The Memory of Love

by Forna, Aminatta

  Helena. It sounds like Tejani might even marry her. We, he says in his letter. ‘We’ are going to buy a place. Kai still hasn’t congratulated him for his exam pass. He pens a few lines, striving for and falling short of Tejani’s cheerful tone.

  How Nenebah had envied Kai. He knew, for she had told him. She’d envied him the cleanliness of his work, the moral purity of the task at hand.

  They’d been lying in bed, spooned against each other, he was still inside her, savouring the slipperiness of semen and sweat. Once she described for him the sensation that followed his withdrawal from her body if it happened too soon, his abandonment of her body. Loss, she said. It felt like loss.

  That night was some years after she dropped out of college. What had he done wrong? He never really knew. He had to be up early for surgery. She was broody and angry with him and in a visceral way he knew why. It was for knowing every morning when he awoke, without any shade of doubt, what he was there to do, the certainty she no longer possessed. She’d lost her faith at exactly the same time he’d found his. Neither one of them expected such a thing to happen.

  After the lovemaking, she’d pulled away, withdrawing her body from him. Suddenly no longer inside her, he experienced the sensation as a shock. An abandonment. And later, in the middle of the night, he reached for her and failed to find her, saw her standing by the open window. He’d gone over and drawn her back into bed. Lying against her into the early hours, he could feel the rapid beating of her heart. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them slept.

  He picks up the pen again and continues to write, congratulating Tejani on the exam pass. In his letter Tejani reminds Kai of the days they’d been forced to revise by torchlight, of the petition the students had raised and presented at the Vice Chancellor’s office. The authorities were having none of it and the gathering had grown angry. It is a wonder to him now, to think of it, the students’ moral indignation. Where the hell had they even got the idea they had the right to it? The Vice Chancellor’s reaction had been one of cold fury. He’d remained in his office while he sent security to deal with them. A security officer had taken the petition, and for a foolish moment a cheer had gone up: the students thought they had a victory.

  Instead they had given the authorities a place to begin. A list of dissenters.

  Nenebah left soon after. Life on the campus became untenable for her, so she said. Kai thought she’d given in too easily. But he had sensed also the anger in her, the desire to hurt someone for what had happened.

  Hey, man, Kai writes, does the new house come with a pool as well as a couch? Get ready for your new house guest. When he finishes the letter he seals the edges and puts it in his pocket. He is minded to walk down to the post office, then remembers it is Sunday. The heat has yet to break. Kai can hear the recitatives of the evangelical churches, the exhortations of their pastors, the wild assurances of the congregations. His cousin had gone to church. He has lent her Old Faithful.

  ‘Abass!’ he calls.

  The boy appears suspiciously quickly.

  ‘Want to go to the beach?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Hurry up then. Fetch your trunks. How about a curry at the Ocean Club?’

  Abass races into the house. Kai follows to fetch his own trunks, a paperback and his sunglasses. He finds the glasses on the coffee table in the sitting room. When Abass appears, he puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

  ‘All ready?’

  Abass nods.

  Out in the street, away from the shade of the yard, the shadows are sharp, the edges hard, colours brilliant beneath the sun. Kai reaches for his sunglasses and puts them on. Without warning his vision grows blurred, the brightness disappears, the edges of the house grow indistinct and the shadows merge into each other. He stops, uncertain of his steps. He removes his glasses.

  ‘Very funny, Abass,’ he says.

  The kid is rocking from side to side, clutching his belly, laughing.

  Kai makes as though to lunge at him. The child ducks. They walk down the street towards the main road. In the back of the cab Kai peels away the layer of cling film from the inside of his glasses.

  Much later, after they have swum together, he watches Abass play on alone in the waves, crashing through the surf over and over. And he feels his love for the boy rise in his chest, pressing against his ribcage, crushing his lungs and his heart, as if it would suffocate him.

