Fame (17 page)

“Come in.” I opened the door. “Come in, everyone!”

In Danger

I
thought we were going to crash. My God, have you ever been through anything like that?”

Elisabeth shook her head. This time she too had thought this was it: the tiny plane had emitted cracks and groans as it was carried by huge gusts of wind and the packages of medicines had been hurled around in every direction in the cargo bay that stank of metal and gasoline. One of the doctors had been struck in the head, and they’d had to put a pressure bandage on it to stanch the flow of blood. But Leo had sat there calmly the whole time, pale but upright, a narrow, crooked smile on his face.

“I wonder,” he tilted his head back, stretched his arms, and turned around, “why we find this beautiful. Some grass, a few trees, a lot of sky. Why is it like coming home?”

“Not so loud!” She felt dizzy, she had to sit down on the ground for a moment: no asphalt, just reddish earth, flattened hard by the wheels of planes. At the edges of the runway
two jeeps were waiting with a number of men in uniform. Two of them were carrying machine guns slung across their bodies.

“A dream from the distant past,” said Leo. “Millions of years on the savannah. Everything subsequent a mere episode. Tell me, are you feeling sick?”

“It’s okay,” she murmured: there was a dull coughing sound and the plane started the propellers: rotating at first, then a gray blur. The machine began to taxi. Müller and Rebenthal, the two doctors, loaded the cartons of medicines onto the jeeps. From time to time one of them cast skeptical glances at Leo. Nobody had been pleased that Elisabeth had come with a companion this time. It wasn’t customary, it wasn’t done; and if anyone were to find out that the nervous guest was in fact a writer whose job it was to spill everything he saw, she would never be forgiven. But Leo had insisted; he wanted, he kept on saying, to learn her world too, and real life couldn’t go on escaping him. So, perhaps because she wanted finally to show him this real life, perhaps because she was curious how he would handle himself under real pressure, but perhaps also because she just couldn’t refuse his wishes, she had finally taken him along.

“Is that a real weapon?” he asked the two doctors. “The one the man over there’s carrying, there, you see, the one in the jeep, is it real?”

“What do you think?” asked Müller. He was a tall, taciturn Swiss who’d worked for years in the Congo and had gone through things there he never talked about. When he’d
been hit in the head by the crate during the flight, he hadn’t even groaned.

“Let me help!” Leo snatched the carton out of his hands and set it in the back of the jeep. There was a clink of glass. “Have you read Hemingway? I think about him all the time here. Can you work here
without
thinking of him?”

“Yes,” said Müller. “Easily.”

“But all this,” Leo pointed to the armed men, then the plane, which was just turning at the end of the runway, “could be straight out of one of his books!”

“Don’t point, please!” said Rebenthal.

“What?”

“Don’t point with your finger.”

“It could make them angry,” said Müller. “That’s certainly not what you want.”

“But these are your people!”

“Leo,” said Elisabeth. “Please.”

“But—”

“Be quiet and go sit in the jeep!”

How could she explain to him? How to make clear to an outsider what compromises had to be made when working in a war zone, how to say to him that you settled for the less murderous faction or the one you thought was less murderous, or you just paid one of them, no matter which, for shelter and protection. She had lived in murderers’ camps more than once, had eaten their bread and their soup, and then treated those people in destroyed villages whom her hosts had left alive. Nothing was clean, no decision was clear, you could only try to help the wounded and ask no questions.

“Look!” cried Leo.

She followed his glance. At the end of the runway the plane left the ground, climbed, grew small, and disappeared into the blazing corona of the sun.

“To crash here,” he said. “That would be something. Would sound good in someone’s biography. Lost in Africa.”

Elisabeth shrugged.

“Since Maria Rubinstein went missing a year ago her books have never been more popular. Now they want to give her the Romner Prize even
in absentia.
My God, can you imagine, I could have taken that trip. Then maybe it would be me and not her—I still keep asking myself if I should feel guilty.”

Elisabeth bobbed her head. She had no idea what he was talking about.

