Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  But for the first six months or so, until I could speak quickly and easily, it was very difficult to work efficiently with my fellow medics. Still, I always enjoyed working with my team, who were generous in sharing their knowledge, anxious to acquaint me with local conditions. When we weren’t working – bandaging, stemming haemorrhages, stitching wounds, resuscitating, injecting, stabilising fractures – we laughed a lot; nice guys, all four of them. They’d given themselves European names for their white bosses, and were known as Daniel, Samson, Milo and Jacob. Jacob was a Luba, from the Katanga region across the border in the Belgian Congo, and when things got difficult he would curse in French, oblivious to the fact that I had studied French to a fairly proficient level in high school and could understand most of what he said, some of it directed at white guys when they were being difficult: branleur – wanker; casse toi – piss off, get lost; débile – idiot; and of course the well-known merde – shit. I never let on that I understood these less-than-complimentary expressions, and when they were directed at me in the beginning, after I’d made some fundamental mistake, I took the criticism as part of my education.

  What the other three may have said in their own language I shall never know. But after a while, all my training as a medic came back to me. With my eidetic memory, the various courses I’d taken under Nick Reed’s direction during the war came back to me in detail, so that I was able to cope reasonably well. When there were no white guys about, I taught my team stuff I knew and that they were not permitted to do. The idea that someone should be banned from potentially saving a life because of the colour of their skin was anathema to me.

  Life on the night shift wasn’t all that different from working at the GAWP Bar at the Firebird, except that I had the early evenings to myself. Noel White and his wife, Judy, would often invite me to dinner. I made a few friends at the Club, not the recreation room and bar in the single quarters run by the Krauts, but the social club for all the miners and their wives. I’d spend a couple of hours at the pool (referred to as the ‘swimming bath’) or in the Club gym, but mostly I read my Penguin paperbacks or something I’d taken out of the Club library, or I’d study medical stuff.

  When I’d settled in, I bought a record player in Ndola and ordered a stack of the new long-playing records – classical, jazz and blues – plus some sheet music by mail-order from a catalogue I found in the Club. The firm that produced the catalogue, Polliacks, had stores in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria, and claimed to be the biggest music shop in Africa. They even featured a Steinway grand in their catalogue, though I couldn’t help wondering who would buy such an expensive instrument by mail-order. I’d asked them on the order form if they stocked jazz and blues sheet music, and when the records arrived, they’d included the score for George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, ‘With compliments’. It wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind but I was to find that much of it could be adapted for the harmonica.

  I was corresponding with my mom and Nick through using a private post-office box, and I’d often ask Nick for detailed medical information. With the doctor only visiting twice a week to attend to white patients, and the African hospital for black patients thirty miles away in Ndola, I was having to do rather more than I was trained to. Matron Suzanna Hamilton was a marvel and seemed to have every certificate a nurse could possess. But sometimes, when it came to a black miner, it was a choice between doing what I could and his certain death.

  Of course, some miners died despite my attempts to save them and this caused me a great deal of distress, whether it was my fault or not. In some cases they’d have died even if we’d had a surgeon standing by. I can’t tell you how bad it feels to see a man die in front of your eyes, just because you lack the necessary skills to save his life and you know he’d never have reached the hospital in Ndola in time.

  As the year drew on, the wet season began, with constant rain, mud and slush. There was mould everywhere, and everything felt damp. It was the time of year when the ambulance had to be loaded onto a train because the road to Ndola, or anywhere else, was impassable.

  I’d been underground about six months when one night, at about 2 a.m., a call came to attend an accident on a grizzly on the eleven hundred level; that is, 1100 feet down. When we got there, the grizzly man’s leg was trapped between the bars, jammed between rocks. He explained that he’d been crossing the rocks to lay a charge to break up several large boulders at the far end of the grizzly when they’d suddenly shifted and he’d slipped, trapping his right leg. His black gang were unwilling, or too frightened, to use crowbars to attempt to free him. It was a dangerous situation because, while rocks were not as yet coming down the funnel from the stope, there was always a chance that one would. A rock the size of a football falling sixty feet would kill a man if it landed on his head, or rip his arm off if it hit his shoulder. In a great deal of pain, the grizzly man had sent one of his ‘boys’ to fetch me.

