by Damon Galgut
But of course I was right: the weeds and the grass did grow back, and as the slow green millimetres accumulated nobody said a word. And nobody cut them down. Laurence’s attention had moved on to a new project somewhere else. And when I saw, a month or two later, that somebody had broken the cheap lock on the chain that held the door at the end of the passage, I said nothing about that either.
I had my own preoccupations. Not all of my life was centred on Laurence or the hospital: I had other pursuits, further afield, to distract me. I had gone back to visiting Maria at night. Not every night, not in the same way as before. But once or twice a week a restless impulse came over me and I headed for my car.
The sex was different now. Something hard and brutal and hungry had come into it. Maybe it was only sex now – the romance of it had gone. I was rough with her. Not violent, but with an inclination towards it that threw everything off balance. I was always on top, I held her down. And there was an answering passivity, an acquiescence, in her. But we didn’t really touch each other. We didn’t even try to talk. It was as if I was looking for something I couldn’t get to; the closest I could come was by hammering, hammering, on this heavy wooden door.
I paid her every time now. And that’s what it was: a payment. Our meetings were transactions, the limits of which were practical. When we did talk it was about arrangements. A couple of times she warned me not to come on particular nights. I accepted these restrictions without letting them conjure any personal feelings. The other man didn’t exist, except as a prohibition on my time, or as a symbol in the form of a white car outside the shack.
Only once did the distance close up; she said, ‘Where is that man – your friend?’
I took a moment to understand. ‘Laurence? He’s not my friend.’
‘No?’
‘No. Well, maybe he is.’ I watched her pulling her dress over her head, slipping her arms into the broken sleeves. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’
She gestured.
‘His face...?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about his face?’
She was about to answer, but then shook her head. A glance went between us and then it was back: the enormous distance, the wall. ‘You come Friday?’ she said.
So he was here too, a manic disconcerting figure, flickering for an instant on the wooden side of the shack. It was hard to imagine that my life had been entirely free of Laurence Waters just two months before.
I didn’t tell him about Maria, I don’t know why. Everything had been set in that first alarming instant when he asked me, ‘Have you slept with that woman?’ My answer was instantaneous and a lie; there was no strategy behind it. My instinct saw his intuition as a threat; I lied to defend myself. And then I had to go on lying.
I lied even though he knew exactly where I was going. The fact that he never asked made it clear that he knew. He watched me shower and change my clothes and drive off into the dark without saying anything to me. Sometimes he was still awake when I got back. The others in the hospital had seen my late comings and goings for a long time too, and none of them said anything either. But they could only guess; he knew.
So that even this little part of my life – paid for with cash, to keep it separate from the rest – became connected to Laurence. As the weeks went past and we became more accustomed – or resigned – to each other, my mind kept going back to that question he’d asked when he first arrived. When was the moment when you knew that you wanted to be a doctor? I watched Laurence when he attended to the one or two patients who drifted through. It didn’t matter how old or young they were, how arbitrary or critical their condition; he was the same with every one of them: serious, concerned, committed. They all seemed to matter to him.
This bothered me. It bothered me because, really, I didn’t care too much. I don’t mean that I didn’t try. I gave my detached, professional best to each of them, but when nothing more was possible I didn’t think about it again. And Laurence’s involvement and effort showed up a lack in me.
I searched through my life for a moment of truth like his. It felt to me that somewhere, some time, something had happened to define me. But I couldn’t bring that moment to mind.
And then I could. One arbitrary day it came to me: a simple flash of recognition. And I wished I could forget about it again.
My moment had come thirteen years before. I had spoken with Laurence, on a few occasions, in a casual, everyday way, about my time in the army. He’d asked me some questions too, with a young man’s ingenuous curiosity. But every time the topic came up I could hear that it didn’t mean anything real to him. It was the way he said the word ‘army’. I could hear that he had no idea of what it was, what it was like. Conscription had been part of the life of every white man for forty years and then suddenly, overnight, a new law was passed and it vanished. Now here was this white man, one generation away from me, who looked on this part of my life as history.
On one or other day it happened that Laurence and I were driving yet another untreatable patient to the other hospital. The side road that linked the town to the main road was a winding one, going over hills and through dips, and from a particular turn along the way it was possible to see the remains of the military camp from which the Brigadier had come. In the old days, apparently, it used to be a major military settlement: rows and rows of tents and trucks, swarms of men moving around. That was in the time of upheaval, with the possibility of incursions from over the border. Now it was abandoned – a huddle of tatty tents behind a scrawl of barbed wire. A dirt track led off to it, but the track was overgrown and I’d never gone down there to investigate. But I always slowed down, at this particular point, to look. I don’t know what the attraction was; there was nothing, really, to see. But today I thought I glimpsed a human figure, moving between the tents. It was far away and tiny and then it flashed out of sight; and I was immediately unsure whether I’d seen anything at all. But I kept turning around to look.
