Rereading the chapter I thought that is was maybe a bit too technical, but I took great pleasure in writing it. In short, you will have a lot of unnecessary details about the magical geopolitics in the Balkans. Wishing you a pleasant reading.
XIV. European policies (1)
Michel Desjardins
My free life, as I call this period of my existence, therefore began with shouting and threats. Without a word, La Roque led me into one of his rooms. Iskandar was waiting for me there, seated in one of the Louis XV armchairs. He darted a displeased look at me.
"Michel Desjardins! He called out. "What will it take to get you in line? What threat, what punishment? Haven't I told you to be cautious? Haven't I warned you enough? "
Instead of lowering my head as usual, the unfairness of what he was saying almost made me jump. He seemed to notice my involuntary movement. He stopped, then resumed in a cold voice:
"Do you want to lead? Do you want to shine? To fight, to conquer this place under the sun to which you seem so desperately to aspire?
"Yes," I replied in a breath, "yes, I do," I asserted.
I fell silent, surprised by my own fervor. Iskandar fixed his icy gaze on me.
"Well, you're going to serve then, you will do your duty, and we shall see if you achieve the same success. And you will never, ever again, hear me, rebel against the authority of the House of Life. Is that clear ?
- Yes, Chief Lector. "
He tossed me a map. I spread it out on the table.
"Sarajevo. Jews, Croats, Serbs, Muslims, Slovenes, Tzigeuners… And so, obviously, gods, spirits, monsters. Well, you know all that. You already frequent pantheons of all kinds."
The last sentence sounded like a reproach.
"I don't know anything about it, I confessed.
- At least you won't be biased. Find out ! Learn the language. Send back to me, alive or dead, all of Setne's accomplices. Clean up, calm down everyone. Cooperates with Belgrade. Secure the borders with Greece, that they do not descend to Mount Olympus, that would be tragic. I have no men to give you. Fend for yourself.
- Yes sir.
- Beware of the Russians, they will want to help you but they have their own interests in the region. And the same with Italians, Turks, Austrians, Romanians…" He stared at me. "Actually beware of everyone. You have free rein. The region must be secure. "
"As the leader of the Nome, you will participate in the Nomes' assembly. Don't speak there, don't get noticed. You didn't deserve this right.
- Not yet. "
Iskandar suddenly cracked a smile.
"Yes, maybe not yet. Go on, you can leave! La Roque is waiting for you. "
The next day, I had landed with almost nothing in an unknown city, and felt much more uncertain of myself. Me and my big mouth! It took me hours to find the ruined building that had served as the Nome's headquarters. It was a traditional, whitewashed house with planked windows. However, for security reasons, we did not settle in Sarajevo itself, but in a secret place, in Dalmatia, on a small island.
One of the first things I did next was to meet with some dissident Slavic leaders. In the absence of the Serbian Nome's assistance, I could quickly count on the help of Miloš, a Montenegrin demigod, son of the Slavic god Kresnik. Miloš was both my Serbian language teacher, my guide and the guardian of the Nome premises. Finally, the Chief Rabbi of Sarajevo gave us some unexpected and precious help.
Iskandar had given me a lot of leeway, which I understood better when I saw the territory's condition. To pull through, I needed to ally myself with men from all sides. Though I didn't know it at the time, this permanent negotiation was the best possible training for then navigating the currents of the Per Ankh's politics. What is, in reality, a bunch of disgruntled magicians compared to a gang of Romans, alongside two Cyclops, some hellhound and an Orthodox priest seeking to slaughter a Gypsy encampment? (This was one of the first cases I encountered, and I must admit that I still haven't understood what the priest was even doing there).
In 1924, I had attended my first chiefs of Nomes' assembly. It was easy to go unnoticed: the meeting's greatest draw had been the Russian magicians' return to Heliopolis. When Menshikov walked into the room, a mixture of applause and hoots had resounded. Unperturbed, he had taken his place at the Eighteenth Desk, sat there looking at the assembly as if they were only his mere subjects. The Russian Nome received no sanction. Its help was recognized in the banishment of Sekhmet, and the Per Ankh's victory in Central Asia. Also, it was one of those with the most independence from the First Nome, especially in matters of defense of its territory.
