Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

Kai replaces the sketch in silence and picks up a photograph in a green leather frame, of the kind that close upon themselves, a travelling photograph frame. A gift from Lisa. ‘This your wife?’

‘Yes,’ replies Adrian. ‘Lisa.’

A pause. And because he is trying not to show how discomfited he is by Kai’s lack of niceties and because the notion that a conversation is a continuous act is bred into his bones and silences like nudity should be covered up lest they offend, Adrian asks, ‘How long have you worked here?’

Kai puts Lisa’s picture back upon the shelf. ‘Four years. Something like that.’

‘And before?’

‘There was no before.’ He cranes his neck sideways to read the titles of the books on the shelf; his back is to Adrian, who persists. ‘You were studying?’

‘Yup.’

‘Of course. So where did you do your medical studies?’ Adrian expects Kai to name an overseas university, in the United States or Britain, possibly one of the former Soviet bloc countries.

‘Here.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yup. Local boy.’

‘The whole lot?’

Kai nods.

‘So you’ve never visited Britain?’

‘Nope.’ Kai accents the word, shaking his head, turns and places his whisky glass on the table.

Why this is such a surprise Adrian cannot quite say, something in Kai’s manner, he struggles to put his finger on it. ‘Have you ever been outside the country?’

Kai shakes his head. ‘Leave? When we have so much here?’ He laughs and drains his glass.

Adrian pours the last of the whisky, leaving the empty bottle on the table. He takes a sip, and then another, pacing the drink. The whisky has gone to his head. He remembers he hasn’t eaten properly and closes his eyes. Behind his lids the blackness turns liquid. He wonders if he doesn’t feel faintly unwell. He opens his eyes, feels the stab of light against his retina before his pupils have time to contract. Coffee is what he needs. He rises and makes his way to the kitchenette, tinkers with the kettle and cups. It is later than he thought. Outside invisible dust thickens the air. Tomorrow the hills above the city will have disappeared from view. He remembers the flight across the Sahara, watching the dust rolling across the dunes, gathering force and height until it extinguished the view from the window.

When he returns Kai is lying with his head back and his eyes closed. Adrian stands with the two cups in his hand. There is something compelling in looking at a sleeping person. In the early days he would watch Lisa asleep, right up close, feeling her breath on his face. If she woke up, when she woke up, their eyes met. She didn’t start or flinch. And so with strangers, even a stranger on a bus, there is a shadow of that same intimacy. Something in the freedom of the gaze, to look without being seen, a kind of power, a stolen intimacy. Kai’s skin, bright and unblemished. Unshaven; the hair grows on Kai’s face in sparse, erratic bursts. He wears his hair in an unfashionable style for the times. In contrast to the cropped or smooth-shaved heads of many black men Kai’s hair grows thickly and tufted to an inch or two.

The beard and the hair conceal his youth; he is much younger, Adrian thinks, much younger than at first imagined. This makes Adrian by far the senior. He realises why he was surprised to learn Kai had never left his country, never left Africa. It is the worldliness he carries with him, all the more noticeable now for being momentarily dissipated.

On the arm of the settee a single finger taps out an unheard rhythm.

‘Coffee?’ says Adrian, suddenly awkward.

‘Sure, why not?’ Kai answers. He does not open his eyes. Adrian places a cup on the table, where the liquid sloshes gently in the cup. Kai opens his eyes, reaches for it.

The middle of the night. Adrian wakes. His mouth is dry from the whisky. The water bottle on the bedside table is empty. He starts through to the kitchen, turning on lights as he goes. Too late, he remembers Kai, hastily turns the light off and is forced to stand still for a few moments while his eyes readjust to the darkness. He wonders if he has woken the other man, listens for Kai’s breathing and finds it. Slowly he gropes his way along the walls towards the kitchen.

In the kitchen he opens the fridge, takes a plastic bottle of water and raises it to his lips. He pushes back the cotton curtain. No sign of a moon. From the other room he hears sounds. A murmuring. Muttering. He lowers the bottle from his lips and listens.

Conscious of the tread of his bare feet he crosses the kitchen to the doorway. Kai is sitting on the edge of the couch.

‘Oh. I woke you,’ says Adrian. ‘Sorry.’

When there is no reply, he ventures forward, peering through the darkness. Kai is sitting on the couch, his arms squeezed to his sides, his face turned upwards, eyes open. He is speaking, though Adrian can distinguish none of the words, which come in a gabbled monotone. Faster now. And louder. Followed by a gasp, as if he had been hit in the chest. Silence. Then the murmuring begins again, softly rising.

Adrian reaches out to touch him, pushes him gently back down on to the couch. ‘You’re dreaming,’ he says in a normal voice. ‘You’re asleep and dreaming.’ He stays until the murmuring subsides, then makes his way back to his room.

In the morning Adrian wakes to a clattering. His head is buzzing. From above come loud scratching sounds of birds trying to gain purchase on the corrugated-iron roof with their claws. He rises and knocks experimentally on the door to the sitting room, pushes at the door. There are the pillow and sheets rumpled on the settee, the Ludo board and scattered coloured counters, the empty whisky bottle. He stands and surveys the scene, then turns and heads in the direction of the kitchen.

Boiling water for coffee Adrian hears the sound of the door and fetches down a second cup from the cupboard. He realises, suddenly, how empty he has felt these past weeks.

* * *

In the days and weeks that follow, the rhythms of their lives begin to intertwine. Kai takes to passing by at those times when he has a few minutes spare and sometimes to shower in Adrian’s apartment. One day Kai arrives just as Adrian is leaving. Adrian lets him in, and gives him a key to lock behind him. Suggests he may as well hold on to it.

Certain days Adrian comes home to find Kai in the apartment, settled in the front room, going through papers or writing up notes. The pattern of Kai’s breaks from the operating theatre becomes familiar to Adrian, and he will, on occasion, endeavour to stop work at the same time. He finds he looks forward to the other man’s companionship in the evenings.

So a new friendship is formed.

A high wall surrounds the hospital, built of rough, bare blocks through which hardened floes of concrete spill. Lizards dance between shards of broken bottles planted in a bed of concrete. A ruff of razor wire encircles the building.

Outside Elias Cole’s room a kite is caught. A black kite with a bamboo frame, wings of black plastic and a tail of torn strips. It twists and turns, like a snared bird. The more it struggles to break free, the more hopelessly entangled it becomes.

In a moment of silence the old man’s eyes follow Adrian’s, and both watch the agonies of the kite.

‘Does the kite mean something to you?’ asks Adrian.

*

It reminds me of my brother. You were asking me about my family. We once built kites just like that, though in those days we made the wings from paper.

Once I was given a real kite; my father bought it for me with his clerk’s salary the week I passed my school certificate. I ran out to test it on the bank behind our house. But the season was wrong, there was not so much as a whisper of wind. Running to and fro, I became frustrated, finally I threw it down and burst into tears. My crying angered my father. He told me to bring the kite to him and in front of him he made me hand it to my brother.