“No, he didn’t die. He’s just hurt.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“Sure. It doesn’t look too bad.”
“Shit.”
In the rearview mirror, Lionel saw Vauthier close his eyes. And suddenly he was afraid he might drift off and not wake up again, like an exhausted mountain climber in a blizzard. He had to keep talking to him, to keep him awake, provoke him even, so that he would mobilize all his strength and not let death come any nearer.
“There’s something I don’t get, Vauthier. Why do you hate Marc so much?”
Vauthier opened his eyes and stared at the gray canvas ceiling splattered with spots of dirty grease.
“Hatred . . . ” he said thoughtfully. “How can you explain hatred?”
He was still holding the open water bottle in his outstretched hand. Now he raised it to his lips, but spilled some water on his face. He shook his jowls like a dog shaking itself. His eyes were shining with something like joy.
“Hatred is happiness. You don’t know that yet, do you? It’s a passion, a reason for living. It’s a real luxury. Maybe the only luxury.”
Lionel observed this monologue out of the corner of his eye. He was glad he’d attained his goal: Vauthier was no longer drifting off. But now he mustn’t get too excited.
“Hatred is as strong as love. Except you don’t need to ask the other person for their opinion.”
He took another swallow of water and moved his dry lips to soften them.
“Okay,” said Lionel, “but why Marc?”
It was actually a question he’d been wanting to ask for a long time, a question he could also ask himself, because he’d disliked Marc, too, even long before Maud went off with him.
“It’s like love, I told you. There’s nothing to understand. You can never understand. You can always find reasons, but they’re false.”
Lionel suddenly got the impression that Vauthier was having more difficulty breathing.
“There’s just one condition,” he added, his voice hoarser and not as loud, but forced, as if he wanted to get his message across. “To hate, you need someone who’s like you.”
“You think that you and Marc are alike?”
“Not identical. Not equal. But similar. Look at the people around here. Look at their hatred. They’re different. But similar.”
Vauthier let out a long, loud moan, almost a stifled cry. Lionel saw he was holding his stomach.
“Are you all right?”
Vauthier’s entire body was taut, writhing with a searing pain. It was taking his breath away, as if he’d received a violent punch in the stomach. The spasm lasted a few seconds, then he relaxed. Lionel wondered if he should stop or, rather, wave to the others to go faster, in hopes of reaching the hospital sooner.
“In any case, tell him something for me,” continued Vauthier, his voice scarcely audible. “Tell him, you swear?”
“Tell who? Marc?”
“Yes.”
“I swear. What is it?”
“He’ll find out anyway but I want it to come from me.”
“What will he find out?”
There was another spasm. Vauthier was holding his stomach with both hands. Blood was oozing out through his fingers clenched against his wound.
“His explosives . . . ”
“Well?”
“In town, you remember when we stopped for the night?”
“At UN headquarters?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“We took them out. We couldn’t take the risk.”
“You mean . . . ”
“There’s nothing left in his truck. Nothing.”
The road had just passed below a fortress, one of those castles that had been the glory of Bosnia in the Middle Ages. For centuries its parapets and crenellated towers had been keeping watch over the place where two valleys opened out. Once a front line, now the place was deserted, and no invader would dream of going by there. In winter the old walls served as a refuge for jackdaws and raptors.
Oddly enough, instead of being reassuring, this human vestige made the stony landscape even more desolate and gloomy. An image of strength vanquished by time, the fortress clinging to its rock made all human endeavor to conquer death seem derisory. These surroundings left an overwhelming impression of fragility, cold, and extreme solitude. A heavy silence reigned in each of the vehicles.
In the silence Filipović heard the faint sound of a car horn far behind him. He opened his window and leaned out. The convoy had stopped and he was a hundred yards ahead. He motioned to his driver to halt and he got out.
“Stay here,” he said to Alex, still sitting behind. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
The snow was melting in the sun and the general’s military boots sank in, leaving deep footprints on the road. When he reached the convoy he saw that Lionel had gotten out of his truck and walked over to the one Maud was driving; he was leaning against the door.
Filipović went over to Marc’s side; Marc rolled down the window.
“What’s going on?”
All three of them were silent, their faces haggard. Lionel had one arm on Maud’s window and was staring into space. A Croatian soldier had sold him some weed back at the hut. Now he’d made a huge joint and was taking long, deep puffs.
“Vauthier’s dead,” said Marc.
This was sad news, of course. But no surprise to Filipović, who knew how bad his wound was. He thought the others knew, too; it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to them. He could not understand why they looked so downcast, particularly as he knew their story, and knew that they had any number of reasons to despise Vauthier.
