The African Equation

1. Frankfurt

When I found love, I told myself, that’s it, I’ve gone from just existing to actually living, and I swore to do whatever it took to ensure my joy would never end. My presence on earth now had a meaning, a vocation, and I had become someone special … Before that, I’d been an ordinary doctor pursuing an ordinary career, leading a humdrum existence without any real appetite, having the odd passionless affair that left no trace when it was over, meeting friends for drinks in the evening or for pleasant hikes in the forest at weekends — in short, routine as far as the eye could see, with the occasional unusual event, as vague and fleeting as a sense of déjà vu, which had no more effect on me than some trivial item in a newspaper … But when I met Jessica, I discovered the world; I might even say I gained access to the very essence of the world. I wanted to be as important to her as she was to me, to be worthy of her every concern, to occupy her every thought; I wanted her to be my groupie, my muse, my ambition; I wanted many things, and Jessica embodied all of them. The truth is that she was my star, she lit up the whole sky for me. I was as happy as a man could be. It was as if I just had to hold out my hand and summer would come early. A state of grace was a mere heartbeat away. Every kiss I received was like a vow. Jessica was my seismograph and my religion, a religion in which the dark side of things had no place, in which all the holy books could be summed up in a single verse: I love you … But in the past few weeks, doubt had crept into even those pious words. Jessica had stopped looking at me in the same way as before. I no longer recognised her. After ten years of marriage, I was aware that something was wrong with our relationship, and I hadn’t the slightest clue what it was, had no way of locating the source of the problem. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she would give a start, and it would take her at least a minute to realise that all I was trying to do was break through the wall she had built around herself. If I insisted, she would put her arms up like a barrier and tell me that now was not the time. Every word, every sigh upset her, pushed her that little bit further away from me.

My wife didn’t so much worry me as terrify me.

She had always been a fighter, had always battled for what she believed in, had always done all she could to make our lives better. Jessica and I had had ten wonderful years when everything had gone well, ten years of unbridled love, combining sensual passion and warm friendship.

I had met her in a brasserie on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. She was taking part in a seminar, and I was attending a conference. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. I was near the front window, she was at the far end of the room, and we looked at each other in silence. Then we both smiled. She left first, along with her colleagues. I didn’t think I would see her again. In the evening, our paths crossed in the foyer of the hotel where her seminar and my conference were both taking place, on different floors. Chance seemed to be on our side, so why not take advantage of it? … Within four months, we were married.

What was making her so distant? Why wouldn’t she tell me any of her anxieties or secrets? In desperation, interpreting her attitude as the sign of a guilty conscience, I suspected an extramarital affair, a casual adventure that had driven her into a frenzy of remorse … But that was absurd. Jessica was mine. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her look at another man.

Sometimes, sitting in the kitchen after a meal during which we hadn’t spoken and she had avoided my eyes, I would reach out my hand to her. Instinctively, like a frightened snail, she would move her arm away and hide it under the table; I would keep calm, for fear of making matters worse.

Jessica was a beautiful woman. I was dying to take her in my arms; I was hungry for her, her warm body, her passionate embrace. The smell of her hair, her perfume, the blue of her eyes: I missed everything about her. I longed for her even though she was within arm’s reach; I lost sight of her as soon as she turned away from me. I no longer knew how to get her back.

Our house was like a sealed mausoleum in which I was both a prisoner and a ghost. I didn’t know which way to turn. I felt confused, superfluous, completely useless. All I could do was watch the lights going out one by one and darkness spreading from the wings to the stage, where my leading lady had forgotten her lines. No role matched her silences. She was merely a semblance of herself, as elusive as a memory that had lost its own story. What was she thinking about? What was worrying her? Why was she always in a hurry to go to bed, leaving me alone in the living room with a pile of questions?

I spent my evenings slouched in front of the television, even though it no longer amused me and I hopped listlessly from one channel to another. Wearily, feeling as if my head were in a vice, I would go to the bedroom and spend an eternity listening to Jessica sleep. She was magnificent when she slept, like an offering fallen from the sky, except that I was forbidden to touch. Freed from whatever obsessed her, her face regained its freshness, its magic, its humanity; she was the most beautiful sight I could hope for in the midst of the darkness that had seized my world.

By the time I got up in the morning, she was usually already gone. I would find traces of her breakfast in the kitchen, and a note on the fridge: Don’t wait up for me tonight. I may be back late … With a lipstick mark on the paper by way of signature.

Whatever the day brought, it was likely to be as dreary as my evenings.

I was a general practitioner. My surgery was on the ground floor of a grand-looking building, a few blocks from the Henninger Turm in the upper part of Sachsenhausen, in southern Frankfurt. My surgery occupied the whole floor and had a waiting room large enough to hold about twenty people. My highly efficient assistant was named Emma. She was a tall girl with muscular legs, the mother of two children she was bringing up alone after her husband had walked out on her. She kept my surgery as spotless as an operating theatre.

Two patients were waiting for me in the waiting room: a pale-faced old man in a tight coat and a young woman with her baby. The old man looked as if he had spent the night outside my surgery waiting for me to arrive. He stood up as soon as he saw me.

