Sunday lunchtime. Adrian has managed to borrow a vehicle to go to Ileana’s for lunch. It is the first time he has been behind the wheel of a car in weeks and he sets off, uncertainly at first. The Land Cruiser is much larger than anything he has handled, as well as being left-hand drive. It takes his hands and feet time to recover the memory of driving. Soon he is moving at speed, savouring the mood of independence. He drives in the opposite direction to the instructions Ileana has given him, towards the city, through the dense throng at the roundabout. The heat is rising, he is grateful for the air conditioning, both for the cool and the insulating effect from the dust and noise on the other side of the glass. He turns the wheel of the vehicle to the left and the traffic eases up. On the right is an open stretch of ground, a golf course; directly ahead he can see the sea. The road swings around to the right and Adrian follows it, driving the full length of the beach. Here there is no traffic at all. He turns off the air conditioning and winds down the window, lets the breeze touch his face. At the far end he doubles back at another roundabout. When he reaches the left turn at the end he sees a small road he had missed when he had come from the other direction. Behind a pair of concrete pillars a crescent driveway curves under the arch of a building. Adrian turns in and drives to the car park at the back, descends and makes his way across the uneven tarmac to the building. Three steps lead up to a fountain, an art deco figure of a girl, head tilted back, outstretched arms holding aloft a torch. A trickle of water from the torch runs down the girl’s arms and belly into a small pool of green at her feet, from which a scab-eared dog laps. Behind her, a sign painted upon the wall, in faded letters: Ocean Club Patrons Only.
Parquet floors, bleached and water-stained, a few blocks missing in places. Adrian reaches the top of the short flight of stairs. On one side of the vast space a horseshoe bar, ahead clusters of tables and chairs, to the right a sweeping dance floor capable of holding a hundred couples or more. Morning sun and shadows shimmer on the tabletops, the walls, the stilled ceiling fans. On the far side of the dance floor the building is entirely open to the seafront. All is quiet, save for the sound of the waves. There is nobody in sight as he wanders across the dance floor, feeling strangely vulnerable as he always does crossing an empty dance floor, as though at any moment he might hear a drum roll or the clash of cymbals or find himself suddenly illuminated by a spotlight.
On the beach a score of translucent crabs scuttle from his shadow. Down by the water tiny seabirds, sandpipers, follow the movement of the waves, scurrying after the retreating water, inspecting the sand for whatever has been left in its wake. Hurrying back as the water advances. Detectives scanning the beach for evidence, wings like hands clasped self-importantly behind backs. Adrian is tempted to remove his shoes and socks and walk down to the water, but the practicalities are off-putting. So he heads instead for the bar, pulling up one of the old stools to sit on. Within moments a man appears.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Beer, please.’ It is only eleven, what the hell.
The barman opens a bottle and slides the beer down the inside of a tilted glass. He flips a beer mat, places the glass upon it and pushes it towards Adrian, who takes a sip enjoying the bite of the cold beer at the back of his throat. The man goes away and comes back with a stainless-steel dish of peanuts. They are tiny, delicious, with salty pink papery skins, a fragment of which gets caught in Adrian’s throat causing him to cough and cough again.
‘Be careful, sir.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Adrian drains his glass, but is left still coughing. ‘Another beer, please.’
‘First time here?’ says the waiter as he pours the second bottle.
‘Yes.’ It is a question he has grown to dislike. He feels patronised, a new arrival, wet behind the gills – particularly if the questioner is another Westerner.
‘And how do you find us here?’
Adrian nods. ‘I like it very much.’
The bartender nods gravely as though this is as he would have expected. He replies, ‘Maybe you will tell others. And then they will come.’
Adrian drinks his beer. The barman departs and returns with a basin of ice, which he positions on a shelf beneath the bar.
‘Actually,’ says Adrian, ‘I already knew a bit about the country. From my grandfather.’ This is not strictly true, and he is not quite sure why he says it. Perhaps because he is tired of being treated like a beginner. The barman looks up.
‘Your grandfather was here?’
