The African Equation

1

We reached the Red Cross camp at nightfall, completely exhausted and in a very sorry state. The old people collapsed as soon as they were through the gate, and had to be picked up. The women and children staggered in the dust, mere scraps of flesh wrapped in rags, their mouths drooping with hunger and thirst. We had lost two more of the group on the way and taken turns pulling the sickest. Male nurses came running to meet us. Stretchers were unfolded. Nobody in the camp had been expecting so many people to arrive. Nothing had been prepared for them. Elena tried to see that things were done in the right order, but she soon ran out of energy and had to step aside. A tall, lanky man joined us in the main yard. He was the director of the centre. In his sixties, with stooped shoulders and a large nose, he was a full head taller than any of us. In marked contrast to his affable, gentle manner, his stentorian voice rang out like a whip. He began by issuing instructions to his staff, told the stretcher-bearers to take care of the old people and children first, ordered hot meals and two tents to be got ready, then, once the families had been dispatched and calm restored, he turned to Elena and her team, who, no longer able to stand, had sat down on the ground, their heads bowed and their arms around their knees. Bruno and I didn’t know if we should go straight to the two tents or wait where we were for our fate to be decided. The director hadn’t taken any particular notice of us. To be honest, there was nothing to distinguish us from the other refugees. Filthy, with our legs as thin as wading birds’ and our downcast expressions, we looked like two scarecrows dumped in a field. The director crouched by Elena, patted her on the wrist in support and helped her to her feet. While Elena, Lotta and Orfane were delivering their report in the director’s office, the two nurses took their leave of us and headed to a wing of the camp. Slowly, the bustle of the families settling into the tents died down and gave way to the hum of a generator. The camp was lit by floodlights as well as a number of anaemic-looking street lamps. You could see the rows of tents around the administrative block, a water tank mounted on metal scaffolding, a second block with lighted windows that looked like an infirmary, a third block with a chimney on top — presumably the kitchens — a glazed hut at the entrance to the camp which served as a guard post, and, somewhat further back, a huge canvas shed with a red cross on it. There was a car park on the south side of the camp, where two ambulances and two Land Rovers stood beneath corrugated-iron canopies. It was like being in a military fort, and nothing like the refugee camps you usually saw on television. No crowds, no rioting, no campfires, no disturbances. Everything seemed scrupulously laid out.

A few minutes later, Lotta Pedersen came to fetch us. She led us to the director’s office, a prefab equipped with cupboards, a computer, padded chairs and shelves filled with medical books and pamphlets, registers, numbered files arranged in chronological order, hard-cover encyclopedias and a neat pile of paperwork. Elena was sitting slouched on an old sprung sofa, a glass of water in her hand. She looked exhausted, her dimpled face was drawn and her eyelids were drooping. Orfane was perched on the arm of the sofa, his hands crossed over his knee. Having by now been informed who we were, the director received us with great respect, offered us a small carafe of filtered water and waited while we drank. He told us his name was Christophe Pfer, that he was Belgian and that he had been working for the Red Cross for seventeen years. He had the scars to show for it — one on his chin, a souvenir from the war in the Balkans, and a bad knee, the result of an ambush in a forest in El Salvador. He was a genial man — a wise man, too, after two decades spent dealing at close quarters with human stupidity and the problems it caused all over the world. With his curly grey hair, thick moustache and nonchalant demeanour, he reminded me of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. Like anyone with a radio or access to the internet, he knew about the kidnapping of two Germans by pirates off the coast of Somalia, but had never expected to be welcoming one of them on his own premises. He informed me that the international press was still talking about our kidnapping and that a large-scale search had been launched to find us. I asked him if there was any news of Hans Makkenroth. He had none. Actually, he had difficulty believing it was really me, because he too found it strange that the kidnappers had chosen Sudan instead of Somalia in which to barter our release. Bruno asked if giant posters with his face on them had been displayed on the front of every town hall in France, provoking marches on the Champs-Élysées demanding his release. Pfer had to admit that nobody knew about his disappearance. Bruno pretended to be shocked, before pointing out that he was no common tourist, but an African in every fibre of his being, that his misadventure was strictly an African affair and that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Western media. Then, aware of the bewilderment he had caused, he made a whole series of self-mocking gestures as if to make up for it. Pfer scratched behind his ear: since humour was inappropriate in these painful circumstances, he must have been wondering if this Frenchman was entirely of sound mind. Nevertheless, he promised to contact our respective embassies as soon as radio contact was established and advised us to have a good bath and a hot meal and go to bed. Bruno asked permission to join ‘his African brothers’ in the tent. He was subtly staking a kind of claim by his request. I winked at him, just to let him know that I understood him and approved. He turned on his heel like a soldier and headed for the tents.

Orfane offered to take care of me for the night. He invited me to his airy, restful quarters, a cabin complete with air conditioning, two padded benches, a small desk, a fitted wardrobe and a narrow but shiny tiled bathroom. I almost fell over backwards when I looked in the mirror above the washbasin. After what I had been through physically and morally, I had been expecting it, except that instead of a castaway, I discovered a shipwreck. I looked like a zombie, with my wild beard, dirty, dishevelled hair, dusty eyes, furrowed cheeks and skin the colour of papier mâché. My shirt was nothing but a filthy rag and my crumpled trousers resembled a floor cloth. I supposed I must smell like a dead rat. Orfane pointed to a bar of Aleppo soap and a bottle of shampoo on a stainless-steel stand next to the shower head. I quickly undressed and got in the shower. While I washed, my host switched on a mini stereo. The Afro-American music that started up made me quiver from head to foot. It had been so long since I had listened to anything other than coarse insults and moaning. In the old days, I hadn’t been able to start my car without switching on the radio or the CD player. Now I realised how much I had missed music and how its absence had impoverished me. A stream of pure air rushed into my lungs. I had the feeling I could hear my soul being rebuilt. My heart was pounding so hard I feared a heart attack. My whole being demanded music, demanded it as a hymn to life. The foamy water flowing over my body reconciled me with myself. As the voice of the singer filled me with intoxication, I rubbed and soaped myself aggressively to expel the dirt from my flesh and from my mind. The water at my feet was almost black with it.

Orfane threw me a dressing gown and suggested I take the bench near the window. A waxed cardboard tray was waiting for me on the bedside table: steaming hot soup, a plate of salad, white bread and a slice of smoked fish. I threw myself greedily on the food. Orfane took a can of beer from a mini refrigerator, handed it to me and went into the bathroom to wash. When he came out again, wrapped in a thick white loincloth, he went to fetch a bottle of soda from the fridge and opened it with his thumb.

‘Would you like another beer?’

‘No, thanks … Is that your wife?’ I asked, pointing to the photograph of a black woman on the desk, next to another photo in which three black men were posing with a white man.

He gave a broad smile. ‘That’s my mother when she was thirty.’

I looked at the photograph in its wooden frame. The woman appeared lost in thought. There was something graceful and proud about her. Bruno had told me that Africans worshipped their mothers, convinced that no prayer would be granted without Mama’s blessing.

‘She’s very beautiful,’ I said.

‘Of course, my father was the village chief.’

He drank from the bottle, put it down on the bedside table and lowered the volume a little on the stereo.

‘Nina Simone, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” … That’s my sedative. That and Marvin Gaye. When Marvin sings, the black clouds dissolve and summer floods my thoughts …’

‘I like him,’ I said. ‘He’s magical.’

‘Isn’t he?’

The bench creaked beneath his athletic body. He reached out his arm and picked up the photo of the four men. There was something very tender in that movement of the hand. He showed me the photo. The men were standing in a crowded, smoky bar. One of the black men, a stocky man in a docker’s cap and a coat that was too big for him, was visibly delighted to be having his photograph taken with the other three.

‘That’s my father, the white man’s Joe Messina, that’s Robert White, and that one’s Eddie Willis … There’s an incredible story behind this photo.’ He put it back down on the edge of the desk. ‘It was my father who taught me about music. He was the village chief, like I said, and very spoilt. He always asked for records for his birthday, and he celebrated his birthday every time a hit song came out. He loved black American music. Our house almost collapsed under the weight of all the records: Otis Redding, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Abbey Lincoln … We had to move whole boxes of them to see where to put our feet. It drove my mother crazy. My father was the only one who knew his way around. He knew exactly where to find such and such a track. My father had a particular weakness for the Funk Brothers. One morning, he left his rosewood throne, his ostrich feather headdress and his sceptre cut from a baobab tree and disappeared. We thought he’d been kidnapped or murdered, but we never found his body or any trace of him. He’d vanished into thin air, just like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘One evening, three years later, he came back to the village. Without warning … He’d gone to the United States, on a “pilgrimage” to Detroit. He’d crossed whole countries with no money and no papers, done whatever pitiful little jobs he could find to pay for a train or bus ticket, worked for months in ports waiting for the right boat and the right moment, and managed to stow away as far as Detroit. And why did he do all that? To be photographed with his idols, Joe Messina, Robert White and Eddie Willis. Just to be in a photo with those three guys. No more, no less. The next day, with his trophy in the bag, he set off on the return journey.’

‘You’re exaggerating …’

‘I swear it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ he laughed, raising his right hand. ‘My father used to say: “Nations can’t survive without myths and young people can’t bloom without idols.” When those two points of reference are missing, things are a mess. African rulers refuse to admit that. That’s why they’re sending their people back into the Stone Age.’

I refrained from hazarding the slightest opinion on that subject.

‘Would you mind if I took everything off?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot, and I like to sleep naked.’

‘Put the air conditioning on.’

‘The electricity is supplied by a generator. It’s strictly rationed, and is switched off at ten o’clock, in other words, in the next fifteen minutes.’

Without waiting for my permission, he took off his loincloth, and his ebony body made a sharp contrast with the white sheets.

‘What’s your favourite kind of music, Dr Krausmann?’

‘Classical, obviously.’

‘I suspected as much. Of course, that’s quite natural for a descendant of Beethoven … I like everything. From Mozart to Alpha Blondy. I don’t discriminate on grounds of race or morality. It was when man detected a sound and a rhythm in noise that he discovered himself. And that made him superior to the other creatures. I love musicians. I love singers, from sopranos to choirboys, from baritones to rappers. Do you see, Dr Krausmann? Music is the only talent that God envies men.’

‘I agree with you, Dr Orfane.’

He increased the volume of the stereo and closed his eyes. ‘Are your parents still alive?’

‘My mother died years ago,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. And your father?’

‘Do you mind turning off the light?’

‘Of course not. What about the music?’

‘No, leave it on, please.’

‘You’re lucky. The stereo’s connected to a car battery. Generator or not, at Orfane’s place, it’s always party time.’

‘Good night, Dr Orfane.’

‘Good night, Dr Krausmann. I put a pair of trousers, a shirt and clean underwear out for you on the chair. We’re pretty much the same size, so they should fit you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You have quite a few boils and your complexion’s a bit off. We’ll have to take a look at all that tomorrow morning.’

He switched off the light.

Despite my tiredness and the softness of the sheets, I couldn’t get to sleep. My brain was whirring. I wasn’t thinking about anything specific, but every image, however vague, kept me in suspense as it spread through the maze of my insomnia. I thought of the most absurd things, only dismissing those connected with the ordeal I had been through. I had no desire to twist the knife in the wound. I didn’t have the strength. I wanted to fall into a sleep so deep that I would achieve oblivion. But my twisted muscles prevented me from unwinding. I lay on my right side, my left side, on my back, on my stomach, my head under the pillow, on my forearm, but it was impossible to get to sleep. I imagined myself at home, in my scented bed; the absence of Jessica stoked my obsessions. I thought about Frankfurt, my surgery, my patients. There was no way to loosen the hold my anxieties had over me. In desperation, I stared up at the ceiling and listened to the damp, bloodless night ponder its nostalgia in the shelter of darkness. Orfane started snoring and muttering in his sleep. I got out of bed, went outside and sat down on the steps of the cabin. There was a big golden moon in the middle of the sky, so close that you could clearly see the outlines of its craters. Some shadowy figures were moving about near the tents. I felt like a beer but didn’t dare go and look for one in the fridge. The sickly-sweet breath of the desert blew on my naked torso. I sat there until my eyes began to blur with dizziness. I groped my way back to my bed in the dark. I think I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

The sun was at its height when I woke up. I put on the clothes Orfane had lent me and went to the office. Pfer offered me coffee and told me the fax had been sent and that our embassies would soon respond. I went back out to stretch my legs, but was intercepted by Orfane who marched me to the infirmary, gave me a thorough examination, and tended to my blisters and boils. On my way out of the treatment room, I came across Elena, who was tying up her laces next to her cabin. She looked rested and relaxed. Her face lit up when she saw me. She stood up and asked me from a distance if I had slept well. I told her I’d slept like a log. She threw her head back with a delightful laugh and confessed that, in her case, they’d had to send for a deep-sea diver to bring her up out of her coma. Elena was sublime, with her hair hanging loose down to her hips and her bronzed, finely featured Andalusian face. She was wearing faded jeans, an open-necked shirt that revealed the pendant around her neck, and bright-yellow espadrilles. ‘It’s my day off,’ she said, to justify her casual dress. ‘As there’s nothing in the way of entertainment, at least I dress relaxed.’ Jessica would never have tolerated jeans on her body, let alone canvas shoes on her feet. Jessica was strict about the way she dressed; everything had to be impeccably cut, her made-to-measure suits had not a fold or a thread out of place. She would spend more time trying on a dress in a high-end shop than a surgeon operating on a seriously ill patient. I had often suggested she dress less formally, but to no avail. Both at home and in the city, she was inflexible on the matter. True, the clothes she chose perfectly matched her diaphanous skin and gave her platinum-blonde hair the lustre of sunlight. Jessica, my God! Jessica … When I was small, on my way home from school, I would deliberately make a wide detour in order to walk past a magnificent house with a garden as beautiful as a dream. In short trousers, my satchel on my back, I would slow down to sneak a look at this residence, which compensated all by itself for the dullness of our suburb. I loved the glittering tiles on its roof, the sophisticated lines of its façade, the marble columns standing guard on either side of the flowery front steps, the monumental oak door. I wondered what the people who lived inside were like, what luxury and opulence they must be familiar with, and if, once night had fallen and the lights were out, their sleep gave them as much joy as the comfort with which they were surrounded. One day, coming back from school, I saw an ambulance outside the front door of the beautiful residence and neighbours on the pavement watching stretcher-bearers bring out a corpse. I learnt later that the wealthy old woman who had lived alone in that dream house had been dead for many days without anybody noticing … Thinking of Jessica, it was that splendid residence that came spontaneously to my mind. Behind my happy marriage, something had been decomposing without my knowledge. Just like that woman who had been so fortunate and so cruelly forgotten in her gilded tomb …

‘Are you all right?’ Elena asked me.

‘Er, yes … why?’

‘I don’t know. For a second, you looked sick.’

I smiled. ‘I’m not yet fully recovered.’

‘Oh, you know, everything gets back to normal in the end.’

‘The quicker, the better, as far as I’m concerned.’

She cast a professional eye over me then, reassured, told me that all good people deserved food and suggested we go and eat. But before that, she took a little camera from her pocket and took a photograph of me. Without asking for my permission. Not that I could have resisted her anyway.

The canteen was a small oblong room between the kitchens and the wash house. Four doctors and a pastor were sitting at a table in the corner, listening to a young black man with his arm in plaster telling anecdotes that had them doubled up with laughter. Elena waved to them as we passed. We collected the trays from a round table, served ourselves at the counter, and sat down next to a window whose twill blinds filtered the dusty light from outside. ‘Your colleagues are in a good mood,’ I whispered in Elena’s ear. ‘In Africa laughter is second nature, Kurt,’ she said. Her ‘Kurt’ touched me deep inside. She apologised for the frugality of the meals, and explained that as the roads weren’t safe and the supply convoys were regularly attacked and hijacked by outlaws, the authorities were forced to supply the camp by air. As there was only one freighter aircraft to serve all the camps, it was rotated in a random way, and sometimes they lacked basic foodstuffs for weeks, which was why the director insisted on a severely restricted diet. I assured her that after the disgusting stuff the pirates had given me out of rotten cans, it would be ridiculous of me to turn my nose up. Her hand came to rest on mine. ‘Oh, I can imagine,’ she sighed. The touch of her fingers and the musky smell of her skin were strangely comforting, and I hoped deep in my heart that she would not take her hand away immediately.

