Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘Quite probably. Or not. If her appearance is as you say, then that might encourage someone to bring her to a safe place like this. Hoping for a reward or a tip, either from us or the family.’

‘Has anyone made enquiries with the police?’

‘I doubt it very much. Even if we thought they’d be cooperative, who here has the time?’

They’d left it there. Adrian would examine her again in two days’ time.

He is on his third beer when Kai arrives and drops into the chair next to him without apology. He lifts a hand at a passing waiter, indicates Adrian’s beer, holds up two fingers. Adrian has grown used to the silences, their textures and shades. Around them the bar is filling. A mass of insects thickens around the fluorescent lights, their humming resonating with the buzz of the lights. By the time Kai is on his third beer, Adrian is hungry. They order skewers of roast meat, smeared with crushed groundnuts and pepper. Elated and now somewhat drunk, Adrian orders another round. He is tired, and he savours the feeling, the exhaustion that comes from a hard day’s work.

He hums along to the music. Another beer. And another. A woman standing at the bar is watching Kai. Square-shouldered, blonde hair, the skin on her back and shoulders faintly pink and filmed with moisture, exposed by a blue halter-neck top. He can see the pale outline of her bikini straps, the red swelling of an insect bite. Her mouth is open, eyes narrowed, head angled. Her pose is one of concentrated desire, such that Adrian, shocked, looks to see whether Kai has noticed. Kai drains his bottle and gets to his feet, headed for the toilet. As he does so he staggers slightly.

‘Watch how you go.’

The woman pushes away from the bar, moving towards Kai, never once taking her eyes from him. When he straightens himself she is there in front of him, her breasts pointed at his chest, so close her body almost touches his.

‘Hi,’ she says and puts out her hand, into the narrow space between them. ‘I’m Candy.’ Or was it Sherrie? Some such, later Adrian cannot be sure. He is taken aback by her boldness. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

Kai looks down at the woman, who waits in the moment of silence that wells briefly up in the wake of her question.

‘No thanks.’ He places his empty bottle carefully on the table.

The woman makes the best of the rebuff, pushes her lips into a moue of mock disappointment, lifts her shoulders, puts her head on one side and looks up at him. But Kai is already off, headed for the toilets. She shrugs and saunters back to her friends, resumes her place by the bar. A moment later two Middle Eastern-looking men, swarthy and tight, move from the other side of the bar to take up positions either side of the woman and lean across her, breathing into her neck, touching her hair. And she is laughing again.

Adrian turns away, thinks again about his friend, about the wall inside him. Kai occupies only the present, reveals little of his past. Of the manner of his existence when he is not at the hospital, Adrian has no real idea, imagines only a house with relatives, a shared room, cloths strung up against the light. He is adept at taking care of himself, though, so perhaps a houseful of bachelors. Where else does he spend his evenings? In places like this? No. This is for Adrian’s benefit. At night Adrian hears the sounds from Kai’s dreams, footsteps late into the night that begin and end in no place, has lost count of the times he has come through to find Kai awake and dressed, while the stars still glimmered in the sky outside.

Kai returns; he has stopped at the bar on his way and purchased two more bottles of beer. Adrian, because he has been thinking about these things, asks, ‘Ever been married?’

‘Who, me?’ Kai deflects the question.

‘Yes, ever been married?’

‘Nope.’ He upends his bottle of beer, tipping the liquid down his throat, his eyes on a point somewhere past Adrian’s shoulder.

Adrian takes a sip from his own bottle. The food has helped and his head is, for a while at least, clear again.

‘Once, nearly. I thought about it,’ says Kai.

‘And?’

Kai shakes his head. ‘We were too young. At least so I thought. I’d set myself a lot of things to do when I graduated. A few things got in the way of that.’ He belches.

‘Like what?’

‘A little thing like a war.’

‘What did you want to do?’

‘Plans, man. I had big plans.’

‘To do what?’

‘To be the best, I guess. Just that. Me and Tejani, he was my friend back then. We never imagined it any other way.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Gone.’ He waved vaguely as though he were swatting a mosquito.

‘And the girl?’

‘Ah.’ He swallows from the bottle until he has to stop for air. ‘The girl? She’s still out there.’

It is midnight. The crowd has thickened into a mass. Inside the fluorescence illuminates some faces like moons, while outside other faces slip in and out of the darkness. On the dance floor a coloured ball transforms the sweat of the dancers into glistening trails of red. Adrian and Kai sit alone at their table, marooned in the middle of so much noise and heat, like shipwreck survivors, exhausted, pleased to be alive. A song begins, with a South African rhythm. Congo maway, congo. Congo mama .

‘Come on.’ Kai is up and swaying on his feet. He is on his way to the dance floor. Adrian is drunk enough to follow. Together they dance, nobody cares. The blood and alcohol in his body, the lights, cause Adrian’s head to begin to spin again. He feels certain if he let himself go limp he would be buoyed along by the welter of bodies. After a while the dizziness overwhelms him and he makes his way back to the table, where he sits and watches Kai, his head tilted back, eyes half closed, dancing on.

Julius. What would you like me to tell you about him? He was a person who believed in himself, in the purpose of his existence, in his own good fortune. Julius didn’t like to be alone, he required companionship. He sought out my company, and in many ways, it seemed to me, he had come to depend upon it.

Once we made a trip to the casino. We were together without either of our women. By that time my relationship with Vanessa had shrivelled to virtually nothing and I was still at odds as to how best to conduct myself around Saffia given the unfortunate outcome of my last visit. Julius, unaware of all of this, came to my office looking for entertainment.

We had been drinking. The suggestion was his, as most suggestions were. He grew exuberant under the influence. In that way, as in so many, we were opposites, for drink has always caused me to close in upon myself and, if bothered, I am prone to lash out. Julius felt lucky, and he declared it aloud to the empty street as we stepped out of a bar and headed in the direction of the casino. He stacked his chips on a single number. I spread my chips carefully. The wheel spun. I won, modestly. Julius lost, royally. He celebrated his losses at the bar.

That was the night I learned Julius was an asthmatic. While we were in the casino, something, I forget what, struck him as amusing. He began to laugh. The illness showed in his laughter, laughing was apt to set off an attack. That was why Saffia had looked at him with such concern that first dinner at their house. This time the laugh turned into a cough, he had been coughing a lot recently. The change in the seasons, perhaps. The dust in the air had lessened as the harmattan drew to a close. But the rains brought their own hazards. Spores and pollens filled the air as new life burst forth. Within moments he was wheezing, a see-sawing sound, broken with intermittent bursts of coughing. He reached into his pocket, drew out an inhaler. I was surprised. I suppose in my mind I always thought of asthmatics as carrying considerably less weight than a man like Julius. I remember he had once told me that as a child he had nearly died. I believe he must have been talking about his asthma. He was the youngest, the only boy. I could see it all. He behaved as though the world had been made for him alone, a result of being constantly indulged, no doubt. Or perhaps also for so nearly having left it.