‘I’m in private practice.’
‘What about your wife?’
My breathing accelerated when I told her that my wife was dead. I expected her to apologise profusely, as people usually do when they’ve been indiscreet, but she didn’t. She looked at me with sympathy and said nothing. I assumed that her long experience of death had hardened her and that she approached this kind of situation philosophically. Her eyes searched mine, shifted to my lips, then, in an almost mystic movement, she took my hand in hers and held it for a long time.
‘I have to go,’ I said reluctantly.
Lotta came to fetch me early the next morning. Three military vehicles bearing the insignia of the African Union were parked outside the camp’s administrative block. Soldiers rigged out like draught horses, their rifles at rest, were sitting in the back seats, stiff and silent. A light-skinned young officer in a multicoloured parka stood to one side, conversing with Pfer, who merely nodded his head, his hands behind his back. Bruno was already there, in his disguise as a Muslim dignitary, cooling his heels outside Pfer’s office.
The officer saluted me, then held out his hand. ‘Captain Wadi,’ he said. ‘I command the Omega detachment, stationed thirty kilometres to the south of here. I have orders to ensure your safety and that of the delegation which will be arriving by plane in two hours’ time.’
‘Dr Kurt Krausmann, pleased to meet you.’
‘I’m glad to know that you’re safe and sound, Dr Krausmann. The director has told me about your misadventure.’
‘Misadventure? Is that what you call it?’
He took no notice of my reservations about his definition and invited me to follow him into the office. Bruno sat down on the sofa, looking morose. Not once did he look up at the captain. He seemed to have an aversion to soldiers, and the proximity of this young officer made him ill at ease. I took a seat while Pfer went behind his desk. The captain preferred to remain standing, to feel in control, I suppose. He was somewhat sickly-looking with a thin, clean-shaven face, crew-cut hair and glittering green eyes that were in marked contrast to his bronzed complexion. He could well have been an Arab or a Berber.
‘According to the captain, the plane has taken off from Khartoum,’ Pfer said to relax the atmosphere, given that an inexplicable sense of embarrassment had fallen over the room.
Bruno shrugged. He addressed Pfer in order to avoid speaking to the captain. ‘In that case, why summon us now?’
‘I need some information,’ the captain said.
‘What information?’ Bruno grunted, still looking at Pfer. ‘We don’t owe anybody anything. Representatives of our embassies will be here soon, and as far as my friend and I are concerned, they are the only people we should speak to.’
‘Sir—’ the captain began.
‘Monsieur Pfer,’ Bruno interrupted, standing up, ‘we ask permission to leave immediately. We aren’t criminals or illegal immigrants. And we have nothing to say to strangers. Kurt and I will return to our quarters until our officials arrive.’
The captain placed a file stuffed with papers on Pfer’s desk and folded his arms across his chest, his nostrils dilated with anger. ‘We’re not talking about an interrogation, sir, but a normal procedure which is within my rights. I’m responsible for security in this area and any information that can improve living conditions in my sector of operations—’
‘Can we go?’ Bruno asked Pfer, deaf to the captain’s injunctions.
Pfer was embarrassed. He took his head in both hands and stared at the calendar in front of him. Bruno ordered me to follow him. Disconcerted by Pfer’s reaction, I decided to fall in with Bruno’s plan. The captain made no attempt to stop us. He opened his arms wide and brought them down against his sides in an irritable slap.
Bruno gave me no explanation for his refusal to cooperate with the young officer. We crossed the yard, he at a furious pace, I hobbling along behind. He had to stop to let me catch up. Elena and the others being busy with their patients, he took me to see his ‘brothers’, who occupied the tent near the infirmary. There were half a dozen of them, all convalescents: an old veteran with mocking eyes, two teenagers and three battered-looking men, including the thirty-year-old in plaster who had been telling naughty jokes in the canteen two days earlier. They were laughing like mad and our arrival didn’t put them off.
‘I won’t set foot in a souk again in a hurry,’ a boy with a bandaged hip was saying.
‘I’m sure the shopkeepers will be really upset,’ one of the wounded men said ironically.
‘It’s my right,’ the boy said. ‘I’m the one who chooses where to spend my money, aren’t I?’
‘Let him speak!’ said a man with a burnt face. ‘Otherwise he’ll lose the thread of his story.’
The others fell silent.
The narrator coughed into his fist, delighted to be the centre of attention. He resumed his story. ‘I’d just been paid, and with my wages and savings, I was hoping to buy some nice fashionable trainers, with a label on the tongue and wonderful white laces. All my life, I’ve only worn old flip-flops with holes in them. I wanted to get myself something awesome to show off to the girl next door, who was always cutting me dead. I went to all the bazaars, and it took me all day. Finally, by chance, I came across a street peddler who took some Nikes out of a box that really took my breath away. I tried them on and they fitted me like a glove. They cost an arm and a leg, but I didn’t haggle. When you want to treat yourself, you don’t scrimp, isn’t that right, Uncle Mambo?’
‘You’re absolutely right, son,’ the veteran said in a learned tone. ‘Personally, when I want to give myself a treat, I never think of the price of the soap.’
Roars of laughter shook the tent. The boy waited for the others to calm down before continuing, not at all disturbed by the lingering guffaws around him. ‘I took the Nikes and checked them from every angle. They looked so good my mouth was watering. I could already imagine myself strutting past the girl next door’s window. But just as I was putting my hand in the back pocket of my trousers to pay, I realised that someone had robbed me of half my money.’
‘Damn!’ exclaimed a young boy, entranced by his comrade’s story.
‘I hope you managed to get your hands on the thief,’ said the thirty-year-old in plaster.
‘How could I find him in that crowd? There were loads of people in the market that day.’
‘Easy,’ the veteran said. ‘You just had to look for a oneeyed man. Only a one-eyed man would have left the job half done.’
Laughter rang out again. Bruno laughed for form’s sake. His mind was elsewhere. Later, he would admit to me that, not having papers, he was dreading the possibility that the Sudanese authorities would send him back to France, which was why he had no desire to talk to the officer in charge of our security.
We stayed with the convalescents until midday, long enough for me to realise how amazing these people were. Had these survivors forgotten the misfortunes that had befallen them or had they discovered an antidote? As I observed them, I wondered from what ashes they had been reborn. They had an astonishing ability to downplay adversity. Their strength lay in their mindset, a unique, ancient mindset forged in the very magma of this good old earth of men. A mindset that had come into being with the first cry of life and would survive hard times and the downward spiral of the modern world with undimmed vigour. Bruno hadn’t been completely wrong. Deep inside these people, there resided an enduring flame that brightened and revived them every time the darkness tried to overwhelm them. Evidently, they had instinctively assimilated what I would not be able to grasp without wading through endless and often pointless mathematical probabilities. These people were an education. They laughed at their disappointments as if at an unsuccessful farce. Here they were, happy to be together, in total sympathy with each other, and if they laughed at their own naivety, it was in order to underline the fragility of things so that they could handle it better. I envied them, envied the maturity they had gained from so much suffering and so many nightmarish ordeals, their philosophical distance which allowed them to rise above traumas and disasters, and their sense of humour that seemed to proudly defy an unjust and treacherous fate, the mechanism of which they had somehow deciphered.