Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

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!