Lunch with the Generals

by Derek Hansen

  ‘It is too early to judge the outcome,’ insisted her doctors. ‘See how her face is swollen? But we are optimistic.’

  They were right, of course. Her face was grossly swollen, her right eye closed over, her nose a shapeless lump, and everywhere, like the streetmap of a madman’s town, there were angry red lines of lacerations and the cross-hatching of sutures.

  Jan was stricken. He couldn’t bear to visit Annemieke alone. He would no longer look upon the sleeping child unless all her bandages were in place. He would visit her with Lita when she was able, and Barnaby or Neneng when she was not. He would wait anxiously for them to arrive at the hospital, but once they were there he’d procrastinate. He could feel himself withdrawing from Annemieke and was powerless to stop. When he was with her he would take hold of her foot, seemingly the only part free of injury, only to release it in anguish before taking it up again, and releasing it, endlessly, unthinkingly.

  Lita knew the agonies he was going through. Hadn’t she recognised his vulnerability from the time they’d met? She used to call him a softie and a big sook as she soothed him, but these words were inappropriate now. Annemieke was his special weakness, and many times she had envied the relationship between them. She realised that she would need all her skills to comfort Jan, and make him realise that what had happened was an accident, that he was free from blame. Jan would listen to her words and want to believe them, but deny them all the same. She soothed him and when that didn’t work, she berated him.

  ‘How can you be so heartless?’ she accused. ‘How can you wallow in your own self-pity when she needs you? Go to her. Sit with her. Talk to her. Tell her stories. Tell her everything will be all right. Don’t abandon her. Don’t think that because her eyes are closed she cannot hear. The words are not important. It’s your presence that matters. You must be there whenever she opens her eyes.’

  ‘She’ll never forgive me,’ he pleaded. ‘What I’ve done to her, she’ll never forgive me.’

  ‘Jan, it was an accident. There is nothing to forgive. Go to her. Don’t abandon her. She will think she has done something wrong.’

  Their words chased each other endlessly, and resolution was as elusive as last night’s dreams. Mercifully, Annemieke was still under the spell of her medication. She sensed something was amiss as she drifted in and out of the fog. Something she had grown up with and taken for granted had changed. Something she had built her faith upon. But she could not yet work out what it was.

  Annemieke awoke on the morning of her tenth day in hospital and knew immediately that this day was different. The medication had worn off and not been replaced. The clouds and fog lifted, and she began to string thoughts together once more. She knew she’d been in an accident. That much had penetrated her fog-bound mind. And she knew both her parents were all right because she was aware that they’d come to see her. She’d wanted to hug them, but there was a savage weight upon her chest and she could not move her arms. That was a funny thing. Where were her arms? She tried to open her eyes. One obliged, one didn’t. And the one that did was blurred. She wanted to rub it awake but there was the problem with her arms again. Where were they? Where were her arms? She tried to sit up but warning pains in her chest stopped her. She became aware of other pain. Her face hurt a bit as well, and there was a dull ache in her head. What had happened to her? She began to feel afraid. She sobbed. A strange sound she hardly recognised as her own. She felt imprisoned. Not imprisoned. What was it? Paralysed! She was paralysed! Again she heard that strange sound that began as a sob. Then a voice, a kind, gentle voice, and a white shape appeared in her blurred and limited vision.

  ‘Hello,’ it said cheerily. ‘I am Tin. I see you have decided to wake up. How do you feel?’

  Annemieke clutched at the salvation the kind voice seemed to offer.

  ‘Goo …’ she said.

  ‘Good?’ asked the nurse. ‘Excellent. I’ll go and call the doctor. He’ll want to see you while you’re feeling so good.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ cried Annemieke quickly. She was scared. There were things she didn’t understand, things she wanted to know and she wasn’t ready to be left alone. She wanted to know if she was paralysed but, in the end, the prospect was so terrifying she was too afraid to ask. Desperately she sought another reason to stop her nurse leaving.

  ‘I can’t thee clearry.’

