The Memory of Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

The man brushed at Adrian’s arm, as if to remove the woman’s touch.
    ‘Sorry, sorry! That woman is a crazy woman. No family.’ And touched his finger lightly to his temple, a butterfly taking to the wing.
    Adrian shook his head, flustered, disappointed at the failure of his own response, but when he looked about for the woman she had gone.
    He thinks about her sometimes, thinks of her now, at the open window. For days he had waited for her. But she never came.
    It is nearly one o’ clock. Lunchtime. These days he is acutely aware of the hours of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meals have become more than punctuation marks in his day, they have become events in themselves. When he was a young man, doing his training in the hospital, there were times when he would forget to eat. While he was preparing for his doctorate he would leave his books to run across the road and buy a slice of pizza from the takeaway opposite; unwilling even to wait the minutes it took the Greek owner to warm it, he would eat it as he made his way back to his study, cold congealed cheese and curled ham.
    He closes the window, trapping the sounds on the other side of the glass. There is dust from the sill on his palms, a fine, red, ubiquitous dust that covers everything. At this time of year it hangs in the air, a red mist, obscuring the hills behind the city, hovering above the horizon. Adrian feels the dust in the back of his throat every time he breathes; his skin and nose itch, the wind sucks the moisture out of his pores. He finds a handkerchief in his pocket, he has taken to carrying one again, dampens it with bottled water and rubs at his palms. And though rust-coloured stains rise on the white cloth, he feels as if all he is doing is working the dust into the layers of skin. There are days he feels constantly soiled, can feel the dust trapped beneath his shirt, clinging to his damp skin.
    The canteen is still empty, save for two men in porter’s uniforms hunched over scattered Lotto tickets and a newspaper. The woman behind the counter heaps rice upon his plate and then, turning to the two tureens behind her, lifts the lid of the nearest and spoons chicken and sauce on top of the rice. A fortnight or so before Adrian had noticed how the woman served the local staff in the queue from the other tureen. He had asked the woman behind the counter what was inside the other pot.
    ‘Chicken.’
    Her unhelpfulness had provoked his insistence.
    ‘I’ll have some of that, please.’ The woman had duly served him with what appeared to be identical chicken stew. At the table Adrian ate a spoonful. The food was fiery with pepper. Glad to be alone, he’d reached for a glass of water and another, returned to his office without finishing his meal, his mouth and lips still smarting.
    Since then the woman behind the counter nods at him, and sometimes smiles. She appears to gain no particular satisfaction from what occurred, rather it seems to give their daily encounters a modest intimacy. Adrian remembers that day for the chicken stew and also because it was the day the new patient sent for him.
    That the new patient was a man of some standing was evidenced by the fact he had a private room. Adrian passed the room every day on his way to his office. Never had he seen any visitors, save a retainer carrying sometimes a cloth-covered basket, sometimes a knotted sheet of soiled bedlinen, sometimes a pile of laundered clothes. Another time Adrian had glimpsed, through the slit of the partially opened door, the retainer sitting on the bed, fanning the torpid air with a raffia fan, chasing flies and adjusting the bed sheets with a twitch of the fingers, just like the mothers on the children’s ward.
    The day Adrian returned to his office, his lips smarting, he had found the retainer squatting on his haunches outside his office door.
    ‘Can I help you?’ Adrian unlocked the heavy door and the man rose and followed him into the room. Once inside he handed Adrian