“It’s tragic, of course,” he said. “But you knew it might happen, didn’t you?”
They didn’t answer, so he followed another line of thought. Maybe they were worried about the legal consequences of his death.
“You cannot be accused of anything. It was legitimate defense.”
Still the silence, and Lionel noisily inhaling his smoke. Maud held her face in her hands. Finally Marc spoke, eyes lowered.
“That’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
“The explosives . . . ”
“Well?”
“You know I came back because of that.”
“Yes, I understood,” said the general somewhat formally. “You implied as much. Thank you. Our poor people will be truly grateful. And all of you—”
Marc was getting impatient. Shaking his good arm, he moved his torso, and this hurt his shoulder. He made a face.
“No, no. Don’t say that. When you find out . . . ”
“Find out what?”
“That bastard Vauthier and his cop buddies removed the explosives from the truck.”
“What do you mean?”
“We stopped for one night in town, at a UN building. Apparently, they took the opportunity to search the load. We did all that for nothing.”
Marc did not have the outlet of tears. For him, sorrow took the form of a rush of dry-eyed rage. He thought about the bridge they would not destroy, the war that would go on, the helplessness of the world, with which he could not reconcile himself. Filipović held out his hand and squeezed his arm.
“Listen, Marc, it’s normal for you to be disappointed. Only a few days ago if you had told me this I would have been desperate. But now everything has changed.”
“I don’t see why.”
It was only then that Filipović understood. The convoy had been on the road and they must not have heard. Everything had fallen into place so quickly.
“Of course, how could you know . . . There was a massacre in Sarajevo, at a market. The international community was unanimous in its condemnation, and at last they decided to do something. NATO has entere
d the war. Their planes have been bombing every day.”
Maud lifted her head and Marc looked at Filipović, stunned.
“And guess what one of their first targets was . . . the bridge over the Drina!”
“The one we wanted to blow up with our explosives?”
“The very one. There’s nothing left. You should see it.”
Maud and Marc looked at each other, incredulous. But Filipović, more and more excited, continued his story.
“They’ve been striking barracks as well. You should see them run, those bastards. They don’t know where to hide now. Planes are attacking tanks, troop convoys, artillery posts. And in the meantime our own forces have been advancing. We’re winning, do you understand?”
“There will be peace soon,” said Maud, thinking suddenly of the little girls in the hut.
“And it’s victory they need, first and foremost!” exclaimed Filipović.
Marc’s very words. She looked at him. He had closed his eyes. His features had softened and for the first time, in the pale light of the snowy day, she saw his nighttime face.
Then everyone suddenly relaxed and they all burst out laughing. Even Lionel, still leaning on the window, roused himself.
Filipović reached into his pocket for a flask, and they all drank to this happiness that had returned, by way of defeat.
Alex, all the while, was still waiting for the general. He climbed out of the old jeep to stretch his legs. The news of Bouba’s marriage was beginning to sink in, and he felt less pain, less trouble. It had been a blow, and now it left him feeling as if he were recovering from a bad hangover. He realized he had spent all these weeks in a trance.
He walked a few steps ahead of the command car, looking off into the distance. It was twilight, and invisible veils in the sky were tinted orange and green. The mountaintops were already dark. Suddenly, from the snowy north, he saw a flock of wading birds heading due south. They were in perfect formation, powerful and serene as they flew off into the distance.
Alex thought that he, too, ought to be looking for a new place of exile, but this time he would go far away from the cold climate, from these mountains he’d thought were his own, under love’s illusion.
With a smile he decided he, too, would leave and head for the sun.
AFTERWORD
Some readers might be surprised that I decided to use the English word “checkpoint” as the title for this book. It is true that unlike “checklist” or “checkup,” the word “checkpoint” does not yet have an entry in French language dictionaries. And yet to me it seems the word has no real equivalent, and that it has acquired an almost universal use, including in our language. The official translation, “point de contrôle” (or “poste de contrôle”), is not really satisfactory. It only covers one of the word’s meanings: that which refers to a classic military use, for example the famous checkpoint between West and East Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie.
The checkpoints to be found in many places on the globe are not nearly as well-ordered. They reflect the chaos, violence, and fragmentation endemic to countries in the midst of civil war—in the Middle East, in Africa, or in Eastern Europe. In these extreme situations, the border is everywhere. Every man becomes the guardian of his own territory. A rope strung across a road, a few shacks made of leaves, often rudimentary weapons, and there you are, at a checkpoint.
