‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five,’ she whispered.
‘Good. And the other hand.’
This time she missed her thumb, finished up on four and sat staring at her hand.
‘Try again.’
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’
So she was in there, somewhere. And she understood English.
Later, in the same room, he drank tea with Ileana and described the woman and their session. He had concluded it after fifteen minutes, long enough to gain an initial impression. To Ileana he gave an account of what had occurred.
‘My guess is that she’s from a reasonable background.’ Her appearance, composure, the fact she understood English. ‘I’d certainly like to know who brought her here. Maybe they could be of some use.’
‘Quite probably. Or not. If her appearance is as you say, then that might encourage someone to bring her to a safe place like this. Hoping for a reward or a tip, either from us or the family.’
‘Has anyone made enquiries with the police?’
‘I doubt it very much. Even if we thought they’d be cooperative, who here has the time?’
They’d left it there. Adrian would examine her again in two days’ time.
He is on his third beer when Kai arrives and drops into the chair next to him without apology. He lifts a hand at a passing waiter, indicates Adrian’s beer, holds up two fingers. Adrian has grown used to the silences, their textures and shades. Around them the bar is filling. A mass of insects thickens around the fluorescent lights, their humming resonating with the buzz of the lights. By the time Kai is on his third beer, Adrian is hungry. They order skewers of roast meat, smeared with crushed groundnuts and pepper. Elated and now somewhat drunk, Adrian orders another round. He is tired, and he savours the feeling, the exhaustion that comes from a hard day’s work.
He hums along to the music. Another beer. And another. A woman standing at the bar is watching Kai. Square-shouldered, blonde hair, the skin on her back and shoulders faintly pink and filmed with moisture, exposed by a blue halter-neck top. He can see the pale outline of her bikini straps, the red swelling of an insect bite. Her mouth is open, eyes narrowed, head angled. Her pose is one of concentrated desire, such that Adrian, shocked, looks to see whether Kai has noticed. Kai drains his bottle and gets to his feet, headed for the toilet. As he does so he staggers slightly.
‘Watch how you go.’
The woman pushes away from the bar, moving towards Kai, never once taking her eyes from him. When he straightens himself she is there in front of him, her breasts pointed at his chest, so close her body almost touches his.
‘Hi,’ she says and puts out her hand, into the narrow space between them. ‘I’m Candy.’ Or was it Sherrie? Some such, later Adrian cannot be sure. He is taken aback by her boldness. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
Kai looks down at the woman, who waits in the moment of silence that wells briefly up in the wake of her question.
‘No thanks.’ He places his empty bottle carefully on the table.
The woman makes the best of the rebuff, pushes her lips into a moue of mock disappointment, lifts her shoulders, puts her head on one side and looks up at him. But Kai is already off, headed for the toilets. She shrugs and saunters back to her friends, resumes her place by the bar. A moment later two Middle Eastern-looking men, swarthy and tight, move from the other side of the bar to take up positions either side of the woman and lean across her, breathing into her neck, touching her hair. And she is laughing again.
Adrian turns away, thinks again about his friend, about the wall inside him. Kai occupies only the present, reveals little of his past. Of the manner of his existence when he is not at the hospital, Adrian has no real idea, imagines only a house with relatives, a shared room, cloths strung up against the light. He is adept at taking care of himself, though, so perhaps a houseful of bachelors. Where else does he spend his evenings? In places like this? No. This is for Adrian’s benefit. At night Adrian hears the sounds from Kai’s dreams, footsteps late into the night that begin and end in no place, has lost count of the times he has come through to find Kai awake and dressed, while the stars still glimmered in the sky outside.
Kai returns; he has stopped at the bar on his way and purchased two more bottles of beer. Adrian, because he has been thinking about these things, asks, ‘Ever been married?’
‘Who, me?’ Kai deflects the question.
‘Yes, ever been married?’
‘Nope.’ He upends his bottle of beer, tipping the liquid down his throat, his eyes on a point somewhere past Adrian’s shoulder.
Adrian takes a sip from his own bottle. The food has helped and his head is, for a while at least, clear again.
‘Once, nearly. I thought about it,’ says Kai.
‘And?’
Kai shakes his head. ‘We were too young. At least so I thought. I’d set myself a lot of things to do when I graduated. A few things got in the way of that.’ He belches.
‘Like what?’
‘A little thing like a war.’
‘What did you want to do?’
‘Plans, man. I had big plans.’
‘To do what?’
‘To be the best, I guess. Just that. Me and Tejani, he was my friend back then. We never imagined it any other way.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Gone.’ He waved vaguely as though he were swatting a mosquito.
‘And the girl?’
‘Ah.’ He swallows from the bottle until he has to stop for air. ‘The girl? She’s still out there.’
It is midnight. The crowd has thickened into a mass. Inside the fluorescence illuminates some faces like moons, while outside other faces slip in and out of the darkness. On the dance floor a coloured ball transforms the sweat of the dancers into glistening trails of red. Adrian and Kai sit alone at their table, marooned in the middle of so much noise and heat, like shipwreck survivors, exhausted, pleased to be alive. A song begins, with a South African rhythm. Congo maway, congo. Congo mama.
