poilus of 1914 I never knew what to say, I was ashamed maybe or afraid of frightening my family, I dished out commonplaces about the powerful enemy, about the courage of our troops, about victory and I said I was doing well, that I wasn’t taking any needless risks, that I had good comrades who were watching out for me, that’s it, then of course the letters became spaced farther apart, they were replaced by a few quick phone calls made for free from some operation HQ, more and more rarely, and quite certainly my parents and Marianne got used to the idea that nothing serious would happen to me, since I didn’t give them any news, either good or bad, but I knew afterwards that my mother was still pretty worried, that she went to church every morning at 7:00 to pray for me and that she burned a considerable number of candles, maybe that’s what saved me after all, all that smoke all that melted wax in the 15th arrondissement in Paris, I find it hard to picture my sister in my place at the front like Intissar, who knows, she might have made an exceptional fighter, after all she is capable of deploying a wealth of contrariness, she is headstrong and patriotic — Marianne wrote to me often, she related her days as a Parisian student to me in detail, gave me the latest cultural and political news, told me she missed me and urged me to come home as soon as possible, she had assumed the role of the faithful fiancée, she would have made a magnificent widow, even more so than Stéphanie, Stéphanie would not have waited for me, she had too much of a feel for the current situation and for time, a taste for the present, much less Christian, in this sense, than Marianne the bourgeois, Stéphanie wanted to know, though, she was curious about the war she had seen the photo where we were all three of us holding court, Andrija and Vlaho and me in uniform, it had become an obsession, to understand and make me “clear the air” as she said, erase the trauma that she imagined, that’s why I saw Commander Eduardo Rózsa again in a documentary on Channel 4, Stéphanie showed up at my place one evening for dinner saying look I recorded this show yesterday, we could watch it, it might interest you, she was surely lying, the film was dated 1994 not very likely that any channel had shown it the day before, she must have moved heaven and earth to find images showing foreign fighters in Croatia, she thought I had fought in an international brigade, which could easily have been the case, I was in a good mood I said why not, if it makes you happy, after all we’d have to go there eventually, I was just back from Trieste I felt happy, it had rained all throughout my stay with Globocnik and Stangl, among the remains of Aktion Reinhardt scattered over the Adriatic, I was happy to see Stéphanie again, we had had dinner, I should never have let myself be persuaded to watch this film, it was in fact an investigation into the death of the British photographer Paul Jenks, dead from a bullet in the neck on the Osijek side, in mysterious circumstances, Paul was a photographer mainly for the Guardian his companion Sandra Balsells worked at the time for the London Times, she too had covered the war and in 1994 she made the journey to Croatia again with a television crew to try to figure out how Paul had been killed, the man she loved, that seems easy to say, she returned to the place where he died on the front where they had worked together in 1991, Stéphanie stared wide-eyed at the screen, she discovered flat desolate landscapes covered in snow, the immense Slavonic plain, she discovered the grey and khaki of war, as if she saw them for the first time, because she was in my presence, I should have known it would end badly, I should have understood from the way she clutched my arm, the way I was beginning to feel cold, in front of the television screen, I listened to what the Croatian soldiers were saying behind the English commentary, guys I thought I recognized sinister faces at every checkpoint, a blackened aluminum kettle that could have been Vlaho’s, a street in Osijek, mismatched uniforms, straight flat highways, muddy fields, destroyed farms, the smell of frost of gas of burnt rubber and the frozen face of Sandra Balsells in back of the car, her few words, the flowers she puts in the ditch where Paul Jenks fell, near the railroad a kilometer before Tenjski Antunovac a poor village that had been occupied by the Serbs, the journalists suspect that the bullet that hit him in the back of the skull didn’t come from that side but from closer by on the right, from the headquarters of the international brigade headed by Eduardo Rózsa the patriot, when I heard his name I started, he appeared on the screen, just the same, a little chubbier maybe, Rózsa the smiling, with his round mug his somber eyes and his humor, of course he denies everything, he says that’s impossible, that Paul Jenks was killed by a Serb sniper from Antunovac, that the other journalist found strangled during a patrol happened unfortunately upon a Chetnik scout, what could he say, Sandra Balsells observed all these soldiers who may have killed the man she loved, Stéphanie watched Sandra Balsells and then me, she looked as if she were asking, what about you, what do you think? who killed Paul Jenks? while my eyes were glued to the screen, in January 1994 when the journalists return to Croatia there is a permanent ceasefire on that part of the front, they get those white ice-cream trucks from the UN which help them get into occupied territory, where the Serbs are, they want to go see the four demolished houses of Tenjski Antunovac, the Serbs are friendly and cooperative, they agree to let them climb up to the highest point, a firing post in the ruins of one of the last houses in the village, a soldier even brings them a magnificent sniper’s brand-new M76 with a very handsome gunsight so they can see with their own eyes, and here Sandra Balsells takes the weapon, she presses her hand against the angle of the butt and puts her eye against the sight, under the black lens-hood, she looks straight north towards the ditch where Paul fell, what is she thinking at that instant, what is she thinking, she is in the exact same position as the shooter who may have killed Paul, beneath the same roof, an identical rifle against her shoulder, she observes the details of the Croatian post 800 meters away, so precise in the crosshairs it seems you just have to stretch out your arm to touch them, there is no longer a corpse in the ditch, she sees the spray of the frozen yellow flowers she put there, is she picturing Paul’s body, is she crying like Intissar the Palestinian I don’t think so, she keeps silent, her long golden hair caresses the varnished wood of the weapon, Athena the perverse has given her the possibility of seeing what no one has ever seen, the dark side, the very hand of death her eye pressed against the lens her breath precise, Sandra lets go of the rifle, a Serb soldier takes it, does he know who she is probably not, they go back down the ladder, get into their car again after thanking the Serbs for their hospitality, in the back seat Sandra doesn’t know anymore who killed Paul, if it was Rózsa’s mercenaries the Chetniks or the goddess herself, she has doubts, Stéphanie is moved to tears, I pour myself a big glass of hard stuff the investigation continues, John Sweeney is now questioning Frenchie, Eduardo Che Rózsa’s Welsh adjunct in the international brigade, not a bad guy, a soldier, he reminds me of Vlaho with his jagged teeth, I wonder if we would have bumped off a journalist if we had to, no doubt about it, after all a photographer is a kind of spy bought by the highest bidder, a parasite who lives off war without fighting it, all those freelance guys were like us, young and inexperienced at the beginning of the conflict, like us they trembled with fear beneath the shells from the Yugoslav tanks, for most of them it was their first assignment, their first contact with war, like us they saw their first corpses like us they shoved their gear in front of their comrades and exchanged bloated, exaggerated tales, everyone outdoing each other in the number of horrors they’d seen, or how close to death they’d come, I’m not watching the screen I’m plunged into my memories I’ve understood that they’ll never find out who killed Paul Jenks they’ll never know I keep drinking leaving Stéphanie to her disgust with mercenaries soldiers Slavonic hail at the end of the tape she stays silent a while she hesitates to ask me questions she doesn’t know where to begin suddenly she realizes something she says