The African Equation (7 page)

I found it hard to comprehend the fact that you could tell amusing, heart-warming stories in the same part of the world where a man could be thrown in the sea like a cigarette end being flicked away.

‘And who are you a fan of?’ I said.

He shrugged, losing interest. ‘There’s Messi, Ronaldo and lots of others, except that Joma says an idol doesn’t have to be a white man. So I went for Drogba, Eto’o and Zidane.’

‘Zidane’s white.’

‘Only white-skinned. He’s African at heart.’

‘Do you play football?’

‘I’m rubbish at it.’ He looked at his toes sticking out of his worn-out espadrilles and wiggled them. An unexpected sadness came over his face. ‘I’ve never been good at anything,’ he sighed.

‘You should have stayed at home.’

‘There wasn’t anything at home. I was like an old boat in a disused harbour, taking in water while waiting for a buyer. Except that nobody was buying. Nobody where I lived had any money. They couldn’t even afford a rope to hang themselves with. I was fed up with taking in water. After a while, I told myself, if I was going to sink, I might as well sink at sea. At least, nobody would see. So I raised anchor and set sail.’

‘You chose the wrong sea.’

‘Maybe the sea doesn’t exist, maybe it’s just a mirage. In any case, I don’t see the difference. Here or somewhere else, it’s all the same.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘For me it is.’

‘I’m sure you’re a good person. Your place isn’t among these people. What they’re doing is a serious crime, and they don’t realise. They kidnapped us and kidnapping is against the law. They’ll be severely punished.’

‘They don’t give a damn about the law. They don’t even know what it is. All they know is how to kill and loot, and they seem to enjoy that.’

‘Don’t you agree with what they’re doing?’

‘I don’t have an opinion. Nobody asks me anyway.’

‘So why join them?’

‘It’s just the way it is.’

‘There’s such a thing as choice.’

‘I don’t have a choice.’

‘Yes, you do … Nobody’s forcing you to go along with this bunch of … of reckless idiots … What’s your name?’

My question threw him. He thought it over, frowning and pulling at the tip of his nose, which was thin and straight, then lifted his chin and said bitterly, ‘What’s a name? A trademark, that’s all. My family’s name doesn’t even mean anything. I’ve learnt to get along without it. I sometimes forget it … Here, they call me, “Hey, you there!”’ He took off his glasses and wiped his face on his vest. ‘That doesn’t make me much of a person either … But I’m patient. One day, they’ll give me a combat name. There’s no reason why not. I’m a warrior and I risk my life like the others … Everyone has a nickname – why not me?’ He started biting his nails again. ‘I’d get a kick out of having a nickname,’ he added in a feverish breath. ‘That would make me someone … A nickname that sounds good, that you can’t easily forget … Blackmoon, for example … I’d like that, Blackmoon. Plus, it sounds like me.’

‘Well, Blackmoon, you’re not someone who’s good for nothing.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘You don’t need to spend lots of time with people to know them. I’m sure you’re a reasonable person.’

‘It’s true, I’m not wicked. The bad things I’ve done were to defend myself. It isn’t that I have regrets or that I’m trying to clear myself. I’d have liked things to happen differently, but what’s done is done, and there’s no point bringing it back.’

‘I agree, except that you can also redeem yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked with a frown.

‘You can be of use to us. You can help us to escape.’

He shook his head as if he had just received an uppercut to the chin. ‘What?’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Help you to escape? What are you talking about? What do you take me for? I talk to you for a while, and you immediately think you’ve got me in your pocket. I was only having a chat. Here, apart from Joma, nobody says a word to me. And even Joma doesn’t talk to me, he just tells me off … Why do you take me for a sucker?’

‘Don’t take it badly. I wasn’t—’

‘Shut up!’ he yelled, getting to his feet, his sabre at the ready. ‘I try to be nice to you, and you try to trick me. Why should I help you to get out of here? What’s in it for me? What will I do after that? And who’ll help me when the guys get their hands on me? We’re in Africa, damn it! Wherever you hide, they always track you down. And besides, do I look like a traitor?’

