soy un novio de la muerte, I am the bridegroom of death, a man marked by the claw of Fate, who links himself by the strongest tie to the loyal company of Death, what a song, all of it to Spanish oompahs that sound like they come straight out of a running of the bulls, the Grim Reaper’s household pets, artistically massacred by matadors dressed in bullfighter’s outfits, my mother at the age of twelve played in front of those knights undone by age, knights of the mournful countenance marked by war and death in all its forms, marked in their own flesh like Astray or in the flesh of others like Luburić, I too am engaged to implacable Moira, Hades’s niece, in my train rumbling towards nothingness, wearing the death mask of Yvan Deroy the mad, rushing to Rome and the end of the world in the midst of invisible Tuscan hills accompanied by phantom passengers and memories of massacres in my suitcase, son of my mother dubbed, during that Spanish ceremony, by the warriors present, she received the energy from those proud soldiers to transmit to her son an inflexible, fierce history, a share of Fate like a burden on my shoulders, everything connects, everything connects, the silence of the audience, my mother’s hands striking up Contrapunctus XI in The Art of the Fugue, re la sol, fa mi re, do re mi, not too fast, to let the four voices answering each other be heard, to warm up her fingers also, halfway through the piece the audience starts nodding off, it takes a little less than ten minutes for Marija Mirković my progenitor to come to the end of the fugue, with brio, so forthright already, so metronomic that despite her youth she manages to play as if she had four hands, what comes next will wake up the masses, prelude and fugue in D minor from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Millán-Astray stares wide with his one eye to follow the fingers of this gifted child so frail on her red velvet bench, in the spring light when Madrid smells of flowers and green Castilian wheat, frail but determined Marija promenaded her Bach and her Scarlatti sonatas through all of France, to Holland, to England, at twelve in a cream-colored dress she was applauded by all of Europe, she has already received more roses than she did in her entire life, she knows who she’s playing for on that April 14, 1951, she wants to do well, Carmen Polo de Franco the austere will present her with a medal of the Virgin to thank her, my sister still wears it today — my sister received holy inspiration from the dictator’s wife, I received the tutelary looks of Millán-Astray and Luburić my professors of military nobility and my patriotic conscience in the cold cruelty of the neatly combed Pavelić, those are the fairies who leaned over my cradle, the first snapshots of my history, on one hand my grandparents witnesses to the assassination of King Alexander on the Canebière, on the other my mother plays Bach and Scarlatti for Pavelić the man who had ordered the attack, the games of destiny, wie einst Lili Marleen, wie einst Lili Marleen, what solitude in this train now that there’s nothing left to do but let yourself be carried to Rome, to do what, to do what else in Rome to take revenge on barbaric Fate or find a welcoming grave, I’m beginning to glimpse my share of fate, did my mother know what god she would be the instrument of and in what battle, when she made a brief curtsey to the Croatian dictator and to Millán-Astray in Madrid — maybe she envisioned a great career for herself as a soloist, before the miracle of age diminished and before, despite the efforts of her Conservatory professor, Yvonne Lefébure, herself a virtuoso at the age of ten, she discovered herself to be when all was said and done an entirely ordinary pianist, whose passion for the instrument, perhaps blunted by adolescence, the terrible weight of tradition, and then of family, weakened and became a small flame maintained by pedagogy: dozens of relatively gifted girls from good families came to her place to prepare for the entrance exam to the upper Conservatory, why did she marry a man who had little appreciation for music I have no idea, why have I myself never been able to bear my mother’s repertory, allergic to Bach, Scarlatti, and all the rest, I know these works by heart though, I am resistant to art, insensitive to beauty, as Stéphanie the brunette said who liked my mother enormously, she said it’s a stroke of luck to be the son of such an artist, how was it that you never learned how to play the piano, damned if I know, maybe I didn’t have the gift, quite simply, I was much better at sport, programmed to be a warrior probably, which doesn’t mean anything really, swift-footed Achilles plays the lyre and recites poems in his tent — my sister Leda learned all the piano she wanted to, for years, clinging to my mother like a crab on Andrija’s balls, I was the audience, I had to endure private family concerts on Sunday afternoons, after lunch my mother called out, come on everyone, come here, Leda’s going to play something for us, my sister strutted like a pigeon in heat, put her fat buttocks on the stool everyone present sat down on chairs in a row facing the instrument she sits in front of, sonatina by Clementi number God knows what, etc., my stoic father applauded loud enough to bring the house down, bravo sweetie-pie bravo that was perfect, my mother a teacher to the tips of her toes said yes, it was good, but, but the tempo, but the crescendo, but this, but that, every Sunday we waited for my mother’s but after the applause, I was ashamed for my sister, when I think about it, I was ashamed that she made such a spectacle of herself, a shame mingled with jealousy perhaps, what did I have to show, me, what can earn me my family’s applause, Leda slipped into the mold prepared for her, a perfect young lady, sweet and diligent, then a deadly boring woman who unearthed a magnificently insipid husband to whom she has given perfectly inane children who will end up in a bank or in insurance, and voilà, the pianist Marija Mirković surprised Millán-Astray in Madrid on April 14, 1951, without knowing who this rigid general with the frightening appearance was, and now, hundreds of kilometers farther away, Francis the coward is thinking of his mother and that famous invalid in a train hurtling towards nothingness in an Italian night, alone like a star on a cloudy evening, into what obscure mold did I slip, what professor emerging from the shadows will say to me it was very good, but. . Lebihan maybe, between oysters and bicycle races, or Maurice Bardèche himself the old fascist will say to me you did well, but. . maybe Ezra Pound the radio commentator of Mussolini’s Italy will walk out of the shadows to murmur it was perfect, but. . or Tihomir Blaškić the colonel of Vitez will leave his Bosnian retreat to shout to me