Then they were sitting squashed together in the jeep, driving through the tall grass. The wind blew through their hair, it smelled of earth, the sun above them was enormous; it was so bright they had to squeeze their eyes shut and everything dissolved in the light. Leo called something, she couldn’t understand a word. In the distance she heard the dark rumble of thunder.

“What did you say?” she cried.

“Real for the first time,” yelled Leo.

“What?”

“I can’t remember when something was as real as this.”

She didn’t want to know what he meant, there were other things she had to think about. Tomorrow she would start dealing with the first wounded, and she knew that once this
started she would be cut off from all feeling. Everything would become soft and cottony, and while she was doing what needed to be done, there would only be a dull numbness inside her. How often already had she decided to stay in Europe and not do this work anymore? Next to her, Leo was pulling out his notebook and beginning to scribble. What was he thinking, did he take himself for André Malraux? She peered over his shoulder but could only make out a few words:
Living room … switch off the TV … playground … neighbor.

He turned and saw her look. “Just an idea!” he cried. “That’s all.”

The dappled head of a hyena rose for a moment in the grass. The soldier behind them aimed his weapon but didn’t shoot and in a moment they had passed it. Leo kept making notes and she couldn’t help staring at the notebook. Her old fear that he would put her in a story and create a distorted copy of her, rearranged according to his own needs: the thought was unbearable. But whenever she said this, he evaded her or changed the subject.

Back there in the capital, he had been strangely calm. During her conversations with two ministers he had stood by her side without drawing any attention to himself, but not missing a word. After two days during which there was no water, he had made no protests but like all of them had washed first using mineral water and then had not washed at all, and on their last day he’d secretly paid their driver to take him through the slum where the worst atrocities had taken place. She only heard about it afterward. Apparently Leo had even
gotten out of the car and asked people questions. Where did his sudden courage come from? It wasn’t like him. The thunder echoed in the distance again. Instinctively she looked up at the sky, but there was nothing but a few scattered high clouds.

“I’ve never heard shots,” said Leo. “Artillery?”

“Tanks,” said Müller.

Of course! She closed her eyes for a moment. Was it possible he’d recognized the sound and she hadn’t?

The village was a mere grouping of little corrugated iron huts. Two rusty jeeps were standing at an angle in the grass, a dozen men, weapons at the ready, sat yawning around the remains of a fire. A goat was sniffing thoughtfully at a mound of earth. Three Europeans ducked out of one of the houses: a little woman in her mid-fifties with glasses and a knitted vest, a man in uniform with the UN insignia on the front, and behind them a woman with brown hair, tall, slim, and extremely beautiful.

“Riedergott,” said the little woman. Elisabeth took a moment to realize she’d just introduced herself. “Klara Riedergott, Red Cross. Good that you’re here.”

“Rotmann,” said the man. “UNPROFOR. The situation is completely unstable. I don’t know how long we can maintain a presence here.”

A phone rang, they all looked around, puzzled. Finally Leo pulled out his gadget with an apologetic smile. How amazing that there was reception here! He turned away and began to murmur.

“Haven’t we already met?” asked Elisabeth.

“I can’t think where,” said Mrs. Riedergott.

“Yes,” said Elisabeth. “Not so long …”

“I already told you,” Mrs. Riedergott had turned rigid. “I can’t think where!”

Elisabeth noticed that the brown-haired woman was looking at her. She had an aura of intelligence and something secret. For some reason she seemed to be the most important person here. It was almost impossible not to look at her.

“The Elmitz Karner Prize,” cried Leo.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m getting the Elmitz Karner Prize. They wanted to know if I’d accept. I said I can’t possibly think about such nonsense right now.”

“And?”

“What do I know? Probably they’ll give it to someone else. Can’t pay attention to that sort of thing right now. They must be confusing me with someone who does give a damn.”

Elisabeth’s eyes moved back to the woman. What in the world was going on here? Her suspicions were still vague, she couldn’t put them into words. At that moment the horizon glittered, despite the brightness of the daylight, and she thought the ground trembled. Only seconds later did they hear the explosion. I shouldn’t have brought him here, she thought, it’s too much for him. But Leo looked calm and alert, only his lips twitched a little.

