Night Calypso

by Lawrence Scott

  Later that morning, Vincent prepared to give the first of a series of lectures to all the nurses and their assistants. A lecture might have been too grand a title. This was a new idea. Another of his fantastic ideals, he thought. He wanted his hospital, no matter in how small a way, to be a teaching hospital.

  Mother Superior was the first, at the front, in the row of chairs arranged on the verandah outside the nuns’ common room. She had eventually relented, giving her permission. Between Mr Krishna Singh with his political speeches under the almond tree, not to forget Jonah Le Roy, the tall black man, as she always referred to him, looking more like Moses than Jonah, and now this new, free-thinking doctor with his lectures, she wondered where she could make her impression, except in the Chapter House of her convent.

  She invited Father Meyer, the chaplain, to come along, as a kind of inquisitor, Vincent thought. Maybe he would be taken out and burnt at the stake afterwards for heresy.

  Sister Thérèse sat with Sister Rita at the back. Those other nuns who were not on duty filled up the other seats. Krishna Singh was at the front. Jonah was standing at the back, near the steps.

  Vincent placed a small table in front of his audience, laid out his papers, securing them from the relentless wind with a stone. Sister Claire brought him a chair from the common room.

  The gist of Vincent’s lecture was education. The stigma, as old as the disease, making outcasts of the lepers; the image of people bandaged in rags, shunned, forced to ring a bell to announce their arrival, so that others could get out of the way, had to be resisted. ‘We’ve got to educate the public and the authorities.’ Vincent looked up from his paper. He saw anxiety and disapproval on the faces of Mother Superior and the sisters near her. But he continued. ‘We’re quarantined here. Our patients are exiles in their own home. We must change that view.’

  He needed to catch some other eyes. ‘There’s the shame our patients feel when they first come to us. We see it whenever the bumboats arrive. There’s the loss of self brought by this disease. It’s as if their very history has taken their self-esteem away.’

  Before he moved on from the social stigma of the disease, he looked up and thought he saw the faintest glimmer of a smile on Sister Thérèse’s lips. Her bright eyes encouraged him.

  Singh looked ahead proudly, sitting next to the chaplain and Mother Superior. Jonah was beaming from the back, ushering in some of the older patients, like Mr Lalbeharry, who sat on the steps. Vincent gained in confidence.

  ‘Where the infectious, incurable form of the disease exists, there is relentless deterioration. It can seem an endless task: suppurating sores, joints that rot away, faces which collapse. Yet shining through, like in some of our boys, Ti-Jean, for instance…’ Vincent looked up and smiled proudly. Everyone knew that the boy was his hero. ‘Or, take Ma Rosie! We see the individual no matter the state of their body.’ He paused to mention other particular patients, to drive his point home. ‘You, Lal.’ Mr Lalbeharry smiled from the back. ‘We can get depressed that, after all our advice, we see the little care some of our other patients take of themselves. Why is this? They burn themselves. They stump their limbs. They cut their skin. We need to remind ourselves that this is not the disease itself. Yes, it’s a job of clean bandaging. It’s a matter of looking after wounds and sores. But, there’s more. There’s understanding the complexity of this disease. What can we do to heal? What can we do to prevent deterioration?’

  Lastly, Vincent said, ‘A bit of love, sisters. Let them experience that. And, dare I say it, a bit of pleasure.’ Jonah stamped his feet with approval. Singh applauded. Mother Superior moved her chair deliberately as if to get up and leave, then remained sitting, bolt upright with an unflinching face. The chaplain coughed profusely. Vincent had noticed that this was a nervous reaction on his part throughout the speech. ‘The general well-being of our patients, the opportunity for a full life.’ Vincent caught Sister Thérèse’s eyes. ‘By encouraging full relationships, sisters, we can bring happiness amidst so much sadness.’

  Mother Superior came up to Vincent when he had finished. ‘I’m glad that you appreciate the individual soul, Doctor.’

  ‘Soul? Who said anything about the soul? I mentioned the individual. It’s their mortality I’m interested in improving. I know nothing about immortality. I leave that to you, Mother, and Father Meyer here. You deal with the invisible. I’ll deal with the visible, even though I may need your entire community looking into a microscope to find it.’

