The Memory of Love

by Forna, Aminatta

  Inside the apartment he leans against the door frame and lets the breath out of his body, listens to the sound of the trolley, slower now, fade away. He pulls off his T-shirt and crawls back underneath the mosquito net. For a while he lies on his back, eyes closed. Behind his lids he sees the scene, the baby’s head, the eyes: closed and peaceful, as though he had taken a look at the world he was about to enter and changed his mind.

  Sleepless now, he turns on the light for a second time and climbs out of bed. In the kitchen he pours himself a glass of water from the bottle in the fridge. Tiny red ants mass around a half-biscuit on a plate, the edges of a patch of spilled guava juice, like beasts around a vanishing water hole. He picks up the plate; the ants swarm over his fingers delivering fiery bites. He swings around, drops the plate into the sink and holds his hand under the tap, watches the flailing ants sucked into the vortex.

  In the sitting room he sits upon the crumbling foam cushions of the couch and picks up a book from the shelf beneath the coffee table. It is an English novel, of the kind taught in schools and left by the previous occupant. Adrian opens it randomly and begins to read, has difficulty concentrating, becomes entangled by words and their meaning. Then, before he can reach the end of the paragraph, the lights fail. For a moment he sits, insufficiently bothered to move, lets himself give in to the inertia and finds it comforting. A minute passes, then another. The thought occurs to him to sleep on the settee, when a series of rapid knocks on the door jerks him into alertness.

  The man on the doorstep is dressed in green hospital scrubs, a T-shirt pulled over the top, on his feet a pair of rubber flip-flops. His face is lost in the darkness.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you. Thought I might crash here a few hours, hope you don’t mind.’ A pause. The man points beyond Adrian’s head, to the interior of the room. ‘The light was on.’

  Adrian blinks and, not knowing what else to do, moves aside.

  ‘Thanks,’ says the man, as he steps over the threshold into the apartment. His movements are exact, assured, unlike Adrian, who fumbles to find a candle and matches, light the candle’s wick and set it on the table. In the trembling yellow light he sees something familiar in the man’s profile.

  ‘You were attending the woman just now?’

  The visitor nods.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What happened?’ The man looks up at Adrian. ‘The baby was stuck. The woman was in labour for two days.’

  ‘And now?’

  He shrugs. ‘Well, now it’s out.’

  Adrian is silent at that.

  The man scratches his ear, but ventures nothing further. Then, ‘So you live here?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yeah, I think I heard that. We used to use this place, you know. In-between times, after a late call. Mind if I crash?’

  ‘I’ll fetch some linen.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

  Adrian goes into the bedroom anyhow, where he locates a pair of sheets and takes a pillow from his own bed. When he returns the man is sitting, barefoot now, thumbing through the volume Adrian has left open on the table, squinting at the print in the inconstant light and pinching the place between his eyebrows. At the sound of Adrian’s tread, he replaces the book carefully, face down as he had found it. For some reason Adrian wants to tell him it doesn’t matter, the book doesn’t belong to him, but he says nothing. As he bends to put the sheets and pillow down, the man looks up and extends his hand.

  ‘Kai Mansaray,’ in an exhausted voice.

  ‘Adrian Lockheart.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He places the pillow against the wooden arm of the settee, punches a hole in it to create a hollow and lies down.

  With no more apparently forthcoming, Adrian carries the candle through to his bedroom, the shadows rearing up and shrinking back around him, and climbs into bed.

  In this country there is no dawn. No spring or autumn. Nature is an abrupt timekeeper. About daybreak there is nothing in the least ambiguous, it is dark or it is light, with barely a sliver in between. Adrian wakes to the light. The air is heavy and carries the faint odour of mould, like a cricket pavilion entered for the first time in the season. It is always there, stronger in the morning and on some days more than others. It pervades everything, the bed sheets, towels, his clothes. Dust and mould.

  Outside his window somebody is talking in a loud voice. He has no idea what they are saying. For a moment his mind drifts with the thought. To be surrounded by languages you don’t understand. Of how it must, in some ways, be like being deaf. The deaf children he knew, whose parents sometimes came to see him, became remote, cut off, even inside their own families. Silent islands. By the time they were diagnosed the damage to the relationship with their parents and siblings was already done. No wonder, he thinks, that the deaf create their own communities. Deliberately turning their backs on the hearing world.