Menshikov came to see me after the meeting.
"Well, if I expected this… Iskandar is honoring you. Or just trying to bury you. Sarajevo, really?
- A Nome like any other.
- I do not doubt it, but with quite a special history though. The Bosnian Nome's failure became the whole of Europe's failure of in 1914.
- Weren't you sent as reinforcements?
- And have we not already paid a great price for our failure? Setne was nothing. Just a spark. Europe was already on the verge of suicide when he shot the Archduke. Well, so be it. I suppose we will meet again, elsewhere than in Cairo. The Balkans are still in the zone of Russian influence.
- My interlocutor is a king, yours a party secretary.
- But the Slavic gods do not know any frontiers. We will have to work together, Frenchman.
- And you're going to tell me to trust you, right?
- Oh no, really, don't. Never ever trust me Desjardins. "
I suddenly noticed a detail on his hand.
"You got married ?"
He looked down at his wedding ring.
"Yes. The success of a lifetime."
I raised a questioning eyebrow.
"One hundred and fifty years of perseverance!
- I always knew you were a great romantic. "
He looked at his wedding ring tenderly, then said as a goodbye to me:
"Good luck with Serbo-Croatian, it's a difficult language for French speakers. Like Russian for that matter."
I did need some luck. Our Nome was torched three times in the first year. Then, when the Per Ankh understood that that things were getting better for me, our neighbors, the Hungarian, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Italian, and Austrian Nomes started to show interest in what we were doing. To protect ourselves from their curiosity, we had an infallible technique: all our official activities took place at the Sarajevo Nome, the behind-the-scenes transactions with the locals more often took place in Dubrovnik, Podgorica, or at the Belgrade Nome, our private affairs, among which our meetings with some European Nomes' members, or Alice's acquaintances, happened in our home, in Dalmatia.
We had built it ourselves, on top of the rocks, overlooking the sea. It was a two-story house, with a very large ground floor, and beneath, large cellars and storerooms carved into the rock. Vines covered an arbor in front of the door which opened onto a large terrace, a few meters above the waves. Some steps, cut in the rock, led down to a beach. In the morning, after breakfast, we used to remove the tables and chairs, so that Giacomo could give Louis his fencing lesson. On the other side of the house grew a large garden with an orchard that covered more than a quarter of the island. It was a very small island though, uninhabited, clad with all possible protections and magically unattainable.
After the first difficult years, we quickly took our marks. It was our territory, we knew almost everyone there. We were free there, depending only on Iskandar, and far from the other magicians' eyes. I hardly returned to Paris now. The children had grown up in the hot Adriatic climate. Louis was seven years old. Jeanne, Alice's daughter, born in 1926, was turning three.
That day, at the end of September 1929, it was already the sixth time I had to attend the annual meeting. Suffice to say that I had the time to adjust. The assembly only had an advisory function, but Iskandar never made a decision without first studying the balance of power within it. The sessions lasted for several days. First, we would always discuss the annual budget and the financial grants to Nomes in difficulty, which rarely concerned the large Nomes that were financially independent. Then we talked about the past year's crises and those currently happeninig, as well as other security issues. Each Nome presided in turn, so it took three hundred and sixty years to go around. They would also announce the appointments of new Nome leaders. Finally, Iskandar reconfirmed in their posts certain magicians fulfilling particular functions, such as the chief healer of the First Nome (First Sunu), the guardian of the Three Hundred and Sixtieth Nome, the guardian of ancient monuments, the Master of Ceremonies, or the Grand Master of studies. These days were also of social interest: alongside the Per Ankh's exam, it was the only time of the year, when magicians from all over the world met to discuss and exchange.
There had been some changes since my first assembly in 1924. The Old Kane had died last fall, his son Jabari had taken over as head of the Twenty-First. The other big news was Hannibal Friedwald's appointment as head of the Sixteenth Nome, following the death of old Alvensleben. Germany's Nome, like that of France, was part of the "group of the fifty", the first fifty Nomes, particularly powerful and populous who made most of the decisions within the House of Life. Of course things were much more complicated, some big Nomes, like Japan, were not part of the group, but we will come back to this point another time.
