At the Heart of the Universe

by Samuel Shem

  First they wash her upper body and lay her back down and wash from her belly to her toes, using sea sponges they found in the kitchen to massage the warm, soapy water all over. Then they put on fresh underwear and pants and two layers of socks—she wants her shoes on but they are too filthy to use and Clio indicates that they will clean them and give them back. Then they wash her chest and back and face and hair—everything but where the bandage covers the wound on her back, shoulder, and arm. She is so dirty that they have to change the soapy water several times, going to the mouth of the cave to spill it out, watching it run down onto the moss covering the stone bones of the mountain.

  As she and Katie wash Xiao Lu’s limp body, Clio remembers washing her own mother during her long dying from cancer. Once, on what would turn out to be the family’s final “locust” trip together, as she and her mother stood outside the Grand Souk in Marrakesh, her mother got strangely frank: “Hold the awe, Clio dear, always. Hold the awe.” Clio didn’t understand, and asked her what she meant. She didn’t elaborate. A month later she was dead. Clio was seventeen.

  Like washing my mother, those last endless days.

  To her now, Xiao Lu’s skin feels the same, toneless on the bone, her eyes have that same mix of pain and fear, the way she can’t move and Clio has to move her. The way Clio can’t quite get the dirt out of her hair or her ears or the creases of her body is the same. Washing my mother, washing my child. That first night with Katie in the Jiang Jiang Hotel, their new baby never yet having uttered a sound so they feared there was something wrong, they put her in the hot, soapy water in the sink—she pinkening—and she gave a wail and their hearts lifted! Washing my daughter, washing my mother. My mother washing me.

  My mother washing me, Xiao Lu thinks, hazily, sort of knowing that it is no longer her mother washing her when she was a sick child in the little house by the slow river, and sort of knowing that her mother was not the one washing her mostly because she was the baby of the family and everyone was starving and then there floats into her memory who it is she feels is washing her. First Sister, who was my mother until she disappeared, and never came back. Never came back—ever!

  “Mom, look,” Katie whispers, “she’s crying.”

  “I see, yes.”

  “You think we’re hurting her?”

  “No, dear, I think she’s afraid. We’ll go gentle-gentle, and she’ll know we’re here and helping her to get better. You stay here and dry her while I get fresh hot water so we can clean her arm and back, okay?”

  “Okay.” Katie takes the pine-scented fresh towel and starts to pat Xiao Lu dry, her neck and hair and then her face, looking into her dark eyes, sparkling wet from her tears. Katie is amazed at how deep her eyes seem, as if, if she could turn herself into a tiny person, she could just walk into them and go deep down like in the deep part of Kinderhook Creek under where the bridge used to be. She finds it impossible to keep looking at her but impossible to look away for long. So she just caresses her cheek, back and forth a time or two gentle-gentle, and the dark eyes get wetter and the lips turn down at the edges and she feels herself cry inside with her. My birth mom and mom too. My body’s not like my mom’s, it’s like hers. When Mom and I were naked trying on bathing suits I saw in the mirror her body didn’t look like my body, it was strange. Now I know my body looks like hers.

  Clio is back with fresh soapy water. Pep comes over with a kerosene lamp and his Ziploc plastic bags of pill bottles, needles and syringes, wraps and tubes.

  The lamp casts an acrid warm light.

  “I’m not sure you should see this, Katie,” he says. “It’s a bad cut.”

  “It’s okay. I want to.”

  “Sure?” She nods. “Okay.” Pep washes his hands in fresh soapy water and sterilizer and dries them on a fresh towel. They roll Xiao Lu over on her good side and start to unwrap the bandage they put on her back and arm. He tries to be as gentle as possible, but the gauze sticks to the bloody wound and she screams in pain. Katie winces, Clio grits her teeth.

