The Blue Afternoon

by William Boyd

  She faced him. Square, strong. Small pale-lashed brown eyes. Odd, that combination. White skin, freckle-spattered, but very white. You’d think blue eyes. But no, brown, like unmilked coffee, a fierce stare. Tiny blisters of perspiration in the well-defined groove of her top lip.

  “I shot it,” she said. A soft accent. Shaht. Southern, was it? “I’m very sorry, it was a complete accident. I’m just learning—”

  His tongue sat inert in his dry throat.

  “—and it just sort of kicked up when I fired it. It went way high into the trees. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s an outrage,” he managed to say, weakly. “I could have died. Apology. I demand apology. Your name.”

  “Look, I’ve already apologised several times. I’ll apologise again: I’m sorry. No-one was hurt. It was an accident.”

  “What is your name?” It came out almost as a shriek.

  She looked at him.

  She sighed. “My name has nothing to do with this, or with you,” she said, her tone changing, becoming angrier, no-nonsense. “Whoever you are, you silly little self-important man. Your behaviour is most unreasonable, not to say offensive. Would you now please be on your way as you are interrupting our lesson.”

  BAD BLOOD

  The Chinese boy had died in the night, suddenly, but not unexpectedly. Ever since his operation it had been obvious he was ailing: he was feverish, he had absolute constipation, his tongue—which had been healing admirably—began to ooze pus and blacken around the sutures. Listerism and asepsis had achieved marvels. Even here in Manila, in San Jeronimo, the recovery rate in his wards was five times better than in Cruz’s, but when he saw these signs he knew his ability to intervene was over. It was rare to find peritonitis associated with erysipelas of the throat, but he had encountered it two or three times before. He assumed the streptococcus reached the serous membrane through the blood somehow. Anyway, he had dosed the boy with opiates, tried to make him comfortable and stood uselessly by as he had died. He knew the worst when he had come into the ward and seen the boy lying on his back, his knees drawn up, his fluttering hands held above his head to increase the capacity of the thorax. His face was already gaunt, his eyes restless, his hands cold and damp. He began to vomit regularly and his abdominal wall grew rigid, board-like. Meteorism became present, the abdomen tense and tympanitic on percussion. He complained not only of a burning pain in his gut but of a tormenting thirst. He was given a rectal injection of cold water. He drank a little iced milk and soda water, the tongue was painted with a solution of glycerine in an attempt to keep it moist. To no lasting avail. The boy’s pulse grew rapid, hard and wiry. He began to hiccough violently, a most disturbing symptom that Carriscant knew marked a serious failure in prognosis. He developed the classic face grippee, pinched and sunken, the naso-labial crease very deep. His tongue became coated and faul and the vomited matter was highly offensive. Sordes were present on the teeth and lips. Carriscant watched the boy’s piteous restlessness—there was no blessed coma in cases of peritonitis to ease the suffering—and watched as his limbs became cold and blue. In the act of dying there was a great gush of foul and brownish fluid from the mouth and rectum. Moments like these tormented Carriscant with a vision of the huge void of his ignorance and helplessness. His instruments were sterile, his operating theatre clean and disinfected, his hands were scrubbed pink, he wore freshly laundered white gowns and yet somehow, from somewhere, the dreaded streptococcus infected the boy’s blood, corrupting it. From ‘somewhere’…that vague supposition alone was bad enough. An incision in the tongue had produced an infection of the serous membrane in the abdomen. He knew the intestines would be covered in an exudation of pus and fluid, a thick layer of lymph along the lines of contact between the various coils of the bowel. Once infected, the patient’s body succumbed inevitably to the toxin of bad blood and a new impotency took over as you watched and waited for death. Bad blood…At times like these he understood his benighted precursors’ vain obsession with leeches and bleeding.