Thus, on this morning we were discussing the annual budget. The meeting could have gone a lot faster, if the big Nomes could just stop interfering. Anyway, as I explained, they weren't receiving any funds at all from the First Nome. But of course, they'd never miss an opportunity to bicker. In the end, the reactions were as usual: Menshikov and Kane were happily arguing. Voiello was asking for money. Mazrui (the richest man in Per Ankh) was protesting against unnecessary spending. Boris had told me that before, when the Sforza ruled the Nome of Italy, and the Bellini that of Tunis, they would often evacuate the hall, and search the participants at the entrance to prevent them from bringing weapons with them.
Boris Subotić, seated next to me, directed the Nome of Belgrade. He had designated himself as my chaperone and instructor. In fact he had kind of lost started losing it since the 1918 massacres, and his Nome was in a terrible condition. In fact Iskandar had sent me to chaperone him. The old wizard was irascible and rude, and had turned away all the inspectors and reinforcements that had been sent to him. Besides, nobody wanted to get their hands dirty in the Balkans' quagmire. Before me, two magicians had successively tried to rule the Sarajevo Nome, without success. Boris had watched them get overwhelmed, laughing. Sarajevo had then become a kind of Nome-punishment.
But of course, I hadn't exactly followed all the rules. Using only magicians to control a region where three monotheisms rubbed shoulders, where the Slavs were at perpetual war with the Romans, the Greeks, and the Germanic gods, was a losing battle. And then, just as always, I had arrived after the heavy fighting, in territories exhausted by five years of internal strife, eager for order.
When Boris realized that I was doing better, he suddenly took an interest in me as well, and seemed delighted with my ability to make enemies out of the Per Ankh's most important faces. He had, for many reasons, kept a grudge against other magicians. The fact that he'd sympathized with me mostly to annoy others could have been quite upsetting, but at the time it was just a relief. Boris hardly did anything, and I found myself having to handle most of his Nome's business for him. I didn't hold it against him. I suppose that, past a thousand years, one should have the right to retire, and he was one thousand five hundred and fifty-two. It was also much easier to have a coherent policy in the region by dealing with it alone.
I must say that his company had some advantages: he spoke all the languages of the region, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian-Macedonian, Slovene, Modern Greek, Romani, but also the rarest ones, like the Albanian, Turkish Tatar, Aromanian, Istrian, Meglenite… Finally, his history lessons were of great help to me. In general, I liked old people among the Per Ankh for they had lived the story they were telling. Giacomo used to go drinking with him and collect all his precious anecdotes and stories about the House of Life's ancient past.
Finally, he knew very well the chiefs, the spirits, and the local deities. I had traveled enough with Erwan before the war, to know that it was they who really controlled a territory. With their help it got easy for us to spot and dismantle all of the armed bands, one by one, and to stop Setne's former allies. Usually our intervention groups consisted of Giacomo, Miloš and me, plus Esme who came by from time to time, sometimes from Alice, though she didn't have a lot of combat experience, or some of her friends/lovers whom she occasionally recruited. Some other people would sometimes help us : Boris' acquaintance living in the territory and Slovenian magicians. The Albanian Nome often gave us a hand too. I carefully avoided that of the Hungarians or Greeks.
At the time of the break, I approached Vladimir.
« How is your dictatorship doing ? » He saluted me.
In Belgrade, King Alexander had just dissolved the parliament. The kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was going to be renamed within a few days "Kingdom of Yugoslavia". Croatian and Macedonian nationalists, just like the Communists, were already being hunted down.
"How is yours ? Still no news from Trotsky?
- Oh, I won't miss him."
He had of course not forgotten the time of the red terror.
"What about Stalin.
- At least he doesn't bother with ideology.
- He's just a brigand, yes."
He looked at me with his piercing eyes.