He was incensed. His sabre hovered above the back of my neck.

Taken aback by the violence of his about-turn, I no longer knew how to react. His cries echoed in the cave like explosions. I was afraid the others would hear and come to see what was going on. Suddenly, in the same way as he had lost his temper, he calmed down. In a flash, he was again the boy who liked football. I was flabbergasted.
Who was I up against? Who were these people who were furious one moment, placid the next. I looked at the boy in amazement, at the sabre he had now lowered, and his eyes which were recovering that disturbing acuteness that had made me so ill at ease.

He threw me even more when he said, in a moderate, even conciliatory tone, ‘You mustn’t take me for an idiot. It isn’t good. I may not look up to much, but I have my self-respect.’

‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be unpleasant—’

‘Shut up. Just because I’m not shouting doesn’t mean I’m not angry. Stop amusing yourself by taking me for a fool. Joma says that white people think Africans have mush for brains. But they’re wrong … We’re just as intelligent as you, even if you’re more calculating than the devil.’

He sat down again, placed his sabre on its side, brought his knees up to his chest, folded his arms over them and was still. Only his jaws continued to move. I wondered if he was entirely in his right mind or if he was a brilliant actor.

After a long silence, he looked up and said, ‘Do you think Beckenbauer’s still alive?’

I thought it best not to restart the conversation.

The following day, it was another boy who brought us food. Blackmoon didn’t set foot in the cave again. I saw him from time to time, passing the cave entrance, but not once did he lift his eyes in my direction.

In the afternoon, Hans at last emerged from his lethargy. Standing on his unsteady legs, shivering with fever and
hunger, he tried desperately to free himself of his chains.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

He was unable to utter a sound. He stared in terror at a corner of the cave while his Adam’s apple leapt in his throat. His voice emerged, quavery and unrecognisable.

‘A snake … There’s a snake over there …’

I thought he was hallucinating, then, following his gaze, I noticed a shadow moving a few paces from us. My blood froze. A conical head the size of a hand glided over a stone; a snake more than three metres long, plump and hideous, had wriggled out of a crack, its eyes shining through the gloom. Hans started screaming for help.

‘Whatever you do, don’t move!’ said a guard alerted by Hans’s cries for help.

The snake slid over a bump on the ground and, attracted by the cries, came towards us, its tongue quivering. I was petrified with horror. The reptile lifted its head as far as Hans’s belt, then recoiled; I closed my eyes, my heart pounding fit to burst … Nothing happened. I opened my eyes again; the snake slithered towards a hole, slid into it and disappeared.

‘Get us out of here!’ Hans screamed, his nerves at breaking point. ‘Get us out of here!’

Two of our kidnappers cautiously approached the crack through which the snake had vanished. Joma joined them. All three stood looking at the hole.

‘We won’t stay a moment longer in this nest of madmen!’ Hans cried.

‘I have nowhere else to put you,’ Joma said.

‘But there’s a snake,’ I said, beside myself.

‘It wasn’t a snake, it was the spirit of the cave,’ he said, with a seriousness that left us speechless. ‘It’s the guardian
of the place. If it had wanted to harm you, it would have gobbled you up like two hard-boiled eggs.’

With this, he ordered his men to block up the hole and, without another word, abandoned us to our fate.

Four days spent waiting for the return of Chief Moussa!

On the first night, I had a dream: I was on a tree cutting a branch with a saw. Below, my mother was playing with an orange medicine ball. She was only a little girl with golden hair, but in the dream she was my mother. She was running after the ball and humming a tune. Suddenly she stopped hitting the ball. There was a strange silence. Blood was gushing from the top of my mother’s head, over her bare shoulders, and down to her feet. She looked up at the tree and turned white.
Kurt
, she cried,
what are you doing?
… I shifted my attention to what I was doing, and realised it wasn’t the branch I was sawing off, but my arm … A sudden pain woke me; my chains were digging so hard into my wrists, they’d almost cut them.