  Pep takes a deep breath to steel himself. Worse than he thought. The wound is ugly, a bite on the back and a rip from shoulder down to elbow, in one place a deep slash down to what might be bone. He has come prepared. Before they left he badgered Orville Rose to give him a complete ultra-medical kit suited to high-risk people who trek alone across Africa or through the gut of Asia to Kuala Lumpur. He also took an EMT training course, and invited Orvy to dinner twice to discuss the practice of the medical arts in disastrous environments—something the good doctor knew a lot about, from his “salad days” wandering the genocidal zones in Médicins Sans Frontières, before he’d come back under duress to his broken-down hometown, Columbia.

  Now all of Pep’s training kicks in. He cleans and tends the wound, thinks to suture it up—but then remembers that it’s hazardous to sew up bites. The bacteria in mouths are anaerobic; without oxygen they’ll form abscesses and spread. He knows from the good Dr. Rose that the worst bites for infection are from humans, not animals. They didn’t talk monkeys. He slathers more Betadine disinfectant over the skin, wraps the whole wound with clean gauze, and splints it with a fresh clean stick from the inside of a split log. Finally, he uses the big capsules of his stash of Levaquin, the latest broad-spectrum-Western-antibiotic-that-kills-everything. He and Clio prop Xiao Lu up and pop the big pill in. Katie helps her to drink it down. He thinks of giving her a shot of Demerol, but she seems calm and not in great pain—as they lower her to her pillow she looks from one to the other and smiles.

  “Go to sleep,” Clio says, smiling, patting her hand.

  “Wa-an, Xiao Lu,” Katie says. Clio looks at her. “It means ‘go to sleep’?”

  Clio smiles at her, takes her hand. They walk away.

  “Mom, can I have Shirty?” Clio, as daytime Shirty-keeper, unzips her money belt, takes out the worn, soft little shirt, and hands it to Katie. Katie goes back to Xiao Lu, whose eyes are closed. “Xiao Lu?” Her eyes open. “Here, you need Shirty tonight.” She gives the little guy to Xiao Lu, who moves her good hand slowly up to take it. “You use Shirty like this.” Katie takes her hand with Shirty in it and moves it up to her cheek, showing her how she can hold the softness against her cheek gentle-gentle. Again tears come to Xiao Lu’s eyes. She smiles. Katie goes to Clio and Pep.

  “That’s a wonderful thing to do, dear,” Clio says. “You never gave Shirty to anyone for the night before, did you?”

  “Nope. But she really needs him tonight, more than me.”

  The three of them get into the big bed and pull the quilt up to their chins. The scent of cedar calms.

  “She risked her life to save us,” Clio says.

  “She was brave,” Pep says.

  “No foolin’,” Katie says, and then, in awe, “Super brave.”

  “Let’s take a minute of silence to pray for her.”

  To the soft flurry of bats rushing in and out of the mouth of the cave, they fall asleep.

  

  Clio, Pep, and Katie are so sore the next morning they can barely move. Every muscle seems made of dry leather, every scratch a flicker of fire. Groaning, they hoist themselves up and go to Xiao Lu. She lies on her side, quiet and still, as if she hasn’t moved all night. Her eyes are open, and her breathing is regular, but her forehead is damp with sweat. With difficulty Pep shows her how to keep the little plastic battery-powered thermometer under her tongue, and it beeps at 101.6. He’s worried. Clio sees his concern, and asks if there’s any way that they can get some help. But there’s no way to carry her back to the monastery, and for one of them to try to get there alone is too dangerous. They’re stuck. He gives her another Levaquin.

  They set about organizing the tasks of the day. Pep is in charge of medical care, fire, heavy lifting, and controlling bugs, snakes, and any other pests. Clio and Katie are in charge of tending to Xiao Lu, cooking, and cleaning. Together they
will hunt and gather food and water.

  It is more difficult than they could have imagined. Clio and Pep have little idea how to take care of the basics of life in the wild. Katie, having tagged along with Xiao Lu, is the expert. She shows them how to carry water—not just one bucket, leaning to one side as you walk, but using a bamboo carrying pole to bring two, making it easier to balance on the path and up the slope. She shows Pep how to use the wedge and hammer to split wood, and shows Clio where the right vegetables grow, and which mushrooms to pick (Clio and Pep don’t know which are the safe and which are the poisonous ones)—even, sometimes, saying the Chinese words for them. It is amazing how Katie’s mind has absorbed all of this, even the smallest detail of daily life here. Katie is in heaven directing them.

