‘I am just walking this way. To the top of the hill.’
So we walk, saying nothing. And from the top of the rise I see the land rummage on. In the distance are more hills.
‘That is Kenya,’ Kessy says. ‘Less than twenty miles.’
‘And the road goes there?’
‘Not officially.’
‘Not officially?’
‘The border is closed. People must only use designated border crossings.’
‘But they cross anyway.’
‘Of course. Smugglers, Masai, local people. Who is going to stop them? Me? With my club? My flashlight?’ He laughs at himself. ‘My laws?’
We stand for a while in the low wind. I’m thinking about the children. The way their teeth chattered and snapped. They are a rendering of this place, of the hidden, dark huts and the weary violence that breeds there, and ends up, one day, in a report on the desk of a human rights lawyer marked Atrocity.
Walking back, we pass the place where they disappeared. I can make out their footprints in the dust, a fandango, and here and there the tiny paw prints of the puppy.
‘What are you doing?’ Kessy asks.
‘Looking for the puppy.’
‘It has gone. It has followed the children. Look.’ He crouches, shows me the tracks.
And I’m washing my face in the sink. It is later now, after dark, and the generator has quit, so I have only a cheap candle and this wavering, narrow light. I’m washing my hands, surprised at how dirty they always are. I look at myself in the cracked mirror above the sink, push back my hair. I’ve lost weight, it shows in the hollow of my cheekbones. The children — of course, they are just children. Their gender and their number are a coincidence. A girl and two boys. From huts in the bush. But there, again, is the odd loosening, the wavering, and I force myself to look in the mirror. Here I am. Here. My hands on the sink. The solidity of things. Touch my face with my fingertips. Feel my skull under the skin.
Bern, March 13
I wanted Tom.
But in the same instant I knew he wouldn’t be there. Knew like looking at the whole world from space, a spinning blue marble: Tom was with Elise and their new baby.
I opened my eyes and saw the rectangular lights and white ceiling.
‘Mrs Lankester?’
A face loomed over me. A man, unknown. For some reason I focused on his nasal hair. ‘You are okay,’ he said. His voice was heavy with Swiss German. ‘You are in a hospital in Bern. Everything is okay. Just a bad concussion and a few bruises. You are very lucky.’
Lucky?
I tried to speak, to form the word ‘why.’
He leaned in. I could smell his aftershave, the hint of peppermint on his breath.
My tongue was burred, heavy. I labored to form a ‘w.’
‘Water?’
I nodded, or seemed to, or perhaps just shut my eyes. Everything began with ‘w.’ Why, what, who, water.
He said, ‘I’ll have the nurse bring you some.’ Then he shone a pinhole of light into my eyes. ‘Look at the light. Follow it.’
I did as he said.
‘Now, my finger. Follow. Yes. Good.’
‘What.’ I said. ‘What.’
‘Water?’ Briskly: ‘Yes, yes, I’ll ask the nurse.’
I shut my eyes, focused, my mouth forming the words clumsily. ‘What. What.’
He looked at me. ‘Do you have any bad headache?’
‘Everything. Hurts.’
‘Can you then think, please, about your head.’
I tried to feel my head like a detached object, a vase with potential cracks or chips. There was no specific pain. I told him this.
‘Good, good. We shall keep you for observation for twenty-four hours and then you can be released. Unless the police—’ he cut himself off, busy putting his little flashlight away.
‘The police?’ I grabbed at his sleeve, nipping the fabric.
He pulled away with a shocked expression, as if I was a leper or beggar. Then immediately he covered what I’m sure was disgust with a professional look of query.
‘Yes?’
‘Why am I here?’
‘You do not remember?’
Really, I had no idea.
‘It’s very common. In such an incident of trauma to have memory loss. Post-Traumatic Retrograde Amnesia. Some memory may eventually return. Or it may not.’ He glanced over my chart. ‘CAT scan is normal. Blood? Yes, yes, all fine. But let us know if you feel any severe nausea or experience ringing of the ears or blurred vision.’
‘What trauma? What police?’ It was difficult for me to speak, as if there was a great distance between my brain which held the words and my mouth which should speak them. I sensed the doctor’s evasiveness, but then was not sure at all. Was I just not understanding? As I struggled to speak, my mind felt sluggish.
But he didn’t answer. Instead: ‘Is there someone we can contact for you? A friend? A relative?’
‘No,’ I said. Why wouldn’t he tell me what had happened?
‘Are you sure?’ he regarded me. ‘There must be someone.’ Now he flipped to another page on my chart. ‘Your husband? Mr Thomas Lankester.’
‘We’re not married.’
‘He is listed as your next of kin.’
‘The divorce,’ I said. ‘The paperwork…’
‘Ah, yes. Here it is,’ he stabbed the relevant paperwork. ‘I see that the police called him, but he declined to come.’
I felt a humming of humiliation in my chest. Keep going, I thought.
‘And there is no one else?’ He sounded incredulous.
No one. Because we always left or they always left. The projects, the tribunals, the stints — it was impossible to form attachments, friendships. We joked, Tom and I, of our ‘associates.’
When I didn’t answer, the doctor turned to leave. I spoke now with determination to be clear: ‘I want to know what happened, why I am here.’
‘The police are coming in a minute. Wait for them. It is better for them to explain.’ And he left.
I lay back and considered the curiously intense image of Mrs Gassner putting on her shoes. I was helping her with the laces. I hadn’t paid my phone bill.
‘They cut you off no mercy,’ she was saying.
MAHNUNG!
There was a knock on the door. A policewoman leaned in. ‘I am Sergeant Caspary,’ she said. ‘May I come in?’
She entered gently. She was small and rounded, not fat, but neatly stacked in a series of orbs. She pulled a chair to the side of the bed and cleared her throat and took out a notepad. ‘The doctor tells us you don’t remember what has happened.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said automatically.
‘It must be very confusing for you.’ Was she being kind? I couldn’t tell. She took a small breath, ‘I must inform you this is something terrible.’
I was trying to think — what? Perhaps if I squeezed my eyes shut I could find the memory. I could feel the outline of it in the dark. I considered the word ‘terrible’—a bomb? Had there been a terrorist attack? I felt in my body a sudden lurching as if I’d been thrown.
‘You were involved in a very tragic incident,’ Sergeant Caspary said. She waited, watching me as if gauging my reaction. Like the doctor she’d carefully chosen the word. Like the doctor she was evading.
‘Incident?’
She shifted in her seat. ‘With your car.’
I waited. She waited, watching me.
Then she said, ‘Three children have been killed.’
Obviously, there’d been a mistake. Someone else instead of me. Charts switched, paperwork mixed up. Even the Swiss can make mistakes. But Sergeant Caspary said right away: ‘I appreciate it’s difficult for you that you don’t remember. It must seem very unreal.’