The second night, I dreamt about Paula. We were sitting at the table on the veranda of our bungalow in Maspalomas. Hans was doubled up with laughter. I couldn’t understand why he was laughing. Paula was performing an acrobatic dance, her red dress fluttering around her like a poppy. There was a closed door standing on its own on the edge of the veranda. Paula opened it and a stream of blinding light flooded the veranda. Hans ran to the door, yelling at his wife to turn back. Paula continued walking into the
light, dissolving into it bit by bit. Hans yelled and yelled; the wind had blown the door shut, so firmly that I had hit my head on the rock …

On the third night, I dreamt about Jessica, but I can’t remember anything about the dream.

Four days!

Four days and nights heavy with uncertainty and anxiety, spent shivering at night in the coolness of the sea spray and suffocating by day in the corrosive humidity of the cave … Four interminable days and nights spent scraping my bones on the rough ground, forced to perform a thousand gymnastic manoeuvres to scratch myself, and a thousand others to relieve myself; drinking my bitterness to the dregs and chewing over my powerlessness like a poisonous herb … Four days as sleepless as the nights, four nights as shadowy as our kidnappers’ plans for us, wondering when I would finally wake up and emerge from this sordid dream that had relegated my grief to the background … I was angry with these maniacs conjured by some evil spell who had broken into my life, turning my mourning upside down and in one fell swoop destroying the faith I had in mankind. I felt like screaming, tearing out the ring that kept me chained to the wall and dented my self-respect, and lashing out at random with my shortened arms. I felt sick in my flesh, sick in my being, and sick everywhere my thoughts took me. Why was I being confined in a foul-smelling cave, in the middle of nowhere, with these incessant swarms of flies drinking from the corners of my lips and driving me mad? What right did these bandits have to divert us from both our route and our destiny? I was furious. Hatred rose in me like molten lava, secreting in my mind a blackness I didn’t think I was capable of.
The more I observed our kidnappers, the angrier I got. Everything about them disgusted me – their filthy language, their single-mindedness, their absence of humanity – while here I was, reduced to a mere piece of merchandise with an uncertain fate, chained up, depersonalised and forced to lick my cold soup out of a disgusting can. The whole universe appeared to me devoid of logic, lacking in purpose, vile and absurd, something almost to be renounced. Frankfurt seemed light years away, belonging to a period suspended between mirage and sunstroke. Had I really been a doctor? If I had, was it yesterday or in a previous life? … I had become nothing overnight – worse, a piece of junk, a contraband product to be traded on the black market, a hostage playing Russian roulette with his own future … It was appalling! I was ashamed of my complaints, my indecision, my hollow fury that had nothing to hold on to, no resonance, that turned round and round in a void like a simulated belch, too improbable to come out into the open air … And I was angry with myself … I was angry with myself for every pain that afflicted me, every question that tormented me, every answer that refused to come … I was angry with myself for suffering the blows of fate without being able to react, as resigned and wretched as a sacrificial lamb …

Four days and four nights! … How did I manage to hold out?

Headlights lit up the cave. I twisted my neck to see what was happening. Two pick-up trucks and a spluttering jeep had just come to a halt in the yard. Armed men jumped to the ground, yelling in loud voices. Orders were given.
Our guards came running. The campfire projected their turbulent shadows on the sand. Doors slammed, then the lights and engines went off. I made out the chief from his silhouette. He was carrying an automatic rifle across his shoulder. Joma approached him and asked him if everything was all right. The chief pointed to a form lying on a stretcher and joined the rest of his men, who had disappeared inside a tent.

A few minutes later, they came to get me. I found it hard to stand up. My bones felt weak, and my knees stiff. I was frogmarched to see a sick man laid low with fever. He was very thin, with a muddy complexion. Lying in a fetal position on the stretcher, his neck straining back and his hands stuck between his thighs, he was moaning and shivering, insensitive to the water-soaked cloth that a boy was pressing to his forehead. From the smell he gave off, I realised he had urinated on himself.