  Monday morning Kai makes his way to Foday’s ward. When he arrives Foday is in the toilet, so Kai sits on the edge of the bed and waits for him. The matron appears and tries to fuss over him, but Kai waves her away. There above the bed is the Polaroid of Foday which moved with him from bed to bed. Foday’s talisman – to show him how far he has come. Two operations and so far they’d straightened both tibias, breaking each bone in three places and resetting it. That was the easy part. Next they’d tackle the feet. If Foday had been treated by doctors as a baby it would have been a simple job; now he was an adult the operation was complicated. More so if they had to lengthen the Achilles tendon.

  On the night stand are a carafe of water and Foday’s few possessions, including the school exercise book which he uses as a diary, keeping careful notes of his treatment and his conversations with Kai. The writing on the cover is as strained and effortful as Foday’s walk. Nothing came easily to Foday in life, thinks Kai. But Christ, what a fighter.

  At that moment Foday appears pushing himself along in his wheelchair, a male nurse follows behind. Kai stands and raises his right hand in salute and Foday returns the gesture, freewheeling for a few moments. A yard from the bed he manoeuvres the wheelchair skilfully around.

  ‘Looking good,’ says Kai.

  ‘Yes thank you, Doctor.’ Foday’s voice is strong today. The male nurse comes around ready to lift him into bed, but Foday shakes his head. Kai folds his arms and watches Foday. The young man’s eyes narrow in concentration. He takes a deep breath and levers himself up. For a moment he is suspended, like a gymnast on a pommel horse, then he eases himself down and rights himself upon the bed, arranging his leg in the cast in front of him. When he is finished, he turns to Kai.

  ‘Great,’ says Kai.

  Foday grins.

  ‘How’s the physiotherapy?’ Kai leans forward and squeezes Foday’s other calf muscle, slight still from the weeks encased in plaster.

  ‘The lady, Miss Salinas, she says she is pleased with me.’

  ‘Good. You’re not overdoing it now, are you? We really don’t want you to run before you can walk, I mean it.’

  Foday laughs. ‘No, Doctor Kai. Don’t worry. First I’m walking, then running. After that, maybe cartwheels. Please pass me my book.’

  Kai passes him the exercise book. Foday opens it, removes a photograph and hands it to Kai. The picture shows a young woman of around nineteen sitting demurely on a stool in front of a hut, dressed in what appear to be her best clothes and shoes. Her smile is for the camera, for she looks shy, as though she is not used to being photographed.

  ‘Ah,’ says Kai. ‘Let me guess. Your fiancée?’ He studies the photograph for a few seconds more and gives it back to Foday.

  ‘No. She is not my fiancée. I would like her to be, though.’

  ‘Your girlfriend?’

  ‘Her name is Zainab. We were townsmates. She has sent me this picture of herself while I am in hospital. So you see, I think she likes me.’

  ‘It looks that way to me.’

  Foday holds the picture up close to his face, then lowers it and smoothes it with his palm before replacing it carefully between the leaves of the exercise book. He passes the book to Kai and pulls himself further up the bed.

  ‘I would like to ask you something, Doctor.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Kai, once he has returned the book to its place. ‘Ask away, my friend.’

  ‘After my operations maybe I will go to Zainab’s family to put cola for her. That’s what I am thinking.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I will di
scuss it with Zainab first, of course. But if she has sent me this picture of herself, then I think she will consider me.’

  ‘I have no doubt Zainab will be happy for you to go to her parents.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. And you see, what it is I want to ask is whether you will come with me as my elder brother.’

  For a moment Kai is quiet, then he says, ‘I would be honoured to come as your elder brother. But don’t you have any other brothers or uncles you want to ask?’

  Foday shakes his head. ‘My elder brothers are away in the mines. Besides, if Zainab’s family see you, then I know they will want to accept me.’

  Kai laughs. He reaches over and pats Foday on the shoulder. ‘Sure, my friend. I can do that. But you know the minute they see me they’ll double the bride gift, don’t you?’

  ‘I know.’ Foday shrugs. ‘But I have been putting aside little by little. The bride gift will be all right, I think. Besides, if Zainab wants me then she will speak to her parents.’