  ‘You think words will heal. You joke. You charm. But you don’t charm me Doctor.’

  ‘Just the opposite. Understanding what the disease is, how it works, how it’s prevented. We know more than we did. This is what lies behind research. Research and education is allied to treatment. That is the valuable work your nuns can do. Meticulous, relentless research in order to extend our understanding helps us prepare our treatment.’

  ‘They’re just poor people. They know more than any of us how to suffer and to accept the cross Christ has given them to carry. We can assist in that.’

  ‘I see no cross. Poor, yes. But that means they deserve even more, surely. Even your religion teaches us that.’

  ‘The poor will always be with us, as Christ says in the gospel.’ Father Meyer, within earshot, contributed.

  ‘Well, yes, if you think that way, we can then rely on the poor always being with us. My work is to help them, so that they can work themselves out of poverty.’

  The other sisters moved away in embarrassment, their loyalties stretched.

  ‘Don’t underestimate the gift of patience which they have, and what it allows us to witness. Suffering, Doctor, is the way of the Lord.’

  ‘I admire my patients’ endurance. Don’t get me wrong. But I want to harness it to improve their health, their self-esteem, not remain silent receivers of charity.’

  Father Meyer smiled. He preferred his battles over a few rum punches and Wagner on the gramophone. He patted Vincent on the shoulder in order to quieten him. He patronised both him and Mother Superior with his smile, as if their discussion was beneath him. Seemed to Vincent that his philosophy was that charity was to keep the poor poor, even if not expressed so bluntly. ‘They allow us to advance in virtue, as they themselves grow in that very same virtue.’

  ‘And don’t forget, Doctor, that my nuns are brides of Christ.’ With that parting salvo, Mother Superior turned her back and walked away.

  Singh, leaning up against the balustrade of the verandah, caught Vincent’s eye. ‘I see you on our side now, Doctor.’ He patted Vincent on the back.

  ‘I hope we’re on the side of our patients.’

  ‘People. People, Doctor.’

  ‘Words, Krishna. You heard Mother Superior.’ Vincent smiled. ‘How many brides does Shiva have?’

  ‘And Mohammed?’

  ‘Religions! They’ll keep the poor poor.’

  ‘Opiates!’ Singh proclaimed.

  Later that afternoon, finishing his rounds, Vincent turned to Sister Thérèse who carried a tray of bandages. Resting it down, she passed the lint through her fingers, snipping with her scissors. He knew she was one of the best on the wards. She was firm in her purpose, but delicate and gentle. He watched her hands turn in the light. He watched her fingers in the strips of cotton cloth and muslin lint, a gold band on her marriage finger. She was Christ’s bride. He watched her wash wounds and clean suppurating sores. What had brought this young girl to El Caracol?

  ‘Le village. The village.’ She spoke phrases in simultaneous translation. It was a kind of nervousness, a kind of being in two places at once, being in two minds at the same time. After her doctor’s lecture, and the public response from her Mother Superior, the air was tense. She spoke in her French accent, opening conversation on something other than their work as doctor and nurse. She talked about the place from where she had come. ‘We went to Provence in the summer and vacations. Otherwise, we were in Paris.’

  They were not supposed to ha
ve personal conversations. When Vincent had first arrived, Mother Superior had always insisted that Sister Gertrude, a woman of nearly seventy, should be his ward assistant. Then he used to look at the young sisters giggling together, catching them in an off-guard moment in the pharmacy.

  He had requested Sister Thérèse Weil because of her research experience. He was getting used to her as his best assistant. She was looking up at him from where she bent over her work. ‘What’s it, Sister?’

  Her eyes were always being lifted from below a bowed head, an irritating gesture of humility, learned in some spartan, Jansenist novitiate in France. Not her natural demeanour, he thought. She extracted from her copious sleeves an envelope which was as blue as the Antillean sky. ‘A letter from Papa.’ The paper had faded with its passage, and was creased with its secrecy, secreted into the folds of her habit, now withdrawn between the tips of her fingers. Once read, already censored, it should have been destroyed. That is what Mother Superior would have wanted.

