Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘This is my first day out at the beach.’

‘You’re kidding! By the way, I’m Candy. This is Elle.’ They are both in the country working for aid agencies. In turn Adrian tells them about his position at the hospital.

‘So this isn’t your place then?’

‘No.’ Adrian mentions Ileana. Candy shrugs and shakes her head. Two men selling sarongs and souvenirs approach and begin to display their wares, batik cloths, haematite necklaces and glossy, carved animals. One of the men is in his fifties, the other in his twenties, shirtless with a smooth muscular chest. Neither Candy nor Elle pays attention to the men or their wares. Elle sits on the sand and, turning her back on them, rolls over on to her stomach on the sand; as she does so, she reaches down to adjust her bikini bottoms, flicking the elastic. There is no self-consciousness in the gesture, as if the men behind her don’t exist. Candy is still talking. Adrian looks at her, remembers the expression on her face the night she had approached Kai: self-confident, hungry. He thanks the two men, tells them they are not interested in buying.

‘Don’t bother, they never give up,’ says Candy. ‘So how long have you been here?’ For the second time that day Adrian is asked the question. He tells them and Candy laughs.

‘I thought you looked saner than the rest of us,’ and she laughs again.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You haven’t heard the joke?’ says Candy, flicking a look at Elle.

Adrian shakes his head, bemused.

‘You know the joke? About the tourist?’

He still has no idea what she is talking about.

‘What’s the difference between a tourist and a racist?’

‘I don’t know,’ he responds automatically.

‘Two weeks!’

Elle laughs supportively, though she has clearly heard the joke before. Candy is grinning at him. Adrian has no idea how to respond. He is silent.

Behind Candy the sellers are folding sarongs, putting them away. Adrian thinks of the obtuse police officers and the deaf boy, his frustration with the hospital administrator, the power cuts and water shortages, the heat, the clogged gutters and traffic jams in the city, the beggars. He thinks of the pregnant woman with the dead baby between her legs, of Kai, then of Agnes, of the young man he first brought to the hospital, of his friends among the patients at the hospital, the calm and beauty of the Patients’ Garden. Of Attila’s unbroken determination. Of his own strange happiness in that place. He is still unsure what to say when he realises the attention of both women has been redirected.

‘Oh, hi,’ Candy says, in a tone noticeably flatter to the one with which she had greeted Adrian. Ileana has reappeared with a dish of sliced fruit, mango and pineapple. She greets the two women and sets the plate down on the table.

‘Hey, that looks great!’ Candy says, her tone gushing now. ‘And this place, too.’

‘Thank you. I’ll get some more plates.’

To Adrian’s relief the moment has passed. He wonders if Ileana heard Candy’s joke, though if she did she gives no sign of it, disappearing for a second time to re-emerge with extra plates and cutlery. The fruit is fresh, sharp and clean, clears his taste buds of the residual flavour of crab.

Suddenly Ileana sets her plate back on the table and stands up. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says to the two women. ‘You don’t have anything to drink. What would you like? There’s wine.’

‘Hey. Awesome! We’ve lucked out here. Could a day get any better?’

Ileana nods graciously. She takes the bottle from the cool box beside Adrian and pours two more glasses.

‘This is really good.’ Elle, this time.

‘Do you know what the most popular white wine here is?’ asks Ileana.

‘No,’ say Candy and Elle and turn to her, Adrian as well. The two women open-faced and smiling.

‘It goes like this,’ says Ileana, and she affects a grating, high-pitched voice, a clear imitation of Candy’s nasal accents. ‘Christ, what’s wrong with these people? Can’t they do anything for themselves? If it wasn’t for us they’d still be in the trees.’ And with that she sits down heavily in her chair, takes a sip from her own glass. ‘Cheers! Good, isn’t it? The most popular white whine.’

That night it turns cold. There is no wind, no rain and yet, lying in his bed, Adrian feels a chill in the air. He gets up from his bed and switches off the ceiling fan. The movement sets his stomach churning. The crab perhaps, though it had tasted fresh enough. With these things one seldom knew until it was too late. And yet, if his memory serves, seafood poisoning came on quickly. He calculates how long it has been since he left Ileana’s. About five hours. Candy and Elle had stayed only a few minutes after Ileana’s remarks. ‘Silly tarts,’ she’d said as they watched the two women walk away. ‘Do you know how much they get as a hardship allowance?’ Fortunately, the tension caused by the women’s visit had vanished with them, Adrian and Ileana once more at ease between themselves. He had admired the sharpness of her response, and felt grateful for her apparent willingness to overlook the failure of his own.

They had swum, the shock of the water — the warmth rather than the cold — dispelling any awkwardness resulting from seeing each other, two professional colleagues, in their swimwear. Ileana, hair tucked up inside a tight rubber cap, turned out to be a strong, serious swimmer and a match for Adrian. They had both cut through the soupy water for fifty yards, and stayed there riding the ebb and flow of the waves, as the sun went down. And afterwards they’d walked down the beach, where Ileana had shown Adrian a hotel, deserted since the war. There was the bar, the card tables: torn felt and broken glass, as though a wind had blown through them.

Later Adrian had driven home through the rapidly gathering dusk, not wanting to test his driving skills in the dark. He arrived exhausted and with the beginnings of a headache, had drunk some water and gone soon to bed, to wake a few hours later to this unseasonal coolness. The cotton sheet, which he usually pushes from his body during the night, is not enough. He searches the cupboards, finds a blanket and lies back down, pulling the stiff, stale wool up around his shoulders.

Dawn finds him shivering. Far away he hears the key turn in the door, wonders what Kai is doing here so early. He pulls the blanket around his body and stumbles to the bedroom door.

‘Hey, man,’ says Kai. ‘How’s the morning?’

Adrian tries to answer, his voice emerges weakly. He sees Kai turn to look more closely, take a few steps towards him. Standing there Adrian feels the sweat rising, seeping from his pores, bringing with it a flush of heat. He pushes the blanket away, suddenly he is thirsty. He puts out a hand to steady himself. Kai is in front of him, blocking his way, his hands on his shoulders, peering into his face.

‘Woah, man.’ He hears Kai’s voice distantly. ‘Man, you are sick!’

Two hours after the end of his shift and Kai has cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, thrown out all the old food in the fridge, wiped the surfaces and emptied the bin of rubbish and ants. Next he rearranged the front room, punching the cushions and shaking the mats. With a switch broom borrowed from the caretaker he swept the dust out of the door. Then he stripped the soiled sheets from under Adrian, tipping a porter to remove them and return with clean ones, and made up the bed, moving Adrian from one side of the bed to the other with practised efficiency. Minutes later the porter returned with a bag of food, and Kai entered the kitchen and set about making soup: a clean, clear broth to which he added an entire Scotch bonnet pepper, crushed on the back of a wooden spoon, and a dash of lime.