‘I can’t stand the pain, doctor. The pills you prescribed aren’t having an effect any more. What’ll become of me if I can’t find a drug that works?’

‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Herr Egger.’

‘My blood’s turned pitch-black, doctor. What exactly do I have? Are you sure you’ve made the right diagnosis?’

‘I’m going by what the hospital has told me, Herr Egger. We’ll have a look in a minute.’

The old man resumed his seat and huddled in his coat. He turned to the young woman, who was looking outraged, and said, ‘I was here before you, madam.’

‘Maybe you were,’ she shot back, ‘but I have a baby with me.’

I found it hard to concentrate on my work that morning. I kept thinking about Jessica. Emma noticed that I wasn’t myself. At midday, she urged me to go and get some lunch and have a breather. I went to a little restaurant not far from the Römerberg. There was a couple that kept bickering in low voices at the next table. Then a family arrived with some noisy kids and I hastily asked for the bill.

I went to a little park not far from the restaurant and sat on a bench until a group of young tourists came and disturbed me. In the surgery, three patients were sitting twiddling their thumbs. They looked pointedly at their watches to indicate that I was more than an hour late.

At about five, I had a visit from one of my oldest patients, Frau Biribauer, who always deliberately chose to come towards the end of surgery so that she could tell me her troubles. She was a woman in her eighties, unfailingly polite and well dressed. But today, she hadn’t put on any make-up and her dress hadn’t been ironed. She looked downcast, and her withered hands were streaked with bruises. She began by making it clear that she hadn’t come for any medical reason, apologised for constantly ‘boring’ me with her stories, then, after a pause for thought, asked, ‘What’s death like, doctor?’

‘Come now, Frau Biribauer—’

She raised her hand to cut me short. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Nobody has ever come back from the dead to tell us what it’s like,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, we aren’t there yet. All you have is a small benign tumour that’ll disappear with the right treatment.’

I tried to put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. ‘The reason I came to see you, doctor,’ she went on, ‘isn’t that monstrous thing that’s growing under my armpit. I really do ask myself the question. It’s the only thing I can think of lately. I try to imagine what it’s like, that big leap in the dark, but I can’t.’

‘You should think of something else. You have an iron constitution, and lots of good years ahead of you.’

‘The good years are those you share with the people you love, doctor. And what am I supposed to think about? What else is there?’

‘Your garden.’

‘I don’t have a garden.’

‘Your cat, your flowers, your grandchildren …’

‘I don’t have anybody left, doctor, and I don’t get any joy from the flowers on my balcony any more. My son only lives twenty kilometres away, but never comes to see me. Whenever I phone him, he says he’s working every hour God sends and he doesn’t have a minute to himself … Whereas I have plenty of time to wonder what death is like …’ She wrung her hands. ‘Loneliness is a slow death, doctor. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m still alive.’

She held my gaze for a moment or two, then turned away.

I reached out to take her hands, and this time she let me as if she no longer had the strength to resist.

‘Try to forget your dark thoughts, Frau Biribauer,’ I said. ‘You’re worrying unnecessarily. It’s all in your mind. Keep your spirits up. You’ve shown great courage and a clear head. You have no reason to give in now. With its joys and pains, life deserves to be lived to the end.’

‘But that’s just it, doctor, what’s the end like?’

‘What does it matter? What matters is that you take more care of your flowers. Your balcony will look a lot more cheerful. Now, show me how our little tumour has reacted to the medication.’

She took her hands away and confessed with a sigh, ‘I haven’t taken the medication.’

‘What do you mean?’

She shrugged like a sulking child. ‘I burnt the prescription as soon as I got home.’

‘You surely don’t mean that.’

‘Of course I do. Nothing matters when you have nobody left.’

‘There are places that can help you, Frau Biribauer. Why not try them if you feel alone? You’ll have company, you’ll be well taken care of, and—’

‘You mean an old people’s home? Those are just places to die in! They’re not for me. I can’t imagine ending my days somewhere as grim as that. No, I couldn’t stand people putting me to bed at a fixed time, taking me out into the fresh air like a vegetable, pinching my nose to make sure I swallow my soup. I have too much pride for that. And besides, I don’t like relying on other people. I’ll go with my head held high, standing on my own two feet, without needles in my veins or an oxygen mask attached to my face. I’ll choose the moment and the manner for myself.’

She pushed my arm away and stood up, angry with herself. I tried to hold her back, but she asked me to let her go and left the surgery without saying anything else and without looking at anybody. I heard her open the front door of the building and slam it behind her. I waited to hear her walking down the street, but as she didn’t pass my windows, as she usually did, I assumed she had gone in the opposite direction. A deep sadness took hold of me, and I quickly had the next patient shown in.

Night had fallen when Emma came and asked me if she could go.

‘See you tomorrow,’ I said.

After Emma had gone, I stayed in my consulting room for another half an hour or so, doing nothing in particular. As Jessica wasn’t due home until late, I wasn’t sure what to do with the time I had on my hands. I switched off the lights, leaving only my desk lamp on. That relaxed me a little. I loved listening to the silence of the building, a silence filled with shadow and absence that seemed to steady the things around me. People lived on five floors, along hushed corridors, and I never heard any noise from them. They shut themselves up in their homes as if in tombs. They were people of a certain age, well-to-do, of some social standing, and incredibly discreet. I’d sometimes pass one or two of them on the stairs, stooped, barely visible beneath their hats, in a hurry to disappear from my sight, almost apologising for being in my way.

