Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘The next night, after a day of enduring Johnson’s torment, I was returned to the same cell. I lay with my face pressed into the grit of the floor. I did not hear Julius’s worry beads. It occurred to me he’d been moved, possibly even released, though I doubted that. He was, after all, the main object of Johnson’s interest. I was afraid for myself. Johnson had succeeded in constructing such a case against me I was almost convinced of my own involvement. I did not see how I was going to get out of this. And even if I did, my career, my reputation, these things were sullied for ever. It was Saturday night and nobody in the world knew where I was. I feared the night and I feared the next day.

‘At some point I slept and woke. An insect crawled over my face.

Too dark to see the hands of my watch. I guessed it was somewhere between two and four o’clock in the morning. I stared into the darkness. I listened, desperate for a sound to assure me I was alive. In the room upstairs I’d at least been able to hear something of the outside world. Down here there was no window, nothing. As I listened I became aware of a sound. I crawled over to the wall on the side next to where I thought Julius was being held. I pressed my ear against the wall. Yes, I could hear it clearly now. A wheezing. No, it was somehow a more desperate sound than mere wheezing. A gulping noise, is how I would describe it. I tapped. Once, twice. But this time nobody tapped back. In my heart I had no doubt it was Julius.

‘What should I do? If I called for a guard, I doubted very much anybody would come, and if they did they were equally likely to become heavy-handed with me. We were in an unforgiving place. I could end up making more trouble for myself, for Julius. I pressed my ear against the wall. I leant back and considered matters. Surely Julius had his medication. I struggled to decide what was best. I told myself he didn’t sound so bad. That he was surely capable of calling for aid himself if he was indeed in trouble. At other times I worried how long he had been in this condition. I reasoned the guards must have been in and out of his cell in the course of the day. In this way my thoughts moved back and forth. At one point I heard a cough. I read that as a good sign. Somehow I fell asleep. When I woke it was dawn and I was still living in the nightmare.

‘That morning the Dean came to see me. A deal with Johnson was suggested. I gave him my notebooks in return for my freedom. I never returned to the cell in the basement. In those first few minutes I was so relieved to be free I forgot all about Julius. The Dean accompanied me to my office in the faculty building to collect the notebooks. He was irritable, angry at being called out to attend to me when he should have been in church. I could tell my odour offended him, for I had spent two days under duress without washing.

‘If Johnson was in any way pleased to receive my notebooks he chose not to show it. Why was I not surprised? Because by then I knew the man had all sorts of tricks and power games of his own making. He merely thanked me and asked one of his men to take us to the entrance of the building. It was then I remembered Julius. I stopped and turned at the door. The Dean saw me hesitate. I looked at Johnson, who looked straight back at me. The Dean looked at us both. “For heaven’s sake, what is it now?” Johnson was silent, but continued to look at me with a calm regard. And I saw in that moment that Johnson knew. I could tell it from his eyes. Johnson knew everything. I was within seconds of walking out of that building for ever. I had everything to lose. I closed my mouth. We turned to leave. And that was the last view I had of Johnson: standing behind his desk, the books held to his chest, a black-suited figure, a devilish pastor.

‘So you see what happened? I did nothing. Johnson was the one who let Julius die. But the truth, the truth if you want to know — and I have thought about this for many years. The truth is Julius brought it upon himself. He never knew what was good for him. He presumed too much.’

So this is how the entire course of a life, of history, is changed.

A day later Adrian stands at the window and watches the men rake the grass. They are nearly finished now and the work has done much to raise their spirits.

A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission. Whatever you like to call it. Adrian collects his briefcase from its place by the door, steps out and locks the door behind him. Elias Cole would never take responsibility for his hand in Julius’s fate. The fragmentation of the conscience. Cole absolved himself the moment he handed responsibility for Julius to Johnson, in the same way he handed the list of students to Johnson knowing and yet refusing to acknowledge the likely outcome. He absolved himself of responsibility for the greater crime and yet it could not have occurred without him. There are millions of Elias Coles the world over. Suddenly Adrian is tired.

One or two of the men nod to Adrian as he passes by. They do not smile or speak, but he knows that now he is held high in their regard. Salia is there and raises a hand. The fragmentation of the conscience. Adecali, tortured by those acts he had committed. Elias Cole unperturbed by the many he had not. Adecali was made to feel shame, was held culpable. Cole was venerated. Yet where does the greater evil lie, if evil is what you call it? Somewhere in the place he calls a soul, Elias Cole knows. Adrian has been his last attempt at absolution, his last attempt to convince himself of his own cleanliness.

Adrian drives slowly home. Though the roads are heavy with cars and minibuses, the traffic keeps moving. At a junction he stops and watches a man with matted dreadlocks feed crumbs of cake to a skinny dog lying curled against him. Both dog and man look entirely content. He crosses each of three bridges. The first, which divides the west of the city from the east. He reaches the junction where the traffic policeman with the wheeling arms stands. There he turns right over the peninsula bridge, where Julius as a boy was once lowered over the side by the men who built it, in order that he might write all their initials in the wet cement on the side. The boy had watched them every day for months as they built the bridge. Julius’s bridge. The final and smallest bridge is the one over the river next to his new home. Adrian turns down the track.

He is early. He knows Mamakay likes to sleep in the heat of the afternoon those days she is able, for the baby keeps her awake at night. There are times he has returned home to find her asleep on the cane sofa on the verandah. For some reason it embarrasses her to be caught sleeping. The thought makes him smile. He will surprise her. There she is. His footsteps must sound in her dreams for she begins to stir as he mounts the last few steps. He walks towards her, she opens her eyes.

He smiles.

She blinks, looks up at him, her eyes wide, frowning slightly.

‘What is it?’ he says.

She half rises. Her hand is feeling among her skirts, patting the cushions of the old sofa as though searching for a lost ring. Adrian follows the movements of her hand, until he sees the wide, dark stain spread out upon her skirt and the covers of the chair.

In front of Kai, Zainab behaved demurely, just as she appeared to be in her photograph, a girl possessed of the manners of the village. She regarded his footwear when she spoke to him, giggled behind her hand and smiled with her lips held together. In Kai’s opinion she nevertheless succeeded in giving the impression of being in possession of some impertinent secret, some item of unwholesome knowledge about him. Foday gazed at her with open admiration. And Kai too had taken a liking to Zainab, despite scarcely succeeding in pressing a word out of her. It was in the clarity of her gaze that Kai saw a young woman who knew exactly who she was in this world.