‘What is it?’ Laurence said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s gone.’
I didn’t want to talk about the Brigadier again to someone who didn’t care who he was.
‘What’s that place?’
‘Old army camp.’
He said, ‘I wish I’d been in the army. It feels like I missed out on a formative experience.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He looked sharply at me, a startled sidelong glance. ‘I thought you told me it wasn’t a big deal. You had a boring time, you said.’
‘It was boring.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
He let it go, but somehow this conversation had stirred something up for me. That night I lay awake for a long time, thinking. My experience in the military didn’t often come to mind; it was more like a blankness, a dead patch in my memory. There was really only one incident, one telling little encounter, that had burned itself into me.
History had sent me up to the Angolan border for two years. What I’d said to Laurence was true: most of those months were flat and dull – lost time. I got moved around from camp to camp. I had just qualified as a doctor, so I was given the rank of lieutenant. But there were quite a few of us and I did nothing to distinguish myself in any way. It seemed a good policy to lie low.
At only one point in that whole period did I ever come close to physical action. That was when I was sent for three months to a small camp deep in the bush. My experience in the military till then had been tame and domestic. I dealt with people who’d injured themselves in accidents or were suffering from heatstroke or tick-bite fever or broken bones. Mundane calamities. But up there the casualties were of a different kind. That camp was being used for a lot of intensive activity: patrols were going out constantly, looking for enemy patrols to annihilate. For the first time I was treating people who were fighting in a war. I saw things there I hadn’t seen before. Wo
unds made by grenades and bullets and land mines; the deliberate damage that people wilfully inflict on each other. The overriding impression that I retain is of the vividness of bleeding meat, like some kind of bright fruit blooming against the dun, dusty veld.
There were only two lieutenants in the little field hospital – me and Mike. That was where I met and befriended the man who would later run off with my wife. But in those days he was just good company. We worked under a fat captain, who was the chief medic. The officer in charge of the whole camp was Commandant Moller.
Until this one particular night, I had never come close enough to see him properly. It was his figure I saw, usually off in the distance, getting into or out of helicopters, inspecting things, giving orders. He was thin and compact and powerful and he exuded a quality of danger. We were afraid of him and went out of our way to avoid him. He had a reputation that spread far beyond his physical presence – for a blind and holy devotion to his job.
His job was killing enemy soldiers, and it was for this reason only that the camp existed. It was for this reason only that we were there, although we didn’t kill anybody. No, we patched up the people who did the killing, so that they could go out and do it again. When we failed, our patients were sent out in the other direction, south, in body-bags.
I didn’t have moral qualms about my job. The truth is that I didn’t think about it much. I was too young, maybe, too narrow in my understanding; I saw in front of me only the immediate task at hand. Close up this wound. Pick out shrapnel. Save the life. I was a doctor, and I performed within the scope of my training. If a wounded enemy soldier had been set down in front of me, I would’ve reacted with the same tiny, myopic, amoral focus.
Except for that one night.
It happened from time to time that our boss, the captain, was called away at odd hours to the cell block at the centre of the camp. These summonses came after batches of Swapo prisoners were brought in, and we understood that the call had something to do with them. We understood also that we shouldn’t ask too much about it. There was a lot of activity around those low brick buildings – the only permanent structures in the whole place – that was obscured by a fog of secrecy and silence. When he came back, the captain – usually a jolly, benevolent man – always seemed troubled and quiet.
But on one particular night the call came when the captain wasn’t there. I forget what happened exactly, but he was away in a different camp somewhere. It was only me and Mike, sharing a bottle of whisky and talking about our plans to set up a practice together when these two years were over.
The corporal who’d brought the summons went away again. But ten minutes later he was back.
‘The commandant says one of you must come.’
We looked at each other. Neither of us wanted to go.
‘You do it.’
‘No, you.’
‘Your Afrikaans is better.’
Two minutes later I was following the brown back of the corporal through the hot dark towards the cells. I was afraid of the commandant and what he could do to me; this fear eclipsed the undefined reason I was being brought here, which might hurt me far more deeply.
The brown back led me to a tiny room with brick walls and a concrete floor. No windows. A low zinc roof, from which one raw light bulb is suspended on a length of flex. There are four soldiers here, two of them are officers. One is Commandant Moller. He is wearing his brown army pants and boots and a white T-shirt. He sits on a stool, relaxed and informal.
On the floor is a black man, naked. He is splattered with blood and lying still, except for the painful rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathes. At the periphery of my vision I see quirts and other objects, strange shapes that I don’t recognize. But I know the scene, although I have never been in it before; it’s an old tableau, in which my place is immediately clear.
‘Naand, Lieutenant,’ the commandant says. ‘Jammer om te steur.’