It was eight o’clock by my watch. I didn’t feel like going home to a darkened living room and sitting watching TV shows I wasn’t interested in, checking the clock on the wall every five minutes and thinking Jessica was back whenever a car pulled up in the street. I glanced at my wife’s portrait in its frame. It was a photograph taken on an Italian beach two years into our marriage: Jessica sunbathing on a rock surrounded by foaming waves, blonde hair flowing over shoulders so translucent they never tanned. She looked like a mermaid sitting on a cloud, laughing, her face radiant, her eyes bigger than the horizon … What had happened? Since she had been promoted to the post of deputy head of external relations at the multinational company she worked for, Jessica had changed. She travelled a lot, from Hong Kong to New York, from Scandinavia to Latin America, and worked flat out, sacrificing her holidays, bringing bundles of files home with her to go through in fine detail; sometimes she would shut herself up for hours in her tiny office, the door double-locked, as if she were dealing with top-secret material.

I grabbed my coat, wrapped my scarf around my neck, switched off the desk lamp and went out. In the foyer of the building, the lift was waiting patiently for someone to use it. It was a beautiful old-fashioned lift, encased in wrought iron, painted black and sparkling clean.

Outside, an icy wind was raking the walls. I put my coat on and walked up the street as far as the snack bar in the square. Toni the barman gave me a broad smile when he saw me come in. He poured me a tankard of beer and placed it, frothing over, on the counter. I was a regular customer for his seafood platter whenever Jessica was late home. Toni was a lively, humorous southerner, with fiery red hair. He loved playing to the gallery with his jokes that verged on rudeness. In the neighbourhood, he was known as the Sicilian because of his spontaneity and good humour. His excessive familiarity disconcerted some customers who weren’t used to impromptu friendships, but they eventually got used to it. I liked Toni a lot, even though I was a little too reserved for his taste. He had a knack for making me loosen up, and enough tact to let it go when I didn’t react to his slaps on the back.

‘You’re not looking too good, Kurt.’

‘I’ve had a busy day.’

‘Lucky you! You should be pleased.’

‘I am.’

‘You don’t look it. I hope you didn’t leave your smile on your stethoscope.’

I smiled at him.

‘That’s better. You see? It doesn’t cost much to smile.’ He gave the counter a wipe with his cloth. ‘Hans has only just left, by the way. Didn’t you pass him in the street?’

‘No. When did he get back?’

‘Three days ago. Hasn’t he been to see you?’

‘No.’

‘Have you fallen out?’

‘Not at all. If he hasn’t been to see me, it must mean he has things to sort out … So he’s back from the Amazon?’

‘Apparently, yes. We didn’t have time to talk about it, but he seemed pleased with the expedition. Plus, he’s tanned, and he’s lost weight, which really suits him.’

Hans Makkenroth was an old friend. The heir of one of the richest families in Frankfurt, he ran several large companies specialising in medical equipment. But his fortune hadn’t made him inaccessible. Quite the opposite: he was often seen in quite ordinary places, melting into the crowd and avoiding gala evenings and other social events like the plague. We had met ten years earlier at Maspalomas in the Canary Islands. Hans and his wife Paula were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary, while Jessica and I were on our honeymoon. We had adjoining bungalows close to the beach. Paula and Jessica became friends, in spite of the age difference. They would invite each other over for coffee in the evening and allow us, Hans and me, to join them. Hans was interested in boats, oceans, and remote peoples. As I was receptive, Hans took an interest in me too. We became inseparable.

Paula died of a sudden devastating bout of pneumonia four years later, and, since becoming a widower, Hans had travelled the world constantly, as if in an attempt to shake off his grief. He was an exceptional sailor, fascinated by far horizons. Every year, he would set off for the unlikeliest places, carrying aid to destitute peoples deep in the Amazon jungle, or in Africa, or in remote areas of Asia.

‘Would you like something else?’ Toni asked.

‘I’m a bit peckish, but I don’t feel like seafood tonight.’

‘I have some delicious calamari.’

‘I’d rather have meat. A starter should be enough.’

Toni suggested a carpaccio of beef.

On the plasma screen above the counter, a football match was in full swing. At the far end of the room, a family was having dinner in silence, gathered around an old man who was gesturing vaguely. Two young women were chatting at a table close to the window; the snack bar’s neon sign spattered them with coloured light, adding gleaming highlights to their hair. One of the women stared at me before leaning towards her companion, who also turned to look at me. I asked for the bill and left, despite Toni insisting I have another drink. Out in the street, it had got colder.

I’d been planning to walk towards the river, in order to stretch my legs and clear my head, but the heavens opened and the rain forced me to go straight back to the car park where I’d left my car.

Because of the rain, there were traffic jams, and I didn’t get home until about 10.30. I’d been hoping Jessica might be back, but the windows of our house were still dark.

A jacket of Jessica’s lay on the chest of drawers in the hallway. I didn’t remember it being there that morning when I left for the surgery.

