Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

But Kai doesn’t hear him, doesn’t turn or look up, is pulling his mask from his face, and as he walks his feet barely clear the floor. He does not hear Adrian because the sound of Adrian’s call, before it began, died in his throat. Something in the set of Kai’s shoulders. Why is he walking like that? It is all wrong. Adrian pushes through the door, begins to run down the corridor.

‘Kai!’

At the sound of him Kai lifts his head. Suddenly he no longer looks defeated but very alert. He turns square to Adrian, begins to move towards him down the corridor. He walks fast, very fast indeed. It crosses Adrian’s mind how strange it is: Kai walking towards him, his head lowered, arms by his sides, fists clenched, at such a pace. Now he is lifting his arms. Adrian stops and waits, puzzled, unmoving. Standing thus, he takes the full force of the push, feels the heels of Kai’s hands hard against his chest. Out of his mouth is expelled all the air in his lungs. Winded, he doubles over, sees Seligmann hurrying towards them. A nurse, eyes round above her mask. Kai’s face above his, Kai’s voice ringing in the empty corridor, calling Adrian a bastard. Now Seligmann is there. A hand on each man, on Kai’s arm and Adrian’s shoulder. Seligmann is pushing Adrian back against the wall, peering into Adrian’s face.

Adrian wants to speak, to ask Seligmann about Mamakay, for Seligmann surely knows and will tell him. He tries to take a breath, to form the words, but he cannot.

Four o’clock. Adrian places the glass back on the table. He watches the movement of his hand, listens to the knock of the glass against the table surface. Opposite him sits Kai. They are in the old apartment, now returned to its former use as a place for on-duty staff to rest. Salt has dried on Adrian’s cheek, his skin is dry and tight. He feels the contractions in his empty stomach, but they come without the accompanying desire for food and he mutes the pangs with shots of whisky. They sit in silence. Seligmann is long gone, knowing he was neither needed nor wanted. The whisky is courtesy of him. They are, neither of them, drunk. Though Adrian longs to be.

A sigh from Kai, who sits with his fist clenched, shakes his head as he stares at the floor. For the last three hours his mood has swung the short distance between grief and rage. Adrian has wept, but so far Kai has remained dry-eyed. ‘Sometimes I kid myself into believing it might be over, finally,’ he says.

‘That what might be over?’

‘The dying, the killing. That perhaps the bloodthirsty bastard up there might have had enough for the day. Or might pick on someone else for a change.’

Adrian is silent.

‘Why? Why the fuck?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Adrian.

‘She survived everything else, survived the war. She was never afraid, you know. I never saw her afraid in all that time. There were times I was afraid, Jesus, yes — but not her. Even when they brought her here tonight. Fear equals defeat in her vocabulary. Fear of what, it doesn’t matter. The trick is — you didn’t give in.’ He changes tense as he speaks of Mamakay, from present to past, to present. ‘Like death was a big dog or something. You should never show it you are afraid. I told her that once. She liked it. Death the dog. Or perhaps it was fate. Yes, fate — you must never show fate you’re afraid.’

‘I believe that,’ says Adrian.

‘What?’

‘That she treated fate like a big dog.’

Kai laughs, as if remembering something else. A moment later the smile drops off his face and he clenches his fist again. They sit in silence for several minutes more.

‘I wish I knew what to do,’ says Adrian.

‘Go home.’

Adrian blinks and looks up at Kai.

‘Go home,’ repeats Kai. ‘What in the hell did you ever come here for, anyway?’ He speaks tiredly and does not raise his voice.

Adrian looks down.

‘Well?’ Louder this time.

Still Adrian doesn’t answer.

Kai continues, ‘I’m serious. It’s a genuine question. Why did you come here and have you found whatever it was you were looking for?’ He is slipping back towards anger of which Adrian has seen plenty that night.

To Adrian a memory of their first meeting, here in this room. Kai had called Adrian a tourist, had always questioned his right to be here, even once they’d become friends. ‘What makes you think I was looking for something?’

Kai shrugs, continues to stare at the floor. ‘Everybody who comes here wants something, my friend. You came here because you wanted to be a hero is my guess. So do you feel like one now?’

To Adrian, Kai’s anger is understandable. If Adrian had never come here, these events would never have taken place. Mamakay would be alive. It is the logic of grief. Equally, thinks Adrian, if he had taken her away from here, back to England — she would be alive, too. He replies levelly, ‘You know already why I came here. I was sent as part of a medical team. I came back to help. That’s the sum of it.’

Now Adrian looks back on the past it seems disordered, a tangle of days, weeks and months. Looking forward, he sees nothing, only the narrow walls of the tunnel of his existence and the thought that he will never see Mamakay again. The thought is too enormous for his mind to hold on to. He lets it go. He should go home, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be alone. Being with Kai is as close as he can get to Mamakay, even though Kai is angry.

‘And have you?’

Adrian has forgotten what they were talking about. He looks up. ‘Have I what?’

‘Helped? Have you helped?’

Now Adrian feels a small starburst of anger. ‘Yes,’ he says, to put an end to it. He looks directly at Kai at the same time as Kai looks up. Their eyes meet. In Kai’s face there is cold rage. Adrian opens his mouth. He could give Kai the names of men at the hospital, talk about the group meetings, the sessions with Adecali. Attila’s smiling scepticism. He drops his eyes, rubs his eyelids. He offers none of this. It is not the point. And anyway, everything he has done here is worthless. He says, ‘You have nightmares.’

Another shrug. ‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Plenty of people. The occasional bad dream, perhaps. But not recurrent nightmares. Not nightmares that stop you sleeping for nights on end. Not nightmares that result in insomnia — chronic insomnia, that is — so that your functions are impaired the next day.’

‘I see,’ says Kai. He is leaning back now, regarding Adrian through hooded lids. ‘And you’re sure of this?’

‘What? That other people don’t suffer recurrent nightmares? Yes. I am sure. Though I am also sure there are a lot of people in this country who do, people who have survived a trauma. It would be extraordinary if it was otherwise.’

‘No, I mean about me.’

‘I know you suffer nightmares. The rest is an educated guess. I know you’re afraid to cross the bridge. The one over to the peninsula. You always drive the long way around.’

‘Yup, you’re right. I dream. I dream about the same thing. I dream about something that happened. I could tell you, but it wouldn’t make any difference. You can’t undo it. And how could you ever understand? Unless you were here how could you ever understand? The truth is none of you wanted to know then, so why do you care now?’ Kai is not looking at Adrian but staring into his glass, swirling the liquid around and around. He stops, raises the glass to his lips and drinks, recommences the same circular movement.

On the table lies a small red paper fan. Adrian recognises it as Mamakay’s. Left behind during one of her visits when he still lived here, maybe even the same day they saw Kai. Adrian reaches for it. ‘You loved her, I know,’ he says.