"You're always wrong, the worst are the ideologues. They are elated. We wouldn't have had Stalin without these ideologues, he would be in his place, in his shitty campaign. Wait a minute, what else does Kane want from me? I'm going to roast him. "
He got up and went back to argue with Kane. The worst part was that they both agreed. Both supported a reform to obtain more independence and financial opacity in the face of the First Nome (bullshit if you want my opinion). They just couldn't calm down for two minutes to decide on a modus operandi. They reminded me of Justine who spent her time yelling at Erwan, though he was one of her best allies.
In fact the two chiefs of Nome were perfect opposites. The Nomes of America had a somewhat peculiar position: they were absolutely independent from their government. The only organ that could control them was the First Nome. The Eighteenth, on the other hand, was extremely free in the face of the First Nome, but closely watched by his temporal government. It is a system in force since Peter the Great and Alexander Menshikov.
Vladimir returned to his place without having advanced in his project, but happy to have let off some steam.
"Isn't it a bit too much ?
- I can not help it, he is a capitalist, I have to not get along with him. And then, you are in no position to lecture me. What have you done to him? "
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I exist" I answered.
He lit a cigar.
" Are you serious ? I stared at the cigar.
"Who said cigars are incompatible with communism?
- Your propaganda cartoons. Find me a real Communist leader who smokes cigars!"
Obviously, at the time I had no idea that Cuba would come to resolve this paradox.
"Deal." Menshikov replied.
Vladimir Menchikov
If someone was to put on a show, with just Desjardins on stage complaining and criticizing everything for two hours, I'd pay to see it. It was both hilarious and always unexpected. Since this morning he had had time to complain about the lack of organization which made us waste time (that's the goal, I wanted to tell him), about the stupid questions that kept coming back, and about the Vienna Nome, which had sent him threatening letters again ("what is the matter with these old aristocrats? The Austro-Hungarian Empire is over, it is high time someone told them!"). Desjardins had a long history with the Austrians that went back further than his troubles with the Vienna Nome. Then he had started a quarrel with the Albanians for no apparent reason.
"I need you" he'd come upon me during the break.
"What have you done again?" I sighed.
It was a little Iskandar's fault too, he had propelled Desjardins leader of one of the most delicate Nomes of Per Ankh, without any political training.
"You need to talk to the Bulgarian guy" he replied. "I have the Fifth who still wants to annex Macedonia."
I sighed. The Fifth, who was one of the most powerful and ancient Nomes, as you could imagine following its number, that of Athens, had had only one obsession for millennia: Macedonia's reconquest (which he was refused precisely so that he would not become too powerful). Bulgaria was notoriously one of its fiercest adversaries. But its Nome leader, Kolchagovi, a filthy junk, instead of allying himself with Desjardins in his setbacks against the Slavs, preferred to wait for him to have his throat slit, to then help his successor instead. Desjardins embodied communism in his eyes (which was highly ironic, given his relations with my communists). Kolchagovi was also one of Boris Subotić's sworn enemy, since I don't know which Bulgarian-Serbian war exactly. That could explain stuff as well.
"Macedonia is not part of your Nome." I reminded him.
He pouted.
"You know very well that if I don't take care of it, it's going to fall back on me."
He wasn't wrong. A greater Greece would be catastrophic for the equilibrium of the whole region. And Subotić was suffering from an extreme case of what I called острый похуизм.
"What about Albanians ?
- You're kidding ? They received money from the Greeks. You know very well that the Bulgarians depend on you.
- Well, I'll see with Kolchagovi. You talk to the Turk, and don't yell at him like the other time. Normally, he is always happy to oppose the Greeks.
- I argued with him because he was trying to mobilize some imams to go spy on Slavic magicians. Who does this moron think he is? As if it hadn't been complicated enough to make them lay down their arms!"
