The African Equation (24 page)

I had hoped to take nothing away from Africa and to leave nothing there, but I was starting to realise how naive I had been. In the little plane taking me back to Germany, I knew that I was not returning in one piece. Part of me was still a prisoner in the desert, and Hans’s coffin lay in the hold. Lowering the blind over the window in order not to see the land that had stripped me of my illusions as it receded into the distance, I tried to sleep. But what sleep was there for someone who had no more dreams? I had only to close my eyes to find myself face-to-face with my obsessions. My head was throbbing with noise, the smell of mass graves clung to my nostrils, my lungs were full of sand. In Khartoum, I had spent more than an hour in the shower. I had soaped myself down a dozen times and still been unable to rid myself of the repulsive bark that had replaced my skin. My new clothes stung like nettles. My tie felt like a noose, except that I was the gallows. Opposite me, Gerd Bechter sat engrossed in a magazine, turning the pages mechanically. His mind was elsewhere, somewhere where questions don’t need answers because everything has been said. He hadn’t left me alone for a minute in Khartoum. He had come into my hotel room constantly, using any excuse to keep an eye on me, afraid I might be
taken ill. True, I was nothing but a ghost lost in the mist of its own emotions, but the trials I had been through were keeping me alert. Irritated by his interference, I had asked him if maybe he wanted to share my bed. He had apologised for bothering me and gone to fetch me a drink. We had drunk until morning and slept on the same sofa …

A TV screen indicated the route the plane was taking: we had left Sudan, then flown across Egypt and along the Mediterranean. A hostess brought me a tray of food; I declined her offer and sank into my seat. Behind me, two journalists were dozing. A young woman who had been introduced to me but whose name I couldn’t recall was leaning towards the window and staring out at the sea. Beside her, a cameraman was sleeping the sleep of the just. There were just eight passengers in the little plane, which had come specially from Berlin to repatriate us. An archipelago of eight islands separated by rivers of silence.

I imagined all the people waiting for us in Frankfurt. The Makkenroth family in full mourning. Friends of the dead man. His neighbours. His staff. The officials stiff with solemnity. The television channels. All the clichés wrapped in greyness. Closed faces. Empty eyes … I couldn’t see any place for me there. I had prepared nothing. I would say nothing. I would walk in the dead man’s shadow and follow the funeral procession without asking any questions. I was in a state of shock. What I felt didn’t matter. I would wait patiently for things to settle. Then I would take the plunge. Hans would be upset with me if I didn’t survive him. Life is a succession of ambiguities and acts of bravado. You learn more every day, and every day you wipe the slate clean and start again. In reality, there is no irrefutable truth, there are only beliefs. When
one turns out to be unfounded, you make up another and cling to it come hell or high water. Life is a shipwreck, and whether or not you survive depends not on providence but on stubbornness. There are those who give up and die, and others who rethink everything … I recalled the image of the marabout dying on his camp bed, his face as pale as parchment. His tremulous voice reached me in a sigh from beyond the grave. What was it he had said? It came back to me: ‘For a heart to continue to beat its defiance, it must look to failure for the sap of its survival.’ Why had I fled that old man? Maybe because he could read me like an open book. Maybe because he had stripped me bare with his eyes. I had always hated exposing my nakedness to strangers. At Maspalomas, there had been a stretch of beach reserved for nudists. I could never bring myself to venture there. In a few hours, when I was thrown to the wolves on a runway swarming with important people and journalists, I would feel as naked and wretched as a worm, and I would hate the whole world … Then interest would move to the coffin and the Makkenroth family, and there, too, I would catch myself resenting all those people turning their backs on me, already ignoring me and delivering me, with hands and feet tied, to the most pernicious of solitudes … I wanted to have done with it all, to confront my tomorrows, which I guessed would be totally different from my yesterdays and wouldn’t conform to whatever idea I might have about them, because another chapter, another episode, another story would make me a different man, someone I would find hard to grasp and to tame. ‘What have we really learnt from what we think we know?’ Hans used to say. ‘Habits? Reflexes? Work during the week and a let-up on our days off? What do
we know of the people we wave at in the morning and who disappear from our lives the minute they turn the corner of the street? If living were merely existing for oneself, what would make me any better than the trees that grow bare in winter and are covered in spring while I do the opposite?’ Hans wasn’t wrong. What have we really learnt from what we think we know? I had thought that Jessica was the centre of my life; Jessica had gone, and the earth had not moved one millimetre. I had thought my career was all mapped out, my future assured, and I had discovered how a trifle can start to unravel this tissue of lies. There are rules we follow in order not to bother with other rules; we adopt them because they suit us and make us believe that we can do without the rest. We convince ourselves that what is convenient for us systematically wipes out what isn’t. All my life, I had firmly believed in maturely thought-out choices, choices I had accepted and which I had worked hard to fulfil. Because every choice is a risk, no matter how hard we try to think it through … So why second guess? Why prepare to hate the whole world before I had even landed? Let things come instead of going to look for them; often they are not where we think they are.

