Orfane threw me a dressing gown and suggested I take the bench near the window. A waxed cardboard tray was waiting for me on the bedside table: steaming hot soup, a plate of salad, white bread and a slice of smoked fish. I threw myself greedily on the food. Orfane took a can of beer from a mini refrigerator, handed it to me and went into the bathroom to wash. When he came out again, wrapped in a thick white loincloth, he went to fetch a bottle of soda from the fridge and opened it with his thumb.
‘Would you like another beer?’
‘No, thanks … Is that your wife?’ I asked, pointing to the photograph of a black woman on the desk, next to another photo in which three black men were posing with a white man.
He gave a broad smile. ‘That’s my mother when she was thirty.’
I looked at the photograph in its wooden frame. The woman appeared lost in thought. There was something graceful and proud about her. Bruno had told me that Africans worshipped their mothers, convinced that no prayer would be granted without Mama’s blessing.
‘She’s very beautiful,’ I said.
‘Of course, my father was the village chief.’
He drank from the bottle, put it down on the bedside table and lowered the volume a little on the stereo.
‘Nina Simone, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” … That’s my sedative. That and Marvin Gaye. When Marvin sings, the black clouds dissolve and summer floods my thoughts …’
‘I like him,’ I said. ‘He’s magical.’
‘Isn’t he?’
The bench creaked beneath his athletic body. He reached out his arm and picked up the photo of the four men. There was something very tender in that movement of the hand. He showed me the photo. The men were standing in a crowded, smoky bar. One of the black men, a stocky man in a docker’s cap and a coat that was too big for him, was visibly delighted to be having his photograph taken with the other three.
‘That’s my father, the white man’s Joe Messina, that’s Robert White, and that one’s Eddie Willis … There’s an incredible story behind this photo.’ He put it back down on the edge of the desk. ‘It was my father who taught me about music. He was the village chief, like I said, and very spoilt. He always asked for records for his birthday, and he celebrated his birthday every time a hit song came out. He loved black American music. Our house almost collapsed under the weight of all the records: Otis Redding, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Abbey Lincoln … We had to move whole boxes of them to see where to put our feet. It drove my mother crazy. My father was the only one who knew his way around. He knew exactly where to find such and such a track. My father had a particular weakness for the Funk Brothers. One morning, he left his rosewood throne, his ostrich feather headdress and his sceptre cut from a baobab tree and disappeared. We thought he’d been kidnapped or murdered, but we never found his body or any trace of him. He’d vanished into thin air, just like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘One evening, three years later, he came back to the village. Without warning … He’d gone to the United States, on a “pilgrimage” to Detroit. He’d crossed whole countries with no money and no papers, done whatever pitiful little jobs he could find to pay for a train or bus ticket, worked for months in ports waiting for the right boat and the right moment, and managed to stow away as far as Detroit. And why did he do all that? To be photographed with his idols, Joe Messina, Robert White and Eddie Willis. Just to be in a photo with those three guys. No more, no less. The next day, with his trophy in the bag, he set off on the return journey.’
‘You’re exaggerating …’
‘I swear it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ he laughed, raising his right hand. ‘My father used to say: “Nations can’t survive without myths and young people can’t bloom without idols.” When those two points of reference are missing, things are a mess. African rulers refuse to admit that. That’s why they’re sending their people back into the Stone Age.’
I refrained from hazarding the slightest opinion on that subject.
‘Would you mind if I took everything off?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot, and I like to sleep naked.’
‘Put the air conditioning on.’
‘The electricity is supplied by a generator. It’s strictly rationed, and is switched off at ten o’clock, in other words, in the next fifteen minutes.’
Without waiting for my permission, he took off his loincloth, and his ebony body made a sharp contrast with the white sheets.
‘What’s your favourite kind of music, Dr Krausmann?’
‘Classical, obviously.’
‘I suspected as much. Of course, that’s quite natural for a descendant of Beethoven … I like everything. From Mozart to Alpha Blondy. I don’t discriminate on grounds of race or morality. It was when man detected a sound and a rhythm in noise that he discovered himself. And that made him superior to the other creatures. I love musicians. I love singers, from sopranos to choirboys, from baritones to rappers. Do you see, Dr Krausmann? Music is the only talent that God envies men.’
‘I agree with you, Dr Orfane.’
He increased the volume of the stereo and closed his eyes. ‘Are your parents still alive?’
‘My mother died years ago,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. And your father?’
‘Do you mind turning off the light?’
‘Of course not. What about the music?’
‘No, leave it on, please.’
‘You’re lucky. The stereo’s connected to a car battery. Generator or not, at Orfane’s place, it’s always party time.’
‘Good night, Dr Orfane.’
‘Good night, Dr Krausmann. I put a pair of trousers, a shirt and clean underwear out for you on the chair. We’re pretty much the same size, so they should fit you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You have quite a few boils and your complexion’s a bit off. We’ll have to take a look at all that tomorrow morning.’
He switched off the light.