Desjardins had succeeded in sowing discord between all the bands of Slavs in his territory to better reconcile them in his own way. "You are a true master magician," I complimented him. "Putting Isfet at the service of Ma'at is a very great art." The fact that some of their leaders had mysteriously disappeared had of course helped, especially when the Frenchman set out to dismantle the largest band of demigods in the area. The local Greek heroes were often the worst. They banded together in order to survive, made deals with monsters and terrorized people. I recognized in their defeat the discreet hand of a certain magician. Having a Bellini in his ranks was an advantage none of Desjardins predecessors had had, and of course I suspected Iskandar calculated the move.
Besides Boris, there were still five Serbian magicians, two Muslim Bosnians, three Croats and six Slovenes left in the Per Ankh. One of the Serbs served at the Kyiv Nome, two at the Bulgarian Nome, the rest at mine. The Croats were in Vienna, the Slovenes had formed an autonomous unrecognized Nome in Ljubljana, the Bosnians were at the First Nome. All the Kosovars had deserted to the Nome of Albania. Nobody wanted to take back Sarajevo. Subotić called them sissies. He wasn't wrong.
Michel had secured the good graces of the Slovenian magicians by recognizing their Nome, which had of course annoyed the Nome of Vienna (of which the Slovenes were once a part), but he did not care, since in doing so, he did not no more common border with him. In return, the Ljubljana's magicians occasionally lent him men to hold his territory. He also had had the wit not to report his activities to the Yugoslav monarchy, which allowed him to remain independent.
Vienna had then sent him its Croats to take back the Nome. They replied to their hierarchy that they would not set foot in Sarajevo, and had went to Zagreb instead. After some negotiations between Michel and them, they joined the independent Slovenian Nome. Two of them then left for the Nome of Sydney, where the husband of one of the magicians lived, which wiped them off the European policies map. Vienna had remained angry with Sarajevo.
The Italians, had remained quiet for the moment. Desjardins had refused to intervene in the quarrels between the Slovenes and the Eighth, that began with Carniola's annexation (some part of Slovenia) by Italy. Actually, I suspected a certain Bellini, who knew well Italian magicians, of having blackmailed most of the important members of the Nome to buy peace. You can see now that this whole situation was quite complex and intertwined, although very distracting in hindsight.
I admit that I had played in all of this, a role that went beyond what I'd expected. At the beginning, Desjardins wisely refrained from asking me for a hand. It was in fact me, who, faced with a somewhat complex situation with my government, had asked for his help. He then came back to see me, to ask me for a special favor that was not related to politics.
"I would like to go back to training. With your Nome's magicians."
Desjardins was one of the first to have the audacity to present me with such a request. It was quite surprising, but wise in its own way. Russian elementalist magicians were considered to be the best in the world. The three great masters in their respective disciplines, Fire, Water and Earth were affiliated with us: the greatest water elementalist watched over Arkhangelsk, that of Earth, had been trained in my Nome and was now stationed in Georgia, and finally the greatest fire elementalist was my wife, Anna Egorovna. The air bender served under the Mazrui family, in the Nome of Tanzania.
"Aren't you a little old to go back to school?
- You're never too old for that."
I had asked Anna for her opinion, since she was leading our Elementalists.
"You have a weird relationship with your French, you are really involved in his shit, my wife said."
- It's just to annoy Kane, I promised him. Also, I too took the head of my Nome when I was still quite young (thirty years old is very, very young for magicians), and I would have liked to receive a helping hand from the other chiefs, rather than a general rush on my territory.
- Ah, but of course! Vladimir, you, kind, altruistic, generous and sentimental old bitch, she had scolded me, half hilarious, half angry, stop being nice to people. Oh and hell with you both! I'll entrust him to one of my Earth magicians. The French are terribly bad at elemental magic, they must have damaged him a lot. "
I had thus offered one of my magicians the pleasure of being paid to beat up a Frenchman every week (no, we had not forgotten 1812, magicians have a hard grudge). Gradually I had come to give him various political advice, in particular on how to deal with the Serbs. It was I who advised him never to mention his Catholic education, so that he would not be accused of favoritism towards the Croats. It was I too who had found myself giving him a course in Orthodox dogmatism (in those days, the Orthodox clergy frequented the Slavic gods, you had to beware).
