door to take refuge in the fresh air under the rain that hadn’t stopped, wet dog with his caudal appendage sticky in his trousers, the pitch-black night and the return to the bar all full of shame stupid and filthy, sent to the bottom with one more little humiliation, as I looked for my change I lightly nicked the pad of my index finger against the condom wrapper stuffed without thinking back into my pocket and now fifteen hours later there’s a little diagonal wound on the finger that I crush against the cold window: I regret I don’t know why I regret, you regret so many things in life memories that sometimes return burning, guilt regrets shame that are the weight of Western civilization if I had caught the plane I’d have been in Rome for hours already, I turn round once more in my seat my head facing right towards the great void outside, going backwards, I’m going backwards my back to my destination and to the meaning of history which is facing forward, history which is taking me directly to the Vatican, with a suitcase full of names and secrets: I’ll find Sashka in Rome, her fat cat, the apartment, her short hair in my hands and that strange silence there is between us, as if through her ignorance I could erase the weight of remorse, the women, the insects, the traces, the war, The Hague, the ghosts of my Service files, Algeria first of all, then the Middle East, and recently I dreamed of a post to South America, for a change of polluted air, names, and languages, maybe that’s the reason for this journey, moving through phonemes as if into a new world, neither my father’s language nor my mother’s, a third language, another one, and in the rhythm of this monotonous train rewrite myself to be reborn when I get out — the tired traveler invents idiotic games for himself, memories, daydreams, companions to pass the time since the landscape is completely invisible in the night, unable to sleep, I see again despite myself the photos of the Tibhirine monks faces without bodies I had a copy of them in my file, immortalized by the Algerian embassy, the first shock of my new life as a spy that all of a sudden brought me back to wounds to massacres to revenges to the cold rage of revenge the muddy blackened heads I was entering the Zone entering Algerian land that brought forth limbs and corpses more abundantly than Bosnia, then the long carefully recorded list only grew, Sidi Moussa, Bentalha, Relizane, one after the other, stories of axes and knives in the shadows in the flames the scenarios all identicaclass="underline" a few hundred meters away from a post of the Algerian army a band of terrorists got into the village began systematically massacring the population women men men women children newborns their throats cut their bellies ripped open burned shot slammed against walls skulls burst jewelry torn from fingers from wrists with axes beautiful virgins carried off into the mountains as spoils the share of honor for the conquerors with no enemies in the night and the warriors killed killed killed villagers just as poor as they or farmers even poorer, there was nothing in our notes and our reports, nothing whatsoever aside from endless torrents of blood names of villages and emirs scrublands chaparral touched by the fury of Ares, bearded men who spoke more and more incomprehensibly, more and more abstrusely, who spoke of Satan and God of the vengeance of God of all those farmers those Algerians who were infidels and deserved to die, the translators transcribed into French for me the pamphlets the declarations of war the anathemas the insults against the West the army the government farmers women alcohol livestock life and God himself whom they ended up excommunicating because he was too forgiving in their eyes, they worshipped their saber their rifle their leader and when they weren’t fighting amongst themselves they went cheerfully off to massacre and raid in darkness, in front of my civil servant’s eyes, why didn’t they provide night vision equipment in the Algerian army, that was their only excuse for not intervening, they were blind, night was night it belonged to the warriors and I knew better than anyone the terror of combat in the dark, in the midst of civilians between houses they could do nothing — but without provoking it terror suited them, turmoil favored them, Europe had no other choice than to support their dying regime against the barbarism and extremism to protect the oil the mines the villagers the workers the laypeople the infidels the liberals the region the quaking Tunisians and Moroccans, they had to hold firm, the Trojans were outside the ramparts, about to invade the camp and push us out to sea in our hollow vessels, the Islamists were the common enemy and this already before 2001, before the Great Accord that would have us exchanging terrorists galore, the Great Cleanup, suspects activists of all kinds sent off to Guantánamo, chucked out of planes in the middle of the Indian Ocean, tortured in Pakistani or Egyptian cellars, lists and more lists as long as possible until the Iraqi bone of contention, Troy took ten years to fall, and in my well-guarded office I began as an accountant of bodies, like someone who becomes a referee after having been a boxer and himself no longer touches the faces that explode beneath fists, he counts the blows, I gave Algeria beaten down by KOs several chances, and even raised high the arms of winners in my endless reports: Lebihan my boss constantly congratulated me on my prose, you’d think you were there he said, you are the all-round champion of notes, but couldn’t you be a little drier, get a little more to the point, just think, if everyone were like you we wouldn’t know if we were coming or going, but bravo my good man bravo — poor Lebihan, he constantly had health problems, never very serious, always very annoying, hives, pruritus, alopecia, all kinds of fungus, he was nice to me, he addressed me with the formal “vous,” I never knew anything about him or almost nothing, aside from the fact that he came from Lille, which his name did not suggest (if that really was his name), and that he wore a wedding ring — he was a specialist in the ISF, the GIA, all sorts of more or less violent movements, we’d find their names and their members’ names for years to come scattered throughout the four corners of the globe, sometimes with a different spelling or nickname, sometimes in a list of those “presumed dead,” because of the problems in Arabic transcription there were guys with us who had three or four index cards that had to be grouped together, some died three times in a row in three different places and finding a man was not always easy, even if that wasn’t our main objective, as Lebihan gently pointed out to me, the threats against interna