Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

Agnes is crossed.

They are in the Patients’ Garden, the smoke from Ileana’s cigarette curling upward, entwining with the branches of the trees. Her elbow rests on the arm of the wooden bench, half an inch of ash droops from the end of the cigarette. Inside the pocket of her smock she fiddles with her lighter. Adrian can hear the rasping of the wheel against the flint. She is listening with her eyes upon him.

When he stops speaking she says, without taking her eyes away from him, ‘You are considering schizophrenia, of course?’

‘Of course,’ Adrian replies. ‘Though she’s clearly confused. And there are lapses. I don’t think I’m dealing with a psychotic. In fact, I’m as sure as I can be.’ And then, ‘You’ve never examined her?’

Ileana shakes her head, a movement which causes the ash to drop from her cigarette; she raises the remainder of it to her lips and draws deeply before discarding the butt among the fallen flowers.

‘What about Attila?’ says Adrian.

‘He tries to see all the patients, but there are so many. Besides, she doesn’t stay long. It would have amounted to an intake interview. Nothing more.’

Adrian picks a pod up from the ground and begins to pull it apart. The seeds fall out, clattering faintly on to the stones. He doesn’t want to say anything to Ileana just yet, about what he is thinking, the books he has been reading. He wants to wait until he is a little more certain. He needs to hold off talking to Attila, too. For now he is enjoying Ileana’s company, sitting here in the shade of the garden, the most peaceful place in the city. He’d like to carry on talking to her, to invite her for a beer. He realises he has no idea of her home life, whether she is here alone, married or single. He struggles to picture her anywhere else but here.

‘Where do you live? I mean here, in this place.’

‘A bungalow. By Malaika beach. I’ve been there about six months. Before that I had an apartment in town, a real dump. What I have now is so much better. You should come and see it.’

‘Are you there alone? I mean …’ He is fumbling a little now. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t prying. I was just thinking about safety.’ He finishes abruptly.

She laughs and looks at him; in her dark eyes there is genuine amusement. ‘I know what you mean. And the answer is yes, I’m on my own. And I feel safer here than anywhere in Israel, or Romania for that matter. I don’t suppose anybody back home would believe it if I told them.’ She laughs. ‘Last time I was in your bloody country I was followed round Haringey by some fucking pervert. I could have screamed my head off and nobody would have heard me.’

Ileana lights another cigarette and stands up. Together they leave the garden.

‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

On the way home he asks the driver to stop at the supermarket. Inside he moves up and down the aisles, perusing the imported products, savouring the air conditioning. The prices are almost beyond reach, the owners must be making a fortune. He selects two large packets of crisps, takes some beers from the cold cabinet and pays, counting out grubby notes. It is the end of the day, his mind is unwinding, he performs the task slowly, loses count and begins again.

Back in the taxi, heading out to the hospital, not across Julius’s bridge this time, but through the thick of the town. There is a song on the radio. Adrian can’t place it exactly, but it takes him back decades. The title track to a film, maybe. The rhythm lifts his mood. Not for the first time the face of the woman he saw talking to Babagaleh rises before him. This time he does nothing to suppress it, remembers the look she gave him, the way it touched his skin, leaving him exposed as he tried to slip past. He tries to focus upon the features of her face, but they elude him. He sees only the expression she wore, as if she knew exactly what he was doing as he tried to slip past Babagaleh. But then, all good-looking women possessed the same power, or so it seemed.

He presses a beer can against his forehead, feels the cool seep through his body. Six o’clock. The day is over.

‘What’s the time, please?’

Elias Cole was asleep when Adrian arrived, his eyelids fractionally open. For once his breathing was inaudible, causing a momentary hesitation in Adrian accompanied by a double beat of his heart. Of death, he had no experience, except that of his own father. Pneumonia, the official version. It had been a slow death, an awkward lingering. Adrian knew enough to know how these matters were generally handled. A dose of penicillin withheld, the gentle, cold kiss of the morphine needle. By the time Adrian arrived the bed sheets had already been changed. All the time his father was in the home, Adrian chided himself for not visiting more often. Not for his father, who barely recognised him. Or for his mother, who believed, or maintained, that Adrian’s job was extremely demanding. But for himself. He knew he’d regret it. He chided himself. He’d done it anyway.

Adrian walks to the window and draws the curtain against the sunlight.

‘It’s two o’clock.’

He helps the old man to a glass of water. From elsewhere the sound of the expatriate medical staff singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a German colleague. Minutes before Adrian had stood with them in the staff room, sipping vinegary, dusty wine. He’d slipped away before the cutting of the cake.

Adrian sits, the other man’s eyes upon him. ‘You told me people often wondered what Julius saw in you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that you yourself often wondered the same thing.’

‘I have no illusions.’

‘But what did you see in him, in Julius?’

‘I saw Saffia. Nothing but Saffia.’

*

20 July 1969. The Sea of Tranquillity.

It was all done for the Americans, of course. So they could take the afternoon off and watch at home with beer and barbecues. It was, after all, their money, their president, their rocket, their show. They were the winners. The rest of the world could but watch. The American Embassy on my way to the Ocean Club was alive with light and noise, dignitaries arriving by the score. The Soviet Embassy by contrast was closed and dark, a house of mourning. Winner takes all. The Soviets had even lost the loyalty of an insignificant state such as ours. Our Prime Minister — or was that the year he made himself President? Our President was at that moment rubbing shoulders with the Americans, basking in their glory, despite years of Soviet munificence.

The taxi I was travelling in came to a halt behind a long line of traffic. I took my chances and climbed down. Moments later it started to rain, but by then somebody had already claimed the empty taxi. No choice but to keep walking. I’d forgotten my umbrella. As luck would have it I passed a bar I knew and decided to stop for a drink to escape the rain. The bartender had the radio tuned to the World Service with all the preamble, the discussions and interviews, the expert opinion that would fill the hours up until the attempt. Who cared? Not I. I finished my first drink. I thought of Saffia and felt the familiar jolt of yearning.

My second whisky was followed by a third. They watered down the spirits in this place, I’d be hard-pressed to get drunk. So I stayed and drank. I drank to avoid the rain. I drank to avoid too early an arrival. I drank to keep my new shirt from getting wet. Most of all I drank to postpone, painfully, exquisitely, the moment when I would be in Saffia’s company again.

All talk in the bar was of the evening’s events. The same all over town, no escaping it. The mood of confidence was unshakeable; do you believe me when I say that? Men had died, it’s true. But America was the superpower. It was a time of gods and we in Africa were mere mortals.