The Memory of Love (18 page)

He presses a beer can against his forehead, feels the cool seep through his body. Six o’clock. The day is over.

CHAPTER 19

‘What’s the time, please?’

Elias Cole was asleep when Adrian arrived, his eyelids fractionally open. For once his breathing was inaudible, causing a momentary hesitation in Adrian accompanied by a double beat of his heart. Of death, he had no experience, except that of his own father. Pneumonia, the official version. It had been a slow death, an awkward lingering. Adrian knew enough to know how these matters were generally handled. A dose of penicillin withheld, the gentle, cold kiss of the morphine needle. By the time Adrian arrived the bed sheets had already been changed. All the time his father was in the home, Adrian chided himself for not visiting more often. Not for his father, who barely recognised him. Or for his mother, who believed, or maintained, that Adrian’s job was extremely demanding. But for himself. He knew he’d regret it. He chided himself. He’d done it anyway.

Adrian walks to the window and draws the curtain against the sunlight.

‘It’s two o’clock.’

He helps the old man to a glass of water. From elsewhere the sound of the expatriate medical staff singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a German colleague. Minutes before Adrian had stood with them in the staff room, sipping vinegary, dusty wine. He’d slipped away before the cutting of the cake.

Adrian sits, the other man’s eyes upon him. ‘You told me people often wondered what Julius saw in you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that you yourself often wondered the same thing.’

‘I have no illusions.’

‘But what did you see in him, in Julius?’

‘I saw Saffia. Nothing but Saffia.’

*

20 July 1969. The Sea of Tranquillity.

It was all done for the Americans, of course. So they could take the afternoon off and watch at home with beer and barbecues. It was, after all, their money, their president, their rocket, their show. They were the winners. The rest of the world could but watch. The American Embassy on my way to the Ocean Club was alive with light and noise, dignitaries arriving by the score. The Soviet Embassy by contrast was closed and dark, a house of mourning. Winner takes all. The Soviets had even lost the loyalty of an insignificant state such as ours. Our Prime Minister – or was that the year he made himself President? Our President was at that moment rubbing shoulders with the Americans, basking in their glory, despite years of Soviet munificence.

The taxi I was travelling in came to a halt behind a long line of traffic. I took my chances and climbed down. Moments later it started to rain, but by then somebody had already claimed the empty taxi. No choice but to keep walking. I’d forgotten my umbrella. As luck would have it I passed a bar I knew and decided to stop for a drink to escape the rain. The bartender had the radio tuned to the World Service with all the preamble, the discussions and interviews, the expert opinion that would fill the hours up until the attempt. Who cared? Not I. I finished my first drink. I thought of Saffia and felt the familiar jolt of yearning.

My second whisky was followed by a third. They watered down the spirits in this place, I’d be hard-pressed to get drunk. So I stayed and drank. I drank to avoid the rain. I drank to avoid too early an arrival. I drank to keep my new shirt from getting wet. Most of all I drank to postpone, painfully, exquisitely, the moment when I would be in Saffia’s company again.

All talk in the bar was of the evening’s events. The same all over town, no escaping it. The mood of confidence was unshakeable; do you believe me when I say that? Men had died, it’s true. But America was the superpower. It was a time of gods and we in Africa were mere mortals.

‘I thought maybe you had forgotten me.’ A woman’s voice, soft and ingratiating.

I swivelled round. It took me a moment to place the young woman standing next to me. She spotted my hesitation, her eyes flickered in the direction of the barman, as if to check whether he was watching. Her smile though remained turned upon me. It was the girl from the bar, the one with whom I had spent the night the day of my first visit alone with Saffia. I had taken her home with me. I’d given her no thought from the moment I put her in a taxi and gave her a sum of money that amounted to somewhat more than the fare. Still, in my present state the thought of her company, the distraction it offered, was moderately appealing.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How nice to see you.’

She replied, ‘I have thought about you. I hoped you would come and find me.’

‘Well, here I am. What would you like to drink?’ I didn’t bother with excuses, what was the point? We both knew what it had all been about. She could play coy all she wanted. I clicked my fingers for the barman.

Why I invited the girl to the Ocean Club, I don’t know. An anger licking at my insides. Perhaps I wanted to spite Saffia. Her love for her husband, her immaculate coolness, her honour that seemed designed to keep me at a distance and yet allowed her friendships with men as she pleased.

And then, of course, the sound of her, the day I went to deliver the chairs. It burned. It burned.

Kekura was leaning against the bar when we entered.

‘Cool shirt, man. I thought for a moment Julius had just walked in.’ He looked at the girl, waiting to be introduced. I had forgotten her name, if I had ever known it.

‘Hello, my name is Kekura. Kekura Conteh.’ He extended his hand to her.

‘Hello,’ she replied shyly. She didn’t proffer her name, so neither of us were any the wiser. Kekura slipped off his stool and the girl sat down.

‘Are the others here?’ I asked.

‘Only Ade. I won’t be staying too long myself. I need to get up to the house and make sure everything is working.’

I remembered Kekura had been charged with providing the audiovisual entertainment because of his job with the state broadcasting station. I nodded. My head throbbed slightly. I was just considering what might fix it better, another whisky or a glass of water, when I saw Julius and Saffia.

The Ocean Club. Let me sketch it for you. A semicircular bar. A dance floor, vast and open to the sky. Sometimes they played live music there. Tables scattered all around. The sea was only a few yards away, you could walk straight on to the sand. The inside of the club was reached by a stairway of curved steps, which led almost directly on to the dance floor, so whoever had just arrived drew the eye of everyone in the room. Saffia was wearing a blue gown, the same dress as the day I first laid eyes upon her. I watched them descend, Julius one pace ahead, exactly as he’d been the day of the faculty wives’ dinner, when he was minded to skip the receiving line and she had drawn him back with the touch of her fingertips.

