The African Equation (18 page)

In the evening, at the time when the earth turns upside down like an hour glass, I took my seat on a pile of loose stones and watched the sun dying on the horizon. The heat had abated, and a hypothetical silence, like that of a truce, hung over the plain. A line of ragged trees wound through hills as polished as shells reflecting the light of the sunset. Under less inclement skies, such a fresco would have filled me with contentment. But my heart had learnt to resist such spells. What had once fascinated me now saddened me, because I fear that I could no longer revive my old joys, no longer look at things in the same way. My passions had broken free of their moorings, and the happy, indulgent observer I had once been could not forgive talent its imperfections. No magic spoke to me now, no Rembrandtesque tableau or idealised image. The only light I cared about was the one at the end of my tunnel. When would it appear? I wanted time to speed up, I wanted the sun to disappear and reappear the next minute, I wanted some conjuring trick to make tomorrow arrive faster than tonight. Ever since the guide had promised us the end of our wandering, I had been unable to keep still. Urged on by some feverish drive, I often found myself going ahead of the convoy until Bruno called me back. The day before,
noticing that I was wearing shoes unsuitable for a forced march, the father of a family had offered me his son’s espadrilles. ‘He won’t need them where he is now,’ he had said. My feet were still bleeding, but the pain had eased. Anyway, it wasn’t my legs that were carrying me, but the hope of an imminent end to all this; I felt almost like praising the saints in whom I had never believed.

Dr Juárez brought me coffee. She sat down beside me and gazed at the sunset. She was a very pretty woman, with the profile of a goddess and large dark eyes, which, when they came to rest on you, enveloped you entirely. She must have been in her thirties, in spite of her dimpled face and youthful figure. Her long chestnut hair cascaded down to her hips, when she didn’t gather it in a bun. During the two days’ walking we had done together, not once had I heard her complain. Of course, whenever she got the chance she slept like a log, but as soon as she was on her feet she pushed herself onwards. The previous day, she had come to see me; my limp worried her and she wanted to take a look at the state of my feet. Her voice was so soft I hadn’t paid any attention to what she was saying. While she spoke, I couldn’t take my eyes off her crimson lips, which had made her uncomfortable. It had taken me a good five minutes to realise that she had left.

‘It feels like a sandstorm is coming,’ she said now.

‘Oh, no!’

‘Yes. We’re going to have to get our
cheches
out and pray it isn’t a big one.’

She placed her lips on the rim of the glass and took a small sip. She had pretty hands with slender fingers, but no ring or any other adornment, except for an old watch
with a leather strap and a crucifix around her slender neck.

‘We lost another old woman,’ she said.

‘I know.’

She shook her head, and a loose lock of hair fell over her eye. She again lifted her glass to her mouth, which was round and full, and squinted at the sunset. I wondered how shoulders as frail as hers could bear such heavy and unpredictable responsibility, how a woman her age managed to live with danger, what motivated her to that extent when the mere fact of going to the aid of some poor devil automatically exposed her to major risks? I tried to imagine her fleeing across the scrub, a pack of fanatical killers at her heels, or held captive in a sordid hideout at the mercy of depraved kidnappers, and her devotion seemed to me as inhuman as the conditions faced by these tribes she was trying to save.

She gave a start. ‘I’m sorry. What was it you said?’

‘What?’

‘Excuse me, I thought you said something.’

‘No, no … Maybe I was thinking aloud.’

She tensed her wonderful mouth with its dazzlingly white teeth. The way she had of biting her lip was a joy in itself.

‘And how are your feet?’

‘Getting better … How come your camp hasn’t sent anyone out to look for you? They haven’t heard from you for days. It would only be natural for them to worry and send out patrols or helicopters to find you.’

‘They don’t know our situation at the camp. Our radio was destroyed in the Land Rover.’

‘All the same … You left on a mission. They know your
route. You weren’t going on holiday. This is a dangerous area. I’m amazed that you’ve been left to your own devices.’

‘There’s nothing to say they aren’t searching for us. But I don’t think we can expect an armada of helicopters. We’re in Africa, after all. We don’t have such means at our disposal.’

