‘Will you answer me honestly, man to man?’
‘I have no reason to lie to you.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Were you cheating on Jessica?’
The bluntness of his question came like a slap in the face. But what broke my heart was the tone in which he voiced his suspicions: it was thick with such suffering, such helplessness, such fear that I felt sorry for him. The Wolfgang I had known, the rock-solid ex-soldier, was crumbling before my very eyes, right there on the balcony, which had suddenly taken on the dimensions of a battlefield. I was certain that if I’d touched him with my finger it would have gone right through him.
I waited for him to recover a little of his composure and said, ‘No … I wasn’t cheating on Jessica. I had no reason to look elsewhere for what I had within reach.’
His eyes grew moist. He leant on the rail and struggled to hold back his tears. He took a deep breath, nodded and said in a hoarse voice, ‘Thank you.’
He went back into the living room and out through the hallway. From the balcony, I saw him leave the house and walk back along the street, heedless of the rain. He was dragging his feet, as if weighed down with a heavy burden. It was the first time I had seen him defeated: in spite of his age – seventy-five – he had always made it a point of honour to stand erect, and to give the impression in all circumstances that he could withstand any tragedy, any hurricane.
My neighbours and colleagues started to take their leave. Someone whispered, ‘I’m with you all the way, doctor.’ It was kind of him, but I didn’t believe it. What did he know of my solitude? My grief was too personal to be shared; it made me insensitive to all such expressions of sympathy, all those customary phrases and actions that bear no relation to the situation at hand. Grief is a parallel universe, a horrible world where the sweetest words, the noblest gestures seem absurd, inappropriate, clumsy, stupid. I was irritated by those sympathetic little taps on the shoulder which reverberated inside me like hammer blows. I’m with you all the way, doctor … For how long? Once my guests were gone, my house would close over me like a fist; I would hold out my hand, searching for support, for a shoulder to lean on, and find nothing but empty air.
Evening arrived. In the darkening living room, only Hans, Emma, Claudia and I remained. The two women finished collecting the glasses and paper plates left scattered by the guests. They tidied the living room, put away the dishes and took out the bins, while I walked from room to room without knowing why. Wolfgang’s words throbbed in my temples … Were you cheating on Jessica? … Were you cheating on Jessica? … Now that Jessica was gone, would our paths ever cross again? Would we end up making peace? Were we actually at war? I had the feeling I’d failed in my duty as a son-in-law, that I’d missed an opportunity for a possible reconciliation with Wolfgang … I tried to get a grip. What was I inflicting on myself now? Why add an illusory guilt to my widower’s grief? Even if I had fallen short in my behaviour towards Wolfgang, there were surely more important things to worry about while I was in mourning.
I went back on the balcony. I needed fresh air. The cold lashed my face. I leant over the rail and gazed at the streams of water in the gutters. Every now and again, a car passed. Watching it move away, I had the impression it was taking a little of my soul with it.
Claudia joined me, a glass in her hand. ‘Drink this,’ she said. ‘It’ll buck you up.’
I took the glass and lifted it to my lips. The first sip felt like a trail of lava, the second shook me from head to toe.
‘You should eat something,’ Claudia said. ‘You haven’t touched a thing since we got back from the cemetery. I’m amazed you’re still standing.’
‘I’m walking on my head.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Can you?’
She placed her hand on mine, a gesture that made me feel ill at ease. ‘I’m really sorry, Kurt. I haven’t had a wink of sleep in the last few nights.’
‘I’m only just starting to wake up. And I don’t understand what I see around me.’
She strengthened her grip on my fingers. ‘You know you can count on me, Kurt.’
‘I don’t doubt that. Thank you. You were great with the guests.’
‘It’s the least I could do.’ She took her hand away, leant back against the rail, and sighed. ‘You think you’re prepared for anything, and when it happens, you realise how wrong you were.’
‘That’s life.’
‘I still can’t believe that Jessica could have done something like that. Over a promotion … Just imagine! Over a job … A job she would have got one day anyway.’
An electric shock couldn’t have given me a greater jolt … Promotion? … Job? … What was she talking about? Claudia’s choked voice immediately sobered me up.