  ‘Then we have a deal.’ Kai offers his hand to Foday, and they shake, snapping fingers and punching each other on the knuckles. A minute or so later Kai prepares to leave, asks Foday if he needs something.

  ‘Maybe you can borrow me a radio?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll see what I can do.’

  Kai should talk to Foday about his next operation, but he decides to leave it for the day. There’s no hurry. Foday’s greatest challenges are ahead of him. Kai knows this. Foday knows this. Meanwhile there is Zainab, waiting for him in her Sunday best.

  Whatever it takes. Kai says these words to himself, whatever it takes.

  Outside the ward he catches sight of Mrs Mara cutting the corner of the courtyard, struggling in her high heels across the uneven grass. He pauses a beat, to give her time to get ahead, then makes his way to Adrian’s apartment, where he knocks on the door at the same time as he slips the key into the lock. The apartment is empty. The kitchen is tidy and bare. He puts some water in the kettle and while he is waiting for it to boil searches out the old Philips transistor in the back of one of the cabinets. The radio is bulky and battered but serviceable despite a definable hiss. He drinks his coffee at the kitchen window. A sunbird descends, hovers briefly at the empty feeder, and is gone.

  A few minutes later, so is Kai.

  CHAPTER 32

  In Elias Cole’s room, a bustle of activity. Adrian waits in the corridor. In time a doctor emerges followed by a nurse wheeling a trolley of equipment.

  ‘How is he?’ Adrian asks of the doctor.

  The man, a Swede, possessed of the crisp, antiseptic aloofness Adrian associates with Northern Europeans, looks at Adrian, according him the automatic respect of a fellow white man. ‘Not so great. But OK.’

  ‘Can I talk to him?’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘I am a counsellor,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, I see. Well then, you may as well know he’s been treated with corticosteroids. Now it looks as if he’s stopped responding. That’s not so unusual. Steroids don’t work for everybody, and even when they do they don’t work for ever. The trouble is there aren’t very many other options from here on in. A lung transplant is out of the question.’ He bends a little closer to Adrian and lowers his voice. ‘I mean, how long have you been here?’

  ‘Since January,’ says Adrian.

  The other man shakes his head. ‘He needs oxygen therapy,’ says the Swede, telling Adrian what he already knows. ‘He’s at risk from hypoxaemia. Oxygen will improve his quality of life and give him some months more to live. Only maybe. I’m going now to talk to the administrator about it.’

  Good luck, thinks Adrian. He has spoken to Mrs Mara about an oxygen concentrator for Elias Cole three times. On each occasion she promised to see what she could do. So far she has done nothing. The demands upon her are many. The last few months of Elias Cole’s life are lost in the crowd.

  ‘Let me know how you get on,’ says Adrian. He watches the Swede walk away, his rubber clogs creaking on the concrete floor.

  Inside the room Elias Cole is sitting up in bed. Over the last few weeks he has grown noticeably thinner, his face worn almost to the bone. Around his neck the skin rests in pleats. Standing at the end of the bed Adrian feels like the priest in an old black-and-white movie, the man of God hovering at the deathbed, waiting for his moment. To divest himself of this sensation he goes over to the window and looks out. A kingfisher sits on the telegraph wire. A moment later it is joined by another. Adrian watches them for a few moments, almost forgetting his purpose in being there.

  He turns to the old man. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Elias Cole smiles, a tugging of the corner of the lips. ‘That was the last call. I’m in the departure lounge now.’

  Adrian laughs. ‘There’s still some time left.’

  ‘I’ve been warned I may begin to forget.’

  ‘That’s one of the possible effects of hypoxaemia. There’s no guarantee it’ll happen.’

  ‘There’s more I want to tell you.’

  *

  A year passed. For me, a year of waiting. There was the Forty Day ceremony. Do you know the forty days mark the end of a wife’s period of mourning? Among her own people Saffia would be considered ready for remarriage. Life here is too short to mourn for very long.

