Yasmina Khadra: The African Equation

‘I’m walking on my head.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Can you?’

She placed her hand on mine, a gesture that made me feel ill at ease. ‘I’m really sorry, Kurt. I haven’t had a wink of sleep in the last few nights.’

‘I’m only just starting to wake up. And I don’t understand what I see around me.’

She strengthened her grip on my fingers. ‘You know you can count on me, Kurt.’

‘I don’t doubt that. Thank you. You were great with the guests.’

‘It’s the least I could do.’ She took her hand away, leant back against the rail, and sighed. ‘You think you’re prepared for anything, and when it happens, you realise how wrong you were.’

‘That’s life.’

‘I still can’t believe that Jessica could have done something like that. Over a promotion … Just imagine! Over a job … A job she would have got one day anyway.’

An electric shock couldn’t have given me a greater jolt … Promotion? … Job? … What was she talking about? Claudia’s choked voice immediately sobered me up.

‘What job? What’s all this about a promotion?’

Claudia looked at me in astonishment. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Oh, my God, I thought you knew.’

‘Please just tell me.’

Claudia was completely thrown. She knew she had gone too far to pull back. She looked around in panic, as if searching for support. I wouldn’t let her avoid my gaze; I needed an explanation. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her angrily. I knew I was hurting her, but I wouldn’t let go.

‘For heaven’s sake, tell me.’

She said, in a tone that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep inside, ‘The board of directors had promised her she’d be put in charge of external relations. Jessica had been working towards the position for two years. She wanted it more than anything. And she really deserved it. Our CEO even name-checked her during an EGM. Jessica was the kingpin of the company. She went well beyond the call of duty. She was the one who’d negotiated the biggest contracts in the last few years, with great success. All our colleagues agreed on how efficient she was … I thought you knew all about this.’

‘Please go on.’

‘Three months ago, our marketing director, Franz Hölter, also started campaigning to be head of external relations. He’s a careerist, ambitious, willing to go to any lengths to leapfrog his way to the front. He knew Jessica had a head start on him, and he did everything he could to catch up with her. He even torpedoed a couple of projects to discredit her. It was like a war to the death. At first, Jessica had no problem handling the competition. She knew her subject. But Franz had managed to win over the CEO and was starting to gain ground.’

‘So that’s why Jessica wasn’t herself these last few weeks?’

‘That’s right. She was very worried. Franz did whatever he wanted. A real shark operating in dirty waters. He put every obstacle he could in her way. It’s no surprise Jessica ended up cracking under the strain. Her final negotiation, with a Chinese group, broke down because of a file that had supposedly disappeared. The board were furious. And Jessica realised she had made a fatal mistake. A week ago, the verdict was delivered, and Franz was appointed to the position she’d wanted so much. When I went to comfort Jessica, I found her sitting crushed in her office. The blood had completely drained from her face. She told me to leave her alone and went out to get some air. It was about nine in the morning. She didn’t come back. I tried to reach her on her mobile, but all I got was her answering machine … My God! … It’s so unfair.’

The last bastion keeping me a tiny bit sane had fallen. I felt a tightness in my throat, and couldn’t utter a syllable. Torn between indignation and anger, incredulous and dazed, I didn’t know which way to turn. Jessica had taken her own life because her board of directors hadn’t promoted her! I found it inconceivable, inexcusable. It was as if Jessica had just killed herself for the second time.

My house became a funeral urn filled with ashes. All my hopes, all my certainties had gone up in smoke.

Time seemed to have stopped. Everything around me was clogged, unable to move. I would get up in the morning, botch my day’s work and return home in the evening as if to a labyrinth, trying to shake off the ghosts of those no longer with me. I didn’t even feel the need to switch the lights on. What good was a lamp against the shadows that were blinding me?

At the surgery, I found it hard to concentrate on my work. How many times did I prescribe inappropriate treatments before realising, or before being picked up on it by my patients? Emma saw that things couldn’t go on like this … I was forced to entrust my surgery to Dr Regina Hölm, my usual replacement when I was on holiday. I went home to pack my bags. It had occurred to me that spending some time in the country, where I had a second home, would allow me to get back on my feet. I hadn’t gone fifty kilometres before I did a U-turn and drove back to Frankfurt. No, I wouldn’t have the strength to be alone in that little stone house perched at the top of a verdant hill. It had been our nest, Jessica’s and mine, our retreat when we wanted to get away from the city’s pollution and noise, its constraints and anxieties. We would go there for weekends, to recharge our batteries and make love with the passion of teenagers. It was a lovely spot, camouflaged by tall trees, where only the odd hiker ventured and where the wind singing in the leaves would dispel our worries. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a sofa on which we would lie in each other’s arms, blissfully happy, and listen to the wood crackling in the hearth. No, I couldn’t go there and trample on so many wonderful memories.

For two days, I shut myself up in my house in Frankfurt, with the blinds down, the lights off and the phone off the hook. I didn’t open the door to anybody. I kept asking myself how a beautiful, much-loved woman with a fabulous career ahead of her could disregard all the chances she had and take her own life … If your mind hadn’t been elsewhere, you might have been able to avoid this tragedy , Wolfgang had said. His reproaches reversed the roles, swapped the perpetrator and the victim, confused the crime and the punishment. Had Jessica given me a sign I hadn’t recognised? Could I have changed the course of events if I had been more vigilant?

One night, in pouring rain, I went out and wandered the streets. I walked past red lights blinking at the intersections, little parks, neon signs, advertising hoardings appearing and disappearing in the darkness, empty benches. The noise of my footsteps preceded me. Tired of walking, soaked to the bone, I stopped on the banks of the Main and gazed down at the shimmering reflections of the street lamps on the river. And there too, try as I might to forget, to shake off my pain, the image of Jessica lying lifeless in the bathtub emerged from the waves and shattered any respite I’d hoped to grant myself.

I went back home, shivering and exhausted, and stood by the window, a blanket around my shoulders, waiting for day to dawn. And dawn it did, draped in white, as if it were merely the ghost of night.

‘You have to get a grip on yourself,’ Hans Makkenroth said, ‘and fast.’

He had been round several times. When I refused to open the door, he had threatened to call the police. The state in which he found me shocked him. He ran to the phone to call an ambulance, but I persuaded him not to. Cursing, he pushed me into the bathroom. What I saw in the mirror terrified me: I looked like a zombie.

Hans dragged me back to the living room and forced me to listen to him. ‘When I lost Paula, I thought I was finished. She’d been everything to me. All my joys I owed to her. She was my pride, my glory, my happiness. I’d have given anything for one more year, one more month, one more day with her. But there are things we can’t negotiate, Kurt. Paula’s gone, just as every day thousands of people who are loved or hated die. That’s how life is. All kinds of things happen, we may be stricken with grief, we may be bankrupt, but the sun still rises in the morning and nothing can stop night from falling … Paula has been dead for five years and thirty-two weeks, and every morning when I wake up, I expect to find her lying beside me. Then I realise that I’m alone in my bed. So I throw off the sheets and go about my daily business.’