From a metaphorical point of view, the checkpoint has also become the symbol of the passage from one world to another, from one established ensemble of values to its converse, a door onto the unknown, perhaps danger.
Today, in particular since the bloody attacks upon France in January and November 2015, we are experiencing a radical shift. We feel we are standing at a mental border now. The need for security tends to prevail over all other considerations. It would be an illusion to think that humanitarian work will be left out of this transformation of mentalities.
For half a century we dreamt of ourselves as kindly, generous, and charitable. Humanitarian, in other words. Conflicts unfolded elsewhere, far away, and those citizens who wanted, here, to get involved did so according to the ideals of Henri Dunant: humanity, impartiality, neutrality.
Over recent years, this peace-loving face of humanitarian work has yielded several times to military involvement. To assist the populations of Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, the international community finally resolves to arm them. First it was supplies that were parachuted, then before long it was weapons. The United States, with a head start of fifteen years in its confrontation with terrorism, has long been converted to offensive intervention: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, they bombed in the name of human rights. Once again, they were pointing the way to the future, and now everyone in the West is ready to imitate them. Because the victims are no longer far away, now, but close at hand. It is no longer just the Other who is made to suffer; it is we ourselves.
This evolution does not only concern states and their armies; it reflects a debate that concerns each of us.
This novel dramatizes these contradictions, questions, and heartbreak. It has been constructed like a sort of in camera road movie. Through their own personal drama, the five characters confined in the cabs of the two trucks experience in real time a radical change of their world, a change in which all convictions are overturned. They have embarked on a “classic” humanitarian mission—to deliver food and medicine to civilian victims of the war; they will go through real checkpoints but also confront a more essential mental border. What do the “victims” need—to survive or to win? Where must aid go: to their animal side, demanding sustenance and shelter, or to their strictly human side, demanding the wherewithal to fight, even at the risk of self-sacrifice?
To illustrate these dilemmas I decided to drive the trucks across the territory of another war, in Bosnia. This choice allowed me to divest this book of anything that might have seemed too preoccupied with the details of an unstable present, where ephemeral adventures occult essential issues. The war in the former Yugoslavia happened long enough ago to seem almost forgotten. One does not need to know it in detail to understand what the characters in this book are going through. Everything one needs to know can be found in the course of the book. This war is simply one example of chaos, without the exoticism of Africa or Asia necessarily setting it at a greater emotional distance. This is Europe tearing itself apart, a Europe where everyone has decided to take up arms for protection against the threat they are afraid of. There is a bit of our present day in this long-ago past and, I fear, a great deal of our future.
But Bosnia also brings to the story the splendor of its landscape, the cold beauty of winter: monotonous and subtle, it only unveils itself gradually, through slow observation. Above all, Bosnia enabled me to fill this book with images that are also personal memories, buried deep in my mind, memories I thought I’d forgotten.
One episode in particular affected me deeply. In the middle of one winter during the war, after a long journey in an uncomfortable armored vehicle, I went into the power plant in Kakanj, and I got a shock. All the machinery fallen silent, crows croaking as they flew over the site, the dirty snow clinging to the black mass of the plant’s huge corrugated iron sheds: it all came together to make the site into a representation of the end of the world. A detachment of peacekeepers, from the French Engineers, were guarding that desolate place to prevent any further massacres. When a young sapper opened one of the huge coal ovens for me and in the dim light I saw a family of refugees huddling against the metal for its faint warmth, I felt that here was the stage set of a tragedy. But at the same time the young French soldier, as he spoke to one of the daughters of the family, looked at her in a way that clearly showed the two of them were in love. So at the very heart of what was so inhuman, a sort of hope went on living. All sorts of reversals were possible: those who had come to offer their protection, instead of fighting, were making love. But one could sense that in the na
me of that love, those soldiers might come back again someday, alone, and really fight. I promised myself I would make that scene into a novel one day. And then I forgot about it.
In the meantime, the world has changed, and very quickly. Now from the Eastern Christians to the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, from the kidnapped girls of Nigeria to the beheaded hostages in Syria, there are new victims everywhere, and in them I see the face I glimpsed that day in Kakanj, the fiancée of the coal ovens.
One would like to love these victims with a special kind of love: the love that is a call to arms.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jean-Christophe Rufin is one of the founders of Doctors Without Borders and a former Ambassador of France in Senegal. He has written numerous bestsellers, including The Abyssinian, for which he won the Goncourt Prize for a debut novel in 1997. He also won the Goncourt Prize in 2001 for Brazil Red.
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