  ‘One moment,’ her new friend said, and disappeared from view. Then Annemieke could feel warm, wet cottonwool wipe across her good eye and then a tissue. She opened her eye and looked into the face of her Sundanese nurse, hovering over her. She saw something else which both reassured her and frightened her at the same time. She found her arms, white columns reaching up in front of her. She’d seen enough school friends with plastered limbs to know what that meant, but at least it solved one mystery.

  ‘Better?’ asked Tin, her nurse.

  ‘Yeth.’ Then as an afterthought. ‘My armth are broken.’

  ‘Yes. And three ribs. And your nose. And your cheekbone. Oh, you should have seen the mess you were in when they brought you here. You are a very lucky girl, Annemieke.’

  Annemieke couldn’t possibly imagine how anyone could think she was lucky.

  ‘Enough talking now. The doctor will want to see you before your parents come. Now don’t go away.’

  There it was. Confirmation. Her parents were all right and better than that, they were nearby. She could feel tears welling up and when she tried to stop them by scrunching up her good eye, someone set fire to her face. It was so unexpected and so sudden. The tears came in a flood she didn’t dare stop. She barely dared to breathe in case the pain returned.

  ‘Oh dear,’ the kind voice said again, and she felt a tissue wipe across her eye. ‘It’s all right, Annemieke. Just lay still. The doctor is here.’

  Annemieke opened her eye once more to see a dark, friendly face staring down at her.

  ‘Well well, how are we feeling this morning? A fine day for recuperation, I am thinking.’

  His accent was strange, and to Annemieke’s ears, almost comical. She wondered if she was dreaming. But Dr Ganguly was real enough, and his lapse into his native Indian accent was deliberate. He used it often as part of his bedside patter. It usually brought a smile to the face of patients who otherwise had no reason for smiling.

  ‘My face hurtth. Thon fire,’ said Annemieke.

  ‘Well, we shall just have to put out the fire. Let me see.’ The doctor shone a light into Annemieke’s eye.

  ‘Very good,’ he said and then began to remove bandages. Annemieke had not been aware that her head was bandaged, but now when she thought of it, vague half memories drifted by. Of course! The doctor took his time. In fact he seemed to take an extraordinary amount of time.

  He looked at her closed eye.

  ‘Soon we’ll be having it as good as new,’ he said.

  Then gently, ever so gently, he began to touch different parts of her face.

  ‘Can you feel this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeth. Yeth. Yeth. No. No.’

  The examination continued. Annemieke concentrated, but she couldn’t always feel the doctor’s touch, no matter how hard she tried. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but the doctor didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  ‘Very good,’ is what he said.

  He turned his attention to her ribs.

  ‘Ouchth,’ she said.

  ‘Very good, very, very good,’ he said.

  He tickled the soles of her feet and tapped her knees. It hadn’t occurred to her to move her legs till now, and she was greatly relieved to feel them respond. But raising them hurt her ribs and her hips felt tender and bruised. Any lingering thoughts of paralysis evaporated.

  ‘Very good,’ said the doctor once more, looking extremely pleased with himself. ‘Who would believe this is the same young woman they are bringing in ten days ago? Bloody marvellous.’

  Tin laughed. Dr Ganguly’s performance wasn’t entirely wasted.

  Annemie
ke wanted to smile. It seemed she was making everybody around her happy, and she wanted desperately to please for the reassurance it brought. But the effort had made her weary, and the pain had returned. She licked her lips so she could speak and thank the doctor.

  Conscious now of every little movement, she became aware of how swollen her tongue was, and how lethargic. And something else. Teeth were missing. How many she couldn’t guess, because her swollen tongue made detailed exploration difficult.

  The nurse began to paint antiseptic onto her face and Annemieke concentrated once more on the touch of the swab she used. But it proved elusive no matter how hard she concentrated. Sometimes she could feel it so much it tickled. Other times she could feel nothing at all.

  ‘Hello,’ said the nurse unexpectedly. ‘I think you’ll find your daughter a lot brighter today. Right, Annemieke?’

