Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

In this way I indulged myself, exquisitely, achingly. I had never been in love before. I had no idea. Hopes building up, fragile and heavy as crystals upon a filament. I was without caution.

Outside the routine of exams I took the opportunity to pursue my efforts to see the Dean. What Saffia had said, about my languor, was not entirely true. I had submitted and had rejected my paper, ‘Reflections on Changing Political Dynamics’. That week I stopped by his office and spoke to his secretary, who guarded him like the Oracle at Delphi. I was apportioned a thin slot of time at the end of the day. I arrived with my arguments rehearsed and ready.

The Dean was a small man, dark-skinned, balding and possessed of a quicksilver energy, with tiny hands and feet, and high round buttocks which pitched him forward, so he appeared to approach the world at a trot. Stacked upon his desk were piles of papers, each wrapped around with a rubber band. The desk itself was a massive affair, dark wood with the high gloss of the reproduction, the surface of which was inlaid with green leather with a border of tooled gold. A green onyx paperweight and a pen in a matching stand, an ivory letter-opener and a brass nameplate, similar to the one on the door. Behind the Dean’s chair on a stand stood a massive globe of the world, Typus orbis terrarum scripted above the tropic of Cancer. A ship scurried across the line of the Equator to Africa, hastened by a puff of wind to its sails.

‘How is everything, Cole?’

I replied that everything was fine, as well as could be expected.

‘Good, good. All to your liking?’ He sounded like a hotel manager. I nodded and gave a version of the same reply.

‘Good, good.’

A pause. He offered me a drink. I accepted. He swivelled around in his chair and flipped open the top of the globe. Inside were several decanters, an ice bucket, tongs, highball glasses and tumblers.

‘What will you have?’

‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ I had read somewhere ordering the same drink as your boss was a sure way to impress, a tacit endorsement of their own choice.

‘Hmm?’ he said, as though he hadn’t been listening. His back to me, I couldn’t get a glimpse of his face. ‘Tell me what you’d like.’

Better perhaps to be my own man. ‘I’ll have a whisky, please.’

The Dean occupied himself in a search, lifting and replacing decanters, inspecting the contents inscribed upon silver plates suspended around their necks. Several were empty. He gave the impression of a child at play with a new toy. Finally he lifted out a decanter in which an inch of gold-coloured liquid swirled, removed the stopper, froze for a moment as though interrupted by a new and startling thought, shook his head slightly, replaced the stopper and returned the decanter to the globe.

‘I think I’ll send out for some soft drinks.’

I said, ‘Thank you.’

He picked up the telephone and called the secretary, who arrived momentarily with two bottles on a tray, opened them and handed us one each. The Dean raised a bottle to his lips and sucked reflectively at the top. I followed suit.

‘How are you finding the office? Comfortable enough for you?’

Again I nodded. Ten minutes had passed and all we had covered were the pleasantries. He leaned back in his chair and the leather squeaked beneath his buttocks. I imagined his feet, below the enormous desk, the tips of his shoes hovering an inch above the floor.

‘Good. Good.’ He placed his hands on the desk in front of him and spread his fingers. His next remark appeared to come out of nowhere.

‘It’s a real responsibility, you know, administration.’

‘Of course.’ What else but to agree?

‘Oh, it doesn’t attract the accolades of academia. You know that. I know that. And yet great societies are built on their administrators. We are historians. It’s not us who make history. Nor the generals. It’s the administrators. Who were the first administrators in this country, Cole?’ He had been staring dreamily out of the window. Now his neck snapped back and his gaze was redirected to a spot in the centre of my forehead. Before I could reply he was wagging his finger at me in warning, as though I was about to give the wrong answer. ‘Not the British, though they like to take the credit. It was the Fula! Yes. Cattlemen and shopkeepers. And, I know and so do you, Cole,’ that gimlet eye daring me to say otherwise, ‘once rulers of the largest empire in West Africa. I should say arguably the largest, because of course records as such are scant.’

He pushed himself back into his chair; the leather sighed again as it accommodated his movements. I waited, still perplexed by this turn in the conversation.

‘Their gift didn’t lie in superior fighting skills. Those they subjugated were mostly farmers, not warriors. Their gift, their trick,’ and here his voice grew louder until he shouted out, ‘their brilliance , was to leave an administrator in every town and village they passed through. Somebody to keep the local rulers in check, and to make sure the right taxes were paid at the right time. All without the benefit of a filing system. Less red tape that way. Ha!’ And he gave a bark like a cough. ‘Native administration, you see. The British didn’t invent it after all! But red tape, now that really was their contribution. Ha!’ He barked again. ‘Forget the politicians and the soldiers. Learn to respect the administrators!’ And he wagged a finger at me again, but less threateningly this time, as though to assure me of the levity of this last remark. Then he shook himself slightly. ‘But I don’t have to tell you that. Your father was a civil servant.’

I nodded.

In a relative frenzy of creaking the Dean swung himself out of his chair and went to the window.

‘You’re generous with use of your office space. Excellent. I feel I made the right choice in you. Not enough space, the university was never built for so many students. Nobody stopped to consider the consequences of all these decisions when they made them. Only how popular they would be.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, the only thing I had really said so far. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get around to the matter of my paper. I ventured, ‘I submitted a paper for the journal. I was wondering if we might …’

The Dean interrupted me with a wave of his hand. ‘Ah yes, yes. Not really your best. I’m sorry, Cole. And space in the journal was tight.’

‘I was hoping we could discuss the particular aspects you considered problematic.’

‘Are you sure you want to discuss it?’ I could see the reflection of his frown in the window. ‘Very well. You started with the wrong question, hence the argument was flawed from the start.’ He continued to stand with his back to me. I waited, but he added nothing more.

‘Your written comments would be very welcome.’

He turned from the window, without looking at me, and resumed his seat, spreading his tiny hands out on the table again, as though inspecting his fingernails.

‘My advice? The work it would take, you may as well start again. The journal committee are really looking for a different kind of thing.’ Everybody knew the journal committee and the Dean were one and the same. ‘Now if you were to take a look through the archives, we’re lucky to have them at the university and they’re an undervalued resource in my opinion. In Europe, as you know, modern history is taken to begin at the end of the Middle Ages. Not quite applicable to us here. Still, it gives one a lot of scope.’

And that, once I had finished my drink, was more or less where we left it. As I reached the door he made one more remark, with perfect casualness.