  He looked at the boy’s naked body as it lay before him on the dissecting table in the mortuary as he prepared to examine its morbid anatomy. Slightly plump with almost girlish breasts and a small scribble of pubic hair above the clenched genitals. He touched the cool, yielding flesh, pressed down on the rib cage, allowed his hands to shape the contours of the youth’s belly. He knew every component of that individual body, everything hidden behind that pliant but tough integument of skin. The inside of a man or woman was as familiar to him as the face of a friend or the layout of his sitting room, but it was a familiarity afforded only after death. The head, the chest, the spine, the heart…He did not dare advance across that threshold while the body lived. Here he was, a highly trained surgeon, the equal, he liked to think, of any in the entire civilised world and yet to all intents and purposes he was trapped, pinioned by fear and the pathetic limits of his knowledge. He was like a man of vast wealth who has purchased a palace of immense and unparalleled splendour. He can wander in the grounds, circle the exterior, peer through the windows, admire the gilded furniture and the lavish textiles, the fabulous works of art and glittering chandeliers. It is all mine, he could think, and yet he was for ever denied entry, on pain of death. On pain of death.

  He turned the boy over. Of course, he thought scornfully, one is always allowed access to the bladder or rectum, and those other portals the body provided itself, where catheters and probes, pincers and scalpels, could reach. How many times had he patiently ground down a suffering man’s bladderstones, his thin instruments deep inside the bladder, sawing and grinding. He was renowned for the delicacy of his manipulation: of the dozens of operations he had performed in the bladder only three had subsequently died of peritonitis. He knew at once when his touch had let him down. As the lithotrite was withdrawn or the catheter extracted from the penis, there was that small fatal signature of blood. Then the silent prayer: oh Lord, let it only be a scratch on the bladder wall. Even the tiniest of punctures seemed to bring down the heaviest of sentences…

  He rolled the boy over again, and reached for his scalpel, about to pull back once more the curtains on the body’s baffling fragile treasures. He had read recently of certain American doctors who were recommending the use of rubber gloves during operations—he could practically hear Cruz’s incredulous scoffing. Even he, Salvador Carriscant, proud herald of all that was new in medicine, had some doubts about that course of action—what would happen to your ‘touch’, the magic of the surgeon’s gift? That unique combination, as he had heard it expressed, of a lacemaker’s fingers and a seaman’s grip? What was the point of honing a skill if you then wilfully smothered it in rubber? It was like those Arab princesses hidden behind black veils. Why should a beautiful woman not bestow…

  And he thought of the American woman again, of course. Hardly an hour seemed to go by these days without her coming, unbidden, to mind. Something about the quality of her gaze, the geometry of her face, her odd colouring, had acted upon him with fiercesome, uncompromising effectiveness. Never before, never before…Like an inert liquid galvanised into crazy effervescence by a strange catalyst. And here she was, in his city…This was what unmanned him: he felt that curious weakness come upon him again, flowing out from some new gland in the base of his spine and spreading through his body like a tree.

  He set down his scalpel with a rattle, and bracing his arms, hung his head over the boy’s pale ruined corpse. Jesus Christ, he said in unfamiliar prayer, heaven help me.

  “Salvador, what’s wrong?” Pantaleon stepped into the room, anxious, concerned to find him this way.

  “I’m fine, fine,” he said straightening. “Just a little tired, I think.” He put the scalpel down. “This can wait.”

  He turned. Pantaleon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

  “What is it?” Carriscant said. “Can I have a discreet word?”

  Carriscant had one of the hospital porters drive him down to the docks where the quays on both
banks of the Pasig were as clotted as ever with shipping—steamships, square—and lateen-rigged schooners, junks and ferry boats, fat shallow-draught paddle steamers that could negotiate the silty reaches of the river upstream and the great wallowing cascos, barges cum houseboats, homes for the river’s transient population, moored four or five deep along the wharves. He was happy to be out of the hospital, quite content to do this favour for Pantaleon, as it gave him an opportunity both to compose himself and also scrutinise every European and American he saw in the passing carriages in the fervid hope of glimpsing that pale freckled face again and feeling the cool gaze of those candid brown eyes…

  The carriage pulled up at the foot of a narrow lane, Calle Crespo in Quiapo, where it seemed every second shop was a tinsmith’s and the air vibrated dully with the sound of hammers on galvanised iron. As he descended Carriscant saw a new illuminated advertisement across the junction: coney island shooting gallery—clearly the Americans were here to stay. At number 89, Crespo, he found the sign he was looking for: between ‘Sam. M. Goodforth, marine surveyor’ and ‘Pablo Eulegio, hat cleaner’ was his destination—‘Udo Leys, tobacco merchant’.

