The Ghosts of Eden

by Andrew JH Sharp

  In the mirror he could see Felice kneeling beside Stanley, holding his hand, her face close to his, saying in a fearful voice, ‘It’s OK, you’ll be OK.’

  Michael headed for the park entrance, concentrating on keeping to the middle of the narrow track, fists tight on the wheel. A warthog scampered across the road, legs a blur under its stout body, upright tail rigid with fright; a panicked flock of francolins launched themselves away over the grasses, wings beating noisily, shrill calls like a chorus of expletives. Half a mile from the gate Michael sounded the horn to summon the warden gatekeeper. He turned on full-beam lights. They approached the boom at speed.

  ‘You must sign out,’ said the game warden, agitated. ‘Regulation UP75.6.’

  ‘Regulation ML1 takes precedence,’ spat Michael.

  The gatekeeper appeared, took one look at the approaching vehicle and leant heavily on the end of the boom to open it.

  Good man: a sixth sense that protocol must be ignored in this instance, or perhaps he was sensibly preserving the boom; after all, there were no exit fees to collect.

  ‘Where’s the nearest hospital with a trauma surgeon?’ Michael shouted.

  He heard Stanley respond weakly, ‘It’s too far, Michael, take me to Lwesala. You must do the surgery. We have instruments.’

  ‘What’s his pulse, Felice?’

  ‘It’s fast. It’s not strong.’ He could hear the suppressed panic in her voice.

  ‘Do you have blood at Lwesala?’

  ‘We’ve no blood bank. We crossmatch the relatives before surgery and bleed them if we need blood,’ Felice said.

  The game warden said, ‘I have nausea.’ He took out a well-ironed handkerchief and placed it to his mouth.

  Michael ignored him. The only relative of Stanley’s nearby was Zachye. He might as well be at the other end of the earth.

  Felice said, ‘Sister Dorakasi’s the same blood group as Stanley. She’ll donate.’

  Stanley was speaking again to Felice. She lifted her head and said, ‘Stanley asks that we don’t tell the police that Zachye was with the bandits.’

  ‘I must report this Zachye in my report,’ the game warden said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief.

  Felice touched Michael on the shoulder and said, ‘Please!’

  Michael glanced around. She was looking at him as if only he could deliver what was likely to be Stanley’s last wish.

  He looked sharply across at the game warden and said menacingly, ‘If you ever speak Zachye’s name, I’ll ensure that your role in provoking the shooting is made known to the police.’

  ‘Me?’ the game warden said.

  ‘Think about it,’ Michael said.

  The warden thought about it. He lowered his gun to the floor. ‘But that Zachye,’ he pleaded, ‘he shot at us.’

  ‘We don’t know which of them shot at us. Let me make myself clear. If you mention Zachye to anyone I’ll take you back to the park and kick you out, at night, on the plain. Do you understand?’

  The game warden dropped his handkerchief and fingered the barrel of his rifle again. ‘You can rely on me, sir.’

  They stopped directly outside the small theatre building at the hospital. Michael leant on the horn. Staff came running from every direction.

  ‘Stanley’s shot. I need to operate straight away.’

  While many hands, desperate to help, carried Stanley to the operating table, news spread, as if winged, into the district. Their doctor had been shot. A silent crowd gathered in no time outside the theatre. The hospital chaplain arrived to lead supplication. Inside, Michael barked orders: ‘I need a Venflon, I need a giving set, sterilise the instruments, someone take this blood for crossmatch. Are you Sister Dorakasi? We need your blood. I need gauze packs.’

  Michael found that his hands were steady, moving with unhurried but efficient purpose. Idiot man had broken; rational man would repair. The thought came that this was why he had come out to Africa again: to save Stanley. Fate (impassive, blind, but wise enough to have generated every living thing on the planet) had ordained it. He picked up the knife and ran through possibilities, through technical scenarios, as he cut down through the layers, varying the pressure on the knife, weighting each cut to the texture, density and thickness of the tissue. There had been no exit wound. With a high velocity rifle round that could only mean that the full energy of the bullet had been attenuated dramatically before entering the body. At a kilometre per second the energy transfer to a body that stopped the bullet dead would liquefy its innards; the shock wave bursting blood vessels far from the bullet’s resting place. Not survivable. Maybe he would find a shrapnel shard. What if a liver resection was necessary? He might need gallons of blood. Sister Dorakasi could only be asked to give two pints although he guessed she would be willing to be completely exsanguinated for Stanley’s sake.