In our room, the bed hadn’t been disturbed.

I took off my coat, jacket and tie and went straight to the kitchen to get myself a beer. I sat down on the sofa, put my feet up on a pouffe and grabbed the remote. The first thing that came on was a political debate. I switched channels several times before coming across an underwater documentary showing sharks hunting in packs in a coral reef. Seeing the depths of the ocean had a calming effect on me, but I couldn’t really concentrate. It was eleven minutes past eleven by the clock on the wall. By my watch, too. I started channel-hopping again frantically, and finally went back to the underwater documentary. Unable to focus on any one programme in particular, I decided to take a shower before going to bed.

As I switched on the light in the bathroom, I almost fell backwards as if hit by a gust of wind. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but it wasn’t an optical illusion, and was far more than a fleeting impression. No, I heard myself cry out. Paralysed, suspended in a celestial void, I grabbed hold of the washbasin to stop myself collapsing. My calves began to tremble, and the trembling rose to my stomach and spread through my body like a series of electric shocks. Jessica lay in the bath, fully dressed, the water up to her neck, her head twisted to the side, one arm dangling over the edge of the tub. Her hair floated around her pale face, and her half-closed eyes stared sadly at her other arm, which was folded over her stomach … It was an unbearable, nightmarish, surreal sight. Horror in all its immeasurable cruelty!

My house was swarming with intruders.

Somebody brought me a glass of water and helped me to sit down. He was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. I saw strangers bustling around me, uniformed policemen, ambulance men in white. Who were they? What were they doing in my home? Then it came back to me. I was the one who had called them. There had been a brief moment of lucidity, followed by fog. Again I couldn’t understand, couldn’t find my way through the chaos cluttering my mind. Jessica … Jessica had killed herself by swallowing two boxes of sleeping pills. Two boxes … of sleeping pills … how was it possible? … Jessica was dead … My wife had committed suicide … The love of my life had gone … In an instant, my world had disintegrated …

I took my head in both hands to stop it falling apart. Impossible to get rid of that flash image in the bathroom, that corpse in the bath … Jessica, come out of there, I beg you … How could she come out of there? How could she hear me? Her stiffness, her marble-like pallor, her fixed, icy stare were irrevocable, and yet I had run to her, taken her in my arms, shaken her, yelled at her to wake up; my cries whirled around the room, smashed into the walls, drilled into my temples. As a doctor, I knew there wasn’t much I could do; as a husband I refused to accept that. Jessica was merely a heap of flesh, a still life, but I’d laid her down on the floor and tried all kinds of things to revive her. Finally, exhausted, struck dumb with terror, I had huddled in a corner and looked at her through a kind of two-way mirror. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, wild-eyed, prostrate with grief, overwhelmed by the calamity that had struck me.

The police finally left the bathroom, after packing up their equipment. They had taken photographs and collected any clues that might explain the circumstances of my wife’s death. The ambulance men were given permission to remove the body. I watched them take Jessica out on a stretcher — Jessica reduced to a common corpse under a white sheet.

A tall man in a dark suit took me aside. He had a round face, white hair at the temples and a large bald patch. With a politeness that verged on obsequiousness, which for some reason irritated me, he asked if he could talk to me in the living room.

‘I’m Lieutenant Sturm. I’d like to ask you a few questions. I know now is hardly the best time, but I’m obliged to—’

‘No, lieutenant,’ I interrupted. ‘Now is definitely not the best moment.’

I could barely recognise my own voice, which seemed to reach me through an endless series of filters. I was furious with this policeman, and found his attitude inhuman. How dare he ask me questions when I didn’t understand what was happening? What kind of answers did he expect from someone who had just lost his bearings, his faculties, his ability to think? I was in a state of shock, crushed by a storm that was sucking me into some kind of abyss …

There was only one thing I wanted: for my house to be silent again.

The lieutenant came back early the next day, flanked by two inscrutable inspectors I took an immediate dislike to. He introduced them briefly and asked if they could come in. I stood aside to let them pass. Reluctantly. I wasn’t up to receiving visitors. I needed to be alone, to close the shutters over my windows, to wall myself up in darkness and pretend I wasn’t in. My grief had replaced time, the world, the whole of the universe. I felt so small in its grip, so infinitesimal that a tear would have drowned me. And then there was that incredible tiredness. I felt shattered. I hadn’t slept a wink all night. The more that macabre scene in the bathroom had come back to me, the less I could grasp it. It was like a recurring dream, like being chronically seasick. I think I threw up several times. Or maybe I had just felt nauseous a lot. I wasn’t sure of anything. Jessica’s suicide was a terrifying mystery … The truth was, I didn’t want to sleep. Sleep would have been the worst torture. Why sleep? Just to realise, when I woke up, that Jessica was dead? How could I have survived the repeated shock of that brutal awakening? … No, the one thing I mustn’t do was sleep … When the ambulance and the police cars had left the night before, I had switched off the lights and locked the shutters, then retreated to a corner of my room and kept sleep at bay until morning, conscious that no ray of sunlight would help me to see clearly in my grief.

