The Memory of Love (19 page)

Did I mention to you how young we were then? How very young?

A piece of street theatre was going on outside. The dancer called for Julius to stop the car and we all descended. He went on to achieve some degree of fame as a choreographer, as I recall, until he fell foul of the authorities. I believe he died abroad. But that is by the by.

Outside a store two men dressed in improvised space suits moved about the interior of a makeshift module. Behind them was a television screen too small to be viewed by the crowd. So the performers were mimicking the astronauts, replicating for the audience what was taking place on Apollo 11. The dancer was enthralled and we stood and watched for a few minutes, until Saffia, made anxious by the possibility of guests arriving in our absence, said we must go and so we left him to catch us up later.

A few people had indeed already arrived. Julius went directly to the bar and began to serve drinks. Saffia disappeared into the kitchen. Kekura moved around the room holding up an aerial, while Ade monitored the quality of the picture. Kekura found a chair, placed the aerial on a shelf and stepped back to check his handiwork. Julius went to the record player, slipped a record from its sleeve and placed it on the turntable. The sound of a man’s voice accompanied by the rhythms of a guitar filled the room. Next to me the girl began to dance.

Nowadays every person you speak to who was alive at the time of the moon landing will tell you they can remember precisely where they were. My own recollections of that night are as shabby and ill-lit as the image that appeared on the screen Kekura and Ade had set up. A good part of that evening is lost to me now, lost to me moments after they occurred, lost in self-pity, frustration and alcohol. Here’s what I do remember:

At midnight people were still arriving. I wandered from the verandah to the main room and back again, for the most part avoiding becoming embroiled in conversation, drinking steadily. I picked up scraps of talk here and there as I moved by, like remote radio stations.

‘Keep a dog. Better than insurance.’

‘I hear Boston is as cold as hell. Yes, please. Campari.’

‘They are challenging the opposition MPs’ election one by one. Through the courts, so no one can complain. But it amounts to the same thing. Soon there will be none left.’ Kekura, who else?

‘And if something goes wrong with the spaceship?’

‘If they run out of oxygen, they will die.’ Ade Yansaneh, frowning under the lid of his hairline.

‘Eggplant. What is it you call them here? Garden eggs. I like that.’ The black American woman.

All the time I kept surreptitious watch on Saffia. Oh, she was an excellent hostess, as I think I have mentioned before; she attended to her guests in every matter, calling over the steward – whom I recognised from the university canteen – to refill a glass here, empty an ashtray there. There were dishes of spiced cashew nuts and Twiglets, as the evening wore on trays of
olele
wrapped in leaves. I ate nothing.

The moon walk was scheduled to take place at two o’clock in the morning. I helped myself to a cigarette from the box on the coffee table. The television, largely ignored once the initial buzz had worn off, glowed silently on one side of the room. Men talking behind desks and reruns of footage we had seen already. I stood gazing at images of the astronauts. The music had changed to something slow and melodic.

Next to me the dancer appeared: ‘Watch them for long enough and they begin to move in time to the music.’

Rubbish, I thought, though in fact he was not too far from the truth. The astronauts stepping into the craft, turning and waving, their weightless antics in space did indeed seem to correspond to the rhythm of the music. The same became true even of the programme hosts as they gestured and swivelled. The more I watched, the more it seemed so. After a few minutes I laughed out loud and turned to the fellow, but he had moved away. I watched for a few more minutes and laughed again. At some point I began to feel a little dizzy. I shook my head and looked at the picture again. Air. I needed air. I went out to the verandah, passing Ade, who asked me if I was all right. I brushed his hand away. I saw the back of Saffia. Did I mention to you her very resolute posture? Yes, quite unyielding, in fact. I turned and headed in the other direction, knocking against a chair, which caused a small amount of my drink to spill on to the back of the woman sitting in it. She shrieked and snapped her head around to glare at me. I mumbled an apology, but didn’t stop.

Then I remembered the girl. Who cared if I couldn’t have Saffia? There were other women. I had half a mind to call Vanessa, though the practicalities of doing so eluded me. I made a promise to myself I would do it the very next day. Not too late, it could all yet be mended. For now there was the girl. Where was the girl?

I was in the garden. I have no memory of taking the stairs. It was as though I floated down: an ethereal, alcohol-fuelled descent. I wandered through the maze of paths, my drink in my hand. The moon hovered protectively overhead. From indoors I could hear the sound of the music, livelier now. I stopped and listened. Dizzy Gillespie, I could say with some certainty, one of Julius’s favourites. The music though did not have a cheering effect upon me, standing where I was, removed from the party. At one point I stood under a tree and gazed up at the milky swathes of stars. Standing thus, with my head tilted as far back as it could go, caused me some loss of balance. I staggered and reached out for the tree with my one free arm and stood there holding on to it whilst I took the precautionary measure of taking another slug or two of my drink.

After a while I felt better and decided to get going. I followed the scent of the flowers and the earth, I fancied I could smell the moonlight, pure oxygen. I reached the place where the Harmattan lilies grew. By now, of course, the season was well and truly past. I could make out forms, upright and angular as insects, black against the moonlight. I knocked back the remainder of my drink and stood there clutching my empty glass pressed against my chest, staring at the silhouetted flowers.

The truth, if you want it, is that I have a tendency to become maudlin when I am drunk. Did I tell you that? I stood there, in front of the Harmattan lilies, and for some reason I thought of my mother, of her last illness. And then I thought of my brother, my mother’s favourite, who had written to me when I was in England with news of her death. I realised I was still holding on to my empty glass and I tossed it into the flowerbed.