  ‘You’ve not given up the world, Sister, that you long for its news so,’ Vincent teased.

  ‘Papa, you know. I’ve told you of his letters.’ She smiled, refolding the letter, indicating its author, putting it back into her sleeves, secreting it further, somewhere deep in all those folds. He could not imagine where it eventually encountered her flesh.

  Women who had worked in his mother’s house lifted their blouses and inserted money and keepsakes in the depths of their bosoms. Hers were flat. She seemed like a boy in girl’s robes. What had she done with her breasts? ‘No, go ahead, Sister. I would be delighted to share your news. I’m of the world. I long for its news.’ Vincent smiled.

  ‘Papa is worried. He hears from friends, les amis.’ There were tears in her eyes. What was he to do with a crying nun? He moved to comfort her, then stopped, folding his arms. Better to keep those out of the way.

  ‘What does your father say? What has he heard from a friend?’

  ‘Events in Germany will encourage ideas in France. It’s a long history. Kristallnacht. It sounds pretty. Like the name of an opera, or a piece of music.’

  ‘Yes Sister, it was in the local paper. It was on the radio.’

  ‘C’est dangereux. For France.’

  They talked about the report which had come through on the BBC, again reported in the local papers. A high-ranking remember of the German embassy in Paris had been shot. A seventeen-year-old young man had been detained for questioning. He was a Polish Jew, Hershel Grynzpan. The man was reported to have said that he shot the official, Ernst Von Rath, to call attention to the fate of Polish Jews in Germany. He died on the afternoon of November 9th.

  Vincent and Sister Thérèse exchanged these facts. Between their exchanges were long silences.

  ‘There were riots by the National Socialists right across Germany,’ she continued to read from her father’s letter.

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Acts of revenge.’

  Vincent remembered Theo glued to the radio, fiddling with the knobs to try and tune in the reception more clearly. ‘“Kristallnacht”, new vocabulary, Doctor.’ Words excited the boy.

  ‘It’s been reported that SA men in uniform, some in civilian clothes, rioted in the streets of many German towns across the country, destroying Jewish shops, synagogues, attacking Jewish citizens. Many are seeing these riots as a direct result of the killing of Ernst Von Rath in Paris, but others are seeing it as a pretext for what is now National Socialist policy, as expressed recently by Herman Goring. He has called for all available resources to be brought to bear on a final solution to the Jewish question. They have no place in our economy.’

  Sister Thérèse folded her father’s letter over and over till it was as slender as a needle, which she then again inserted into her sleeve, as if she were administering herself an injection. She looked up. ‘They’ll kill my father.’

  Vincent listened.

  As if to distract herself from her real pain, she spoke quickly of other reports in her father’s letter. ‘News coming through says that the riots were supposed to appear as a spontaneous outbreak by the Volk. Leaders of the Jewish community are calling the attacks a Pogrom.’

  ‘Your father is very detailed.’

  ‘Witnesses in the city of Aachen have reported that the firemen, responsible for putting out the flames to the burning synagogue in the city, were seen spraying chemicals which contributed to the destruction.’

  ‘I can believe it.’

  ‘He says the smashing of windows with bars, sledgehammers and picks have inspired commentators on major newspapers to call the night of destruction, Kristallnacht, describing the broken glass in the streets, in many cities, across the country.’

  By now, Sister Thérèse had unfolded the letter once more, like some piece of espionage.

  ‘Sister, I’m sorry, try not to disturb yourself.’

  Tears wet her cheeks. She paid no attention to Vincent’s caution.

  ‘“It is reported that there are thousands wounded, and a hundred people have been killed. The events are said to have caused concern in many European capitals, though there are no official statements, which other commentators are seeing as the delicate caution with which the government of the National Socialist Party is being treated.”’

  ‘It’s terrible. You’re not helping yourself.’ He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, sit. Don’t read anymore.’