‘And you agree to work in such conditions?’

‘Gladly. Imagine this country cut off from the world, these people without aid … Fortunately there are NGOs, Dr Krausmann.’

‘Where are we exactly?’

‘In Darfur.’

My Adam’s apple jumped in my throat. ‘What? I thought we were in Sudan!’

‘Darfur is a region of Sudan. Sudan’s the largest country in Africa. More than two and a half million square kilometres. Five times the size of Spain.’

Darfur … I was in Darfur, that land of atrocities, endlessly talked about in news items to which I’d listened with only half an ear between a slug of beer and the phone ringing. Darfur, that bloodstained Atlantis patrolled by elusive ogres, where the darkness was as red as sacrificial altars and the mass graves as vast as landfills! So it really existed, and I was in the middle of it. I had been through so much, overcome so many ordeals, only to end up in Darfur! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Those brief news reports that had once flashed past on my TV screen now all came back to me, clear and explicit this time, with their daily massacres and movements of population, their crows perching on the corpses of children and the surreal testimonies of those who made it out alive. How
to survive in a snake pit, in an open-air gladiatorial arena where everything was allowed and where death might cut you down at any moment without warning? Was the end of the tunnel, as promised by the guide Jibreel, merely wishful thinking, a mirage? It was a huge blow to my morale. I felt faint. I didn’t recognise my voice when I heard myself swallow and say, ‘You’re joking!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you sure we’re in Darfur?’

‘I’ve been working here for two years.’

‘Do people live that long around here? This country’s generally thought of as the antechamber of hell.’

She threw her head back in a throaty little laugh that made her shoulders shake. ‘There is no hell on earth, Dr Krausmann, only devils, and they aren’t invincible. It hasn’t been easy to make this territory fit to live in, but we’ve fought tooth and nail to defend it. We’ve had to stand up to the government and their henchmen, to legions of fanatics and death squads that have tried to chase us out of here. Some of our doctors have been kidnapped, others murdered, but that’s only strengthened our determination. We’re gaining ground every day.’

I wished I could share her enthusiasm, only I wasn’t sure it would have quelled my doubts. The naivety of what she was saying saddened me more than it reassured me.

Dr Juárez noticed that her glass was empty; I offered her mine, which I hadn’t touched. She gently refused, put her arms round her legs and placed her chin on her knees. Her shirt gaped open in a place where a button had come undone, revealing the silky swelling of her breasts. The sun had just sunk beneath a mass of blood-red splashes and the first stars were starting to appear in the sky.

‘You say you were kidnapped in the Gulf of Aden, Dr Krausmann?’

‘In those waters. Why?’

‘The pirates usually operate in Somalia. Negotiations are easier there. I don’t see what your kidnappers hoped to find around here. The rules and the stakes differ from one country to another. Being so lawless, the Somali coast offers more room for manoeuvre. Opting for Sudan strikes me as strange.’

‘Isn’t that this continent all over?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Everything’s strange in Africa. People kill, steal, ransom, hold life cheap … So whether it happens in Somalia or Sudan, what’s the difference basically?’

‘Not much, in a way. But—’

‘But what, Dr Juárez? As far as I’m concerned, nothing justifies what happened to me. No instability, no revolutions. None of that is any of my business. It isn’t my story and it isn’t my future. I don’t know these people from Adam and I have nothing in common with them. We were just passing by, my friend Hans and I. We were sailing in international waters. We were on our way to the Comoros. The worst of it is that it was for a good cause. Where is Hans Makkenroth now? On what market stall is he being displayed? That’s
my
problem. Whether it happens here or next door is of no concern to me. I just want to know what happened to my friend and if there’s any chance I’ll see my city and my country again.’

‘Right,’ she said, taken aback by my sudden anger.

Someone started moaning behind a copse. ‘Duty calls,’ Dr Juárez said, getting quickly to her feet – saved by the bell. She hadn’t been expecting my outpouring of
bitterness and she felt sorry she had provoked it. I didn’t blame her. I was even furious with myself for being so rude to a woman who had come to comfort me. Didn’t she have enough worries with her horde of survivors without me unloading all my resentment on her? Giving me a disappointed look, she ran down the slope. When she had gone, I realised that I should at least have offered her my help and taken the chance to clear up the misunderstanding.