  I could see he was losing blood from what might have been a compound fracture. Without my having to ask them, my three medics grabbed crowbars. We were supposed to wear safety chains but the accident had occurred at the far end of the grizzly, and the chains barely stretched that far, which was dangerous if we needed to move quickly. The grizzly man himself had decided against using his chain when he’d gone to lay the gelignite charge. So, we walked the bars without chains. Straddling two bars eighteen inches apart, my medics set about trying to lever the rocks apart sufficiently to free his leg. The grizzly man’s name was Karel Pretorius, and while he was pretty stoic, it was, of necessity, a crude procedure and he screamed in agony as I finally pulled his leg free.

  Daniel and Samson then carried him off the bars – a dangerous manoeuvre – as Milo followed, hovering anxiously. I was ahead of Jacob, who was holding the, now bloody, crowbar. There was a sudden scream and I turned in time to see Jacob disappear between the bars. A small rock the size of a tennis ball had fallen out of the stope and down the grizzly shaft. It hit him on the shoulder blade, knocking him off balance and sending him tumbling down through the bars to fall some thirty feet, landing on the rock half filling the shaft below. Somehow he’d landed on his heels and butt before tumbling, but at the same time more material fell from the stope, creating a small rain of rocks. Fortunately, I was able to jump clear of the bars just in time, having been afraid that the small rock might have been holding up a mass of larger ones that were about to come crashing down on us. Such a blockage was known as a ‘bunch of grapes’, and this is what had occurred.

  Fortunately, Jacob had tumbled down a slope until he landed directly under the large rocks from which we’d extracted the grizzly man’s leg, so that these now acted as a roof to protect him from the small avalanche of rocks as he lay thirty feet below us. Miraculously, despite the nasty fall, he seemed okay at first, though I could see his left shoulder had been dislocated when the small rock struck him. Then he tried to sit up and it immediately became apparent that his left arm was wedged under several rocks and he was unable to move it, no doubt because of the intense pain of the dislocation.

  I instructed Daniel to give Karel Pretorius a shot of morphine and then, with Samson and Milo, to apply a tourniquet to slow the bleeding and apply a splint to the broken bone. Black medics were forbidden to perform some of these procedures, of course, but fuck it, Karel Pretorius wasn’t going to be allowed to die and Jacob had every chance of being killed if a big run started in the stope ninety feet above him.

  It never occurred to me at the time that it was forbidden to rescue a black miner if he fell down a grizzly shaft and wasn’t able to be pulled free using a rope or safety chain. In effect, if he were partially buried under rock, even if he were still alive, like Jacob, it was, as Noel White would say, ‘All over Red Rover, poor bugger’ll soon be pushing up clover!’ A white medic climbing down into the shaft below the grizzly bars to rescue a trapped black miner was unthinkable to mine authorities and, apart from being forbidden, was plain insanity.

&
nbsp; I know it was stupid of me but, at the time, with the adrenalin still running from having rescued Karel Pretorius, this didn’t occur to me, and what other choice did I have, anyway? I clipped three safety chains together, anchored one end around a grizzly bar and lowered myself the thirty or so feet to where Jacob lay. When I reached him I tried to extract his arm, but it was clear that, even with the crowbar Milo lowered to me, this wasn’t going to work. Jacob’s shoulder was dislocated, and almost half of his arm was trapped in rock I had no hope of moving. Nothing short of blasting would work, and Jacob would have been killed in the process. I had to face the fact that the only way to free Jacob was to amputate his arm. His forearm was crushed and the bones protruding from the skin, the entire arm bent at an unnatural angle. Disastrous as it sounds, this came as a relief; it meant I wouldn’t have to use the bone saw.

  Thank God for the hours I’d spent pouring over Gray’s Anatomy. I had a medical bag lowered to me containing tourniquets, hypodermic syringes, morphine, scalpels, iodine solution, swabs, clamps and sutures. It was one of our special medical kits we hoped we’d never have to use.