‘What job? What’s all this about a promotion?’
Claudia looked at me in astonishment. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Oh, my God, I thought you knew.’
‘Please just tell me.’
Claudia was completely thrown. She knew she had gone too far to pull back. She looked around in panic, as if searching for support. I wouldn’t let her avoid my gaze; I needed an explanation. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her angrily. I knew I was hurting her, but I wouldn’t let go.
‘For heaven’s sake, tell me.’
She said, in a tone that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep inside, ‘The board of directors had promised her she’d be put in charge of external relations. Jessica had been working towards the position for two years. She wanted it more than anything. And she really deserved it. Our CEO even name-checked her during an EGM. Jessica was the kingpin of the company. She went well beyond the call of duty. She was the one who’d negotiated the biggest contracts in the last few years, with great success. All our colleagues agreed on how efficient she was … I thought you knew all about this.’
‘Please go on.’
‘Three months ago, our marketing director, Franz Hölter, also started campaigning to be head of external relations. He’s a careerist, ambitious, willing to go to any lengths to leapfrog his way to the front. He knew Jessica had a head start on him, and he did everything he could to catch up with her. He even torpedoed a couple of projects to discredit her. It was like a war to the death. At first, Jessica had no problem handling the competition. She knew her subject. But Franz had managed to win over the CEO and was starting to gain ground.’
‘So that’s why Jessica wasn’t herself these last few weeks?’
‘That’s right. She was very worried. Franz did whatever he wanted. A real shark operating in dirty waters. He put every obstacle he could in her way. It’s no surprise Jessica ended up cracking under the strain. Her final negotiation, with a Chinese group, broke down because of a file that had supposedly disappeared. The board were furious. And Jessica realised she had made a fatal mistake. A week ago, the verdict was delivered, and Franz was appointed to the position she’d wanted so much. When I went to comfort Jessica, I found her sitting crushed in her office. The blood had completely drained from her face. She told me to leave her alone and went out to get some air. It was about nine in the morning. She didn’t come back. I tried to reach her on her mobile, but all I got was her answering machine … My God! … It’s so unfair.’
The last bastion keeping me a tiny bit sane had fallen. I felt a tightness in my throat, and couldn’t utter a syllable. Torn between indignation and anger, incredulous and dazed, I didn’t know which way to turn. Jessica had taken her own life because her board of directors hadn’t promoted her! I found it inconceivable, inexcusable. It was as if Jessica had just killed herself for the second time.
My house became a funeral urn filled with ashes. All my hopes, all my certainties had gone up in smoke.
Time seemed to have stopped. Everything around me was clogged, unable to move. I would get up in the morning, botch my day’s work and return home in the evening as if to a labyrinth, trying to shake off t
he ghosts of those no longer with me. I didn’t even feel the need to switch the lights on. What good was a lamp against the shadows that were blinding me?
At the surgery, I found it hard to concentrate on my work. How many times did I prescribe inappropriate treatments before realising, or before being picked up on it by my patients? Emma saw that things couldn’t go on like this … I was forced to entrust my surgery to Dr Regina Hölm, my usual replacement when I was on holiday. I went home to pack my bags. It had occurred to me that spending some time in the country, where I had a second home, would allow me to get back on my feet. I hadn’t gone fifty kilometres before I did a U-turn and drove back to Frankfurt. No, I wouldn’t have the strength to be alone in that little stone house perched at the top of a verdant hill. It had been our nest, Jessica’s and mine, our retreat when we wanted to get away from the city’s pollution and noise, its constraints and anxieties. We would go there for weekends, to recharge our batteries and make love with the passion of teenagers. It was a lovely spot, camouflaged by tall trees, where only the odd hiker ventured and where the wind singing in the leaves would dispel our worries. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a sofa on which we would lie in each other’s arms, blissfully happy, and listen to the wood crackling in the hearth. No, I couldn’t go there and trample on so many wonderful memories.
