Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘There’s something I wanted to ask you.’

‘By all means.’

‘Did you ever see Johnson again?’

Silence.

Will Cole take the easy way out and lie? Adrian half expects him to. Instead he replies, ‘So someone has been talking to you. That is always a danger in this place. Full of gossips and whisperers.’

Now it is Adrian’s turn to be silent as he considers his reply, at what point to mention Mamakay, when Cole continues, ‘But then again, Babagaleh tells me you and my daughter have become acquainted.’

‘Yes,’ says Adrian.

‘Did you think perhaps I didn’t know? Or were you worried I would disapprove? Well, I don’t. Get her out of this place. There’s nothing for her here.’

‘She wants to stay.’

‘I don’t doubt it. She was always contrary in that way.’ A pause. ‘And it was from my daughter you learned I kept occasional company with Johnson?’

‘Yes,’ says Adrian.

‘Hmmph.’ Cole gives a soft snort. ‘And who told her?’

‘She recognised him when he visited your house. She’d seen him before.’

Cole nods slowly. All the time he is thinking, moving the fingers of his right hand, flexing them one after the other, so they ripple like a fan. Adrian can almost hear his brain tick. He looks away.

‘It was a social relationship,’ says Cole presently. ‘We drank whisky. He had a taste for Black Label, as I recall. It cost me a fortune. We discussed the state of the country. I was Dean by then. It was important to have a sense of what was going on.’

‘Can you see how that would seem strange to someone on the outside? Given what you told me about him, your feelings for him?’

Cole flicks his fingers and then closes them into his palm. His tone is subtly changed. Adrian listens carefully, trying to define the shift, but fails to pinpoint it.

‘As you so rightly put it, you are an outsider. This is a small country. You’ve never lived in a place like this. Here enemies are a luxury only the poor can afford. The rest of us have to move on — to use your terminology. I made my peace with power. I had no other choice.’ He smiles thinly at Adrian.

‘You were friends.’

‘Acquaintances would be my preferred term.’

‘How did it happen? I mean, how did it happen that you found your way into his company again?’

‘I forget now. I believe he came by the house. I don’t really recall.’

‘Sometimes people can find themselves thrown together by events. Something that binds them in an unlikely way.’ Johnson was ambitious and clever, but lacked a truly first-rate mind, the fact of which he concealed with belligerence and obtuseness. If Cole couldn’t see the similarities between himself and Johnson, Adrian could. It was remarkable, in fact. Projection? Perhaps. Though it didn’t do to be too clever about these things. Johnson might just as easily be exactly as Cole described. On many occasions Adrian had asked himself whether the connection with Johnson went deeper than Cole allowed.

Cole frowns. ‘He was an acquaintance. Nothing more.’

‘Who gave Johnson the list of students? Was it you?’

Cole’s face remains impassive, though Adrian sees the light change in his eyes, a muscle flinch in his cheek. He regards Adrian with an expression emptied of meaning.

‘What is it you think you know of these matters?’

‘I only know what you and your daughter have told me. In her view you betrayed her friends the night the campus was attacked. You delivered them to Johnson.’

The silence this time is longer. Cole shakes his head. He seems to have regained control of his composure so fast Adrian is momentarily unsure now whether he even lost it. He says, ‘It is what she believes.’

Cole continues to shake his head until he provokes a minor coughing fit. He pulls himself up, his elbows angled sharply outwards, raises his head, breathes deeply and exhales, closing his eyes.

‘Could you call Babagaleh for me, please?’

Adrian does as he is asked. He doesn’t follow Babagaleh back into the room, but waits in the corridor, his back against the warm grit of the bare concrete wall. Through the door he can hear the sounds of movement, the murmur of the oxygen concentrator, the whisper of voices. He cannot make out what is being said. Fifteen minutes elapse. Adrian waits. His conversation with Elias Cole needs to be finished, taken to its conclusion, whatever that might be. Cole is tiring. The change Adrian heard in his voice when he first entered the room, behind the rattle of the stiffened lungs, the vocal cords taut and dry: Cole is wearing out.

