The African Equation

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘There’s someone there,’ he exclaimed, stretching his arm out towards the village.

  A figure was walking up and down the village square, a dog at its heels, going from one hut to another and bending to pick things up. It was a man. He was alone. The village seemed uninhabited. Bruno took back the binoculars and swept every corner, alert to a trap. But there was nothing to alarm us. The man was calmly going about his business. We decided to try our luck.

  As we approached the huts, we noticed forms lying on the ground. The man didn’t seem to notice the roar of the truck, and continued to pick things up without paying any attention to us. The doors of the huts were wide open, but nothing moved inside. No women or children. The forms lying in the dust were animals, and they didn’t move. There were two donkeys in the square, some goats in the middle of an enclosure, a dromedary lying in its trough, and here and there some dogs with twisted bodies. All of these animals were dead.

  ‘Something bad happened here,’ Bruno said.

  The man was gathering branches and leaves in the square. His arms were laden with bundles of sticks. He hadn’t yet noticed us, in spite of the noise of our vehicle; maybe he was deliberately ignoring us. His dog, which had run away when it heard us arrive, started back towards its master, although without going too close, ready to scuttle away again. It made a curious impression on me, with its ears down and its tail between its hind legs: it seemed to be in a state of shock.

  We parked the pick-up at the entrance to the village and got out, our senses on the alert. The animals were lying in pools of blood. There were bloodstains everywhere, some indicating where bodies had been dragged. Bullet cartridges glittered amid the stones. As slowly as a sleepwalker, the man went over to one of the huts, laid his burden down and came back to get the pieces of wood that marked off the enclosure where the goats had been killed. Bruno said something to him in an African dialect, but the man didn’t hear him. He was a doddery old fellow with a stooped back and white hair, as thin and dry as a nail. His face was chiselled, with hollow cheeks that made the bones stand out. His absent gaze seemed to be swallowed up by the curdled white of his shaded eyes.

  A terrible buzzing came from the hut. Human corpses lay inside it, besieged by thousands of frenzied flies. You could see arms and legs, the bodies of women and children heaped one on top of the other, some naked and displaying open wounds. Paralysed by the sight, we were immediately overcome by the terrible stench of putrefaction, a stench the scarves over our faces were unable to keep at bay.

  ‘I’ve seen lots of massacres in my life,’ Bruno said with a mixture of sorrow and disgust, ‘and every time it’s made me sick.’

  ‘Do you think it was Gerima’s men?’

  ‘I don’t see any tyre marks on the ground.’ He pointed to horse droppings and countless hoof prints in the sand. ‘These poor devils were attacked by horsemen. There are all kinds of criminal gangs operating like this. They decimate isolated families who are unfortunate enough to be in their path.’

  ‘I don’t understand what goes on in these monsters’ minds.’

  ‘A goldfish can’t bring the complexity of the ocean back to the tranquillity of its bowl, Dr Krausmann,’ Bruno said with a hint of reproach.

  ‘I don’t live on another planet,’ I retorted, exasperated that he could still come out with these insinuations after all I had been through.

  ‘Neither does a goldfish. But what does it know about storms? The world has become colour blind. On both sides, everything is either black or white, and nobody cares to put things into perspective. Good and evil are ancient history. These days, it’s a matter of predators and prey. The predators are obsessed with extending their living space, the prey with their survival.’

  ‘You’ve been too long in Africa, Bruno.’

  ‘What is Africa, or Asia or America?’ he said in disgust. ‘It’s all the same. Whether you call it a brothel or a whorehouse, it’s the soul that’s in it that determines its vocation. Whether you say “it smells bad” or “it stinks” doesn’t change the air around you. The South Pole is only the North Pole lying flat on its back, and the West is only the East on the other side of the street. And do you know why, Monsieur Krausmann? Because there are no more shades of grey. And when there are no more shades of grey, anybody can rationalise anything, even the worst atrocity.’

  Evening was starting to fall. The old man had finished his wood gathering, still walking back and forth in front of us, still ignoring us. Only once had he raised his hand, stopping Bruno dead in his tracks as he went to help him, and waited for the Frenchman to step back before continuing to gather branches; not once did he so much as glance at us. We had now been waiting there for half an hour, hoping he would pay us a moment’s attention. We needed to know where we were, if there was a town not too far from here, or a barracks, or anybody who could take charge of us. Bruno had tried to talk to the old man, taking care not to upset him, but it was as if he had been addressing a djinn, as if they walked right through each other like shadows. Was the old man blind and deaf? No, he could see and hear, he was simply refusing to talk to us. He stood there, dignified, outside the hut. From the way his lips were moving, we realised he was praying. Next, he grabbed a can of petrol that stood at his feet, poured its contents over the lifeless bodies, sprinkled the branches and the walls, struck a match and threw it into the hut. A blue flame spread over the bundles of wood, making first the foliage, then the straw flare up, and becoming thicker as it reached the walls. Soon, acrid smoke was escaping through the cracks in the roof while the crackling grew louder. The old man watched the fire spread its greedy tentacles, twist the branches in its flames, then, like a whirlwind, engulf the bodies and the few pieces of makeshift furniture surrounding them.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Bruno said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He won’t tell us anything and he won’t follow us.’