After the meal, Elena showed me around the camp. Then we walked to the other side of the fence and looked around a huge building site some hundreds of metres away. Elena told me that this was a pilot village intended for refugees who had been forced to leave their lands. A broad avenue cut the site in two. On either side, buildings were going up, some still at the foundation stage, others almost finished. Woodwork and roofs were still missing, but the work seemed to be advancing, given the dozens of workers bustling about and the profusion of wheelbarrows and hacksaws.

‘The refugees don’t only need food and medical care,’ Elena said. ‘They need to regain their dignity, too. They’re building this village themselves. Of course, architects and supervisors came from Europe to get things going, but the refugees are doing the actual construction. They’re happy to have the work and plans for the future. A little further south, we’ve built farms and laid out orchards. The farms are run by widows so that they can provide for their families. The orchards have been entrusted to shepherds who’ve turned into farmers. And they seem to like it. Soon, the first houses will be ready and this village will be born. Initially, we’ll be able to house forty-three families. By the end of the year, we’ll have room for another sixty-five. Isn’t that wonderful? When we set up the camp two years ago, there wasn’t a single hut left within a radius of a hundred kilometres. It was like the valley of shadows. And now look what we’re doing. I’m so proud.’

‘So you should be, it’s quite an achievement. Congratulations.’

‘The village will be called Hodna City. In Arabic, it means something like “reassurance”.’

‘It’s a pretty name. It sounds good.’

Elena was delighted. She was full of an almost childlike enthusiasm, and her shining eyes danced with light.

‘Over there, we have a school. Three classes of forty pupils each, and six native teachers, all survivors of atrocities. Plus a football pitch, with wooden goalposts. You’ll see, after classes all the kids rush to watch the match … We’re trying to give these people a normal life. And they’re ready for it. They’ve already forgiven.’

She paused here for a moment or two before resuming as volubly as before. She told me there was also going to be a big assembly hall, a library, perhaps a cinema, a traditional market in the square, stalls and cafés in the avenue, and lots of other facilities.

‘Do you have a barber anywhere around here?’ I asked. ‘I have to get rid of this fleece on my face.’

‘Yes, we do. A really good one.’

Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting on a stool in the open air, a towel around my neck and foam on my face, at the mercy of Lotta Pedersen’s razor and scissors. The Scandinavian gynaecologist was magnificent in her role as an occasional hairdresser. And as she rehabilitated my image, a swarm of kids stood around us and laughed uproariously at the sight of a woman shaving a man.

A gaudy turban around his head, Bruno sat twiddling his thumbs in the doorway of the administrative block. He had washed and spruced himself up, made friends among the storekeepers — which explained the brand-new kamis and Saharan flip-flops that he was wearing — but he hadn’t touched a hair of his Rasputin-like beard. With prayer beads around his finger and kohl on his eyelids, he looked like a sheikh about to address the masses. But he wasn’t happy: he was grim-faced and his nostrils were quivering. He had tried several times to get through to Djibouti by phone, and each time he had heard ringing at the other end, the line had been cut off. Bruno suspected the switchboard operator of stopping him from contacting the outside world. It was quite likely, he said, that the director of the camp had received instructions from the government to keep our situation secret. How else to account for the fact that neither the French nor the German embassy had reacted to the fax they had been sent early that morning?

Pfer assured us that the fax had indeed reached its destination and that his supervisors in Khartoum were making the necessary arrangements with the relevant authorities.

The next day, there was still no news from Khartoum. Bruno and I spent the whole morning in Pfer’s office, waiting for the fax to screech or the phone to ring. About midday, the switchboard operator managed to make contact with Djibouti and Bruno burst into sobs on recognising his partner’s voice at the end of the line. Then his laughter burst out through his tears. I didn’t understand what he was saying in Arabic, but it was clear that the line was vibrating with the overflow of emotion. Bruno wiped himself with his turban, hiccuped, grinned, struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, jumped up and down on his seat, and every now and again let out shrill cries. His partner passed the phone, one by one, to family members, neighbours, the shopkeeper opposite, an old friend, whoever, and I imagined all these people hearing the news, stopping whatever they were doing and rushing to the phone to say how happy they were to learn that their dear Frenchman was still alive and how they couldn’t wait to see him again in the flesh. The conversations went on. Sometimes, Bruno was forced to wait while the next speaker was fetched from the other end of the street or a bedridden old acquaintance who absolutely had to talk to him was helped from his bed and dragged to the phone. Silences were followed by euphoric yells, and again tears and laughter mingled. By the time he hung up, Bruno was transformed. He was in seventh heaven, and his eyes sparkled. He gave me a big hug, then grabbed Pfer and danced like an orphan who’d been given his family back.

Pfer suggested we go to the canteen to celebrate. As we left the office, we saw two male nurses running across the yard towards the main gate of the camp. Children were standing outside their tents, pointing at something. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw a figure swaying in the distance, a burden on its back. Pfer, who had immediately realised what was happening, sent his secretary to alert the infirmary. We gave up on the canteen and hurried to catch up with the two nurses. The figure didn’t stop on seeing help arrive. It kept on staggering towards the camp. The two nurses tried to relieve it of its burden, but it refused and carried on its way, like an automaton. Bruno was the first to identify the figure: it was the young man with the cart who had been abandoned with his mother in the desert! There he was, before our very eyes, tottering but still upright, his mother on his back. He entered the camp, barely able to stand, empty-eyed, deaf to the words of the male nurses who tried to take the old woman from him. It was as if he wanted to see his exploit through to the end, jealously guarding his trek and rejecting any help he judged premature. The children, who had recognised him, ran towards him, incredulous. They didn’t cry out, didn’t go too close to him, simply escorted him to the infirmary, where a doctor and two of his assistants were waiting. The old woman was immediately laid on a stretcher and taken into the treatment room.

His lips white and his eyes on the verge of rolling back, the prodigal son collapsed exhausted against the wall, his arms dangling, his calves covered with cuts, his back steaming, half dead but valiant, incredibly valiant, supremely valiant.

Bruno turned to me and said, proudly and vengefully, ‘That’s Africa, Monsieur Krausmann!’

2

That afternoon, Pfer summoned Bruno and me and informed us that representatives of our respective embassies would be arriving the following day. There would probably be journalists in the delegation, and maybe also Sudanese military. He gave an outline of that kind of encounter, which he had witnessed before, and its emotional impact, which could be quite severe. Bruno merely nodded, but once Pfer had finished his briefing, he announced that he had no intention of going back to Bordeaux, but preferred to return to Djibouti. Pfer promised to see what he could do and let us go.

Bruno took me to see an old man lying in a tent. He wasn’t sick, just too old to stand. His face had collapsed and his gestures were sparing, and all he could do was smile in a dazed kind of way. Bruno told me he was a marabout and warrior, as well as an incomparable diviner able to sense water over a wide radius and locate it without needing a rod or a pendulum. According to Bruno, the old man, who was Ethiopian in origin, was an emblematic figure in the Horn of Africa. His reputation extended from the Yemeni Bedouin to the fabled Masai of Kenya. He had been the instigator and one of the leaders of the armed revolt against the Italian invasion in 1935 — Mussolini was said to have put a fabulous price on his head. After the national liberation at the beginning of the 1940s, he had been much feted by Emperor Haile Selassie. Then the coming of Communism to Ethiopia had turned the traditional structures upside down, and the old man had spent a decade rotting in the Marxist regime’s dungeons, while Mengistu’s henchmen murdered, ‘disappeared’ and forced into exile the most influential members of his tribe. Still hounded, he had ended up joining the swarm of refugees and had wandered from one country to another until age had caught up with him. Taken into the camp, he was waiting to die the way legends die in those lands where memories grow dim with the generations. I wondered why Bruno was telling me all this, then realised that there was no ulterior motive, that he was simply proud of ‘his people’s’ charisma. As he spoke, the old man kept his eyes fixed on me. He must have been over a hundred and reminded me of an Apache chief on his catafalque of feathers. He wore a talismanic necklace and an amber rosary by way of a bracelet. A ring bearing the effigy of some ancient deity looked like a large wart on his finger. Bruno assured me it had belonged to Haile Selassie himself, who had given it to the marabout as a mark of friendship. The old man muttered something; his words emerged from his toothless mouth as if from an abyss, sepulchral and disjointed, and faded in the air like plumes of steam. He reached out his arm to me and placed his open hand on my forehead. A wave of energy went through my brain, and a strange sensation, as if I were levitating, forced me to take a step back. He said something in his dialect, which Bruno translated: ‘Why are you sad? You shouldn’t be. Only the dead are sad because they can’t get up again.’ I quickly took my leave of him and invited Bruno to walk with me to the pilot village.

It was the end of classes, and the pupils in their pinafores were rushing to the football ground, their high-pitched voices echoing. We watched a closely fought match, with excellent tackles and strict marking.

As Elena, Orfane and Lotta were late joining us, Bruno and I had dinner in the canteen. Even though his grievances against me seemed forgotten, Bruno showed signs of anxiety. Torn between the fear of disappointing the envoys from his embassy and the idea of being reunited with his partner and his friends in Djibouti, he didn’t know which way to turn. When he realised he was miming his thoughts, he pulled himself together. He clinked his spoon against the rim of his bowl, stirred his soup, dipped a piece of bread in it and left it there.

‘I admit she’s a gorgeous creature,’ he said suddenly.

‘Who?’

‘Elena Juárez.’

Bruno always surprised me: you never knew what he was going to say next. He gave a wicked little smile. He knew he had taken me aback and my embarrassment boosted his ego.

‘I saw you at the football match. You kept jumping every time you thought you’d spotted her in the crowd.’

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I stammered in irritation.

‘Of course I am …’

‘I suppose this is more of that damned African curiosity you were talking about.’

‘I saw you looking at her yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that. Your eyes were full of her.’

‘Please, Bruno. Now is not the time.’

‘Love doesn’t care about time. When it arrives, the world can wait, and everything else pales into insignificance.’

He plunged his spoon into his soup, fished out the piece of bread and lifted it to his mouth, his eyes already withdrawing far away. We ate in silence, taking no further interest in each other, then parted company. I went back to Orfane’s cabin, took a shower and lay down on the padded bench. I tried to think of nothing, but that was impossible. I was a whirl of thoughts. Jessica’s ghost on one side, Joma’s on the other, and me caught in the crossfire. I switched off the light to make myself invisible. Orfane came back late. I pretended I was asleep, praying that he wouldn’t put the light on. He didn’t. He undressed in the dark, slipped beneath the sheets, and immediately started snoring. I dressed again and went out into the night. The generator was off. The moon cast an anaemic light over the camp. Over by the tents, somebody was still up. I thought I recognised Bruno’s voice, but wasn’t sure. I walked along the fence, my arms crossed over my chest, my head bowed. Two puppies came and sniffed my calves. I crouched down to stroke them. They moaned contentedly and ran off towards the gate, where a night watchman was dozing, a tiny transistor radio against his ear … A cigarette end gleamed intermittently in the darkness. It was Elena. She was sitting on the steps of her cabin, in vest and shorts, smoking and staring down at her feet. As I was about to turn and walk back the way I had come, she noticed me and gave me a little sign with her hand.

‘I can’t get to sleep,’ I said by way of excuse.

‘Neither can I.’

‘Worried?’

‘Not really.’

She shifted on the steps to make room for me. I sat down next to her. The touch of her body unsettled me. I felt the heat of her skin against mine, smelt her subtle perfume. I had the impression she was shaking, or perhaps it was me.

‘You should quit smoking,’ I said to fight back the wave of emotion overwhelming me.

She smiled and tapped on the cigarette to get rid of the ash. ‘One or two cigarettes a day isn’t so bad.’

‘If you aren’t hooked, why not give up altogether?’

‘I like one in the evening before going to bed. It relaxes me a little. And it also keeps me company.’

‘Do you feel lonely?’

‘Sometimes. But I don’t make a fuss about it. I do a lot of thinking, and that does isolate me a bit. So when I’m alone and I light a cigarette, it’s like having someone else between my thoughts and me. Someone who supports me, if you see what I mean.’

I didn’t press her. She looked at me and I looked at her. The moonlight gently illuminated her. She was very beautiful: I’ll never stop saying that. Her vest clung to her voluptuous torso, her silky arms were long and magnificent, and her eyes were like two rubies wrapped in velvet. Her musky smell intoxicated me.

‘I haven’t seen you all day.’

‘I was with the old woman,’ she said, referring to the mother of the young man with the cart.

‘How is she?’

‘She’ll recover.’ She flicked her cigarette away and turned to face me. ‘Are you religious, Dr Krausmann?’

‘Kurt.’

‘Are you religious, Kurt?’

‘My mother was religious enough for the whole family. She took everything on herself … Why?’

‘I was thinking of the old woman. We left her for dead, didn’t we? We all thought she was dying. The only reason we gave in to her son’s demands was because we thought he wanted to be left alone to bury her. I can’t believe she’s still alive. I’ve been in Africa for six years now. I was in the Congo and Rwanda before this. And there are things I’ve seen that go beyond human understanding. There are phenomena in these countries that I can’t grasp or explain. It’s extraordinary.’

‘What’s extraordinary?’

‘The miracles,’ she said, looking in my eyes in search of something. ‘I’ve witnessed quite a few supernatural events. I’ve seen people come through terrible ordeals, sick and dying people get up out of their beds, and things so unlikely I can’t talk about them without sounding ridiculous.’

Her hand grasped mine, a gesture she had whenever she felt she was losing her way. It was much more a question of clinging to something than a considered move.

‘This continent is a holy land, Kurt. I don’t know how to say it. The people are … I can’t find the words.’

‘Strange?’

‘Not in the conventional sense of the word. They carry a kind of allegory inside them, or rather a truth that’s beyond me. And it comes home to me with such strength that it makes me shiver. There’s a biblical inspiration in these people. Something that strengthens my faith, even though I don’t exactly know what it is.’

‘Maybe because you give too much of yourself.’

‘It has nothing to do with that. In the Red Cross, we don’t have any respite. There are so many priorities that everything becomes urgent. But this is another dimension, don’t you see? When the old woman opened her eyes this morning, I saw a kind of revelation in them that bowled me over. As if a dead person had come back to life. I … I’m still in a state of shock.’

Holy land, I thought. My whole culture being incompatible with what I considered some kind of surreal folklore, that kind of statement disturbed me. Ever since the misunderstanding that had almost compromised my friendship with Bruno, any reference to an idealised Africa had made me uncomfortable. I hated to argue about subjects that led nowhere. I’d even say that I endured them with a patience I disliked. My embarrassment wasn’t lost on Elena, who frowned and asked me if she was tiring me.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I have the impression I’m boring you with my ramblings …’

‘No, no, I’m listening. I don’t know much about Africa. I come from a continent where miracles are simply remarkable coincidences.’

She turned up her nose in mild annoyance and sighed. ‘You’re right. I suppose it’s very difficult to connect with that kind of story when you don’t have faith … Can I get you a beer?’

I gladly accepted. She went into her cabin, leaving the door open so that I could follow her inside. I hesitated, and she came back to fetch me. She apologised for the mess. Her cabin was an exact copy of Orfane’s, with the same padded benches, fitted wardrobe and tiled bathroom. I sat down on a chair next to the desk and crossed my legs. Elena brought me a can and a glass.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked, pointing to a signed photograph pinned to the wall showing a black woman surrounded by a happy gang of kids.

‘Marguerite Barankitse.’

‘An African singer?’

‘An icon in the aid field.’

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘In her heart and mind, too. She’s an exceptional lady and a great fighter. She rescued tens of thousands of orphans and child soldiers and built a hospital, a school, and farms to help the widows and their offspring. I’d give anything to do in Darfur what she managed to do in Burundi.’

‘You’ve already done a lot.’

‘We can do better. We don’t have enough medical staff.’

She sat down cross-legged on one of the padded benches. Polite as I was, I couldn’t help admiring the curves of her legs, barely covered by her shorts.

‘I don’t see any other photos,’ I observed.

She burst out laughing, with that spontaneous singsong laughter of hers that was like the chirping of birds. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you’re trying to find out.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

She raised a sceptical eyebrow and let me sip my beer. ‘I married when I was twenty,’ she said. ‘A handsome Andalusian, intelligent, generous. But he was possessive, and I was independent. He wanted me for himself alone and forgot that he was only my husband. We’d loved each other since high school. We continued to love each other at university and got married as soon as he graduated. Two years after our honeymoon in Cape Town, we broke up.’

‘These things happen,’ I stupidly stammered.

‘I love my work, Dr Krausmann,’ she went on, brushing her hair back.

‘Kurt.’

‘I’m sorry … When I was a teenager, I had two idols. Robert Redford for my girlish fantasies. And Mother Teresa. My husband took the place of the first and tried to overshadow the second. We can’t have everything we want in life, can we, Kurt?’