Despite my tiredness and the softness of the sheets, I couldn’t get to sleep. My brain was whirring. I wasn’t thinking about anything specific, but every image, however vague, kept me in suspense as it spread through the maze of my insomnia. I thought of the most absurd things, only dismissing those connected with the ordeal I had been through. I had no desire to twist the knife in the wound. I didn’t have the strength. I wanted to fall into a sleep so deep that I would achieve oblivion. But my twisted muscles prevented me from unwinding. I lay on my right side, my left side, on my back, on my stomach, my head under the pillow, on my forearm, but it was impossible to get to sleep. I imagined myself at home, in my scented bed; the absence of Jessica stoked my obsessions. I thought about Frankfurt, my surgery, my patients. There was no way to loosen the hold my anxieties had over me. In desperation, I stared up at the ceiling and listened to the damp, bloodless night ponder its nostalgia in the shelter of darkness. Orfane started snoring and muttering in his sleep. I got out of bed, went outside and sat down on the steps of the cabin. There was a big golden moon in the middle of the sky, so close that you could clearly see the outlines of its craters. Some shadowy figures were moving about near the tents. I felt like a beer but didn’t dare go and look for one in the fridge. The sickly-sweet breath of the desert blew on my naked torso. I sat there until my eyes began to blur with dizziness. I groped my way back to my bed in the dark. I think I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
The sun was at its height when I woke up. I put on the clothes Orfane had lent me and went to the office. Pfer offered me coffee and told me the fax had been sent and that our embassies would soon respond. I went back out to stretch my legs, but was intercepted by Orfane who marched me to the infirmary, gave me a thorough examination, and tended to my blisters and boils. On my way out of the treatment room, I came across Elena, who was tying up her laces next to her cabin. She looked rested and relaxed. Her face lit up when she saw me. She stood up and asked me from a distance if I had sle
pt well. I told her I’d slept like a log. She threw her head back with a delightful laugh and confessed that, in her case, they’d had to send for a deep-sea diver to bring her up out of her coma. Elena was sublime, with her hair hanging loose down to her hips and her bronzed, finely featured Andalusian face. She was wearing faded jeans, an open-necked shirt that revealed the pendant around her neck, and bright-yellow espadrilles. ‘It’s my day off,’ she said, to justify her casual dress. ‘As there’s nothing in the way of entertainment, at least I dress relaxed.’ Jessica would never have tolerated jeans on her body, let alone canvas shoes on her feet. Jessica was strict about the way she dressed; everything had to be impeccably cut, her made-to-measure suits had not a fold or a thread out of place. She would spend more time trying on a dress in a high-end shop than a surgeon operating on a seriously ill patient. I had often suggested she dress less formally, but to no avail. Both at home and in the city, she was inflexible on the matter. True, the clothes she chose perfectly matched her diaphanous skin and gave her platinum-blonde hair the lustre of sunlight. Jessica, my God! Jessica … When I was small, on my way home from school, I would deliberately make a wide detour in order to walk past a magnificent house with a garden as beautiful as a dream. In short trousers, my satchel on my back, I would slow down to sneak a look at this residence, which compensated all by itself for the dullness of our suburb. I loved the glittering tiles on its roof, the sophisticated lines of its façade, the marble columns standing guard on either side of the flowery front steps, the monumental oak door. I wondered what the people who lived inside were like, what luxury and opulence they must be familiar with, and if, once night had fallen and the lights were out, their sleep gave them as much joy as the comfort with which they were surrounded. One day, coming back from school, I saw an ambulance outside the front door of the beautiful residence and neighbours on the pavement watching stretcher-bearers bring out a corpse. I learnt later that the wealthy old woman who had lived alone in that dream house had been dead for many days without anybody noticing … Thinking of Jessica, it was that splendid residence that came spontaneously to my mind. Behind my happy marriage, something had been decomposing without my knowledge. Just like that woman who had been so fortunate and so cruelly forgotten in her gilded tomb …
‘Are you all right?’ Elena asked me.
‘Er, yes … why?’
‘I don’t know. For a second, you looked sick.’
I smiled. ‘I’m not yet fully recovered.’
‘Oh, you know, everything gets back to normal in the end.’
‘The quicker, the better, as far as I’m concerned.’
She cast a professional eye over me then, reassured, told me that all good people deserved food and suggested we go and eat. But before that, she took a little camera from her pocket and took a photograph of me. Without asking for my permission. Not that I could have resisted her anyway.
The canteen was a small oblong room between the kitchens and the wash house. Four doctors and a pastor were sitting at a table in the corner, listening to a young black man with his arm in plaster telling anecdotes that had them doubled up with laughter. Elena waved to them as we passed. We collected the trays from a round table, served ourselves at the counter, and sat down next to a window whose twill blinds filtered the dusty light from outside. ‘Your colleagues are in a good mood,’ I whispered in Elena’s ear. ‘In Africa laughter is second nature, Kurt,’ she said. Her ‘Kurt’ touched me deep inside. She apologised for the frugality of the meals, and explained that as the roads weren’t safe and the supply convoys were regularly attacked and hijacked by outlaws, the authorities were forced to supply the camp by air. As there was only one freighter aircraft to serve all the camps, it was rotated in a random way, and sometimes they lacked basic foodstuffs for weeks, which was why the director insisted on a severely restricted diet. I assured her that after the disgusting stuff the pirates had given me out of rotten cans, it would be ridiculous of me to turn my nose up. Her hand came to rest on mine. ‘Oh, I can imagine,’ she sighed. The touch of her fingers and the musky smell of her skin were strangely comforting, and I hoped deep in my heart that she would not take her hand away immediately.
