The African Equation by Yasmina Khadra Read Free Book Online

He was very proud of his boat, which he had decorated himself. Whenever he took the controls, he gave the impression he was taking charge of his own destiny. The first few days, laid low with seasickness, I would spew my guts out over the hawsehole, then collapse on a seat, wrap my arms around the bulwark, and watch Hans through the window of the control room. He would be standing erect like a conqueror, his white beard held high, like an older but wiser Captain Ahab. At first, he had invited me to the helm and explained the workings of the different dials on the control panel, showed me the radio, the radar, the tracking system, the navigation instruments, then, realising that I wasn’t taking much of it in, he had stopped ‘bothering’ me. My mind was elsewhere and his teaching bored me. I preferred to spend most of my time scanning the horizon and listening to the sails flapping in the wind.
    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