I led the three police officers into the living room. They sat down on the sofa. I remained standing, not sure exactly what to do. The lieutenant pointed to an armchair and waited for me to sit in it before asking me if Jessica had any reason to take her own life. He had asked me the question almost reluctantly. I stared at him in bewilderment. After turning the question over and over in my head, I replied that I found it hard to believe that Jessica was dead, that I was still expecting her to wake up. The lieutenant nodded politely, and asked me the same question again as if my words were irrelevant and he wanted me to keep strictly to the facts, the reasons that might have led a person like Jessica to kill herself. From his way of looking at me, I realised that he was merely suggesting a preliminary hypothesis before moving on to another, more carefully thought-out one, because as far as he was concerned, there was nothing for the moment to prove that it was suicide. Becoming aware of his lack of tact, he straightened his tie and asked me straight out how Jessica had been lately. I replied that she had been nervous, evasive, secretive, but that never for a moment would I have thought her capable of such a desperate act. The lieutenant didn’t appear satisfied with my answer: clearly, it didn’t get him very far. After smoothing the ridge of his nose, he passed his hand over his bald spot, without taking his eyes off me, and asked me if my wife had left a note …

‘A note?’

‘Or maybe a recording,’ he said, ‘something like that.’

‘I haven’t checked,’ I said.

The lieutenant wanted to know if my wife and I had been going through a ‘rough patch’. He turned his eyes away as he asked the question. I assured him that Jessica and I had got on really well and never quarrelled. I began shaking, embarrassed at having to talk to strangers about my private life. Routine as this questioning was, there was a kind of shamelessness about it that I couldn’t stand. It was as if the three policemen suspected me and were trying to catch me out. Their cold, unwavering pedantry exasperated me. The lieutenant scribbled some notes in a little book, then raised his fist to his mouth, cleared his throat and told me that according to the pathologist, my wife’s death had occurred between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. He asked me to tell them about my movements the day before. I told him I had left the house at 8.30 so as to be at the surgery by 9.15, that I had seen patients until 1, that I had gone out to have lunch before going back to work … All at once, I was afraid. What if they asked me what I’d been doing between 1 and 3.30? How could I prove that I had been sitting alone on a bench in the park, without any convincing witnesses, while my patients sat twiddling their thumbs in the waiting room of my surgery?

The two inspectors were taking down my statement with false detachment, insensitive to the turmoil they were causing. I hated them for hounding me like this, for ignoring my grief and continuing to bombard me with questions, shamelessly rummaging in every nook and cranny of my married life. I was waiting stoically for them to leave, to get out of my sight. At the end of the interview, the lieutenant put his notebook away in the inside pocket of his trench coat and asked if he could help me in any way. I didn’t answer him. He nodded and handed me his card, pointing out his telephone number in case I remembered any detail that might be of use to him.

Once the policemen had left, I took my head in both hands and tried to think about nothing.

Emma phoned to tell me that my patients were getting impatient. I asked her to apologise to them for me and to cancel all my appointments in the coming days. She asked if anything was wrong.

‘Jessica’s dead,’ I said in a toneless voice.

‘My God!’ she exclaimed.

She was silent for a long while at the other end of the line, then hung up.

I stared at the receiver in my hand, not knowing what to do with it.

A few neighbours came round to see me. The previous night’s flurry of activity hadn’t escaped them. The arrival of the ambulance and the police cars with their flashing lights must have kept them awake. Now it was daylight, they wanted to find out what was going on.

About midday, alerted by Emma, Hans Makkenroth came to see me. He was deeply shocked by what had happened. ‘What a tragedy!’ he said, putting his arms around me.

We sat at the table in the kitchen and listened to the rain drumming on the window pane. Without saying a word. Without moving.

After a while, Emma arrived. She was appropriately dressed in a black tailored suit. It was clear from her red eyes that she had been crying. She was kind enough not to overburden me with her condolences, which might have proved awkward. Instead, she busied herself fetching us something to drink.

By the time night fell, the three of us were so lost in our own thoughts that it hadn’t occurred to any of us to switch the light on in the room. We hadn’t eaten anything all day, and our glasses were still full. I told Emma she should go home.

‘My children are with my mother,’ she said. ‘I can stay.’

‘It really isn’t necessary.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need me?’

‘I’ll be all right, Emma.’

Before leaving, she reminded me that I had her mobile number and that I could call her whenever I liked. I promised her I would.

Then I turned to Hans.

‘I’m not leaving you alone,’ he hastened to announce in a commanding tone.

He called Toni and ordered dinner for us.