After the meal, Elena showed me around the camp. Then we walked to the other side of the fence and looked around a huge building site some hundreds of metres away. Elena told me that this was a pilot village intended for refugees who had been forced to leave their lands. A broad avenue cut the site in two. On either side, buildings were going up, some still at the foundation stage, others almost finished. Woodwork and roofs were still missing, but the work seemed to be advancing, given the dozens of workers bustling about and the profusion of wheelbarrows and hacksaws.
‘The refugees don’t only need food and medical care,’ Elena said. ‘They need to regain their dignity, too. They’re building this village themselves. Of course, architects and supervisors came from Europe to get things going, but the refugees are doing the actual construction. They’re happy to have the work and plans for the future. A little further south, we’ve built farms and laid out orchards. The farms are run by widows so that they can provide for their families. The orchards have been entrusted to shepherds who’ve turned into farmers. And they seem to like it. Soon, the first houses will be ready and this village will be born. Initially, we’ll be able to house forty-three families. By the end of the year, we’ll have room for another sixty-five. Isn’t that wonderful? When we set up the camp two years ago, there wasn’t a single hut left within a radius of a hundred kilometres. It was like the valley of shadows. And now look what we’re doing. I’m so proud.’
‘So you should be, it’s quite an achievement. Congratulations.’
‘The village will be called Hodna City. In Arabic, it means something like “reassurance”.’
‘It’s a pretty name. It sounds good.’
Elena was delighted. She was full of an almost childlike enthusiasm, and her shining eyes danced with light.
‘Over there, we have a school. Three classes of forty pupils each, and six native teachers, all survivors of atrocities. Plus a football pitch, with wooden goalposts. You’ll see, after classes all the kids rush to watch the match … We’re trying to give these people a normal life. And they’re ready for it. They’ve already forgiven.’
She paused here for a moment or two before resuming as volubly as before. She told me there was also going to be a big assembly hall, a library, perhaps a cinema, a traditional market in the square, stalls and cafés in the avenue, and lots of other facilities.
‘Do you have a barber anywhere around here?’ I asked. ‘I have to get rid of this fleece on my face.’
‘Yes, we do. A really good one.’
Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting on a stool in the open air, a towel around my neck and foam on my face, at the mercy of Lotta Pedersen’s razor and scissors. The Scandinavian gynaecologist was magnificent in her role as an occasional hairdresser. And as she rehabilitated my image, a swarm of kids stood around us and laughed uproariously at the sight of a woman shaving a man.
A gaudy turban around his head, Bruno sat twiddling his thumbs in the doorway of the administrative block. He had washed and spruced himself up, made friends among the storekeepers – which explained the brand-new kamis and Saharan flip-flops that he was wearing – but he hadn’t touched a hair of his Rasputin-like beard. With prayer beads around his finger and kohl on his eyelids, he looked like a sheikh about to address the masses. But he wasn’t happy: he was grim-faced and his nostrils were quivering. He had tried several times to get through to Djibouti by phone, and each time he had heard ringing at the other end, the line had been cut off. Bruno suspected the switchboard operator of stopping him from contacting the outside world. It was quite likely, he said, that the director of the camp had received instructions from the government to keep our situation secret. How else to account for the fact that neither the French nor the German embassy had reacted to the fax they had been
sent early that morning?
Pfer assured us that the fax had indeed reached its destination and that his supervisors in Khartoum were making the necessary arrangements with the relevant authorities.
The next day, there was still no news from Khartoum. Bruno and I spent the whole morning in Pfer’s office, waiting for the fax to screech or the phone to ring. About midday, the switchboard operator managed to make contact with Djibouti and Bruno burst into sobs on recognising his partner’s voice at the end of the line. Then his laughter burst out through his tears. I didn’t understand what he was saying in Arabic, but it was clear that the line was vibrating with the overflow of emotion. Bruno wiped himself with his turban, hiccuped, grinned, struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, jumped up and down on his seat, and every now and again let out shrill cries. His partner passed the phone, one by one, to family members, neighbours, the shopkeeper opposite, an old friend, whoever, and I imagined all these people hearing the news, stopping whatever they were doing and rushing to the phone to say how happy they were to learn that their dear Frenchman was still alive and how they couldn’t wait to see him again in the flesh. The conversations went on. Sometimes, Bruno was forced to wait while the next speaker was fetched from the other end of the street or a bedridden old acquaintance who absolutely had to talk to him was helped from his bed and dragged to the phone. Silences were followed by euphoric yells, and again tears and laughter mingled. By the time he hung up, Bruno was transformed. He was in seventh heaven, and his eyes sparkled. He gave me a big hug, then grabbed Pfer and danced like an orphan who’d been given his family back.
The African Equation Page 20