‘What is it?’ asks Adrian.
‘Where is my gold chain? I cannot find my gold chain. Somebody’s taken it. Has this matter been reported? Why has nobody returned the chain to me?’ Her voice has acquired weight.
‘Tell me about the chain.’
‘It is gold. Somebody’s taken it.’
‘Was it a special chain?’
‘It was gold.’
Adrian listens. He reassures Agnes everything possible will be done to find her chain. He doesn’t want to let her stray too far from the path of their discussion. The mention of the chain may be significant, then again it may not. He makes a mental note of the detail, of where in the conversation it arose, like one of the pins he left upon the map of her travels.
‘What else do you remember? From before you left home.’
She shakes her head and turns her hands over in her lap. She seems to have lost her place.
He urges her gently on. ‘What do you remember? Tell me one thing you remember. Just one.’
A dog barking, over and over again. It woke her from her dreams. The sound was bothersome, adding to her headache. She was lying on her bed thinking she should get up, but couldn’t seem to rouse herself. She kept being drawn back into her dreams. Somewhere somebody was burning rice fields, even though it was the wrong time of the year. The smoke entered her room and her lungs. It tasted bitter, made her nauseous. Outside the sun was rising, the shadows shifted at the window. She knew she had to get out of the house, but she remained in the grip of her dreams.
‘What were the dreams?’
She cannot remember.
Adrian waits, not wanting to interrupt more than necessary. Sitting before him in the heat of the room, Agnes twitches slightly, her shoulders and head slump and her eyelids flutter. Adrian leans forward. Though he can’t be sure, it looks very much as though she is asleep.
‘Agnes?’ he says softly. At the sound of his voice she pulls herself up. ‘You can go back to the ward now.’
It is nearly time for lunch. Salia steps forward and helps Agnes to her feet. She seems very frail.
At the door, Adrian says, ‘Salia will see about your chain.’
Agnes looks at him.
‘Your chain.’
‘What chain?’ Her face is blank.
‘The gold chain you lost.’
She does not reply. She blinks and moves on.
Adrian watches her as she leaves, guiding herself around the desk and towards the door. She does not look back. There is no element of performance in her shuffling steps, the head that sways slightly as she makes her way down the corridor and out towards the women’s ward. He stands at the window and watches, sees Salia stop to talk to another staff member and Agnes shuffle on oblivious, Salia walk smartly to catch her up.
If she had been faking, Adrian would have to ask himself why. But he is quite sure what he saw was real. He watched her cross from one state to another, one in which she was concerned about the loss of a gold chain, the other in which she appeared to have no memory of the loss of the same item. He remembers the words of the man in the old department store, the one who had brought Agnes to the hospital. Salia had used the same words and tried to explain them to Adrian.
Agnes is crossed.
They are in the Patients’ Garden, the smoke from Ileana’s cigarette curling upward, entwining with the branches of the trees. Her elbow rests on the arm of the wooden bench, half an inch of ash droops from the end of the cigarette. Inside the pocket of her smock she fiddles with her lighter. Adrian can hear the rasping of the wheel against the flint. She is listening with her eyes upon him.
When he stops speaking she says, without taking her eyes away from him, ‘You are considering schizophrenia, of course?’
‘Of course,’ Adrian replies. ‘Though she’s clearly confused. And there are lapses. I don’t think I’m dealing with a psychotic. In fact, I’m as sure as I can be.’ And then, ‘You’ve never examined her?’
Ileana shakes her head, a movement which causes the ash to drop from her cigarette; she raises the remainder of it to her lips and draws deeply before discarding the butt among the fallen flowers.
‘What about Attila?’ says Adrian.
‘He tries to see all the patients, but there are so many. Besides, she doesn’t stay long. It would have amounted to an intake interview. Nothing more.’
Adrian picks a pod up from the ground and begins to pull it apart. The seeds fall out, clattering faintly on to the stones. He doesn’t want to say anything to Ileana just yet, about what he is thinking, the books he has been reading. He wants to wait until he is a little more certain. He needs to hold off talking to Attila, too. For now he is enjoying Ileana’s company, sitting here in the shade of the garden, the most peaceful place in the city. He’d like to carry on talking to her, to invite her for a beer. He realises he has no idea of her home life, whether she is here alone, married or single. He struggles to picture her anywhere else but here.
‘Where do you live? I mean here, in this place.’
‘A bungalow. By Malaika beach. I’ve been there about six months. Before that I had an apartment in town, a real dump. What I have now is so much better. You should come and see it.’
‘Are you there alone? I mean …’ He is fumbling a little now. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t prying. I was just thinking about safety.’ He finishes abruptly.
She laughs and looks at him; in her dark eyes there is genuine amusement. ‘I know what you mean. And the answer is yes, I’m on my own. And I feel safer here than anywhere in Israel, or Romania for that matter. I don’t suppose anybody back home would believe it if I told them.’ She laughs. ‘Last time I was in your bloody country I was followed round Haringey by some fucking pervert. I could have screamed my head off and nobody would have heard me.’
Ileana lights another cigarette and stands up. Together they leave the garden.
‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
On the way home he asks the driver to stop at the supermarket. Inside he moves up and down the aisles, perusing the imported products, savouring the air conditioning. The prices are almost beyond reach, the owners must be making a fortune. He selects two large packets of crisps, takes some beers from the cold cabinet and pays, counting out grubby notes. It is the end of the day, his mind is unwinding, he performs the task slowly, loses count and begins again.
Back in the taxi, heading out to the hospital, not across Julius’s bridge this time, but through the thick of the town. There is a song on the radio. Adrian can’t place it exactly, but it takes him back decades. The title track to a film, maybe. The rhythm lifts his mood. Not for the first time the face of the woman he saw talking to Babagaleh rises before him. This time he does nothing to suppress it, remembers the look she gave him, the way it touched his skin, leaving him exposed as he tried to slip past. He tries to focus upon the features of her face, but they elude him. He sees only the expression she wore, as if she knew exactly what he was doing as he tried to slip past Babagaleh. But then, all good-looking women possessed the same power, or so it seemed.
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.