  The last layer, the peritoneum, he tented up with forceps and then held the knife, poised, ready to enter the abdominal cavity.

  ‘I’ll need suction.’

  He nicked the peritoneum with the blade to make a small hole and then slid a pair of scissors up and down, protecting the bowel under the lower blade with his fingers. When he let the abdominal wall fall back, blood and thin bowel juices spilled out of the wound.

  ‘The intestine’s perforated.’

  But first he had to identify the source of the bleeding.

  ‘Pass me the sucker.’

  ‘It’s broken, sir,’ a nurse said, ‘but I’ll make it work.’ She pulled the vent tube out of the top of the sucker bottle and sucked, soon filling the glass jar with murky, brown liquid.

  She’s got guts, Michael thought. I might get a smile out of Stanley with that one – if he pulls through.

  ‘I need packs.’

  ‘We’ve no sterilised packs at the present time.’

  ‘Damn it.’

  He pressed the bowel away with his hands, placing the sucker nozzle in the deep recesses of the abdominal cavity looking for fresh bleeding. Loops of bowel slid around his fingers, obstructing his view.

  ‘Damn it!’

  He worked his way methodically down a checklist. Spleen OK, liver OK, mesentery OK. No obvious source for the bleeding. He lifted the large bowel onto his patient’s chest and explored the recesses where the first part of the intestine, the duodenum, formed a loop as it left the stomach, enclosing the head of the pancreas and critical vessels carrying bile, pancreatic juices and blood to the intestine. Blood washed around the complex anatomy: paraduodenal fossa, inferior duodenal fold, mesentericoparietal recess. He struggled to prevent the twenty feet of small intestine from worming its way into his field of vision. He asked the nurse to suck again and, with the tip of the nozzle, touched the bloody pools at the base of the intestine, draining them from their surface to avoid disturbing any fragile plugs of clot beneath. A purple swelling, a haematoma, precariously contained by the semi-translucent peritoneum, emerged at the root of the intestine like jellied pond life. Through a laceration at its apex seeped a small, but confluent, stream of fresh blood.

  Choices: gentle packing of the area in the hope of sealing the bleeder by inducing a stable clot – but there were dangers in shifting the underlying structures; or dissect down to find the vessel to repair it, risking making the bleeding worse by disturbing the clot already formed.

  Complicating factor: a bullet, or shrapnel, might be sitting in the blood clot and if not removed might cause overwhelming infection. The abdominal cavity was already awash with bacteria from the perforated bowel.

  Decision: he would pack the area, get the patient haemodynamically stable with the blood transfusion, and would then weigh the risks further. He wished he had an X-ray. The hospital radiation-spreader was not transportable.

  Someone had found a sterile pack on the obstetric ward and he pressed it, with the gentleness of a hand of blessing, onto the haematoma.

  As Sister Dorakasi gave up two pints of blood in the corner of the theatre – the whites of her eyes
turning as pure as egg white – a compelling but guilt-inducing thought slipped as smooth as liver into his head. If his patient were to die, despite his heroic efforts of course, Felice would be alone. He swallowed awkwardly as if struggling with an unchewable piece of Mr Magara’s stew. What sort of man had he become to play with such thoughts? Karamoja Bell? Slitting a throat, grabbing a native girl. Damn it! He could offer her a different life; probably with children; certainly with money. She could indulge herself at last, adorn herself from Oxford Street – it was plain that she loved to dress well, making the most of what must be a limited wardrobe. He could save her. He saw her naked in the shower. He saw her accepting look. He remembered her easy laughter and their repartee. He felt his solitude. Damn it!

