Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

Now he sits on the settee, while the soup simmers, glances through some of the papers on the coffee table, flicks through a reference book reading a sentence here, a chapter heading there. He lays his head back and closes his eyes. In a moment images begin to rise, fragments of dreams. He shakes his head and forces his eyes open. He is not sleeping well and sleep, when it comes, chooses inopportune moments. He hasn’t been home in three days, going instead straight from the theatre to Adrian’s apartment.

He enters the bedroom carrying a bowl of soup. At the sound of the bowl being set upon the night stand, Adrian opens his eyes. Kai leaves and returns with another bowl, this time of water, plus soap and a towel.

‘I can use the bathroom, you know.’

‘Sure you can. Easier for me to carry the bowl than you, that’s all.’

Adrian smiles and pulls himself up. He washes his hands. In the three days he has grown leaner, the bones of his face thrown into relief.

Kai hands him the bowl and spoon. ‘Pepper soup. All-time cure. Everything from hangovers to malaria. Good for the soul, too. Like Jewish chicken soup, only better. Both have proven curative and restorative powers.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Good.’

‘I was dreaming,’ says Adrian, in between sips. ‘Swimming underwater. The fish. The colours, my God. Is this what it’s like?’

Kai nods. ‘Mild deliriums, maybe. The medication can sometimes have that effect, not just the illness.’

A movement at the window on the other side of the room causes them both to turn. It is the sunbird. The bird’s body is curved, his wings work so fast as to be invisible to the naked eye, just the slender body of the bird, a comma hanging in the air, or a pause in a moment in time. Kai has moved the feeder to a place outside the window of the bedroom. Earlier in the day the sight of it from the kitchen window had revived a memory from childhood — he must have been very young indeed, for the memory came without accompanying thoughts, only physical sensations — of following a bird such as this through a garden. Not to catch it, but to imitate it. He remembered picking a flower and putting it in his mouth, the dustiness of the pollen, the taste of crushed petals, and finally, the sweetness.

Adrian’s sketchbook and paints are on the floor next to the bed, where Kai has placed them. ‘I feel too much like shit to be bored,’ Adrian says.

‘You wait. You’ll need to rest at least a week before you go back to work. You’ll be bored.’

‘I can’t afford a week.’

‘Listen.’ Kai sits on the edge of the bed. ‘The last guy who declined the advice I’ve just given you we shipped back home three months later. He didn’t work again for a year. It’s not just the malaria. Your body is fighting on all fronts in this climate. If you’re born here you get used to it. On the other hand, there’s a reason life expectancy is so short. So take my advice.’

On Adrian’s behalf, Kai telephones Ileana and also sends a message to the old man’s room. Afterwards he collects some medicine from the hospital pharmacy and makes his way along to Adrian’s apartment again.

‘The guy in the private room. You told me about him. Pulmonary fibrosis, right?’

‘Right.’

‘I guess I didn’t bother to read the name on the notes.’

‘Why? Do you know him?’

‘Yes. Well, knew him. From the university.’

‘He was a lecturer, is that right?’

‘More than that, he was Dean of Humanities in my time.’

‘Oh?’ says Adrian. ‘Is there a reason you ask?’

Kai takes a breath. ‘Not really. How are you doing with that soup?’

‘I feel better already.’

‘I’ll let you finish it,’ says Kai. He leaves the bedroom, crosses the living room, opens the front door and looks out at the hospital quadrangle.

Elias Cole. How that name takes Kai back to another time, drops him down into a place in the past he doesn’t want to go. He casts around for something else to think about, fastens on a picture sent to him by his sister some years back of the whole family, minus Kai, of course, whale watching in Vancouver. In the picture his parents made uncertain, lumpish tourists, wearing zipped cardigans and solemn expressions, like overgrown children. In between them his sister’s two kids mugged for the camera; the boy had pushed himself forward of the group so that his head was absurdly large within the frame. His sister’s Canadian husband must have been behind the camera. Doubtless the excursion was his idea. It would never occur to Kai’s parents to go whale watching. They didn’t understand those kinds of activities: climbing a hill for the view, sending postcards containing a single line of text. Besides there were whales right here; you could see them from the beach at certain times of the year.

With his parents gone Kai inhabited the house less and less, and then only in the hours of darkness. On weekends, when not with Nenebah, he was with Tejani, and when he was with neither of them he simply returned to the hospital.

A Sunday they’d operated upon a miner. The man, a Guinean, spoke only French. He’d been given an epidural rather than a full anaesthetic, nobody anticipating quite how awkward the procedure would prove to be. A steel pin, a repair to an earlier fracture, had slipped downwards into the knee joint and needed to be removed. They’d struggled to locate the tip of it within the femur. All the while the man had lain upon his back, gazing at the ceiling, apparently indifferent to the bone-jarring drill.

Afterwards they’d emerged to a darkened city, thinking at first it was later than it was. In the staff room there was talk of a coup. The Europeans went to the phones and began to dial their embassy switchboards. Kai left the hospital and entered the curfew-quiet streets. On his way he saw others, ghosts flitting through the narrow lanes away from the main roads. On a corner he collided with somebody’s shoulder. The other man reached out to steady him, a moment later Kai was on his way. Not a word had been spoken, the only sound the softly uttered grunt at first contact.

The moon was a waning crescent, a sliver of light escaping through a slit in the sky. Just enough to outline, faintly, the edges of the house. Kai waited outside until he saw Nenebah leave the sitting room. He stood up and skirted the house, walking in parallel to her, she inside, he outside, they both reached the bedroom at the same time. His fingers found the edge of the shutter. When she returned from washing, still drying her face with one end of the towel, he was lying on his stomach across her bed. A quick breath, her eyes darted towards the door. Silently she let the towel drop and slid into his embrace.

‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. ‘What if my father finds you? You’re not supposed to do this. You’re supposed to say the password.’

‘Sorry.’ He pressed his face against her belly, his chin rested in shower-damp hair.

‘Go on.’ She lay back and placed her arms above her head. And then, a small giggle. ‘Not that. I mean say the word.’

So he’d whispered their password, there and then, but she didn’t hear it, rather felt his breath, and arched her back slightly to meet him, placing her hands on his shoulders, pressing down with open palms. He loved the even pacing of her breathing, the intake and release, until the rhythm fell away, like a musician missing a string of notes, crashing down upon the keyboard.

Later, tracing her form with the back of his hand, feeling the new dampness upon her skin, he caught her nipple between his index finger and middle finger and held it the way one would hold a cigarette.

‘You’ll have to stay,’ she said. ‘You can’t go now. It’s too dangerous.’