‘Come on.’ Kai is up and swaying on his feet. He is on his way to the dance floor. Adrian is drunk enough to follow. Together they dance, nobody cares. The blood and alcohol in his body, the lights, cause Adrian’s head to begin to spin again. He feels certain if he let himself go limp he would be buoyed along by the welter of bodies. After a while the dizziness overwhelms him and he makes his way back to the table, where he sits and watches Kai, his head tilted back, eyes half closed, dancing on.
CHAPTER 13
Julius. What would you like me to tell you about him? He was a person who believed in himself, in the purpose of his existence, in his own good fortune. Julius didn’t like to be alone, he required companionship. He sought out my company, and in many ways, it seemed to me, he had come to depend upon it.
Once we made a trip to the casino. We were together without either of our women. By that time my relationship with Vanessa had shrivelled to virtually nothing and I was still at odds as to how best to conduct myself around Saffia given the unfortunate outcome of my last visit. Julius, unaware of all of this, came to my office looking for entertainment.
We had been drinking. The suggestion was his, as most suggestions were. He grew exuberant under the influence. In that way, as in so many, we were opposites, for drink has always caused me to close in upon myself and, if bothered, I am prone to lash out. Julius felt lucky, and he declared it aloud to the empty street as we stepped out of a bar and headed in the direction of the casino. He stacked his chips on a single number. I spread my chips carefully. The wheel spun. I won, modestly. Julius lost, royally. He celebrated his losses at the bar.
That was the night I learned Julius was an asthmatic. While we were in the casino, something, I forget what, struck him as amusing. He began to laugh. The illness showed in his laughter, laughing was apt to set off an attack. That was why Saffia had looked at him with such concern that first dinner at their house. This time the laugh turned into a cough, he had been coughing a
lot recently. The change in the seasons, perhaps. The dust in the air had lessened as the harmattan drew to a close. But the rains brought their own hazards. Spores and pollens filled the air as new life burst forth. Within moments he was wheezing, a see-sawing sound, broken with intermittent bursts of coughing. He reached into his pocket, drew out an inhaler. I was surprised. I suppose in my mind I always thought of asthmatics as carrying considerably less weight than a man like Julius. I remember he had once told me that as a child he had nearly died. I believe he must have been talking about his asthma. He was the youngest, the only boy. I could see it all. He behaved as though the world had been made for him alone, a result of being constantly indulged, no doubt. Or perhaps also for so nearly having left it.
In the weeks that followed I was a guest at their house on two occasions. Both times at Julius’s behest, and at the risk of drawing myself to his attention with a sudden display of reticence, I acquiesced. I could not resist the opportunity to be near her. I sought solace in the very thing that caused me pain.
Saffia’s withdrawal from me took the form of unerring good manners. I alone noticed the way her eyes never sought mine, as they had before, unselfconsciously. And should our eyes meet by chance, her smile never broadened as it used to, but remained fixed in depth and width, quickly supplanted by an offer of more beer, an enquiry as to whether I was being bothered by mosquitoes, a suggestion to visit this place or that place, or meet this person or that person. She asked after Vanessa frequently. It is a way women have, or perhaps learn, of repositioning a man at arm’s length.
On the second occasion I dined at their house, Saffia and I were left momentarily alone at the table. Julius and Ade had set out to fetch more beer. Kekura had disappeared into the toilet. She would not have desired it, this sudden abandonment by the others, but was left little choice but to entertain me. She filled the silence with a question, another one, about Vanessa’s well-being.
‘Well, that’s just it,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid to tell you Vanessa and I won’t be marrying after all.’
‘Oh.’ She was genuinely taken aback by this, as of course she would be. Wary still, though. ‘I didn’t realise. I mean I didn’t know you two were engaged.’
‘No, of course you wouldn’t. And we weren’t, not formally. I had hoped it would be so; Vanessa decided differently.’
‘You should have come to see me.’ Her face was full of concern.
‘I did. I mean I tried. But your aunt … It wasn’t the right time.’
A white lie. Essential to our friendship, to the delicate negotiations that kept it within the framework of the acceptable. I watched her face as the shades of knowledge deepened, the shift in emotions, the flare of relief, the flush of embarrassment that came with the realisation she had mistaken the purpose to my last visit.
‘Perhaps I could talk to Vanessa.’ She was keen to help now.
‘Thank you, Saffia. But I don’t think it would do any good. Any good at all.’ I shook my head and stared down at my plate. A moment of silence. From somewhere in the back of the house came the singing of the cistern. ‘There’s just one thing.’ One last tap, I couldn’t resist but drive my advantage all the way.
‘Of course.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer we kept it between us. Not even Julius.’
‘No, no. Don’t worry. You won’t have to put up with any of Julius’s teasing.’ She leant across and squeezed my forearm.
Friendship restored.
Moments later Kekura appeared, attending to the buckle of his belt and waving his damp hands in the air to dry them. I watched Saffia, who sat, the shadow of a crease upon her brow, still trying to compute what I’d told her and most of all, I suspect, the fact that she had apparently been wrong about my motives. Ah, the vanity of women! She’d allowed herself to believe I was attracted to her and so the freshness of relief contained a chill of rejection.
