Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

The road to Ileana’s house is straight and the distance no more than a few miles; nevertheless it takes Adrian thirty minutes to drive there because of the road’s treacherous condition. Two dogs, collarless and slender, lie by the door. One of them cautiously sniffs Adrian’s hand as he waits for Ileana to answer his knock. Through the fly screen he can see the living room: old rattan sofa, coffee table, books. Bright shawls cover the furniture. On the wall a mirror bordered by a mosaic frame, sharp fragments of glass. There is piano music playing. In time he sees Ileana cross the sitting room, smoking a cigarette. As he watches she performs a few steps of a dance. Her lips are pale, bare of lipstick. She does not see him. Adrian waits until she is out of sight before knocking a second time. This time Ileana appears down the short passage, and briskly throws open the fly screen.

‘The door is open. You should have come in.’ She smiles and kisses him on each of his cheeks, stands back and regards him for a moment, like a mother looking to see how much her son has grown. Her lips are dark red, freshly painted. ‘Welcome!’

The house, a compact bungalow, sits squarely on the beach. Ileana goes to the kitchen and returns with a cold beer for Adrian.

‘If this was my place, I’d knock down all the walls and keep it as one space, like a studio,’ she says.

‘It’s great.’ He removes his shoes, slides open the screen and steps on to springy grass and sand. ‘How did you find it?’

‘It was leased by a mining company, for their foreign workers to take weekend breaks. I took it over at a bargain rent. You could say there was a bit of a glut in the property market at that time.’ Ileana laughs. ‘You’d never get something like this now, and not at that price. All the ones along this stretch are rented for a fortune to one NGO or another.’

She places a pair of plastic chairs and they sit, enjoying for a few moments a companionable silence and the sound of the sea.

A group are walking up the beach against the sun. Three fat silhouettes and three thin. Each of the fat figures appears conjoined to a thin one. As they approach, Adrian sees that they are three men, each with a young black girl. The girls seem exceptionally young, narrow and pretty.

Ileana and Adrian watch them pass.

‘How differently we behave in other people’s countries,’ says Ileana. She raises her beer bottle to her lips. ‘It just goes to show.’

‘Show what?’

‘No sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn’t require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.’

‘I see what you mean.’ Adrian watches the receding figures.

Here and there groups of bathers sit on the sand, or under an umbrella. Children move between them selling peanuts and fruit.

‘I hope you like crab,’ says Ileana.

They carry salad, plates and cutlery outside. There is fried rice and a bottle of cold white wine. Ileana throws a pair of giant crabs on top of a coal pot, where they pop and sizzle. While they eat Adrian talks to Ileana about Agnes, of the progress she is making.

‘She’s still pretty confused, though that’s improving. A few days ago she couldn’t recognise herself in a mirror. Now she’s able to hold a conversation. There are gaps but my guess is that in a few days she’ll be back to herself.’

‘And the journeys?’

‘So far as I know they started after the war, not before. That much seems clear. I need to find the trigger. I’m working on the premise that something occurred during the war.’

‘You think she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?’

‘That’s what I’m looking at,’ Adrian says carefully.

Adrian is aware of Ileana’s steady gaze upon him. He can’t fool her, she knows exactly what’s in his mind. If he’s right he will have achieved something considerable. To prove the existence of fugue in a population would be a professional coup. But if he could also demonstrate a clear link to post-traumatic stress disorder? Well, that could make his name.

Moving on, he tells Ileana about the gold chain, how they had got to the bottom of that particular mystery. Agnes had pawned it and forgotten.

‘Dissociation,’ says Ileana, standing up. ‘She does things she can’t remember doing. More wine?’

‘Yes please,’ says Adrian.

He looks out at the horizon. In his mind he replays the second interview with Agnes, during which she’d complained about the theft of her gold chain. This followed the night Salia had been forced to sedate her. Adrian had prompted Agnes into recalling the events leading up to her most recent journey. She’d mentioned her daughter had been away. And again, in the last interview, when they had talked about her first journey, the daughter had been away from home that time, too. With this realisation his heart skips a beat, he leans forward in the chair, peruses the connection he has just made. It cannot simply be a coincidence. Naasu is the only daughter she talks about, he’d already noted that. The journeys occur when Naasu is away from home. He exhales and leans back in his chair. He can hardly wait to interview Agnes again. He must be careful not to rush her. What had they been talking about when she’d brought up the gold chain again? He asked her who was in the house with her. He mentioned the girl, her son-in-law. He ponders whether there is meaning in that. Sudden switches of subject were sometimes a marker of a patient wanting to avoid something: the subconscious steered them away.

Ileana returns with the wine.

‘It could take a long time,’ she says, continuing their early conversation. ‘I mean for you to discover the trigger, if there is one. Years of investigation. Therapy. And even then there are no guarantees. After all, it was us Europeans who invented the talking cure. And most of the maladies it’s designed to treat.’ She snorts faintly.

‘There are other ways,’ says Adrian.

‘Like what, hypnosis?’

‘Yes. Have you ever tried it?’

‘No,’ replies Ileana. ‘I don’t know what Attila would make of it. I know I think it’s a bit early in the game.’

‘Of course,’ concedes Adrian. ‘It was just a thought.’

Ileana stands and scrapes the contents of one plate to the other, the debris of crab shells and empty claws. Out at sea a fishing canoe sits high upon the shallow waves, a line of buoys marks the shape of the net. Ileana is in the kitchen. Two women are walking along the beach; one of them waves at Adrian. A moment later she waves again. Politely, Adrian waves back thinking she must have mistaken him for somebody else. The women change direction and come up the beach towards him.

‘Hiya,’ says the one who waved. She is tall, her shoulders almost as broad as his, an athlete’s body, blonde hair and prominent teeth. Her companion is shorter, small-breasted though with a good figure, reddish hair and a red bikini, the pale skin of a true redhead.

‘Hello,’ says Adrian, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looks up at them.

‘We saw you and thought we’d come and say hello. Pedro’s, a couple of weeks ago.’ Her accent is American.

‘Of course,’ Adrian replies. He recognises her now as the woman from the bar the evening he drank beers with Kai. Kai had given her the brush-off, though she hadn’t seemed to mind.

‘Been having a good day?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Isn’t the beach great? But there are others that are even better, with some great beach bars, well, if you can call them that. Of course it takes them for ever to bring the food. And half the time they don’t have what you order. But then isn’t that the same every place? You get used to it. The lobster is to die for and just about two dollars for a whole one. Can’t get that at home. Some guy dives from the rocks for fresh oysters while you wait. They’re a dollar a dozen.’ She sits in Ileana’s chair. ‘Have you tried the Shangri-La?’