I rose to use the bathroom. My shoulder throbbed faintly. I remembered my crashing progress through the garden, the immovable solidness of a tree trunk. There were a few scratches here and there, otherwise I was unhurt. The mirror displayed no further evidence. I looked the same as any other day, with the exception of an ashy cast to my skin and a smear of dark under my eyes. I would shake off the hangover soon enough with some food and coffee and in that way I might delay the effort and emotion involved in thinking about what I had done. I splashed water on my face, rinsed out my mouth and spat into the basin. Then I went to set some water on the stove to fill a bath.
I was returning from the bathroom with the emptied pan of water when I noticed a woman standing on the opposite side of the street. By then it was drizzling. The rain came in thin, viscous loops that seemed to hang from the sky. The woman had an umbrella up and gave the impression of a person waiting for something. It was her stillness, I suppose, she looked neither right nor left, but gripped the stem of the umbrella with both hands.
I refilled the pan under the tap, listening to the hiss of the cold water hitting the scalding metal. As I was about to carry the pan back to the bathroom the woman raised her head. I caught a glimpse of her profile, the tilt of her chin and nose. It was enough to stop me in my tracks. I put the pan in the sink, opened the window and looked out. What on earth could she be doing here? My first reaction was alarm: her visit must be connected to my behaviour of the previous evening.
I drew back. I did a turn of the room and went once more to the window. No doubt about it. Despite myself, hope, foolish and desperate, mingled with the fear. My heart thudded in my chest, my head reeled to the point of nausea. A memory of the altercation in the garden surfaced, like a drowned corpse from beneath the swamp. What had I said? What had I done? And why had Julius not come? Or Kekura or Ade Yansaneh on a diplomatic mission to mend bridges?
Hastily I threw the covers back over the bed and pulled on some clothes. I stepped outside on to the landing of the outside stairs just at the point Saffia looked up.
If I have never described my apartment to you, I should say now that to use the word apartment was to overstate the case. It was in reality a single though largish room, with a sink and stove at one end, a bed and a bathroom at the other. It is strange to admit but as Saffia hurried up the stairs all I could think was that this was not the way I had imagined her visiting me. She reached the top step, her face unsmiling and her gaze shifting as though she was searching for something.
‘Oh Elias!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve been waiting.’
‘You should have come up,’ I said, moving aside to let her in.
‘I did. I think I woke up your landlady.’
I followed her inside, sensitive to the smell in the room, of sweat and stale breath, the residual odour of vomit. Two steps into the room she turned to me, her voice as hollow as dead wood. What she said next swept my mind clear of thoughts.
‘Julius has been arrested.’
On the drive to the house Saffia told me what had happened. Two men had arrived at the house in the wake of the party, just after the last of the guests had departed. Plain clothes, it seemed, for neither wore uniforms. Julius and Saffia had not yet gone to bed. No reason had been given for the arrest, no warrant, no explanation. Julius protested, of course, but in the end had seen no other choice but to comply. Saffia had tried to telephone Ade and Kekura, but failing to reach either she had come to me. I’d flattered myself, thinking I was the first place she had turned. I watched her while she tried the telephone again, listening to the faint, maddening ringing. Nobody answered. She stood with her hands covering her face, shaking her head.
‘I’m sure it’s a mistake,’ I said. ‘What else could it be?’
I suppose I had imagined we would simply wait it out. God knows I had no experience of these things, but I was — I am — by nature inclined to caution. There seemed no point in getting worked up by what could yet turn out to be a false alarm. We might even be sitting down together in a few hours laughing about it. I genuinely believed it. What I wanted to do was to stay with Saffia, here in this house. I could offer her comfort, I could offer her strength. I could be her protector. We would wait it out, and when it was over — well, I didn’t think that far ahead, only of the possibility of the hours between.
Saffia picked up her car keys and proposed we drive to Ade and Kekura’s homes.
No sign of Ade. A neighbour told us he had been taken away in the early morning. Ade had been one of the last to leave the party; they’d been waiting for him when he arrived home. From Ade’s place we hastened to Kekura. There we found neither Kekura, nor news of him. There were three police stations within reasonable proximity of Saffia and Julius’s house and we visited each in turn. The officer in charge at the first station tried to reassure Saffia that missing husbands had a habit of turning up. Saffia described the men who had come to the house that morning. He’d looked at her then, a narrow, curious stare, shrugged his shoulders and turned his back to us. I took Saffia by the arm and pulled her away.
We drove through silent streets. Back at the house Saffia continued to make calls. We discovered nothing new. Nothing on the radio either, just the usual round-up of births, deaths and marriages. All news was of the successful moon landing.
Saffia told me her aunt was away. I went into the kitchen and found some food left over from the night before. There was a new throbbing in my temple and I drank several glasses of water. I carried some cold olele and plantain back into the sitting room.
There was still then, at least in me, the certainty that this was not as serious as it appeared, that Julius would yet stride through the door any minute and turn the whole thing into a huge laugh, a story to tell against himself. I even, astonishingly, entertained quite seriously for several minutes the notion of kidnap, and then the idea that this was a practical joke on the part of Kekura and Ade. No doubt it was the bizarre nature of the previous evening: the moon landing, my own fall from grace, the residual alcohol in my bloodstream; anything had begun to seem possible.
One o’clock. Julius was not back. Two o’clock. Julius was not back. Four-thirty. Julius was not back. Five o’clock. Six-forty-five. Eight o’clock.
The hours dragged by, at other times sped bumpily past. At the sound of the telephone bell Saffia jumped up and snatched the receiver only to slump in disappointment when it was not Julius. Darkness came, encroaching upon hope. Somewhere a child was being beaten, the cries seemed to go on for minutes. Between Saffia and me, silence. Then Saffia rose and as she did so uttered a long sigh, of which she seemed entirely unaware. When it was over her physicality was altered; her shoulders sagged as though she was literally deflated. She moved around the room turning on the lights.
I said, ‘Is there anything at all Julius might have been arrested for?’
‘Of course not.’
We rehearsed the events of the morning, the possibilities — of which there were few. At the end of it she repeated what she had said at the start. None of it made any sense.
I poured us drinks. Saffia protested she didn’t want anything. I persuaded her it would help. She had not touched food all day. After a single sip she set the glass back upon the table. As for me, the action of the alcohol, the hair of the dog, had an immediate and soothing effect upon my nervous system.