‘That depends on what we want.’

‘I wanted to help people. Ever since I was very young, that’s all I’ve dreamed about. In my fairy stories, I didn’t see myself as a princess or Cinderella, but as a nurse devoted to the destitute. I imagined myself tending to the wounded on the battlefield. And when I saw what Mother Teresa was doing among the “untouchables” and the lepers, I was certain. It was exactly what suited me. It was quite natural for me to choose the Red Cross … What hospital do you work at in Frankfurt?’

‘I’m in private practice.’

‘What about your wife?’

My breathing accelerated when I told her that my wife was dead. I expected her to apologise profusely, as people usually do when they’ve been indiscreet, but she didn’t. She looked at me with sympathy and said nothing. I assumed that her long experience of death had hardened her and that she approached this kind of situation philosophically. Her eyes searched mine, shifted to my lips, then, in an almost mystic movement, she took my hand in hers and held it for a long time.

‘I have to go,’ I said reluctantly.

Lotta came to fetch me early the next morning. Three military vehicles bearing the insignia of the African Union were parked outside the camp’s administrative block. Soldiers rigged out like draught horses, their rifles at rest, were sitting in the back seats, stiff and silent. A light-skinned young officer in a multicoloured parka stood to one side, conversing with Pfer, who merely nodded his head, his hands behind his back. Bruno was already there, in his disguise as a Muslim dignitary, cooling his heels outside Pfer’s office.

The officer saluted me, then held out his hand. ‘Captain Wadi,’ he said. ‘I command the Omega detachment, stationed thirty kilometres to the south of here. I have orders to ensure your safety and that of the delegation which will be arriving by plane in two hours’ time.’

‘Dr Kurt Krausmann, pleased to meet you.’

‘I’m glad to know that you’re safe and sound, Dr Krausmann. The director has told me about your misadventure.’

‘Misadventure? Is that what you call it?’

He took no notice of my reservations about his definition and invited me to follow him into the office. Bruno sat down on the sofa, looking morose. Not once did he look up at the captain. He seemed to have an aversion to soldiers, and the proximity of this young officer made him ill at ease. I took a seat while Pfer went behind his desk. The captain preferred to remain standing, to feel in control, I suppose. He was somewhat sickly-looking with a thin, clean-shaven face, crew-cut hair and glittering green eyes that were in marked contrast to his bronzed complexion. He could well have been an Arab or a Berber.

‘According to the captain, the plane has taken off from Khartoum,’ Pfer said to relax the atmosphere, given that an inexplicable sense of embarrassment had fallen over the room.

Bruno shrugged. He addressed Pfer in order to avoid speaking to the captain. ‘In that case, why summon us now?’

‘I need some information,’ the captain said.

‘What information?’ Bruno grunted, still looking at Pfer. ‘We don’t owe anybody anything. Representatives of our embassies will be here soon, and as far as my friend and I are concerned, they are the only people we should speak to.’

‘Sir—’ the captain began.

‘Monsieur Pfer,’ Bruno interrupted, standing up, ‘we ask permission to leave immediately. We aren’t criminals or illegal immigrants. And we have nothing to say to strangers. Kurt and I will return to our quarters until our officials arrive.’

The captain placed a file stuffed with papers on Pfer’s desk and folded his arms across his chest, his nostrils dilated with anger. ‘We’re not talking about an interrogation, sir, but a normal procedure which is within my rights. I’m responsible for security in this area and any information that can improve living conditions in my sector of operations—’

‘Can we go?’ Bruno asked Pfer, deaf to the captain’s injunctions.

Pfer was embarrassed. He took his head in both hands and stared at the calendar in front of him. Bruno ordered me to follow him. Disconcerted by Pfer’s reaction, I decided to fall in with Bruno’s plan. The captain made no attempt to stop us. He opened his arms wide and brought them down against his sides in an irritable slap.

Bruno gave me no explanation for his refusal to cooperate with the young officer. We crossed the yard, he at a furious pace, I hobbling along behind. He had to stop to let me catch up. Elena and the others being busy with their patients, he took me to see his ‘brothers’, who occupied the tent near the infirmary. There were half a dozen of them, all convalescents: an old veteran with mocking eyes, two teenagers and three battered-looking men, including the thirty-year-old in plaster who had been telling naughty jokes in the canteen two days earlier. They were laughing like mad and our arrival didn’t put them off.

‘I won’t set foot in a souk again in a hurry,’ a boy with a bandaged hip was saying.

‘I’m sure the shopkeepers will be really upset,’ one of the wounded men said ironically.

‘It’s my right,’ the boy said. ‘I’m the one who chooses where to spend my money, aren’t I?’

‘Let him speak!’ said a man with a burnt face. ‘Otherwise he’ll lose the thread of his story.’

The others fell silent.

The narrator coughed into his fist, delighted to be the centre of attention. He resumed his story. ‘I’d just been paid, and with my wages and savings, I was hoping to buy some nice fashionable trainers, with a label on the tongue and wonderful white laces. All my life, I’ve only worn old flip-flops with holes in them. I wanted to get myself something awesome to show off to the girl next door, who was always cutting me dead. I went to all the bazaars, and it took me all day. Finally, by chance, I came across a street peddler who took some Nikes out of a box that really took my breath away. I tried them on and they fitted me like a glove. They cost an arm and a leg, but I didn’t haggle. When you want to treat yourself, you don’t scrimp, isn’t that right, Uncle Mambo?’

‘You’re absolutely right, son,’ the veteran said in a learned tone. ‘Personally, when I want to give myself a treat, I never think of the price of the soap.’

Roars of laughter shook the tent. The boy waited for the others to calm down before continuing, not at all disturbed by the lingering guffaws around him. ‘I took the Nikes and checked them from every angle. They looked so good my mouth was watering. I could already imagine myself strutting past the girl next door’s window. But just as I was putting my hand in the back pocket of my trousers to pay, I realised that someone had robbed me of half my money.’

‘Damn!’ exclaimed a young boy, entranced by his comrade’s story.

‘I hope you managed to get your hands on the thief,’ said the thirty-year-old in plaster.

‘How could I find him in that crowd? There were loads of people in the market that day.’

‘Easy,’ the veteran said. ‘You just had to look for a oneeyed man. Only a one-eyed man would have left the job half done.’

Laughter rang out again. Bruno laughed for form’s sake. His mind was elsewhere. Later, he would admit to me that, not having papers, he was dreading the possibility that the Sudanese authorities would send him back to France, which was why he had no desire to talk to the officer in charge of our security.

We stayed with the convalescents until midday, long enough for me to realise how amazing these people were. Had these survivors forgotten the misfortunes that had befallen them or had they discovered an antidote? As I observed them, I wondered from what ashes they had been reborn. They had an astonishing ability to downplay adversity. Their strength lay in their mindset, a unique, ancient mindset forged in the very magma of this good old earth of men. A mindset that had come into being with the first cry of life and would survive hard times and the downward spiral of the modern world with undimmed vigour. Bruno hadn’t been completely wrong. Deep inside these people, there resided an enduring flame that brightened and revived them every time the darkness tried to overwhelm them. Evidently, they had instinctively assimilated what I would not be able to grasp without wading through endless and often pointless mathematical probabilities. These people were an education. They laughed at their disappointments as if at an unsuccessful farce. Here they were, happy to be together, in total sympathy with each other, and if they laughed at their own naivety, it was in order to underline the fragility of things so that they could handle it better. I envied them, envied the maturity they had gained from so much suffering and so many nightmarish ordeals, their philosophical distance which allowed them to rise above traumas and disasters, and their sense of humour that seemed to proudly defy an unjust and treacherous fate, the mechanism of which they had somehow deciphered.

Midday. The plane had not yet appeared. The news of its imminent arrival had spread through the camp like wildfire. People’s necks were stiff from looking up at the sky. Whenever a bird came in sight, everyone stood up. The children came running, the women shielded their eyes with their hands and the men stopped what they were doing and stood with their hands on their hips. But no plane appeared on the horizon. The delegation was an hour late. Had it really taken off from Khartoum? The captain may have been categorical, but we were starting to fear the worst. Pfer looked at his watch every five minutes, and the lines on his forehead grew deeper. His many phone calls went unanswered. Something serious had happened. Tired of biting his nails, Bruno went back to his ‘brothers’. Elena came twice to ask about the situation then disappeared again. The captain was glued to the radio: its crackle could be heard a hundred metres away. The soldiers walked up and down beside their vehicles, puffing on cigarette ends. An anxious atmosphere pervaded the camp. At about three in the afternoon, a fax came through: the plane had gone back to Khartoum. Its arrival was postponed until the next day. Learning the news, Bruno sank into a state of paranoia. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing was a trick. The plane had never left Khartoum and the Sudanese government was trying to gain time. I didn’t see why. Bruno took me to one side and launched into a host of crazy theories that betrayed just how low he was feeling.

‘It could be,’ he said, ‘that the Sudanese authorities intercepted the fax announcing our arrival here and held on to it. Our embassies haven’t been informed. The presence of the soldiers doesn’t bode well. It stinks of conspiracy.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘We’re in Africa, Monsieur Krausmann. How do we know the pirates who kidnapped us aren’t in league with the government? Have our embassies been in touch with us? Like hell they have! Nobody’s contacted us. Don’t you find that strange? Just out of politeness, an official should have phoned to reassure us and ask if we were being well treated. But there seems to be a complete blackout.’

Bruno was getting carried away. I guess he was really disturbed by the possibility of being taken to the border and sent back to France. At about three the following afternoon, a small propeller plane landed without incident on a stretch of wasteland not far from the camp. On board were the first secretaries of our respective embassies, a German secret service man, a correspondent from a major television channel and his cameraman, two newspaper reporters and three Sudanese army officers. A technical problem, we were told, had forced the pilot to return to base and the delegation had had to charter a second plane to accomplish its mission, which allayed Bruno’s mad suspicions. Pfer let us use his office, the narrowness of which obliged the cameraman to twist in all directions in order to film the event. After the handshakes and the introductions, the German first secretary, Gerd Bechter, informed me that arrangements had been made for my repatriation and that I could go home whenever it suited me. I asked him if there was any news of Hans Makkenroth. He told me, much to my dismay, that the search had so far yielded no results.

‘How can that be?’ Bruno cried. ‘They were holding him to ransom.’

‘We’ve never received any ransom demand,’ Gerd Bechter said. ‘We know the boat was hijacked between Djibouti and Somalia. But after that, we lost all trace of you, Herr Makkenroth and your Filipino companion.’

‘Tao was thrown overboard by the pirates,’ I said.

The journalists nervously scribbled that information in their notebooks.

‘Who reported the attack on the boat?’ Bruno asked suspiciously.

‘Herr Makkenroth’s Cyprus office. Herr Makkenroth had been calling them twice a day, at nine in the morning and ten at night, to report his position and the weather conditions. Then they lost radio contact. No faxes or emails either. They kept trying to get in touch with the boat, but without success. Forty-eight hours after contact was lost, Herr Makkenroth’s family in Frankfurt alerted the embassy and we immediately launched a search. The boat was spotted in a creek on the northern coast of Somalia and recovered by French special units dispatched from Djibouti. No arrests have been made, and we’re still in the dark, without any leads or witnesses.’

‘I’m not going back to Germany without Hans Makkenroth,’ I said.

‘Dr Krausmann, you’re expected in Khartoum today.’

‘It’s out of the question. My friend is somewhere in the region, and I refuse to abandon him to his fate.’

‘The search is ongoing.’

‘Then I’ll wait for it to lead somewhere.’

‘Your presence here will be of no help to us. Let’s go back to Khartoum and then we can see where we are.’

‘Please don’t insist. I’m not moving from this camp until I know what happened to my friend.’

Bechter asked the others to leave us alone. Everyone left the office. The French first secretary took advantage of the situation to talk in private with Bruno.

Bechter’s awkwardness annoyed me. He walked up and down the room, went and stood by the window to get a grip on himself, then came back towards me and implored me to follow him to Khartoum. Nothing he said would make me change my mind. In desperation, he took out his mobile phone and called the ambassador. When he had him on the line, he held the phone out to me, but I categorically refused to take it.

‘You can’t stay here, doctor,’ he said, after apologising to the ambassador.

‘Is there something I don’t know?’

‘We have no proof that Herr Makkenroth is still alive,’ he said bitterly.

It was a blow, and my forehead and back suddenly broke out in a sweat.

‘Could you be more explicit?’

He went to fetch one of the Sudanese officers, a colonel with greying temples, and asked him to explain the situation to me. The colonel told me that the information he had suggested that Hans Makkenroth was probably dead. One night, about four weeks earlier, an isolated shepherd had received a visit from a group of armed men in flight. They had a number of wounded men with them, including a bearded European whose description corresponded to that of Hans. He was in a critical state.

‘There’s nothing to prove it’s him,’ I said. ‘Hostages with a beard are two a penny. I had one myself when I arrived in this camp. We weren’t in a health spa, colonel.’

‘When the armed men pointed at their prisoner, they mentioned he was German,’ Bechter said. ‘There are no other German nationals reported missing in this region.’

‘Hans got a sabre blow in the back during the attack on the boat. He recovered from it before he was transferred.’

‘This wasn’t a sabre blow, doctor,’ said the colonel. ‘The hostage had been hit in the head and chest and had lost a lot of blood. The shepherd was sure about that. They were gunshot wounds.’

I felt as if the ceiling were collapsing on my head. Shaking all over, I made an effort to steady my breathing. I was in a state of weightlessness, unable to preserve even a semblance of self-assurance. The colonel tried to put his hand on my shoulder, but I recoiled. I hate to be touched when things get too much for me.

‘No,’ I stammered after a long silence, ‘there must be some mistake. Hans was sold to a criminal group for money. The reason they haven’t asked for a ransom yet is because my friend is being auctioned. His last buyer will soon put in an appearance. This shepherd’s talking nonsense. Or maybe he’s an accomplice of the kidnappers and is lying to divert suspicion from himself and allow his associates to gain time. They’re hoping you’ll call off the search.’

‘Doctor—’

‘I won’t allow you to manipulate me, colonel. I refuse to listen to you and I refuse to go with you to Khartoum. I’m not moving from here until I get an answer to my question: where is Hans Makkenroth?’

‘I understand how you feel,’ Bechter said, ‘but I can’t approve your decision. I assure you you’d be more useful to us elsewhere.’

‘We have to go back today,’ the colonel said to me. ‘We chartered the plane for the day, and it’ll be dark soon.’

‘I’m sorry, colonel. Your priorities are not the same as mine.’

As far as I was concerned, it was inconceivable that I should go back to Germany without Hans. I wanted to get out of Africa without leaving anything behind and without taking anything away with me. I wanted to dismiss anything that might mar my return to a normal life. It would be hard, very hard, but I intended to succeed because it was the only way for a survivor to learn to live again. I would be able to turn my back on the hateful memories that were dogging my heels and shake off the invective-laden voices and terrible gunshots that still echoed in my head. I would manage to convince myself that my stay in Africa had been nothing but a bad dream, and every morning that the world still had in store for me I would wake up to the sounds that were dear to me.

The delegation failed to persuade me to leave the camp. Bruno was on my side. He refused to abandon me, convinced that Hans was still alive and was being moved from one buyer to another somewhere in the desert. As the sun was going down, the two first secretaries resigned themselves and granted us a few days to think it over, on condition that we cooperate with an officer who would remain in the camp and keep in close contact with the African Union forces deployed in the sector.

When the plane took off, I was overcome with a mixture of dread and loneliness. What if the shepherd was telling the truth? What if Hans had succumbed to his wounds? That possibility was the final blow. My knees gave way and pain gripped my body and my mind.

In the canteen, I stared at my plate without touching it. I couldn’t even have swallowed my own saliva. The rattle of knives and forks sounded to me like hailstones, crushing my thoughts into thousands of shards. Bruno noticed how badly affected I was. He took my hand, but the gesture felt like a bite. I asked him to excuse me and went outside to get some air.

I walked in the darkness without knowing where I was going. Images of Hans went round and round in my head. I saw him again at the controls of his boat, limping through a thalweg with his shirt clinging to his wound, not finding words to say at Jessica’s funeral, fanning himself with his hat in the sun at Sharm el-Sheikh. I had the impression that a whole chunk of my universe was missing, that the absence of Hans had created an impossible gulf between me and the world. However hard I tried to dismiss the idea he might be dead, it kept coming back, as fierce as a hornet.

