Claudia realised she had upset me. In the car, she sat silently, wringing her fingers. I drove carefully, but inside I was seething. When we got to her building, I switched off the engine and turned to face her.
‘That shrink of yours wasn’t there by chance.’
She dabbed her forehead with a small handkerchief, convulsively swallowing her saliva. ‘You’ve been through a lot, Kurt. You’ve had a terrifying ordeal. But being a doctor, you should know as well as I do that there’s nothing humiliating about consulting a psychologist.’
‘What I find humiliating is that you assume the right to decide for me. You could at least have said something. You know me, I prefer swimming to football: I don’t like dribbling, tackles from behind or dives. I’ve always swum in my own lane and taken care not to stray into anyone else’s.’
She was on the verge of bursting into tears. Her face was twitching. ‘You’re not the same as you were before, Kurt. And every day, you give the impression you’re becoming someone else. You tell me off for staying too long in the shower, for wasting water needlessly. You get angry with people who leave food on their plates. You almost threw a fit when you saw that giant poster of that pop star in a dress made from animal skins. You’ve been back a month, and all you’re doing is making your case worse …’
‘My case, Claudia?’
‘Yes, Kurt … You worry me. I’m only trying to help you. Dr Brandt is an old friend. Trust me, he’s a good person … Please, tell me what’s wrong, Kurt.’
‘Why, do you think there’s something right?’
‘Don’t you?’
She clenched her fists. ‘You’ve changed a lot, Kurt.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I see it.’
‘And what do you see?’
She weighed up her answer, and said, ‘A man who’s been through a terrible experience and refuses to move on.’
‘And what is he like, this man who’s been through a terrible experience and refuses to move on?’
My questions threw her; she hadn’t anticipated that I would badger her in this way. Caught by surprise, she had to think fast to avoid making things worse. She had surely not been expecting to find me with my guard up and ready for battle. That morning, when she had phoned to invite me to the restaurant, I had waited calmly for her to hang up so that I could get back to my old demons. Solitude suited me. I had private conversations with myself, and there was nobody to question me. For some weeks now, holed up in my house, I had been spending my time pulling myself to pieces, and this unconstrained exercise perfectly suited my state of mind. I conducted my trial in total freedom, being the judge and the defendant best suited to this kind of therapy. There was a sense in which I could no longer bear to listen to other people; they were crowding me, denying the essence of me. When I was alone, I could choose to tell myself all or nothing, without the need to weigh my words or suffer because of them; I was in my element and had no desire to share it or reveal it to anyone.
Having thought over my question, Claudia had to admit defeat. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she sighed.
‘Then don’t say anything.’
She must have been wondering why I was behaving so unreasonably. Seeing no justification for my rudeness, she retorted, ‘You left Africa to its wars, and brought its misfortunes with you.’
‘You’ve never been to Africa, Claudia. What do you know?’
‘I know what it’s done to one particular man.’
‘A man who’s seen what you’ll never see.’
‘I’m not blind,’ she said in her defence. ‘You’re the one who’s become blind … You remember the other day, on the terrace of the restaurant, that drunken beggar who stood there watching us eat until a waiter chased him away? You put your fork down on the table, you wiped your mouth with a napkin, and then what did you do? You shook your head irritably, ordered a beer and carried on with your lunch as if nothing had happened.’
‘It isn’t the same.’
‘It’s exactly the same, Kurt. Except that in that restaurant the world was reduced to the four of us: you, the beggar, the waiter and me. And it happens the same way all over the world. On a larger scale. That’s the way the world is, and nobody can change it. There are people who suffer, and people who get by as best they can. That’s the nature of things. Nobody’s supposed to take other people’s misfortunes on himself, because everyone, rich or poor, has his share of them. Good luck and bad luck are both tests we are destined to get through. Nature has its rules: we don’t blame a millipede for having more legs than it knows what to do with while a worm doesn’t even have a claw to scratch itself. And a turkey can’t claim it’s unfair for a partridge to fly away when a predator approaches while he can only stand there like an idiot. There’s a morality in what we consider unfair, Kurt. The real question is whether to deal with it or ignore it. Your problem is that you think you embody that morality when you have neither the calibre nor the weight to do so. You’re one person among seven billion other people, with no special authority to demand a fairness that nature itself can’t conceive of.’