The chief was walking up and down inside the tent, his hands on his hips. He appeared very bored. Standing at a slight remove, Joma was holding a storm lantern at arm’s length. He paid no attention to me. The chief at last consented to notice that I was there. He clapped his hands in embarrassment, approached me, and was surprised to see me in such a bad state. He looked to Joma for an explanation. Joma didn’t react.

‘Are you in pain, doctor?’

I found his question absurd, almost cynical. If I’d had any strength left, I would have thrown myself at him. He pointed to the patient.

‘He has malaria. Try to do something for him. He’s a great guy.’

In my mind, I refused to approach the patient, felt
reluctant even to touch him. My aversion squirmed inside me like a reptile, sharpening my senses and what remained of my fighting instinct. I was shocked, outraged even, that they should call on my services after what Hans and I had been put through. I looked at the chief and found him as pitiful as his patient. I wasn’t afraid of him, felt only disdain for his authority, disgust for the paranoid monster hiding behind his lantern, and cold hatred for this whole gang of degenerates who had been released into the wild like virulent germs in a pandemic …

Curiously, by some kind of professional reflex, I crouched, took the patient’s hand, felt his pulse, examined him: he was in a bad way.

‘Do you have any quinine?’ I asked.

‘Not even so much as an aspirin,’ the chief retorted.

‘And what do you expect me to do?’

‘Treat him.’

‘With what?’

‘You’ll manage. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’

I stood up and faced the chief. Again, his smugness, his affected airs stoked my aversion. Our noses were almost touching; my eyes were boring into his. I had never thought myself capable of such violent animosity. I took a step back, repelled by his drunken breath, and in a voice throbbing with scorn declared, ‘I’m a real doctor, not a witch doctor. My profession’s not about going into a trance or invoking the spirits of the ancestors to ward off evil. Your man needs drugs, not a voodoo session.’

‘Careful what you say!’ Joma threatened.

The chief quickly raised his hand to put him in his place. After pondering my words, he took my chin between his thumb and index finger, then turned away, much to the
annoyance of Joma, who cried, choking with indignation, ‘What! Are you really going to let him get away with speaking to you like that?’

‘He’s right, Joma. Ewana needs drugs, and we don’t have any.’

‘That’s not the point!’ Joma protested. ‘This cretin has no right to talk down to us. Does he think he’s dealing with cavemen or what? What was all that about voodoo? If I were you, I’d grab a car jack and teach him to swallow his arrogance.’

‘That’s enough!’ the chief said. ‘It’s been a tough journey and I’m exhausted. Take the doctor back.’

With a weary hand, he dismissed us.

Once outside the tent, Joma jabbed his rifle butt into my back to make me walk faster.

‘You’re a tough guy, aren’t you?’

I didn’t reply.

He grabbed me by my shirt collar and twisted me round to face him.

‘Well, I’m an old cooking pot. A cauldron straight out of hell. We’ll soon see how tough you are. I’m going to cook you on a low heat until you melt in my mouth.’

He showed his teeth in a fierce grin.

I looked at him dejectedly, turned towards the pale sky and searched for my star among the thousands of constellations, which all seemed oblivious to my prayers tonight. A vague premonition took root in me: I’d just made myself a sworn enemy.

When I woke up, I found the chief crouching by my side. He was in his fatigues, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses.
He hadn’t expected to find Hans and me in such a terrible state. He stood up, paced up and down the cave angrily, and kicked a tin can, which rolled into the shadows with a clatter. Then, unable to contain himself, he turned to Joma and screamed, ‘Have you been keeping them tied up all this time?’

‘I don’t have enough men to keep an eye on them,’ Joma said grudgingly.

‘I never asked you to chain them like that.’

