Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

For several months after his parents’ departure Kai had stayed on in the empty house, alone with a three-piece suite and a television, the only items of furniture he hadn’t given away. He passes the room where his sister used to sleep. The room at the end of the corridor is where he spent most of his growing years. He’d left behind a full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica , purchased by his father by mail order and appropriated by Kai, moved from the family room into his bedroom. What innocence, he thinks, in the idea that the sum of human knowledge could be held in twenty bound volumes.

When Kai had spoken to his sister by telephone, they’d agreed to keep the news of his leaving from their parents until it was confirmed. She’d sounded serious rather than elated, had asked him if he was sure. Yes, Kai had said. Yes, he was sure. Almost telepathically she’d asked him whether he had news of Nenebah. No, Kai lied.

Nenebah. She’d looked just the same, and for a moment — the moment before she saw him — it seemed to him she looked happy. Then she had turned towards where he stood in the middle of the quadrangle, exposed, body and soul. He watched her smile vanish. They’d greeted each other with the formality of lovers whose wound is not yet healed. So unlike Nenebah, the careful solicitous voice, asking after his mother, his father and even his sister with whom she had rarely seen eye to eye.

For so long he had done everything in his power to avoid thinking about her. Gradually, without realising it, he’d let her slip back into his thoughts.

There was Adrian, standing behind her, a hand on her shoulder, looking from Kai to Nenebah and back again, the smile slowly setting on his face. What would have happened, Kai wonders, if Adrian had not been there, if they’d been alone?

He pushes at the door to the room. The first thing he notices is the smell, of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. The windows are closed, upon the bed is a nest of sheets and in the corner of the room a pair of shoes, old-fashioned men’s lace-ups that once belonged to his father, cracked and polished, stuffed with newspaper. Books have been removed from the shelves and stacked upon the floor. An empty can serves as an ashtray. From a piece of wire strung from a window bar to a nail on the wall, a pair of trousers hangs. The mystery of the missing fridge is solved. Kai crosses the room and pulls hard at the door. The suction yields suddenly and audibly. The fridge is empty, the stench from inside appalling. He follows the lead to the plug lying on the floor. Then he crosses to a window and pushes it open. A sound makes him turn quickly. The bathroom door is open, where before it was closed. Somebody is watching him from the darkness.

‘Who’s that?’ says Kai. ‘Hey, you.’

He moves towards the bathroom. The face disappears. Kai reaches out for the door, but before his hand touches it a person dashes past him, knocking his arm aside. A boy. Kai snatches at his shirt, but the boy wrenches himself free and races for the door. Kai goes after him and grabs his arm.

‘Hey,’ he says, softly this time. ‘Stop.’

For a moment the boy looks him full in the face and Kai sees something familiar in him. He relaxes his grip. The boy is motionless, his eyes never leave Kai’s face. Suddenly he pulls away and makes for the door. This time Kai abandons the effort of following. He notices the boy’s fingernails, his hand upon the door — fingernails painted pink. And then he is gone. Kai stands still and exhales. Now he’s forgotten what he’d been doing here in the first place. Yes. He thought he might take the encyclopaedias home for Abass. But there is nothing here for Abass, or for him. As he leaves he closes the door behind him, makes his way through the house, leaving the doors open as he found them, and descends the hill to where he parked Old Faithful in the shade of an avocado tree.

On the drive back down the hill towards home Kai places the boy. The son of one of their old cooks. Kai’s parents had paid his school fees for a few years, until Kai’s mother sacked the father for pilfering. He stops the car and sits for several seconds with his hands on the steering wheel, then reverses up the hill. He walks into the house, to his old bedroom, plugs the fridge into the socket and switches it on. And this time when he leaves, he doesn’t look back.

Kai enters his cousin’s house to find himself surrounded by noise. In the middle of the room two of his aunts appear to be pleading or possibly remonstrating with his cousin. His cousin meanwhile is shaking her head, holds her hands up in front of her as though fending them off. Everybody is talking at once. Of Abass there is no sign. It takes Kai ten minutes to discover what has happened.

Abass had sworn at his mother. Now he has locked himself in his bedroom.

The word, the exact word he’d used, was sufficiently bad for his mother to propose a beating. The aunts were begging for mercy on Abass’s behalf. Neither spoke English and so could have no idea of the meaning of the word, for otherwise they would most certainly have joined in the call for a beating. As it is, neither Kai nor his cousin is inclined to be the one to explain to them, and so a compromise is reached.

Kai knocks on the bedroom door and softly calls Abass’s name. No answer. Kai turns the handle but the door doesn’t yield. Abass has drawn the bolt on the other side.

‘Abass,’ he calls. ‘Come and open the door.’

Silence.

‘Will you let me in? Your mother wants me to talk to you.’

The sound of footsteps. Abass opens the door. He looks small and serious, worried but with an overtone of defiance. Kai slips inside the room and Abass closes the door after him and slides the bolt. They sit side by side on the bed.

‘That was bad, what you called your mother.’

Abass shrugs.

‘Well, wasn’t it?’

Abass doesn’t reply and Kai senses he has no idea of the meaning of the word for which he is now in so much trouble.

‘At least you must know why you did it. Your mother asked you to help her with the church chairs and you disappeared instead. That’s not good either, is it?’

Abass shrugs again. Kai exhales lightly with frustration. ‘What’s up, my friend?’

‘All she does is go to church.’

‘Who, your mother? Your mother is a Christian: that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

Abass shrugs again.

Kai says, ‘You don’t want her to go to church?’

‘I don’t like them coming here. All they do is pray and pray and then take all our money. They used to come once a week. Now they come nearly every day. And I don’t like them.’

Kai couldn’t agree more, but it would not do to say so. Instead he asks, ‘What would you like to happen instead?’

Abass shakes his head and shoves his hands between his knees.

‘Well?’

The boy mumbles something, so low Kai hardly hears it. ‘I want her to play with me.’

‘I see.’ He puts an arm around Abass. ‘Well, you’re getting a bit old to play, aren’t you?’

‘I mean stay with me …’ He tails off.

‘You want to spend more time with your mother, is that it?’

Abass nods.

‘I see.’ Kai looks across the top of the boy’s head, across the room. There on the windowsill, the row of origami animals he has made for Abass over the years, faintly red with dust. He says, ‘I think it gives your mum comfort to pray. And I think that’s something we should respect, whatever we think ourselves. We must just be patient and polite, even to the preacher.’ He nudges Abass lightly and the boy giggles and then grows serious.

‘What does she need comfort for?’

There it is again. Soon there will be no avoiding it. Abass believes his father died a natural death and a peaceful one, which is as much as he has been told. Kai needs to talk to his cousin, to make her listen. For now he says, ‘We’ll talk about that another time. Meanwhile you apologise to your mother and then you and I can do something.’