The door opens and Babagaleh steps into the corridor, nods at Adrian, who pushes open the door to the room. Cole is lying on his pillow much as Adrian left him, his eyes closed.

‘We all live with the consequences of our pasts, don’t we? One might ask what brought you here? Compassion? Career? The failure of marriage symbolised by the ring you no longer wear? And why here?

‘Babagaleh tells me your grandfather’s name was Silk. That he was posted here before the war. I mean your war, of course. Naturally I find that interesting, as a historian. Fortunately our recorded history here is short enough for me to be able to remember most of it. Our last Governor was Beresford Stuke. Silk served under his predecessor. An undistinguished career, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Apart from the minor fiasco of the chief’s rebellion, I dare say he would have gone on to something quite good.

‘Babagaleh’s brother — I use the term loosely, he claims so many — is a barman at the Ocean Club. Did I ever tell you that? The chap must be about due for retirement now. He was even there in my day.’

Adrian is silent. Cole, who is not looking at him but out of the window, continues. ‘There are some things that may have happened in the past that carried less weight then than they do now. Or vice versa. That seemed important then, and now are all but forgotten. Time presses hard on me, lying here. It’s hard not to think of these things.

‘Where were we? Oh, yes. We were talking about Johnson. What a fellow! I disliked him. In fact it wouldn’t be going too far to say I hated him. But, you see, you don’t make an enemy of a man like Johnson. Not if you have any sense. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, isn’t that what they say? Whatever I did, I did for Mamakay. She was too close to where the trouble was. She risked being caught up in it. Johnson was on to them. With or without me, the net was closing. I had to take care of my own. Any father would have done the same. If I gave Johnson a list of names, it was because I had no choice. Was I to know what he would do with them?

‘Julius was a fool. He refused to see the change coming even though it was in the sky. Perhaps he imagined he could alter the weather. He riled Johnson, just as he riled the university authorities.

‘Sometimes I wonder, if he had lived, who would he have become? Would he be Dean of his faculty? Not likely. He was a dreamer. He dreamt of building cities, bridges, raising towers up to the sky, flying to the moon, for God’s sake!

‘That night, the first night I was in Johnson’s power, was the worst of my life. I told you what happened. He stole my cake, duped me into believing he was coming back, left me there and never returned. I banged on the door and nobody came.

‘Nobody came for one, two, I don’t recall how many hours. I was left alone. But in the end somebody did come. Not Johnson, for he had gone home, one of his guards. I was taken from that place and led downstairs to another room. It was much cooler there, I was grateful for it at first. But gradually it turned cold, and the cold bored through me. I tried to sleep. At some point in the night I had that image of myself, a dark, untidy shape. A shape devoid of detail and yet unmistakably mine, the shadow of me. I slept again and was woken, I think, by a cry somewhere in the building. I sat and listened. Silence. The cry, if that was what I had heard, did not come again. Instead I heard something else, a sound like a tiny spinning top, a whirr and a clatter. It came regularly, at intervals. The same sound, but with enough variance to suggest human agency rather than the sound of a machine. In time I thought I recognised it. You remember I told you Julius almost always carried something in his pocket, something to fiddle with. A screw, a bolt and washer. Julius’s worry beads. The sound was coming from the other side of the wall. I heard coughing. Julius. I listened. I knocked. The coughing stopped. The knock came back to me. I was sure, then, it was Julius. I did not dare speak, for fear of attracting the guards. But Julius had no such fear. “Hello,” he said. “Hello? Who’s there?” He had no way of knowing it was me. I’m not certain he even knew I’d been arrested, unless Johnson had told him. I hesitated. I opened my mouth to reply and then I heard someone coming. A sharp rap on Julius’s door. The rest of the night passed in silence. Silence, save for the sound of Julius’s worry beads, the spinning top wearing itself out over and over again. At some point even that stopped.