Yasmina Khadra: The African Equation

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

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

‘What’s over?’ I said.

‘What started one day.’

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

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

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

‘Time will take care of that.’

‘I don’t believe you …’

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t know.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘You might as well. Go ahead.’

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

‘I have no reason to lie to you.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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