  In the kitchen Kai Mansaray, barefoot but dressed in the clothes of the night before, is opening and closing cupboard doors. He doesn’t turn when Adrian greets him.

  ‘Hey, man. Not much here. Tell me you have coffee!’

  Adrian opens a cupboard on the opposite wall and finds the tin of instant coffee. He fills the kettle with water from the plastic bottle and lights the gas ring.

  Kai Mansaray watches him.

  ‘Boiling sterilises it.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ says Adrian, feeling the other’s gaze. He fetches down the only two mugs he possesses and prises the lid of the coffee tin open with the end of a teaspoon. ‘How did you find the couch? I hope it was all right.’

  ‘Yeah, fine, fine. Me and your couch go back a long time. I’m not a big sleeper anyhow. I had to check on my patient.’

  ‘How is she doing?’ When there is no reply, Adrian glances up. Kai Mansaray is studying the label on the coffee tin. Adrian can’t be sure whether he has heard the question or not. Suddenly the other man looks up at him.

  ‘I could eat,’ he announces. ‘I’ll make us breakfast.’

  ‘There’s nothing much here.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ For the first time since they met, Kai Mansaray smiles. ‘You relax.’ He steps around Adrian, so nimbly Adrian doesn’t have time to move out of the way, opens the door of the apartment. ‘Sssss! I say! Come!’ he beckons. A hospital porter hurries over. Kai hands him a few coins and a short time later the porter reappears carrying a plastic bag and two freshly baked loaves of bread wrapped in newspaper. Kai passes him a coin in return and the porter nods gratefully and retreats. On the kitchen counter Kai lays down the loaves of bread and unpacks the bag: a tin of powdered milk, another of Kraft cheese, onions, a dozen eggs, a fruit: large, oval and green with a ridged skin, a single lime.

  Adrian dresses to the sounds of his visitor preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Efficient sounds, that relay a deftness of hand, a certainty of procedure. Still he dresses quickly. By the time Adrian reappears the apartment has been overtaken by the smell of frying onions. In the kitchen Kai Mansaray breaks eggs with one hand into a soup bowl, and whisks them into a froth. He has made coffee in the teapot and replaced the broken lid with a saucer. Adrian pours two cups, and sets one where the visitor can reach it, then leans back on the counter. In the silence a prickle of self-consciousness touches him. He shifts from one foot to the other. Watching the newcomer move around the kitchen, his kitchen, as though he were a man entirely alone in his own space, it is Adrian who feels like the intruder.

  He has yet to become used to it, the silences between people. In Britain people came, or were sent, to see him. He learned to examine their silence, to see if it was tinted with shame, or pain, or guilt, coloured with reluctance or tainted with anger. He himself used silence as a lure, pitting his own silence against theirs, until they were compelled to fill the void. Here those tricks have no place, even with those whom he calls his patients. If Adrian falls silent, so too do they, waiti
ng patiently and without embarrassment. Here the silences have a different quality, are entirely devoid of expectation. And so he watches Kai Mansaray shaving curls of cheese with a knife blade. Swift, deft movements. Next Kai spoons two teaspoons of powdered milk into a tea cup, dribbles a little water from the tap into it and mixes the powder and water into a paste. This he adds to the eggs along with the cheese, relights the gas ring beneath the frying pan and pours the mixture into it. While the eggs cook he divides the fruit, scooping out shiny grey-black seeds, cuts a lime in half and squeezes the juice over the orange flesh. They sit down at the table to eat.

  ‘Papaya!’ says Adrian, recognising the fruit; he has never seen one so large.

  ‘Pawpaw,’ replies the other.

  ‘Pawpaw. Is that what you call papaya?’

  Kai Mansaray turns and looks at him briefly. ‘That’s what it is.’ He takes a bite. ‘Netherlands?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Kai Mansaray eats rapidly, hunched over the table, arms either side of his plate, as though ready to defend his food. ‘Where you’re from.’ He tears a hunk of bread from the loaf and points it at Adrian’s chest.