We reached Frankfurt at about four in the afternoon. The jet touched down on the tarmac as if on velvet. Through the window, I saw the parade of glass façades, planes connected to gates, service vehicles, wagons overflowing with baggage, wide buses … and the sun. It was a nice day in my city. I had been expecting an overcast sky, with drizzle and wind appropriate to the occasion, instead of
which a glorious afternoon was rolling out the red carpet for us. How to define the feeling that overcame me the moment the wheels of the jet touched my native soil? Impossible to describe it. Impossible to contain it. A remarkable alchemy took possession of my being, of every drop of my blood. I was millions of emotions … The jet rolled along a secondary runway, circumvented several small blocks, and at last stopped outside a structure that looked like some kind of grand reception area. Journalists were waiting impatiently behind a barrier. Flashbulbs started popping, and reached a peak as I got off the plane. The Chancellor and a few members of her government greeted me at the foot of the stairs. Not having eaten since Khartoum, I didn’t feel well. Somebody whispered something to me, but I didn’t catch it. Since everyone was smiling, I did the same. Happiness is contagious. Chests restricted my breathing, arms encircled my body, hands engulfed mine. The Chancellor was so moved she had tears in her eyes. She said something to me, but the yelling of the journalists drowned it out. I thanked her. I heard myself thanking everyone for everything. Behind the official staff, the Makkenroth family were having to grin and bear it; clearly, this media attention, these ministers, the whole performance was intruding on their mourning. I would learn later that they had wanted things to be done as privately as possible, but protocol had other requirements. I went up to Bertram, Hans’s oldest son. I had known him for years. We threw our arms around each other. The hug was a brief one. His wife, hidden behind a black veil, lightly touched my fingertips. Mathias, the younger son, patted me on the back. I had met him two or three times, but couldn’t remember where. He was a taciturn,
mysterious young man. Deeply affected by the loss of his father, he avoided looking me in the eyes. An old lady, doubtless the senior member of the family, leant towards me and whispered, ‘We don’t want to know anything about what happened, Herr Krausmann. Hans is dead, and that’s all that matters.’ Her voice was low, but what she said sounded like a warning. Hans’s coffin was taken from the hold of the plane and placed on a catafalque covered with flowers. Again, there was an explosion of flashbulbs. There was a stirring within the Makkenroth family, but it was quickly stifled. The Chancellor made a moving statement to the press, then held the microphone out to me. I raised my hand in refusal, much to the disappointment of the journalists, who were eager for a speech. What could I say, what could I add? The embassy people had worn me out in Khartoum, and I couldn’t wait to go home. Bertram agreed to address the journalists. He was concise and fair: ‘My father always felt that it was through sharing that one reached maturity. He shared his fortune, his time and his humanity with the poor all over the world, and he shared their sufferings and tragedies, too. Hans Makkenroth didn’t do things by half. He was generous and sincere, and never promised what he couldn’t deliver. He loved people, and many returned that love. He was an exceptional man. He gave so much of himself to others that they have kept him for ever.’