June. And the rains had settled into their stride. The water ran off the hills and out to sea staining the blue with a dark shadow of silt. In those hours in the late morning and afternoon when the rain let up and the sun shone, you could see the hills above the city, vibrant and green. With the students revising or else in exams, and many lectures and classes consequently suspended until the new academic year, the campus had the atmosphere of a seaside town out of season. With the exception of the holidays, this was the time I enjoyed the most. Space to think, time alone. These were the things I cherished. Not so Julius who, without the daily performance of his lectures and the adoration of his students, seemed bored.
I was at work, once more, on a paper for publication in the faculty journal. This time I had taken stock of my conversation with the Dean and come to the conclusion he was inviting me, if one could put it like that, under his wing – to become his protégé. In addition I had absorbed his advice over the choice of subject for my paper. We had spoken once more on the topic; he had passed me in the corridor, ‘Ah, Cole!’ and ushered me into his office. I was gazing at the objects on his desk, fixing them in my memory. Onyx paperweight. Pen stand. Ivory letter-opener. Nameplate. The Dean stood facing the window, his stiff little buttocks pointed at me.
‘Are you a political man, Cole?’
I answered, honestly, I believe, that I was not.
‘Good. In my view the job of we academics is to provide the perspective of the past. Leave the present to others.’
I mumbled a demurral, adding that surely the study of one period did not preclude the simultaneous study of another.
‘I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,’ the Dean had answered, somewhat testily. ‘I’m saying we are historians, that’s what we are.’
‘Of course.’ Frankly, I had no wish to get into a row. I needed several more publications to my name to stay on track to tenure. If the Dean offered me an administrative post as well, so much the better.
‘A university is a place of learning, not of politics. And I like to run a tight ship. You see what I’m saying, Cole?’
He was referring, I think, or at least thought so then, to what was going on in Europe and in America, the demonstrations which seemed to be erupting everywhere. The year before was 1968. There’d been riots in Paris, strikes and student occupations in Rome. At Harvard the next year the administration building had been overrun. The same in Berkeley, in May. A student had been shot by the police. In his outrage Julius had burst into my office, shaking a copy of the newspaper. ‘Kids, Cole!’ he’d said. ‘They were kids. If they’re going to have the courage to question kicked out of them, who is there who will do it?’ For a man of his size, he was quite excitable. He sat down, blinking. I believe there were tears in his eyes. I knew little of the riots or indeed what exactly had provoked them. Communist sympathisers, if you believed the authorities. Free speech, if you were with the students. I didn’t put much store by either account. The students were troublemakers. The police were doing their job, with relish, undoubtedly. But doing it all the same. For me such antics were a world away. This was Africa. The 1960s had not reached us here. Well, that’s not quite true. Some of the academics in other countries like Nigeria had involved themselves in politics, kicking up a ruckus over things they didn’t like. But they were the exception rather than the rule. All it achieved was to lose them their jobs. And I wasn’t sure I agreed with some of Julius’s ideas about education. It was our job to get the students through their exams, that was all. In that respect you could say I was a traditionalist, like the Dean.
I steered the conversation back on track by raising the subject of my proposed new paper, ‘Direct Taxation in the Early History of the Province’. The Dean, as he had already made clear to me, had the soul of a bean counter. Much as I expected, he was delighted with my proposal. There then followed a thoroughly enjoyable conversation between the two of us on the subject, during which he addressed me throughout as his equal. In time I rose and made to depart.
‘Good talking to you, Cole.’ And then, ‘Cole?’ I
turned, my hand on the door. The Dean didn’t look up at me as he rummaged around the papers on his desk. ‘Your room. Weren’t you going to give me a list of people who used it outside hours? Other than yourself, of course.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh. I thought I’d asked you.’
I shook my head.
‘Well, anyway, there’s a meeting coming up about office space on the campus. It would be good to have some figures, to give me a picture. If not an overview, then an example to better our case.’ He raised his head and looked at me directly as he said this.
‘Of course. No problem.’
‘Leave it in my pigeonhole.’
I assured him I would, and with that I made my departure.
CHAPTER 14
There, on the opposite path, Attila. It is the morning of Adrian’s third visit to the asylum. He cannot help himself, he estimates the distance to the stairway to Ileana’s office and calculates that an encounter is unavoidable. He feels a faint flush, something about the man unnerves him.
Attila seems not to remember his name.
‘Of course,’ he says when Adrian has supplied it, accompanied by a small deadly smile. ‘So you’re back. How are you finding things?’
‘Fine. Thank you. Salia is being most helpful.’
Adrian doesn’t want to say more until he has had the chance to examine Agnes again, until he has a greater sense of her condition. Here Attila is all powerful, his grace everything. The Minotaur inside his labyrinth. Adrian moves aside to make way for the older man.
Agnes is an enigma, still. The clues he has to work with are few. There is no evidence of delusions, she is calm. The attendants say she is one of the better patients, meaning she is not disruptive, complaining only of a headache. She seems to be in a constant state of readiness, as if waiting for someone or something.
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