The Memory of Love (22 page)

Elle laughs supportively, though she has clearly heard the joke before. Candy is grinning at him. Adrian has no idea how to respond. He is silent.

Behind Candy the sellers are folding sarongs, putting them away. Adrian thinks of the obtuse police officers and the deaf boy, his frustration with the hospital administrator, the power cuts and water shortages, the heat, the clogged gutters and traffic jams in the city, the beggars. He thinks of the pregnant woman with the dead baby between her legs, of Kai, then of Agnes, of the young man he first brought to the hospital, of his friends among the patients at the hospital, the calm and beauty of the Patients’ Garden. Of Attila’s unbroken determination. Of his own strange happiness in that place. He is still unsure what to say when he realises the attention of both women has been redirected.

‘Oh, hi,’ Candy says, in a tone noticeably flatter to the one with which she had greeted Adrian. Ileana has reappeared with a dish of sliced fruit, mango and pineapple. She greets the two women and sets the plate down on the table.

‘Hey, that looks great!’ Candy says, her tone gushing now. ‘And this place, too.’

‘Thank you. I’ll get some more plates.’

To Adrian’s relief the moment has passed. He wonders if Ileana heard Candy’s joke, though if she did she gives no sign of it, disappearing for a second time to re-emerge with extra plates and cutlery. The fruit is fresh, sharp and clean, clears his taste buds of the residual flavour of crab.

Suddenly Ileana sets her plate back on the table and stands up. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says to the two women. ‘You don’t have anything to drink. What would you like? There’s wine.’

‘Hey. Awesome! We’ve lucked out here. Could a day get any better?’

Ileana nods graciously. She takes the bottle from the cool box beside Adrian and pours two more glasses.

‘This is really good.’ Elle, this time.

‘Do you know what the most popular white wine here is?’ asks Ileana.

‘No,’ say Candy and Elle and turn to her, Adrian as well. The two women open-faced and smiling.

‘It goes like this,’ says Ileana, and she affects a grating, high-pitched voice, a clear imitation of Candy’s nasal accents. ‘Christ, what’s wrong with these people? Can’t they do anything for themselves? If it wasn’t for us they’d still be in the trees.’ And with that she sits down heavily in her chair, takes a sip from her own glass. ‘Cheers! Good, isn’t it? The most popular white whine.’

That night it turns cold. There is no wind, no rain and yet, lying in his bed, Adrian feels a chill in the air. He gets up from his bed and switches off the ceiling fan. The movement sets his stomach churning. The crab perhaps, though it had tasted fresh enough. With these things one seldom knew until it was too late. And yet, if his memory serves, seafood poisoning came on quickly. He calculates how long it has been since he left Ileana’s. About five hours. Candy and Elle had stayed only a few minutes after Ileana’s remarks. ‘Silly tarts,’ she’d said as they watched the two women walk away. ‘Do you know how much they get as a hardship allowance?’ Fortunately, the tension caused by the women’s visit had vanished with them, Adrian and Ileana once more at ease between themselves. He had admired the sharpness of her response, and felt grateful for her apparent willingness to overlook the failure of his own.

They had swum, the shock of the water – the warmth rather than the cold – dispelling any awkwardness resulting from seeing each other, two professional colleagues, in their swimwear. Ileana, hair tucked up inside a tight rubber cap, turned out to be a strong, serious swimmer and a match for Adrian. They had both cut through the soupy water for fifty yards, and stayed there riding the ebb and flow of the waves, as the sun went down. And afterwards they’d walked down the beach, where Ileana had shown Adrian a hotel, deserted since the war. There was the bar, the card tables: torn felt and broken glass, as though a wind had blown through them.

Later Adrian had driven home through the rapidly gathering dusk, not wanting to test his driving skills in the dark. He arrived exhausted and with the beginnings of a headache, had drunk some water and gone soon to bed, to wake a few hours later to this unseasonal coolness. The cotton sheet, which he usually pushes from his body during the night, is not enough. He searches the cupboards, finds a blanket and lies back down, pulling the stiff, stale wool up around his shoulders.

Dawn finds him shivering. Far away he hears the key turn in the door, wonders what Kai is doing here so early. He pulls the blanket around his body and stumbles to the bedroom door.

‘Hey, man,’ says Kai. ‘How’s the morning?’