  Annemieke tried to turn in the direction of the voices she heard. The voices she longed with all her heart to hear. Her mum and dad had come to see her. Her spirits soared, but the sudden movement brought her back down to earth with a thump. Her face once more caught fire as if somebody had thrown petrol on it and struck a match. She fought back the tears. She wasn’t going to cry, not now, not in front of her parents.

  Annemieke turned her head as far as the pain would allow. She saw her mother first. She was sitting. No! She was in a wheelchair. And her face was also bandaged. Annemieke’s mind reeled. Her good eye searched for her father and found him. He only had one arm! Alarm flashed across her face. Lita quickly reached across and stroked her hair.

  ‘Shhhh,’ she soothed. ‘We’re all right, little one. Don’t be upset. I’ll be out of this wheelchair soon enough, long before you and your father come out of your casts.’

  Annemieke looked again at her father, and saw the cast about his shoulder and his missing arm strapped across his chest.

  ‘I thought you’d lotht your arm,’ she said and smiled.

  To her horror, her father reeled back. She couldn’t know what effect her attempt at a smile would have on him. Jan was already distressed. He’d steeled himself to look once more on the sight he tried so hard to avoid. He wasn’t prepared for her mouth to open, lopsidedly, and reveal a gaping black hole where once her perfect white teeth had been. Now his worst fears flooded back. He had destroyed his daughter’s face. He had robbed her of her beauty. He had taken a young face, so beautiful the angels would weep to gaze upon it, and turned it into something grotesque. A travesty. He could not help himself. In his horror and his shame, he reeled back and turned from her. He fled from the room.

  ‘Dad! Dad! Come back!’ Annemieke turned to her mother, imploring her to do something. To bring him back. To tell her what she had done wrong.

  But on her mother’s face she saw a look of such pain and hurt, she couldn’t bear it. What had happened? What had she done wrong? Annemieke’s mind whirled helplessly and she began to sob. And each sob added fuel to the blaze that now raged across her face, and twisted the knife in her side where her ribs had barely begun to heal.

  ‘Mieke … Mieke … stop!’ she heard her mother cry. But nothing would stop her.

  ‘Nurse!’ called her mother. ‘Oh Mieke, Mieke … please don’t cry. Please, baby.’

  Tin was quickly by Annemieke’s side, plunging a hyperdermic into her drip. Slowly Annemieke calmed as the sedative went about its task. Her breathing evened and the pain in her side faded away.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ she asked her mother, eyes pleading.

  ‘Nothing, pet, nothing. It’s all right. Everything will be all right. Your father is just upset to see you, that’s all. You know what he’s like when you’re sick. You know what a softie he is. He can’t stand it when anything happens to his little angel. You know that, don’t you? He loves you more than anyone in this world.’

  ‘Yeth,’ said Annemieke.

  ‘We’ll just have to be brave, Mieke. We’ll have to give him time to get over it.’

  Her mother’s voice had grown distant and she seemed a long way away.

  ‘Osshhh,’ her mother said, stroking her hair.

  ‘Osshhh …’ Annemieke echoed, and thoughts of the tiny monkey filled her head as sleep stole her away.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The big man sat like a small boy on Lita’s bed as she quietly, and without anger, told him how much he had hurt Annemieke and how much he had frightened her. Jan had no defence other than his sense of guilt, which Lita would not accept.

  ‘There can be no guilt because there was no fault,’ she insisted. ‘It was an accident. That is fate, that is the way things are. It was our fate to have that accident, to leave Pengalengan when we did, though both of us knew it was foolish to do so. No one can change their fate. And only a fool dwells on the past because that cannot be changed either. But if you are convinced you have done wrong, then make good your mistake. Go to her. Give her all the love you can find in your heart. Be her friend. Be her strength. Be her father!’ Her voice had risen but she checked herself. She hadn’t finished with him. She would stand over him to make sure he performed all his duties faultlessly. If he insisted on behaving like a child, she would treat him like one.

