Yasmina Khadra: The African Equation

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

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

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

‘A note?’

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

‘I haven’t checked,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

‘My God!’ she exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It really isn’t necessary.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need me?’

‘I’ll be all right, Emma.’

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

Then I turned to Hans.

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

He called Toni and ordered dinner for us.

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