Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

‘Oh yeah?’ Kai is still facing away from Adrian. ‘That old place.’

‘You know it, then?’ says Adrian, disappointed.

‘Sure. Haven’t been there for a long time, though.’

Adrian turns his concentration upon the road, tries to hold on to his lightness of mood. At the junction by the petrol station the same traffic policeman he has seen before stands waving his arms. As they approach he holds up the palm of his hand. Adrian comes to a stop and puts on the right-hand indicator.

Next to him Kai sits up. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the Ocean Club. Is that all right?’

‘You want to keep straight.’

Adrian shakes his head, he knows different now. The city has begun to unravel itself for him, he is becoming privy to its secrets and ways, the geography of its contours. There are two routes to the Ocean Club.

‘If we cross the peninsula bridge and take the beach road there’ll be much less traffic. It’ll be backed up at the other end of this.’ He hefts the steering wheel over a few inches, bringing the car into the middle of the road, just enough to shift the vehicle out of the way of a lorry bearing down from behind.

‘For Chrissake!’

‘It’s OK.’ Adrian smiles, thinking Kai doubts his driving skills.

‘I said stop! I don’t want to go that way. Would you just do as I ask and drive on?’

This time Adrian hears the effort at control in Kai’s voice and turns briefly to regard him. Kai is sitting forward, kneading his forehead with the tips of his fingers. A vein stands out on his neck, a node visible beneath the skin. He doesn’t look at Adrian but stares straight ahead through the windscreen. He looks terrified.

‘Of course.’ Adrian checks the mirror and swiftly re-enters the traffic. From the tail of his eye he sees Kai lean back, place his hands squarely upon his thighs, his head upon the headrest, eyes half shut.

Inside the club Kai disappears into the toilet. Adrian finds a table, and orders two Star beers. He thinks about what just happened in the car. Kai had genuinely panicked at the thought of taking the bridge road, or it seemed very much like it. Adrian tries to think of whether they have ever taken that route before, and realises they have not. If anyone drives it’s usually Kai, or else they take a taxi and Kai is the one who negotiates with the driver. Minutes later Kai joins him, pulls a chair out from the table and turns it around to straddle it. He sits with his elbows on the table, drinking his beer. Adrian watches him for a moment.

‘How’s Abass?’

‘Yeah, he’s good. Little man’s good.’

‘He’s a great kid.’

‘He is, he is.’ Kai shakes his head. He raises his beer bottle to his lips.

It is early yet, and there are no other guests, just a Middle Eastern-looking man at the bar, who may or may not be the owner, and a younger man knocking balls on the snooker table. Outside the tide is on its way in. The crabs are out, high on the dry sand, old men watching the advancing sea. Below them the sandpipers perform their quickstep with the surf, eight steps forward, eight steps back. A young brown-and-white dog appears, dashing across the sand, scattering complaining crabs in every direction. The sandpipers, caught between the sea and the dog, take briefly to the air and regroup a dozen or more yards away. Adrian smiles and looks around at Kai, but Kai is staring at a spot on the floor, drumming his fingertips on the table. A single knee jerks up and down.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Sure, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You just seem a bit restless, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Kai stops drumming and sits up, then stands and swings the chair around to face the correct way. He sits back down. ‘No, I’m OK. Just haven’t been sleeping too well, you know how it goes.’

Adrian remembers the first night Kai slept over at his apartment, finding him sitting on the edge of the bed with his eyes wide open, lost inside some dark dream. Since then Adrian has woken in the night more than once, aware of a restlessness in the apartment, of soft footsteps, of objects being moved, the sound of sighs.

‘Are you doing anything about it?’

‘You mean am I taking anything? No. I’ve tried once or twice. The pills stopped working a long time ago. No, man. It’s one of those things. Just have to see it through.’ His gaze shifts away from Adrian again.

‘There are other things, relaxation techniques. It might be worth —’

This time Kai interrupts him. ‘Thanks, man, but I’m good. Really. One night’s sleep and I’ll be right back.’

‘I was just saying …’

‘Yeah, got you. I’m fine. Here I am relaxing, see?’ He stretches out his legs, takes a deep swallow from his bottle and places it with deliberate care upon the table, but nevertheless misjudges the distance so the bottle knocks against the hard surface.

They sit in silence again. Adrian is used to Kai’s silences, his indifference to the kinds of courtesies and pleasantries Adrian was raised to observe. He is even, at some level, faintly awed by the way Kai is, feels himself by comparison to be too eager to please. All the same the mood has shifted.

‘Another?’ Kai has drained his bottle.

‘Sure,’ Adrian replies.

Kai holds up his hand for the waiter.

After the man has gone, Kai returns to drumming his fingers on the table, staring moodily at the wooden surface. Behind him two early drinkers stray into view. Dressed in identical grey slacks, white shirts and ties, they wear their hair close-cropped and each carries an attaché case, a name tag on their right breast. Adrian watches as they place their order. The waiter returns with two Coca-Colas and Adrian silently congratulates himself on his guess. Mormons.

A few more arrivals are drifting in, among them Adrian sees Candy and Elle. They haven’t met since the afternoon at Ileana’s house. Adrian thinks Candy may have seen him because she looks in his direction, but as she does not acknowledge him he cannot be sure. The two women are accompanied by a short, plump African man, with clownish features and an arm around each of them. Adrian looks at Candy’s skinny haunches and broad shoulders, Elle’s narrow mouth and small teeth. He thinks of Mamakay, of her hips in the old sunflower dress she wears to fetch water, the outline of her lips, and her nose, the shallow, inward curve of the bridge, the almond-shaped nostrils. The man’s hand slides down the arch of Elle’s back towards the faint swell above the drop of her buttocks.

Seeing them reminds Adrian of the girl in the purple top the night in the beach bar; he had noticed her as he sat and waited for Kai. The girl had been leaning her body against a Western man. Adrian had watched her and fantasised briefly about what it would be like to have sex with her; she’d turned and caught him staring at her. With the memory his reverie is arrested.

What does Mamakay think of him?

He has no idea.

Three o’clock the previous Friday, Kai arrived at the US Embassy and stated his business to the marine in the glass booth at the front gate. The marine pointed to a long line of men standing in front of a hatch on the outside wall. ‘Green-card lottery right there.’

Kai shook his head. ‘I’m a doctor, a surgeon,’ he said.

‘One moment, sir.’ The marine leaned forward and pressed the buzzer to allow him through the security gate. ‘Office at the end of the hall. Have a good day.’

As he was leaving Kai passed by the queue of men in the street. The line appeared undiminished though he’d been inside the Embassy building for thirty minutes. The men were young, the youngest perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Lean or muscled, dressed in jeans and T-shirts.