  ‘At least ask him. He might point us in the right direction.’

  ‘Monsieur Krausmann,’ Bruno cried irritably, ‘that man is just as dead as his family.’

  We got back in the pick-up. Bruno noisily engaged the gear stick, did a U-turn and set off into the gathering night. Turning, I saw the old man standing outside the blazing hut like a condemned soul at the gates of hell.

  We had chosen to bivouac near a cave.

  The stale smell of the regs spread through the coolness of the evening. A jackal barked somewhere. The night had returned to relieve the day of its mirages and give the darkness back its emptiness. Bruno and I hadn’t exchanged a word for more than an hour. We were each too busy putting our thoughts in order. We had lit a fire in the shelter of the cave, eaten dried meat, emptied a few cans of food and drunk a bitter coffee that hurt my palate, then, exhausted by all the driving, we got ready to sleep.

  Bruno threw a handful of sand over the fire to extinguish it and, unable to hold on any longer, went and urinated on a dune. Relieved, he spread a blanket over the ground, wiped the dust off his backside and lay down. I heard him moving about in search of a comfortable position. After a great deal of twisting and turning, he at last moaned with contentment, curled up and stopped moving. I knew he wouldn’t close his eyes until he had relived his old wanderings and reviewed, one by one, the people who had meant something to him. Every night until now, he had told me an episode of his African adventures, his encounters and his setbacks, his lost loves, his little deaths and his redemptions … I hoped against hope that he wouldn’t make an exception tonight. I needed him to talk to me, to make me drunk on his tribulations, to tell me about the women he hadn’t been able to hold on to, the opportunities he hadn’t been able to seize. His inspired voice might perhaps allow me to shrug off the guilty conscience that was infiltrating the furthest corners of my mind. Bruno was extraordinarily gifted at giving any disaster its dignity and finding a meaning in the unlikeliest things.

  ‘You haven’t uttered a single woman’s name since we’ve known each other,’ he sa
id all at once.

  The wind began to whistle through the cave while the shadows cast their spell over the nocturnal beasts you sensed in the darkness, far from their lairs, raking over a hunting field as dry as a bone. All the same, I was pleased to hear his voice. I would have liked him to talk about himself, and about Africa – his romanticism and his optimism would have been good therapy for me – but he had chosen to focus on me and, not expecting it, I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I can’t remember you ever having talked about women, Monsieur Krausmann. Is there someone in your life?’

  ‘I’m a widower,’ I said, hoping that he would change the subject.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment’s embarrassment. ‘Illness?’

  ‘An accident.’

  ‘A road accident?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Work-related?’

  ‘In a way.’

  He lifted himself on one elbow and looked at me, his cheek resting in the palm of his hand. ‘Curiosity is an African flaw,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody here knows where curiosity ends and impoliteness begins. But you’re not obliged to answer me.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t have anything very interesting to say about the subject,’ I assured him.

  ‘Then I shan’t insist.’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘I assume it is …’

  He lay back down, crossed his hands over his stomach, and gazed up at the myriad of stars in the sky.

  ‘I often think about Aminata,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s become of her, if she’s happy with her cousin, if she has children, if she still remembers the two of us … She seemed happy with me. I made her laugh a lot. I think she liked me. Maybe not as a lover, but at least as a friend … I’d picked her out among the girls in her tribe. She was very beautiful. A bit on the plump side, but really attractive. Eyes that sparkled like diamonds. And a smell like a meadow in springtime … I asked for her hand without consulting her, and the elder gave his permission. It’s a common practice among the Azawed … She could have refused. Nobody would have forced her. The elder informed her of my intentions, and she didn’t object … I don’t understand why she left. I try to find excuses for her, but I can’t. I can’t remember ever depriving her of anything. I was no thunderbolt in bed, but I performed my conjugal duties decently … Her cousin didn’t visit us often, and never alone or outside a religious or family celebration. Never once did I catch him and Aminata looking at each other in a suspicious way. Then suddenly, away they flew like turtle doves. Without any warning, without a word of explanation. I was devastated.’

  ‘Are you still angry with her?’

  ‘I’ve often been angry with myself, but never with her … There are things we can’t really explain. They come down on our heads like tiles off a roof, and that’s it … Do I miss her? I’m not sure. She was a good girl, a generous girl. I don’t have the feeling she betrayed me. She simply made a choice. Did she realise how much she was hurting me? Not for a second. Aminata didn’t have a bad thought in her head. She was sweet-natured, and quite innocent.’

  ‘You still love her.’

  ‘Mmm … I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you still love her.’

  ‘No, I assure you. It’s ancient history … Aminata, for me, remains a vague regret. A misunderstanding of the flesh … Anyway, that’s life: it only takes from us what it’s given us. Neither more nor less.’

  In the sky, the stars were trying to outshine each other.

  Now Bruno was waiting for me to speak, to tell him something. I think he really wanted to hear what I had to say. Just as he was turning his back on me to sleep, convinced that I wasn’t going to tell him any secrets, my voice anticipated my thoughts and I heard myself say, ‘She killed herself.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘My wife … She committed suicide.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  He didn’t add another word.