Kekura, too, stopped talking, and watched. I had the impression everyone in the room was engaged in the same act. Suddenly Saffia was standing next to me, greeting me, laying her hand upon my arm. No woman I knew had the power to alter my mood by such simple gestures. Where previously I had felt irritable, I was now elated.

‘Aren’t you excited, Elias?’ she said. I could smell her scent on the warm air, just for a moment.

‘Of course,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to look at her, aware of her hand still resting on my bare arm, the touch of her fingers. ‘It’s an historic moment.’

‘I wonder what the significance of this will be?’ Kekura said. ‘In ten years’ time, when we look back.’

‘I do, too,’ I said.

Saffia removed her hand. I was aware of her turning away to see who else was there.

‘Well, I pray it puts an end to this race between Russia and America. Perhaps the Americans will stop what they are doing in Vietnam.’

‘I doubt that,’ I said. I had no desire to be forced by Kekura into a discussion; my brain was slowly liquefying.

Saffia rejoined us. ‘Everyone else is wondering whether they’ll find men on the moon.’

‘There are not,’ Kekura replied flatly. ‘Otherwise we would surely see them waving at us.’

Saffia laughed. ‘No. But who is to say there aren’t other life forms, micro-organisms, plant life?’

She was a scientist, of course.

Julius joined us then, back from working the tables. Kekura called the barman and ordered more drinks. The conversation broke and reformed around Julius, who raised his glass and proposed a toast.

‘My friends, after today nothing will ever be the same again.’ And we all drank, not knowing how true his words would be for all of us.

I’d forgotten the girl, who was still sitting on the stool. We’d all shifted slightly to accommodate the arrival of first Saffia and then Julius, gradually forming a circle from which the girl was now excluded. She stood up and came over to stand next to me. I gave no response, the way I acted she might have been a stranger. I was aware of Saffia and Julius watching me. I wondered what on earth had possessed me to bring the girl? Perhaps if she’d stayed where she was I could have quietly dispatched her before the party. But now, in the wake of this act of presumption, I had no choice but to bow to the inevitable.

‘This is Adline, a friend.’ Adline was another girl I had once known, a girl of similar character; in the moment I seized her name out of the air.

Saffia nodded. Julius, his eyebrows fractionally raised, said, ‘Hello, Adline.’

‘My name is Yamba,’ the girl said loudly, as though broadcasting a public statement. She emphasised the two syllables of her name.
Yamba
. ‘And I am very pleased to make the acquaintance of you people.’
Pee-pool
. I realised I had barely ever listened to her. She was not from the city as I had assumed, but from the provinces. Saffia and Julius stared at her politely, faintly nonplussed, as did Kekura, nobody quite knowing how to follow her statement. It was Saffia who broke the spell of the moment.

‘Well, very nice to meet you. Are you at the university?’

‘What university is that?’

I butted in. ‘Maybe we should think about going. The traffic is bad, you know.’

‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ said Julius.

‘Actually, I’m glad you reminded me. I should be going. Is there somebody at the house to let me in?’ Kekura, mercifully, helped bring the conversation round to another tack and in a few moments we had moved on to other things.

Julius, as I have told you before, attracted people and soon others in the bar migrated towards our group. A woman I recognised from the campus. I didn’t know anything about her, except that she was a black American. She was with a mulatto fellow, a writer who also ran a dance troupe, with some success or so I had been told. Saffia asked him whether he felt inspired by the night’s events.

All over the city people were gathering together in homes, in compounds, in bars to listen to news of Apollo 11’s progress on the radio. We were still at the Ocean Club when the announcement came that the lunar module would soon make the attempt to land. The proprietor ordered the music turned down, the room fell silent. Nothing except the hiss of static and the sound of the waves. I could see the water, faintly phosphorescent, advancing and retreating to the call of the very moon upon whose surface mankind would shortly arrive. The announcement came, followed by a short, black space and then the voice of the astronaut: ‘Houston. Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.’ Everyone in the room began to applaud and to congratulate each other. Even the proprietor, a miserly fellow by nature, was moved to order drinks on the house. The bartender sprang from stillness into life.

Julius punched the air and shouted, ‘The Eagle has landed!’

The girl Yamba, gazing at him from atop a barstool, asked, ‘What eagle?’

‘The name of the lunar module,’ I explained. When she looked at me as though I had spoken in Dutch, I added, ‘The spaceship.’

‘What spaceship are you talking about?’

I explained the mission to the moon, which had evidently completely passed her alone in the world by, she continued to regard me in disbelief. Some part of our conversation caught Julius’s attention and he turned to listen, as did others. At the end of my account, she pointed to the night sky.

‘This small moon here.’

‘Of course, that moon.’

She drew in her chin, put her hands to her hips and her head to one side, assessing me for the possibility I was making a fool of her. ‘Well, tell me one thing,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘What kind of person would want to do a thing like that?’

At that Julius shouted with laughter and slapped his thigh, slopping his drink around in his glass.

‘Excellent! I should let you talk to some of my pupils. First principles. Why?’

‘To humiliate the Soviets,’ said Kekura. ‘This is the new scramble for Africa. The scramble for space. A hundred years ago it was us they were fighting over. Our land, our wealth, our souls.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ It was Ade, who had joined us in the last ten minutes. ‘And to stop the newspapers talking always about Vietnam, Vietnam.’

‘It’s hard to disagree.’ The writer-dancer spoke next. ‘But if it were me I know why I would do it.’

‘Why?’ asked Saffia.

‘To fly.’

Saffia said, ‘I like that.’

‘To fly,’ repeated Julius. ‘To test the limits of our endeavour, of our courage.’ He was serious. ‘Otherwise what point is there in being alive?’