The African Equation (6 page)

We reached a cave oozing with damp and filthy with excrement and the traces of meals. It was a dark, fetid hole, its uneven roof covered with bats’ nests, its bumpy floor strewn with trails of wax as if thousands of candles had melted on it. There were rusty iron rings on the walls, some still with age-old chains through them, their joints eaten away by time and sea salt. Here and there, leftover food had blackened in the midst of crushed cans, tattered cloths and assorted rubbish. A sickly-sweet odour emanated from the corners of the cave, depleting the air. Disturbed by our arrival, flies rose in a buzzing fury and began attacking us in close-packed contingents.

The giant ordered his men to chain us. Too exhausted to do anything, Hans let them. He could barely stand. I tried to resist the arms crushing me; some kind of handcuff rapidly closed over my wrists and I was thrown to the ground.

‘This is your hotel now,’ the giant announced.

‘You can’t leave us here,’ I protested.

‘Why not?’

‘My friend is hurt. This place is unhealthy and may make him worse. Can’t you put us somewhere else?’

‘Yes. I can tie you to a tree, or plant you in the sand, but you won’t find a better place to see Africa from up close. That’s what brings you here, isn’t it? Exoticism, wild spaces, nostalgia for lost empires …’

‘We aren’t tourists.’

‘Of course not. In Africa, there are no tourists, only voyeurs.’

He ordered his men to follow him outside. Immediately, the flies took possession of the place again; their buzzing made the stench of the cave even more oppressive. I was nauseous, but there was nothing left in my empty belly to spew up. Hans lay down on the shit-stained ground and tried to sleep. His giving up worried me as much as his eye.

‘You have blood on your back,’ I said.

‘I was cut with a sabre as I tried to go up on deck. I wanted to throw a lifebelt to Tao.’ His face creased at the memory of the scene on the yacht. ‘When I think of Tao,’ he said, ‘you don’t know how angry I am with myself.’

‘There’s no point feeling guilty. We have to keep our spirits up. The sea isn’t far. We need to know where we are. I have no intention of rotting here.’

‘Shhh!’ said the boy with the lensless glasses, still standing guard over the entrance to the cave.

Night fell like the blade of a guillotine. I had drifted off to sleep. Outside, there wasn’t a sound; the boy who had been mounting guard had disappeared. I listened out: apart from the noise of the sea, nothing. At that precise moment, while a cold sweat froze my back, I became fully aware of the gravity of the situation.

‘Have they left?’ I asked Hans.

Hans didn’t reply. I nudged him with my knee; he didn’t react. For a second or two, I thought he was dead. I bent over him, pinned my ear to his side; he moaned and rolled over.

I was racked with hunger and thirst, but I didn’t care. A tension I had never known was choking me. There was nothing inside me but dark thoughts and dread. I sensed that I was in danger. I didn’t want to go back to sleep: I wanted to look into the darkness and assume it was night, a moonless, starless night like those I had known in Frankfurt in winter; I wanted to keep my eyes wide open and familiarise myself with what I couldn’t see; this was perhaps the last time I could cling to something that kept me alive … Hans had given up. I disturbed him when I spoke to him; he would answer reluctantly, out of politeness. I imagined him struggling with Tao’s ghost. But I needed to talk, to say something, no matter what, to ask questions to which I wouldn’t demand answers; Hans’s silence left me
defenceless. Silence is the cruellest medium for panic; it turns doubt into an obsession, darkness into claustrophobia. What were they going to do with us? Death was prowling around us; I could have touched it but I was afraid to provoke it. I listened out for a voice or an animal cry that would burst through that awful, crushing silence, but it was pointless. Outside, the night was like a sarcophagus; it stank of mustiness and rotting flesh. I was scared …

In the morning, a teenage boy brought us something to eat: a kind of thick, lumpy soup. The smell alone made me nauseous.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘Here we eat and don’t ask questions. It isn’t every day we have something to get our teeth into.’

The boy seemed bored, as if he was being forced to do tasks he hated. He was very tall, with prominent shoulder blades, an angular face and a tuft of frizzy hair cut into a diamond shape in the middle of his shaven skull. A tattoo showing a girl’s face and the letter
f
adorned his right shoulder. I turned and held out my arms so that he could untie me. He stepped back warily.

‘How can we eat with our hands behind our backs?’ I said.

‘Does sir need a trolley?’ the giant grunted, appearing suddenly as if emerging out of the stone. ‘A chromeplated trolley with embroidered white place mats, silver cutlery and crystal glasses?’