  Clio and Pep are better at taking care of Xiao Lu. The Great American Antibiotic may or may not be working, but it has certainly worked on Xiao Lu’s bowels. With a shameful look in her eye she lets them know that she has not been able to control herself. Clio and Katie roll her over and confront the mess. At first they feel disgusted, but Clio remembers how, with Katie as a baby, there was no disgust. It helps. They clean and dust her with baby powder Clio carries, and reassure her that she just has to let them know when she has to go, and they will bring a flat bowl to use as a bedpan. Xiao Lu smiles wanly and soon goes back to sleep.

  Like being in a strange new house, they—even Katie—are awkward in their chores. Nothing they need seems close by or right; things they do find seem useless. They can’t figure out what to do when. They float through the day clumsily; the meals they make are pallid. After lunch the monsoon comes again—they finally realize that in the summer on the mountain it comes every day, it’s just a question of how fiercely—trapping them indoors for the afternoon. Katie goes to the hut to do calligraphy, Clio going with her. Pep stays with Xiao Lu in the cave.

  The rain beats down on the stones of the path through the mossy clearing, on the roof of the hermitage, and the wind whips it against the cliff face. It’s strange for Pep to sit there alone with the sleeping young Chinese woman. Occasionally she awakens, and seems disoriented and cries out. He goes to her, sits, holds her hand until she sees where she is and with whom, and calms down. He feeds her, washes her hot forehead, and smiles, and she smiles back, and soon goes back to sleep.

  It reminds him of caring for Katie when she had pneumonia last year. She got more and more listless and said at first that she felt like she was going to die and then said she wanted to die—which sent a bolt of panic through him and they called Orville at two a.m. and she spent the night getting intravenous antibiotics in Kinderhook Memorial. He wonders, now, if Xiao Lu could die. Infections from bites, Orville said, always nasty, can be lethal. But she’s strong, and tough. The next day or two will tell.

  In the little hut, Katie is teaching Clio calligraphy. Trying to follow her lead, Clio feels an admiration for her, for the way that she’s made a jump from doing it the Western way to the Eastern. It’s hard to define the difference. It’s something about not trying to make it happen, but being relaxed enough so that it happens. Katie has got it now and Clio has not. Together they laugh at Clio’s clumsiness.

  The rain stops in time for the evening feeding of the deer. Katie organizes this too, knowing where the deer appear, showing Clio and Pep how to creep up silently to the edge of the forest near the low moon gate, and signaling for them to be silent while she imitates exactly Xiao Lu’s call to them. “Ping? Ping?”

  The deer don’t come. “Maybe they’ll come if I’m alone?” Katie says.

  Clio and Pep walk away, sit at the entrance to the cave, and watch.

  “Ping? Ping?” Katie stands absolutely still, holding out her open palms with the orange Goldfish. “Ping? Ping?”

  “She looks so young,” Clio whispers.

  “Young and old both.”

  “And almost like she’s right, here?”

  “Yes.”

  The deer are coming. Like parts of the leaves they part to appear, all at once they are there. They are so small that Katie seems even bigger. The buck comes first, and then beside him the doe, and the fawn. They stop and stare at the girl. Then they come up to her, first the buck, finishing a handful, and then the doe for the second handful, and the fawn for a few nibbles of the third—which the buck finishes up. The deer ease back into the wood. Katie turns to look at Clio and Pep and gives a thumbs-up and shouts, “Yes!” Clio and Pep echo back, “Yes!” The last shafts of sunlight play off the flinty face of the mountain and dance across the clearing.

  Smiling, Katie walks with unusual slowness through the bars of light toward them, not in a straight line but veering off here and there as a sound from the woods or the glimpse of a bird attracts her, as if she has become like all this, a current of mere nature, like the mountain deer Xiao Lu has tamed.