‘There’s an African proverb that says: “He who doesn’t know that he doesn’t know is a disaster.”’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Exactly what it says, but I assume you’re not one for riddles. Don’t you see, Claudia? What happened to me in Africa has at least taught me something, something that may seem like nothing to you, but to me is very important.’
‘I wish you’d enlighten me.’
‘Sorry, I’m all out of enlightenment.’
I leant across her thighs and opened the door for her.
She pursed her lips, sniffed loudly and got out.
I switched on the engine and drove off.
The wind blew along Schaumainkai. The neon signs streaked the river with different colours. A few islands of greenery stood out on the soot-black river banks. I walked as far as Theodor-Stern-Kai, wandered through Niederrad, then returned to the river. I couldn’t accept what Claudia had done, let alone forgive it … I felt alone. My legs were like lead, my breath like fire. Jessica’s ghost was pursuing me. It had been limping behind me since I had got out of my car. I was downcast, but I kept going, swept along as I had been the day I decided to confront the valley of shadows rather than rot in Gerima’s jail. I had the feeling I was changing …
Lost in his own thoughts, a man sat on a bench, talking to himself and watching his cigarette end burn out at his feet as if watching a caterpillar die. His coat was torn at the shoulder and through the tear you could see part of his sweater. He didn’t look up when I passed him and continued to mutter and box the air. Like him, I despaired of finding a cure for my depression. I sat down on another bench and threw my head back, and my mind was invaded by a plethora of images like a speeded-up film, flashes of Jessica on the beach, in the forest, coming out of a hotel, lounging on a sun-drenched terrace, hailing a yellow taxi, sitting on a plane, kissing me on the lips. The images followed one after the other, led to more flashes, collided with another reel that was out of control. My skull was seething with noises, voices, laughter, smashing glass, the clicking of high heels on marble floors, waves rolling on white sand. I started to feel dizzy. Why? … The man on the next bench jumped. I realised I was shouting.
The next day, I left my house for my home in the country. The peace of the countryside and the freshness of its groves would cheer me up, I thought … I was wrong. My ‘exile’ merely made things worse.
The days went by, all totally empty. I didn’t want anything. I didn’t know what to do with my time. I sometimes spent the whole day sitting in an armchair, staring at the wall. I felt adrift, a stranger to myself. Sometimes I found myself standing with my nose up against the window pane, looking at the rain-drenched grove without seeing it. Whenever a hiker crossed the clearing, I would rush out to see him, but by the time I got outside, he would be gone; only his boot prints in the mud proved to me that I hadn’t been
dreaming. One morning, a car stopped at the end of the path. I had hoped it was Claudia; it wasn’t Claudia. I realised how unfair I had been to her … The solitude was worse than the misunderstanding. The day before, I had gone for a walk among the trees. The gloomy weather infected my mood. By the time I got back to the house I was in a terrible state. I lit a fire and sat down so close to the fireplace that my clothes steamed. In a flash, I saw again the old man standing in front of his burning hut like a lost soul at the gates of hell, and I grew afraid of my shadows, which the fire projected around me in a tremulous dance. On the table, alongside an apple core and a dirty plate, I lined up ten bottles of beer and started knocking them back one after the other, at regular intervals, until I could no longer see clearly. Then I walked all over the house. A comb left lying about, a nightdress, a piece of jewellery forgotten on the dressing table: any trace of Jessica was a torment. Without her, I was nothing but the raw expression of my widowhood, my interrupted mourning, my grief – a grief that was irrational and unrestrained. My legs unsteady and my mind numb, I went to the bedroom. The bed, once so narrow, now seemed more vast and arid than the desert. I fell asleep and woke up a few minutes later, sure that I would not close my eyes again before daybreak. A recurring image kept passing in front of me: in a funeral urn overflowing with ashes, a haughty vulture posed phoenix-like on a pile of cigarette ends. I tried to grasp the symbolism of that surreal image, but couldn’t. I hugged the pillow to me, in the absence of another person, and let myself be overcome by the sweet lethargy of depression.