For two days, I shut myself up in my house in Frankfurt, with the blinds down, the lights off and the phone off the hook. I didn’t open the door to anybody. I kept asking myself how a beautiful, much-loved woman with a fabulous career ahead of her could disregard all the chances she had and take her own life … If your mind hadn’t been elsewhere, you might have been able to avoid this tragedy, Wolfgang had said. His reproaches reversed the roles, swapped the perpetrator and the victim, confused the crime and the punishment. Had Jessica given me a sign I hadn’t recognised? Could I have changed the course of events if I had been more vigilant?
One night, in pouring rain, I went out and wandered the streets. I walked past red lights blinking at the intersections, little parks, neon signs, advertising hoardings appearing and disappearing in the darkness, empty benches. The noise of my footsteps preceded me. Tired of walking, soaked to the bone, I stopped on the banks of the Main and gazed down at the shimmering reflections of the street lamps on the river. And there too, try as I might to forget, to shake off my pain, the image of Jessica lying lifeless in the bathtub emerged from the waves and shattered any respite I’d hoped to grant myself.
I went back home, shivering and exhausted, and stood by the window, a blanket around my shoulders, waiting for day to dawn. And dawn it did, draped in white, as if it were merely the ghost of night.
‘You have to get a grip on yourself,’ Hans Makkenroth said, ‘and fast.’
He had been round several times. When I refused to open the door, he had threatened to call the police. The state in which he found me shocked him. He ran to the phone to call an ambulance, but I persuaded him not to. Cursing, he pushed me into the bathroom. What I saw in the mirror terrified me: I looked like a zombie.
Hans dragged me back to the living room and forced me to listen to him. ‘When I lost Paula, I thought I was finished. She’d been everything to me. All my joys I owed to her. She was my pride, my glory, my happiness. I’d have given anything for one more year, one more month, one more day with her. But there are things we can’t negotiate, Kurt. Paula’s gone, just as every day thousands of people who are loved or hated die. That’s how life is. All kinds of things happen, we may be stricken with grief, we may be bankrupt, but the sun still rises in the morning and nothing can stop night from falling … Paula has been dead for five years and thirty-two weeks, and every morning when I wake up, I expect to find her lying beside me. Then I realise that I’m alone in my bed. So I throw off the sheets and go about my daily business.’
I don’t know if it was Hans’s words or the vibrations of his voice that reached down into the depths of my being, but all at once my shoulders sagged and tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t remember having cried since I was a small child. Curiously, I wasn’t ashamed of my weakness. My sobs seemed to clear away the blackness that had been contaminating my soul like a poisonous, putrid ink.
‘That’s it,’ Hans said encouragingly.
He forced me to take a bath, shave, and change my clothes. Then he bundled me into his car and took me to a little restaurant just outside the city. He told me that he had come back to Germany to settle some issues with the Chamber of Commerce and launch a project that meant a lot to him. This would take two or three weeks, after which he would sail to the Comoros, where he was planning to equip a hospital for a charitable organisation he belonged to.
‘Why not come with me? My yacht is waiting for me in a harbour in Cyprus. We’ll fly to Nicosia then set off for the Gulf of Aden …’
‘I can’t, Hans.’
‘What’s stopping you? The sea’s wonderful therapy.’
‘Please, don’t insist. I’m not going anywhere …’
2
Blackmoon
1
Hans hadn’t been exaggerating. Out at sea, stripped of their symbolism, all points of reference were reduced, so that each thing found its true significance. I certainly found mine: I was merely a single drop among a billion tons of water. Everything I had thought I was or represented proved to have no substance. Wasn’t I like the wavelets born from the backwash and then merging with it, an illusion that emerges out of nothing and falls back into it without leaving a trace?
I thought about my patient, Frau Biribauer. What’s death like? … If it was like the sea, then everything might be forgiven. Then I thought about Jessica, and caught myself smiling.
I felt a little better, washed clean of my wounds. Like getting out of the bath after a day filled with confrontations. My grief was allowing me a semblance of respite; there was no space for it in the kingdom of shipwrecks, where sorrows drowned without arousing any dismay.
