Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘Julius has been arrested.’

On the drive to the house Saffia told me what had happened. Two men had arrived at the house in the wake of the party, just after the last of the guests had departed. Plain clothes, it seemed, for neither wore uniforms. Julius and Saffia had not yet gone to bed. No reason had been given for the arrest, no warrant, no explanation. Julius protested, of course, but in the end had seen no other choice but to comply. Saffia had tried to telephone Ade and Kekura, but failing to reach either she had come to me. I’d flattered myself, thinking I was the first place she had turned. I watched her while she tried the telephone again, listening to the faint, maddening ringing. Nobody answered. She stood with her hands covering her face, shaking her head.

‘I’m sure it’s a mistake,’ I said. ‘What else could it be?’

I suppose I had imagined we would simply wait it out. God knows I had no experience of these things, but I was — I am — by nature inclined to caution. There seemed no point in getting worked up by what could yet turn out to be a false alarm. We might even be sitting down together in a few hours laughing about it. I genuinely believed it. What I wanted to do was to stay with Saffia, here in this house. I could offer her comfort, I could offer her strength. I could be her protector. We would wait it out, and when it was over — well, I didn’t think that far ahead, only of the possibility of the hours between.

Saffia picked up her car keys and proposed we drive to Ade and Kekura’s homes.

No sign of Ade. A neighbour told us he had been taken away in the early morning. Ade had been one of the last to leave the party; they’d been waiting for him when he arrived home. From Ade’s place we hastened to Kekura. There we found neither Kekura, nor news of him. There were three police stations within reasonable proximity of Saffia and Julius’s house and we visited each in turn. The officer in charge at the first station tried to reassure Saffia that missing husbands had a habit of turning up. Saffia described the men who had come to the house that morning. He’d looked at her then, a narrow, curious stare, shrugged his shoulders and turned his back to us. I took Saffia by the arm and pulled her away.

We drove through silent streets. Back at the house Saffia continued to make calls. We discovered nothing new. Nothing on the radio either, just the usual round-up of births, deaths and marriages. All news was of the successful moon landing.

Saffia told me her aunt was away. I went into the kitchen and found some food left over from the night before. There was a new throbbing in my temple and I drank several glasses of water. I carried some cold olele and plantain back into the sitting room.

There was still then, at least in me, the certainty that this was not as serious as it appeared, that Julius would yet stride through the door any minute and turn the whole thing into a huge laugh, a story to tell against himself. I even, astonishingly, entertained quite seriously for several minutes the notion of kidnap, and then the idea that this was a practical joke on the part of Kekura and Ade. No doubt it was the bizarre nature of the previous evening: the moon landing, my own fall from grace, the residual alcohol in my bloodstream; anything had begun to seem possible.

One o’clock. Julius was not back. Two o’clock. Julius was not back. Four-thirty. Julius was not back. Five o’clock. Six-forty-five. Eight o’clock.

The hours dragged by, at other times sped bumpily past. At the sound of the telephone bell Saffia jumped up and snatched the receiver only to slump in disappointment when it was not Julius. Darkness came, encroaching upon hope. Somewhere a child was being beaten, the cries seemed to go on for minutes. Between Saffia and me, silence. Then Saffia rose and as she did so uttered a long sigh, of which she seemed entirely unaware. When it was over her physicality was altered; her shoulders sagged as though she was literally deflated. She moved around the room turning on the lights.

I said, ‘Is there anything at all Julius might have been arrested for?’

‘Of course not.’

We rehearsed the events of the morning, the possibilities — of which there were few. At the end of it she repeated what she had said at the start. None of it made any sense.

I poured us drinks. Saffia protested she didn’t want anything. I persuaded her it would help. She had not touched food all day. After a single sip she set the glass back upon the table. As for me, the action of the alcohol, the hair of the dog, had an immediate and soothing effect upon my nervous system.

‘We don’t even know where he is,’ she said. ‘I should have followed them. I didn’t think. It was all so confusing.’

‘How could you have known?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have known. You don’t know until it happens. And something like this has never happened before.’

At eleven I went home promising to be back in the morning. An offer to stay had been declined. My route home took me through several checkpoints. Like so many others I’d ceased to see them other than a momentary inconvenience, that is unless your luck went against you, or you handled an exchange badly. Bullish behaviour provoked the soldiers. I wondered if something of the sort had unfolded between Julius and the men who came to the house that morning, that what began as some sort of mistake had escalated into something more for no good reason.

I nodded at the soldier manning the roadblock. He loosed the rope in his hand and eased the barrier upwards.

Some names he knows.

Lamin says he worked colouring Easter eggs in a factory in Germany. He uses the occasional German word: Frau. Haus. Osterei . Diagnosed with dissocial personality disorder. Attila does not believe Lamin has ever been to Germany, Ileana tells Adrian. Lamin is making progress, Attila has allowed him to be unshackled from his bed, the chains remain around his ankles and wrists. Lamin shambles around in the sunlight, the mass of his chains gathered up and looped over one arm, like a bride’s train. He raises his free hand in salute to Adrian.

In the bed next to Lamin is Kapuwa. Adrian has read his notes. Paid a bowl of rice in exchange for twelve hours a day in a diamond pit. In the evenings the men curbed their hunger with ganja. The mines were overrun by rebel soldiers, who worked them just as hard, for less food. Kapuwa escaped, but left his mind behind. His family brought a healer to wash him and recite prayers once a week. His violent outbursts frightened his family, who kept him chained to a bamboo pole in the yard.

Borbor occupies the bed in the centre of the ward. Borbor is mentally retarded and epileptic. He turns his back to Adrian and bends over waving his backside, which Adrian can see plainly through the rent in Borbor’s trousers. Adrian pretends to be horrified, Borbor laughs and claps. The other patients complain Borbor is crazy. Adrian suspects Borbor is less demented than he would have others believe.

And then there is the Professor. One in every asylum, thinks Adrian. The mentally retarded and the brilliant, together in madness. The Professor is a manic-depressive, the walls around whose bed are covered in chalked words: poetic, nonsensical, obscene. The father of one of the new patients, a religious man, has complained. The Professor does not wear chains, and has the freedom of the grounds. Adrian recognises him as the man he spoke to at the front gate that first morning.

These four are long-term residents. Then there are the others, who come and go. They lie in bed all day, sleeping or in various stages of withdrawal. At night the sound of their deliriums upsets the other patients. Occasionally there is a ruckus. Many of them were once fighters, who faced each other as enemies. Now they lie side by side. The young man Adrian brought is one of them. They come and go. Come and go.