The Memory of Love (27 page)

‘I have spoken to Mr Johnson. He has explained some of the matter to me. I’ve told him that you are one of the most reliable members of the faculty. As a result he has been kind enough to allow the use of his office for us to have this conversation.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I see no reason why this should take very long at all.’ His manner was devoid of the fractious energy and absent-mindedness he displayed at other times. I was pleased. He was taking it seriously. At last somebody to make sense of it all, to lead me out of this place.

‘I have no idea what this is about,’ I said. ‘I can assure you.’

‘Mr Johnson tells me the police are clamping down on illegal publications,’ said the Dean. ‘It seems you may have been swept up in somebody else’s business.’

He pushed a newspaper across the desk towards me, one of those street sheets, with names like
Scope
and
Searchlight
. I thought of the vendor whose arrest I’d witnessed. The paper on the desk bore a date a month old; in terms of quality it was marginally better produced than most.

The Dean continued, ‘It’s simply a matter of cooperating with these people.’

I didn’t have the strength to argue with the Dean, to tell him what kind of person Johnson was, how you could not believe anything he said. I waited.

The Dean pushed the paper an inch further towards me. ‘He asks me to show you this.’

‘What does this have to do with me?’

‘Take a look.’

I opened the paper, and began to turn the leaves one by one. I could feel the Dean watching me. On the third page, on the right-hand side, a headline caused me to pause. I felt the same small electrical jolt to my heart as when Johnson had mentioned my essay. This article was entitled, ‘A Black Man on the Moon’.

‘Read it.’

I had paused too long. I should have continued turning the pages, maintained a pretence. Too late. So I did as the Dean had asked me and read the article. Put plainly, it consisted of a sustained attack upon the government, on the regime’s failure to observe basic human rights during their time in power. Progress in the country was in danger of stalling because the elite had more interest in lining their pockets. The relevance of the headline was to indicate to the reader how distant we were as a nation from such an achievement. There was no byline, and I noticed none of the other articles had bylines either. I scanned the article quickly; one phrase came to the fore that still sticks:
At the present rate of development it will take a century to achieve what many nations manage in a decade
. An inversion of the words Julius had used, the very first evening we spent together. A century of work in a single decade. He’d been talking about the moon landing.

The Dean watched me, leaning back in Johnson’s chair, balanced between the chair’s two back legs and his toes. Before I had finished reading he interrupted. ‘Not the kind of thing we want associated with the university, I think you’ll agree.’

I nodded, I was scarcely in a position to do otherwise.

He let the chair drop forward and leaned his elbows on the desk. He was silent, tapping his pursed lips with his forefinger. Then he put his fingertips together, and looked at me over their steepled arch. ‘Really, it’s a matter of coming to some arrangement with these people. No more than that.’

CHAPTER 25

Kai watched the pump lever move up and down, the pink liquid slide from side to side within the glass tank as the level dropped, rising in Old Faithful’s tank. To Kai the colour of petrol was a faint surprise, always. He stretched, felt the skin tight across his back from the swim. Driving with the car windows down, he’d retained the feeling of freshness from that first dive into the water. Somehow he had never expected to find their old haunt unchanged. Surely that was the true force of nature. When so much else lay in ruins, the waterfall, the rocks, the river: these things remained.

One station in town with petrol. Cars, motorbikes, people holding containers, all waited in a line – still, Kai’s mood was good. He counted out the notes and gave them to the attendant. Afterwards he held his hands out in front of him and spread his fingers. No trembling. Good. He looked around for Abass and Adrian. The driver of the car next in line sounded his horn and gave a lazy wave. And so Kai slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine and pulled out of the petrol station. He parked up, still looking around. Ah, there was Abass. The boy stood, fingering cassettes with all the awe and yearning of an archaeologist handling an ancient pot he knows he must return to the earth. Of Adrian there was no sign. Kai got out of the car and went over to the stall, where the stallholder, in his white djellaba and skullcap, perched upon his stool like a stork, one leg crossed over the other.

‘Hey, little man.’ But Abass, deafened by the music, didn’t hear him. Kai put the palms of his hands on the child’s head, Abass tried to swivel round, Kai applied pressure, pinning him to the spot. Abass giggled and squirmed.

The stallholder joined in, laughing oilily. ‘Yes, sir. Your son has been safe with me.’

Kai nodded at him briefly and waited for Abass to correct the stallholder, to tell him Kai was his uncle. Children were particular like that. But Abass said nothing. Kai looked down at Abass, at his bowed head. The pattern of the hairs, near perfect concentric circles ending in a single hair in the centre of the crown. The curled rim of his ears. The unblemished skin. He wondered if Abass remembered anything about his father. He had never asked. And earlier that day, seeing the bodies by the side of the road, Abass had displayed only a child’s morbid curiosity.

‘Look!’ Abass held the cassette box up for Kai’s inspection.

‘Is this the one you want?’

