Although we avoided mentioning Jessica, Paula’s name came up again and again. Hans spoke about her as if he had left her early that morning and was sure he would go home to her that night. I could tell he missed her, but he had the gift of managing things so that she remained omnipresent in his heart and mind.
‘It’s starting to get chilly,’ I said, energetically rubbing my arms.
He nodded. ‘One last drink?’ he suggested.
‘I don’t think so.’
I took a shower before going to bed. As on the previous nights, I planned to switch off the lights and stare at the darkness for an hour or two. I had started to read Musil on the plane taking us to Nicosia. That night, I realised that I was still on the first chapter. Incapable of concentrating on the text, I started again from the beginning. Like the night before, and the nights before that, I put on a little music, the same piece of Wagner, then, in the middle of a sentence or a metaphor, the book faded away and I found my mind wandering. And there, in the muffled silence of my mahogany-lined cabin, amid the platinum joints and the paintings on the walls, Jessica’s ghost caught up with me. I closed my eyes to dismiss it, but in vain. What I dreaded more than anything was waking up — the first thing that would come into my mind was Jessica’s death — every time I woke up I would experience the exact same emotions I had felt in that bathroom where the love of my life had slipped away from me. It was terrible. Would I ever get over it? … I wondered above all how I managed to get up, shower, shave, drink my coffee and go back up on deck to see the sea replace time … Day being merely a respite, night would find me in bed again and would spread its blackness into my thoughts and whisper in my ear, just before I drifted off, asking if I was ready or not to face the moment of waking that stood on guard, waiting for morning.
I took a sleeping pill.
As I did every night.
*
I was woken by the noise of something falling. The pill I’d taken had dulled my senses, and I wasn’t sure where I was. I looked for my watch, couldn’t find it, consulted the one built into the bedside table: 4.27. Someone was yelling at Hans in the next room. Suddenly, the door of my room was flung open, and a torch was shone right in my face. I didn’t have time to react before a shadowy figure rushed at me and placed something metallic against my temple. A second figure came into the room, searched for the light switch and turned it on. The ceiling light revealed two excited black men. The first was in his thirties, solidly built with shaven head and shoulders like a weightlifter’s, a brute naked from the waist up, with amulets around his arms and venom in his eyes, screaming orders at me in an unknown language. The other intruder was a slender teenager, with slashes on his face, and eyes that shone like a drug addict’s. He was pointing some kind of firearm at me, maybe a sawn-off shotgun or a home-made carbine.
The older man was a real giant and too strong for me to put up any resistance. He tore me from my bed and threw me against a wall. I was no sooner on my feet than I received a blow with a rifle butt in my stomach which bent me double. The second intruder grabbed me by the hair and forced me to kneel. His blood-red eyes travelled over my body like two man-eating ants. I had never met anyone like these two in my life. The younger man seemed to be waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to shoot me dead … The giant rummaged in the drawers, turned the mattress over to see what was underneath, and took down the paintings in search of a hidden safe. Whenever he came across anything interesting — my watch, my sleeping pills, my wallet, my mobile phone, my belt, my sunglasses, my book — he threw it into a small, dirt-stained jute sack. The search over, he came back to me, looked into my eyes in the hope of detecting some detail that might have escaped him, lifted my chin with the tip of his Kalashnikov and yelled something at me in his language. He repeated the same question three times, in a guttural voice that made the veins on his neck throb. Not getting any answer, he hit me and pushed me out into the corridor.
In the control room, four armed men stood with guns aimed at Hans and Tao. They were all yelling at once. A fifth barred the stairway that led up on deck, moving the blade of a sabre back and forth across the palm of his hand, as sinister as an executioner getting ready to behead his victim. There was an unhealthy gleam in his eyes, and his fixed grin chilled my blood. Puny-looking, with a bony face and unusually long arms, he gave the impression of not being entirely of sound mind, especially with the grotesque pair of glasses without lenses he was wearing so casually.
Our attackers were young, some barely out of puberty, but they seemed to know exactly what they were doing. After lots of yelling and bursts of spittle, they ordered us to put our hands in the air. Hans, who had only had time to put on a pair of trousers and one sock, tried to calm them down, and was ordered to shut up and keep still.
‘No other passengers?’ a tall, thin man with bronzed skin asked the younger of the two men who had come to get me.
‘No, chief.’
The chief turned and looked at me, lingering over my underpants, my bare legs. With his revolver, he shoved me against the wall. My Adam’s apple scraped my throat. I found it hard not to close my eyes, expecting a gunshot at any moment. I was seized with terror, and I clenched my fists to push it back.
‘Are you the pilot?’ he asked me in English.
‘No, I am,’ Hans said. ‘What do you want with us?’
The chief laughed, revealing a gold tooth, and without taking his eyes off me retorted, ‘These damned whites! They always need everything spelt out for them.’ He went up to Hans and looked him up and down. ‘Is this your boat or did you hire it?’
‘It’s my boat.’
‘Great! … French, American, British?’
‘German.’
‘Are you in business or some kind of scam?’
‘They’re spies,’ the giant with the amulets said.
‘That’s not true,’ Hans said. ‘My friend’s a doctor. And I’m in humanitarian aid. I’m supposed to be equipping a hospital in the Comoros …’
‘How touching,’ the chief said ironically, turning to Tao. ‘And the chink?’
‘He’s Filipino.’
‘The skivvy, I assume. He cleans, does the cooking, wipes your arse, attends to your every need … How much would a Filipino cook fetch on the market, Joma?’
‘You probably couldn’t give him away,’ the giant said.
‘In other words, a bad investment,’ the chief said, walking around Tao.
Tao did not flinch. He held himself erect, his face inscrutable, revealing nothing of what he was feeling.
‘Sorry,’ the chief said, ‘I’m going to have to dispense with your services. I hope you can swim.’
Immediately, the giant with the amulets took Tao by the waist. Hans tried to intervene, but a blow with a rifle butt knocked him to the floor. Tao didn’t struggle. He didn’t understand what was happening. His small body was engulfed by the black giant. I stood there petrified, in a daze, unable to react. I watched the giant take Tao up on deck. Not a muscle responded.
‘Kurt, don’t let him do it!’ Hans screamed at me from the floor.