  Jacob had lapsed into unconsciousness, but I injected the morphine just in case, my mind trying desperately to recall the three demonstrations I’d attended as a medic in the army. I secured a tourniquet around his upper arm to stop further blood loss, and washed the arm liberally with iodine solution, dousing my hands in it as well, in an attempt to protect the wound from contamination while I made the incisions.

  The brain is an amazing organ. If you’ve seen, heard, experienced or read something, the knowledge remains tucked away in some tiny crevice of it, and, although I seemed to be working almost by instinct, I knew that I could trust my poker-player’s memory. My main task was to ensure that I made the incision as close as possible to the break, and that I left sufficient skin and muscle to form a pad over the severed bones so that when Jacob got into the operating theatre, the surgeon could tidy him up. That is, of course, if he survived the shock of the injury and what I was preparing to do to him.

  I made the first incision, cutting around the circumference of the arm and into the muscle, then angling the cut upward towards the elbow to expose the broken ends of the radius and ulna. Fortunately, the breaks were clean, which would, I hoped, minimise the need for further bone removal. Once I had removed the forearm, I clamped off the radial and ulnar arteries and the two main veins, then tied them off. The minor blood vessels still oozed a little blood but there wasn’t much more I could do, apart from sloshing on more iodine and placing a large dressing over the stump.

  It was only then that I realised what a desperate situation we were in. I looked up, and the torch on my hard hat illuminated the bottom of the rocks that had trapped the grizzly man’s leg and protected Jacob and myself so fortuitously. I couldn’t imagine how either of us would get back up safely to the grizzly bars, but somehow we did, Jacob still blessedly unconscious as he was jolted back up. I shall never forget the faces of Karel Pretorius’s black grizzly gang. One of them was grinning fit to burst, clapping his hands and almost dancing with delight. Sometimes you are forced to accept that there is a god in heaven. If we could get Jacob out safely and I could minimise the time the tourniquet remained on his arm, he was young enough and fit enough to make it. Later, Daniel would inform me that the grizzly gang claimed to have seen the impossible, and that I had become known across the Copperbelt as a white man who had risked his life for a black man. Apparently, I was no longer known as Bwana Jack, but as Ingelosi, or Angel, Doctor Canada.

  My own indelible memory of that night was of the severed part of Jacob’s forearm – crimson, ivory and black – sticking out of grey rock.

  I won’t recount the tedious and difficult process of getting both men back to the surface, but when eventually we did, I insisted they travel in the waiting ambulance to be taken to the cottage hospital. There they could be cared for by Matron Hamilton until the doctor arrived to perform the necessary surgery and decide when Jacob would be fit enough to travel to the Ndola Hospital.

  I would be censured for this later, but not by Suzanna Hamilton. She refused to relinquish Jacob for three days until Dr Patel, the Indian doctor, pronounced it safe for him to travel to Ndola Hospital for more specialised care.

  Whether Karel Pretorius knew that Daniel and Samson had performed forbidden procedures to effect his treatment at the grizzly, I can’t say, but he had nothing but praise for the way he had been rescued. And, although he was white, and an Afrikaner to boot, he made no fuss about having to recuperate in the bed opposite Jacob’s in the cottage hospital, even demanding that the sheet someone had hung from the ceiling between their beds be removed.

  In addition, Daniel and Samson received a certificate of merit from the Red Cross and a commendation from the mine management. They were proud to receive these marks of appreciation, and I was glad there’d been no unpleasantness. I guess I shall never understand how race relations work in Africa. We’d done dozens of procedures on black miners underground, but everyone decided to acknowledge this particular one; I suppose to be seen to be promoting harmonious relations between blacks and whites.

  For my part, I confess I was rather pleased when the surgeon at the Ndola Hospital phoned to tell me I’d done a commendable job on Jacob’s arm and that there was no gangrene or other infection. I suspect Matron Hammond should have taken the credit for that, but I was pleased to hear that the surgeon was fairly confident Jacob would eventually recover without any complications beyond a missing forearm.

