Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

We crossed the verdant grounds, where the patients were getting their supply of sunshine and fresh air. There were old people in wicker chairs with blankets over their legs, sickly figures walking up and down the paths, staff bustling back and forth. A sombre melancholy cast a veil over the daylight. The nurse led me into a dormitory block that looked like a place where people were left to die. A few ghosts dragged themselves along the narrow corridors, some with walking frames. My father’s room was at the end of the corridor, near the stairs. The nurse opened the door without knocking and stood aside to let me in. An old man sat huddled in a wheelchair. It was my father, or what was left of him: a bundle of bones wrapped in a grey coat. All I could see of him was his unkempt hair, the chalk-white back of his neck and his thin arm dangling over the side. He didn’t turn round when he heard our footsteps behind him. Nobody had been to see him since he had arrived here, the director had told me. When he had been informed that I was coming, he hadn’t said yes or no; he had remained as inscrutable as the Sphinx … The nurse withdrew. Her heels clicked in the corridor. I closed the door behind her. My father kept staring out through the French window. I knew he wouldn’t turn round. He had never had the courage to confront things. Whenever he came back from one of his drinking sprees, I would hide in my room and cover my ears in order not to hear him yelling and overturning the furniture. Had I ever loved him? I suppose I had. Every child sees his father as a god. But I must have become disillusioned very early when I realised that you don’t have to be a hero to procreate, that it doesn’t take much and can even be an accident. Had my father loved me? He had never given me the impression that he had … Now, as soon as I entered his room, he had opted for withdrawal; he wasn’t looking at the grounds, he was running away. He had sent me a letter. Just one. It dated from the day he was admitted to the home. A kind of mea culpa . He must have been afraid I would refuse to pay his bills. Your mother was a good woman , he wrote. I left because I couldn’t hold a candle to her . He wasn’t telling me anything new. He’d been a loser, sponging off a devoted wife who had martyred herself in the observance of her marriage vows and had always hoped for the best while coping with the worst. I didn’t abandon you, I left you in peace . I hadn’t read his letter to the end. It had fallen from my hands. It had sounded as false as the bells of paradise.

I waited for him to stir, to show signs of life. My father didn’t move. He was hiding his face from me. I shook my head and was about to leave when his ruined voice rolled towards me like a dying wave.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

And he continued looking out at the grounds.

I left the room, closed the door behind me, waited a while longer in the corridor, then, certain that we had said everything there was to say even though I had said nothing at all, I joined the nurse at the foot of the stairs.

I drove in a trance.

I drove through towns and villages with no idea of where I was, the image of a dying man stuck in his wheelchair splashed all over the windscreen.

Where was I going?

I took the first exit I came to off the autobahn. A ribbon of tarmac led me through the middle of a landscape garlanded with orchards and farms and dropped me at the entrance to a small town which the mist was trying to hide from sight like forbidden fruit. A steeple, sober and dignified, watched over little houses with tiled roofs. The streets lay wrapped in a cold silence. I looked for a road sign, but couldn’t see any. I parked outside a bar and switched off the engine. It was as if my fatigue was waiting only for the engine to stop in order to overwhelm me. My shoulders sagged beneath the weight of the kilometres I had travelled and my limbs felt tight. Leaning on the wheel, I tried to summon a little strength and clear my mind … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig … What was the meaning of this journey? Why had my father, the father I thought I had rejected, suddenly become an inescapable milestone on my road map? Why had I gone to look for forgiveness at my mother’s grave, when I hadn’t laid flowers on it for years? And what magic formula could my old university friends possibly have had that might allow me to bounce back when adversity laid me low? … The dullness of the village was startling. I had to find out where I was and how to get back to Frankfurt. I looked in the glove compartment for a map and found a packet of cigarettes that someone must have left. Without being able to stop myself, I lit up. The first puff went to my head. I had quit smoking the day I graduated as a doctor, a lifetime ago … The mist on the windscreen saddened me as much as my thoughts. A pharmacist’s sign blinked on the façade of a small shop. A little girl in a hood ran across the road. A few drops of rain hit the roof of my car … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig, and then what? … Even if I visited every city in Germany, where would it get me? I knew I wouldn’t shake off either my grief or my shadow. The sickness I was fleeing was inside me. Wherever I went, it would be there, rooted in my flesh, playing on my weaknesses and thwarting my attempts at diversion. I needed to ward off the old demon, to drive it out of my body. With my bare hands or with forceps. Because there wasn’t room for the two of us.

I stubbed out my cigarette on the pavement and walked into the bar. A woman stood behind the counter, her face in her hands and her eyes staring into space, paying no attention to the two young men sitting at a table at the far end of the room. She jumped when I ordered a beer and a cheese sandwich. After serving me half-heartedly, she went back to her corner and resumed her daydreams.

‘Is there a hotel around here?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

I left a banknote on the counter and went back to my car. The sky had darkened; a faulty lamp was flickering at the end of the street. The memory of my father came back to provoke me. I got in and thought about what I should do: find a hotel for the night or keep driving. An old man with a newspaper under his arm walked past me, dragging his leg. He reminded me of Wolfgang walking away in the rain, weighed down by grief. Wolfgang! Why wasn’t he on my list? Had I forgotten him, or had I deliberately left him out? There was no rhyme or reason to this trip. All these unlikely reunions, this whole laborious itinerary intended to somehow purge my mind, were merely a desperate manoeuvre to get away from what I couldn’t accept. It was pointless to look for a hotel. The answers to my questions were buried somewhere in my house.

Somebody was ringing the doorbell. The noise drilled into my head. My hangover was so bad I found it hard to get up. The daylight hurt my eyes. The sun was at its height. I don’t know how many hours or days I had slept. My mouth furry, my movements laborious, I slipped out of bed, looked for my slippers, couldn’t find them, and went barefoot to the door. It was the postman. He was surprised to see me in vest and pants, looking quite untidy, and handed me a registered package. I signed for it and slammed the door in his face. I hadn’t done it deliberately. It was a mistake, due to my drunken state, and I immediately realised how rude it was. I opened the door again to apologise, but the postman had already disappeared. I staggered to the kitchen — I didn’t dare go to the bathroom yet — stuck my head in the sink and let the water from the tap lash me, then went back to my bedroom and tore the wrapping off the package. Inside, I found a small book with a letter in it. The book was Black Moon , Joma’s collection, dedicated to his ‘desert rose, Fatamou’. In the letter, Bruno had written: