A few minutes later, Lotta Pedersen came to fetch us. She led us to the director’s office, a prefab equipped with cupboards, a computer, padded chairs and shelves filled with medical books and pamphlets, registers, numbered files arranged in chronological order, hard-cover encyclopedias and a neat pile of paperwork. Elena was sitting slouched on an old sprung sofa, a glass of water in her hand. She looked exhausted, her dimpled face was drawn and her eyelids were drooping. Orfane was perched on the arm of the sofa, his hands crossed over his knee. Having by now been informed who we were, the director received us with great respect, offered us a small carafe of filtered water and waited while we drank. He told us his name was Christophe Pfer, that he was Belgian and that he had been working for the Red Cross for seventeen years. He had the scars to show for it — one on his chin, a souvenir from the war in the Balkans, and a bad knee, the result of an ambush in a forest in El Salvador. He was a genial man — a wise man, too, after two decades spent dealing at close quarters with human stupidity and the problems it caused all over the world. With his curly grey hair, thick moustache and nonchalant demeanour, he reminded me of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. Like anyone with a radio or access to the internet, he knew about the kidnapping of two Germans by pirates off the coast of Somalia, but had never expected to be welcoming one of them on his own premises. He informed me that the international press was still talking about our kidnapping and that a large-scale search had been launched to find us. I asked him if there was any news of Hans Makkenroth. He had none. Actually, he had difficulty believing it was really me, because he too found it strange that the kidnappers had chosen Sudan instead of Somalia in which to barter our release. Bruno asked if giant posters with his face on them had been displayed on the front of every town hall in France, provoking marches on the Champs-Élysées demanding his release. Pfer had to admit that nobody knew about his disappearance. Bruno pretended to be shocked, before pointing out that he was no common tourist, but an African in every fibre of his being, that his misadventure was strictly an African affair and that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Western media. Then, aware of the bewilderment he had caused, he made a whole series of self-mocking gestures as if to make up for it. Pfer scratched behind his ear: since humour was inappropriate in these painful circumstances, he must have been wondering if this Frenchman was entirely of sound mind. Nevertheless, he promised to contact our respective embassies as soon as radio contact was established and advised us to have a good bath and a hot meal and go to bed. Bruno asked permission to join ‘his African brothers’ in the tent. He was subtly staking a kind of claim by his request. I winked at him, just to let him know that I understood him and approved. He turned on his heel like a soldier and headed for the tents.
Orfane offered to take care of me for the night. He invited me to his airy, restful quarters, a cabin complete with air conditioning, two padded benches, a small desk, a fitted wardrobe and a narrow but shiny tiled bathroom. I almost fell over backwards when I looked in the mirror above the washbasin. After what I had been through physically and morally, I had been expecting it, except that instead of a castaway, I discovered a shipwreck. I looked like a zombie, with my wild beard, dirty, dishevelled hair, dusty eyes, furrowed cheeks and skin the colour of papier mâché. My shirt was nothing but a filthy rag and my crumpled trousers resembled a floor cloth. I supposed I must smell like a dead rat. Orfane pointed to a bar of Aleppo soap and a bottle of shampoo on a stainless-steel stand next to the shower head. I quickly undressed and got in the shower. While I washed, my host switched on a mini stereo. The Afro-American music that started up made me quiver from head to foot. It had been so long since I had listened to anything other than coarse insults and moaning. In the old days, I hadn’t been able to start my car without switching on the radio or the CD player. Now I realised how much I had missed music and how its absence had impoverished me. A stream of pure air rushed into my lungs. I had the feeling I could hear my soul being rebuilt. My heart was pounding so hard I feared a heart attack. My whole being demanded music, demanded it as a hymn to life. The foamy water flowing over my body reconciled me with myself. As the voice of the singer filled me with intoxication, I rubbed and soaped myself aggressively to expel the dirt from my flesh and from my mind. The water at my feet was almost black with it.
Orfane threw me a dressing gown and suggested I take the bench near the window. A waxed cardboard tray was waiting for me on the bedside table: steaming hot soup, a plate of salad, white bread and a slice of smoked fish. I threw myself greedily on the food. Orfane took a can of beer from a mini refrigerator, handed it to me and went into the bathroom to wash. When he came out again, wrapped in a thick white loincloth, he went to fetch a bottle of soda from the fridge and opened it with his thumb.
‘Would you like another beer?’
‘No, thanks … Is that your wife?’ I asked, pointing to the photograph of a black woman on the desk, next to another photo in which three black men were posing with a white man.
He gave a broad smile. ‘That’s my mother when she was thirty.’
I looked at the photograph in its wooden frame. The woman appeared lost in thought. There was something graceful and proud about her. Bruno had told me that Africans worshipped their mothers, convinced that no prayer would be granted without Mama’s blessing.
‘She’s very beautiful,’ I said.
‘Of course, my father was the village chief.’
He drank from the bottle, put it down on the bedside table and lowered the volume a little on the stereo.
‘Nina Simone, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” … That’s my sedative. That and Marvin Gaye. When Marvin sings, the black clouds dissolve and summer floods my thoughts …’
‘I like him,’ I said. ‘He’s magical.’
‘Isn’t he?’
The bench creaked beneath his athletic body. He reached out his arm and picked up the photo of the four men. There was something very tender in that movement of the hand. He showed me the photo. The men were standing in a crowded, smoky bar. One of the black men, a stocky man in a docker’s cap and a coat that was too big for him, was visibly delighted to be having his photograph taken with the other three.
‘That’s my father, the white man’s Joe Messina, that’s Robert White, and that one’s Eddie Willis … There’s an incredible story behind this photo.’ He put it back down on the edge of the desk. ‘It was my father who taught me about music. He was the village chief, like I said, and very spoilt. He always asked for records for his birthday, and he celebrated his birthday every time a hit song came out. He loved black American music. Our house almost collapsed under the weight of all the records: Otis Redding, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Abbey Lincoln … We had to move whole boxes of them to see where to put our feet. It drove my mother crazy. My father was the only one who knew his way around. He knew exactly where to find such and such a track. My father had a particular weakness for the Funk Brothers. One morning, he left his rosewood throne, his ostrich feather headdress and his sceptre cut from a baobab tree and disappeared. We thought he’d been kidnapped or murdered, but we never found his body or any trace of him. He’d vanished into thin air, just like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘One evening, three years later, he came back to the village. Without warning … He’d gone to the United States, on a “pilgrimage” to Detroit. He’d crossed whole countries with no money and no papers, done whatever pitiful little jobs he could find to pay for a train or bus ticket, worked for months in ports waiting for the right boat and the right moment, and managed to stow away as far as Detroit. And why did he do all that? To be photographed with his idols, Joe Messina, Robert White and Eddie Willis. Just to be in a photo with those three guys. No more, no less. The next day, with his trophy in the bag, he set off on the return journey.’