There were people — those desperate enough to venture out, or else with nothing to lose, street boys and madmen. The street boys cheered every time a military vehicle passed, the madmen cursed. When they saw Kai, several of the soldiers yelled at him to turn back. ‘Curfew. Go to your home.’ Kai stopped walking and raised his hands, then he approached slowly, he wanted them to see he was a doctor. Soldiers were almost superstitious about doctors, never knowing when they might need one. The smell of ganja was heavy in the air. Down each of the five roads fires burned, figures moved through the light and darkness, the sound of their calls like jackdaws.
‘Mansaray!’ somebody called him. A Bedford truck was slowing for the checkpoint. Kai looked up into darkness. ‘Mansaray!’ A hand reached out towards him through the wooden slats at the back of the truck. Automatically Kai stretched out his own hand. Up ahead the barrier was raised, the truck’s engine revved and the vehicle began to gather speed again. Whoever it was called, ‘I say, wait up! Wait up!’ The truck stopped five yards on the other side of the barrier and Kai raced towards it. He had no idea who he was running to, simply that this was his only chance. He climbed up on to the tailgate of the truck and sat down opposite the man who had called to him, an army officer around the same age as himself. ‘Lucky I saw you there, my friend.’ Hindered by the darkness, Kai struggled to recognise the other man at first, then it came to him. Five-a-side football. Kai had been in the college team for a season. Lansana was his name. Lansana what? He couldn’t remember.
‘They’ve invited the rebels into the city. For talks, they say,’ he told Kai. ‘But look at this. Most of these are not our men. Some of them, yes.’ Around them drunken looters staggered under the weight of their bounty. Cars abandoned full of crates and boxes.
The Bedford dropped Kai two streets short of Nenebah’s house. ‘Take care, man.’ Lansana gave him a high five as he prepared to climb out of the truck. A glimmer of light momentarily revealed the other man’s face to Kai. Behind the smile his eyes were flat, almost without expression. The look stayed with Kai for a long time afterwards, until finally he saw it for what it was. Fear, nerves or excitement, these had all been absent. And that, in turn, spoke of something else — the absence of hope. Kai thanked Lansana and wished he knew his surname.
The army was divided, he told Nenebah. If the army was divided it was dangerous for everyone. The army, the rebels, whoever they were — were attacking homes now. Even the diplomatic missions and the houses of the whites.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Nenebah had said once, not then, before. Before, before. When they were younger still, at university. What were they talking about? Some faraway atrocity reported in the news. The students passed a resolution condemning it. That was it, yes, he had dismissed the action with a joke. But she had a dislike of cynicism. ‘Hitler, Pol Pot. Funny, isn’t it? How it only seems to be evil people who think they can change the world? I wonder why that is.’ And Kai had responded, ‘Because they’re mad.’ She had dug a sharp elbow into his ribs. Then she shook her head. ‘But they do, don’t they? They do change the world.’
For the next three days Kai walked alone to the hospital, where the medical staff continued to report for work and treat the wounded with detached determination. This was their job, their life. At those times Kai was happy.
The memories come at unguarded moments, when he cannot sleep. In the past, at the height of it, he had attended to people whose limbs had been severed. Working with a Scottish pain expert years later, he treated some of those same patients again. They complained of feeling pain in the lost limbs, the aching ghost of a hewn hand or foot. It was a trick of the mind, the Scotsman explained to Kai: the nerves continued to transmit signals between the brain and the ghost limb. The pain is real, yes, but it is a memory of pain.
And when he wakes from dreaming of her, is it not the same for him? The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.
CHAPTER 22
A day passed. Then another. The clouds hung thick over the city, only their patterns altered with the wind. It was as if we were trapped on the dark side of a mirror. We could see the world, people running through the rain, children playing in the puddles, but we could not hear them. The house was quiet. One or two of Julius’s colleagues from the university called, his absence at a meeting had been noted. We told them he had been called away on a family matter. No news of Kekura. The dancer fellow, I remember, dropped by. Somehow he had heard what had happened and he arrived, throwing out offers of help, claiming to have various contacts here and there among the police. I did not like his familiarity, the way he sat, legs splayed, arms stretched out along the back of the chair, making a display of himself. Nor did I believe his claims. Were the police taking dancing lessons now? But Saffia would take help where she found it. I had a growing sense by then that no good would come of stirring things up. Better to sit it out. And anyway, sure enough, the fellow returned hours later, with nothing to show for his apparent efforts.
After the door closed behind him, Saffia began to cry.
I moved over to sit by her. I put my arm around her. She neither resisted nor made to move away. The sobs came, dry, uneven, causing her shoulders to shudder. Her head rested on my shoulder. From her hair rose a close, earthy scent. A tear landed upon my shirt, and I felt it soak through the cotton and touch my skin. I stayed sitting there as long as I could until I felt the shift in her. Any moment she would regain her composure and perhaps feel awkward with our proximity. I stood up.
‘It will be over soon. There’s a procedure for these things, soon enough we will know.’
My words provided the break. She sat up straight, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
‘Can I fetch you something?’ I said. ‘Shall we go and get something to eat?’
‘No thanks, Elias. I should stay close to the phone. But I am terribly thirsty.’
In the kitchen I opened the fridge door and reached for a bottle of water, but instead took a bottle of Coca-Cola, poured half of it into a glass along with a slug of Julius’s whisky. I put the glass on the table in front of her. She picked it up and took a sip.
‘What’s in here?’
‘A little whisky,’ I replied. ‘Just to calm you.’ She nodded and took another sip, began to rehearse aloud details from the previous days, starting with the morning after the party, a fingertip search through her own mind for whatever it was she had missed.
Outside the window, the blue of the sea turned grey and then black. In the garden the colours grew solemn and withdrew. The phone was silent. Between ourselves, little of consequence was said. I refilled Saffia’s glass, once, twice. She did not move from her place on the settee.
I stepped outside on to the verandah to gaze at the sky, the lead-blue darkness settling over the city. I lit a cigarette and smoked it in the darkness. Through the glass of the sliding door I could see Saffia. She sat in a coin of bright light from the lamp, her head rested on her forearm across the back of the settee. I stood and watched, I shrouded by darkness, she in the light. Something in her pose struck me, the weight of her head where it rested upon her arm. I realised she was asleep, or else on the verge of it. For several minutes I remained where I was, quite still.