It was drizzling in the cemetery, and the greyness made the place all the more melancholy. The ceremony took place on a square of lawn demarcated by stony paths. The friends who had come to see Jessica to her last resting place huddled together beside the brown grave, some carrying umbrellas, others in raincoats. Jessica’s father, Wolfgang Brodersen, stared intently at the coffin in which his daughter lay. He had arrived that morning from Berlin and had preferred to get in touch with the undertakers rather than contact me. From the way he was keeping his distance and saying nothing, I realised that he was angry with me. We had never been especially friendly. A former soldier, trained to be stoic, he spoke little and kept his opinions to himself. He had hesitated for a long time before consenting to Jessica marrying me, and hadn’t stayed long at our wedding. I couldn’t remember seeing him at the reception. A widower, solitary and stubborn, he avoided weddings and parties at all costs. On the rare occasions when Jessica and I had been in Berlin, he had given the impression that we were in his way. I had no idea why he was so hostile to me. Maybe that was how military men were: forced to live far from home, they developed a hard shell that made them resistant to the joys of family life. Or maybe, having no one else since his wife’s death, he had felt possessive towards Jessica and hadn’t looked kindly on the idea of someone taking his only remaining relative from him. I admit I hadn’t blamed him or looked for excuses. Not that it would have changed much in our relationship. It was a pity, that was all. He loved Jessica. Although he hated showing his feelings, I just had to see him looking at his daughter to know how much he loved her. And Jessica loved him. In spite of her father’s excessive reserve, she had no qualms about running to him and flinging her arms around him every time she saw him. He would stand there for a moment, his arms rigid at his sides, in the grip of an inner struggle, before returning her embrace.

Among the friends present at the funeral was Hans Makkenroth. From time to time, he would give me a sign of his support. Behind him, Emma shivered under her umbrella, the tip of her nose red with cold. Beside her, Toni was almost invisible behind the collar of his coat. To his right, Claudia Reinhardt, a colleague of Jessica’s, kept wiping her tear-stained eyes with a tissue. She had been great friends with my wife and spent more time at our house than with her family. Claudia was a lively, funny girl. It was she who had urged Jessica to join a gym, and they had gone to aerobics classes together. She gave me a sad little smile, to which I responded with a slight nod, then plunged her nose back in her tissue and didn’t look up again.

After the ceremony, people dispersed. Doors started slamming, and one after the other, the cars left the cemetery. I was aware only of the crunching of tyres on the gravel. When silence had returned, Hans Makkenroth came to me and said in a low voice, ‘It’s over, Kurt. Let’s go.’

‘What’s over?’ I said.

‘What started one day.’

‘Do you think it’s as simple as that?’

‘Nothing’s simple in life, Kurt, but we have to make do.’

I threw a last glance at the grave. ‘You may be right, Hans, but that doesn’t tell us how to make do.’

‘Time will take care of that.’

‘I don’t believe you …’

Hans raised his hands in surrender. The fact was, he had no answer for that, and realised that saying the wrong thing would only make things worse. He was sorry he hadn’t found the words to comfort me, and was angry at himself for not keeping quiet.

Emma, Claudia and a few of my neighbours had come back to the house. Much to my surprise, my father-in-law, Wolfgang Brodersen, was there too, sitting slumped on a chair near the balcony. I had been thinking he had already left for Berlin. He stood up, put his glass down on a chest of drawers and waited for me to approach him before he opened the French window and suggested I follow him onto the balcony. He began by looking up at the coppery sky, as if trying to get his thoughts into some kind of order, then turned his piercing eyes on me and let me have it: ‘How could you have allowed her to get into such a state of despair?’

‘I can assure you I didn’t see it coming.’

‘Precisely,’ he said, ‘precisely … You should have been paying attention. If your mind hadn’t been elsewhere, you might have been able to avoid this tragedy. There are signs we can’t ignore. People don’t kill themselves on a whim. Jessica was a strong character. She wouldn’t have given in to some stupid little problem. She was my daughter. I knew her better than anyone. She was a fighter, she always got back on her feet … What could have driven her to such an absurd, violent end?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s not the answer I expected from a husband. You were the person who was closest to her. She must have given you some kind of warning. Of course, she wasn’t the kind of girl who would panic over just anything, but she was intelligent enough to confide in her husband. If you didn’t see it coming, it was because Jessica was suffering in silence. You had your mind on other things, I assume, and that’s what led her to such a monstrous act.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’ I said, outraged at his insinuations.

‘I was married too. My wife didn’t need to draw me a picture.’

‘That’s enough!’ I interrupted. ‘Jessica was my wife and I loved her more than anything in the world. I understand your grief, I feel it just as much as you do. I don’t know what Jessica was hiding from me. I don’t know what was wrong with her. Not a minute goes by when I don’t ask myself why she did what she did.’

Wolfgang looked at me in silence. On the balcony, his breathing replaced the murmur of the rain. He unclenched his fist and stood there facing me, his eyes fixed on mine. ‘May I ask you an indiscreet question?’

‘You might as well. Go ahead.’

‘Will you answer me honestly, man to man?’

‘I have no reason to lie to you.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Were you cheating on Jessica?’

The bluntness of his question came like a slap in the face. But what broke my heart was the tone in which he voiced his suspicions: it was thick with such suffering, such helplessness, such fear that I felt sorry for him. The Wolfgang I had known, the rock-solid ex-soldier, was crumbling before my very eyes, right there on the balcony, which had suddenly taken on the dimensions of a battlefield. I was certain that if I’d touched him with my finger it would have gone right through him.

I waited for him to recover a little of his composure and said, ‘No … I wasn’t cheating on Jessica. I had no reason to look elsewhere for what I had within reach.’

His eyes grew moist. He leant on the rail and struggled to hold back his tears. He took a deep breath, nodded and said in a hoarse voice, ‘Thank you.’