Politics was just part of the truth. Using a Champollion to anger the old families in America was useful to me, it's true. But beyond that, I had a certain affection for the kid. Also, my magicians were all traced by my government. In an exchange of good deeds, Desjardins sometimes gave me a hand, spying here and there, doing me some favors, unbeknownst to the party and its central committee. He had quickly figured out our total lack of independence from my government. He therefore was a real potential for nuisance for us. My sister Nina didn't like it, of course. "He knows too much about us. Get rid of him." No one was to know our weakness, when the Communists had put a noose around our neck.
I told myself that having an ally in the Balkans was more useful to us. Also, as Serguei had pointed out, Desjardins showed a certain indifference to the power struggles within Per Ankh. "He looks like his ancestor. Champollion didn't give a shit about anything, throughout his life. Whenever he'd wanted to do something, he would just go and do his thing. And your Frenchman is like him, he appeared walking around in the middle of the civil war, to take care of his own business, without even worrying about what we were doing, about Anna who was walking around doing chaos magic or of you who allied yourself with Evenk shamans. "
"Are you doing something this weekend? I have a boring civil servant that I would love to see disappear." I asked him during the break.
The basis of our agreement. It was a kind of mutual protection, actually.
"All right. Which town ?"
Since there were hardly any portals in the Balkans, Michel had learned the art of moving through the Duat.
"Not exactly a city. The Solovki Islands. Oh and we'd have to ex-filtrate a friend.
- Greek? Slavic?
- No, just an intellectual. Do you think you can get him out of the country?
- We're gonna work it out."
A few days later, three dead, and the magic militia chasing us in a Karelian forest, we were more in trouble than anything else. Of course, I had walked right into a trap. Even a magician, one should not go to the Solovki Islands as if it was a vulgar Siberian camp.
Since the summer, conditions in our prisons had become tougher, with forced labor compulsory for detainees. I had forbidden any form of disobedience to my magicians, for their own safety. So I found myself doing this kind of operation alone, or with people outside the Nome.
I put wood back into the fire and checked our defensive spells. Desjardins was sleeping nearby, he had just burned all his energy to teleport us through the Duat. The forests of Karelia bore the traces of a particular magic, that was blurring our location, slowing our pursuers. Karelians did not have Stalin in their hearts. I thought about my sister, Саша, если бы ты меня видела ... Где же ты сейчас? A torpor came over me, and, despite the risk, I let myself fall into sleep. I needed to replenish my energy reserves too, to get back to Leningrad.
I was awakened by a howl. Turned my head and saw Michel struggling in his sleep. I grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him until he woke up. I gave him a few minutes to come to his senses, before offering him a drink. He gratefully accepted.
"War still?
- It had also been a long time since I had not dreamed of it. I think it's the camps, it reminds me of too many things. I was starting to wonder… "
He didn't finish.
"I think you already know that, but the easiest way is to let it slip away, not to dwell on these moments.
- I don't want to forget, he replied. If I don't sort through my memories, they get blurry and disappear over time. I will have to review every second to be able to turn the page I think.
- Why would you want to remember it? Another war will come and will soon remind you of it.
- No, not if I can do something about it.
- I remember the first man I killed, the monsters and all, that doesn't really matter actually. I was sixteen. It was a gang leader, a great Bashkir, who had ambushed us. I finished it off with a saber. I think I cried all night after that. Nina gave me two slaps when I woke up, telling me that I had to pull myself together.
- She was tough on you.
- That's normal, she's my eldest. It was her role. It all faded soon after, I was able to go through all the wars.
- Maybe you can toughen up like that. But I just feel like if I bury this inside me, I won't be able to feel anything anymore. Nothing at all.
- This is where you are quite eccentric. See, most of us here don't feel anything anymore. "
He didn't answer.
"You'll be fine," I promised him.
I added, "It would be hard for you if you were weak. But you are not weak. "
Traduction du russe:
острый похуизм : Acute I-don't-carism
Саша, если бы ты меня видела... Где же ты сейчас ? : Sacha (diminutive of Alexandra), if you saw me ... Where are you now?