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.
Late in the afternoon he had stepped outside the building. Somebody offered him a cigarette, and though he didn’t smoke he placed it unlit between his lips. Rumours abounded. One, no, two of the hotels were under siege, packed full of fleeing politicians. The Americans were coming. The British were sending a gunship. The central bank had been raided, there was money lying in the streets. Inside the empty staff room a radio blared, the spokesman for the coup leaders issuing statements in broken English.
The next time Kai left the building it must have been around midnight. It was dark. For the last five hours he’d been working by the light of a camping lantern. He stood listening to the sound of gunfire. Later it would never fail to amaze him how innocuous a sound it was in reality, nothing like the loud bangs in the movies. A time would come when he would be able to identify the make and model of a weapon from the sound it made, match the resulting injuries to those weapon types. For now he stood and stared at the sky, the iron-rich scent of blood rising from the stains on his gown. He felt exhausted, and at the same time utterly content. He smiled.
Then he remembered Nenebah.
Evening comes. Kai is folding paper from memory: in half, a corner here, an edge turned over, he runs a fingernail down a fold, working quickly for speed is part of the purpose. His fingers move deftly, finally pulling the object into shape. A frog. He pulls it apart, smoothes out the creases and begins again. This time he fashions a long-necked camel, after that a swan. At home, origami animals line the windowsill in the room where Abass sleeps. Kai is about to dismantle the swan when Adrian comes into the room, clad only in his shorts. His hair is stuck in dark points to his forehead. He is holding a pair of scissors.
‘Can you help me?’
‘Sure.’ Kai puts the swan back on the table.
‘That’s impressive.’ Adrian picks up the swan. ‘Where did you learn to do this?’
‘I practise.’ He shrugs. He takes the scissors from Adrian. ‘What do you want me to do with those?’
‘Cut my hair. It’s driving me crazy.’
Kai rises and goes to stand behind Adrian, he picks up a strand of hair experimentally. ‘Do you have a comb?’
‘Yes.’ Adrian fetches a comb from the bedroom. Kai selects a lock of hair; the texture is disconcertingly glassy, the small nail scissors scarcely gain purchase. He snips at a few strands of hair, stops, watches the trembling in the fingers of the hand holding the scissors. This morning, in surgery, he’d been obliged — almost — to ask another surgeon to handle a delicate task. He’d even gone so far as to imagine what he might say, pretend that a speck of something was caught under his eyelid, an excuse to leave the room. In the end it had been all right. Kai concentrated on breathing and managed to steady his hand; just once he thought he saw the nurse’s eye upon him.
Sharp strands of hair fall to the floor.
‘Your wife didn’t want you to come here.’
‘Not as such.’
Kai considers Adrian’s reply for a moment. ‘That means no.’
‘I didn’t really give her the opportunity to object, if I am honest.’
‘OK.’
‘I needed something else. I could look up and see my future rolling into the distance. I knew exactly what was going to happen every day. I used to wonder, too, whether if I disappeared it would make any difference to any of my clients’ lives, I mean in reality as opposed to the short-term inconvenience. Probably it was a dangerous thing to do.’ He laughs. ‘But you know what I mean.’
Kai does not know what he means. Still, he chooses not to say. This is the way Europeans talk, as though everybody shared their experiences. Adrian’s tone suggested that the desire for something was all it took. They all live with endless possibilities, leave their homes for the sake of something new. But the dream is woven from the fabric of freedom. For desire to exist it requires the element of possibility, and that for Kai has never existed, until now, with the arrival of Tejani’s letters. There for the first time is the element of possibility, kindling for the small flame of his own desire. He looks at Adrian’s hair, which now is about an uneven two inches long all over.
‘I don’t think this is working,’ he says. And watches Adrian’s tentative fingers appear over the horizon of his head. ‘Wait. I’ll go and get a pair of clippers from the store.’
When Kai walked away from the hospital the day of the coup nobody tried to stop him for the simple reason he told nobody he was going. The most direct route to Nenebah’s house passed through the centre of town. He reasoned nobody else would think to go that way, which was the extent of his forethought. The hospital lay at the end of a street perpendicular to the main road. The street was empty as Kai had never seen it, even in the early hours of the morning. He kept moving, staying close to the walls of the buildings. A car, a Toyota packed with joyriding soldiers, crossed the intersection ahead of him. Kai stopped and crouched next to a stinking gutter. The vehicle passed by, leaving a trail of sound. The tune stayed in his mind. From behind a corrugated-iron yard door he saw a child’s face, regarding him through rusted eyelets. Kai put a finger to his lips. He stood up, doubled back on himself. This time he took the bay road, slung like a hammock between one high point of the town and another, the lowest point sagging through the city slums. The air was heavy with smoke, the tart fumes of burning fuel. A car approached him, travelling at speed. Kai caught a glimpse of the driver, a man wearing a panama hat, driving with a ferocious concentration. Kai raised his hand to ask for a lift. The driver passed by without slowing. Kai had expected little else. By now he had settled into a slow jog, marking time to the sound of his own breathing.
At the roundabout, a roadblock, Kai slowed to a walk. Five roads met at this point. He could see a dozen or so soldiers, some checking vehicles, others standing around. He saw the man with the panama hat sitting behind the wheel of his car. A soldier opened the car door, the man climbed down and the soldier took his place behind the wheel. Kai could see the man’s mouth, an oval of protest. A soldier patted the man on the shoulder. From inside the vehicle another soldier threw his briefcase to him. The man clumsily tried to catch it. The vehicle backed out, clutch screaming. Kai walked on with measured paces, his heart hammered in his chest, there was a ringing in his ears. He walked towards the checkpoint.