An evening they are sitting up on the balcony upstairs. The occupant of the flat is away for a few days. They carry their beers up the outside stairs. ‘For a change of scenery,’ she says. ‘I’m tired of looking at concrete.’ There is a view of the roof of the house in front, of clusters of huts, panbodies as Adrian now knows them to be called.
A group of ragged children march across an open space, pushing one of their number ahead of them like a prisoner. One of them smacks the boy in front in the back and he staggers.
‘Hey!’ Mamakay is on her feet and shouting at the children, who stop and look up. One by one they drop their gaze and shuffle off.
‘You couldn’t do that in Britain.’
She sits down opposite him. ‘Is that so?’ She seems amused.
‘Yes,’ says Adrian. And then, ‘Did you have brothers and sisters?’
‘No,’ says Mamakay.
‘That’s unusual, isn’t it?’
She nods. ‘I don’t know why. I wanted a little brother, you know, like little girls do. I used to ask my mother. She never said no, and she never said yes. After a while I stopped. I must have changed my mind. So, no. No brothers or sisters.’
Adrian has yet to tell Mamakay about his relationship with her father. There is no genuine conflict of interest, he tells himself. Elias Cole is his patient, not Mamakay. And Elias Cole is not really a patient, not as such. It requires handling, though. In Britain his relationship with her would undoubtedly be viewed as problematic from a professional standpoint. This, though, is not Britain.
Something flies out of the darkness and drops into a pawpaw tree, the sound of its wings like a mainsheet loosed against the wind. The tree is the height of the balcony, the leaves almost within reach. Mamakay shines a torch into its recesses and they see a fruit bat. Adrian can hear the sucking sound as it eats the fruit, apparently undisturbed by their proximity. A second bat arrives and nestles into the same crevice. Adrian is unprepared for how black they are, an unreal blackness: wings, snouts, claws, as though all the darkness had gathered in this one living creature. He would like to draw them, but they only come after dark, says Mamakay. She fetches an oil lamp and sets it on the table between them. She sits with her heels resting on the lip of her chair, her arms across her knees, one hand holding her beer bottle. The light illuminates the planes of her face, the edges of her lips, the reflection of her eyes. He discovers she studied history at university, like her father.
‘Did you ever think about getting a position at the university?’
She replies, ‘I never finished my studies.’
‘Because of the war?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ She stands up, changing the subject. ‘Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I need to eat. Let’s go out.’ Suddenly she is no longer relaxed but restless.
‘Sure,’ says Adrian, who has yet to deny her anything.
When he is away from her, he tries to conjure up her face. He closes his eyes, but the magic eludes him. When they are together he watches, learning her features, her gestures. Still, afterwards, he cannot make it happen. It is as though when she goes she takes everything of herself with her.
He realises too that she asks him almost nothing about himself, not even when they will next meet. In those moments they are together, she gives him her attention entirely; by the same token he draws none of her curiosity. It bothers him. As he watches her lying with her back to him, a memory of the night at the bar: the girl with the purple top arrives, skewed and bent out of shape, moulded into something else. The paranoia of a man newly in love. She senses something because she rolls over to look at him, frowns slightly. ‘What is it?’
‘Have you done this many times before?’ he asks.
She raises herself up on one elbow and traces his Adam’s apple lightly with her forefinger. He is afraid to ask. She removes her finger and says, ‘What are you asking me?’
He can barely breathe: ‘Have you done this before?’
She is gazing at the ceiling, an arm extended, drawing circles with her index finger in the air. To Adrian there is something mesmeric about that finger, as it passes in and out of the shadows cast by the moon.
‘No,’ she replies.
The relief is so immense his bowels turn to water.
Still tracing patterns on the ceiling, she continues, ‘Have you?’
‘No,’ replies Adrian.
She says, ‘Fine, then.’ And rolls over with her back to him once more. His relief disappears.
‘You make me happy,’ he says to her back.
‘Good,’ she replies to the wall.
‘And it frightens me.’
She turns to face him. ‘You shouldn’t be frightened,’ she says, not whispering like him, but speaking in a normal voice.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it is pointless. Whatever happens will happen.’
Now he rolls over on to his back and watches the moon shadows on the ceiling. There is thunder in the distance. He rolls back to her, misjudges the distance between them and knocks his head hard against her face. The violence of the blow jars his teeth. He finds her mouth, kisses her and tastes blood, fetches a box of matches and strikes one against the dark.
‘I’ve hurt you,’ he says, peering at her lip. The match dies. He lies back down and places his arms around her. He can feel her shaking; a giggle escapes from the place between them. Suddenly they are both laughing.
In the morning, because he has already said things he did not intend to say and now is reckless, he asks, ‘Who have you loved the most?’
‘A man, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not a dog?’
‘No.’
‘Or a bat?’
‘Not a bat, either.’ He is happy to banter, but also insistent.
She is cleaning the kitchen, rubbing Vim on the surfaces. He likes that he is privy to her small domestic routines. She turns around to face him, her hands white with powder, a scouring sponge in one hand; milky water runs down her arm, drips off her elbow. Her face is smiling and yet serious. ‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes. Have you been in love before?’ He wants to know whether what is happening has happened before. As lovers always do. He feels like a cliché, it does not stop him.
‘Once.’ She holds up a whitened index finger. ‘Just once. We practically grew up together. We were together for ever, at least it felt like it.’
‘Would you have married him?’
‘Yes,’ she replies. There is no hesitation and it hurts him, a tiny thorn, though he had asked her to be honest. He is silent. She turns away to put the sponge in the sink and he comes up behind her, places his arms around her waist and rests his chin in the dip of her shoulder blade.
‘What happened?’
‘What usually happens. We grew in different directions. He was more ambitious than me. Eventually we’d grown so far apart we couldn’t touch each other any more. He changed, too.’ She shrugs.
Adrian stands still. She continues to rub at a stain on the counter. This game is too dangerous. He doesn’t want to ask any more questions. He stops speaking.
And Mamakay naturally asks him nothing at all.