  ‘I’m English.’ Adrian frowns. Obvious, surely.

  ‘OK. Only we get a lot of Dutch. Medical or emergency? You’re not in surgical.’

  ‘Actually, neither.’ Adrian takes a sip of his coffee. ‘I’m a psychologist.’

  The other man looks up from his food at that, raises his eyebrows momentarily, inclines his head by slowly tilting his chin to one side. ‘Ok-ay.’ The word is spoken in two parts, split down the centre as neatly as if he’d used an axe. As though he is considering the statement carefully, examining its likelihood. Adrian might just have confessed to being the Grand Old Duke of York. ‘So do they make you pay for this place?’ he says, changing the subject.

  Adrian tells him and Kai snorts by way of response. ‘For how long? I mean, I take it you haven’t immigrated.’

  ‘I’m seconded for a year.’

  ‘So you don’t plan on coming to live here for good. No, well, I thought not. If you did you’d be the first immigrant in two hundred years.’ Kai Mansaray laughs at his own joke, a raucous, ear-splitting sound. ‘We don’t even have any tourists. Except your sort, that is.’

  ‘My sort?’

  The visitor takes another bite of bread. ‘Nothing. What I meant to say to you was, “Welcome!”’ He raises his coffee cup.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Adrian, and sips at the cold remnants of his cup.

  Silence for the rest of the meal, more or less. When they are through eating, Adrian picks up the plates and moves towards the dustbin.

  ‘Hold it!’ The other man reaches out, removes the plates from Adrian’s hands and scrapes the remainders of the meal into the discarded plastic bag. For a moment he holds it over the dustbin in his outstretched hand, then bends over and peers into the hollow of the bin and grunts, ‘Ants.’

  He scoops up the bin, unties the plastic bag and upends the entire contents into the bag, juice bottle, biscuit pieces, ants and all, ties the handles of the bag and drops it into the bin. At the sink Adrian watches him wash his hands with meticulous care, examining the cuticles and searching under the fingernails for grains of dirt.

  From the doorway he raises his hand in a salute. ‘So. Next time.’ He slides his feet into his flip-flops.

  ‘Yes,’ nods Adrian. ‘Next time.’

  And watches the door close.

  CHAPTER 3

  The house where Saffia and Julius lived was in a web of narrow streets in the hills above the city. The paintwork was pale pink, sun-streaked, with dark-pink recesses and a tin roof. An orange tree, laden with fruit, bent over the house, which was reached through an open iron gate. I was early, I knew – but nonetheless I climbed the steps. Still sweating from the uphill walk, I paused and ran my finger around the inside of my collar. A band of stray dogs raced past the gate. I knocked. Moments later there was Saffia, running her palm over her hair and smoothing her skirt. Julius was not yet back from the university. I made an offer to walk a little and return. Naturally she demurred.

  ‘No, no. You’re welcome. Please, come in,’ she said and stepped back.

  I followed her through to a verandah at the back. The house looked directly out over the city.

  ‘A beautiful home.’ My own voice rang in my ears, the words had come out too loudly, a declamation. Moreover, strictly speaking, it was not the house, which was a modest affair, so much as the view that commanded attention.

  ‘I like it,’ she replied, as though she recognised my compliment for the hollow thing it was. ‘We chose it for the garden, really.’

  I hadn’t noticed the garden as such, but now I could see what she meant. It stretched out from below us, and swept one’s gaze up towards the view, rather in the way, or so I am told, an artist composes a painting to draw the eye in a particular direction.

  ‘Let me perhaps show you before the others get here.’

  For a moment I had no idea what she was talking about until I remembered the ostensible reason for my visit. Saffia picked up a basket and a pair of secateurs and led the way down a spiral staircase into the garden.

  A pair of fan palms marked the two far corners of the garden and were reached by a network of shaded gravel paths which led down descending terraces. Travellers’ palms, she told me, the leaves always pointed east and west. There were ferns, some the size of trees. Fruit trees: almonds, lime, guava, a great breadfruit tree. Cumuli of white bougainvillea darkly edged with another kind of climbing flower, sweet-smelling with heavy violet heads. Here and there, perhaps where a path divided, or between the roots of a tree, clay pots of plants. And along the far wall more differently sized pots, some holding a single specimen, others containing artful arrangements of flowers and shrubs. She raised them, she told me as we walked, for weddings and the like.