*
After a week, I returned to Frankfurt. As crumpled as an old sheet. Sick. My hair sticking up on my head. My furrowed cheeks covered in beard. A neighbour must have told Claudia, because she showed up within the hour.
‘What are you doing to yourself, Kurt? … And now you’re even smoking! Your house stinks of cigarettes. Look at yourself, you’re an absolute state.’
I knocked back my drink and threw the glass at the wall. Startled, Claudia raised her arms to protect herself. I laughed, amused by her bewilderment, swaying in the middle of the living room, defying the portrait of Jessica that I was daring to confront for the first time since my return from Africa.
‘I have a beautiful house, don’t I?’ I asked her. ‘It cost me a small fortune. And what about these curtains, what about these sofas? Even a prince would envy me. And what about me, aren’t I handsome? Is there anything wrong with me? I’m healthy, I have style, and I’m of sound mind. Any diva would fall into my arms like a shot.’
‘Kurt,’ she begged me, ‘calm down, please.’
I stumbled over a pouffe and almost fell flat on my back.
I declaimed:
We were lovers
We were two volcanoes
Burning with a thousand fires
From summer to spring
We were but one season
We were lovers
‘Kurt, for heaven’s sake …’
‘What’s heaven got to do with it? It’s what happens down here that matters, on this filthy earth where everything decays … I need reassurance, Claudia. Am I still handsome?’
‘Of course you are.’
‘Then why do I hate myself so much?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about her,’ I screamed, sweeping away with my hand the photograph of Jessica, which fell to the ground and smashed. ‘I’m talking about Jessica, Jessie, my other half, my dream that went up in smoke … How could she do that to me? In Africa I saw people who were nothing but skin and bone, who had nothing to eat and nothing to expect, and who fought for every second of life. People who’d had their lands stolen from them, people who were persecuted, reduced to the level of their own beasts of burden, chased from their squalid villages and wandering among bandits and disease, and yet, just imagine: poor and helpless as they were, they didn’t give up one scrap of their wretched existence. And Jessica, who had everything to make her happy, everything, a beautiful house in a wonderful city, lots of friends, money in the bank, a luxurious office, a job with a major company, and a husband who wouldn’t have let a speck of dust touch her, what does she do, what does she do to us? She deliberately takes her own life! And why? Over a promotion …’
Claudia picked up the photograph, put it back in its place, and ran her finger over the star-shaped crack in the glass. Then she walked around the armchair that was between us, took my hand, and pressed it to her breast. I hated anyone to feel sorry for me. What she assumed was part of a nervous breakdown was only legitimate, clear-headed disapproval; and this misunderstanding, rather than bringing us together, placed a thick barrier between her and me, leaving us engaged in an absurd dialogue of the deaf. I had the feeling I was making a spectacle of myself to a blind woman.
I took back my hand; she took hold of it again and kept it. Her breath fluttered against my face. I suspected she might try to kiss me. Her eyes questioned mine, searched for my quivering lips, while her half-open mouth offered itself in an imperceptible movement of her head.
I recoiled.
She lowered her eyelids with their curved lashes. From the touch of her fingers, I sensed that my reaction disappointed her.
‘These things happen, Kurt. We live in a crazy world. Things get too much for us and we rush about thinking we can catch a moving train. It’s no wonder some end up on the wrong platform.’
Again, her eyes met mine and her scarlet mouth, as vivid as a wound, again brushed my lips. Her breath was burning my face now.
‘Not many people can control their anxieties,’ she went on, ‘and even fewer know what they really want.’
I pushed her away. Not violently, but firmly enough to make her let go of my hand.
‘You’re a great girl, Claudia … I’m sorry if I went too far. I have nobody else to let off steam to, but I mustn’t take advantage … I need to be alone. I have an account to settle with myself. Man to man.’
‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded, a little lost, tried to say something, gave up. After looking at me with infinite sadness, she picked up her bag from the table and left the house, leaving the door open.
