Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

‘Can’t you be a bit more precise?’

‘I’ve never refused you anything, Joma. I love you more than my father and my mother. I left my family for you, my village, everything …’

‘Get to the point, please.’

‘Let them go!’

The blade of a guillotine couldn’t have cut short the debate with such startling abruptness. Joma almost choked. Stunned by Blackmoon’s words, he blinked several times to make sure he had heard correctly. Throwing a rapid glance in our direction, he realised that we had also heard the boy’s suggestion; he grabbed Blackmoon by the neck and pulled him close.

‘What are you talking about?’

Blackmoon started by loosening the fingers around his neck. Calmly. Then he mopped his forehead with his cheche and returned Joma’s fiery gaze.

‘I don’t want to raise my hand to anybody any more, Joma. I’ve had enough. I want to go home. All this talk of revolution and justice and God knows what else doesn’t grab me any more. I don’t believe in any of it. For years now, we’ve been running all over the place, and I still don’t see the end of the tunnel. What’s changed since we started playing at being rebels? Not a damned thing. And you know why? Because there’s nothing to change. The world is what it is, and none of us can change it because we aren’t God.’

Joma was dumbfounded. After a long silence, he said, ‘You’re right, boy. You should have kept your mouth shut …’

We set off again as soon as the meal was over. It was Joma himself who tied our hands behind our backs, as if he didn’t trust Blackmoon. Of course, he had not lingered too long over his subordinate’s remarks. As far as he was concerned, they were just idle words spoken by a young boy overwhelmed by the turn that events were taking. All the same, it had made him slightly ill at ease. During the ride, he didn’t say another word to Blackmoon, but kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

*

Late that afternoon, a puncture almost catapulted us into a rock. The pick-up skidded, and Joma’s aggressive attempt to control it sent it flying over several metres. Bruno and I were almost thrown out.

Joma made us get down and ordered Blackmoon to bring him the spare wheel and the jack. After taking off his hunting vest, he crouched to loosen the wheel nuts. He removed the flat tyre, replaced it, and worked the jack. Just as he was putting the nuts back on, Blackmoon took his sabre and cut through the ropes tying Bruno and me. This gesture both surprised and terrified us. It was obvious that things were about to go downhill. Blackmoon, though, looked calm and implacable. He didn’t seem to realise the significance of his act, nor did he appear to care about the consequences.

‘It isn’t meal time yet,’ Joma yelled. ‘Tie these idiots up again, and be quick about it.’

Blackmoon interposed himself between Joma and us, impassive. ‘Let them go and let’s go home,’ he said.

Joma threw the damaged tyre in the back of the pick-up, lifted the jack and put it away in an iron case soldered to the running board, wiped his grease-stained hands on a cloth and put on his vest. In all this time, he hadn’t looked at us once.

‘Stop this nonsense, Chaolo.’

‘Why won’t you listen to me?’

‘Chaolo, you’re going too far this time,’ Joma said slowly, as if telling off a naughty child.

‘These men haven’t done anything to us.’

‘Chaolo …’

Blackmoon signalled to us to leave. Neither Bruno nor I moved. Leave where? Leave how? We were in the middle of nowhere, our two kidnappers had fallen out, and it looked as though the situation could only end badly for us. A cold shiver went down my back. Bruno was ashen. His eyes shone with terror.

‘You taught me a whole lot of theories,’ Blackmoon said in a flat tone. ‘You told me why some things were right, and others weren’t, and I drank in your words like holy water. But you’re doing the exact opposite of what you told me, Joma. You had a good head on your shoulders when I met you, and you’ve turned bad. You lash out and you yell, and you drive me a little crazier every day. I thought war was crap, and that was what made people such pains in the arse. And I said it would all sort itself out in the end, and that one of these days when we’d dealt with the things that bothered us, we’d go home. Except that you don’t seem to want to go back to the village or become a reasonable person again, the way you were before. Do you remember? We were all right before. We didn’t ask for the moon, and we were content with simple things. Don’t you see? I miss those simple things now.’

‘Chaolo!’

‘You were unlucky, and I understand. I understand it isn’t easy to stay good after what happened to you, but we’ve gone too far. And I don’t want to follow you any more, Joma. Because I don’t know where you’re taking me. When I look behind me, I don’t see any trace of what we were, you and I. I’m not proud of the path we’ve taken. Even your books don’t smell good any more … I’ve listened to you all my life. Now you have to listen to me. I don’t have big words to persuade you, I don’t have your education, but I want you to know that my affection for you is the same as ever and it’s because I still have it that I no longer agree with you.’

‘That’s enough now.’

‘What happened to Fatamou wasn’t because of these two men.’

Joma let out an unusually savage cry and charged at the boy. Not expecting such a lightning reaction, Blackmoon took the full force of his chief’s fist in the face. The force of the blow sent him flying; he fell on his back, then half raised himself, grimacing in terrible pain, unable to breathe. In a fraction of a second, his face crumpled and became waxen. Dazed, he groped for his glasses, found them broken in half, picked them up unsteadily and showed them to Joma with sad eyes.

‘Look what you did to my glasses, Joma.’

‘I forbid you to talk about my private life.’

Blackmoon stared at his glasses as if contemplating a catastrophe.

‘Get up!’ Joma screamed. ‘And tie these dogs up for me!’

Blackmoon tried to raise himself, but none of his muscles responded. The expression on his face was abnormal. It was as if his features had melted, as if the light in his eyes were going out. His mouth filled with blood, which began dangling from his chin in long strands. Suddenly, a red patch appeared beneath his side and started to spread over the ground. Only then did Joma realise the gravity of the situation. He ran to Blackmoon. No sooner had he touched him than the boy let out an inhuman groan. Turning him over on his side, Joma realised that, in falling back, his protégé had impaled himself on his sabre.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he cried out, ‘what is all this?’

He clasped the boy to him, talked to him to keep him awake, begged him to hold on. But he soon realised that it was pointless. Overcome with remorse and grief, Joma turned to the sky and implored it, all the while shaking the frail body, which was draining of its blood in wild spasms … and there, before our very eyes, the brute who had tried to be as devoid of compassion as a crushing machine sank heavily to the ground and began sobbing like a little child.

Blackmoon stared at us over his chief’s shoulder then, slowly, his eyes rolled back and his neck went limp. He had given up the ghost.

Joma continued to clasp the boy to him, cradling him. His sobs spread across the plain, bounced off the rocks, whirled in the air …

Bruno ran to the pick-up and came back with the rifle that had been hanging inside the cab. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but this is where we part company.’

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Joma laid the boy with infinite care on the ground and turned to us.