  I stared at the stars until they merged together. I was stiff and cold, barely aware of the hard stones I was lying on. When, hours later, Bruno started snoring, I turned on my side and, with wild eyes, waited patiently for dawn to restore to the day what night had stolen from it.

  9

  It took us four hours of hard driving over stones as sharp as shards of glass to go a mere seventy kilometres. The ground was terraced over an interminable succession of natural paving stones, all white-hot. The pick-up swayed over the cracks, jolting and settling in an unbearable clanking of old iron. The abrupt twists of the steering wheel were grinding my wrists to a pulp. I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I found it hard to believe that you could cross vast swathes of land without seeing any people or coming upon a village. That pirates should choose little-used roads was understandable, but that you could drive for hundreds of kilometres without glimpsing the merest hut with a semblance of life around it was driving me mad. Every time we thought we were on the verge of getting out of trouble, we found ourselves back at square one, in the middle of nowhere, facing the same inhospitable horizon and surrounded by hills crushed beneath an outrageously sovereign sun, which, after forcing the earth to its knees, was trying to subjugate the sky and its Olympians. Destiny was starting to wear the mask of farce: what was the point of going on, I wondered, since our fate was sealed? Seized with suicidal frustration, I felt like pressing down hard on the accelerator, closing my eyes and tearing straight ahead at breakneck speed …

  Bruno was in no better a state than me. He had stopped peering through his binoculars at our surroundings, or suggesting which way we should go. He sat in the passenger seat, his shoulder against the door, and dozed, even though disturbed by the discordant jolts of the truck. I was angry at him for not being more insistent with the old man the previous day. He might have pointed us in the right direction; he might even have agreed to come with us. But Bruno claimed to know Africans better than anybody, to know exactly when you should make demands on them and when not. I asked him how come, after three days’ driving, he had no idea where we were. After all, he claimed to have been a guide to Western journalists and scientific expeditions. He replied in a condescending tone that in this part of the world a guide was basically someone who kept strictly to the routes he knew by heart, since you just had to deviate one millimetre from the beaten track to put yourself in as much danger as any fool …

  We decided to rest in the shade of a monumental acacia whose branches were adorned with offerings to marabouts and ancestors: scarves, rag dolls, pieces of jewellery, combs tangled with hair, tiny terracotta pots at the bottom of which animal blood had dried. The area was strewn with dromedary droppings and traces of bivouacs. Near the revered tree, Bruno discovered a well without a coping, along with a rudimentary drinking trough. We washed ourselves from head to foot, cleaned our clothes and spread them over the burning stones to dry. Bruno dug out a pair of boxer shorts for me from the bottom of the duffle bag, but they were too big for me; I made do with a pair of Y-fronts and a vest, both still in their cellophane. I had lost a lot of weight. My body was covered in spots, some turning grey; I had a boil under my right armpit, with two others in my groin; my thighs had deep furrows in them and there was a thick whitish crust on my knees. Bruno preferred to stay naked. With his unkempt beard and reptilian hair, he looked like a guru. He performed a series of gymnastic moves, opened his arms wide and crossed them, crouched down and stood up again, twisted his neck so that the vertebrae cracked, then, in order to draw a smile from me, he turned his back to me and bent over to touch his toes, thus offering me the hairy indentation of his backside, which he began to wiggle in a coarse manner. He continued this clownish exhibition until I burst out laughing. Pleased with his success, he waved his arms about in a burlesque choreography and, now an angry witch doctor, now a ballerina, went from a mystic dance to a classical ballet with staggering ease. Dazzled by his sense of improvisation and his comic gifts, which I would never have suspected he posse
ssed, I laughed until the tears ran down my face, and it was as if I were expelling all the filth polluting my body and mind.

  We ate in the shade of the acacia and slept, cradled by the cool breeze.

  When I woke up, I found Bruno absorbed in the book by Joma Baba-Sy. When he closed it, he made an admiring pout. He lingered over the photo on the cover and admitted to me that he couldn’t believe a mass of rage and bestiality like Joma could harbour so much sensitivity … He reopened the book, skipped several pages, stopped at a particular poem and read it out loud:

  Africa,

  Death’s head,

  Bathing in the troubled waters

  Of your horizonless seas,

  What have your sunstruck bastards

  Made of your memory?

  On your ravaged shores

  Your ballads lie rotting

  Like flotsam

  And in your godless sky

  Your most pious wishes

  Chase their own echoes.

  Africa, my Africa

  What has become of your tom-toms

  In the silence of charnel houses?

  What has become of your griots

  In the blasphemy of weapons?

  What has become of your tribes

  In the deception of nations?

  I have questioned your rivers

  And your lost villages

  Looked for your trophies

  In the trances of your women

  Nowhere have I found

  Your age-old legends.

  Your kings are deposed

  Like your statues of wood

  The voice of your traditions

  Has faded and died

  Your stories are told

  In praise of tyrants

  Your destiny denies you

  Like a rejected mother

  And none of my prayers