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.
2
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.