Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘Can you help me?’

‘Sure.’ Kai puts the swan back on the table.

‘That’s impressive.’ Adrian picks up the swan. ‘Where did you learn to do this?’

‘I practise.’ He shrugs. He takes the scissors from Adrian. ‘What do you want me to do with those?’

‘Cut my hair. It’s driving me crazy.’

Kai rises and goes to stand behind Adrian, he picks up a strand of hair experimentally. ‘Do you have a comb?’

‘Yes.’ Adrian fetches a comb from the bedroom. Kai selects a lock of hair; the texture is disconcertingly glassy, the small nail scissors scarcely gain purchase. He snips at a few strands of hair, stops, watches the trembling in the fingers of the hand holding the scissors. This morning, in surgery, he’d been obliged — almost — to ask another surgeon to handle a delicate task. He’d even gone so far as to imagine what he might say, pretend that a speck of something was caught under his eyelid, an excuse to leave the room. In the end it had been all right. Kai concentrated on breathing and managed to steady his hand; just once he thought he saw the nurse’s eye upon him.

Sharp strands of hair fall to the floor.

‘Your wife didn’t want you to come here.’

‘Not as such.’

Kai considers Adrian’s reply for a moment. ‘That means no.’

‘I didn’t really give her the opportunity to object, if I am honest.’

‘OK.’

‘I needed something else. I could look up and see my future rolling into the distance. I knew exactly what was going to happen every day. I used to wonder, too, whether if I disappeared it would make any difference to any of my clients’ lives, I mean in reality as opposed to the short-term inconvenience. Probably it was a dangerous thing to do.’ He laughs. ‘But you know what I mean.’

Kai does not know what he means. Still, he chooses not to say. This is the way Europeans talk, as though everybody shared their experiences. Adrian’s tone suggested that the desire for something was all it took. They all live with endless possibilities, leave their homes for the sake of something new. But the dream is woven from the fabric of freedom. For desire to exist it requires the element of possibility, and that for Kai has never existed, until now, with the arrival of Tejani’s letters. There for the first time is the element of possibility, kindling for the small flame of his own desire. He looks at Adrian’s hair, which now is about an uneven two inches long all over.

‘I don’t think this is working,’ he says. And watches Adrian’s tentative fingers appear over the horizon of his head. ‘Wait. I’ll go and get a pair of clippers from the store.’

When Kai walked away from the hospital the day of the coup nobody tried to stop him for the simple reason he told nobody he was going. The most direct route to Nenebah’s house passed through the centre of town. He reasoned nobody else would think to go that way, which was the extent of his forethought. The hospital lay at the end of a street perpendicular to the main road. The street was empty as Kai had never seen it, even in the early hours of the morning. He kept moving, staying close to the walls of the buildings. A car, a Toyota packed with joyriding soldiers, crossed the intersection ahead of him. Kai stopped and crouched next to a stinking gutter. The vehicle passed by, leaving a trail of sound. The tune stayed in his mind. From behind a corrugated-iron yard door he saw a child’s face, regarding him through rusted eyelets. Kai put a finger to his lips. He stood up, doubled back on himself. This time he took the bay road, slung like a hammock between one high point of the town and another, the lowest point sagging through the city slums. The air was heavy with smoke, the tart fumes of burning fuel. A car approached him, travelling at speed. Kai caught a glimpse of the driver, a man wearing a panama hat, driving with a ferocious concentration. Kai raised his hand to ask for a lift. The driver passed by without slowing. Kai had expected little else. By now he had settled into a slow jog, marking time to the sound of his own breathing.

At the roundabout, a roadblock, Kai slowed to a walk. Five roads met at this point. He could see a dozen or so soldiers, some checking vehicles, others standing around. He saw the man with the panama hat sitting behind the wheel of his car. A soldier opened the car door, the man climbed down and the soldier took his place behind the wheel. Kai could see the man’s mouth, an oval of protest. A soldier patted the man on the shoulder. From inside the vehicle another soldier threw his briefcase to him. The man clumsily tried to catch it. The vehicle backed out, clutch screaming. Kai walked on with measured paces, his heart hammered in his chest, there was a ringing in his ears. He walked towards the checkpoint.

There were people — those desperate enough to venture out, or else with nothing to lose, street boys and madmen. The street boys cheered every time a military vehicle passed, the madmen cursed. When they saw Kai, several of the soldiers yelled at him to turn back. ‘Curfew. Go to your home.’ Kai stopped walking and raised his hands, then he approached slowly, he wanted them to see he was a doctor. Soldiers were almost superstitious about doctors, never knowing when they might need one. The smell of ganja was heavy in the air. Down each of the five roads fires burned, figures moved through the light and darkness, the sound of their calls like jackdaws.

‘Mansaray!’ somebody called him. A Bedford truck was slowing for the checkpoint. Kai looked up into darkness. ‘Mansaray!’ A hand reached out towards him through the wooden slats at the back of the truck. Automatically Kai stretched out his own hand. Up ahead the barrier was raised, the truck’s engine revved and the vehicle began to gather speed again. Whoever it was called, ‘I say, wait up! Wait up!’ The truck stopped five yards on the other side of the barrier and Kai raced towards it. He had no idea who he was running to, simply that this was his only chance. He climbed up on to the tailgate of the truck and sat down opposite the man who had called to him, an army officer around the same age as himself. ‘Lucky I saw you there, my friend.’ Hindered by the darkness, Kai struggled to recognise the other man at first, then it came to him. Five-a-side football. Kai had been in the college team for a season. Lansana was his name. Lansana what? He couldn’t remember.

‘They’ve invited the rebels into the city. For talks, they say,’ he told Kai. ‘But look at this. Most of these are not our men. Some of them, yes.’ Around them drunken looters staggered under the weight of their bounty. Cars abandoned full of crates and boxes.

The Bedford dropped Kai two streets short of Nenebah’s house. ‘Take care, man.’ Lansana gave him a high five as he prepared to climb out of the truck. A glimmer of light momentarily revealed the other man’s face to Kai. Behind the smile his eyes were flat, almost without expression. The look stayed with Kai for a long time afterwards, until finally he saw it for what it was. Fear, nerves or excitement, these had all been absent. And that, in turn, spoke of something else — the absence of hope. Kai thanked Lansana and wished he knew his surname.

The army was divided, he told Nenebah. If the army was divided it was dangerous for everyone. The army, the rebels, whoever they were — were attacking homes now. Even the diplomatic missions and the houses of the whites.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Nenebah had said once, not then, before. Before, before. When they were younger still, at university. What were they talking about? Some faraway atrocity reported in the news. The students passed a resolution condemning it. That was it, yes, he had dismissed the action with a joke. But she had a dislike of cynicism. ‘Hitler, Pol Pot. Funny, isn’t it? How it only seems to be evil people who think they can change the world? I wonder why that is.’ And Kai had responded, ‘Because they’re mad.’ She had dug a sharp elbow into his ribs. Then she shook her head. ‘But they do, don’t they? They do change the world.’