I waited for him to stir, to show signs of life. My father didn’t move. He was hiding his face from me. I shook my head and was about to leave when his ruined voice rolled towards me like a dying wave.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
And he continued looking out at the grounds.
I left the room, closed the door behind me, waited a while longer in the corridor, then, certain that we had said everything there was to say even though I had said nothing at all, I joined the nurse at the foot of the stairs.
I drove in a trance.
I drove through towns and villages with no idea of where I was, the image of a dying man stuck in his wheelchair splashed all over the windscreen.
Where was I going?
I took the first exit I came to off the autobahn. A ribbon of tarmac led me through the middle of a landscape garlanded with orchards and farms and dropped me at the entrance to a small town which the mist was trying to hide from sight like forbidden fruit. A steeple, sober and dignified, watched over little houses with tiled roofs. The streets lay wrapped in a cold silence. I looked for a road sign, but couldn’t see any. I parked outside a bar and switched off the engine. It was as if my fatigue was waiting only for the engine to stop in order to overwhelm me. My shoulders sagged beneath the weight of the kilometres I had travelled and my limbs felt tight. Leaning on the wheel, I tried to summon a little strength and clear my mind … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig … What was the meaning of this journey? Why had my father, the father I thought I had rejected, suddenly become an inescapable milestone on my road map? Why had I gone to look for forgiveness at my mother’s grave, when I hadn’t laid flowers on it for years? And what magic formula could my old university friends possibly have had that might allow me to bounce back when adversity laid me low? … The dullness of the village was startling. I had to find out where I was and how to get back to Frankfurt. I looked in the glove compartment for a map and found a packet of cigarettes that someone must have left. Without being able to stop myself, I lit up. The first puff went to my head. I had quit smoking the day I graduated as a doctor, a lifetime ago … The mist on the windscreen saddened me as much as my thoughts. A pharmacist’s sign blinked on the façade of a small shop. A little girl in a hood ran across the road. A few drops of rain hit the roof of my car … Essen, Munich, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Leipzig, and then what? … Even if I visited every city in Germany, where would it get me? I knew I wouldn’t shake off either my grief or my shadow. The sickness I was fleeing was inside me. Wherever I went, it would be there, rooted in my flesh, playing on my weaknesses and thwarting my attempts at diversion. I needed to ward off the old demon, to drive it out of my body. With my bare hands or with forceps. Because there wasn’t room for the two of us.
I stubbed out my cigarette on the pavement and walked into the bar. A woman stood behind the counter, her face in her hands and her eyes staring into space, paying no attention to the two young men sitting at a table at the far end of the room. She jumped when I ordered a beer and a cheese sandwich. After serving me half-heartedly, she went back to her corner and resumed her daydreams.
‘Is there a hotel around here?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
I left a banknote on the counter and went back to my car. The sky had darkened; a faulty lamp was flickering at the end of the street. The memory of my father came back to provoke me. I got in and thought about what I should do: find a hotel for the night or keep driving. An old man with a newspaper under his arm walked past me, dragging his leg. He reminded me of Wolfgang walking away in the rain, weighed down by grief. Wolfgang! Why wasn’t he on my list? Had I forgotten him, or had I deliberately left him out? There was no rhyme or reason to this trip. All these unlikely reunions, this whole laborious itinerary intended to somehow purge my mind, were merely a desperate manoeuvre to get away from what I couldn’t accept. It was pointless to look for a hotel. The answers to my questions were buried somewhere in my house.
Somebody was ringing the doorbell. The noise drilled into my head. My hangover was so bad I found it hard to get up. The daylight hurt my eyes. The sun was at its height. I don’t know how many hours or days I had slept. My mouth furry, my movements laborious, I slipped out of bed, looked for my slippers, couldn’t find them, and went barefoot to the door. It was the postman. He was surprised to see me in vest and pants, looking quite untidy, and handed me a registered package. I signed for it and slammed the door in his face. I hadn’t done it deliberately. It was a mistake, due to my drunken state, and I immediately realised how rude it was. I opened the door again to apologise, but the postman had already disappeared. I staggered to the kitchen — I didn’t dare go to the bathroom yet — stuck my head in the sink and let the water from the tap lash me, then went back to my bedroom and tore the wrapping off the package. Inside, I found a small book with a letter in it. The book was Black Moon, Joma’s collection, dedicated to his ‘desert rose, Fatamou’. In the letter, Bruno had written:
My dear Kurt,
I think of you every day. I hope you’re well. For my part, things have settled down. I’m reunited with my partner, and I’m living in her house, in Djibouti. Her name is Souad, like the other one, except that she’s too huge to be a dancer and she snores like a diesel engine. But when she gets up early in the morning, she lights up my life. I hesitated for a long time before sending you Joma’s book. I’d never forgive myself if the only memory you had of Africa was a jail and a gang of idiots. We never become battle-hardened, and I know how false the concept is. Often, it’s those who have triumphed over misfortune who are the least ready to confront it a second time. I thought I knew everything about Africa, its hardships and about-turns, and yet, with every false move, I don’t merely stumble, I fall like a child learning to walk. But whatever nasty surprises are lurking around the corner, I refuse to believe that Africa is nothing but violence and poverty, just as I refuse to believe that Joma Baba-Sy was merely a brute with a narrow mind and no heart. I would be at peace with you if you read his poems. They say what we did not deign to hear; maybe one day they might block out the voice reminding us of the wrongs we endured.