  

  The next day is a horror. They awaken to demonic rain, carried on scary gusts that seem driven in directly from the Himalayas. It rains all day and into the night.

  Xiao Lu is worse, her fever is 102, and she is delirious and disoriented, as if a part of her has gone away, disappeared. When she’s awake, she fights their efforts to help. It is all they can do to get the antibiotic and fluids into her and change the dressing. And change her clothes and sheets—she can’t let them know when she’s got to go. To keep the rain out, they’ve strung a heavy blanket across, which keeps them more or less dry, but which entraps the smell of kerosene, sweat, urine, and feces. Inside, the air is soon fetid, but it’s impossible to go outside at all. Even a run for the hut or the latrine soon soaks them through.

  To keep the fire going with wet wood is difficult, and to keep bringing what they need from the hut to the cave is a pain. They take turns doing this, trying to dry out in between. The mossy clearing has turned muddy. The stones are slippery—unable to see where they’re going, soon all three of them have fallen several times.

  In late afternoon, as Xiao Lu goes through a bad run of delirium filled with shouts and curses and sobs, Katie turns to Pep. “Dad, is Xiao Lu gonna die?”

  “No, no, Kate-zer. The medicine should work soon. By tomorrow.”

  “What about giving her some of that monk stuff? It worked on you, Dad.”

  They try to get the bear bile down, but she struggles against it.

  Clio and Pep start to really worry. Pep realizes that Xiao Lu could actually die—the next day or so will tell whether Levaquin works for monkey bites. Despite the gentle deer and the beautiful scenery, the attack of the monkeys has made him afraid of what else is out there. With the constant pounding of the rain, he is filled with dread of the power of all the old rock of this mountain that has been here long before they were and will be here long after they are gone. The sheer bigness of what they are perched upon scares him, mocks him and his pitiful little pills. Time seems trivial, and immense. Death could come at any moment to Xiao Lu—and to him, Clio, Katie—death could come anytime, from anything out there. No one knows where they are. Their bodies would be eaten, their bones scattered, never to be found.

  39

  As they get ready for bed, Clio feels, for the first time in China, a sudden turmoil in her bowels. Grabbing the umbrella and the flashlight, she tells them she is going to the latrine. The wind and rain are fierce. She can barely see the path down to the ditch. One shoe comes off on the way, and she holds it in her hand. At the latrine she yanks down her pants with one hand and squats and... and nothing. Her belly aches, she feels an urgency to go, but nothing comes. She tries, waits. Still nothing, not even gas. It’s difficult to balance there on her heels, holding the umbrella and shoe in one hand, the flashlight in the other. The smell is intense. She breathes through her mouth. Finally it starts to happen, semi-solid and smelling revolting, even breathing through her mouth. And then, in the middle of it, she feels something crawling across her bare foot. The cold sweat of terror comes
over her. Brown snake I’m dead they say not to move and it won’t bite you.

  She freezes, and then, feeling the thing crawl off her foot, she thanks God, but then the thing turns around and crawls back onto her foot and starts up her ankle. Still squatting she squirms around and puts the flashlight on it, and sees what looks like a foot-long giant red millipede crawling up her leg. She screams at the top of her lungs and kicks out with her leg to shake it off, which makes her lose her balance and start to fall, backward into the pit. Desperately she throws all her weight forward, like a rower with an umbrella and shoe for oars, and she avoids falling back into the pit but is so full of terrified strength that she reflexively springs straight ahead and finds herself sprawling in the mud of the path, both arms down hard into something soft, which she hopes is moss, a rivulet of water running over her outstretched arms. She feels the crawling thing—or now things!—creeping with sharp little tarsi up her other leg and lets out another howl and, trying to pull up her pants, gets up and then trips on the band of pants between her legs and goes down again, this time right on her face. Pebbles scratch her. Her face feels coated in a mudpack. She wails and cries and digs her fingernails into the dirt as if into a cliff to try to get up, pulling her pants up and then running as fast as she can back up the path, bamboo whipping against her.