Elena found me on the other side of the fence, huddled beneath a solitary tree, wild with anxiety. She leant down and talked to me, but couldn’t reach me. Unable to get any response or reaction from me, she took me in her arms and I abandoned myself to her like a child.

3

I needed someone.

And Elena was there.

When death tries to suck the lifeblood from you, life has to react, or it will lose all credibility. That might be what happened to me. Hans’s probable death had reactivated my survival instinct. By loving Elena, I proved to myself that I was alive. I was surprised to wake up in her bed. Surprised but reassured. My intimacy with Elena was more than a refuge for me, it enabled me to make peace with myself. Elena was embarrassed. Did she blame herself for taking advantage of the situation? She would have been wrong to think that. I needed support, and she was my rock. How could I have rejected her lips when they gave me back my soul? Hadn’t she told me she felt lonely? In making love, we had formed a common front against all the things that had swept away our moorings.

She had made coffee, put the tray down on the bedside table and gone into the bathroom to get dressed. When she returned, her eyes wandered several times around the room before coming to rest on me. ‘Now that you’ve decided to stay in the camp, what do you plan to do with your days?’ she asked. I told her that if she had no objections, I’d like to resume my work. She assured me that the patients would be happy to be tended by me. I promised her I would join her in the treatment room as soon as I had taken a shower.

Elena had already examined half the patients by the time I joined her in the infirmary. I found her at the bedside of the old woman, who had miraculously survived and was still in intensive care. Her son, the young man with the cart, was in the next bed. He, too, was on a drip. He wouldn’t take his eyes off his mother … Elena introduced me to her patients. There were about thirty of them, from different backgrounds: old men, women and children, most of them survivors of raids. Orfane brought me a white coat and a stethoscope and gave me a row of beds to deal with. Within ten minutes, I had recovered all my old medical reflexes. A young boy grabbed me by the wrist. His case was clearly desperate. With his hairless skull, almost non-existent eyebrows and yellowish complexion, he was nothing more than a big head above a skeleton. The skin of his face crumpled like a sheet of paper when he smiled at me.

‘Is it true that in Germany there are glass houses so high they reach the clouds?’

‘Yes, it’s true,’ I said, taking his hand in mine and sitting down on the edge of his bed.

‘And do people live in them?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how do they get to the top?’

‘They take the lift.’

‘What’s a lift?’

‘A kind of cage. You go inside, press a button with a number next to it, and the cage goes up by itself.’

‘That’s magic … When I’m better, I’ll go to your country and see the glass houses.’

Still smiling, he lay down again and closed his eyes.

Orfane came and told me that the director was waiting for me in his office. I finished my rounds before going.

Bruno had got there before me. He was sprawling on the sofa, his legs crossed and his arms stretched out along the back. The Sudanese colonel saw us without either the captain or Pfer. We told him our stories from the beginning, the ambush outside Mogadishu in Bruno’s case, the attack on the boat in mine, the terrible journey across scrub and desert, the disused fort where Captain Gerima had kept us prisoner, Chief Moussa, Joma the poet-pirate, the transfer of Hans, the final duel that had allowed us to escape, our meeting with Elena Juárez and her refugees. It was a detailed account, and the colonel didn’t interrupt us once: I assumed he was recording our statements on the tape recorder that stood on Pfer’s desk. When we had finished, he asked us to pay attention and went to a map of the region hanging on the wall. With an expandable pointer he pointed to three places, which he surrounded with little blue triangles: the place where Jibreel, the camp’s guide and driver, had found Bruno and me; the place where the shepherd said he had received a visit from pirates with the wounded Hans; the place where we had been kept prisoner by Captain Gerima (based on our description of the outpost and the surrounding landscape). He admitted that he couldn’t understand why the kidnappers had chosen such a bleak, hostile area instead of staying in Somalia where the trade in hostages could be carried on without too many obstacles, although he pointed out that rebels preferred to manoeuvre across borders so that if the worst came to the worst they could fall back on the neighbouring country to avoid being pursued by government forces. Bruno reminded him that we weren’t there to follow a course in military tactics, but to find Hans Makkenroth. The colonel took no notice of his words and continued his presentation. Having finished with the map, he turned to his files. He began by telling us that the authorities had nothing on the so-called Captain Gerima and that no officer who had deserted matched his description.

‘Gerima had definitely been in the army,’ Bruno insisted. ‘He isn’t Sudanese or Somali. He’s Djiboutian and speaks fluent French. He was in the regular army before being sentenced by a court martial for stealing rations and reselling them.’

The officer was exasperated by Bruno’s intervention. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted and saw the Frenchman’s attitude as insubordination and an insult to his authority. He waited for Bruno to be quiet before resuming.

‘As for Chief Moussa, he’s known to the authorities both here and in Somalia. He’s being actively pursued in both countries. Now, with your permission, let’s see if a few faces might point us in the right direction.’ He turned his computer towards us. Photographs of men and teenage boys appeared on the screen. ‘I should make it clear that they aren’t all criminals. The one thing they have in common is that they’ve received gunshot wounds. Hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, all kinds of medical centres without exception are required to inform the police immediately of any admissions of that nature. These people may be shepherds attacked by cattle thieves, lorry drivers intercepted by highwaymen, people hit by stray bullets, people wounded in the course of tribal feuds, but also dealers and bandits arrested during police raids, smugglers, rebels, terrorists and so on. I’d be grateful if you could take a good look at them and tell me if you see any familiar faces.’

We recognised Ewana and a second pirate, the driver of the sidecar motorcycle. Consulting his files, the colonel told us that the two suspects had been admitted to the same rural dispensary on the same night; that the first, whose real name was Babaker Ohid — thirty-one, married, four children, a cattle dealer by profession — had been shot twice, once in the thigh and once in the buttock; and that the second, Hamad Tool — twenty-six, married, two children, a former athletics champion who’d become a scrap merchant — had been shot in the hip. He asked us if we were absolutely certain we recognised them. We hadn’t the slightest doubt, we told him. He switched off his computer, put away his files, asked us another dozen questions, noting down our responses in a register, and dismissed us.

Bruno went off to find his ‘brothers’, and I my patients.

In the evening, Elena offered to show me a quiet spot a few hundred metres to the east of the camp. We went there on foot. The sun hadn’t yet set, and our shadows were long on the ground. It wasn’t very hot. There was a cool breeze in the air. Elena untied her hair, and shook it so that it spread over her shoulders. She took my hand in hers and we walked side by side like lovers. She told me about an old school friend of hers, but I wasn’t listening. Her voice was enough for me. It cradled my silence. Soon, the camp was merely a shimmering patch behind us. Coming to an area where the ground fell away abruptly, we stopped at the edge of the precipice. Below, at the bottom of a vast basin, shaggy shrubs grew alongside wild grasses and plants besieged by midges. The vegetation was green and luxuriant, hard to imagine in this part of the desert. A spring-like aroma filled the air, which was alive with the chirping of insects. Elena photographed me from several angles, then sat down cross-legged and invited me to do the same.

‘The other day,’ she said, ‘I saw a group of antelopes grazing down there, with their young. It was magical.’

‘It’s a real haven of peace,’ I admitted.

‘I often come here to unwind. I put a hat on in order not to get sunburnt, have a flask full of cold water close at hand, and stay here for hours waiting for the antelopes to return. I’ve also seen a jackal. It had gone to ground down there. When it saw me looking at it, it stared at me suspiciously. I got the impression it could see right through me.’

‘It might have attacked you.’

‘I don’t think so. Jackals are secretive, cowardly animals, who never take risks. If they aren’t sure they’ll succeed, they give up. Wild dogs, on the other hand, don’t need to feel threatened to attack. An old night watchman discovered that to his detriment. He got lost in the dark and we found him torn to pieces not far from the camp.’

‘Doesn’t anything nice ever happen here?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t you think this is a beautiful place, Kurt?’

I wanted to tell her that she was very beautiful, but didn’t dare. She took my chin between her pretty fingers, and looked deep into my eyes. My heart pounded in my chest. Elena noticed. She moved her face closer to mine and searched for my lips, but her kiss was cut short by the laughter of two little children who had just jumped up out of the undergrowth below us. They climbed the embankment as fast as they could, stopped to make fun of us, miming languorous hugs and kisses, and ran off towards the camp, laughing triumphantly.

‘Where did they spring from?’ I said.

Elena now also laughed fondly at the antics of the two kids. ‘In Africa,’ she said, ‘even if God turns his head modestly away when two people are ready to make love, you can be surethere’s always a little boy watching somewhere.’

A week had passed since the visit from the delegation. I had moved in with Elena. By day, I took care of my patients. In the evening, Elena and I wandered around the outskirts of the camp and only came back when night had fallen. Every now and again, Bruno would join us with one or two of his mythical ‘brothers’. As far as the Frenchman was concerned, every African was a novel. But it was he, Bruno, who wrote it. Thus it was that he introduced us to Bongo, a teenage boy who had walked three thousand kilometres, without a guide and without a penny in his pocket, to see the sea. He had left his village in Nigeria in order to get to Europe. A people smuggler had promised to take him there in return for his mother’s jewellery, but had abandoned him in the Ténéré. The boy had wandered for months and months in the desert, somehow getting by, until he had come upon the camp by chance. The day after we were introduced to him, he disappeared. He had stolen some provisions from the kitchen, a bag and some walking shoes, and had set off in search of the sea. Bruno had no doubt in his mind: sooner or later the young man would realise his dream. It was written all over his face that nothing would stop him.

One evening, Bruno came running into the canteen in a state of great excitement. He demanded silence, stretched his arms out wide in a melodramatic gesture, and with a lump in his throat declaimed:

I am a man of flesh like you

And I have spilt blood

As if pouring wine

Into the cup of infamy

I have dreams like yours

Forbidden dreams

That I keep within me

For fear they will die in the air

I am the sum of your crimes

The funeral urn of your prayers

The soul expelled from your body

The twin brother you reject

I am merely an old mirror

A mirror cut to your disproportions

In which you hope one day to see

Yourself big even though you are small

He gave a reverential bow, then rose to his full height to savour the applause, of which there was a little. ‘Black Moon, by Joma Baba-Sy,’ he said, advancing through the middle of the room, where a dozen of us were having dinner.

He again asked for our attention and declared in a mocking tone, ‘My dear friends, I am leaving you. I am leaving you to your struggles, your suffering, your miseries. I’m going. I leave you courage, sacrifice, the nobility of grand causes … Yes, I yield them to you graciously. And if you wish, I bequeath you my virtues for they no longer make my soul tremble. As far as I’m concerned, the odyssey ends tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be back with my fat partner and we’ll reinvent the world under a mosquito net …’

A few people laughed indulgently. Bruno came over to the table I was sharing with Elena, Lotta and Orfane, grabbed a free chair and sat down astride it, between the gynaecologist and the virologist. His bulging, joyful eyes rolled like white-hot marbles.

‘I’ve just come from Monsieur Pfer’s office. Guess who I had on the phone? None other than the French ambassador! He told me officially that my case had been examined with the greatest care and that I no longer had anything to worry about. I’m going to be given a new passport and an entry visa to Djibouti. Tomorrow, I’m flying to Khartoum on the freighter aircraft. The pilot has received instructions.’

‘Congratulations,’ Lotta said.

‘I’ve already told my partner the good news. She was so happy we cried like kids. My beard is still wet with my tears.’ He turned to me. ‘I’m going to miss you, Monsieur Krausmann.’

My throat was too tight to utter a sound.

He nodded his head and addressed the others. ‘And you too.’

‘You’re a likeable person, Bruno,’ Lotta said. ‘A bit scatterbrained, but very likeable.’

‘It’s the African sun that’s melted my brain. Which is all to the good. The less you think, the more chance you have of making old bones … Oh my God, how happy I am! I’m not going to sleep a wink tonight, and tomorrow will take for ever to arrive. I can already see myself at home, in my scruffy but comfortable little room … If you ever happen to be passing through Djibouti, come and see me. No need to tell me you’re coming. There’s no protocol in our house. Just go to the souk, ask after Bruno the African — that’s what they call me — and any kid will bring you to me. You won’t even have to ring the doorbell, because we don’t have one. You open the door and you’re immediately at home … Isn’t that so, Kurt?’

I merely nodded.

‘You will come?’

‘I don’t think so, Bruno, I don’t think so.’

‘You know what a marabout once told me? The man who sees Africa only once in his life will die blind in one eye.’

After dinner, Bruno took me to one side behind the canteen. ‘If you’d like me to stay a few more days,’ he said, ‘it’s no problem.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. The soldiers might come back and ask for more information.’

‘They’ve already recorded our statements. No, you go. There’s nothing more for you here. Go back to your nearest and dearest. They’ve already missed you long enough.’

‘Monsieur Pfer told me the camp has received several donations and that another plane is due next week. I could come to an arrangement with the pilot.’

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, Bruno.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

He gave me a big hug and rushed off into the darkness.

The freighter aircraft landed at ten in the morning in a flurry of dust and noise. A monster of zinc and combustion, it trundled to the end of the waste ground, made a U-turn and bounced its way back to the camp. Some twenty men were waiting to unload the hundreds of boxes and crates fastened in its hold.

As far as I was concerned, the plane had come to rob me of my friend.

Bruno had put on a satin robe and had got Lotta to carefully trim his beard. His crew-cut hair shone and he had kohl on his eyelids. He gave me a broad smile and opened his arms to me.

‘How do I look?’

‘Apart from your bald patch, very handsome.’

He smoothed his hair. ‘Baudelaire said that when imperfection looks good, it becomes a charming accessory.’

Bruno embraced Pfer, then Lotta, whose behind he pinched in passing. He had to stand on tiptoe to hug Orfane, then, holding back a sob, he clasped Elena to him. When he got to me, he cracked and big tears rolled down his cheeks. We looked at each other for a moment, as if mesmerised, then threw ourselves in each other’s arms. We stood like that for a while in silence.

‘Don’t forget what I said, Kurt. The man who sees Africa only once in his life will die blind in one eye.’

‘I won’t forget.’

He nodded, picked up a big bag filled with gifts and walked towards the plane. The pilot pointed to the hold and invited him to get on board. Bruno turned one last time and waved farewell. Once the unloading was finished, the door of the hold closed and the winged monster, in a din of propellers, moved onto the runway. We followed it from a distance, waving our arms. Bruno appeared at a window and blew us kisses until the dust enveloped the plane as it set off to conquer the sky.

I was pleased for Bruno, but sad to see him go. Our friendship had been sealed in pain and would never end. Neither distance nor time could lessen it. I knew that wherever I went, whatever my life held in store, whatever my future joys and sorrows, the indelible trace of those weeks full of sadness and fear shared with my inimitable French companion would always remain in a corner of my heart, a corner as sacred as a forbidden city. I would remember Bruno as a remarkable man, a good, sensitive man even when he was play-acting, always helpful and generous, closer to the poor than many a saint or prophet, and happy to be alive despite so many setbacks and so much ingratitude. I didn’t know what he would represent for me in the future, but he had initiated me into the simplest of gestures, giving them a meaning, a strength, and a richness that was worth all the possessions in the world, and into a simple beauty, such as the beauty of fraternal signs that strangers send each other when they emerge from a tragedy or when they spontaneously rally round to deal with human disaster. Would I miss him? Yes, in several ways. For me, he would be Joma’s ‘twin’, except that I wouldn’t reject him. Wherever I went, I was convinced that he would be lurking in my shadow like a star in the darkness, and I would catch myself smiling every time a noise, a light, a piece of music reminded me of Africa, where a world was aspiring to fade away so that another could wake to the song of children.