He went back into the living room and out through the hallway. From the balcony, I saw him leave the house and walk back along the street, heedless of the rain. He was dragging his feet, as if weighed down with a heavy burden. It was the first time I had seen him defeated: in spite of his age — seventy-five — he had always made it a point of honour to stand erect, and to give the impression in all circumstances that he could withstand any tragedy, any hurricane.

My neighbours and colleagues started to take their leave. Someone whispered, ‘I’m with you all the way, doctor.’ It was kind of him, but I didn’t believe it. What did he know of my solitude? My grief was too personal to be shared; it made me insensitive to all such expressions of sympathy, all those customary phrases and actions that bear no relation to the situation at hand. Grief is a parallel universe, a horrible world where the sweetest words, the noblest gestures seem absurd, inappropriate, clumsy, stupid. I was irritated by those sympathetic little taps on the shoulder which reverberated inside me like hammer blows. I’m with you all the way, doctor … For how long? Once my guests were gone, my house would close over me like a fist; I would hold out my hand, searching for support, for a shoulder to lean on, and find nothing but empty air.

Evening arrived. In the darkening living room, only Hans, Emma, Claudia and I remained. The two women finished collecting the glasses and paper plates left scattered by the guests. They tidied the living room, put away the dishes and took out the bins, while I walked from room to room without knowing why. Wolfgang’s words throbbed in my temples … Were you cheating on Jessica? … Were you cheating on Jessica? … Now that Jessica was gone, would our paths ever cross again? Would we end up making peace? Were we actually at war? I had the feeling I’d failed in my duty as a son-in-law, that I’d missed an opportunity for a possible reconciliation with Wolfgang … I tried to get a grip. What was I inflicting on myself now? Why add an illusory guilt to my widower’s grief? Even if I had fallen short in my behaviour towards Wolfgang, there were surely more important things to worry about while I was in mourning.

I went back on the balcony. I needed fresh air. The cold lashed my face. I leant over the rail and gazed at the streams of water in the gutters. Every now and again, a car passed. Watching it move away, I had the impression it was taking a little of my soul with it.

Claudia joined me, a glass in her hand. ‘Drink this,’ she said. ‘It’ll buck you up.’

I took the glass and lifted it to my lips. The first sip felt like a trail of lava, the second shook me from head to toe.

‘You should eat something,’ Claudia said. ‘You haven’t touched a thing since we got back from the cemetery. I’m amazed you’re still standing.’

‘I’m walking on my head.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Can you?’

She placed her hand on mine, a gesture that made me feel ill at ease. ‘I’m really sorry, Kurt. I haven’t had a wink of sleep in the last few nights.’

‘I’m only just starting to wake up. And I don’t understand what I see around me.’

She strengthened her grip on my fingers. ‘You know you can count on me, Kurt.’

‘I don’t doubt that. Thank you. You were great with the guests.’

‘It’s the least I could do.’ She took her hand away, leant back against the rail, and sighed. ‘You think you’re prepared for anything, and when it happens, you realise how wrong you were.’

‘That’s life.’

‘I still can’t believe that Jessica could have done something like that. Over a promotion … Just imagine! Over a job … A job she would have got one day anyway.’

An electric shock couldn’t have given me a greater jolt … Promotion? … Job? … What was she talking about? Claudia’s choked voice immediately sobered me up.

‘What job? What’s all this about a promotion?’

Claudia looked at me in astonishment. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Oh, my God, I thought you knew.’

‘Please just tell me.’

Claudia was completely thrown. She knew she had gone too far to pull back. She looked around in panic, as if searching for support. I wouldn’t let her avoid my gaze; I needed an explanation. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her angrily. I knew I was hurting her, but I wouldn’t let go.

‘For heaven’s sake, tell me.’

She said, in a tone that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep inside, ‘The board of directors had promised her she’d be put in charge of external relations. Jessica had been working towards the position for two years. She wanted it more than anything. And she really deserved it. Our CEO even name-checked her during an EGM. Jessica was the kingpin of the company. She went well beyond the call of duty. She was the one who’d negotiated the biggest contracts in the last few years, with great success. All our colleagues agreed on how efficient she was … I thought you knew all about this.’

‘Please go on.’

‘Three months ago, our marketing director, Franz Hölter, also started campaigning to be head of external relations. He’s a careerist, ambitious, willing to go to any lengths to leapfrog his way to the front. He knew Jessica had a head start on him, and he did everything he could to catch up with her. He even torpedoed a couple of projects to discredit her. It was like a war to the death. At first, Jessica had no problem handling the competition. She knew her subject. But Franz had managed to win over the CEO and was starting to gain ground.’

‘So that’s why Jessica wasn’t herself these last few weeks?’

‘That’s right. She was very worried. Franz did whatever he wanted. A real shark operating in dirty waters. He put every obstacle he could in her way. It’s no surprise Jessica ended up cracking under the strain. Her final negotiation, with a Chinese group, broke down because of a file that had supposedly disappeared. The board were furious. And Jessica realised she had made a fatal mistake. A week ago, the verdict was delivered, and Franz was appointed to the position she’d wanted so much. When I went to comfort Jessica, I found her sitting crushed in her office. The blood had completely drained from her face. She told me to leave her alone and went out to get some air. It was about nine in the morning. She didn’t come back. I tried to reach her on her mobile, but all I got was her answering machine … My God! … It’s so unfair.’