  Eight

  It was gone midnight on the second night after the operation when Michael saw the mountains. He had returned wearily from the hospital to the cottage but, being unable to sleep, he dipped into a book he had borrowed from James, about the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. He read how on the morning of 9 May 1889 Stanley and his caravan of Egyptians, Sudanese, Zanzibaris and plateau natives had snaked their way around the south-western flanks of the Rwenzori Mountains. Stanley lay back in his hide hammock – held in suspension by two of his porters – marvelling at the luxuriant cultivations of plantains, sweet potatoes, yams, colocassia, beans and sugar cane. Looking up, the explorer saw, for the first time, the mountains emerge from their ‘mantle of clouds and vapours . . . resplendent with shining white snow; the blue beyond was as that of ocean – a purified and spotless translucence’. Strangling his excitement with Victorian self-discipline, Stanley took measurements and drew sketches. Now, at last, the world at the far end of the Nile would believe what the ancients had told: that the great river’s fountains sprung from a mountain range whose brightness matched that of the moon.

  Still unable to sleep, and remembering that the moon was up, Michael put down the book, left the cottage and followed the path a short distance to see if the mountains were still covered in cloud. High in the sky he saw an unearthly whiteness, like a shroud over a celestial body – or like fields of white in an imagined country. The peaks had revealed themselves.

  He stood transfixed, but jumped when a voice hissed at him from the banana grove, ‘Mr Ambassador, stand still!’ He froze. ‘Mr Ambassador, do not move!’

  He had no intention of moving. He looked straight ahead and turned out his hands to give the bandit no excuse for hasty action. He remembered the sneer on the bandit’s face. Yet again he was at the mercy of the unpredictable. For a few seconds there was not a sound. Was he taking aim?

  ‘Where’s Dr Katura?’ the bandit asked coldly.

  Options for reply, each with their repercussions, presented themselves like a flicked-through card index: in the mortuary, gone to his home village, been flown to London. Or the truth. Would that put Stanley in danger? Was the bandit going to eliminate witnesses? Stanley was in a critical enough state as it was. Thank God that Felice was in the hospital, and not alone in the house.

  ‘I can tell you, but may I ask who you are?’ Michael said, offering co-operation while trying to build a rapport.

  The silence stretched out, every second pregnant with menace. Then the bandit said with a snigger, ‘If you’re the ambassador, then I’m Idi Amin Dada.’

  Michael dared to play along. ‘I ask the ex-president for permission to go about my duties.’

  ‘First I command you to tell me of Dr Katura’s whereabouts.’ The bandit had abandoned any effort to keep his voice down.

  ‘I’d like to comply, but he’s a friend of mine so . . . I wouldn’t want him to come to any harm.’

  ‘I wish to speak to him.’

  Michael risked not replying.

  After a long pause the bandit said without emotion, ‘I’m Dr Katura’s brother.’

  Michael caught his breath, then said slowly, ‘Your brother wishes to speak to you as well, but he’s very ill.’

  ‘What illness?’

  ‘He was shot.’

  ‘Shot! Cho! Who shot him?’

  Michael suppressed a sarcastic response.

  There was a long silence. Michael saw again the fields of white in the sky – some other country; of the imagination only.

  When Zachye spoke again, his voice was slow and deliberate. ‘And Mrs Katura?’

  ‘She’s not injured. But she’s very distressed.’

  Zachye was quiet. Michael kept still.

  ‘Where’s my brother? I’ll not harm him.’

  For a moment Michael felt that Zachye spoke honestly, that he was not in the habit of doing anything other than what he promised; then he remembered he was speaking to an outlaw who prowled around at night, who consorted with violent men, who had likely been involved in all manner of atrocities. However, it seemed news to Zachye that Stanley had been hit in the shooting. Or was he in denial that he could have shot his own brother?

  ‘Come with me to where I’m staying,’ Michael said evenly, ‘and then I’ll go and ask Mrs Katura whether she’s happy for you to see him.’

  There was no reply. Michael waited, remaining perfectly still, looking up at the mountains. The snows faded from view as he watched. He felt the night empty of a presence. Michael said, as calmly and as clearly as he could, ‘I’m going to walk on now to my bed.’