Bruno joined me on the ridge. We both watched the shadowy, half-starved figures moving about in the river bed, some looking for a place to sleep, others fussing over their exhausted families. I saw only human debris, trailing behind them the twist of fate that had spared them, and clinging to a strange conviction that resembled neither their prayers nor a destiny and which seemed to connect them to life like a thread. What purpose lay behind their martyrdom? I tried to see a meaning in their survival and couldn’t find a single one. These people had nothing; they were at the end of their tether, their tomorrows were minefields, and yet, through some sad phenomenon, they clung to anything to keep going. Where did they find the strength to hold on, the faith to believe in the rising day, a day as poor and wretched as them? They knew that what they had been through the day before was ready and waiting for them the next day, that the cycle of their suffering was never-ending, that where men raged, the gods refused to intervene; they knew all these things and acted as if none of it mattered, refusing to face facts and looking beyond good and evil for an illusion to latch on to, no matter if it was all ash and smoke.

‘That’s Africa, Monsieur Krausmann,’ Bruno said as if he had read my thoughts.

‘That doesn’t explain such doggedness.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, my friend. These people want to live.’

‘But what do they have to live for?’

‘That’s not the question. They want to live, that’s all, live life to the end … I’ve been knocking about this continent for decades. I know its vices, its disasters, its brutality, but nothing alters its desire to live. I’ve seen people who were nothing but skin and bones, others who had lost the taste for food, and others who were thrown to the dogs and the scoundrels, not one was ready to give up. They die at night, and in the morning they come back to life, not at all put off by the troubles that await them.’

‘And you think that’s wonderful?’

‘Isn’t it obvious I do?’

‘Strange, I see only an unspeakable tragedy and none of the good things you see in it.’

‘Africa isn’t something to be seen, Monsieur Krausmann, it’s to be felt, experienced, smelt.’

‘Well, it certainly has a strong smell!’

I had upset him. He was so sensitive that any disagreement struck him as a declaration of war, which was why he was so ready to take my reply at face value. But I had no intention of correcting what I’d said. I was convinced he knew what I was referring to. Africa did have a strong smell. Its air was polluted by the stench of dungeons and mass graves and massacres. It was a fact he couldn’t deny or question, because if you turn away from horror you have no chance of eradicating it. Bruno had to admit that his certainties were not truths, that his viewpoint was biased. That was what I couldn’t stand about him: that
blissful squint which distorted his relationship with Africa and which saw virtue in suffering and contours where there was only flatness. We had often argued about that. Before, I had thrown in the towel, tired of having to keep the debate on track while Bruno went off at tangents and saw hidden doors, finding a kind of panache even in decay. But that wasn’t the case any more. The centaurs he had idealised while we had been rotting in Gerima’s jail were there, before our eyes, and I saw nothing of the myths they were supposed to embody.

‘You disappoint me, Monsieur Krausmann.’

‘It isn’t me, it’s Africa.’

‘You don’t know anything about Africa.’

‘Which Africa? The one you see or the one you smell?’ I looked him in the eyes. ‘In concrete terms, what fascinates you about it?’

‘Exactly what just struck you: the hunger for life. An African knows that life is his most precious possession. Sorrow, joy, illness are simply part of a person’s education. An African takes things as they come without granting them more credit than they deserve. And although he may be convinced that miracles exist, he doesn’t demand them. He’s self-sufficient, don’t you see? His wisdom cushions his disappointments.’

‘Did you say wisdom?’

‘You heard me correctly, Monsieur Krausmann,’ he said, more and more angrily. ‘He’s a splendid creature, the African. Whether he’s sitting in the doorway of his hut, or under a carob tree, or on the banks of a crocodile-infested river, he’s himself. His heart is his kingdom. Nobody in the world knows better than him how to share and forgive.
If I had to give generosity a face, it would be the face of an African. If I had to give brotherhood a sound, it would be that of an African laugh.’