‘I dream. It is such that I am afraid to sleep. But it m-m-m-makes no sense. Sometimes in the day they come, sometimes by night.’ His fingers work upon his forehead. ‘Sometimes I smell something that is not there.’
‘Take your time.’ Adrian urges Adecali on, careful not to push the pace too much. ‘What is it you smell?’
‘I smell roast meats. I hear screaming and banging. And then I smell roasted meat.’
In the afternoon Adrian has a meeting with Attila. He makes his way to the man’s office, forces himself to drop his shoulders, to take deep breaths of the sea-dampened air and walks on past the ornamental palms, the edges of whose great leaves move in the wind, creating a rattling sound which reminds him, as it did the first time, of the spinnakers of yachts at the quay in Norwich. High in the sky a pair of vultures wheel on the rising currents.
Five minutes later he is in the seat opposite Attila. Attila leans far back into his chair, elbows on the table, fingers laced, considering Adrian from beneath hooded lids. He loves a game of cat and mouse, thinks Adrian. Still, it was true to say that though the chief psychiatrist had more or less ignored Adrian he’d also given him the free run of the hospital, had not hampered his efforts. Adrian clears his throat and begins to speak, describing the sessions, their nature, the patients he selected to attend and the reasons for those choices. His choice was heavily determined by whether or not they spoke English, something he does not mention now. Attila listens in silence.
When Adrian has finished he waits for Attila’s response, noticing for the first time the glossy darkness beneath the other man’s eyes. Despite the robustness of his physique, he looks exhausted. Attila leans across and moves a pen a few inches across his desk, shifts a paper or two. It is all an act, thinks Adrian, this ponderousness. Attila is sly and quick and clever. He is dedicated to what he does. Nobody else would do this job.
Adrian likes him, he wishes he could tell him so.
‘What do you aim to achieve with these sessions?’
The cat pawing the mouse.
‘To return the men to normality, to some degree of normality. So they can live their lives. Achieve everything anyone else could expect to achieve.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What is it they can expect to achieve?’
‘To hold down a job. To enjoy a relationship. To marry and have children.’
Atilla nods his head briskly. Suddenly he places his palms flat on the table and pushes himself up. ‘I have to attend a meeting at the Health Ministry. Why don’t you ride along with me?’
Adrian, who has things he could do, though nothing that could in any way be called urgent, senses this is a moment to comply. It is in the interests of his relationship with this awkward, heavy man.
‘Of course.’
Adrian follows Attila out, waits while he selects a key from a large bunch and locks his office door, then follows him to the front entrance of the hospital. Attila eases his bulk behind the wheel of his car, Adrian slides into the passenger seat. They pass through the centre of town, past the turning to the old department store. It is hot and Attila’s car does not have air conditioning. Adrian feels the sweat on his shirt and the back of his thighs.
Now they are away from the grid of roads, the traffic moves more freely here; a light breeze enters the vehicle. Adrian might have been relieved, except the breeze carries with it a foul odour of rotted fish and the high, sweet smell of sewage. The road leads sharply downhill. Tin huts reach out in either direction, an endless landscape of rusted tin. On the right is the sea. Not the green-blue sea visible from the campus, but water the colour of shit. Attila slows the car. Neither of them had spoken during the drive. Now Attila says in a conversational tone, ‘A few years back a medical team came here. They were here to survey the population.’
He pulls over, applies the handbrake and looks out of Adrian’s window, like a tourist pausing to appreciate the view. Ahead of them two shirtless men labour to push a cart loaded with scrap metal up the hill. Their bodies are lean and muscled, glowing with sweat and sun. A filthy dog, with perhaps the worst case of mange Adrian has ever seen, trots across the road. There are people moving in, out and around the huts. The rush of air as a car passes brings a fresh gust of the terrible smell.
‘Do you know what they concluded?’
Adrian shakes his head. Attila has said neither who the researchers were nor indicated the purpose of the study.
‘They were here for six weeks. They sent me a copy of the paper. The conclusion they reached was that ninety-nine per cent of the population was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.’ He laughs cheerlessly. ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder! What do you think of that?’
Adrian, who is entirely unsure what is expected of him, answers, ‘The figure seems high but strikes me as entirely possible. From everything I’ve heard.’
‘When I ask you what you expect to achieve for these men, you say you want to return them to normality. So then I must ask you, whose normality? Yours? Mine? So they can put on a suit and sit in an air-conditioned office? You think that will ever happen?’
‘No,’ says Adrian, feeling under attack. ‘But therapy can help them to cope with their experiences of war.’
‘This is their reality. And who is going to come and give the people who live here therapy to cope with this?’ asks Attila and waves a hand at the view. ‘You call it a disorder, my friend. We call it life.’ He shifts the car into first gear and begins to move forward. ‘And do you know what these visitors recommended at the end of their report? Another one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to engage in even more research.’ He utters the same bitter chuckle. ‘What do you need to know that you cannot tell just by looking, eh? But you know, these hotels are really quite expensive. Western rates. Television. Minibar.’ He looks across at Adrian. ‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘you carry on with your work. Just remember what it is you are returning them to.’
It is as close as he has ever come to praise.
Attila drops Adrian off outside the government building and walks away, leaving Adrian standing in the car park. As he makes his way to the main road to hail a taxi he considers Attila’s words. He recalls the conversation with Kai, two months ago now, after the attack by Agnes’s son-in-law. This is our country. He was rejecting Adrian’s offer of help. It was this that had stung so much, the idea he was neither wanted nor needed. It had simply never occurred to him.
Attila. The man is right, of course. People here don’t need therapy so much as hope. But the hope has to be real — Attila’s warning to Adrian. I fall down, I get up. Westerners Adrian has met despise the fatalism. But perhaps it is the way people have found to survive.
Saturday. The air is so still the woodsmoke from cooking fires lifts vertically into the air. The clouds are unmoving in the sky. Everything is quiet. No traffic on the roads. Even the birds are silent. Adrian is sipping coffee on the verandah of Mamakay’s upstairs neighbour.
‘I should be going,’ he says, meaning the opposite. He wants to know whether she is available for the rest of the day.
‘You can’t.’
He smiles. ‘Can’t I?’ he asks teasingly. ‘Why not?’
And she answers, ‘No, I mean you really can’t go. It’s Cleaning Saturday.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you have to stay in until midday, to clean your yard. Nobody is allowed on the streets except to clean them.’
He has never heard of it before. Mamakay explains. One of the juntas introduced the cleaning days. Their first act in power. By making everyone clean their neighbourhood on the last Saturday of the month they transformed the city. The optimism was short-lived. In the years that followed the capital was sacked twice. Still, Cleaning Saturdays survived and that was something.