Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

His heart is thumping, absurdly, within his chest.

Many hours into the night now. They are in her apartment, they sit with the door open despite the mosquitoes. In this place he can hear the night-time sounds of the city, uninterrupted by the thrum of a generator. From far away, floating upon the dense darkness, comes the sound of late-night prayer. So too does the bass beat of a bar lower down the hill. A blue strobe light marking time. Close at hand the sound of people walking through the narrow street behind the house; voices and steps rebound on the concrete walls. Closer still the sounds of the roosting birds in the dovecote.

‘He dreams,’ says Mamakay of her neighbour, the doves’ owner. ‘And drinks, too.’ She stands up and stretches, her fingertips touch the ceiling, she lets her arms swing back down. She is telling the story of her neighbour. ‘Two days ago he came over, banged on the gate and shouted at me.’

‘Why?’

‘He said I had insulted him. He came around to tell me I was a bad person.’ She laughs.

‘What had you said?’

‘Nothing. He dreamt it all. At first he wouldn’t believe it, but the others told him it was true. They’d been in the dream, too, so he had to believe them.’

‘That must have been quite confusing for him.’

‘Yes. I’m not sure he worked out what was real and what was not. Poor man. Imagine having us hopping in and out of your subconscious.’

‘Does it worry you?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘He was all right before. He will be again. A lot of people here believe in dreams. So do you, don’t you? Psychologists?’

‘Some branches work to interpret them, yes,’ says Adrian. He would not have seen it like that until now, but he cannot say she is wrong. Every day he talks to his patients at the asylum, often asking them about their dreams. What’s the difference, really? She is absolutely right.

The wine bottle is empty, and without wine to refill their glasses, Adrian fears the end of the evening. He tells himself he should leave soon anyway, as he has many times in the last few hours, without ever feeling the slightest desire to do so. Coffee. More wine. The excuses, eked out over the hours of darkness, are running out. The electricity failed early in the evening. The two remaining candles burn low, sending shadows shooting up the walls. He watches now as Mamakay goes to fetch another candle, searching around the apartment.

‘I swear I bought more. Sometimes the others come in and take them.’

If the candle supply runs out, thinks Adrian, then he will have no option but to leave.

‘Ah good. I’d hidden them. I thought so.’

Adrian exhales.

On a side table there is a photograph. He leans to look at it, Mamakay and two other girls. He recognises one of them as Mary, a slimmer, more youthful Mary.

‘Our invasion uniform,’ says Mamakay. ‘That picture was taken right in the middle of things.’

‘What’s with the jeans?’ he says.

‘We wore jeans under our dresses. There was a time we dressed like that every day, because nobody knew when they were coming. One day the radio would say the rebels had been pushed back to the border, another day people arrived in the city saying they were at Port Loko. We stopped believing the government. We wore blue jeans.’ She pauses and then she gives a short, strange laugh, as if remembering something absurd or possibly painful.

Still he doesn’t understand.

Mamakay turns to look at him. ‘Have you ever tried to get a pair of tight jeans off in a hurry? It was the only thing we could think of to do. To stop them raping us. Well, to make it harder.’

Adrian wants to ask her all about it, everything that happened. He cannot imagine what it was like. The powerlessness. In that respect war was worse for civilians, for at least the fighters were given the opportunity to act. Civilians were like rats in a barrel.

Mamakay picks up the photograph, looks at it for a moment and sets it back down. ‘Sarian’s gone now.’

‘Where to?’

She makes it sound as though she is dead.

‘Holland. They have twenty-four-hour electricity, can you imagine?’

He can, but he doesn’t say so. Instead he asks, ‘Wouldn’t you like to live somewhere else?’ He is thinking of England, perhaps.

‘No.’ She shakes her head.

‘You could do so much more, your music.’

‘I’m happy here. Believe it or not.’

One hour later and one inch of candle left. Adrian gets up to go. Mamakay walks with him to his car. It is pitch dark. His shoes hit the concrete with what seems to him a remarkable amount of noise. She is barefoot and silent. Curled up in the yard, the dogs raise their heads and watch his progress through opalescent eyes. For a moment the moon shines through the clouds and he sees the outline of his vehicle ahead of him. He is not at all sure of the whereabouts of Mamakay. He aims straight for the car, placing his feet with more confidence than he feels, tries to remember the location of steps and plant tubs. A few seconds later he collides with the car, takes a backward step and turns, disorientated. In that moment Mamakay steps into his arms. At the touch of her his erection, over which he has maintained uncertain control all evening, rises unchecked. He steps backwards, hard into the car, and comes to rest with his back against the door. Now he cannot see Mamakay any more. He opens his mouth to say something, but changes his mind. He reaches into the dark for Mamakay.

Morning. He rolls over and places an arm across Mamakay, who is still sleeping by his side; his hand comes to rest upon her breast. He closes his eyes and inhales. One by one whatever thoughts were in his mind drop out of sight. He begins to move against her, feels the energy change in her body as she crosses from sleep into wakefulness, the faint tension that arises in her muscles. She turns around. He moves down her body, feeling the resistance of the sweat-damp sheet, the heat from her. The night before he had done nothing but hold her at first. Now he lingers over every detail of her as they make love. She is relaxed and unhurried, quite without vanity or false modesty, laughing when her body makes an unforeseen sound, quite unlike any woman he has known.

And later she wanders naked, making fresh coffee, rearranging items, bringing things back to bed: a CD cover, a saved newspaper article. She scarcely stops talking and does not offer Adrian a robe, so that he remains trapped until he finally frees himself from his own self-consciousness and the bed. In the night he’d got up to pee and found the bathroom full of plants. Now Mamakay fetches water and they wash each other standing on a bed of white pebbles in a vine-enclosed shower in the yard. The man next door comes out to feed his birds, rice clatters down on the tin roof, the birds squabble over it. Mamakay fries plantains. They eat with their fingers. Adrian burns his tongue. An orange-headed lizard approaches them, with a mixture of caution and inquisitiveness. Mamakay blows on a scrap of plantain and throws it. The lizard darts forward and collects the trophy on its black tongue.

‘Is this where you grew up?’ he asks.

She shakes her head.

‘Where then?’

‘On the campus. Later my father built his own house.’

‘On the campus? Where we were yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ she nods. She is looking at him, frowning lightly, seemingly faintly bemused by his questions. ‘My father taught there. He’s a professor of history.’

And then Adrian realises he has been slow, stupidly slow. That first day leaving the hospital, he’d been in a hurry. He nodded at her and she looked back at him; the glance had stayed with him the whole of the day. She’d been talking to Babagaleh. Babagaleh was Elias Cole’s manservant. At first Adrian had taken Mamakay for another servant. Elias Cole was the reason he had gone to meet her on campus, the reason he’d given himself, background context on a client. He hadn’t allowed himself to think. Of course.