  ‘When she is well enough to ask for a mirror,’ she said quietly, ‘you will hold it for her.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, Jan, you will. You will hold the mirror for her and tell her how well she is progressing. You will tell her that everything will soon be back to normal. And if she is upset, you will wipe away her tears and comfort her. She needs you, Jan. She looks to you for her strength. You cannot fail her. You must not let her down.’

  Jan could not meet Lita’s eyes. When he finally did, he saw a face that could have been carved from stone.

  ‘I’ve arranged for an orthodontist from Jakarta,’ he mumbled. ‘She has lost some teeth, but others were just snapped off. We can cap some and perhaps replace the missing ones with ceramic teeth. It would be much better than a plate.’

  ‘Did you ask them to send for a new father as well?’ Lita asked bitterly. ‘A real father. Mieke can do without teeth for now, she can’t do without her father.’

  ‘I’m doing my best. I’m doing my best for her.’ His voice lacked conviction. Wearily, he ran his hand over his brow. ‘Oh dear God, I don’t know what to do.’ He turned to Lita for help, but it was not forthcoming. Lita had hardened herself against his agony.

  ‘I have spoken to Qantas. Mieke will be able to fly in two weeks. Maybe things will be better when we get home.’

  ‘Things will have to get better here first,’ said Lita pointedly, ‘or we’re not going.’

  Jan was taken aback. Did she really mean what she said? She did. Her eyes were hard and her jaw was set.

  ‘Go to her, Jan. And when she asks to look in a mirror, you make sure you hold it. Not the nurse, not the doctor, not me. You hold the mirror. You are not responsible for the accident, but you are responsible for her. Only you can help her come to terms with what has happened to her, and how her life has changed. Only you.’

  Jan was big. But he found he didn’t have the strength to defy the tiny, determined woman who sat before him.

  ‘Okay,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll do it.’

  If he had just volunteered to test a hangman’s noose, his face would not have been more grim.

  But Lita did not see his face. She had turned her wheelchair away from him. She had turned her back to him, isolating him, shunning him. As he had done to Annemieke.

  Jan was as good as his word. He left Lita and went straight back to Annemieke. He sat with her while she slept and he was the first thing she saw when she woke up.

  ‘Oh, Daddy!’ she said and wept great tears. Jan dabbed them away with cottonwool. He apologised. He promised he would never walk away from her again. He sat with her all the rest of that day. He stroked her hair and read to her. They played ‘I Spy’ knowing full well that all Annemieke could see laying flat on her back was the ceiling and the ropes and pull
eys that held her plaster-encased arms. It became their private joke as Jan consistently failed to call ‘ceiling’ for something beginning with ‘C’. She did not notice that Jan would always excuse himself when her bandages needed changing. If she thought about it at all, she would have thought Jan was just making room for her nurse.

  When she returned from the operating theatre, her gums swollen and throbbing from the implantation of her new teeth, Jan was there when she woke up. They’d also taken the opportunity to rebuild her shattered nose, so her face was once more puffy and sore and new dressings covered both eyes.

  ‘Love you, Daddy,’ she slurred, from her drug induced depths.

  ‘Love you too, Mieke,’ he replied. But his soft voice belied his mood.

  Annemieke never complained, even when pain caused her to cry out. And though she dreaded being wheeled off to theatre, she never voiced her fears to her father. Perhaps she should have. Then Jan could have helped, and in the act of helping, begun to assuage his guilt. But her courage stood solidly by her. And she did not want to risk upsetting Jan and losing him again.

  Each time they took her to theatre and each time they brought her back in pain, Jan’s heart went out to her. He sat with her, and he read to her, but he could not take away her pain nor make her better again. Nor could he promise there would be no more operations. He could do nothing. His frustration metamorphosed into anger, which built by the hour and by the day. And his anger made him careless.

  ‘When we get back to Australia,’ he said to her one day, ‘I’m going to get you the best plastic surgeon in the country. I don’t care what it costs.’

  Annemieke knew what a plastic surgeon was, but why did she need the best one in the country? The truth slowly began to dawn on her.

  ‘I want to look in the mirror,’ she said.

  Jan talked her out of it. Never in his life had he been more persuasive or more desperate.