Bruno had barely been gone five days and already it seemed to me that I had dreamt him. Passing the tent where he had chosen to wait, among ‘his’ people, for his situation to be sorted out — he had refused the cabin that Pfer had allocated him — I thought I heard his African laugh, the laugh that started with a guttural contraction before dissolving into a series of Homeric yelps. Bruno laughed about everything, his misfortunes as well as his achievements … What a strange character! Resentment had never dented his indestructible faith in human beings. He saw in their stupidity only a terrible immaturity that did them more harm than they themselves caused. At night, unable to sleep, I tried to find ways into his mind, to understand how it worked, but whatever key I tried, every attempt failed. What secret had he discovered on this continent? What philosophy had he acquired during his years of wandering? Whatever it was, he had taken it away with him. Would I ever see him again? I didn’t think so. I would go back to my rich man’s bubble and die blind in one eye, just as he had prophesied … If there was a moral in life, it could be summed up like this: we are nothing but our memories! One morning, we are there; one evening, we are no longer there. The only mark we leave behind us is a memory that slowly fades until it is shamelessly consigned to oblivion. What would I have left of Bruno? What would I have left of Hans? All the things I couldn’t hold on to: a tone of voice, a fleeting smile, situations distorted by the prism of years, absences that were like hangovers. Now that they were no longer around, I realised how insubstantial any truth was in this capricious world … And what of later? … Later, we come full circle, start again from the beginning and once more learn to live with what we no longer possess. Since nature abhors a vacuum, we create new reference points for ourselves. Out of pure selfishness … Elena knew our relationship had no future, and so did I. That didn’t stop us from taking advantage of the moment … I had made friends among the refugees: Malik, the boy who had asked for my torch, and who came to see me regularly and made sure he never left empty-handed; Bidan, an amazing contortionist who could get his entire body into a box barely large enough for a puppy; old Hadji, who could read the future in the sand and spent all day long sucking on his pipe; Forha, the one-armed man who could put his clothes on faster than a sailor getting ready for combat; and the unstoppable Uncle Mambo, who was a bit of a mythomaniac and was absolutely convinced that Neil Armstrong had never set foot on the moon … But the temporary is like a crazy moneylender who demands his due when he feels like it. And what I feared finally caught up with me. The previous day, three workers had fallen from scaffolding and been seriously injured. I spent the night assisting the surgeon who operated on them. In the morning, hearing the staccato buzzing of a helicopter, I assumed the men were being evacuated to a better-equipped hospital and buried my head under the pillow. I was wrong. The helicopter was for me … It was the Sudanese colonel in person who came and asked me to get dressed and follow him. From his crestfallen look, I understood. I had to cling to the handle of the door to stay upright. ‘No, don’t tell me that …’ I stammered. He looked at me without saying anything. There are silences that speak louder than words. I collapsed on my bed and struggled with all my might to keep a modicum of dignity. ‘They’re waiting for us, sir,’ the colonel said. I got dressed and followed him …

It was a dazzlingly bright morning. The night’s slight drizzle had cleared the air and the sun was playing at being an artist. But who could stand its talent? Its light was garish, the clarity of the horizon overblown. It was a day that was playing to the gallery, trying to distinguish itself from all the others, making sure people took notice. It would be engraved for ever in my subconscious.

I walked to the helicopter, deaf to Elena’s cries. I was in a parallel world. The inside of the aircraft stank of fuel. The engines started wheezing more and more loudly, then, like a huge dragonfly, the helicopter spun into the air. The colonel tapped me on the knee. I felt like screaming at him to keep his hand as far away from me as possible. I did nothing. My whole being was bowed like a weeping willow. The noise of the helicopter drilled into my eardrums. On the bench facing me, five armed soldiers looked out at the desert through the windows. They were the colonel’s escort. Handpicked, probably expert marksmen. Young as they were, some beardless, they were battle-hardened. Their calm was like the lull before a storm.

‘What happened?’ I asked the colonel.

‘An engagement between a detachment of the regular army and a group of rebels. Our soldiers didn’t know there was a hostage.’

‘A blunder, in other words?’

‘Certainly not,’ he exclaimed, outraged. ‘Our detachment wasn’t on active operations, it was carrying out a supply mission. It came across the rebels by chance, and they immediately opened fire to cover their retreat. Our response was perfectly appropriate. Our soldiers, I repeat, didn’t know that there was a hostage among the criminals. And we are the first to deplore this … this accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

‘And you’re sure it’s Hans Makkenroth?’

‘According to the two suspects you identified from the photographs, it was definitely him. They both confessed. And they took us to the place where they buried him.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

‘Does the embassy know?’

‘They were informed immediately after the discovery of the body. A plane went to pick up the ambassador very early this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘He’ll get there the same time as we do.’

‘Is it far from here?’

‘About two hours’ flight.’

‘I suppose you’re counting on me to identify the body?’

‘I can’t think of anybody else who’d be entitled to do so.’

I sat back and said nothing.

Below, pitiful hills, weary of sinking into the sand, formed lines to hold back the advance of the desert; scarlike anthracite patches told of the ages before the flood and their forests filled with game, which a cataclysm had decimated in an instant. Where was man in all this? What did he represent in the cosmic breath? Was he aware of what made him naked and isolated? Was the desert around him or inside him? … I pulled myself together. I had to empty my head. I was in too fragile a state to venture into such unknown territory.

After two hours of noise and the stench of kerosene, the helicopter dipped to the side, straightened up again and started losing altitude. The colonel went into the cockpit to give instructions to the two pilots. Through the window, I saw a column of armoured vehicles parked along a track, soldiers and, further on, a little propeller plane beside which a delegation of civilians stood watching us land.

The German ambassador greeted me as I got out of the helicopter. He introduced the people with him, who included Gerd Bechter. They were all grief-stricken. There were no reporters or cameramen. A high-ranking Sudanese officer whispered something to me that I didn’t catch. His obsequiousness maddened me. I was relieved to see him fall back into the ranks. I asked to be taken to see my friend. The ambassador and his staff set off after a young officer, and I trailed behind. I felt as if my shoes were sticking to the ground. A platoon of soldiers was mounting guard around a heap of stones, their rifles trained on two prisoners: Ewana, the former malaria patient, and the driver of the sidecar motorcycle. Handcuffed and in chains, they were in an indescribable state; it was obvious from the marks on their faces, limbs and clothes that they had been tortured. As I passed them, I looked them up and down. Ewana bowed his head, while his accomplice openly defied me.

We came to six makeshift graves. Some had been desecrated by jackals or hyenas, the soldiers had done the rest. The decomposing corpses were mostly unrecognisable … Chief Moussa had his mouth open, exposing his gold tooth, a hole in the middle of his forehead … Hans, my friend Hans, was lying in the same pit as his kidnapper. His head had been smashed in, and there were black stains on his chest. His white beard quivered in the breeze, his eyes closed over his final thoughts. I wondered what he had been thinking about just before he died, what last cry he had taken away with him, if he had died instantly or if his agony had been long and cruel … My God! What a waste! What could I say in the face of such absurdity? All the words in the world seemed pointless and inappropriate. I could look at the sky, or my trembling hands, or the inscrutable faces of the soldiers and the officials, I could cry until my voice failed me, or say nothing and be one with the silence, it made no difference. And besides, what power did I have left, except for the strength to stare at my friend’s body and the courage to admit that I had arrived too late?

‘He came here to equip a hospital for the poor,’ I said to the two pirates.

Ewana bowed his head a little more and stared at the ground. I lifted his chin to make him look me in the eyes and went on, ‘He came to help the poor and the defenceless. Do you understand what that means? The man lying there gave his fortune and his time so that he could deserve to be called a human being.’

‘Nobody asked him to do it,’ the motorcycle driver muttered.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said in disgust.

‘You heard me.’

An officer slapped him, and the pirate reeled under the blow, but didn’t flinch.

‘Your friend is dead,’ he grunted. ‘Ewana and I will be joining him soon. They’re going to shoot us. That’s the price to be paid and we’re not haggling. You haven’t done too badly out of this so stop pissing us all off.’

Anger and indignation exploded in me like a geyser and I threw myself at him. I tried to blind him in the eye, to tear his tongue out, to crush him with my bare hands. I looked and found only emptiness: soldiers had grabbed me by the waist, while others jumped on the pirate and dragged him away from me and towards an armoured vehicle. He put up no resistance, but continued to taunt me: ‘If you’d stayed at home in your nice silk sheets, nobody would have come looking for you!’ he cried. ‘Where did you think you were, eh? On a five-star safari? People who walk in shit shouldn’t complain if they smell bad. Your friend knew the risks, and so did we. He’s dead, and we’re going to be executed. Why are you the one who’s crying?’ His coldness burnt me like the flames of hell. I struggled to reach him and make him aware of his own wickedness, of how everything he said and did was an insult to the day and the wind and the noise and the silence, to everything that made up life. My arms were like smoke, my rage was consuming me from within. I was my own cremation. I knew there was nothing more to be done, that the wonderful friend unravelling down in his hole saw nothing of my grief — maybe he wouldn’t even agree with the way I was behaving, but what could I do? … I wanted to be somewhere else, a long way away, I wanted to shut myself up in my house in Frankfurt and resume mourning my wife. I wished I had never got on that damned boat or met anyone on my route. I wished for many pointless, ugly things, I wished to be invisible too, I wished there were oceans between me and the graves fouling the ground beneath my feet, but my demands were merely the expression of my refusal to confront the grim reality: men are the worst and the best of what nature has created; some die for an ideal, others for nothing; some perish from their own generosity, others from their own ingratitude; they tear each other apart for the same reasons, each in his own camp, and the irony of fate presides over that terrible drama, finally reconciling, in the same foul-smelling pit, the enlightened and the unenlightened, the virtuous and the depraved, the martyr and the executioner, all delivered to everlasting death like Siamese twins in their mother’s womb.

4

I had hoped to take nothing away from Africa and to leave nothing there, but I was starting to realise how naive I had been. In the little plane taking me back to Germany, I knew that I was not returning in one piece. Part of me was still a prisoner in the desert, and Hans’s coffin lay in the hold. Lowering the blind over the window in order not to see the land that had stripped me of my illusions as it receded into the distance, I tried to sleep. But what sleep was there for someone who had no more dreams? I had only to close my eyes to find myself face-to-face with my obsessions. My head was throbbing with noise, the smell of mass graves clung to my nostrils, my lungs were full of sand. In Khartoum, I had spent more than an hour in the shower. I had soaped myself down a dozen times and still been unable to rid myself of the repulsive bark that had replaced my skin. My new clothes stung like nettles. My tie felt like a noose, except that I was the gallows. Opposite me, Gerd Bechter sat engrossed in a magazine, turning the pages mechanically. His mind was elsewhere, somewhere where questions don’t need answers because everything has been said. He hadn’t left me alone for a minute in Khartoum. He had come into my hotel room constantly, using any excuse to keep an eye on me, afraid I might be taken ill. True, I was nothing but a ghost lost in the mist of its own emotions, but the trials I had been through were keeping me alert. Irritated by his interference, I had asked him if maybe he wanted to share my bed. He had apologised for bothering me and gone to fetch me a drink. We had drunk until morning and slept on the same sofa …

A TV screen indicated the route the plane was taking: we had left Sudan, then flown across Egypt and along the Mediterranean. A hostess brought me a tray of food; I declined her offer and sank into my seat. Behind me, two journalists were dozing. A young woman who had been introduced to me but whose name I couldn’t recall was leaning towards the window and staring out at the sea. Beside her, a cameraman was sleeping the sleep of the just. There were just eight passengers in the little plane, which had come specially from Berlin to repatriate us. An archipelago of eight islands separated by rivers of silence.

I imagined all the people waiting for us in Frankfurt. The Makkenroth family in full mourning. Friends of the dead man. His neighbours. His staff. The officials stiff with solemnity. The television channels. All the clichés wrapped in greyness. Closed faces. Empty eyes … I couldn’t see any place for me there. I had prepared nothing. I would say nothing. I would walk in the dead man’s shadow and follow the funeral procession without asking any questions. I was in a state of shock. What I felt didn’t matter. I would wait patiently for things to settle. Then I would take the plunge. Hans would be upset with me if I didn’t survive him. Life is a succession of ambiguities and acts of bravado. You learn more every day, and every day you wipe the slate clean and start again. In reality, there is no irrefutable truth, there are only beliefs. When one turns out to be unfounded, you make up another and cling to it come hell or high water. Life is a shipwreck, and whether or not you survive depends not on providence but on stubbornness. There are those who give up and die, and others who rethink everything … I recalled the image of the marabout dying on his camp bed, his face as pale as parchment. His tremulous voice reached me in a sigh from beyond the grave. What was it he had said? It came back to me: ‘For a heart to continue to beat its defiance, it must look to failure for the sap of its survival.’ Why had I fled that old man? Maybe because he could read me like an open book. Maybe because he had stripped me bare with his eyes. I had always hated exposing my nakedness to strangers. At Maspalomas, there had been a stretch of beach reserved for nudists. I could never bring myself to venture there. In a few hours, when I was thrown to the wolves on a runway swarming with important people and journalists, I would feel as naked and wretched as a worm, and I would hate the whole world … Then interest would move to the coffin and the Makkenroth family, and there, too, I would catch myself resenting all those people turning their backs on me, already ignoring me and delivering me, with hands and feet tied, to the most pernicious of solitudes … I wanted to have done with it all, to confront my tomorrows, which I guessed would be totally different from my yesterdays and wouldn’t conform to whatever idea I might have about them, because another chapter, another episode, another story would make me a different man, someone I would find hard to grasp and to tame. ‘What have we really learnt from what we think we know?’ Hans used to say. ‘Habits? Reflexes? Work during the week and a let-up on our days off? What do we know of the people we wave at in the morning and who disappear from our lives the minute they turn the corner of the street? If living were merely existing for oneself, what would make me any better than the trees that grow bare in winter and are covered in spring while I do the opposite?’ Hans wasn’t wrong. What have we really learnt from what we think we know? I had thought that Jessica was the centre of my life; Jessica had gone, and the earth had not moved one millimetre. I had thought my career was all mapped out, my future assured, and I had discovered how a trifle can start to unravel this tissue of lies. There are rules we follow in order not to bother with other rules; we adopt them because they suit us and make us believe that we can do without the rest. We convince ourselves that what is convenient for us systematically wipes out what isn’t. All my life, I had firmly believed in maturely thought-out choices, choices I had accepted and which I had worked hard to fulfil. Because every choice is a risk, no matter how hard we try to think it through … So why second guess? Why prepare to hate the whole world before I had even landed? Let things come instead of going to look for them; often they are not where we think they are.

We reached Frankfurt at about four in the afternoon. The jet touched down on the tarmac as if on velvet. Through the window, I saw the parade of glass façades, planes connected to gates, service vehicles, wagons overflowing with baggage, wide buses … and the sun. It was a nice day in my city. I had been expecting an overcast sky, with drizzle and wind appropriate to the occasion, instead of which a glorious afternoon was rolling out the red carpet for us. How to define the feeling that overcame me the moment the wheels of the jet touched my native soil? Impossible to describe it. Impossible to contain it. A remarkable alchemy took possession of my being, of every drop of my blood. I was millions of emotions … The jet rolled along a secondary runway, circumvented several small blocks, and at last stopped outside a structure that looked like some kind of grand reception area. Journalists were waiting impatiently behind a barrier. Flashbulbs started popping, and reached a peak as I got off the plane. The Chancellor and a few members of her government greeted me at the foot of the stairs. Not having eaten since Khartoum, I didn’t feel well. Somebody whispered something to me, but I didn’t catch it. Since everyone was smiling, I did the same. Happiness is contagious. Chests restricted my breathing, arms encircled my body, hands engulfed mine. The Chancellor was so moved she had tears in her eyes. She said something to me, but the yelling of the journalists drowned it out. I thanked her. I heard myself thanking everyone for everything. Behind the official staff, the Makkenroth family were having to grin and bear it; clearly, this media attention, these ministers, the whole performance was intruding on their mourning. I would learn later that they had wanted things to be done as privately as possible, but protocol had other requirements. I went up to Bertram, Hans’s oldest son. I had known him for years. We threw our arms around each other. The hug was a brief one. His wife, hidden behind a black veil, lightly touched my fingertips. Mathias, the younger son, patted me on the back. I had met him two or three times, but couldn’t remember where. He was a taciturn, mysterious young man. Deeply affected by the loss of his father, he avoided looking me in the eyes. An old lady, doubtless the senior member of the family, leant towards me and whispered, ‘We don’t want to know anything about what happened, Herr Krausmann. Hans is dead, and that’s all that matters.’ Her voice was low, but what she said sounded like a warning. Hans’s coffin was taken from the hold of the plane and placed on a catafalque covered with flowers. Again, there was an explosion of flashbulbs. There was a stirring within the Makkenroth family, but it was quickly stifled. The Chancellor made a moving statement to the press, then held the microphone out to me. I raised my hand in refusal, much to the disappointment of the journalists, who were eager for a speech. What could I say, what could I add? The embassy people had worn me out in Khartoum, and I couldn’t wait to go home. Bertram agreed to address the journalists. He was concise and fair: ‘My father always felt that it was through sharing that one reached maturity. He shared his fortune, his time and his humanity with the poor all over the world, and he shared their sufferings and tragedies, too. Hans Makkenroth didn’t do things by half. He was generous and sincere, and never promised what he couldn’t deliver. He loved people, and many returned that love. He was an exceptional man. He gave so much of himself to others that they have kept him for ever.’

