I reached for the handle. Even the certainty that there’s absolutely nothing now between you and catastrophe gives a certain assurance. For one last moment I hesitated. Why not have an even bigger scene, an even more powerful effect? If Hannah was standing outside, why not the children too, why not my parents as well, come of their own accord from their dismal retirement home, and while we were at it, why not Lobenmeier, Hauberlan, and Longrolf from Accounting, why not Mollwitz too; all come to see me without my clothes on, without secrets, pretences, illusions, and deceptions, just as I really was.
“Come in.” I opened the door. “Come in, everyone!”
In Danger
I thought we were going to crash. My God, have you ever been through anything like that?”
Elisabeth shook her head. This time she too had thought this was it: the tiny plane had emitted cracks and groans as it was carried by huge gusts of wind and the packages of medicines had been hurled around in every direction in the cargo bay that stank of metal and gasoline. One of the doctors had been struck in the head, and they’d had to put a pressure bandage on it to stanch the flow of blood. But Leo had sat there calmly the whole time, pale but upright, a narrow, crooked smile on his face.
“I wonder,” he tilted his head back, stretched his arms, and turned around, “why we find this beautiful. Some grass, a few trees, a lot of sky. Why is it like coming home?”
“Not so loud!” She felt dizzy, she had to sit down on the ground for a moment: no asphalt, just reddish earth, flattened hard by the wheels of planes. At the edges of the runway two jeeps were waiting with a number of men in uniform. Two of them were carrying machine guns slung across their bodies.
“A dream from the distant past,” said Leo. “Millions of years on the savannah. Everything subsequent a mere episode. Tell me, are you feeling sick?”
“It’s okay,” she murmured: there was a dull coughing sound and the plane started the propellers: rotating at first, then a gray blur. The machine began to taxi. Müller and Rebenthal, the two doctors, loaded the cartons of medicines onto the jeeps. From time to time one of them cast skeptical glances at Leo. Nobody had been pleased that Elisabeth had come with a companion this time. It wasn’t customary, it wasn’t done; and if anyone were to find out that the nervous guest was in fact a writer whose job it was to spill everything he saw, she would never be forgiven. But Leo had insisted; he wanted, he kept on saying, to learn her world too, and real life couldn’t go on escaping him. So, perhaps because she wanted finally to show him this real life, perhaps because she was curious how he would handle himself under real pressure, but perhaps also because she just couldn’t refuse his wishes, she had finally taken him along.
“Is that a real weapon?” he asked the two doctors. “The one the man over there’s carrying, there, you see, the one in the jeep, is it real?”
“What do you think?” asked Müller. He was a tall, taciturn Swiss who’d worked for years in the Congo and had gone through things there he never talked about. When he’d been hit in the head by the crate during the flight, he hadn’t even groaned.
“Let me help!” Leo snatched the carton out of his hands and set it in the back of the jeep. There was a clink of glass. “Have you read Hemingway? I think about him all the time here. Can you work here without thinking of him?”
“Yes,” said Müller. “Easily.”
“But all this,” Leo pointed to the armed men, then the plane, which was just turning at the end of the runway, “could be straight out of one of his books!”
“Don’t point, please!” said Rebenthal.
“What?”
“Don’t point with your finger.”
“It could make them angry,” said Müller. “That’s certainly not what you want.”
“But these are your people!”
“Leo,” said Elisabeth. “Please.”
“But—”
“Be quiet and go sit in the jeep!”
How could she explain to him? How to make clear to an outsider what compromises had to be made when working in a war zone, how to say to him that you settled for the less murderous faction or the one you thought was less murderous, or you just paid one of them, no matter which, for shelter and protection. She had lived in murderers’ camps more than once, had eaten their bread and their soup, and then treated those people in destroyed villages whom her hosts had left alive. Nothing was clean, no decision was clear, you could only try to help the wounded and ask no questions.
“Look!” cried Leo.
She followed his glance. At the end of the runway the plane left the ground, climbed, grew small, and disappeared into the blazing corona of the sun.
“To crash here,” he said. “That would be something. Would sound good in someone’s biography. Lost in Africa.”
Elisabeth shrugged.
“Since Maria Rubinstein went missing a year ago her books have never been more popular. Now they want to give her the Romner Prize even in absentia. My God, can you imagine, I could have taken that trip. Then maybe it would be me and not her—I still keep asking myself if I should feel guilty.”
Elisabeth bobbed her head. She had no idea what he was talking about.
Then they were sitting squashed together in the jeep, driving through the tall grass. The wind blew through their hair, it smelled of earth, the sun above them was enormous; it was so bright they had to squeeze their eyes shut and everything dissolved in the light. Leo called something, she couldn’t understand a word. In the distance she heard the dark rumble of thunder.
“What did you say?” she cried.
“Real for the first time,” yelled Leo.
“What?”
“I can’t remember when something was as real as this.”
She didn’t want to know what he meant, there were other things she had to think about. Tomorrow she would start dealing with the first wounded, and she knew that once this started she would be cut off from all feeling. Everything would become soft and cottony, and while she was doing what needed to be done, there would only be a dull numbness inside her. How often already had she decided to stay in Europe and not do this work anymore? Next to her, Leo was pulling out his notebook and beginning to scribble. What was he thinking, did he take himself for André Malraux? She peered over his shoulder but could only make out a few words: Living room … switch off the TV … playground … neighbor.
He turned and saw her look. “Just an idea!” he cried. “That’s all.”
The dappled head of a hyena rose for a moment in the grass. The soldier behind them aimed his weapon but didn’t shoot and in a moment they had passed it. Leo kept making notes and she couldn’t help staring at the notebook. Her old fear that he would put her in a story and create a distorted copy of her, rearranged according to his own needs: the thought was unbearable. But whenever she said this, he evaded her or changed the subject.
Back there in the capital, he had been strangely calm. During her conversations with two ministers he had stood by her side without drawing any attention to himself, but not missing a word. After two days during which there was no water, he had made no protests but like all of them had washed first using mineral water and then had not washed at all, and on their last day he’d secretly paid their driver to take him through the slum where the worst atrocities had taken place. She only heard about it afterward. Apparently Leo had even gotten out of the car and asked people questions. Where did his sudden courage come from? It wasn’t like him. The thunder echoed in the distance again. Instinctively she looked up at the sky, but there was nothing but a few scattered high clouds.