  But now, as if to heed Doctor’s advice, she switched to the news of developments in Sudetenland since the recent agreement in Munich between France, Britain, Germany and Italy to concede the province in north-west Czechoslovakia to the Germans. She read blandly, emptied of emotion.

  Sister Thérèse’s hands were full of the sodden bandages taken off from Ma Cowey, whose feet were worse than ever. She and Vincent were both thankful for the sea breeze. The stench of putrefaction and ulcerous sores was overwhelming.

  ‘Ma Cowey, you are not using the crutches we made for you. That was a good piece of cyp that Singh cut for you from the forest. Bon Bois.’ Vincent registered Ma Cowey’s name in his ledger. Two hundred injections this week.

  ‘Docta, you know how it is. I not accustom to crutches. And I not feel nothing. I not feel nothing happening. I surprise myself to see it so.’

  Sister Thérèse helped Ma Cowey down the steps to the yard after completing her bandages. ‘Come again tomorrow at the same time.’

  She returned, wiping her hands on her apron. She went to the sink and scrubbed with carbolic soap. ‘Scrub hard, Sister.’ Vincent tried to clear the air of emotion.

  She returned with her hands in a towel, then unbuttoned her sleeves and rolled them up her arm. She wiped her naked arms. ‘Il fait chaud.’

  ‘You’re right, Sister. It making hot, as the old people say.’

  She smiled. Then she became serious again. ‘She’s not using the crutches.’

  ‘What do you deduce from that?’ Vincent interrogated his assistant.

  ‘She talks almost as if she doesn’t see the need for them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She doesn’t realise what’s happening. She forgets she needs them, because nothing reminds her that she does.’

  ‘Nothing? Why?’

  ‘She cannot feel. She cannot feel pain.’

  ‘Exactly. Pain should remind her. Pain is the message that we hurt. Pain tells us that we need healing. They’re not getting that message. I was looking at you limping this morning. Even after I’d taken out the stitches, you had patterned yourself to limp, just in case. You were getting compensatory messages.’

  ‘Pain is a gift.’

  ‘Well, it’s our protection. We’re wired that way. Something has gone wrong with their wiring. I want to carry out those nerve experiments. But I need a cadaver. I need the conditions in which to work on it.’

  They completed their rounds by seeing how a new boy had settled in. Christiana, the new girl, had shown no signs of the disease so far.

  Already, Ti-J
ean had taken the boy off to school, to play football, getting himself another holiday from the classroom by being legitimately let off by the doctor, but having to avoid Mother Superior nonetheless.

  Suddenly, it was overcast. Coming up from the gulf was a hard rain. A dark gloom settled over the yards. There was a serrated flash, followed by deep thunder and a downpour which had everyone scuttling for shelter under verandahs and doorways as rain, like rock stones clattered on galvanise roofs. Children bawled with excitement and fear on the wards. The drains gargled and pelted down the hills to the sea, in runnels of brown water. Then it was over. The clouds had blown off to the Atlantic. The sun baked the wet yards dry. The scent of hot steam filtered through the humid air, like on ironing day. Children played in the water-filled drains.

  From the path, going up to the huts, there was a wide view of Chac Chac Bay and the gulf beyond. It was strangely empty. Recently, they had become accustomed to seeing the trading ships which came up from Brazil and Argentina. They sailed along the coast of Cayenne and the Guyanas, sheltering and refuelling in the safe embrace of the Golfo de Ballena.

  A lone frigate bird soared high above the island. There always seemed to be this crucifixion in the sky.

  The breeze lifted Sister Thérèse’s veil. It wrapped her white cotton habit around her legs and hips. She laughed, disentangling herself, bowing her head to her knees, keeping her skirts down over her ankles. She was like a giggling schoolgirl.

  Vincent and Sister Thérèse stood and surveyed the bay. They looked at each other and smiled and then continued on their walk. He remembered to respect the sisters’ silence, their proper decorum.

  They reached the very last of the huts, calling in and checking on patients who had not managed to get down to the clinic. Neither of them had come this far in their rounds before. There was still much of the island that they both had to explore, and there were stories that some patients had escaped from the compound, and were hiding in the hills like maroons.