A hearse appeared, followed by a column of official cars and black limousines. The journalists started running towards the exit. The crowd behind the barrier thinned out, and I saw Claudia Reinhardt. She was standing near a group of cameramen who were feverishly packing up their equipment in order to miss nothing of the end of the spectacle. She was wearing a sober tailored suit, and gave me a reluctant smile. Gerd Bechter offered me a lift in the back of his car. I told him I was going straight home. He tried to dissuade me, but I wouldn’t listen to him and walked towards Claudia. At that moment, when my world was shrinking around me, she was my whole family.

A cluster of journalists were cooling their heels outside my house. I told Claudia not to stop. She did as she was told and took the first turning. She drove very badly. The emotion, perhaps. Earlier, when she had taken me in her arms, she had burst into tears. She was lost for words. She laughed and cried, grimaced and smiled, and shook from head to toe. The touch of her body against mine reassured me. Here I was, really here, in the flesh. I was in my country, in my city, in my element. The Frankfurt sun reconciled me to my feelings. I was free, I had my life back, and my suit had stopped chafing me. I lowered the window and couldn’t stop breathing in the air, drawing strength and confidence from it. I looked at the buildings, the cars passing us, the lawns, the advertising hoardings, the street lamps, the surface of the road, and for the first time the hiss of the wheels on the asphalt silenced the hate-laden voices and the gunshots that had been using my head for sparring practice.

Claudia suggested we go to her place. I agreed. The journalists would have to cut me some slack in the end, and then I would go home and learn to live again.

Claudia lived on the third floor of a small building in Eckenheim. I had set up my first practice in that area, two years before I got married, and had really liked the place and the people, but Jessica had wanted me to move to Sachsenhausen, near where she worked, so that we could have lunch together. We had been very close at the beginning of our relationship. It was as if we were one and the same person. We would phone each other all the time, about insignificant things — we were just happy to know that we were only a call away from each other. The phone line constituted our umbilical cord.

Claudia preceded me into the entrance hall. There was no lift. We took the stairs as quickly as possible because I had no desire to be recognised by a neighbour. My photograph, along with Hans’s, had been in the newspapers and on television for months.

‘I sent someone to clean your house,’ Claudia told me as she unlocked her door.

‘Thank you.’

In the hallway of her apartment, she took my bag and helped me off with my jacket. ‘You can stay here as long as you like,’ she said. ‘My mother will put me up for a few days.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I really don’t want to impose. I should go back to the house. It’ll be night soon, and the journalists must have homes to go to.’

‘Makes no difference. They’ll be outside your door again first thing in the morning.’

‘In that case, I’ll go to my house in the country.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ve been away too long. You need people around you.’

I asked her to show me the bathroom.

By the time I got back to the living room after my shower, Claudia had changed, replacing her tailored suit with flannel trousers and a sweater. She had also put on make-up and let her hair down.

‘Let me buy you dinner,’ she said. ‘I know a nice quiet restaurant not far from here.’

‘I don’t really want to go out.’

‘I don’t have anything in the fridge.’ She looked at her watch, thought for a moment, and decided to go out and bring us back something to eat.

It was the first time I had been in Claudia’s apartment. The furniture was old, but well maintained. Everything was in exactly the right place, with no unnecessary extras. The living room was small and somewhat austere. There were no pictures on the walls, just a row of photographs on a chest of drawers, a faded rug on the floor and an old leather sofa in the middle. The window, framed by flimsy curtains, looked out on a sad little square with a giant tree in abundant leaf. Cars were parked on either side, but there was nobody about. No children played, not a sound betrayed a living soul. I sat down on the sofa and switched on the television. It seemed to have been years since I had last handled a remote control. It was the fact that Jessica had so often come home late that had made me a TV addict. Her absence would prevent me from concentrating on a book or on DIY, so I preferred to wait for my wife to return, pleasantly slouched in my armchair, a can of beer in my hand, and, sip after sip, I would count off the minutes like a priest his beads.

The TV news came on. The camera cut away from the newsreader and propelled me onto the tarmac, where I saw myself getting off the plane. I noticed how big my suit looked on me, and that I had stumbled on the last step of the stairs. Hans’s coffin was taken from the hold and carried to the catafalque around which the Makkenroth family were waiting to recover the body. A young woman was crying on a relative’s shoulder. Hans’s two sons held themselves in a dignified manner, their black-clad wives by their sides. One can only gather one’s thoughts in silence …

I dozed off, or perhaps I fainted. It was probably just as well.

Five days after I got back, the funeral service took place in the Katharinenkirche, a Protestant church on the Hauptwache. The place was full to bursting. In the front rows, beside the Makkenroths, were the Chancellor and members of her government. People had come from the four corners of the world to pay their last respects to Hans. As well as the officials and national celebrities, there were people in turbans, Amazonian tribal chiefs, emirs in their ceremonial robes, ambassadors and nabobs. Hans had been not only a major industrialist, but above all a great man and a revered humanist. Outside, the street was packed with mourners. Thousands of anonymous people had been determined to celebrate the memory of this generous man who had devoted his time and fortune to the wretched of the earth. The ceremony was a very solemn one. After a speech by the Chancellor, who emphasised the dead man’s courage and selflessness, Bertram read a poem by Goethe, of whom his father had been an assiduous reader, and reminded us of his father’s principles and beliefs. By the time he rejoined his family, his face was drained of blood. Applause broke out when the coffin left the church. The cortege set off for the crematorium. I had not been invited to this final farewell, which was strictly reserved for family members. My friend’s ashes would be entrusted to the sea … The sea he had loved so much, the sea that was his deliverance and his inner world.

I thanked Claudia for her hospitality and asked her to drive me home. The reporters had realised that I didn’t want to speak to them and had gone back to their offices. Claudia offered to let me stay, just long enough for me to recover my strength. By that, I understood ‘my spirits’, and I deduced that I probably didn’t look very good. I asked her if I had changed; she began by stammering some excuses before regaining her composure and asserting that I needed to have people around me, to get some distance from the events. Hadn’t she asked for time off in order to take care of me? It was true that she had been looking after my every need, but her attention was starting to stifle me and I had to leave. I had been afraid to go out, afraid of being recognised in the street. All my life I had been discreet. Becoming an object of other people’s curiosity overnight terrified me. But shutting myself up in Claudia’s apartment was worse. I had been confined there for a week and it had worn me out. The nightmares that had undermined my sleep in Gerima’s jail were again starting to keep me awake.

I had let my beard grow in the hope I wouldn’t be recognised and I thought that if on top of that I wore sunglasses I’d be able to avoid curious glances.

I insisted on going home.

It was three in the afternoon when we parked outside my house. Fortunately, apart from a plumber putting his equipment back in his van, the street was deserted. I didn’t dare get out of the car. I had been impatient to get back to my own world, but now that I was outside my house, I became confused. An icy hand clutched my heart, and I felt intense pain when I tried to swallow. Claudia sensed that I was panicking and, wanting to show her empathy, did absolutely the wrong thing: she grabbed me by the wrist. I recoiled violently, opened the door and set foot outside. I didn’t dare go any further. I stood there on the pavement, staring at that beautiful white house I had built with my own hands as a monument to everlasting love and life. Claudia realised I wouldn’t move without an escort. She joined me, then walked ahead of me. I followed her. She took the keys from me. I felt as if there were a layer of ice on my back. I could hear my heart pounding in my head. I took a deep breath before venturing into the hallway. Claudia ran to pull back the curtains and open the windows. A blinding light flooded the living room. The cleaner had gone over the smallest nook and cranny with a fine-tooth comb. There were bright flowers in the vase. I saw my furniture, traces of my old habits, but the chasm left by Jessica was irrevocable.

Claudia kept me company for another quarter of an hour during which I remained indecisive, frozen, in a daze.

‘Would you like me to make you some coffee?’

‘No,’ I said in a feverish whisper.

‘I don’t have much to do this afternoon.’

‘Thank you, but I need to be alone.’

‘Shall we have dinner together this evening?’

‘If you like.’

‘Good, I’ll come and pick you up about seven.’

‘All right.’

She left. It was as if she had vanished into the wild.

Once she had gone, I sat on the sofa and stared down at the tips of my shoes, a leaden weight on the back of my neck. I deliberately turned my back on the things that had been mine and which now seemed elusive, even a matter of dispute.

Claudia came back to find the living room plunged in darkness and me lying prostrate on the sofa. Evening had fallen and I hadn’t even noticed.

I spent a restless night. Entangled in the sheets. Sweating profusely. Suffocating. I had to struggle against every thought to keep it at bay. When morning came I had to drag myself out of bed. Not daring to take a shower in the bathroom for fear of finding Jessica’s body, I washed my face in the kitchen sink.

The telephone rang several times, but I didn’t pick it up.

I called Emma and asked her to wait for me at the surgery after the last patient and Dr Regina Hölm, my replacement, had gone. At 7.15, Emma greeted me in the doorway. She was wearing a lovely blue tailored suit and was freshly powdered. I had an unpleasant sensation when she invited me to come in. My surgery felt cold. The walls were still painted in cream gloss, the same low table stood in the middle of the waiting room, with the same magazines piled up on top of it, and the same upholstered chairs, but I didn’t have the impression that I was seeing a familiar place. This strange feeling twisted my insides. My surgery was so melancholy! The photograph of Jessica posing on a rock beset by milky waves still occupied the same frame but not the same memory. I opened the cabinet where my patients’ files were stored, took one out at random, skimmed through it with a sense that I was desecrating other people’s painful secrets. Emma informed me that Frau Biribauer had been unable to overcome her depression and had taken her own life a month earlier. And whose file should I have in my hands but hers; I immediately put it away with a gesture as lacking in courage as a desertion.

I took some sleeping pills. At four in the morning, I jumped out of bed and walked round and round in the darkness. I switched on the television then immediately switched it off again and went and stood by the window. Outside, the wind was tormenting the trees. A car passed, then there was silence, as blank as a truce. I went and fetched a beer from the fridge and sat down in front of my computer. My inbox was full to bursting with spam, unanswered messages of condolence going back to Jessica’s death, and a hundred pending emails. A message from Elena with an attachment drew my attention. I moved the cursor over it, but didn’t click — I was afraid to open a Pandora’s box; I wasn’t ready yet. I went back to my bedroom and waited for daybreak. After an improvised breakfast, I realised I needed to go out. I couldn’t remain a prisoner within four walls, imagining hidden doors that led nowhere. I needed to breathe, to clear my head. Not that there was anything in my head. My thoughts were like pebbles at the bottom of a river … or like sleeper agents, maybe. I was in a state of vague expectation. I was afraid of what I was holding back … I decided to try a diversion, to go into town and melt into the crowd. I had to renew acquaintance with my city, see the old landmarks, the places that had meant something to me. I urgently needed to recover what my African adventure had taken from me, to plug the gaps that those I had lost had left around me …

I was soon disillusioned.

Frankfurt was full of Jessica. My wife’s ghost was everywhere in the city. It walked beside me on the wide streets around the Hauptwache, was reflected in the shop windows on the Zeil, played hide and seek in the Palmengarten, took the place of the walkers outside the Römer, and made an exhibition of itself in the Opernplatz. It appropriated the space, the shadows and the lights, tried to be the pulse of every neighbourhood, which only sweated, only felt, only trembled through it. Jessica was the flesh and memory of Frankfurt. In our favourite French restaurant, Erno’s Bistro, she was already at the table, her hands clasped under her chin, her eyes as blue as a summer sky. She smiled at me, refusing to vanish when I blinked. Her perfume filled my nostrils. I beat a hasty retreat, wandered about some more, got back in my car, parked somewhere, walked up and down the pavements, entered a bar … Jessica was at the counter, half shaded by the subdued lighting of the wall lamps, recalling the woman I had loved, the woman I had rushed to meet after work so that we could go to the cinema together. I didn’t have time to order a drink before I was again on the avenue, hurrying to get away from those queues outside the cinemas, where every person waiting had something of Jessica about them …

I couldn’t stand it any more.

I went back home.

To shake off the voices pursuing me, I made my bed, tidied my wardrobe, polished my shoes, wiped the blinds, waxed the mahogany of my bedside table, then, without leaving my room, swaggering in front of the mirror, I put on my suits one after the other, checked my ties, the creases in my trousers, the stiffness of my shirt collars before going through my pyjamas with so little enthusiasm that it almost made me cry. Once that nonsense was over, I collapsed on the edge of the bed and took my head in both hands, aware that I was losing the thread of a disjointed story which had absolutely nothing to do with me.

I ordered a pizza and sat down in front of the television. I avoided the news bulletins with all their tragedies and disasters, skipped a reality show, lingered over some models strutting on a catwalk, endlessly, like a firework display. I wanted to continue channel-hopping, but couldn’t. I focused on the fashion show. An absurd anger came over me. I felt as if I were under attack, but found myself unable to switch to another channel. An unknown force kept me watching the models sparkling beneath the lights. The theology of the image said that photographers’ flashes made sequins brighter than the sun and stars. Bling flaunted itself, proud of its panache and exuberance. A few steps on the catwalk, and the whole universe threw itself at the feet of these made-up, redrawn silicone muses. I looked for some merit in their narcissism and found none, only the unbelievable practice of voluntary starvation in the quest for so-called perfection. In Africa I had seen people who were no more than skeletons, with bloated bellies, chests devoid of breath and open mouths that let out no sound. Over there, I thought, the catwalk was less attractive, with all the contingents of the damned who trod it — a catwalk riddled with deadly traps, strewn with unburied corpses rotting in the open air and in such a poor state that even the vultures recoiled from them in horror. Here, things were different: here, beauty was a confirmed talent, hip-swaying an art, the closing photo a magic moment that granted posterity to the makers of compromise … A few dance steps, a smouldering look, a sensuous pirouette as lap of honour, and all at once you are the height of celebrity. No need to waste your time in academia; all you have to do is flash your beautiful mascaraed eyes to supplant whole galaxies. What money decides, the gods validate: those same gods who, in Africa, show no sign of life, who pretend not to be there when the poor pray, who look away and deny any responsibility for the wars decimating the land … At the fashion show, those same gods clap their hands and stamp their feet. This star earns enough to feed a thousand tribes just for putting in an appearance at a swanky night club; that diva sells her smile for millions in a commercial as fleeting as a thought. And what hope for decency, when the rulers of this world do all they can to avoid it; morality nowadays is just for nuns and virgins … I pulled myself together. I was rambling … Kurt, Kurt, what’s happening to you? Why all this anger? Since when have you set yourself up as a judge? I quickly switched off the television. Soon, in the silence of a sleeping Frankfurt, if I listened carefully, I would hear the day complaining of having to set itself alight once again … No, no, no, I told myself, you have to get a grip, Kurt, before it’s too late!

At midnight, I came to the conclusion I had to leave Frankfurt for a while. I thought about the friends from university I had lost touch with. Then I thought about my mother: I hadn’t put flowers on her grave since her funeral. I realised how quickly the time had passed, how ungrateful and selfish I’d been. My mother, my sweet mother who had died at the age of forty-four of vain prayers and terrible solitude. I could still see her in her pale dress, half mad, wandering in the cancer ward, her prematurely white hair absorbing the light filtering in through the French windows behind her.

At five in the morning, I took my car and set off for Essen.

I wandered the length and breadth of the cemetery without finding my mother’s grave. It was the caretaker who pointed it out to me. I placed a wreath on the granite stone and stood there for a while, collecting my thoughts. I had hoped to revive my memory, to summon up distant recollections, but strangely, not a single image came to mind. How was that possible? … I didn’t stay long in the cemetery. What was the point? I went to have lunch in a restaurant overlooking the lake, then called Toma Knitel, a childhood friend. His jaw must have hit the floor when he recognised my voice at the end of the line. He could barely speak for laughing. He gave me his new address in Munich and asked me to drop by the university, where he taught mathematics. I got to Munich an hour late because of an accident on the autobahn. Toma was waiting for me outside the front entrance of the university. He was pleased to see me again. His embrace felt good. He directed me to his place, a small house in a modest neighbourhood on the outskirts of town. Toma’s wife had hair as red as a maple leaf and a slightly plump figure, and was very pretty. Her name was Brigitte, and she was a Frenchwoman from Strasbourg. Her welcome immediately put me at my ease. She was delighted to meet me and to introduce her two children, twin girls who were clearly not used to strangers. We ate in, because Toma was determined that I should discover his wife’s culinary talents. Then we talked about the good old days. After a few hours, we had run out of subjects to mull over and spent the rest of the evening in a slightly alcoholic haze. As Toma had a class in the morning, I took my leave. He wanted me to stay over — I could sleep in the guest room, he said — but I had booked a room in a hotel. We said good night at about eleven; Brigitte was already in bed.