“I don’t think they’re coming in this direction,” he said. “They’re heading north. They’ll probably stick to their route.”

“Looks that way,” said Rotmann.

“You never know,” said Rebenthal.

“How,” she said, “do you know which way is north?”

“Are there elephants here?” asked Leo.

“They’re all on the other side of the border,” said Rotmann. “Fleeing the war.”

“I came to Africa,” said Leo. “Perhaps I’ll die in Africa. Without seeing an elephant.” He smiled in the direction of the brown-haired woman. She returned his look. There was a complicity in it that went far beyond words, a total mutual understanding, of the kind that only exists between people who know each other to the very core.

Elisabeth felt her pulse beat faster. “Someone needs to inventory the stocks of medicines,” Rotmann said to her. “Would you help me?” And it was true, this was not the moment to be thinking about such things, there was work to be done.

The two of them sat down inside one of the stifling huts and sorted injection ampoules. Rotmann squeezed his eyes to slits in order to see better. He was breathing heavily. Beads of sweat stood out on his moustache.

“Why UNPROFOR?” Elisabeth asked suddenly.

“Pardon?”

“UNPROFOR was in Yugoslavia, UN Peacekeeping Forces should be called something different here.”

He said nothing for a few minutes. “I must have misspoken.” He laughed awkwardly. “I do know who I work for.”

“And who do you work for?”

He looked at her, baffled. Outside there was the sound of further artillery fire. The door opened, the brown-haired woman came in and bent over the medicines.

“Excuse me.” A handshake, both soft and strong. “A pleasure to meet you. I’m Lara Gaspard.”

“You’re …” Elisabeth rubbed her forehead. “Weren’t you … in America?”

“A long story. Very complicated. My whole life is one long story of complications.”

“Astonishing,” said Rotmann, “how alike you two look.”

“You think?” asked Lara.

Elisabeth stood up and went out without saying a word.

She leaned against the metal hut wall. It was still hot, but the light was fading from minute to minute. In a moment it would be dark, near the equator this happened very fast. It took her several seconds to realize that Leo was standing next to her.

“All this isn’t real,” she said. “Or is it?”

“Depends on your definition.” He lit a cigarette. “Real. It’s a word that means so much, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

“That’s why you’re so serene. So composed and on top of everything. This is your version, this is what you’ve made of it. Out of our trip back then and out of what you know of my work. And of course Lara is there.”

“Lara is always there when I am.”

“I knew you’d do this. I knew I’d end up in one of your stories! Exactly what I didn’t want!”

“We’re always in stories.” He drew on the cigarette, the tip glowed red, then he lowered it and blew smoke into the warm air. “Stories within stories within stories. You never know where one ends and another begins! In truth, they all flow into one another. It’s only in books that they’re clearly divided.”

“The mistake with UNPROFOR shouldn’t have happened. Ever heard of research?”

“I’m not that kind of author.”

“Could be,” she said. “And I’m going to leave you.”

He looked at her. She felt a wave of sadness well up in her. The horizon glittered again. Out there was death, out there reality was so harsh and so painful that there were no words to describe it. No matter whether he’d thought it up or she was actually here—there were places of pure terror, and places where things were themselves and nothing else.

“But not now,” he said. “Not in this story.”

They were silent for some moments. In front of them the uniformed men had lit the fire. Now they were sitting around the flames talking quietly in their language. From time to time, one of them laughed.

“In reality you’d never turn down a prize. Give me a cigarette.”

“That was my last.”

“Nothing to be done?”

He shook his head. “My God, no. And yet I badly need more, I’m appallingly nervous.”

She blinked, but she could hardly see him anymore. He struck her as unreal, already almost transparent and more of
a placeholder than himself. And inside the hut meantime, she knew, Lara Gaspard’s presence and charisma had only grown stronger.

“Poor Mrs. Riedergott! Did you really have to use her too?”

“Why not?” His voice was almost disembodied, it seemed to be coming from all around and yet was almost inaudible in the evening wind. “I found her very useful.”