  Presently we reached an opening and there, a crowd of lushly dressed aristocrats, the Harmattan lilies. They stood magnificent, multi-hued, every shade of a dying sun. Their stems were fleshy, muscular, naked without the modesty of leaves. The flowers thick-petalled and brazenly open, revealing sweeping filaments and shiny, sticky stigmas.

  ‘The Portuguese brought them from South America. The owners of sugar plantations in Brazil and the West Indies liked to plant them around their houses. The bulbs were very valuable.’

  I had never known that and said so.

  ‘They grow like weeds,’ she continued lightly. ‘No matter where you put them. No matter at all. In fact when these ones have finished flowering I’ll have to dig a few of them out. I can give you some bulbs.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I replied. ‘I’d like that very much indeed.’ There was a moment of silence between us. Our eyes met. She looked away. Somewhere inside me, an emotion bloomed.

  Saffia began to cut stems of flowers, for the table. I watched her with her back turned to me, standing against the light. The shape of her neck, the angle of her head, her braids of hair which she smoothed from time to time with the back of her hand. When she turned to look at me, I forced my gaze back to the flowers.

  We settled on the verandah watching the light slip from the sky. The scent of night blooms drifted up from the garden. Saffia served me a Star beer and poured herself a glass of ginger ale. I heard the sound of the door and Julius’s voice. Laughter rolled through the empty house. I stood up quickly.

  ‘I should organise a sweepstake,’ Julius was saying. ‘I could make money from people like you.’ And he appeared accompanied by two other men. One of them he slapped so heartily on the back the chap was fairly propelled out on to the verandah. I recognised him vaguely from the campus.

  If Julius was surprised to see me already there he gave no hint of it. Introductions followed. Ade Yansaneh, the one I thought I knew. Kekura Conteh, who worked for the state broadcasting station. They greeted Saffia with familiarity. Julius bent and kissed the top of her head. Without turning she raised a hand a
nd lightly touched his cheek. They demonstrated their affection in the way Europeans did. I found it strange Julius was unembarrassed by it. Saffia stood up and slipped away, returning with three beers and glasses upon a tray. I sat back down. Julius produced extra chairs. Saffia opened the bottles. The general shuffling subsided.

  Julius turned to me, he was grinning. ‘Ade doesn’t believe the Americans will make it to the moon.’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ said Ade firmly, though without elaborating. Instead he shook his head for emphasis.

  ‘Why not? The technology is there. The Russians have proved it. Several times.’

  ‘A man was nearly lost in space.’ This from Kekura. I realised I recognised his voice from the radio, high and hectoring.

  ‘Come now! What is it they say? How do you make an omelette without breaking a few eggs? There’s risk in everything. The point is he succeeded. He walked in space!’ Julius, who alone drank straight from the bottle, wagged his Guinness bottle at Kekura.

  ‘It is no place for Man,’ said Ade ponderously, as though he were repeating it now for the umpteenth time. I noticed he possessed a hairline that was almost perfectly straight. It cut across his forehead, so that the top of his head looked like a lid. A pedant’s hairline.

  ‘Ah Ade. You disappoint me.’

  ‘I can’t see what good will come of it,’ said Kekura. ‘Big men doing battle.’

  ‘Well, there you might have a point.’ Julius, who had been leaning so far back in his chair that it was balanced only upon the two rear legs, now leaned forward letting the chair fall back into place. He put his bottle on the table in front of him and surveyed it closely, as though it were a miniature spaceship. Under him the chair creaked. Beneath his bulk it looked unworthy of its task. ‘For them maybe. But not for the men working to build these machines. They’re doing it knowing that every day they are making discoveries – in science, technology, engineering. Not to reach the moon first, though that is what unites them. But because what they learn along the way will add to the sum of human knowledge. A century of work in a single decade.’ With his thumb he caught a drop of condensation as it slid down the side of the bottle. In the pause that followed I took my chance to enter the conversation.