‘Yes,’ says Adrian. ‘A long time ago. Before the war. He was a district commissioner.’
‘What was his name, your grandfather?’
‘Silk.’
‘District Commissioner Silk, yes.’ Neither the barman’s tone of voice nor his expression convey a thing, not even whether he recognises the name or is merely politely concurring. Adrian finishes his beer. By the time he comes to pay the barman has gone again. He counts the money and looks around for the man, noticing for the first time a poster on a pillar behind him. He slips from the stool for a closer look; Mamba Blues. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. First Monday of the Month. At the Ocean Club. There is an image of a woman’s face partly in profile. It looks like the woman he saw outside the hospital talking to Babagaleh; the angle of the photograph makes it hard to be certain. Adrian looks around for the barman, but there’s still no sign of him, so he places the correct money on the counter and leaves.
The road to Ileana’s house is straight and the distance no more than a few miles; nevertheless it takes Adrian thirty minutes to drive there because of the road’s treacherous condition. Two dogs, collarless and slender, lie by the door. One of them cautiously sniffs Adrian’s hand as he waits for Ileana to answer his knock. Through the fly screen he can see the living room: old rattan sofa, coffee table, books. Bright shawls cover the furniture. On the wall a mirror bordered by a mosaic frame, sharp fragments of glass. There is piano music playing. In time he sees Ileana cross the sitting room, smoking a cigarette. As he watches she performs a few steps of a dance. Her lips are pale, bare of lipstick. She does not see him. Adrian waits until she is out of sight before knocking a second time. This time Ileana appears down the short passage, and briskly throws open the fly screen.
‘The door is open. You should have come in.’ She smiles and kisses him on each of his cheeks, stands back and regards him for a moment, like a mother looking to see how much her son has grown. Her lips are dark red, freshly painted. ‘Welcome!’
The house, a compact bungalow, sits squarely on the beach. Ileana goes to the kitchen and returns with a cold beer for Adrian.
‘If this was my place, I’d knock down all the walls and keep it as one space, like a studio,’ she says.
‘It’s great.’ He removes his shoes, slides open the screen and steps on to springy grass and sand. ‘How did you find it?’
‘It was leased by a mining company, for their foreign workers to take weekend breaks. I took it over at a bargain rent. You could say there was a bit of a glut in the property market at that time.’ Ileana laughs. ‘You’d never get something like this now, and not at that price. All the ones along this stretch are rented for a fortune to one NGO or another.’
She places a pair of plastic chairs and they sit, enjoying for a few moments a companionable silence and the sound of the sea.
A group are walking up the beach against the sun. Three fat silhouettes and three thin. Each of the fat figures appears conjoined to a thin one. As they approach, Adrian sees that they are three men, each with a young black girl. The girls seem exceptionally young, narrow and pretty.
Ileana and Adrian watch them pass.
‘How differently we behave in other people’s countries,’ says Ileana. She raises her beer bottle to her lips. ‘It just goes to show.’
‘Show what?’
‘No sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn’t require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.’
�
�I see what you mean.’ Adrian watches the receding figures.
Here and there groups of bathers sit on the sand, or under an umbrella. Children move between them selling peanuts and fruit.
‘I hope you like crab,’ says Ileana.
They carry salad, plates and cutlery outside. There is fried rice and a bottle of cold white wine. Ileana throws a pair of giant crabs on top of a coal pot, where they pop and sizzle. While they eat Adrian talks to Ileana about Agnes, of the progress she is making.
‘She’s still pretty confused, though that’s improving. A few days ago she couldn’t recognise herself in a mirror. Now she’s able to hold a conversation. There are gaps but my guess is that in a few days she’ll be back to herself.’
‘And the journeys?’
‘So far as I know they started after the war, not before. That much seems clear. I need to find the trigger. I’m working on the premise that something occurred during the war.’
‘You think she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?’
‘That’s what I’m looking at,’ Adrian says carefully.
Adrian is aware of Ileana’s steady gaze upon him. He can’t fool her, she knows exactly what’s in his mind. If he’s right he will have achieved something considerable. To prove the existence of fugue in a population would be a professional coup. But if he could also demonstrate a clear link to post-traumatic stress disorder? Well, that could make his name.