The last bastion keeping me a tiny bit sane had fallen. I felt a tightness in my throat, and couldn’t utter a syllable. Torn between indignation and anger, incredulous and dazed, I didn’t know which way to turn. Jessica had taken her own life because her board of directors hadn’t promoted her! I found it inconceivable, inexcusable. It was as if Jessica had just killed herself for the second time.

My house became a funeral urn filled with ashes. All my hopes, all my certainties had gone up in smoke.

Time seemed to have stopped. Everything around me was clogged, unable to move. I would get up in the morning, botch my day’s work and return home in the evening as if to a labyrinth, trying to shake off the ghosts of those no longer with me. I didn’t even feel the need to switch the lights on. What good was a lamp against the shadows that were blinding me?

At the surgery, I found it hard to concentrate on my work. How many times did I prescribe inappropriate treatments before realising, or before being picked up on it by my patients? Emma saw that things couldn’t go on like this … I was forced to entrust my surgery to Dr Regina Hölm, my usual replacement when I was on holiday. I went home to pack my bags. It had occurred to me that spending some time in the country, where I had a second home, would allow me to get back on my feet. I hadn’t gone fifty kilometres before I did a U-turn and drove back to Frankfurt. No, I wouldn’t have the strength to be alone in that little stone house perched at the top of a verdant hill. It had been our nest, Jessica’s and mine, our retreat when we wanted to get away from the city’s pollution and noise, its constraints and anxieties. We would go there for weekends, to recharge our batteries and make love with the passion of teenagers. It was a lovely spot, camouflaged by tall trees, where only the odd hiker ventured and where the wind singing in the leaves would dispel our worries. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a sofa on which we would lie in each other’s arms, blissfully happy, and listen to the wood crackling in the hearth. No, I couldn’t go there and trample on so many wonderful memories.

For two days, I shut myself up in my house in Frankfurt, with the blinds down, the lights off and the phone off the hook. I didn’t open the door to anybody. I kept asking myself how a beautiful, much-loved woman with a fabulous career ahead of her could disregard all the chances she had and take her own life … If your mind hadn’t been elsewhere, you might have been able to avoid this tragedy, Wolfgang had said. His reproaches reversed the roles, swapped the perpetrator and the victim, confused the crime and the punishment. Had Jessica given me a sign I hadn’t recognised? Could I have changed the course of events if I had been more vigilant?

One night, in pouring rain, I went out and wandered the streets. I walked past red lights blinking at the intersections, little parks, neon signs, advertising hoardings appearing and disappearing in the darkness, empty benches. The noise of my footsteps preceded me. Tired of walking, soaked to the bone, I stopped on the banks of the Main and gazed down at the shimmering reflections of the street lamps on the river. And there too, try as I might to forget, to shake off my pain, the image of Jessica lying lifeless in the bathtub emerged from the waves and shattered any respite I’d hoped to grant myself.

I went back home, shivering and exhausted, and stood by the window, a blanket around my shoulders, waiting for day to dawn. And dawn it did, draped in white, as if it were merely the ghost of night.

‘You have to get a grip on yourself,’ Hans Makkenroth said, ‘and fast.’

He had been round several times. When I refused to open the door, he had threatened to call the police. The state in which he found me shocked him. He ran to the phone to call an ambulance, but I persuaded him not to. Cursing, he pushed me into the bathroom. What I saw in the mirror terrified me: I looked like a zombie.

Hans dragged me back to the living room and forced me to listen to him. ‘When I lost Paula, I thought I was finished. She’d been everything to me. All my joys I owed to her. She was my pride, my glory, my happiness. I’d have given anything for one more year, one more month, one more day with her. But there are things we can’t negotiate, Kurt. Paula’s gone, just as every day thousands of people who are loved or hated die. That’s how life is. All kinds of things happen, we may be stricken with grief, we may be bankrupt, but the sun still rises in the morning and nothing can stop night from falling … Paula has been dead for five years and thirty-two weeks, and every morning when I wake up, I expect to find her lying beside me. Then I realise that I’m alone in my bed. So I throw off the sheets and go about my daily business.’

I don’t know if it was Hans’s words or the vibrations of his voice that reached down into the depths of my being, but all at once my shoulders sagged and tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t remember having cried since I was a small child. Curiously, I wasn’t ashamed of my weakness. My sobs seemed to clear away the blackness that had been contaminating my soul like a poisonous, putrid ink.

‘That’s it,’ Hans said encouragingly.

He forced me to take a bath, shave, and change my clothes. Then he bundled me into his car and took me to a little restaurant just outside the city. He told me that he had come back to Germany to settle some issues with the Chamber of Commerce and launch a project that meant a lot to him. This would take two or three weeks, after which he would sail to the Comoros, where he was planning to equip a hospital for a charitable organisation he belonged to.

‘Why not come with me? My yacht is waiting for me in a harbour in Cyprus. We’ll fly to Nicosia then set off for the Gulf of Aden …’

‘I can’t, Hans.’

‘What’s stopping you? The sea’s wonderful therapy.’

‘Please, don’t insist. I’m not going anywhere …’