Joma didn’t like the way he was being scolded. ‘What did you want me to do, Moussa? Mollycoddle them? We didn’t have anything to eat, and the joker you put in charge of looking after the hideout wasted the drinking water and let the cans of rations go off in the sun.’

‘I’m talking about the hostages, Joma. They aren’t prisoners of war, damn it.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Yes, a big difference!’ the chief cried, exasperated by his subordinate’s attitude.

Joma gave a shudder. ‘If you have a problem with me, Moussa, talk to me in private. I don’t like being lectured in front of strangers …’

‘I don’t care if you like it or not, Joma!’ the chief spat, and left the cave.

A few minutes later, we were untied. Electric shocks went through me every time I moved a finger or a toe. My wrists were covered in blackish scabs, and my hands were grey and pale. Hans had to put himself through a crash course in order to learn to push himself off the ground and get to his feet. His joints had stiffened up and he couldn’t put his arms in front of him. The bloody patch on the back of his shirt had turned black. We were
dragged to a reservoir of stagnant water, not far from the cave, to wash our faces and our clothes, which we let dry on our bodies. Hans began to sway on his stiff legs, and was shaken with convulsions; he complained of stomach pains and dizziness, but our kidnappers forbade me from going near him. After the makeshift bath, we were taken back to the cave and given a piece of fish and a slice of pancake. The brackish, polluted water from the reservoir had merely aggravated our wounds, which, now that the scabs had come off, bled and caused great excitement among the flies.

In the afternoon, Moussa ordered his men to get ready to evacuate the place. The tent was immediately taken down and the pirates’ kit was wrapped and loaded into the vehicles along with bags of provisions. Hans and I were shoved onto two separate pick-ups, and the little convoy set off. I was so relieved to be leaving the cave that I didn’t even think to wonder what other hellhole we were being transferred to.

We drove for hours without coming across a living soul. Towards evening, we stopped in a gorge whose ridges were crowned with undergrowth. The pirates called the place ‘the station’ – I would later discover that stations were hiding places scattered around the countryside where smugglers and rebels kept supplies of fuel and water when they were on the move. The drivers filled up the vehicles and checked the state of their tyres and the level of water in the radiators, and then, after a basic supper, we spent most of the night driving.

Very early the next day, the convoy entered an area
of scrub where the paths were impassable. The ground was hard and uneven, and the vehicles bounced over it, almost knocking us senseless. We passed between narrow ravines, and the branches of the thorny shrubs rustled on the sheet-metal bodywork and scratched our backs. If one of the boulders had fallen on us, we’d have been done for. Joma drove without a thought for those of us in the back. All he knew how to do was press his foot down on the accelerator, move the wheel wildly from right to left and crank the gear stick back and forth. He didn’t care about the engine speed, or how much we were being shaken about, or the dust being thrown in our faces by the shovelful. Curiously, his clumsiness amused his associates, who burst out laughing every time a heavy jolt threw them against each other.

With my wrists tied, I held onto the seat. I could feel the knocking of the axles reverberate right through my body.

Judging by the position of the sun, we were heading due west.

The ordeal eased after a hundred kilometres. There weren’t even any ruins around to suggest anyone had ever settled in the area. A valley covered in varicose scrub stretched to infinity, anonymous, totally devoid of distinguishing features – if you were trying to figure out where you were, or if you were thinking of escaping and wanted to know which direction to go, it was a depressing prospect.

The convoy halted at the foot of a mountain shrouded in dust. It was the only thing approaching a landmark for miles around. I asked the boy who brought me food if the mountain was sacred and if he knew its name. Joma, who I hadn’t seen behind me and who had guessed where I
was going with this, retorted that it was Kilimanjaro: with global warming the snow had melted, and all that was left of the legendary mountain that Hemingway loved was a mere boulder stuck in the middle of a crater, so insignificant that it would inspire neither budding griots nor visionaries at odds with authority. The boy burst out laughing, and Joma pointed two fingers at me and went ‘boom’, delighted to have scored a point.