Moving on, he tells Ileana about the gold chain, how they had got to the bottom of that particular mystery. Agnes had pawned it and forgotten.
‘Dissociation,’ says Ileana, standing up. ‘She does things she can’t remember doing. More wine?’
‘Yes please,’ says Adrian.
He looks out at the horizon. In his mind he replays the second interview with Agnes, during which she’d complained about the theft of her gold chain. This followed the night Salia had been forced to sedate her. Adrian had prompted Agnes into recalling the events leading up to her most recent journey. She’d mentioned her daughter had been away. And again, in the last interview, when they had talked about her first journey, the daughter had been away from home that time, too. With this realisation his heart skips a beat, he leans forward in the chair, peruses the connection he has just made. It cannot simply be a coincidence. Naasu is the only daughter she talks about, he’d already noted that. The journeys occur when Naasu is away from home. He exhales and leans back in his chair. He can hardly wait to interview Agnes again. He must be careful not to rush her. What had they been talking about when she’d brought up the gold chain again? He asked her who was in the house with her. He mentioned the girl, her son-in-law. He ponders whether there is meaning in that. Sudden switches of subject were sometimes a marker of a patient wanting to avoid something: the subconscious steered them away.
Ileana returns with the wine.
‘It could take a long time,’ she says, continuing their early conversation. ‘I mean for you to discover the trigger, if there is one. Years of investigation. Therapy. And even then there are no guarantees. After all, it was us Europeans who invented the talking cure. And most of the maladies it’s designed to treat.’ She snorts faintly.
‘There are other ways,’ says Adrian.
‘Like what, hypnosis?’
‘Yes. Have you ever tried it?’
‘No,’ replies Ileana. ‘I don’t know what Attila would make of it. I know I think it’s a bit early in the game.’
‘Of course,’ concedes Adrian. ‘It was just a thought.’
Ileana stands and scrapes the contents of one plate to the other, the debris of crab shells and empty claws. Out at sea a fishing canoe sits high upon the shallow waves, a line of buoys marks the shape of the net. Ileana is in the kitchen. Two women are walking along the beach; one of them waves at Adrian. A moment later she waves again. Politely, Adrian waves back thinking she must have mistaken him for somebody else. The women change direction and come up the beach towards him.
‘Hiya,’ says the one who waved. She is tall, her shoulders almost as broad as his, an athlete’s body, blonde hair and prominent teeth. Her companion is shorter, small-breasted though with a good figure, reddish hair and a red bikini, the pale skin of a true redhead.
‘Hello,’ says Adrian, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looks up at them.
‘We saw you and thought we’d come and say hello. Pedro’s, a couple of weeks ago.’ Her accent is American.
‘Of course,’ Adrian replies. He recognises her now as the woman from the bar the evening he drank beers with Kai. Kai had given her the brush-off, though she hadn’t seemed to mind.
‘Been having a good day?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Isn’t the beach great? But there are others that are even better, with some great beach bars, well, if you can call them that. Of course it takes them for ever to bring the food. And half the time they don’t have what you order. But then isn’t that the same every place? You get used to it. The lobster is to die for and just about two dollars for a whole one. Can’t get that at home. Some guy dives from the rocks for fresh oysters while you wait. They’re a dollar a dozen.’ She sits in Ileana’s chair. ‘Have you tried the Shangri-La?’
‘This is my first day out at the beach.’
‘You’re kidding! By the way, I’m Candy. This is Elle.’ They are both in the country working for aid agencies. In turn Adrian tells them about his position at the hospital.
‘So this isn’t your place then?’
