David’s connection to Driss’s death

David Henniger’s connection to Driss’s death begins with a collision caused by the Hennigers’ drinking and deepens through the choices they make afterward. Jo Henniger recognizes their shared culpability, while David’s later return to the roadside suggests a change in how he faces what happened. Yet his private self-forgiveness cannot erase the evidence he concealed or satisfy Ismael, whose fatal attack turns the unresolved past into the couple’s present.

The collision and shared culpability

Jo states the connection plainly when she tells Richard Galloway that both she and David are drinkers. She distinguishes her drinking from David’s more severe problem, but refuses to use that difference to separate herself from the event: the alcohol contributed to David’s bad driving, and she was involved too. Her account assigns responsibility to the couple rather than to Driss, who, as she acknowledges, did nothing wrong except step into the road and try to make them slow down. The collision was not an inexplicable misfortune in her telling; their drinking and David’s driving brought them into it.

Jo’s confession also describes how fear shaped David’s conduct. She says he was terrified of the local people and heavily intoxicated. The admission does not lessen his responsibility; instead, it places fear and drink beside the choices that led to Driss’s death. Jo is not merely supplying Richard with new information. She says she needs to get the truth off her chest, even though she expects him to say that it makes no difference now and believes that, in one sense, he is right. Her need to speak persists despite the absence of any practical remedy.

Richard answers that he already knew and that the truth was obvious. His response confirms that the couple’s guilt has not remained wholly private: their conduct and relationship make the underlying facts legible to someone close to them. But recognition by Richard is not the same as public accountability, nor does it resolve what the Hennigers owe to Driss or those affected by his death.

Concealment and the limits of self-forgiveness

The aftermath includes David’s burial of Driss’s identification document in a small hole. That act becomes important later because Ismael remembers it. The concealed identification links David’s response to the collision not only to grief or remorse but also to an effort to hide a consequential fact. The novel does not treat the roadside burial as an isolated detail: it survives in another character’s memory and returns as evidence by which David is judged.

At the end, David understands that Ismael has recognized him. His response is not surprise but a weary sense that events have closed around him. He thinks that freedom of choice is absurd and that there was nothing he could have done either way. The thought sits uneasily beside the concrete history of the collision and the buried identification: his attempt to see the outcome as unavoidable does not undo his actions. The narration makes the limit of that defense explicit when it observes that David never considers why he has not been forgiven, because he has forgiven himself. His private absolution has not been granted by Ismael and cannot stand in for it.

Returning to the roadside

Three days after the collision, David and Jo drive along the same road again. David consults the map and expects them to reach their destination quickly, but the familiar whitewashed posts and abandoned buildings bring them back toward the place where they struck Driss. A police ribbon is still tied between plastic posts. This is no longer an unmarked stretch of road that the couple can simply pass through: the ribbon makes the death visible in the landscape they revisit.

Jo asks David to stop and pay their respects. His earlier self, she thinks, would have rejected the suggestion outright; now he eases his foot off the accelerator and lets the car slow. Jo feels deep relief at his response and wonders whether he has changed permanently. The small action matters because it contrasts with the earlier flight from responsibility: for once, David does not press on without acknowledging the site of Driss’s death. The gesture is limited, however. It is an act of respect at the scene, not a reversal of the collision or a resolution of the concealed past.

Ismael’s judgment and David’s death

Before the Hennigers can stop, Ismael comes down the stony hill toward the road. He carries a small Psychopyge fossil and a revolver. The couple see a man approaching their headlights; David relaxes his hands on the wheel and turns off the engine, while Jo lowers her window with a searching, sympathetic expression. Ismael greets them, and their astonishment suggests that they recognize him. Their apparent trust gives him the opening to approach.

Ismael’s memory of David burying Driss’s identification explains the personal force of the encounter. He sees that act as characteristic of a foreigner, and David, seeing Ismael with the weapon, understands what is happening. The collision has therefore produced more than the Hennigers’ private guilt: concealment has become part of the history through which Ismael approaches them, and his response is lethal rather than forgiving. David’s return to the road and willingness to pay respects cannot prevent that reckoning.

As Ismael raises the revolver, David experiences the moment in slow motion and thinks of the turbine nightmare that had come to him earlier in the day. He tries to speak, but cannot form a word. The narration presents his final recognition as an apology conveyed only through his eyes, too late to be spoken or answered. David dies without receiving forgiveness from Ismael. His connection to Driss’s death thus ends in a stark contrast: he has privately forgiven himself, but the buried evidence, the surviving grief, and the violence of the final encounter show that self-forgiveness cannot control how others remember or answer the harm.