Abass nodded vigorously.

The vendor watched sideways on.

‘How much?’ Kai asked the vendor.

‘Five thousand,’ the man replied.

Kai dug in his pocket for the notes.

‘What of this one?’ The vendor held up a second cassette. Kai felt Abass’s eyes upon him.

‘No thanks. Just the one,’ said Kai, then to Abass, ‘Where’s Adrian?’

‘He’s coming back soon. He said I should wait.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Abass, shrugging as he inspected his purchase. ‘Not very long, I don’t think.’ Then with more emphasis, ‘Like a
minute
, maybe.’

‘Twenty minutes now,’ said the vendor as he took the money.

Kai looked at the man properly this time. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No,’ said Abass chirpily. ‘He didn’t say anything, except I was to stay here.’

The vendor didn’t reply directly but pointed with his chin as he pushed the notes into his money belt. ‘This road here. This is the one he took.’

‘Thank you. Come on.’ He reached out for Abass. ‘Let’s go find Adrian.’ He released Abass’s hand and watched the kid run ahead, his arms whirling, kicking up dust.

No sign of Adrian down the road the stallholder had indicated. The street was empty, the market extended no further than the square. Dusk was deepening. Houses were shuttered up, the occupants mostly out back, gathered around the cooking fires. Abass made a game of it, rushing to peer down every side road and calling out Adrian’s name. When he heard Abass’s cry, Kai began to run. By the time he reached the corner his heart was racing. He turned into the street.

In the half-light, Abass was standing staring ahead in the middle of the road, his hands hanging limply by his sides. Beyond him a man lay on the ground.

It took ten minutes to reach the car. Kai placed one of Adrian’s arms around his shoulders and hoisted him to his feet after he’d checked to see if anything was broken, running expert fingers across Adrian’s ribs. Abass ran ahead to open the door of the car so Adrian could lie on the back seat, but Adrian demurred, climbed gingerly into the front. Kai sent Abass to the boot to fetch water. The boy stood and watched, frowning and intent, while Adrian sipped from the bottle and then handed it back. Kai said little, but concentrated on finding his way back on to the main road. In the white light of the passing vehicles, Adrian’s skin was bluish, covered in a sheen of sweat.

‘Is Uncle Adrian going to be all right?’ asked Abass. The boy sat pressed against the upholstery, clutching the water bottle in his lap.

Adrian turned his head stiffly. ‘Yes. Don’t worry about me, Abass. I’m going to be fine.’ And then, ‘I was hit by somebody on a bicycle. I don’t suppose he saw me in the dark.’

‘A bicycle?’ repeated Abass wonderingly.

‘Yes.’

Kai said nothing and they left it there, by silent mutual assent. An hour and a half later they dropped Abass at home. The boy pushed the water bottle into Adrian’s hands, along with his new cassette. Adrian kept the water but handed the cassette back. ‘We’ll listen to it together another time. How about that?’

Abass nodded.

‘Tell your mum I’ll be back later,’ said Kai. ‘I need to take Adrian home.’

Kai listened to Adrian’s account of what happened. Of seeing Agnes, following her to the house, the son-in-law, the daughter, Agnes’s reluctance. Then had come the attack, by the son-in-law, Adrian had no doubt. The man had been with him one minute, gone the next. Kai drove in silence throughout.

‘You went to her home?’ he asked, when Adrian had finished.

‘Yes,’ replied Adrian. ‘I shouldn’t have. I mean, not strictly speaking. But these are unusual circumstances. She needs help.’

‘I’m just saying you have to take some care, you don’t understand this country. There are a lot of bad, bad people out there. You could have got yourself really hurt.’

In the apartment Adrian disappeared into the bathroom. Kai went to the kitchen, where he filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Though he wasn’t hungry he began rummaging through the cupboards, purely out of habit. A life lived without fast food and snacks had made him an opportunistic eater. As a child he ate whatever was put in front of him, meat was a treat, he and his sister fought surreptitiously with their forks over the best pieces. Then later, training as a doctor and eating on the run. Years of half-eaten meals, finished cold often hours later. He never suffered indigestion. He decided against tea, lifted the kettle from the stove and helped himself to a beer from the fridge instead.

Adrian appeared.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Kai.

‘I’ll live.’

‘Do you want me to take a look?’

Adrian shook his head. ‘Actually what I really want now is a whisky.’

‘Let me have a look at you.’ He stood in front of Adrian, surveyed his face, reached for his wrist and checked his pulse, pressed on the ends of Adrian’s fingers. Then he located one of the two tumblers Adrian possessed and poured a sizeable measure of whisky into it. He handed it to Adrian. ‘I could run a couple of X-rays. Just to be sure.’

‘No, really. I’m fine. He wasn’t trying to kill me. I’m sure if he wanted to he could have.’ Adrian poured a small amount of water from a bottle into his whisky, stared deep into the glass for a moment, swirled the contents and inhaled. ‘Smell that. My father used to call it releasing the serpent, the water frees the flavour. He was a whisky man. I didn’t really take to it until a few years ago. Funny, that.’