  In November another Apollo mission landed on the moon. Nobody thought of throwing a party. The crew were supposed to send back colour TV images, but something went amiss and the feed failed. Saffia followed the news carefully on the radio, just as she had when the first astronauts came out of quarantine and gave a press conference. I knew she thought constantly of Julius. But as I said, it was a year of waiting.

  Then it was 1970. The 1960s were over.

  I watched Saffia struggle for survival. Following Julius’s death there were practical matters that needed to be considered. The independence which had so struck me at our first meeting had proved to be an illusion, of course. An illusion sustained and perpetuated by Julius, who had spoiled his wife. And also I suppose by the three of us, Kekura, Yansaneh and I, in our own way. For hadn’t we revered her? Did we not outdo ourselves to perform for her amusement? See ourselves as her guardians? We had taken Julius’s duties as our own. But now Julius was gone. Kekura fled. And Yansaneh broken. I alone was left.

  Saffia continued to live in the pink house on the hill with the crone aunt, who came and went between the city and the village. The aunt was a woman, as I think I have indicated, from whom a low-level hostility emanated at all times, who seemed possessed of an infinite capacity for hate. She hated the city people, who were full of themselves. She hated non-believers, but Christians more, because she also distrusted them. She hated the poor, the weak, the sick and the needy. In particular she reviled all members of her own sex. Her attitude to men was somewhat more complicated, for it encompassed both her natural loathing of her fellow man and her sycophancy towards those in possession of some degree of power. That she had disliked me and regarded my visits to the house with suspicion, I knew.

  Between Saffia and the aunt there had always been a certain amount of bickering. Her aunt was straight from the rice fields. It was unsurprising, therefore, that Saffia might be easily irritated by an elder full of village superstitions. Balance in matters of social hierarchy, however, is infinitely delicate, accounted for by so many things: family, age, wealth.

  The shift in the aunt’s manner towards Saffia following Julius’s death amounted to relatively little. She was merely, one might say, altogether less careful. Her tone of voice became sharper, her demands more frequent and petty. She seemed to feel Saffia was there to do her bidding. What had wrought it was this: whilst the aunt was the elder, and as such merited a high degree of deference, it was Saffia who had been married to a big man – this in the aunt’s view, of course – who lived in a grander house than I am certain the aunt had ever previously set foot in.

  Now Julius was gone and Saffia no longer married to a big man.

>   The woman opposite, a coarse-mouthed fish seller, seemed to have found a new vocation in watching the comings and goings at the pink house, a fact she made no effort to conceal. There were occasions I had waited under her gaze, listened to her remark upon my visit to unseen listeners. I never once saw her husband. Doubtless he was barred from the verandah, for fear he might be drawn to the newly available temptations in the house opposite. Not that the fish mammy’s concerns were baseless. A woman alone does indeed attract the attention of men, who scent her vulnerability. It bothered me to think of who might try to take advantage of Saffia’s situation. Once I found the dancer fellow up there, ostensibly offering condolences. I sat down opposite and glared at him until he left.

  However, it became interesting to observe the shift in the aunt’s manner towards me now that she was in the business of encouraging a protector for her niece. As I have indicated, she was the type of woman who adjusted swiftly to any change in the status quo. One evening I encountered her as she returned from the mosque. I raised my hat and greeted her in my most respectful tone. ‘Good evening, Auntie.’ It stopped her in her tracks and, once she had assured herself I wasn’t mocking her in any way, I saw a small smirk of pleasure at being thus addressed. It amused me to think of her as my new-found ally.

  It was the aunt who brought it to my attention that the two of them were struggling to pay the rent. Julius had been far too young to leave a pension. Through my efforts and by applying some leverage upon the Dean who sat upon the relevant committee, I managed to secure for Saffia a small grant to cover her work cataloguing the flora that grew in the university grounds. Not so much she could rely upon it indefinitely. The amount of the grant would give her enough to live for exactly a year.