‘No.’ Adrian mentions Ileana. Candy shrugs and shakes her head. Two men selling sarongs and souvenirs approach and begin to display their wares, batik cloths, haematite necklaces and glossy, carved animals. One of the men is in his fifties, the other in his twenties, shirtless with a smooth muscular chest. Neither Candy nor Elle pays attention to the men or their wares. Elle sits on the sand and, turning her back on them, rolls over on to her stomach on the sand; as she does so, she reaches down to adjust her bikini bottoms, flicking the elastic. There is no self-consciousness in the gesture, as if the men behind her don’t exist. Candy is still talking. Adrian looks at her, remembers the expression on her face the night she had approached Kai: self-confident, hungry. He thanks the two men, tells them they are not interested in buying.
‘Don’t bother, they never give up,’ says Candy. ‘So how long have you been here?’ For the second time that day Adrian is asked the question. He tells them and Candy laughs.
‘I thought you looked saner than the rest of us,’ and she laughs again.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You haven’t heard the joke?’ says Candy, flicking a look at Elle.
Adrian shakes his head, bemused.
‘You know the joke? About the tourist?’
He still has no idea what she is talking about.
‘What’s the difference between a tourist and a racist?’
‘I don’t know,’ he responds automatically.
‘Two weeks!’
Elle laughs supportively, though she has clearly heard the joke before. Candy is grinning at him. Adrian has no idea how to respond. He is silent.
Behind Candy the sellers are folding sarongs, putting them away. Adrian thinks of the obtuse police officers and the deaf boy, his frustration with the hospital administrator, the power cuts and water shortages, the heat, the clogged gutters and traffic jams in the city, the beggars. He thinks of the pregnant woman with the dead baby between her legs, of Kai, then of Agnes, of the young man he first brought to the hospital, of his friends among the patients at the hospital, the calm and beauty of the Patients’ Garden. Of Attila’s unbroken determination. Of his own strange happiness in that place. He is still unsure what to say when he realises the attention of both women has been redirected.
‘Oh, hi,’ Candy says, in a tone noticeably flatter to the one with which she had greeted Adrian. Ileana has reappeared with a dish of sliced fruit, mango and pineapple. She greets the two women and sets the plate
down on the table.
‘Hey, that looks great!’ Candy says, her tone gushing now. ‘And this place, too.’
‘Thank you. I’ll get some more plates.’
To Adrian’s relief the moment has passed. He wonders if Ileana heard Candy’s joke, though if she did she gives no sign of it, disappearing for a second time to re-emerge with extra plates and cutlery. The fruit is fresh, sharp and clean, clears his taste buds of the residual flavour of crab.
Suddenly Ileana sets her plate back on the table and stands up. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says to the two women. ‘You don’t have anything to drink. What would you like? There’s wine.’
‘Hey. Awesome! We’ve lucked out here. Could a day get any better?’
Ileana nods graciously. She takes the bottle from the cool box beside Adrian and pours two more glasses.
‘This is really good.’ Elle, this time.
‘Do you know what the most popular white wine here is?’ asks Ileana.
‘No,’ say Candy and Elle and turn to her, Adrian as well. The two women open-faced and smiling.
‘It goes like this,’ says Ileana, and she affects a grating, high-pitched voice, a clear imitation of Candy’s nasal accents. ‘Christ, what’s wrong with these people? Can’t they do anything for themselves? If it wasn’t for us they’d still be in the trees.’ And with that she sits down heavily in her chair, takes a sip from her own glass. ‘Cheers! Good, isn’t it? The most popular white whine.’
That night it turns cold. There is no wind, no rain and yet, lying in his bed, Adrian feels a chill in the air. He gets up from his bed and switches off the ceiling fan. The movement sets his stomach churning. The crab perhaps, though it had tasted fresh enough. With these things one seldom knew until it was too late. And yet, if his memory serves, seafood poisoning came on quickly. He calculates how long it has been since he left Ileana’s. About five hours. Candy and Elle had stayed only a few minutes after Ileana’s remarks. ‘Silly tarts,’ she’d said as they watched the two women walk away. ‘Do you know how much they get as a hardship allowance?’ Fortunately, the tension caused by the women’s visit had vanished with them, Adrian and Ileana once more at ease between themselves. He had admired the sharpness of her response, and felt grateful for her apparent willingness to overlook the failure of his own.
The Memory of Love Page 20