We had been travelling for two weeks, the wind in our sails, on board a twelve-metre boat. We had left Cyprus at dawn, in glorious weather, and crossed the lustral waters of the Mediterranean, sometimes pursued by excited seagulls, sometimes escorted by pods of dolphins. Every day was a new blessing, and when night removed us from the chaos of the world, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the odours emanating from the depths like so many reminiscences flooding back from the dawn of time. I felt as if I had regained my inner peace.
I loved to perch on the side of the boat and peer at the horizon. It was something I never tired of. It would free me of my anxieties, as if I were being reborn: a forceps birth of course, but a determined one. The sea tore my grief apart like waves hitting a reef. Of course, when the water receded, rocks would emerge amid the foam, but I could deal with that. I clung to the rigging of the foresail and offered my chest to the wind. I sometimes spent hours on end without thinking of anything specific. The lapping of the waves against the hull cradled my soul. Occasionally, a passenger liner would pass in the distance, and I would follow it with my eyes until it had faded into the sea spray; occasionally, too, through a curtain of mist, I would glimpse a surreptitious shore – was it the Farasan Islands, or the Dahlak Archipelago, or else a mirage? What did it matter? The only thing that mattered was the emotion it aroused.
Hans no longer interrupted me. Whenever he joined me on deck and found me in a kind of ecstatic communion with the naked sky and the sea, he would back away.
Two weeks spent gliding over the calm waters. Only once had a storm whipped the midday breeze into a frenzy, after which a heavy swell had slowed us down; the next day, the Mediterranean had unrolled before us a mother-of-pearl carpet on which the first glints of daylight sparkled. Towards evening, shimmering streaks lashed the surface of the water and, with the sunset and its fires, we witnessed a breathtaking spectacle in which red and black fused in a fresco worthy of the northern lights. To crown our wonder, dolphins leapt from the waves, as rapid as
torpedoes, proud of their perfect fuselage that propelled them into the air like fleeting gleams of crystal. At times, fascinated by their lavish choreography of synchronisation and magic, I had the impression my pulse was adjusting its rhythm to the waves that they unleashed.
Intoxicated by nature’s generosity, I joined Hans in the recess that served as a dining room. Above a leather sofa set in glistening wood hung a portrait of Paula. I supposed there were others on the boat … How did he manage to live with a ghost and keep a cool head? … Hans smiled at me as if he had read my thoughts. He pushed his glasses back up onto his forehead and shifted on his seat, pleased to have company at last. I felt embarrassed to have made him wary of what he said to me. I sensed that he turned every word over in his mind before risking it out loud, for fear of hitting my weak spot, convinced that the mere mention of Jessica’s name might plunge me back into my unhappiness, which wasn’t necessarily the case.
‘Land in sight?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t checked,’ I said.
‘Come and sit down … How about a drink before dinner?’
‘I’m already drunk on space and wind.’
‘You should put a hat on. It isn’t sensible to stay bareheaded in the sun for too long.’
‘The wind blew mine away yesterday morning.’
‘I have others, if you like.’
‘No, thanks, don’t worry about me. I’m fine, honestly.’
‘Happy to hear you say so.’
Running out of ideas, he drummed on the table. He must have exhausted his favourite subjects. Since we had left Cyprus, every evening after dinner, he had told me about his humanitarian expeditions. He knew everything there was to know about the primitive tribes of the Amazon. He had made it his life’s work to fight on behalf of these dispossessed and defenceless populations, chased from their lands by excessive deforestation and unregulated poaching, and forced to wander the jungle in search of shelter from which they would be driven again and again until they perished, uprooted and destitute. To illustrate his stories, he would show me photographs he had taken at the ‘scene of the crime’. There he was, in shirt and shorts, posing with naked women and children outside straw huts; holding an old shaman in his arms; pointing at a giant anaconda that had died trying to swallow a crocodile; sharing an ancient peace pipe with a tribal chief who looked like a totem; standing in the path of monstrous machines that were devastating a clearing; protesting against local administrators … Hans travelled relentlessly. Since Paula’s death, he had delegated the running of his businesses to his two sons and stalked human misery all over the world. As he put it, maturity lay in sharing, because the true vocation of man was to be useful.
The African Equation Page 3