Adrian tries to answer, his voice emerges weakly. He sees Kai turn to look more closely, take a few steps towards him. Standing there Adrian feels the sweat rising, seeping from his pores, bringing with it a flush of heat. He pushes the blanket away, suddenly he is thirsty. He puts out a hand to steady himself. Kai is in front of him, blocking his way, his hands on his shoulders, peering into his face.

‘Woah, man.’ He hears Kai’s voice distantly. ‘Man, you are sick!’

CHAPTER 21

Two hours after the end of his shift and Kai has cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, thrown out all the old food in the fridge, wiped the surfaces and emptied the bin of rubbish and ants. Next he rearranged the front room, punching the cushions and shaking the mats. With a switch broom borrowed from the caretaker he swept the dust out of the door. Then he stripped the soiled sheets from under Adrian, tipping a porter to remove them and return with clean ones, and made up the bed, moving Adrian from one side of the bed to the other with practised efficiency. Minutes later the porter returned with a bag of food, and Kai entered the kitchen and set about making soup: a clean, clear broth to which he added an entire Scotch bonnet pepper, crushed on the back of a wooden spoon, and a dash of lime.

Now he sits on the settee, while the soup simmers, glances through some of the papers on the coffee table, flicks through a reference book reading a sentence here, a chapter heading there. He lays his head back and closes his eyes. In a moment images begin to rise, fragments of dreams. He shakes his head and forces his eyes open. He is not sleeping well and sleep, when it comes, chooses inopportune moments. He hasn’t been home in three days, going instead straight from the theatre to Adrian’s apartment.

He enters the bedroom carrying a bowl of soup. At the sound of the bowl being set upon the night stand, Adrian opens his eyes. Kai leaves and returns with another bowl, this time of water, plus soap and a towel.

‘I can use the bathroom, you know.’

‘Sure you can. Easier for me to carry the bowl than you, that’s all.’

Adrian smiles and pulls himself up. He washes his hands. In the three days he has grown leaner, the bones of his face thrown into relief.

Kai hands him the bowl and spoon. ‘Pepper soup. All-time cure. Everything from hangovers to malaria. Good for the soul, too. Like Jewish chicken soup, only better. Both have proven curative and restorative powers.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Good.’

‘I was dreaming,’ says Adrian, in between sips. ‘Swimming underwater. The fish. The colours, my God. Is this what it’s like?’

Kai nods. ‘Mild deliriums, maybe. The medication can sometimes have that effect, not just the illness.’

A movement at the window on the other side of the room causes them both to turn. It is the sunbird. The bird’s body is curved, his wings work so fast as to be invisible to the naked eye, just the slender body of the bird, a comma hanging in the air, or a pause in a moment in time. Kai has moved the feeder to a place outside the window of the bedroom. Earlier in the day the sight of it from the kitchen window had revived a memory from childhood – he must have been very young indeed, for the memory came without accompanying thoughts, only physical sensations – of following a bird such as this through a garden. Not to catch it, but to imitate it. He remembered picking a flower and putting it in his mouth, the dustiness of the pollen, the taste of crushed petals, and finally, the sweetness.

Adrian’s sketchbook and paints are on the floor next to the bed, where Kai has placed them. ‘I feel too much like shit to be bored,’ Adrian says.

‘You wait. You’ll need to rest at least a week before you go back to work. You’ll be bored.’

‘I can’t afford a week.’

‘Listen.’ Kai sits on the edge of the bed. ‘The last guy who declined the advice I’ve just given you we shipped back home three months later. He didn’t work again for a year. It’s not just the malaria. Your body is fighting on all fronts in this climate. If you’re born here you get used to it. On the other hand, there’s a reason life expectancy is so short. So take my advice.’

On Adrian’s behalf, Kai telephones Ileana and also sends a message to the old man’s room. Afterwards he collects some medicine from the hospital pharmacy and makes his way along to Adrian’s apartment again.

‘The guy in the private room. You told me about him. Pulmonary fibrosis, right?’

‘Right.’

‘I guess I didn’t bother to read the name on the notes.’

‘Why? Do you know him?’

‘Yes. Well,
knew
him. From the university.’

‘He was a lecturer, is that right?’

‘More than that, he was Dean of Humanities in my time.’

‘Oh?’ says Adrian. ‘Is there a reason you ask?’

Kai takes a breath. ‘Not really. How are you doing with that soup?’

‘I feel better already.’