This is the closest I have come to him. For the first time I raise my head and look into his eyes. His gaze is blue and dead. He is not unattractive, with the cold, symmetrical face of a religious idol, his brown hair cut close to the neat planes of his skull. And yet the most obvious feature of his face is not its cleanness. Military regulations stipulate that you shave in a line between ear and edge of nose, and he’d followed the rule to the letter: high on each cheekbone is a small clump of hair.
What kind of a man is this?
He says, ‘Is jy Engels of Afrikaans!’
‘English, Commandant.’
He switches to accentless English, his tone level and amiable. ‘We need a bit of help from you, Lieutenant. You are a doctor, né?
‘Yes, Commandant.’
‘We are busy with a little interrogation here. But our friend is taking some strain. He says he can’t breathe properly. Could you just take a look at him?’
I go to the body on the floor. Even a glance can tell you that he is badly hurt. There are bruises and swellings on his face and upper body and some kind of laceration on his neck. His breathing is very audible, a high thin wheezing.
‘Commandant,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t look good.’
‘Okay,’ the level voice says behind me. ‘But is he faking it?’
‘Faking?’ The question is absurd. The man needs a hospital bed, stitches, disinfectant, care. ‘I don’t understand.’
In a patient tone, the commandant says, ‘His breathing, Lieutenant. Is there a problem?’
It’s difficult to isolate his breath from the other abrasions and afflictions, but when I do I can hear the problem immediately. ‘He’s having an asthma attack, Commandant. He’s not faking it.’
‘Can you do something for him?’
‘I can try. I need some water.’
‘Gee vir hom water daar.’
Somebody brings me a bucket half-filled with water, in which a bloody foam is floating. I am moving now in darkness, watching myself through a long tunnel as I splash water on to his face, wipe at his wounds, to clear away the dirt and blood. This will do nothing for his asthma, but it’s my instinct to try to clean him up. He stirs and groans, but the sound from his lungs goes on and on. So I open my bag of supplies and take out the nebulizer.
After a minute or two his breathing is easier.
‘Daarsy,’ one of the others says.
‘Uitstekend,’ the commandant says. ‘Now I need to ask you something, Lieutenant. In your opinion, as a doctor, how much more can he take?’
I stand up and turn around, but I dare not meet his eyes. I am shivering in the warm air. ‘Commandant,’ I say, ‘he needs medical care.’
‘That’s not what I asked you.’ The tone has hardened now. ‘I’m asking you: can he take more questioning?’
‘Not too much.’
‘How much?’
‘Commandant, if you let me give him some proper care, I can get rid of the asthma completely. He should be on cortisone.’
Somebody, one of the onlookers, says, ‘Proper care,’ and laughs.
‘Is he about to die, Lieutenant?’
‘It depends. If he gets pushed too far...’
‘So if we go carefully...?’
These questions are insane, they are the measuring-points of an inverted world, doctors are here to heal and repair, not assist in this calculated demolition of nerves and flesh. I open my mouth to speak but I can feel the dead eyes of the commandant staring at me, staring me down.
There is a pause, in which I remember who I am, where I am, what is required of me. The man on the floor is an enemy, who will in any case not last the night. It is myself I must look after, so that I don’t find myself in his place, naked on my back in a cell, not a doctor any more, a patient for whom there will never be a cure.
‘No,’ I say. ‘He won’t die yet.’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’ The amiable tone is back again. ‘Give my regards to the captain when he gets back.’
And then I am trotting through the dark again, away from th
e cell and the moment of truth that has come to lodge at the dead centre of my life.
Mike was waiting for me when I got back. ‘What did he want? Why did he call you?’
‘Ag, it was nothing,’ I said. ‘He had a headache.’
My agony lasted only a few days. By the next morning I was already learning to bury it:
It would have made no difference.
You didn’t have a choice.
You only answered the question.
And by the time I was transferred, to a dull camp where nothing of much consequence was going on, I had accepted my failure as an inevitable part of my position. I hardly thought about it again, except at odd moments when it surfaced with a strange, anomalous power.
Like now. It was as if somebody had pushed a finger through a weak place in the fabric of my past and was looking in through the hole. And I had the odd temptation to look in too and see myself from outside. But I couldn’t do it. I had found my grand defining moment, but what it revealed I didn’t want to know.
7
I came back from visiting Maria one night to find him sitting on his bed with his map spread out in front of him. It was very late and the whole hospital, except for the front office, was dark. But Laurence was wide awake.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Planning. What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow is my day off.’
‘So do you want to come on an outing with me?’
‘To where?’
‘Just a little walk. It’s a surprise. Come on, Frank.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
I thought of this as one more of the little hikes we’d been on together. But it wasn’t the same. Right from the start there was a sense of a mission about him. I woke twice in the night and he was still sitting there on his bed, gazing at the map. And he woke me at eight-thirty, tense with excitement. He had a rucksack packed full of things – sandwiches and beer and suntan lotion.