  After Annaliese’s father, Gerhardt Leys, and her sister had returned to Germany her uncle Udo had stayed on and had stoically watched the family fortunes remorselessly decline. Carriscant climbed the stairs and pushed open the office door. There was no secretary in the vestibule and in the office itself Udo was nowhere to be seen. The walls were lined with empty glass humidors and extravagant posters for Manila cigars. In the 1870s and 1880s the brothers had had the field more or less to themselves. Now there were eight cigar and cigarette factories in Manila alone: no-one needed to buy from Udo Leys any longer and he had been obliged to diversify, operating an opportunistic import-export business, waiting for a need to manifest itself and then racing desperately to supply it, whether it was bicycles or perfume, cattle feed or fancy goods. The last time Carriscant had seen him, Udo had told him in a conspiratorial whisper that he had seventy-five upright pianos in a warehouse in Tondo. “Think of all those new American schools,” he said, his voice ripe with the allure of profit, “all those assembly rooms…Who will play the Stars and Stripes? They’ll be gone within a week.” Carriscant smiled, remembering the old man’s impregnable conviction, and wandered to the window. The noise here was infernal: in the courtyard below ten men were making buckets.

  He turned at the sound of a door opening and saw Udo emerge from a small cupboard at the rear of the office carrying a chamber pot, the buttons on his flies still undone. He looked unwell, a stout, compressed old man with a florid, noduled face and a small ungroomed bristling moustache that looked as if it were trying to grow in four directions simultaneously.

  “Ah, Salvador, my boy, what a pleasant surprise,” he said. “One second and I’m with you.”

  He limped to the window, opened it and flung the contents of the chamber pot over the bucket makers. The hammering never faltered.

  Udo shrugged. “Those shit bastards are meant to stop at lunchtime, but who cares?” He spoke English with a marked German accent. Carriscant shook his extended left hand as the right still clutched the chamber pot: he was fond of the old man but Annaliese liked to keep contact to a minimum. Udo set the pot on the desk and wiped some drops of moisture off his fingers on to the blotter. He opened a drawer and offered Carriscant a cigar, which he declined.

  Udo waggled his plump fingers over the display, selected a cigar and rolled it sensuously under his veined and bulbous nose.

  “La Flor de la Isabella,” he said, wistfully. “As good as the finest Havana. Have I ever told you that?”

  “Emphatically,” Carriscant said. “How are the pianos going?”

  “Slowly. Did I tell you I was opening a laundry?”

  They speculated a while on the inevitable success of this venture before Carriscant told him why he had called. A friend, he said, had ordered a piece of industrial machinery from France and he needed it shipped to Manila, but with discretion. This friend was concerned that as a Filipino he might not be permitted to import such a component.

  “What is it?” Udo asked. “A Howitzer?”

  “An engine. It’s…it’s a special kind of engine. For a type of automobile.”

  “Is he building a motor car? Very shrewd. I saw one the other day, down here at the docks. Astonishing. German, of course.”

  “Something like that. And he can’t afford to pay the duty.”

  Udo assured him that the whole matter was very straightforward. It might cost a little extra but he knew many agreeable ships’ captains and many shipping firms who would be happy to oblige. If the engine could be conveyed to Hong Kong then from that point forward the maximum discretion could be assured.

  Udo limped to the top of the stairs to see Carriscant off.

  “What’s wrong, Udo?”

  “Gout, or something. My leg’s changing colour. Turning blue.”

  “Come to the hospital, I’ll have a look at it.”

  “You’ll have it off, more likely.” He looked at him dolefully. “No disrespect, Salvador, but I don’t trust you lot.”

  He called down the stairs: “How’s Annaliese?”

  “Ah…Well. Very well.”

  “I’d love to see her again.”

  “Of course, Udo. Very soon. Thanks for your help.”

