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the pharaonic temples that the same Bonaparte conquered before launching ever further into the Syrian expedition and the disaster of the siege of Saint Jean d’Acre, Yvan Deroy the mad or catatonic schizophrenic interned in a specialized institution in L’Haÿles-Roses, in the asylum they used to say—Yvan emerges from his lethargy only to shout and assault the staff and the other patients violently, to try to kill them for they are his enemies, he shouts, they want to hurt him he is simply defending himself nothing more no mystical flights of fancy no voices no hallucinations Yvan emerges from his semi-comatose state only into the pure violence of a wild animal according to the phases of the moon or the changing course of his treatment, and this has been the case for almost twenty years despite the quantity of medication he has taken he resists his sickness resists therapy, he is me now Yvan had a shaved head the time he raised his right arm in salute wanted to put an end to democratic corruption the servants of Bolshevism and international Jewry, he went to church on Sundays to hand out pamphlets to middle-class housewives whom he frightened more than anything else, he read Brasillach and every February 6 th visited his grave with the other militants to celebrate the martyr and promise revenge for the victim of Gaullist injustice and Jewish hatred, Yvan and I visited Maurice Bardèche official fascist who offered us a volume of his pro-Franco history of the Spanish War written in collaboration with Brasillach—Yvan Deroy went mad, I forgot him as I went through normal military training then paratrooper military training and finally all possible military trainings before going to serve France, volunteer for a long period of service they said at the time, months slogging around in the mountains, team spirit songs weapons marches nighttime commandos grenades light artillery a hard happiness shared with comrades I was more than a little proud to come back on leave and share my naïve martial exploits, the kid from Arès was still just a puppy on parade, in training, on maneuvers in the South of France, on maneuvers in the North of France, on maneuvers in the Alps always happy to have a life so full of weapons honor and fatherland, sweating in the mountains on the Saint Bernard Pass with Hannibal and Bonaparte who didn’t get blisters, mounted on their elephants or their horses, Hannibal the Tunisian was inches away from succeeding, Rome trembled, Bonaparte succeeded, Austria capitulated—Yvan Deroy remembers today in this train that his parents were proud of him, that those fervent Catholics thought of his army as a scout camp that would fortify body and soul, his mother whispered in his ear, prophetically, don’t forget, your homeland is also Croatia , I wanted to go into politics enroll in Sciences-Po once my time of service was over I had a knack for contemporary history tenacious and hardworking everything would smile down on me even Marianne who without sharing my right-wing opinions came from a good Christian family, Yvan Deroy has just crossed the Alps one more time while his actual body languishes, waiting for the end of the world prostrate in a wheelchair—now I’m traveling incognito while still being “legal” a good suitcase-carrier invisible in the crowd of identities and minor bank transactions, Yvan Deroy, impossible to sleep effect of the half-amphetamine I took this morning to hold out after having snored for two hours good and drunk like an imbecile I missed the plane and even more stupidly I rushed over to the train instead of waiting for the next flight, now I’m hungry, a little, maybe I should go eat or drink something we’re traveling very fast it’s drizzling a little this December evening I remember the long nights of the Croatian autumn, the corn fields are the same the rain too in Slavonia around Osijek in 1991 we were freezing in our hunting jackets and despite all my military training