A hearse appeared, followed by a column of official cars and black limousines. The journalists started running towards the exit. The crowd behind the barrier thinned out, and I saw Claudia Reinhardt. She was standing near a group of cameramen who were feverishly packing up their equipment in order to miss nothing of the end of
the spectacle. She was wearing a sober tailored suit, and gave me a reluctant smile. Gerd Bechter offered me a lift in the back of his car. I told him I was going straight home. He tried to dissuade me, but I wouldn’t listen to him and walked towards Claudia. At that moment, when my world was shrinking around me, she was my whole family.

A cluster of journalists were cooling their heels outside my house. I told Claudia not to stop. She did as she was told and took the first turning. She drove very badly. The emotion, perhaps. Earlier, when she had taken me in her arms, she had burst into tears. She was lost for words. She laughed and cried, grimaced and smiled, and shook from head to toe. The touch of her body against mine reassured me. Here I was, really here, in the flesh. I was in my country, in my city, in my element. The Frankfurt sun reconciled me to my feelings. I was free, I had my life back, and my suit had stopped chafing me. I lowered the window and couldn’t stop breathing in the air, drawing strength and confidence from it. I looked at the buildings, the cars passing us, the lawns, the advertising hoardings, the street lamps, the surface of the road, and for the first time the hiss of the wheels on the asphalt silenced the
hate-laden
voices and the gunshots that had been using my head for sparring practice.

Claudia suggested we go to her place. I agreed. The journalists would have to cut me some slack in the end, and then I would go home and learn to live again.

Claudia lived on the third floor of a small building in Eckenheim. I had set up my first practice in that area, two years before I got married, and had really liked the
place and the people, but Jessica had wanted me to move to Sachsenhausen, near where she worked, so that we could have lunch together. We had been very close at the beginning of our relationship. It was as if we were one and the same person. We would phone each other all the time, about insignificant things – we were just happy to know that we were only a call away from each other. The phone line constituted our umbilical cord.

Claudia preceded me into the entrance hall. There was no lift. We took the stairs as quickly as possible because I had no desire to be recognised by a neighbour. My photograph, along with Hans’s, had been in the newspapers and on television for months.

‘I sent someone to clean your house,’ Claudia told me as she unlocked her door.

‘Thank you.’

In the hallway of her apartment, she took my bag and helped me off with my jacket. ‘You can stay here as long as you like,’ she said. ‘My mother will put me up for a few days.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I really don’t want to impose. I should go back to the house. It’ll be night soon, and the journalists must have homes to go to.’

‘Makes no difference. They’ll be outside your door again first thing in the morning.’

‘In that case, I’ll go to my house in the country.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ve been away too long. You need people around you.’

I asked her to show me the bathroom.

By the time I got back to the living room after my shower, Claudia had changed, replacing her tailored suit
with flannel trousers and a sweater. She had also put on make-up and let her hair down.

‘Let me buy you dinner,’ she said. ‘I know a nice quiet restaurant not far from here.’

‘I don’t really want to go out.’

‘I don’t have anything in the fridge.’ She looked at her watch, thought for a moment, and decided to go out and bring us back something to eat.

It was the first time I had been in Claudia’s apartment. The furniture was old, but well maintained. Everything was in exactly the right place, with no unnecessary extras. The living room was small and somewhat austere. There were no pictures on the walls, just a row of photographs on a chest of drawers, a faded rug on the floor and an old leather sofa in the middle. The window, framed by flimsy curtains, looked out on a sad little square with a giant tree in abundant leaf. Cars were parked on either side, but there was nobody about. No children played, not a sound betrayed a living soul. I sat down on the sofa and switched on the television. It seemed to have been years since I had last handled a remote control. It was the fact that Jessica had so often come home late that had made me a TV addict. Her absence would prevent me from concentrating on a book or on DIY, so I preferred to wait for my wife to return, pleasantly slouched in my armchair, a can of beer in my hand, and, sip after sip, I would count off the minutes like a priest his beads.