when he saw Taduno approaching.
None of his other neighbours paid him any attention. They busied themselves with their evening chores, their curiosity about him having died since he re-emerged into the world. As far as they were concerned, he was now one of them, having shown that he could survive seven whole days without seeing sunlight and without running mad or hurting himself.
‘I haven’t seen you around all day,’ Aroli said, after they had exchanged greetings.
‘I went out to attend to an urgent matter.’
‘I see.’ Aroli sounded curious.
Taduno fiddled in his pocket for his keys and opened the door. ‘Please come in.’ Somehow he managed not to show just how troubled he was.
‘Wow!’ Aroli exclaimed the moment he stepped into the house. ‘Looks like you’ve been doing a lot of cleaning. The place is spotless!’
‘It took me seven days to achieve,’ Taduno said.
‘Was that why you locked yourself away?’
‘Not really. Yes, I did a lot of cleaning, but it was more a time of soul-searching for me.’
‘I see.’
‘Take a seat, please.’
They sat opposite each other.
‘You said you went out to attend to an urgent matter?’
‘Yes, I have been trying to follow Lela’s trail.’
Aroli sat up. ‘What have you discovered?’
Taduno hesitated.
‘You can trust me,’ Aroli assured him.
‘Lela was not arrested. She was kidnapped.’
‘Kidnapped by who?’ Aroli asked, a frown on his face.
‘By the government.’
Aroli’s jaw dropped. ‘Where did you get that information?’
‘From a certain sergeant in a certain police station,’ he replied, not keen to reveal his source.
‘I don’t understand. Why would the government kidnap Lela?’ Aroli scratched his head.
‘I asked myself the same question, and the answer is not so pleasant.’
‘Which is?’
‘Security agents arrest you if you are believed to have committed an offence. But if the government sees you as a threat, they kidnap you.’
Aroli scratched his head some more, slowly, his brain ticking loudly. ‘That means Lela must be in grave danger.’
‘You get the picture.’
They fell into silence.
‘What are you going to do?’ Aroli asked, at last.
‘I intend to find her.’ Taduno’s voice was grim with determination.
Aroli shut his eyes tightly, as if trying to erase a bad memory, perhaps a reality too difficult to accept. ‘I don’t know how to put this,’ he began, uncertainly.
‘Put what?’ Taduno raised his brows in question.
‘You showed up claiming to be somebody we know. We all see you as a man who has lost his identity – in fact, a man who has lost his mind. But I have been worried since that first morning, and my mind tells me something is not quite right.’
Taduno remained silent.
Aroli continued. ‘You know too much about us to be a stranger, too much to be a man who has lost his mind.’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘I’m worried that it could be the rest of us who have lost our minds. I’m worried that a man who has lost his mind cannot be as sane as you are. You know so much about us, yet we know nothing about you. Is it possible that we are the ones who have forgotten the past? Honestly, I suspect that this could be the case.
‘Tell me about your life. I mean the life you used to live before we forgot you. I need to know about you. I need to know so that I can remember all that I have forgotten.’ Aroli was beginning to sound desperate.
Taduno sighed, touched by Aroli’s candour. ‘At first the life I lived was simple. But then things changed and it became complex.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not something I can talk about now.’
Aroli nodded his understanding. He rose to leave. The look of confusion on his face deepened; a look that wanted answers to so many questions. In a quiet voice he said, ‘I’m prepared to help you find Lela, if you need my help.’
Taduno reasoned that it would do him no harm to take Aroli into his confidence. ‘I intend to go to the police station again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You can come with me if you are not busy.’
Aroli agreed to go with him.
FOUR
The following morning they took a yellow taxi to the police station. The taxi had been recently repainted, and it wasn’t until they got into the back seat that they realised that the taxi was repainted to attract passengers. It looked very clean on the outside, but on the inside it was battered and smelled of damp.
It was too late for them to climb out by the time they discovered the ruse, so they made themselves as comfortable as possible on the torn leather seat which Taduno suspected was lice-infested. And as the taxi drove them to the police station, he filled Aroli in about his encounter the previous day with Sergeant Bello.
‘He could be the key to finding Lela,’ he concluded. ‘He knows something, but I doubt if he would want to share what he knows with us at the police station. He was not comfortable talking to me yesterday.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘I suggest we meet him on neutral ground.’
‘Makes sense to me,’ Aroli agreed.
‘But we must be careful the way we approach him. Policemen can be very difficult people.’
‘I get you.’
They made the rest of the journey in silence.
Luck was on their side. They found Sergeant Bello alone in the office, dozing; a man with nothing meaningful to do, with no time for anything meaningful. The sound of approaching footsteps woke him out of his reverie, and he put on a smile and his worn beret, which he hurriedly picked up from his battered desk.
‘Good afternoon, Sarge,’ Taduno greeted. ‘Remember me?’
‘Ah, good afternoon! Of course, I remember you! How can I forget my friend?’ The Sergeant smiled expansively.
Taduno