He chased away the boy, who left without hurrying, then pushed the pan in my direction with his foot.

‘If you really want to feel Africa at its most authentic, you just have to smell your meal. Of course, it looks like
vomit, but isn’t it already a foretaste of the great journey of initiation?’

‘How can we possibly eat with these chains?’

‘By licking the pan, like animals.’

He walked over to Hans, who was still lying on his side.

‘He’s been hurt,’ I said.

The giant bent over Hans and pulled up his shirt to see the state of the wound. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he muttered. ‘He’ll get over it.’

‘I’m a doctor. I need to examine him.’

‘I tell you it isn’t serious.’

‘And I tell you his wound will get infected if—’

With one hand, he grabbed me by the throat, stifling the rest of my protest.

‘Don’t raise your voice to me,’ he said, opening wide his huge white eyes. ‘I hate that.’

His fingers closed over my carotid artery; their throbbing reached my temples.

‘You’re in Africa … you’re in my home, and here, I’m the master. When you talk to Joma, you take care what you say … And stop looking at me like that or I’ll gouge your eyes out with a toothpick.’

My brain was starting to lack air.

‘Have you got that?’

Spit from his mouth spattered my face. Scornfully, he pushed me away.

‘I don’t like you,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He made as if to leave the cave, then turned back, shaking with suppressed rage as if an age-old resentment, silenced for centuries, had caught up with him and
overwhelmed him. In his massive face, as black as coal, his nostrils quivered in time with the spasms making his cheeks twitch.

‘You must be wondering what kind of creature I am, not enough of a primate to be tamed, nor human enough to be moved.’

‘I don’t know what you’re insinuating.’

His hand landed on my cheek, so hard that my skull bounced off the rock. In a sudden surge of pride and revolt, I stood up again to confront him. Our breaths met. He raised his arm. I defied him, my neck stretched to breaking point. Unable to make me back down, he gave up on the idea of hitting me again and left the cave like a devil deserting the body of a possessed man.

On the second day, it was the boy with the lensless glasses who brought us our food. Again, that rancid, sticky goo that left a rotten aftertaste on the palate and made us belch for hours on end. At first, I didn’t think I could swallow a mouthful without throwing up, but hunger masks nutritional horrors the way spices conceal bland food … The boy gave a start when I pushed the pan away with my foot. Not grasping the meaning of my gesture, he didn’t take much notice of it; he was only surprised that I could turn down a meal. He sat down on a bump in the ground and, with his sabre between his thighs, looked at me with a curious stare. Since the attack on the yacht, this boy had intrigued me. His gaze was an enigma; there was no way to guess what was brewing behind it. His eyes were small – light brown, surrounded by a sandy white, the edges of the irises gnawed by tiny milky pellets – but inscrutable,
and so fascinating that they almost overshadowed the rest of his face. They were the only things you saw above a puny body, two arms barely thicker than broomsticks and two legs straight as crutches … Eyes as troubling as a sudden, inexplicable sense of dread.

‘Joma isn’t easy to get on with,’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s best not to tease him. He goes crazy sometimes for no reason.’

Unsure where he was trying to lead me, I refrained from reacting. Seeing him there with his sabre, while Hans and I were defenceless, didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

‘Are you really German?’

I didn’t reply.

My silence offended him. His jaws clenched. He was barely containing his temper. He adjusted his lensless glasses, examined his nails, sniffed and muttered, ‘Do I look like a spy?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Do I look like a spy?’

‘I never said you were.’

‘Then why don’t you answer me? I’m not trying to grill you.’

Again, I said nothing. I was afraid that a clumsy remark on my part might upset him. The look in his eyes, the way he fiddled with his glasses and worried about his fingers, his various facial expressions, sometimes vague, sometimes more defined, suggested how deeply unstable he was.

‘Joma says you’re either mercenaries or spies.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Of course, the others don’t believe him. Joma reads too many books; he sees the bad in everyone. Plus, he’s allergic to white people.’

‘If the others don’t agree with him, why don’t they let us go?’ Hans asked, still lying curled up, without turning.

‘They’re not in charge. Joma isn’t either. It’s Chief Moussa who gives the orders.’

‘Where is Chief Moussa?’ I said.