At the hotel, I didn’t take any sleeping pills. My reunion with Toma had done me a lot of good. I felt at one with myself and it occurred to me I could repeat the experiment with Willie Adler, another friend from university, who lived in Stuttgart. I would look for his phone number and call him in the morning.

Willie was happy to welcome me to his home. He had been successful in life. He owned a thriving company, lived in a beautiful house in the most fashionable neighbourhood in town, and had a lovely wife. He entrusted his two children to a babysitter and drove his wife and me to a superb restaurant on the banks of the Neckar. During the evening, he talked endlessly about his career, the astronomical contracts he was negotiating, his ambitious plans. I noticed that he had aged quite a bit: he had deep, sallow rings under his eyes, and premature baldness had deprived him of the fine head of hair he had been so proud of at university, when he played guitar in an amateur pop group. He wasn’t the same person he had been when we were twenty. He barely listened to anyone else, and his laughter rang out like a bugle. His wife watched us in silence. She seemed to be bored and constantly looked around to see if her husband’s loud voice was disturbing the other diners. It was once the wine had started to take effect that Willie really came out with it. He admitted that he was the one who had smeared my desk drawer with grease and urinated in my bed on the evening of the graduation ball. He glared at me as he told me this. I realised to my surprise that the young man I had thought was my best friend hadn’t really liked me, that he’d been secretly in love with the girl I was going out with at the time, and that he’d hated me for putting him in the shade. When he became aware that his rants were bothering the couples having dinner around us, his bitterness only increased and he became even more aggressive. His wife begged me with her eyes to put her husband’s bad behaviour down to alcohol. Willie had never been able to handle his drink, but that evening he had gone too far. I listened to him without flinching, out of respect for his wife, wishing he would shut up. After dinner, we went out into the coolness of the night. Willie was dead drunk. He could barely stand. He yelled at the valet who had taken his time bringing him his car, then leant towards me and whispered in my ear, ‘No hard feelings, Kurt. I’ve always preferred to put my cards on the table.’ His wife helped him into the passenger seat and, before taking the wheel, said to me in an embarrassed tone, ‘I’m truly sorry. Willie’s like this with most people.’

I closed the door on her and let them go.

Then I walked around the city until the rain forced me back to my hotel.

The next day, I went to Nuremberg, where I spent two days wandering the streets, then to Dresden for a spot of sightseeing. During the night, I thought about my father. I hated him so much I thought I had wiped him from my memory for good. He had been nothing but a drunkard and a brute who spent most of his time hanging around in shady bars and his nights terrorising us … A year earlier, the telephone had rung in my consulting room. The call was from a nursing home in Leipzig. The lady at the other end of the line informed me that a man named Georg Krausmann had just been admitted. He required detox treatment and had asked if I would agree to bear the cost. If I had been hit over the head with a hammer, I couldn’t have been more stunned. I had been speechless for quite a long time, then said yes and hung up.

I can’t explain my thought process. It was as if an irresistible force drew me to my car and sent me heading straight for Leipzig. On the way there, I wondered what I could possibly say to my father, what rational motive I could find for the visit. It made no sense, I kept telling myself; my father wouldn’t even recognise me. I was fourteen when he broke all ties with us. Even at that time, he had almost never looked at me. He would come back late at night, and disappear in the morning. He was never home on special occasions, and he wouldn’t remember my birthday or my mother’s. Often, he would vanish for weeks on end without a word and without an address where he could be reached in case of emergency. When he came back, he would bring storm clouds with him. I could still see him, staggering in the hallway, saliva dribbling from his mouth, his hand ready to strike. They were turbulent homecomings: the neighbours would knock on the walls, and sometimes call the police. I would lock myself in my room and pray for him to go away and never come back … One night, finding his packet of cigarettes empty, he turned the house upside down in search of a cigarette end. He was like a junkie desperate for a fix. After knocking my mother about — he held her responsible for every misfortune that befell us — he had left and never come back. That night, I knew God existed, because my prayer had been granted.

I got to the nursing home at about eleven in the morning. Luckily, the sky was cloudless and a sun as big as a pumpkin shone down on the establishment. The director received me in her austere office, reassured me about my father’s state of health, asked me a lot of questions about my relationship with him, asked if I planned to leave him permanently in her care, because, she said, he couldn’t manage on his own and would be better off at the home with its well-trained and highly devoted staff. I asked her if I could see my father. She called a nurse and told me to follow her.

We crossed the verdant grounds, where the patients were getting their supply of sunshine and fresh air. There were old people in wicker chairs with blankets over their legs, sickly figures walking up and down the paths, staff bustling back and forth. A sombre melancholy cast a veil over the daylight. The nurse led me into a dormitory block that looked like a place where people were left to die. A few ghosts dragged themselves along the narrow corridors, some with walking frames. My father’s room was at the end of the corridor, near the stairs. The nurse opened the door without knocking and stood aside to let me in. An old man sat huddled in a wheelchair. It was my father, or what was left of him: a bundle of bones wrapped in a grey coat. All I could see of him was his unkempt hair, the chalk-white back of his neck and his thin arm dangling over the side. He didn’t turn round when he heard our footsteps behind him. Nobody had been to see him since he had arrived here, the director had told me. When he had been informed that I was coming, he hadn’t said yes or no; he had remained as inscrutable as the Sphinx … The nurse withdrew. Her heels clicked in the corridor. I closed the door behind her. My father kept staring out through the French window. I knew he wouldn’t turn round. He had never had the courage to confront things. Whenever he came back from one of his drinking sprees, I would hide in my room and cover my ears in order not to hear him yelling and overturning the furniture. Had I ever loved him? I suppose I had. Every child sees his father as a god. But I must have become disillusioned very early when I realised that you don’t have to be a hero to procreate, that it doesn’t take much and can even be an accident. Had my father loved me? He had never given me the impression that he had … Now, as soon as I entered his room, he had opted for withdrawal; he wasn’t looking at the grounds, he was running away. He had sent me a letter. Just one. It dated from the day he was admitted to the home. A kind of mea culpa. He must have been afraid I would refuse to pay his bills. Your mother was a good woman, he wrote. I left because I couldn’t hold a candle to her. He wasn’t telling me anything new. He’d been a loser, sponging off a devoted wife who had martyred herself in the observance of her marriage vows and had always hoped for the best while coping with the worst. I didn’t abandon you, I left you in peace. I hadn’t read his letter to the end. It had fallen from my hands. It had sounded as false as the bells of paradise.

I waited for him to stir, to show signs of life. My father didn’t move. He was hiding his face from me. I shook my head and was about to leave when his ruined voice rolled towards me like a dying wave.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

And he continued looking out at the grounds.

I left the room, closed the door behind me, waited a while longer in the corridor, then, certain that we had said everything there was to say even though I had said nothing at all, I joined the nurse at the foot of the stairs.

I drove in a trance.

I drove through towns and villages with no idea of where I was, the image of a dying man stuck in his wheelchair splashed all over the windscreen.

Where was I going?

I took the first exit I came to off the autobahn. A ribbon of tarmac led me through the middle of a landscape garlanded with orchards and farms and dropped me at the entrance to a small town which the mist was trying to hide from sight like forbidden fruit. A steeple, sober and dignified, watched over little houses with tiled roofs. The streets lay wrapped in a cold silence. I looked for a road sign, but couldn’t see any. I parked outside a bar and switched off the engine. It was as if my fatigue was waiting only for the engine to stop in order to overwhelm me. My shoulders sagged beneath the weight of the kilometres I had travelled and my limbs felt tight. Leaning on the wheel, I tried to summon a little strength and clear my mind … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig … What was the meaning of this journey? Why had my father, the father I thought I had rejected, suddenly become an inescapable milestone on my road map? Why had I gone to look for forgiveness at my mother’s grave, when I hadn’t laid flowers on it for years? And what magic formula could my old university friends possibly have had that might allow me to bounce back when adversity laid me low? … The dullness of the village was startling. I had to find out where I was and how to get back to Frankfurt. I looked in the glove compartment for a map and found a packet of cigarettes that someone must have left. Without being able to stop myself, I lit up. The first puff went to my head. I had quit smoking the day I graduated as a doctor, a lifetime ago … The mist on the windscreen saddened me as much as my thoughts. A pharmacist’s sign blinked on the façade of a small shop. A little girl in a hood ran across the road. A few drops of rain hit the roof of my car … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig, and then what? … Even if I visited every city in Germany, where would it get me? I knew I wouldn’t shake off either my grief or my shadow. The sickness I was fleeing was inside me. Wherever I went, it would be there, rooted in my flesh, playing on my weaknesses and thwarting my attempts at diversion. I needed to ward off the old demon, to drive it out of my body. With my bare hands or with forceps. Because there wasn’t room for the two of us.

I stubbed out my cigarette on the pavement and walked into the bar. A woman stood behind the counter, her face in her hands and her eyes staring into space, paying no attention to the two young men sitting at a table at the far end of the room. She jumped when I ordered a beer and a cheese sandwich. After serving me half-heartedly, she went back to her corner and resumed her daydreams.

‘Is there a hotel around here?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

I left a banknote on the counter and went back to my car. The sky had darkened; a faulty lamp was flickering at the end of the street. The memory of my father came back to provoke me. I got in and thought about what I should do: find a hotel for the night or keep driving. An old man with a newspaper under his arm walked past me, dragging his leg. He reminded me of Wolfgang walking away in the rain, weighed down by grief. Wolfgang! Why wasn’t he on my list? Had I forgotten him, or had I deliberately left him out? There was no rhyme or reason to this trip. All these unlikely reunions, this whole laborious itinerary intended to somehow purge my mind, were merely a desperate manoeuvre to get away from what I couldn’t accept. It was pointless to look for a hotel. The answers to my questions were buried somewhere in my house.

Somebody was ringing the doorbell. The noise drilled into my head. My hangover was so bad I found it hard to get up. The daylight hurt my eyes. The sun was at its height. I don’t know how many hours or days I had slept. My mouth furry, my movements laborious, I slipped out of bed, looked for my slippers, couldn’t find them, and went barefoot to the door. It was the postman. He was surprised to see me in vest and pants, looking quite untidy, and handed me a registered package. I signed for it and slammed the door in his face. I hadn’t done it deliberately. It was a mistake, due to my drunken state, and I immediately realised how rude it was. I opened the door again to apologise, but the postman had already disappeared. I staggered to the kitchen — I didn’t dare go to the bathroom yet — stuck my head in the sink and let the water from the tap lash me, then went back to my bedroom and tore the wrapping off the package. Inside, I found a small book with a letter in it. The book was Black Moon, Joma’s collection, dedicated to his ‘desert rose, Fatamou’. In the letter, Bruno had written:

My dear Kurt,

I think of you every day. I hope you’re well. For my part, things have settled down. I’m reunited with my partner, and I’m living in her house, in Djibouti. Her name is Souad, like the other one, except that she’s too huge to be a dancer and she snores like a diesel engine. But when she gets up early in the morning, she lights up my life. I hesitated for a long time before sending you Joma’s book. I’d never forgive myself if the only memory you had of Africa was a jail and a gang of idiots. We never become battle-hardened, and I know how false the concept is. Often, it’s those who have triumphed over misfortune who are the least ready to confront it a second time. I thought I knew everything about Africa, its hardships and about-turns, and yet, with every false move, I don’t merely stumble, I fall like a child learning to walk. But whatever nasty surprises are lurking around the corner, I refuse to believe that Africa is nothing but violence and poverty, just as I refuse to believe that Joma Baba-Sy was merely a brute with a narrow mind and no heart. I would be at peace with you if you read his poems. They say what we did not deign to hear; maybe one day they might block out the voice reminding us of the wrongs we endured.

For you, in the name of the suffering we shared, I will always keep the faith of those who have come through the same ordeal with greater wisdom than anger.

Fraternally yours (in Africa, we are all brothers)

Bruno

At the bottom of the page, there was an email address and a telephone number.

Claudia insisted that I emerge from my ‘lair’. ‘You look like a peasant,’ she said. Not having the strength to resist her, I gave in. She took me to a restaurant just outside town. The subdued lighting soothed me. We sat down at the far end of the room. There were only three other couples having dinner. Nobody recognised us. Claudia ordered the dish of the day for both of us. We ate in silence. She seemed hesitant. Every time she was about to say something, she changed her mind and dropped it. We were in the middle of the meal when a dapper, plump-faced middle-aged man came and said hello. He was wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a gold wristwatch. I didn’t know him. Claudia invited him to join us. He pretended to hesitate before accepting. The smile he gave me went right through me. I didn’t appreciate the liberty Claudia had taken in imposing a stranger on me.

‘Let me introduce Dr Brandt, an eminent psychologist.’

The man hastened to hold out his hand. ‘I’m delighted, Dr Krausmann. Claudia assures me you’re reacting very well after what happened to you.’

So she had told him about me.

I signalled to the waiter and asked for the bill. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending a minute longer in the company of someone who had a head start on me.

Claudia realised she had upset me. In the car, she sat silently, wringing her fingers. I drove carefully, but inside I was seething. When we got to her building, I switched off the engine and turned to face her.

‘That shrink of yours wasn’t there by chance.’

She dabbed her forehead with a small handkerchief, convulsively swallowing her saliva. ‘You’ve been through a lot, Kurt. You’ve had a terrifying ordeal. But being a doctor, you should know as well as I do that there’s nothing humiliating about consulting a psychologist.’

‘What I find humiliating is that you assume the right to decide for me. You could at least have said something. You know me, I prefer swimming to football: I don’t like dribbling, tackles from behind or dives. I’ve always swum in my own lane and taken care not to stray into anyone else’s.’

She was on the verge of bursting into tears. Her face was twitching. ‘You’re not the same as you were before, Kurt. And every day, you give the impression you’re becoming someone else. You tell me off for staying too long in the shower, for wasting water needlessly. You get angry with people who leave food on their plates. You almost threw a fit when you saw that giant poster of that pop star in a dress made from animal skins. You’ve been back a month, and all you’re doing is making your case worse …’

‘My case, Claudia?’

‘Yes, Kurt … You worry me. I’m only trying to help you. Dr Brandt is an old friend. Trust me, he’s a good person … Please, tell me what’s wrong, Kurt.’

‘Why, do you think there’s something right?’

‘Don’t you?’

She clenched her fists. ‘You’ve changed a lot, Kurt.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I see it.’

‘And what do you see?’

She weighed up her answer, and said, ‘A man who’s been through a terrible experience and refuses to move on.’

‘And what is he like, this man who’s been through a terrible experience and refuses to move on?’

My questions threw her; she hadn’t anticipated that I would badger her in this way. Caught by surprise, she had to think fast to avoid making things worse. She had surely not been expecting to find me with my guard up and ready for battle. That morning, when she had phoned to invite me to the restaurant, I had waited calmly for her to hang up so that I could get back to my old demons. Solitude suited me. I had private conversations with myself, and there was nobody to question me. For some weeks now, holed up in my house, I had been spending my time pulling myself to pieces, and this unconstrained exercise perfectly suited my state of mind. I conducted my trial in total freedom, being the judge and the defendant best suited to this kind of therapy. There was a sense in which I could no longer bear to listen to other people; they were crowding me, denying the essence of me. When I was alone, I could choose to tell myself all or nothing, without the need to weigh my words or suffer because of them; I was in my element and had no desire to share it or reveal it to anyone.

Having thought over my question, Claudia had to admit defeat. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she sighed.

‘Then don’t say anything.’

She must have been wondering why I was behaving so unreasonably. Seeing no justification for my rudeness, she retorted, ‘You left Africa to its wars, and brought its misfortunes with you.’

‘You’ve never been to Africa, Claudia. What do you know?’

‘I know what it’s done to one particular man.’

‘A man who’s seen what you’ll never see.’

‘I’m not blind,’ she said in her defence. ‘You’re the one who’s become blind … You remember the other day, on the terrace of the restaurant, that drunken beggar who stood there watching us eat until a waiter chased him away? You put your fork down on the table, you wiped your mouth with a napkin, and then what did you do? You shook your head irritably, ordered a beer and carried on with your lunch as if nothing had happened.’

‘It isn’t the same.’