‘I’ll let you finish it,’ says Kai. He leaves the bedroom, crosses the living room, opens the front door and looks out at the hospital quadrangle.

Elias Cole. How that name takes Kai back to another time, drops him down into a place in the past he doesn’t want to go. He casts around for something else to think about, fastens on a picture sent to him by his sister some years back of the whole family, minus Kai, of course, whale watching in Vancouver. In the picture his parents made uncertain, lumpish tourists, wearing zipped cardigans and solemn expressions, like overgrown children. In between them his sister’s two kids mugged for the camera; the boy had pushed himself forward of the group so that his head was absurdly large within the frame. His sister’s Canadian husband must have been behind the camera. Doubtless the excursion was his idea. It would never occur to Kai’s parents to go whale watching. They didn’t understand those kinds of activities: climbing a hill for the view, sending postcards containing a single line of text. Besides there were whales right here; you could see them from the beach at certain times of the year.

With his parents gone Kai inhabited the house less and less, and then only in the hours of darkness. On weekends, when not with Nenebah, he was with Tejani, and when he was with neither of them he simply returned to the hospital.

A Sunday they’d operated upon a miner. The man, a Guinean, spoke only French. He’d been given an epidural rather than a full anaesthetic, nobody anticipating quite how awkward the procedure would prove to be. A steel pin, a repair to an earlier fracture, had slipped downwards into the knee joint and needed to be removed. They’d struggled to locate the tip of it within the femur. All the while the man had lain upon his back, gazing at the ceiling, apparently indifferent to the bone-jarring drill.

Afterwards they’d emerged to a darkened city, thinking at first it was later than it was. In the staff room there was talk of a coup. The Europeans went to the phones and began to dial their embassy switchboards. Kai left the hospital and entered the curfew-quiet streets. On his way he saw others, ghosts flitting through the narrow lanes away from the main roads. On a corner he collided with somebody’s shoulder. The other man reached out to steady him, a moment later Kai was on his way. Not a word had been spoken, the only sound the softly uttered grunt at first contact.

The moon was a waning crescent, a sliver of light escaping through a slit in the sky. Just enough to outline, faintly, the edges of the house. Kai waited outside until he saw Nenebah leave the sitting room. He stood up and skirted the house, walking in parallel to her, she inside, he outside, they both reached the bedroom at the same time. His fingers found the edge of the shutter. When she returned from washing, still drying her face with one end of the towel, he was lying on his stomach across her bed. A quick breath, her eyes darted towards the door. Silently she let the towel drop and slid into his embrace.

‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. ‘What if my father finds you? You’re not supposed to do this. You’re supposed to say the password.’

‘Sorry.’ He pressed his face against her belly, his chin rested in shower-damp hair.

‘Go on.’ She lay back and placed her arms above her head. And then, a small giggle. ‘Not that. I mean say the word.’

So he’d whispered their password, there and then, but she didn’t hear it, rather felt his breath, and arched her back slightly to meet him, placing her hands on his shoulders, pressing down with open palms. He loved the even pacing of her breathing, the intake and release, until the rhythm fell away, like a musician missing a string of notes, crashing down upon the keyboard.

Later, tracing her form with the back of his hand, feeling the new dampness upon her skin, he caught her nipple between his index finger and middle finger and held it the way one would hold a cigarette.

‘You’ll have to stay,’ she said. ‘You can’t go now. It’s too dangerous.’

‘I know,’ he replied. Not knowing if she were talking about her father or the coup. From Kai’s room in the student halls of residence, the return to their family homes restricted their lovemaking, bringing to it a new anticipation. Many times he had knocked on the shutter, whispered their password; never had he slept there. That night he had not slept, either, but lain awake and watched the changing light upon the bare wall, dawn slowly highlighting the shape of her beside him. It had rained hard in the night, the pattern of the rain played out upon the wall; the sound wrapped itself around them as they lay in the huddle of each other’s arms.

In the morning he had slipped out, the air clammy with dew and the exhaled breath of sleepers. By then there was a new order.

Kai awakens from dreaming of her. From outside comes the sound of rain. For a while he imagines it is some part of the dream, surely it is too early in the year for rain. The water resounds upon the roof. Kai rises and crosses the sitting room to turn up the music, Jimmy Cliff. ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People.’ He goes to the door and opens it, watching the rain, feeling the water splash up and touch his feet, his ankles. Gradually the glory of the music, the soothing sounds of the rain absorb the memory of the dream.

