On the beach a score of translucent crabs scuttle from his shadow. Down by the water tiny seabirds, sandpipers, follow the movement of the waves, scurrying after the retreating water, inspecting the sand for whatever has been left in its wake. Hurrying back as the water advances. Detectives scanning the beach for evidence, wings like hands clasped self-importantly behind backs. Adrian is tempted to remove his shoes and socks and walk down to the water, but the practicalities are off-putting. So he heads instead for the bar, pulling up one of the old stools to sit on. Within moments a man appears.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Beer, please.’ It is only eleven, what the hell.
The barman opens a bottle and slides the beer down the inside of a tilted glass. He flips a beer mat, places the glass upon it and pushes it towards Adrian, who takes a sip enjoying the bite of the cold beer at the back of his throat. The man goes away and comes back with a stainless-steel dish of peanuts. They are tiny, delicious, with salty pink papery skins, a fragment of which gets caught in Adrian’s throat causing him to cough and cough again.
‘Be careful, sir.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Adrian drains his glass, but is left still coughing. ‘Another beer, please.’
‘First time here?’ says the waiter as he pours the second bottle.
‘Yes.’ It is a question he has grown to dislike. He feels patronised, a new arrival, wet behind the gills — particularly if the questioner is another Westerner.
‘And how do you find us here?’
Adrian nods. ‘I like it very much.’
The bartender nods gravely as though this is as he would have expected. He replies, ‘Maybe you will tell others. And then they will come.’
Adrian drinks his beer. The barman departs and returns with a basin of ice, which he positions on a shelf beneath the bar.
‘Actually,’ says Adrian, ‘I already knew a bit about the country. From my grandfather.’ This is not strictly true, and he is not quite sure why he says it. Perhaps because he is tired of being treated like a beginner. The barman looks up.
‘Your grandfather was here?’
‘Yes,’ says Adrian. ‘A long time ago. Before the war. He was a district commissioner.’
‘What was his name, your grandfather?’
‘Silk.’
‘District Commissioner Silk, yes.’ Neither the barman’s tone of voice nor his expression convey a thing, not even whether he recognises the name or is merely politely concurring. Adrian finishes his beer. By the time he comes to pay the barman has gone again. He counts the money and looks around for the man, noticing for the first time a poster on a pillar behind him. He slips from the stool for a closer look; Mamba Blues. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. First Monday of the Month. At the Ocean Club. There is an image of a woman’s face partly in profile. It looks like the woman he saw outside the hospital talking to Babagaleh; the angle of the photograph makes it hard to be certain. Adrian looks around for the barman, but there’s still no sign of him, so he places the correct money on the counter and leaves.
The road to Ileana’s house is straight and the distance no more than a few miles; nevertheless it takes Adrian thirty minutes to drive there because of the road’s treacherous condition. Two dogs, collarless and slender, lie by the door. One of them cautiously sniffs Adrian’s hand as he waits for Ileana to answer his knock. Through the fly screen he can see the living room: old rattan sofa, coffee table, books. Bright shawls cover the furniture. On the wall a mirror bordered by a mosaic frame, sharp fragments of glass. There is piano music playing. In time he sees Ileana cross the sitting room, smoking a cigarette. As he watches she performs a few steps of a dance. Her lips are pale, bare of lipstick. She does not see him. Adrian waits until she is out of sight before knocking a second time. This time Ileana appears down the short passage, and briskly throws open the fly screen.
‘The door is open. You should have come in.’ She smiles and kisses him on each of his cheeks, stands back and regards him for a moment, like a mother looking to see how much her son has grown. Her lips are dark red, freshly painted. ‘Welcome!’
The house, a compact bungalow, sits squarely on the beach. Ileana goes to the kitchen and returns with a cold beer for Adrian.
‘If this was my place, I’d knock down all the walls and keep it as one space, like a studio,’ she says.
‘It’s great.’ He removes his shoes, slides open the screen and steps on to springy grass and sand. ‘How did you find it?’
‘It was leased by a mining company, for their foreign workers to take weekend breaks. I took it over at a bargain rent. You could say there was a bit of a glut in the property market at that time.’ Ileana laughs. ‘You’d never get something like this now, and not at that price. All the ones along this stretch are rented for a fortune to one NGO or another.’
She places a pair of plastic chairs and they sit, enjoying for a few moments a companionable silence and the sound of the sea.
A group are walking up the beach against the sun. Three fat silhouettes and three thin. Each of the fat figures appears conjoined to a thin one. As they approach, Adrian sees that they are three men, each with a young black girl. The girls seem exceptionally young, narrow and pretty.
Ileana and Adrian watch them pass.
‘How differently we behave in other people’s countries,’ says Ileana. She raises her beer bottle to her lips. ‘It just goes to show.’
‘Show what?’
‘No sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn’t require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.’
‘I see what you mean.’ Adrian watches the receding figures.
Here and there groups of bathers sit on the sand, or under an umbrella. Children move between them selling peanuts and fruit.
‘I hope you like crab,’ says Ileana.
They carry salad, plates and cutlery outside. There is fried rice and a bottle of cold white wine. Ileana throws a pair of giant crabs on top of a coal pot, where they pop and sizzle. While they eat Adrian talks to Ileana about Agnes, of the progress she is making.
‘She’s still pretty confused, though that’s improving. A few days ago she couldn’t recognise herself in a mirror. Now she’s able to hold a conversation. There are gaps but my guess is that in a few days she’ll be back to herself.’
‘And the journeys?’
‘So far as I know they started after the war, not before. That much seems clear. I need to find the trigger. I’m working on the premise that something occurred during the war.’
‘You think she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?’
‘That’s what I’m looking at,’ Adrian says carefully.
Adrian is aware of Ileana’s steady gaze upon him. He can’t fool her, she knows exactly what’s in his mind. If he’s right he will have achieved something considerable. To prove the existence of fugue in a population would be a professional coup. But if he could also demonstrate a clear link to post-traumatic stress disorder? Well, that could make his name.
Moving on, he tells Ileana about the gold chain, how they had got to the bottom of that particular mystery. Agnes had pawned it and forgotten.
‘Dissociation,’ says Ileana, standing up. ‘She does things she can’t remember doing. More wine?’
‘Yes please,’ says Adrian.
He looks out at the horizon. In his mind he replays the second interview with Agnes, during which she’d complained about the theft of her gold chain. This followed the night Salia had been forced to sedate her. Adrian had prompted Agnes into recalling the events leading up to her most recent journey. She’d mentioned her daughter had been away. And again, in the last interview, when they had talked about her first journey, the daughter had been away from home that time, too. With this realisation his heart skips a beat, he leans forward in the chair, peruses the connection he has just made. It cannot simply be a coincidence. Naasu is the only daughter she talks about, he’d already noted that. The journeys occur when Naasu is away from home. He exhales and leans back in his chair. He can hardly wait to interview Agnes again. He must be careful not to rush her. What had they been talking about when she’d brought up the gold chain again? He asked her who was in the house with her. He mentioned the girl, her son-in-law. He ponders whether there is meaning in that. Sudden switches of subject were sometimes a marker of a patient wanting to avoid something: the subconscious steered them away.