  Paton Bobby’s office was on the second floor of the Ayuntamiento, Manila’s town hall, a huge over-decorated coral and white building on the Plaza Mayor, adjacent to the cathedral. Bobby sat behind his desk, out of uniform, wearing a light tweed suit and a bow tie. The effect was surprising: as if the burly law officer had turned into a university professor or music teacher. From his chair Carriscant could see one of the cathedral’s domed towers with a seagull sitting preening itself on the top of the surmounting cross. Bobby was informing him of the series of unsatisfactory interviews he had undertaken with the men of Ephraim Ward’s platoon: it seemed unlikely now, he reluctantly concluded, that Ward had been murdered by a fellow soldier.

  The gull hunched itself into the air and soared off beyond the frame of the window. “Somebody got him, though. He left his post and somebody fucking got him.”

  Carriscant shifted in his seat: Ephraim Ward’s fate seemed remote from him now.

  “He definitely wasn’t shot, was he? Someone couldn’t have gouged out a bullet? You thought he was stabbed, right?” Bobby scratched his skull through his thin hair with the end of a pencil.

  “I’m sure. By the way, Cruz has still not returned the heart. The liver, but not the heart.” Carriscant closed his eyes briefly and tried to set his tone of voice to neutral. “My wife,” he began slowly, “my wife met an American woman at one of her church functions the other night but she’s completely forgotten her name. A young woman, late twenties, tall, freckled with reddish brown hair. Apparently”

  “Jesus, Carriscant, do you know how many American women there are out here now? Wives, nurses, missionaries, teachers…Must be hundreds.”

  “I told her. She wanted me to ask all the same…” He paused. “Perhaps she has a position of authority, some rank. She mentioned the Malacanan Palace. Some sporting club?”

  Bobby thought. “Reddish hair, you say. Quite a striking woman?”

  “Yes. I mean, as far as I can gather.”

  “Now you mention it, it sounds rather like Miss Caspar. What’s her name? Unusual…Yeah, Miss Rudolfa Caspar. Rudolfa, that’s it.”

  “Miss?”

  “Headmistress of the Gerlinger school. The new one in Binondo.”

  “Thank you, I’ll tell my wife.”

  The conversation returned once again to Ward’s murder, Carriscant suggesting it could be any criminal from the Tondo slums, Bobby reluctant to concede it might be as random as that. They walked to the door and Bobby followed him on to the wide marble landing above the main staircase.

  “But why dump him miles away?” Bobby was saying. “Why not leave him where he fe
ll?”

  A uniformed man walked by, stopped and turned. “Hello, Bobby,” he said. “Any news?”

  Bobby introduced him to Carriscant—a Colonel Sieverance. He had a pleasant, boyish face and a thin moustache, a little patchy. If that was the best quality bristle your face could produce, Carriscant thought, then it would be better to go clean-shaven. Colonel Sieverance seemed remarkably young to hold such an elevated rank, and there was something familiar about him too, Carriscant thought…Perhaps they had met before, somewhere.

  “Ward used to be in the colonel’s regiment,” Bobby explained. “Dr Carriscant examined the body—he has been most helpful.”

  Sieverance smiled, he had an engaging, enthusiastic manner, not in the least warlike or military, Carriscant thought. “A doctor?” he said, gladly. “Are you a physician, sir?”

  “—I’m a surgeon, I’m afraid.”

  “Damn. Why can’t the US army hire a decent physician?” He grinned ruefully. “Thought you’d made my day. Nice to see you. So long, Bobby.”

  “He’s on the Governor’s staff, now,” Bobby said, watching Sieverance stride off down a corridor. “Agreeable fellow.”

  A DIET OF BEEF TEA

  The fish are jumping,” Pantaleon said, “time to dig for worms.”

  Carriscant cut into the flesh of the loin. It was pulpy and oedematous, which made him worried. The man on the operating table, a money-changer from Binondo, had been one of Cruz’s patients who had returned to the hospital after being discharged, complaining of pains in his abdomen and of a cloudiness in his urine. Carriscant cut through the integument and separated the muscles. He paused while the nurses swabbed and sponged.