On the fifth day Kai opens the door of the bedroom to find Adrian up and half dressed. At Kai’s entrance he slumps on to the bed, apparently defeated by the effort of buttoning his trousers. There are faint shadows between his ribs, tracks of purplish veins run beneath translucent skin.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I have to go in.’ Adrian struggles with the buckle of his belt.

Kai shakes his head. ‘Man, you can barely stand.’

‘Just for two hours. That’s all. I have to see her.’

‘Who?’

‘My patient.’

Kai stands regarding Adrian’s efforts for a moment. Then he crosses the room, takes a striped cotton shirt from the cupboard, hands it to Adrian and watches as he forces one arm and then the other through the sleeves, a sheen of sweat upon his forehead. Kai steps forward to help with the buttons.

‘I’ll drive you,’ he says.

Kai recognises Ileana from her voice over the telephone.

She takes one look at Adrian. ‘My God, you look awful.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ve brought my doctor.’ Adrian smiles faintly and waves his arm at Kai, a lolling gesture, like a barely animated rag doll. ‘Kai, Ileana. Ileana, Kai.’

Ileana looks at Kai and nods briskly. Her attention immediately returns to Adrian. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry,’ she says.

‘It’s malaria. Everyone gets it. Or so I’m told.’

‘No. I mean I’m sorry, Adrian. Agnes’s gone. I’m so sorry. I should have called, but you were sick.’

The drive back takes place in silence. Adrian, his head resting upon the glass, gazes sightlessly out of the window. Kai understands the dismay that goes with losing a patient, in whatever manner. Each time you start work on a patient, you begin – he does not know a surgeon who is different – with total belief. It is a belief in the possibility of life, almost a spiritual belief which dwarfs all scientific knowledge, all medical learning. No information about the chances for the patient can assail it. You tackle a one-in-a-hundred with the same vigour you bring to a one-in-three or a one-in-two. During the worst days of the war, the doctors would walk down the corridors picking the injured men and women who might have a chance, leaving the others to die. He had experienced less conflict over doing so than he imagined. Yet once a patient had become their own, once the team became united in that goal, the loss was bitterly felt by all.

In the event it is Adrian who speaks first, to ask if the air conditioning might be turned down. Kai reaches across and rests the back of his hand briefly on Adrian’s brow.

‘Your temperature is right back up. What you need is to cool down.’ He leans back and gropes about on the rear seat until he finds a plastic bottle of water. He hands it to Adrian. Kai sees him take a few sips, bracing himself against the jolting of the vehicle on the uneven road. He slows the vehicle and says, ‘From what you told me she’ll be back in a few months.’

Adrian stares ahead and wipes his mouth. ‘Yes. Only I don’t know if I’ll still be here when she does.’

When they reach the flat Adrian heads straight to the bedroom, and Kai into the kitchen. Presently Kai hears the sound of the cistern and Adrian returns to the sitting room.

‘Christ, I’m exhausted. By the way, is that normal?’

‘To be exhausted? Yes.’

‘No, I mean my piss. It’s the colour of orangeade.’

Kai laughs. ‘I forgot to warn you about that.’

The telephone rings. Lisa. Kai listens to the restraint in Adrian’s voice. He and Nenebah had never got to that place, the place where politeness reasserts itself, had argued frequently. He notices Adrian makes no mention of his illness.

That morning, when Kai had left Nenebah’s house and arrived back at the hospital, had been the first. There would be a lull. The storm would catch them all unawares. But all that was two years away from that morning. Right then he’d been twenty-six years old. On the walk to work he’d heard the sound of mortars for the first time, beginning with the cheerful whistling overhead and ending in an explosion. He began to run, arriving to find the hospital in chaos. His heart still pumped from the run, to him it was exhilarating. The army had mutinied and stormed the central prison, the prison gates had been torn down. The first casualties were prisoners. Burns mostly, and the effects of smoke inhalation, for the first wave of departing prisoners had set fire to their quarters, forgetting or perhaps heedless of the fate of the other inmates. Only the worst wounded came to the hospital, the others preferring to seize the opportunity which had presented itself. There were a few prison guards among them, who thought they should be treated first, and some of the staff were in agreement. Kai hadn’t cared. He merely set to work on the patients, one after the other. The fires burned all night, the sacking of the city continued. That day, apart from burns, he had treated more gunshot wounds than he had seen in his career.