Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

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.’