Pfer suggested we go to the canteen to celebrate. As we left the office, we saw two male nurses running across the yard towards the main gate of the camp. Children were standing outside their tents, pointing at something. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw a figure swaying in the distance, a burden on its back. Pfer, who had immediately realised what was happening, sent his secretary to alert the infirmary. We gave up on the canteen and hurried to catch up with the two nurses. The figure didn’t stop on seeing help arrive. It kept on staggering towards the camp. The two nurses tried to relieve it of its burden, but it refused and carried on its way, like an automaton. Bruno was the first to identify the figure: it was the young man with the cart who had been abandoned with his mother in the desert! There he was, before our very eyes, tottering but still upright, his mother on his back. He entered the camp, barely able to stand, empty-eyed, deaf to the words of the male nurses who tried to take the old woman from him. It was as if he wanted to see his exploit through to the end, jealously guarding his trek and rejecting any help he judged premature. The children, who had recognised him, ran towards him, incredulous. They didn’t cry out, didn’t go too close to him, simply escorted him to the infirmary, where a doctor and two of his assistants were waiting. The old woman was immediately laid on a stretcher and taken into the treatment room.
His lips white and his eyes on the verge of rolling back, the prodigal son collapsed exhausted against the wall, his arms dangling, his calves covered with cuts, his back steaming, half dead but valiant, incredibly valiant, supremely valiant.
Bruno turned to me and said, proudly and vengefully, ‘That’s Africa, Monsieur Krausmann!’
2
That afternoon, Pfer summoned Bruno and me and informed us that representatives of our respective embassies would be arriving the following day. There would probably be journalists in the delegation, and maybe also Sudanese military. He gave an outline of that kind of encounter, which he had witnessed before, and its emotional impact, which could be quite severe. Bruno merely nodded, but once Pfer had finished his briefing, he announced that he had no intention of going back to Bordeaux, but preferred to return to Djibouti. Pfer promised to see what he could do and let us go.
Bruno took me to see an old man lying in a tent. He wasn’t sick, just too old to stand. His face had collapsed and his gestures were sparing, and all he could do was smile in a dazed kind of way. Bruno told me he was a marabout and warrior, as well as an incomparable diviner able to sense water over a wide radius and locate it without needing a rod or a pendulum. According to Bruno, the old man, who was Ethiopian in origin, was an emblematic figure in the Horn of Africa. His reputation extended from the Yemeni Bedouin to the fabled Masai of Kenya. He had been the instigator and one of the leaders of the armed revolt against the Italian invasion in 1935 — Mussolini was said to have put a fabulous price on his head. After the national liberation at the beginning of the 1940s, he had been much feted by Emperor Haile Selassie. Then the coming of Communism to Ethiopia had turned the traditional structures upside down, and the old man had spent a decade rotting in the Marxist regime’s dungeons, while Mengistu’s henchmen murdered, ‘disappeared’ and forced into exile the most influential members of his tribe. Still hounded, he had ended up joining the swarm of refugees and had wandered from one country to another until age had caught up with him. Taken into the camp, he was waiting to die the way legends die in those lands where memories grow dim with the generations. I wondered why Bruno was telling me all this, then realised that there was no ulterior motive, that he was simply proud of ‘his people’s’ charisma. As he spoke, the old man kept his eyes fixed on me. He must have been over a hundred and reminded me of an Apache chief on his catafalque of feathers. He wore a talismanic necklace and an amber rosary by way of a bracelet. A ring bearing the effigy of some ancient deity looked like a large wart on his finger. Bruno assured me it had belonged to Haile Selassie himself, who had given it to the marabout as a mark of friendship. The old man muttered something; his words emerged from his toothless mouth as if from an abyss, sepulchral and disjointed, and faded in the air like plumes of steam. He reached out his arm to me and placed his open hand on my forehead. A wave of energy went through my brain, and a strange sensation, as if I were levitating, forced me to take a step back. He said something in his dialect, which Bruno translated: ‘Why are you sad? You shouldn’t be. Only the dead are sad because they can’t get up again.’ I quickly took my leave of him and invited Bruno to walk with me to the pilot village.
It was the end of classes, and the pupils in their pinafores were rushing to the football ground, their high-pitched voices echoing. We watched a closely fought match, with excellent tackles and strict marking.
As Elena, Orfane and Lotta were late joining us, Bruno and I had dinner in the canteen. Even though his grievances against me seemed forgotten, Bruno showed signs of anxiety. Torn between the fear of disappointing the envoys from his embassy and the idea of being reunited with his partner and his friends in Djibouti, he didn’t know which way to turn. When he realised he was miming his thoughts, he pulled himself together. He clinked his spoon against the rim of his bowl, stirred his soup, dipped a piece of bread in it and left it there.
‘I admit she’s a gorgeous creature,’ he said suddenly.
‘Who?’
‘Elena Juárez.’
Bruno always surprised me: you never knew what he was going to say next. He gave a wicked little smile. He knew he had taken me aback and my embarrassment boosted his ego.
‘I saw you at the football match. You kept jumping every time you thought you’d spotted her in the crowd.’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I stammered in irritation.
‘Of course I am …’
‘I suppose this is more of that damned African curiosity you were talking about.’
‘I saw you looking at her yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that. Your eyes were full of her.’
‘Please, Bruno. Now is not the time.’
‘Love doesn’t care about time. When it arrives, the world can wait, and everything else pales into insignificance.’
He plunged his spoon into his soup, fished out the piece of bread and lifted it to his mouth, his eyes already withdrawing far away. We ate in silence, taking no further interest in each other, then parted company. I went back to Orfane’s cabin, took a shower and lay down on the padded bench. I tried to think of nothing, but that was impossible. I was a whirl of thoughts. Jessica’s ghost on one side, Joma’s on the other, and me caught in the crossfire. I switched off the light to make myself invisible. Orfane came back late. I pretended I was asleep, praying that he wouldn’t put the light on. He didn’t. He undressed in the dark, slipped beneath the sheets, and immediately started snoring. I dressed again and went out into the night. The generator was off. The moon cast an anaemic light over the camp. Over by the tents, somebody was still up. I thought I recognised Bruno’s voice, but wasn’t sure. I walked along the fence, my arms crossed over my chest, my head bowed. Two puppies came and sniffed my calves. I crouched down to stroke them. They moaned contentedly and ran off towards the gate, where a night watchman was dozing, a tiny transistor radio against his ear … A cigarette end gleamed intermittently in the darkness. It was Elena. She was sitting on the steps of her cabin, in vest and shorts, smoking and staring down at her feet. As I was about to turn and walk back the way I had come, she noticed me and gave me a little sign with her hand.