The Memory of Love (32 page)

‘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.

CHAPTER 31

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.

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.

‘Great,’ says Kai.

Foday grins.

‘How’s the physiotherapy?’ Kai leans forward and squeezes Foday’s other calf muscle, slight still from the weeks encased in plaster.

‘The lady, Miss Salinas, she says she is pleased with me.’

‘Good. You’re not overdoing it now, are you? We really don’t want you to run before you can walk, I mean it.’

Foday laughs. ‘No, Doctor Kai. Don’t worry. First I’m walking, then running. After that, maybe cartwheels. Please pass me my book.’

Kai passes him the exercise book. Foday opens it, removes a photograph and hands it to Kai. The picture shows a young woman of around nineteen sitting demurely on a stool in front of a hut, dressed in what appear to be her best clothes and shoes. Her smile is for the camera, for she looks shy, as though she is not used to being photographed.

‘Ah,’ says Kai. ‘Let me guess. Your fiancée?’ He studies the photograph for a few seconds more and gives it back to Foday.

‘No. She is not my fiancée. I would like her to be, though.’

‘Your girlfriend?’

‘Her name is Zainab. We were townsmates. She has sent me this picture of herself while I am in hospital. So you see, I think she likes me.’

‘It looks that way to me.’

Foday holds the picture up close to his face, then lowers it and smoothes it with his palm before replacing it carefully between the leaves of the exercise book. He passes the book to Kai and pulls himself further up the bed.

‘I would like to ask you something, Doctor.’

‘Sure,’ says Kai, once he has returned the book to its place. ‘Ask away, my friend.’

‘After my operations maybe I will go to Zainab’s family to put cola for her. That’s what I am thinking.’

‘OK.’

‘I will discuss it with Zainab first, of course. But if she has sent me this picture of herself, then I think she will consider me.’

‘I have no doubt Zainab will be happy for you to go to her parents.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. And you see, what it is I want to ask is whether you will come with me as my elder brother.’

For a moment Kai is quiet, then he says, ‘I would be honoured to come as your elder brother. But don’t you have any other brothers or uncles you want to ask?’

Foday shakes his head. ‘My elder brothers are away in the mines. Besides, if Zainab’s family see you, then I know they will want to accept me.’

Kai laughs. He reaches over and pats Foday on the shoulder. ‘Sure, my friend. I can do that. But you know the minute they see me they’ll double the bride gift, don’t you?’

‘I know.’ Foday shrugs. ‘But I have been putting aside little by little. The bride gift will be all right, I think. Besides, if Zainab wants me then she will speak to her parents.’

‘Then we have a deal.’ Kai offers his hand to Foday, and they shake, snapping fingers and punching each other on the knuckles. A minute or so later Kai prepares to leave, asks Foday if he needs something.

‘Maybe you can borrow me a radio?’

‘Sure, I’ll see what I can do.’

Kai should talk to Foday about his next operation, but he decides to leave it for the day. There’s no hurry. Foday’s greatest challenges are ahead of him. Kai knows this. Foday knows this. Meanwhile there is Zainab, waiting for him in her Sunday best.

Whatever it takes. Kai says these words to himself, whatever it takes.

Outside the ward he catches sight of Mrs Mara cutting the corner of the courtyard, struggling in her high heels across the uneven grass. He pauses a beat, to give her time to get ahead, then makes his way to Adrian’s apartment, where he knocks on the door at the same time as he slips the key into the lock. The apartment is empty. The kitchen is tidy and bare. He puts some water in the kettle and while he is waiting for it to boil searches out the old Philips transistor in the back of one of the cabinets. The radio is bulky and battered but serviceable despite a definable hiss. He drinks his coffee at the kitchen window. A sunbird descends, hovers briefly at the empty feeder, and is gone.

A few minutes later, so is Kai.