‘What did he want?’ asked Kai.

For a moment Adrian looked at him, perplexed.

‘The guy back there, I mean,’ said Kai.

‘I don’t know.’ Adrian shook his head and stared into the glass. ‘Money?’

‘And yet he didn’t steal anything from you?’ Kai took a sip of his beer and shook his head. ‘Makes no sense. He had every opportunity. You were out cold.’

‘What then?’

‘My guess? He just didn’t want you around.’

‘So it would seem.’

‘For sure not.’

They were silent. Adrian continued looking into his whisky glass. Then, without warning, he said, ‘I need to go back.’

Kai didn’t answer. Instead he tipped the rest of his beer down his throat, opened the bin and dropped the bottle inside. Then he opened the fridge and brought out some eggs, set the frying pan on the flame. By the time he broke the first egg into the pan the oil was so hot the edges of the egg curled up and began to brown. When he cooked he could think more clearly. He flicked hot oil over the surface of the egg, watched the white grow opaque, the yolk stiffen.

Behind him Adrian repeated, ‘I need to go back.’

Kai gave a slight shake of his head. ‘Don’t be fucking crazy.’

‘I need to.’

‘Listen,’ said Kai, more sharply than he intended. ‘You have no idea what you’re getting into. A lot of things have happened here. During the war, a lot of people did a lot of things. Others used the opportunity to make a lot of money. War makes some people rich. That guy is mixed up in something heavy. Whatever is going on in that house – drugs, most likely – you don’t want to know.’

‘What about Agnes?’

‘What
about
Agnes?’

‘She’s suffering post-traumatic stress. She’s ill.’

‘Jesus!’ Angry now, Kai turned to face Adrian; oil dripped from the spatula on to the worktop and the floor following the sweep of his hand. ‘How the hell can I explain this to you in a way you’ll understand? How many months have you been here? Two, three? There’s been a war. What do you expect? This isn’t a game. The guy in that house doesn’t give a damn that you’re a British passport holder. If he needs to kill you, he will.’

Adrian took a piece of kitchen roll and wiped the oil from the counter, squatted down to wipe the floor. Kai saw the grimace, the juddering in his breathing, evidence of the effort it cost him. Now he felt bad. He shook his head. ‘This isn’t your country, man. I’m sorry. But this isn’t your country.’

‘I know that,’ said Adrian. ‘I know this isn’t my country. But it
is
my job.’ He stepped forward, reached for the whisky bottle and poured himself another glass before returning to his former position against the wall, only this time he slid down it and sat on the floor.

Kai removed one egg and cracked another into the pan. It was errantry that brought them here, flooding in through the gaping wound left by the war, lascivious in their eagerness. Kai had seen it in the feverish eyes of the women, the sweat on their upper lips, the smell of their breath as they pressed close to him. They came to get their newspaper stories, to save black babies, to spread the word, to make money, to fuck black bodies. They all had their own reasons. Modern-day knights, each after his or her trophy, their very own Holy Grail. Adrian’s Grail was Agnes.

And yet.

And yet, for Kai it was simple. His patients came, an unending trail. If he worked as a surgeon his whole life it would never be enough. In that way his professional life was self-sufficient, possessed clarity. His achievements were measurable. The people he treated walked again, or breathed again, lived again. Kai knew something of Adrian’s early experiences here at the hospital. When they first met, he remembered his sense of the other man as, what? Unanchored. Since then Kai had witnessed the shift in Adrian. Talk of Ileana, of the man who ran the mental hospital. What was his name? Attila. Kai had met Attila only once. At a funding conference he had found himself alone with Attila for a few minutes, the only two black faces in the room. Kai had been impressed, thinking Attila had got closer to a kind of truth than anyone else. Attila understood something which Adrian didn’t. Not yet.

He looked at Adrian’s face, narrow and pale. The lethargy in his friend, dispelled during the course of the day, had returned.

Kai thought, too, of the last time he’d been to that town, Port Loko. With Tejani, their last trip together, on their way to find the Lassa fever doctor. They’d done it against the odds, not even knowing if the man existed, the country on the brink of anarchy. For the hell of it. Ah, Tejani.

The second egg was cooked on the underside. Kai flipped it over. He said, ‘So what’s the plan? Go back when he’s not around?’

Adrian lifted his head. ‘Yes. Talk to the daughter. She wanted the best for her mother. It was the son-in-law who was the problem. Whatever he is involved in, she isn’t a part of it. I’m certain.’

Kai removed the pan from the gas ring, slid the cooked egg out on to the plate, reached for another egg and rolled it around the palm of his right hand, contemplating possibilities. ‘And how is that going to work? You can’t just hang around on the street corner in a place like that. You, especially.’ With one hand he cracked the egg into the pan.