‘It’s exactly the same, Kurt. Except that in that restaurant the world was reduced to the four of us: you, the beggar, the waiter and me. And it happens the same way all over the world. On a larger scale. That’s the way the world is, and nobody can change it. There are people who suffer, and people who get by as best they can. That’s the nature of things. Nobody’s supposed to take other people’s misfortunes on himself, because everyone, rich or poor, has his share of them. Good luck and bad luck are both tests we are destined to get through. Nature has its rules: we don’t blame a millipede for having more legs than it knows what to do with while a worm doesn’t even have a claw to scratch itself. And a turkey can’t claim it’s unfair for a partridge to fly away when a predator approaches while he can only stand there like an idiot. There’s a morality in what we consider unfair, Kurt. The real question is whether to deal with it or ignore it. Your problem is that you think you embody that morality when you have neither the calibre nor the weight to do so. You’re one person among seven billion other people, with no special authority to demand a fairness that nature itself can’t conceive of.’

‘There’s an African proverb that says: “He who doesn’t know that he doesn’t know is a disaster.”’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Exactly what it says, but I assume you’re not one for riddles. Don’t you see, Claudia? What happened to me in Africa has at least taught me something, something that may seem like nothing to you, but to me is very important.’

‘I wish you’d enlighten me.’

‘Sorry, I’m all out of enlightenment.’

I leant across her thighs and opened the door for her.

She pursed her lips, sniffed loudly and got out.

I switched on the engine and drove off.

The wind blew along Schaumainkai. The neon signs streaked the river with different colours. A few islands of greenery stood out on the soot-black river banks. I walked as far as Theodor-Stern-Kai, wandered through Niederrad, then returned to the river. I couldn’t accept what Claudia had done, let alone forgive it … I felt alone. My legs were like lead, my breath like fire. Jessica’s ghost was pursuing me. It had been limping behind me since I had got out of my car. I was downcast, but I kept going, swept along as I had been the day I decided to confront the valley of shadows rather than rot in Gerima’s jail. I had the feeling I was changing …

Lost in his own thoughts, a man sat on a bench, talking to himself and watching his cigarette end burn out at his feet as if watching a caterpillar die. His coat was torn at the shoulder and through the tear you could see part of his sweater. He didn’t look up when I passed him and continued to mutter and box the air. Like him, I despaired of finding a cure for my depression. I sat down on another bench and threw my head back, and my mind was invaded by a plethora of images like a speeded-up film, flashes of Jessica on the beach, in the forest, coming out of a hotel, lounging on a sun-drenched terrace, hailing a yellow taxi, sitting on a plane, kissing me on the lips. The images followed one after the other, led to more flashes, collided with another reel that was out of control. My skull was seething with noises, voices, laughter, smashing glass, the clicking of high heels on marble floors, waves rolling on white sand. I started to feel dizzy. Why? … The man on the next bench jumped. I realised I was shouting.

The next day, I left my house for my home in the country. The peace of the countryside and the freshness of its groves would cheer me up, I thought … I was wrong. My ‘exile’ merely made things worse.

The days went by, all totally empty. I didn’t want anything. I didn’t know what to do with my time. I sometimes spent the whole day sitting in an armchair, staring at the wall. I felt adrift, a stranger to myself. Sometimes I found myself standing with my nose up against the window pane, looking at the rain-drenched grove without seeing it. Whenever a hiker crossed the clearing, I would rush out to see him, but by the time I got outside, he would be gone; only his boot prints in the mud proved to me that I hadn’t been dreaming. One morning, a car stopped at the end of the path. I had hoped it was Claudia; it wasn’t Claudia. I realised how unfair I had been to her … The solitude was worse than the misunderstanding. The day before, I had gone for a walk among the trees. The gloomy weather infected my mood. By the time I got back to the house I was in a terrible state. I lit a fire and sat down so close to the fireplace that my clothes steamed. In a flash, I saw again the old man standing in front of his burning hut like a lost soul at the gates of hell, and I grew afraid of my shadows, which the fire projected around me in a tremulous dance. On the table, alongside an apple core and a dirty plate, I lined up ten bottles of beer and started knocking them back one after the other, at regular intervals, until I could no longer see clearly. Then I walked all over the house. A comb left lying about, a nightdress, a piece of jewellery forgotten on the dressing table: any trace of Jessica was a torment. Without her, I was nothing but the raw expression of my widowhood, my interrupted mourning, my grief — a grief that was irrational and unrestrained. My legs unsteady and my mind numb, I went to the bedroom. The bed, once so narrow, now seemed more vast and arid than the desert. I fell asleep and woke up a few minutes later, sure that I would not close my eyes again before daybreak. A recurring image kept passing in front of me: in a funeral urn overflowing with ashes, a haughty vulture posed phoenix-like on a pile of cigarette ends. I tried to grasp the symbolism of that surreal image, but couldn’t. I hugged the pillow to me, in the absence of another person, and let myself be overcome by the sweet lethargy of depression.

*

After a week, I returned to Frankfurt. As crumpled as an old sheet. Sick. My hair sticking up on my head. My furrowed cheeks covered in beard. A neighbour must have told Claudia, because she showed up within the hour.

‘What are you doing to yourself, Kurt? … And now you’re even smoking! Your house stinks of cigarettes. Look at yourself, you’re an absolute state.’

I knocked back my drink and threw the glass at the wall. Startled, Claudia raised her arms to protect herself. I laughed, amused by her bewilderment, swaying in the middle of the living room, defying the portrait of Jessica that I was daring to confront for the first time since my return from Africa.

‘I have a beautiful house, don’t I?’ I asked her. ‘It cost me a small fortune. And what about these curtains, what about these sofas? Even a prince would envy me. And what about me, aren’t I handsome? Is there anything wrong with me? I’m healthy, I have style, and I’m of sound mind. Any diva would fall into my arms like a shot.’

‘Kurt,’ she begged me, ‘calm down, please.’

I stumbled over a pouffe and almost fell flat on my back.

I declaimed:

We were lovers

We were two volcanoes

Burning with a thousand fires

From summer to spring

We were but one season

We were lovers

‘Kurt, for heaven’s sake …’

‘What’s heaven got to do with it? It’s what happens down here that matters, on this filthy earth where everything decays … I need reassurance, Claudia. Am I still handsome?’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Then why do I hate myself so much?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about her,’ I screamed, sweeping away with my hand the photograph of Jessica, which fell to the ground and smashed. ‘I’m talking about Jessica, Jessie, my other half, my dream that went up in smoke … How could she do that to me? In Africa I saw people who were nothing but skin and bone, who had nothing to eat and nothing to expect, and who fought for every second of life. People who’d had their lands stolen from them, people who were persecuted, reduced to the level of their own beasts of burden, chased from their squalid villages and wandering among bandits and disease, and yet, just imagine: poor and helpless as they were, they didn’t give up one scrap of their wretched existence. And Jessica, who had everything to make her happy, everything, a beautiful house in a wonderful city, lots of friends, money in the bank, a luxurious office, a job with a major company, and a husband who wouldn’t have let a speck of dust touch her, what does she do, what does she do to us? She deliberately takes her own life! And why? Over a promotion …’

Claudia picked up the photograph, put it back in its place, and ran her finger over the star-shaped crack in the glass. Then she walked around the armchair that was between us, took my hand, and pressed it to her breast. I hated anyone to feel sorry for me. What she assumed was part of a nervous breakdown was only legitimate, clear-headed disapproval; and this misunderstanding, rather than bringing us together, placed a thick barrier between her and me, leaving us engaged in an absurd dialogue of the deaf. I had the feeling I was making a spectacle of myself to a blind woman.

I took back my hand; she took hold of it again and kept it. Her breath fluttered against my face. I suspected she might try to kiss me. Her eyes questioned mine, searched for my quivering lips, while her half-open mouth offered itself in an imperceptible movement of her head.

I recoiled.

She lowered her eyelids with their curved lashes. From the touch of her fingers, I sensed that my reaction disappointed her.

‘These things happen, Kurt. We live in a crazy world. Things get too much for us and we rush about thinking we can catch a moving train. It’s no wonder some end up on the wrong platform.’

Again, her eyes met mine and her scarlet mouth, as vivid as a wound, again brushed my lips. Her breath was burning my face now.

‘Not many people can control their anxieties,’ she went on, ‘and even fewer know what they really want.’

I pushed her away. Not violently, but firmly enough to make her let go of my hand.

‘You’re a great girl, Claudia … I’m sorry if I went too far. I have nobody else to let off steam to, but I mustn’t take advantage … I need to be alone. I have an account to settle with myself. Man to man.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’

‘Yes.’

She nodded, a little lost, tried to say something, gave up. After looking at me with infinite sadness, she picked up her bag from the table and left the house, leaving the door open.

I felt much better. I had lanced the boil; now all I had to do was wait for it to heal. The guilty party had been identified, and it was Jessica. How can you take your own life over a deferred promotion? How can you believe yourself incapable of surviving failure when that failure is merely the kind of hiccup that’s supposed to make you stronger? How can you dare to fall short of your ambitions and think for a single second that there is an objective stronger than love, or more important than your own life? So many skewed questions designed to divert us from the only answer that matters: ourselves. Since time began, suspicious of anything that doesn’t make him suffer, man has been chasing after his own shadow and looking elsewhere for what he already has within reach, convinced that no redemption is possible without martyrdom, that any mishap is a mark of failure, when his greatest strength is his ability to bounce back … Man, that prodigy failing to make the most of his chances and fascinated by his own vanities, constantly torn between what he thinks he is and what he would like to be, forgetting that the healthiest way of existing is quite simply to remain oneself.

After Claudia had gone, I pulled back all the curtains, opened all the windows and let the light of day flood my house. Never had rays of sunshine seemed so bright. The weather was magnificent, weather that makes you feel alive and eager to chase the dreams you’ve allowed to languish. I went to the bathroom, sober, sure-footed. There wasn’t a corpse in the bathtub! Or any skeletons in the closet. There was only me, Kurt Krausmann … I undressed and threw myself under a burning-hot shower; my skin was soft to the touch. After shaving and putting on aftershave, I dressed in my best shirt, my best trousers, my best jacket, and set off to do what I had promised myself as I watched the sun go down over the valley in my hostage prison. I had dinner at Erno’s Bistro, without the shadow of a ghost around me. Late that night, refreshed and sated, I got home, took a beer from the fridge and switched on my computer. This time, I clicked on Elena’s email. No message, just an attachment that I opened without hesitation. I no longer feared Pandora’s boxes. Some twenty photographs appeared. Photographs that Elena had taken of me in the camp. I was standing on the site of Hodna City, sitting on the steps of a cabin, smiling at the back of the canteen, lying in an unmade bed, standing with my arm around Bruno’s neck, examining a child in the infirmary, letting Lotta cut my hair while a swarm of children watched and laughed … Happiness flooded through my being.

I wrote to her, moved but not sure what to say. Thank you for these beautiful memories, Elena. How are you?

I pressed Send.

As I stood up to go and change, a sound came from my computer. Elena had answered me. It was as if she had been waiting for my email. It was 11.45 p.m. by my watch. There was at least an hour’s time difference between Sudan and Germany. I couldn’t get over it. I sat down again and clicked on the message.

Elena: I’d be lying if I told you I miss you and am constantly thinking of you. You mean nothing to me. You never existed … I’m a woman, you see? The truth would offend my modesty.

I didn’t understand at first. On the second reading, it hit me head-on that it was a declaration of love. All at once, I realised that I had misunderstood what it was I was lacking, that it wasn’t Jessica I missed, but Elena, that my trauma had skewed my perception. All I could see was the blankness of the bad patches I had gone through. In the harshness of my inner winter, the forest of my concerns had gathered into a vast funeral pyre and had been waiting stoically for a merciful sun to descend from its cloud and set it ablaze. But in the evening, there was never any fire. My anxieties closed ranks to get me through the night, and the sun, as pale as the moon, withdrew noiselessly like a false dawn. If I had been unhappy since my return from Africa, it was because of my inability to put things in perspective. I’d been beating myself up, blaming myself for a crime I hadn’t committed, a crime of which I was the victim and the evidence. I had been holding completely the wrong trial. I had been going round in circles in an artificial maze, looking for a way out where there wasn’t one. Only someone who knows where he’s going can find a way out. I had to learn to live with what I couldn’t change and find my own path. But I had lacked the presence of mind to do so. How could I have been so thoughtless? … I reread Elena’s message, over and over, and each reading reduced the insidious brew that had crept into my subconscious. As light shone in on my dark thoughts one after the other, my brain was filled with dazzling sparks, and an unaccustomed clarity made the slightest detail around me stand out. ‘Why are you sad?’ the marabout had asked me. ‘You shouldn’t be. Only the dead are sad because they can’t get up again.’ And I was alive. I breathed, I felt emotion, I reacted, I dreamt … I was in seventh heaven. No, I wouldn’t die blind in one eye. And I would be able to ‘share in order to reach maturity’ … My hands were shaking, my fingers got muddled up on the keyboard. I could no longer make out the letters on the keys. Hardly surprising: I was in tears.

I answered Elena: I’m on my way!

The marathon process I’d had to go through to be accredited by the Red Cross had worn me out. I’d really had to battle to obtain a visa, since the Sudanese consular authorities didn’t look kindly on my return to their country. But all that was over. I was on the plane, and the plane had got to the runway. As the pilot gathered speed, I thought about Blackmoon. I saw him again with his sabre and his lensless glasses, sometimes sitting on a stone, sometimes hugging the walls; remembered our first conversation in the cave when he told me about his father who worshipped Franz Beckenbauer, his passion for the books he would never read, the teacher he would have liked to be, his mood swings that turned him without warning from an easy-going teenager into an impulsive hooligan. What a strange boy! In a flash, his innocent smile could replace that cold look of his that made me ill at ease, that look I couldn’t bear longer than two seconds. What message had he been trying to communicate to me? Was it a distress call I had been unable to decode? I saw him in Gerima’s prison, drawing my attention to the piece of bread into which he had slipped Hans Makkenroth’s note. Stand firm. Every day is a miracle. And again on that fateful track, trying to reason with Joma. Joma who was doomed to seek elsewhere what he had within reach; Joma, that twisted poet who had thought that with the Word you could overcome adversity and who, if he had listened to himself, would have realised that no rifle carried further than a good word … The plane took off. Beside me, a young woman leafed calmly through her magazine. A child started crying. I closed my eyes and projected myself across an African desert as hot and disturbing as a strong fever. Beneath the marabout tree, Bruno was naked; he was dancing like a djinn and showing me his pale buttocks. That’s Africa, he cried, pointing to the young man with the cart who was carrying his mother on his back and who, at that moment, in his absolute generosity and courage, embodied selflessness. Good old Bruno, nobody knew better than he did how to look beyond the surface of things and give a fallen land its nobility. I was in a hurry to see him again, to once more experience his old-world romanticism, his exuberant chauvinism, his incorrigible optimism. I could already see him opening his arms to me, arms as wide as a bay, generous and proud of being what he was, with his saint-like forbearance and his opiate daydreams. We would sit by a campfire, and as I looked in the sky for a constellation made to measure for me, he would tell me about Aminata whose eyes shone like a thousand jewels, Souad the dancer who hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice love for a pimp’s promise, the low dives where he slept off both his binges and his sorrows, the indomitable peoples wandering where the desert winds took them, the filthy huts where you had board and lodging at any hour of the day or night, the human beings whose rags I saw but not their souls … I thought about Lotta, and Orfane, and Bidan the contortionist, and Forha the one-armed man, and that old veteran Mambo with his giant body confined in his makeshift bed, his disconcerting comments, his elephant-like indolence and his categorical refusal to admit that men could walk on the moon without offending gods and wolves … As the plane emerged from the clouds to conquer a sky as blue and limpid as a cherub’s dream, the sun hit me full in the face. Like grace. As if emanating from the light, Elena’s face appeared on the horizon. I laid my head back against my seat and let the memories take over. I recalled points of reference, gestures of help, an outstretched hand, another hand caressing, a face smiling in the middle of the night, a lip melting into a beloved lip and the song of a griot transcending prayers. Then I thought about Elena, about the days and nights ahead of us, the brand-new paths opening up to us, and I told myself that the desert is not finite but virgin, that its dust is pure and its mirages stimulating, that where love sows, the harvest is limitless because everything is possible when heart and mind combine. As my flesh remembered every one of Elena’s kisses, as I felt her slender fingers running over my body in a multitude of happy quivers, and her mouth pouring its intoxicating nectar into mine, and her arms carrying me higher than a trophy, and her eyes absorbing my anxieties, and her breath ruffling my senses with millions of vows, there suddenly flashed into my mind these redemptive lines of Joma’s which I had learnt by heart:

Live every morning as if it’s the first

Let the past deal with its own misdeeds.

Live every evening as if it’s the last

Tomorrow will bring what tomorrow needs.