I felt much better. I had lanced the boil; now all I had to do was wait for it to heal. The guilty party had been identified, and it was Jessica. How can you take your own life over a deferred promotion? How can you believe yourself incapable of surviving failure when that failure is merely the kind of hiccup that’s supposed to make you stronger? How can you dare to fall short of your ambitions and think for a single second that there is an objective stronger than love, or more important than your own life? So many skewed questions designed to divert us from the only answer that matters: ourselves. Since time began, suspicious of anything that doesn’t make him suffer, man has been chasing after his own shadow and looking elsewhere for what he already has within reach, convinced that no redemption is possible without martyrdom, that any mishap is a mark of failure, when his greatest strength is his ability to bounce back … Man, that prodigy failing to make the most of his chances and fascinated by his own vanities, constantly torn between what he thinks he is and what he would like to be, forgetting that the healthiest way of existing is quite simply to remain oneself.
After Claudia had gone, I pulled back all the curtains, opened all the windows and let the light of day flood my house. Never had rays of sunshine seemed so bright. The weather was magnificent, weather that makes you feel alive and eager to chase the dreams you’ve allowed to languish. I went to the bathroom, sober, sure-footed. There wasn’t a corpse in the bathtub! Or any skeletons in the closet. There was only me, Kurt Krausmann … I undressed and threw myself under a burning-hot shower; my skin was soft to the touch. After shaving and putting on aftershave, I dressed in my best shirt, my best trousers, my best jacket, and set off to do what I had promised myself as I watched the sun go down over the valley in my hostage prison. I had dinner at Erno’s B
istro, without the shadow of a ghost around me. Late that night, refreshed and sated, I got home, took a beer from the fridge and switched on my computer. This time, I clicked on Elena’s email. No message, just an attachment that I opened without hesitation. I no longer feared Pandora’s boxes. Some twenty photographs appeared. Photographs that Elena had taken of me in the camp. I was standing on the site of Hodna City, sitting on the steps of a cabin, smiling at the back of the canteen, lying in an unmade bed, standing with my arm around Bruno’s neck, examining a child in the infirmary, letting Lotta cut my hair while a swarm of children watched and laughed … Happiness flooded through my being.
I wrote to her, moved but not sure what to say. Thank you for these beautiful memories, Elena. How are you?
I pressed Send.
As I stood up to go and change, a sound came from my computer. Elena had answered me. It was as if she had been waiting for my email. It was 11.45 p.m. by my watch. There was at least an hour’s time difference between Sudan and Germany. I couldn’t get over it. I sat down again and clicked on the message.
Elena: I’d be lying if I told you I miss you and am constantly thinking of you. You mean nothing to me. You never existed … I’m a woman, you see? The truth would offend my modesty.
I didn’t understand at first. On the second reading, it hit me head-on that it was a declaration of love. All at once, I realised that I had misunderstood what it was I was lacking, that it wasn’t Jessica I missed, but Elena, that my trauma had skewed my perception. All I could see was the blankness of the bad patches I had gone through. In the harshness of my inner winter, the forest of my concerns had gathered into a vast funeral pyre and had been waiting stoically for a merciful sun to descend from its cloud and set it ablaze. But in the evening, there was never any fire. My anxieties closed ranks to get me through the night, and the sun, as pale as the moon, withdrew noiselessly like a false dawn. If I had been unhappy since my return from Africa, it was because of my inability to put things in perspective. I’d been beating myself up, blaming myself for a crime I hadn’t committed, a crime of which I was the victim and the evidence. I had been holding completely the wrong trial. I had been going round in circles in an artificial maze, looking for a way out where there wasn’t one. Only someone who knows where he’s going can find a way out. I had to learn to live with what I couldn’t change and find my own path. But I had lacked the presence of mind to do so. How could I have been so thoughtless? … I reread Elena’s message, over and over, and each reading reduced the insidious brew that had crept into my subconscious. As light shone in on my dark thoughts one after the other, my brain was filled with dazzling sparks, and an unaccustomed clarity made the slightest detail around me stand out. ‘Why are you sad?’ the marabout had asked me. ‘You shouldn’t be. Only the dead are sad because they can’t get up again.’ And I was alive. I breathed, I felt emotion, I reacted, I dreamt … I was in seventh heaven. No, I wouldn’t die blind in one eye. And I would be able to ‘share in order to reach maturity’ … My hands were shaking, my fingers got muddled up on the keyboard. I could no longer make out the letters on the keys. Hardly surprising: I was in tears.
The African Equation Page 27
