The lilies were splendid. Dozens of them, deepest crimson, their great funnel-shaped heads turned towards me. Can a flower adopt an expression? I ask because I know you will think me fanciful if I say so, or thought so then. Standing there, it was as though I had opened a door upon a roomful of silent children: watchful, listening, waiting. I knew I had found what I’d been looking for. I turned to go.
The fish mammy was there on her verandah when I left. I felt her eyes upon my back as I walked down the street. For once she was silent.
And in her silence she was more eloquent than in anything her barbed tongue could produce.
In the final weeks of 1972, our daughter was born. I told myself I had given Saffia the one thing Julius had not. It made no difference. Saffia remained as remote as ever. A stillness came over her. It was as if she had realised her error in marrying me, but now it was too late. So, as many women do, she swallowed the bitterness of her regret and submitted. The stillness was what was left.
The aunt came back from the village and Saffia relinquished most of the responsibility of the child to her. In our gratitude we named the child for the old lady. Not the little girl’s real name, for that had already been chosen, but her house name, the name we called her by.
As for me, I loved the child from the start. And she loved me in return. I have no doubt this is the experience of all men, or at the very least a great many. Perhaps even to talk of an infant’s love is a foolishness, for doesn’t a child love selfishly, like a puppy, whoever will take care of them? But for once in my life I never had to ask what somebody saw in me, or question why she might wish to spend her time with me, wonder at her motives. She was my daughter. I, her father. The first love I had ever been able to take for granted.
Even Babagaleh came under the child’s spell. She taught him his letters, you know. I would find him sitting among her dolls and teddy bears in front of a toy blackboard. She liked to play teacher. Later he sat with her while she did her homework. He’d copy out the same sums and sentences alongside her. In this way he learned to read, and he reads perfectly well, though he is careful to maintain otherwise. He would take her to the mosque with him on Fridays and show her off … pretend … his own daughter …
Wheezing. A flailing arm. A shaking hand. The old man’s body convulses upon the bed. His mouth opens and closes. Adrian jumps up, puts his arms under the old man’s armpits and pulls him up. He runs to the door and calls a nurse. He waits in the corridor while the nurse attends to her patient.
All around him is silence, save for the hollow scrape of a bucket being pushed along the floor of the corridor, the slosh of water. The sound of the hospital gates opening and a vehicle entering.
Adrian thinks about the last part of Elias Cole’s story. The child, of course, was Mamakay.
CHAPTER 36
In a bar, Pedro’s, where Adrian has been with Kai. Adrian has left Mamakay at the table while he goes to fetch drinks.
‘One beer, one rum and Coke,’ he says to the barman, holding up a finger against the din. The bar area is crowded. With difficulty Adrian turns himself around and leans against the bar so he can see Mamakay.
‘Great place!’ says the man next to him.
Adrian turns and nods. The other man is young, younger than Adrian at any rate, dressed in chinos and a polo shirt, the modern uniform of the European in the tropics; his skin is sweating and yellowish. He sits with his back to the bar, his thumbs hooked into his pockets, fingers framing his crotch. On the other side of him a sullen-faced woman leans curled into his body. Her left hand slips up and down the inside of the man’s thigh. Adrian nods at her and as he does so recognises her as the girl in the purple top he’d seen here once before.
The man is still speaking. ‘My base is upcountry. I’m in town for a meeting with our funders. Have to take them round a few of our projects, reassure them we’re putting their money to excellent use, let them have their picture taken with a disabled kid, or better still a former child-soldier. That’s the sort of thing makes them cream.’
‘Is that right?’ says Adrian. He looks around for the barman.
‘Well, keep your fingers crossed for me. Because I like this place and I plan to stay.’ The man next to him is still talking. ‘The women,’ and here he whistles, leans over and whispers, ‘buy them a couple of Cokes and they’ll let you fuck them all night.’
At that moment the barman arrives with the drinks. Relieved, Adrian prepares to move on. As he makes to leave the man says, ‘I’m Robert. Hey, bring your girl over. Make an evening of it.’
‘No thanks,’ says Adrian.
At the table Mamakay watches him as he sets down the drinks. ‘Do you know that man?’
‘No,’ says Adrian quickly. ‘God, no.’
‘What were you talking about?’
Though Adrian does not particularly wish to repeat Robert’s remark he does.
Mamakay sits in silence, not looking at him or apparently listening any longer, but staring at Robert, who in turn appears oblivious, his attention occupied by the girl who has now moved to stand in front of him, her legs straddling his knee, rotating her hips in time to the music. Mamakay jumps up and heads to the bathroom. Adrian sits and waits, drinks his beer, wonders how to bring back her mood. He spots her coming back from the bathroom. She smiles softly at him as she takes her seat. He is about to ask her if she is all right, when a disturbance at the bar draws his attention away. It is Robert, he appears to be involved in an argument. Adrian sees the girl who’d been stroking his thigh snatch up her handbag and stalk away. Mamakay is watching, too. When it is quiet again, she picks up her drink and takes a sip.
‘What was all that about?’ says Adrian.
‘While we were in the Ladies I told her what he’d said to you.’
It takes a moment for Adrian to absorb this. He looks sideways at Robert, but the aid worker has his back turned to them.
‘I see,’ says Adrian eventually.
Mamakay speaks again, more quietly this time.
‘I beg your pardon.’ Adrian bends in to hear her.
‘She was my classmate. We were at school together. Her name is Josephine.’
A residual memory of his thoughts when he first saw the girl in the purple top flushes Adrian with shame. When he looks at the bar, Robert is gone.
He did not come here expecting to find happiness.
In the evenings they go out, sometimes to old places, sometimes to new ones. He wants to know this city of hers, he wants to share her world. They eat together, at Mary’s or else buy food from the women who sell to working men from roadside stalls. Less often she cooks. She eats with her hands and laughs at his jokes; she can sometimes be outrageous and flamboyant in his company, as he, Adrian, is in hers. He barely recognises this part of himself, though it is not new, just forgotten. They make love often. Adrian does not know how he is capable, but he is, and still achieves new pleasure. It amazes him that she feels cold at night. She falls asleep, once during an embrace, her thighs either side of him, her upper body curled on his chest. He lies there for an hour, scarcely breathing, to allow her to sleep on. He looks at her, from this awkward angle, too close. Yet manages to memorise the configuration of every hair on her head. Once he dares to lift his hand and touch her hair. There are questions he wants to ask. How many lovers has she known? Who are they and what are their names? Who was the first and who the latest? Did she love any of them? He wants to ask, but he does not dare because he is afraid of what would happen once he began, because he knows he would never be able to stop.