Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

From the Embassy he’d strolled up the street to the roundabout. He’d been standing there only a few minutes when Adrian caught sight of him.

That was Friday. Today is Sunday. A Sunday in April. April Fools’ Day, no less. He knows this because he has written the date on the top right-hand corner of the aerogramme, but also because he can see Abass sneaking around, up to no good. At this very moment the boy is peeping around the corner, checking Kai’s whereabouts and imagining himself invisible.

The trouble with Abass is that he’s incapable of keeping a straight face. Kai had already helped a bewildered aunt into her room after she struggled in vain to grasp a doorknob greased with Vaseline. Abass had been stalking the old lady since breakfast.

Kai bends back to the letter. Tejani’s last letter mentioned the new girlfriend, what was her name? Kai reaches for the crumpled blue paper and smoothes it out, begins to read it over. Tejani wants Kai to join him in America. Two years after they said goodbye, it looks like Kai is finally coming. Tejani is his best friend, the person he has been closest to most of his life, with the exception only of Nenebah. There had been three of them. Always three. Tejani was the third lover, or was it Nenebah? Sometimes Kai saw himself at the centre, best friend to Tejani, lover to Nenebah. More often he’d seen Nenebah as the centre. They’d both loved her, after all. Tejani left. A year later Nenebah and Kai were no longer a couple. Might it have been different if Tejani had stayed? Kai doesn’t know.

Helena. It sounds like Tejani might even marry her. We, he says in his letter. ‘We’ are going to buy a place. Kai still hasn’t congratulated him for his exam pass. He pens a few lines, striving for and falling short of Tejani’s cheerful tone.

How Nenebah had envied Kai. He knew, for she had told him. She’d envied him the cleanliness of his work, the moral purity of the task at hand.

They’d been lying in bed, spooned against each other, he was still inside her, savouring the slipperiness of semen and sweat. Once she described for him the sensation that followed his withdrawal from her body if it happened too soon, his abandonment of her body. Loss, she said. It felt like loss.

That night was some years after she dropped out of college. What had he done wrong? He never really knew. He had to be up early for surgery. She was broody and angry with him and in a visceral way he knew why. It was for knowing every morning when he awoke, without any shade of doubt, what he was there to do, the certainty she no longer possessed. She’d lost her faith at exactly the same time he’d found his. Neither one of them expected such a thing to happen.

After the lovemaking, she’d pulled away, withdrawing her body from him. Suddenly no longer inside her, he experienced the sensation as a shock. An abandonment. And later, in the middle of the night, he reached for her and failed to find her, saw her standing by the open window. He’d gone over and drawn her back into bed. Lying against her into the early hours, he could feel the rapid beating of her heart. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them slept.

He picks up the pen again and continues to write, congratulating Tejani on the exam pass. In his letter Tejani reminds Kai of the days they’d been forced to revise by torchlight, of the petition the students had raised and presented at the Vice Chancellor’s office. The authorities were having none of it and the gathering had grown angry. It is a wonder to him now, to think of it, the students’ moral indignation. Where the hell had they even got the idea they had the right to it? The Vice Chancellor’s reaction had been one of cold fury. He’d remained in his office while he sent security to deal with them. A security officer had taken the petition, and for a foolish moment a cheer had gone up: the students thought they had a victory.

Instead they had given the authorities a place to begin. A list of dissenters.

Nenebah left soon after. Life on the campus became untenable for her, so she said. Kai thought she’d given in too easily. But he had sensed also the anger in her, the desire to hurt someone for what had happened.

Hey, man , Kai writes, does the new house come with a pool as well as a couch? Get ready for your new house guest . When he finishes the letter he seals the edges and puts it in his pocket. He is minded to walk down to the post office, then remembers it is Sunday. The heat has yet to break. Kai can hear the recitatives of the evangelical churches, the exhortations of their pastors, the wild assurances of the congregations. His cousin had gone to church. He has lent her Old Faithful.

‘Abass!’ he calls.

The boy appears suspiciously quickly.

‘Want to go to the beach?’

‘Yes!’

‘Hurry up then. Fetch your trunks. How about a curry at the Ocean Club?’

Abass races into the house. Kai follows to fetch his own trunks, a paperback and his sunglasses. He finds the glasses on the coffee table in the sitting room. When Abass appears, he puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

‘All ready?’

Abass nods.

Out in the street, away from the shade of the yard, the shadows are sharp, the edges hard, colours brilliant beneath the sun. Kai reaches for his sunglasses and puts them on. Without warning his vision grows blurred, the brightness disappears, the edges of the house grow indistinct and the shadows merge into each other. He stops, uncertain of his steps. He removes his glasses.

‘Very funny, Abass,’ he says.

The kid is rocking from side to side, clutching his belly, laughing.

Kai makes as though to lunge at him. The child ducks. They walk down the street towards the main road. In the back of the cab Kai peels away the layer of cling film from the inside of his glasses.

Much later, after they have swum together, he watches Abass play on alone in the waves, crashing through the surf over and over. And he feels his love for the boy rise in his chest, pressing against his ribcage, crushing his lungs and his heart, as if it would suffocate him.

Monday morning Kai makes his way to Foday’s ward. When he arrives Foday is in the toilet, so Kai sits on the edge of the bed and waits for him. The matron appears and tries to fuss over him, but Kai waves her away. There above the bed is the Polaroid of Foday which moved with him from bed to bed. Foday’s talisman — to show him how far he has come. Two operations and so far they’d straightened both tibias, breaking each bone in three places and resetting it. That was the easy part. Next they’d tackle the feet. If Foday had been treated by doctors as a baby it would have been a simple job; now he was an adult the operation was complicated. More so if they had to lengthen the Achilles tendon.

On the night stand are a carafe of water and Foday’s few possessions, including the school exercise book which he uses as a diary, keeping careful notes of his treatment and his conversations with Kai. The writing on the cover is as strained and effortful as Foday’s walk. Nothing came easily to Foday in life, thinks Kai. But Christ, what a fighter.

At that moment Foday appears pushing himself along in his wheelchair, a male nurse follows behind. Kai stands and raises his right hand in salute and Foday returns the gesture, freewheeling for a few moments. A yard from the bed he manoeuvres the wheelchair skilfully around.

‘Looking good,’ says Kai.

‘Yes thank you, Doctor.’ Foday’s voice is strong today. The male nurse comes around ready to lift him into bed, but Foday shakes his head. Kai folds his arms and watches Foday. The young man’s eyes narrow in concentration. He takes a deep breath and levers himself up. For a moment he is suspended, like a gymnast on a pommel horse, then he eases himself down and rights himself upon the bed, arranging his leg in the cast in front of him. When he is finished, he turns to Kai.