A movement. Somebody close by. A couple had entered the space. Seemingly unaware of my presence, they stopped and seemed to embrace. There was shuffling and breathing, a giggle and a few words of encouragement disguised as protest as women make. I moved over and peered at them through the darkness. The ground was soft and silent underfoot, after so many weeks of rain. By the time they looked up and saw me, I was only a few feet away. It was exactly as I thought: the giggle, the voice. It was the girl I had brought to the party and who I had been searching for this last half-hour. She was with some lowlife. I was furious.

Parts of what happened next remain fuzzily bright. I remember I provoked him. You could say I had already
been
provoked by him. For what kind of man is supposed to stand by and tolerate another man’s hands upon his girlfriend? Somehow, anyway, the whole thing escalated. I remember lunging forward and grabbing the girl’s arm when she failed to move away from him, as I ordered her to do. Her insolence heightened my sense of outrage. Some words were exchanged. I picked up a stick and threatened to beat him. The girl must have taken fright and run into the house, because the next I remember is that Julius was there and the other chap began to make excuses, claiming to have no idea what had got into me. The girl stood by emitting weeping noises. Entirely unnecessary. The sound of her and the sight of Julius only served to goad me further. I swore at them all. I raised the arm with the stick in it – not to brandish it as such, but to fling it over their heads. Julius tried to placate me, arms outstretched. I can’t remember whether any kind of tussle followed. I believe not. At that point I lost my footing and fell over backwards.

All at once indignation turned to solicitation. I was pulled on to my feet – by Julius – and dusted down. More than anything else he seemed to find it funny. He repeated my name over and over.
Elias. Elias. Elias
. But I was in no mood to be appeased, or to be the butt of his humour. Inside I felt the pressure of my growing rage. I wanted to lower my head and charge at him, to throw my weight upon him and to punch and kick. Instead I knocked away his hand and stumbled towards the house, crashing through flowerbeds and shrubs. More than once I knocked into a tree. I remember, vaguely, passing through the living room. The stabbing lights. The chaotic chatter. The volume on the television was up and people were gathered around it. I passed behind them towards the front door and pushed it open.

Everybody the world over knows where they were the night the first man walked on the moon. I have always said I was at a party at Julius and Saffia’s house. In time I created a version of the truth for myself, which even included my memory of that grainy grey film, Armstrong’s first sentence complete with internal hesitation.
One small step
. Pause.
One giant leap
.

The truth is I have no real idea how or at what time I reached home. I passed many bars. I may even have had a drink in one or more of them. It is possible that I watched, or more likely listened to, the moon walk. I may have seen the two actors in front of the store, dressed in their tinfoil suits, combined sound and image in my own mind to create an ersatz memory.

All I know is that somehow I reached home alone. I lay in bed sweating, the ceiling spinning above me. Once I crawled out and vomited into the toilet. I went back to bed and curled up in the foetal position. At some point I slept.

I had fallen asleep without drawing the curtains and through the window I could see the sky, dense with purplish cloud that weighed low over the rooftops. Something, I knew not what, had awoken me abruptly. I lay back on the pillow, free-floating in a moment of perfect blankness, of temporary disorientation, my brain doubtless slowed by the amounts of whisky I had consumed, so for a moment, lying there, I experienced only a sense of serenity. I could not remember what day it was, it felt like a Sunday. All too soon I became aware that my mouth was so dry it was glued shut. When I opened it my breath – even to myself – smelled foul. I became aware too that I was lying on top of my bed, still dressed in my clothes. An odour of vomit hung in the air. The first memory of the night before hit me with a hot jolt. And as I continued to lie there, dislocated memories came creeping back, cloaked in shame.

I rose to use the bathroom. My shoulder throbbed faintly. I remembered my crashing progress through the garden, the immovable solidness of a tree trunk. There were a few scratches here and there, otherwise I was unhurt. The mirror displayed no further evidence. I looked the same as any other day, with the exception of an ashy cast to my skin and a smear of dark under my eyes. I would shake off the hangover soon enough with some food and coffee and in that way I might delay the effort and emotion involved in thinking about what I had done. I splashed water on my face, rinsed out my mouth and spat into the basin. Then I went to set some water on the stove to fill a bath.

I was returning from the bathroom with the emptied pan of water when I noticed a woman standing on the opposite side of the street. By then it was drizzling. The rain came in thin, viscous loops that seemed to hang from the sky. The woman had an umbrella up and gave the impression of a person waiting for something. It was her stillness, I suppose, she looked neither right nor left, but gripped the stem of the umbrella with both hands.

I refilled the pan under the tap, listening to the hiss of the cold water hitting the scalding metal. As I was about to carry the pan back to the bathroom the woman raised her head. I caught a glimpse of her profile, the tilt of her chin and nose. It was enough to stop me in my tracks. I put the pan in the sink, opened the window and looked out. What on earth could she be doing here? My first reaction was alarm: her visit must be connected to my behaviour of the previous evening.

I drew back. I did a turn of the room and went once more to the window. No doubt about it. Despite myself, hope, foolish and desperate, mingled with the fear. My heart thudded in my chest, my head reeled to the point of nausea. A memory of the altercation in the garden surfaced, like a drowned corpse from beneath the swamp. What had I said? What had I done? And why had Julius not come? Or Kekura or Ade Yansaneh on a diplomatic mission to mend bridges?

Hastily I threw the covers back over the bed and pulled on some clothes. I stepped outside on to the landing of the outside stairs just at the point Saffia looked up.

If I have never described my apartment to you, I should say now that to use the word apartment was to overstate the case. It was in reality a single though largish room, with a sink and stove at one end, a bed and a bathroom at the other. It is strange to admit but as Saffia hurried up the stairs all I could think was that this was not the way I had imagined her visiting me. She reached the top step, her face unsmiling and her gaze shifting as though she was searching for something.

‘Oh Elias!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve been waiting.’

‘You should have come up,’ I said, moving aside to let her in.