  Life continued and I visited Jacob in Ndola Hospital over several weekends until he was fit to be sent home across the border, with a ten-pound accident gratuity payment, and a train ticket back to Katanga province, from the mine management. As he boarded the train to Elisabethville, I said my farewells in French, ‘Merci mille fois et je vous bénis [A thousand thanks and bless you].’

  Jacob’s eyes widened. ‘Vous avez compris tout le temps, bwana? [You understood all the time, bwana?]’ he replied.

  ‘Bien sûr [Of course],’ I answered as the guard blew his whistle and the train began to move away. He was a bit of a character and I was going to miss him. Poor bastard, with one arm and a shoulder that would never again work perfectly, he was in for a tough time.

  One of Karel Pretorius’s grizzly gang, who called himself Jackson, applied for Jacob’s job on the medic team, which came as something of a surprise. Working on a grizzly paid considerably more than working as a medic, even a fully trained one, but he’d been the one with a smile as big as a slice of watermelon who had almost broken into a dance after Jacob’s rescue.

  I managed to negotiate Jackson’s transfer with the help of Jannie Coetzee in the personnel department, even though he didn’t handle native recruitment. When I went in to see him about it, Jannie drew me aside to warn me. ‘Jack, the union is furious, very, very upset, man. They told me in confidence it’s only because Karel Pretorius refuses to make a written complaint that they’re letting it go this time. But I’m warning you, man, don’t do anything like it again. That grizzly incident was stupid, you hear?’ Then he added, ‘I’m talking to you as a friend, Jack. Remember, it was only a kaffir. With one arm he might as well be dead; he can’t earn a living for himself or his family now.’

  ‘He was a good guy,’ I replied, ‘I’ll miss him.’ I suddenly recalled one occasion when I’d visited him in hospital, which in itself had caused a few raised eyebrows. Jacob had pointed to my hand and said, ‘Now we are brothers, Bwana Ingelosi Doctor Canada.’

  ‘That’s enough, Jacob,’ I’d said, trying to sound stern, ‘the name is absurd. I’ve told the team simply to call me Bwana or Bwana Jack and that includes you, my friend.’ But I was touched by the idea of Jacob being my brother.

  Jannie Coetzee shook his head. ‘You Canadians, you don’t understand, do you?’ He paused. ‘But I got to hand it to you, Jack. With the kaffirs, you’re now a god, man. Bwana Ingelosi Doctor Canada, that’s a ble
rrie big compliment man, kaffirs don’t just hand out names like that.’

  And so, another six months went by, with numerous medical incidents but nothing out of the ordinary – lacerations, sprains, fractures – with the exception of a young Czech grizzly man who fell through the bars while wearing his safety chain, which jerked him to a stop and snapped his spine, putting him in a wheelchair. So much for working to the rules. Everyone knew that wearing a safety chain on a grizzly was potentially as dangerous as going without one. The rules were only there to cover management’s ass should a white guy be badly injured or killed and there was a coroner’s enquiry.

  Then one day Daniel approached me and asked if he and the team could visit me at my rondavel in the single quarters the following Saturday. Technically, there was nothing to stop them, but the Krauts forbade anyone but cleaning staff and servants from entering the area without permission. I hated the bastards but knew it was pointless protesting and went to see Hans Meyerhof, who seemed in a good mood. Thank Christ news of Jacob’s rescue hadn’t reached the Nazis. Before I’d opened my mouth, he said, ‘Jack, you like to play cards?’

  I remembered Noel White’s warning about the poker professionals who periodically came into the single quarters to skin the unwary. It wasn’t quite how he’d put it but, nevertheless, I was pretty sure such a game would be rigged in some way. ‘Why do you ask?’ I replied.

  ‘In two weeks, Saturday night, is coming some friends. They wish to make poker school. Maybe you want to play also?’

  ‘For fun?’ I asked.

  ‘Ja, maybe a little money, only a few pounds, but maybe you win some.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, then asked him about my medic team visiting. I’d bandaged a few heads after drunken Saturday-night fights and figured I was in the Krauts’ good books.

  ‘Maybe it is okay, but maybe also you want to play with our friends some poker, ja? You will enjoy,’ he assured me. He was obviously indicating that one favour deserved another.