‘Don’t know.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘When he feels like it. He has to get rid of the boat first …’

He scratched his back with his sabre, embarrassed. He wanted to talk, but had run out of ideas. I needed him to talk, in order to know who his accomplices were, what they were planning to do with us, where we were; above all, I needed to get an idea of our chances of getting out of here, to believe in them with the force of desperation, just as a condemned man who has exhausted every possibility and refuses to give up believes in a miracle. I thought there was a chance I could get through to the boy. Who was to say? Surely there was no such thing as a criminal completely resistant to emotion; as long as he had something resembling a soul, however deeply buried it was in his animal-like nature, it was still possible to reach him provided you could find a chink in his armour.

‘Are you also allergic to white people?’ I asked, in order to encourage him to continue.

‘Not especially,’ he replied, pushing his spectacles up towards his eyebrows. ‘I don’t meet them often. The first time I saw a white person for real was three years ago. It was a guy from the Red Cross. For Joma, the Red Cross is a modern version of the missionaries. You know, those guys in cassocks who used to spread the good word among
the tribes. Joma is convinced they’re the same bunch of spies, except that the white fathers had the Bible, and the medics have vaccines.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I objected. ‘How can he say something as stupid as that? The Red Cross is a nongovernmental body. It takes action where you live and where we live too. A lot of people working for it have paid with their lives for the help they gave others. They’re everywhere where people suffer, without distinction of colour of skin or religion. They don’t baulk in the face of war, dictatorships, epidemics, or imprisonment. Your friend is being unfair and way off the mark. If he can’t recognise one of the most generous acts of our time, it’s because he’s blind and heartless.’

‘Personally, I don’t give a damn. Whether they’re spies or mercenaries isn’t going to change anything in my life. And besides, I’m not into politics.’

‘This Joma, is he the big guy with the amulets?’

‘They’re real amulets from a great marabout. Each one has a special power. They protect him against fear, bad luck, betrayal and bullets.’

‘Be that as it may, Joma is wrong. He should wear an amulet against prejudice.’

‘That’s in his nature. It’s the way he is, and that’s all there is to it.’

He listened out, went and made sure that nobody was near the cave and came back and sat down next to me. There was a more moderate look in his eyes now.

‘Why do you always carry that sabre with you?’ I asked, trying to win him over. ‘We’re chained up and we have no desire to fight.’

He shook his head. ‘It isn’t a sabre,’ he said cautiously, ‘it’s a machete.’

‘It’s a formidable weapon.’

‘It’s a piece of old iron. It’s the way you use it that makes it formidable.’

Outside, the giant started yelling at his men. The boy gave a small enigmatic smile and shrugged his angular shoulders.

‘So you’re really German?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow! … Do you know Beckenbauer?’ he asked suddenly.

The change of subject was so incongruous, I wondered for a few seconds if I had heard correctly. ‘Franz Beckenbauer?’

‘Yeah … Have you met him?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you live in Germany?’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t possible. You can’t live in the same country and not have met him.’

‘Oh, yes, you can. There are people who live in the same building and never meet their neighbours.’

‘That’s crazy. Here, everybody knows everybody … My father would have given anything to meet Beckenbauer. He was a fan of his. The only poster we had in the house was of Beckenbauer dribbling past an opponent with his arm in a bandage. It had been pinned to the wall a long time before I was born. And whenever my father stood in front of the poster, he’d shake with excitement … There were no other pictures in the house. Not of grandfather
who died by falling down a well, or grandmother who I didn’t know …’

I couldn’t quite follow him.

He was biting his nails like a rodent.

‘I think I heard the name Beckenbauer before any other,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘My father wanted to be called the Kaiser, but in the village, everyone, young or old, called him Beckenbauer. It’s true, he had class, my father. He was tall and cool-headed, and he played for the local club. It wasn’t really a club, more a bunch of idlers running after a punctured ball on a dusty stretch of waste ground all day long. Whenever anyone scored a goal, he’d jump up and box the air then wave to the “stand”. The stand was a handful of kids and a few goats grazing in the bush … My father played centre back. He wore a captain’s armband even though he wasn’t the captain of the team, and a white shirt with a big number 5 on the back that he’d drawn with a felt-tipped pen. His shorts he’d cut out of a pair of trousers and soaked for days in a dye he’d made himself to turn them black. He loved wearing the colours of the German national team, a white shirt and black shorts. The shirt was okay, but for the black shorts, my father had got the formula and quantities wrong when he made the dye. After the match, he started getting spots on his buttocks and around his genitals. And the next day, he was really sick and walked around as if he’d shit in his pants.’