  He waited a little longer and then, thinking better of returning to the house, turned and hurried back to the hospital in case Zachye was on his way there. He strode down the ward to the side room where Stanley lay, but all was quiet, the patients sleeping. Felice was coming out of the room.

  ‘You’re back already. I’d like to thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I’m told by Sister Dorakasi that without your expertise Stanley would not have survived.’

  Michael took a deep slow breath, determined to act in a measured manner. ‘He was lucky as well,’ he said quietly. ‘If the metal splinter had ended up a few millimetres in any other direction . . .’

  They stood close together by the door to the room. ‘Felice, he’s not safe yet; he’s still critically ill.’ He did not want her under the impression that Stanley was out of danger. ‘I’d like him moved to somewhere with better monitoring facilities, but I think he’s still too ill to travel.’

  ‘He’s in God’s hands,’ she said.

  He let it pass. What sort of man takes away another’s basis for hope?

  Felice was saying, ‘His mother will be coming to see him. I’ve sent a message. I hope she arrives soon.’

  She made to walk up the ward but Michael put out his hand to stay her. ‘Something else has happened.’ He told her about his meeting with Zachye. She looked up the lamp-lit ward, absorbing the news, but said nothing. ‘I think you’d better come back to the house and sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re exhausted – you’ve been awake for more than thirty-six hours.’ He looked at her weary form in the lamplight and wanted to wrap his arms around her.

  She slipped back into Stanley’s room but came out again after a minute and nodded at Michael.

  As they walked back along the moon-traced path she said, ‘Stanley’s at peace.’

  ‘Good. He needs all the sleep he can get,’ Michael said, with half a mind on whether Zachye might spring out on them.

  ‘No, I don’t mean restful. I mean he fears nothing.’

  ‘Uh-huh, well, I see.’

  When they arrived back at the house they found the maid had left the stove well stoked and a lamp burning on the table. Felice turned up the wick, stood watching it for a few seconds and then reached over to turn on the radio. The song reminded Michael of an occasion long ago when he played with his school-friend Simon by a hot spring in the pasturelands of the Bahima, and saw two herd boys on the slope above the spring listening to Mr Adams’s radio. Felice went to the kitchen and put water on the stove.

  ‘Stanley told me that Zachye loved this song. It’s Franco – a Congolese singer. Zachye loved music. Stanley says that if Zachye had joined a b
and of musicians instead of a band of brigands things would’ve been different.’

  ‘What’s the song?’

  ‘He’s singing in Lingala but we all know the words. It tells how love makes us suffer. It’s called “Infidelite Mado”.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s our own voices, our own rhythms.’ She started swaying slowly, sadly, to the music. She caught herself almost immediately and looked across at him with a smile that died as swiftly as it came. ‘So you see – it moves me.’

  Felice fetched a saucepan of pre-boiled milk from the cupboard, but when she transferred the pan to the sideboard Michael saw her body wilt as if this last task had drained her of any remnants of energy.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asked.

  She shook her head and made a click noise with her tongue. ‘I’m just so sorry your holiday has not turned out well. Zachye!’ She spoke his name heavily, weighted with years of exasperation, years of hurt. Michael saw it now: Zachye, the ulcer that gnawed at her husband, never left him, and distracted him . . . from her.

  He said, ‘Do you think Zachye will come back again?’ Felice tensed, but he went on. ‘Perhaps what’s happened is bringing him to his senses.’

  Felice picked up a long metal spoon, dipped it in the milk and started stirring slowly. ‘Stanley will hope so. For myself – I don’t know. Stanley is lying in pain on account of Zachye. Zachye’s caused much suffering. His mother grieves for him. His father died sorrowful.’ Michael said nothing while she finished making the tea, her movements languid, spent. Now she stared down at the tin cups. ‘Stanley’s wrong to protect Zachye from the consequences of his actions.’ Her voice caught. She took a deep breath, and impulsively took the grey dishcloth hanging over the taps and wiped down the draining board, although it did not need it. ‘I’m going to report him to the police.’ Her voice wavered.

  ‘But . . . Stanley asked . . .’ Michael said, disconcerted.