by Damon Galgut
An astounded pause followed on.
‘Excuse please,’ Claudia said, ‘but why is this for, why?’
Laurence said, ‘I thought it would be a way of drawing attention to the hospital, of making people aware that we’re here. And of actually doing something.’
That was not a good word to use; the next silence was very cold. When he sat down the energy in the room had gone flat.
I waited a few seconds before I raised my hand and said, ‘I support this idea, this initiative, of Laurence’s, completely. But I’m afraid it won’t be possible for me to attend.’
I could feel Laurence staring at me.
‘Why is that, Frank?’ Dr Ngema said.
‘I have to go away for a few days. Personal reasons.’
‘I’m not aware of any...’
‘It’s just come up,’ I said. ‘I was going to discuss it with you later.’
There was an overwhelming inertia in the room as the meeting broke up. I went out quickly, but Laurence caught up with me as I was crossing the open plot of ground on my way back to the room. ‘Why, Frank, why?’
‘Oh, they’ll be more enthusiastic on the day, Laurence, don’t worry about them.’
‘I don’t mean that. I know they don’t like my plan, I don’t care about them. It’s you, Frank. Why won’t you be there?’
‘I have to go to Pretoria. I can’t help it, Laurence. Bad timing. It’s my divorce agreement. Has to be done.’
‘Oh.’ His face fell. Divorce, signing: adult affairs – a world he didn’t know. ‘But it’s such a pity. It was your idea, Frank.’
‘It wasn’t my idea,’ I said, surprised at the vehemence in my voice. ‘This was your idea entirely.’
‘But to go to that particular village...’
‘It wasn’t an idea, Laurence. It wasn’t even a suggestion. I was just talking without thinking.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘oh,’ and he trailed the rest of the way behind me without speaking, his head down.
I went to see Dr Ngema that afternoon. She was in her office with the door open, writing at her desk. When she saw me she closed the door and sat us both down on the low chairs, face to face, as she always did for personal conversations.
There was nothing she could say; today my haggard, troubled face gave me a kind of power. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll arrange the schedule, Frank. Don’t worry about it.’ It was the first time I’d asked for leave in three years. She put a hand to my shoulder, then let it drop. Trying to show sympathy for a pain I didn’t feel; my marriage had effectively ended years ago. ‘Take off from tomorrow, if you like. I’ll see to it.’
‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’
‘There is something else...’
I’d been waiting for this; I remembered her cryptic allusions at the party.
‘It’s related to the clinic. Indirectly. Actually, it’s about the job.’
‘The job?’
‘This job. My job.’ She leaned forward. ‘Your job. Things are moving again, Frank.’
‘Are they?’ I’d had this same conversation with her so many times by now that I could only give a tired imitation of enthusiasm. ‘That’s good.’
‘I think it’s really going to happen this time. I can’t give you the details, but it’s very promising.’
‘That’s good news, Ruth. I’m very pleased to hear it.’
‘Which is why I’m not so sure this clinic is such a good idea. I know you support it, Frank. You’ve helped Laurence along. For the best reasons, of course, I don’t doubt that. But we don’t need any big new initiatives right now.’
‘Oh. Yes. I see.’
‘I support change and innovation,’ she said plaintively. ‘You know that. But we don’t want to rock the boat. Not at this point.’
‘I understand.’
‘Thank you, Frank. You’ve always been very... understanding. And you know when you’re the big boss here you can do whatever you want. You can change the world!’
I nodded carefully. She was being careful, too, in the way she spoke to me, but now some of her real feeling showed through.
‘I like Laurence. He means well, I can see that. But sometimes he...’
‘I understand.’
‘Yes. The way he talked just now, for example. “It’s a way of actually doing something.” Does he mean we’re not doing anything here?’
‘He’s young. He speaks without thinking.’
‘You’re loyal. He’s your friend. That’s good. But he’s... he’s arrogant sometimes. Too big for his boots.’
I nodded again and her face closed over; the irritation and dislike were gone. Or hidden. She said: ‘I don’t mean anything bad. You know that. I just think he would’ve been happier at another hospital.’
‘You may be right.’
‘I like him. Don’t get me wrong.’
‘I understand.’
‘Thank you for understanding, Frank.’
When I got back to the room, Laurence was dressing for duty.
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said defiantly, ‘and I don’t care.’
‘About what?’
‘If they don’t want to do the clinic, I’ll just go ahead on my own. I don’t care. They don’t matter. I just wish you were going to be there, Frank. That’s the only thing that bothers me.’
‘Next time, maybe.’
He shot me a look of such injured gratitude that I felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was alone, and he didn’t know it. And the quality I’d seen in his face that first day was back again, flickering visibly beneath the skin, almost nameable for a second.
When he was gone I walked around aimlessly, straightening the furniture, wiping toothpaste off the mirror, dusting the win-dowsill, and somewhere in the middle of my vindictive housekeeping I found Tehogo’s cassettes in a heap on the floor. I stacked them up neatly, ready for him to collect; but when everything was clean I took them down the passage myself.
Was I looking for something? I had no motive in my head, but the moment I was outside the door I was conscious of something heightened and alert in me. Something watchful.
It was the last door in the passage. The light outside had broken a long time ago and of course nobody had fixed it. Even now, late in the day, I was standing in the dark when I knocked. He didn’t answer. He was asleep, I thought, and I knocked harder and the door shifted under my hand.
It wasn’t locked. Through the small crack I could see the edge of an unmade bed and a table with ashtrays and orange peel on it. I put out my hand and with the very tips of my fingers I pushed gently on the door – as if it wasn’t me, as if the wind was doing it. The door swung further open. I put my head through and called his name. But the bed was empty and he didn’t come out of the bathroom.
The place was filthy. The floor was strewn with litter – old cigarette boxes, empty bottles, used glasses. The sheets on the bed looked foul. There were magazines lying everywhere and a stale fug of smoke and sweat and tiredness hung in the air.
I called his name again as I went in, but I knew he wasn’t there: it was like a spell to carry me over the threshold. And at that moment the afternoon outside, and my reason for being there, fell away; I was entering into a place inside myself, a sordid little room of my own heart, where a secret was stored.
But of course this was Tehogo’s room – and I saw that too. Maybe it was even, in some peculiar way and in spite of his absence, the first time I had ever seen Tehogo. He was an enigmatic presence in the hospital, surly, opaque, with more attitude than personality... but my eye fell now on traces of a hidden nature. All the magazines lying around were women’s magazines, full of fashion and glamour, and he’d cut out pictures from them and stuck them on the walls. Sunsets and beaches and improbable airbrushed landscapes. Women posing in underwear or fancy outfits. The images gave off a longing and sentiment and pathos. And next to the bed, in a little cleared space on top of a table, was a framed photograph of an elderly cou
ple. They were obviously dressed up for the picture, stiff and awkward in formal clothes, standing slightly apart and rigid outside a house somewhere. His parents? Impossible to know, but it was the one item in the chaos that he’d tried to give a certain value.
My eye went further, looking, looking. And I was so tangled up in all the angles and edges of the discarded junk that it took me a good few minutes to see. But when I did see, all the other stuff became extraneous, a distracting trapping piled around the truth. The truth was in the myriad little bits of metal, the taps and pipes and bed-frames, casually stacked or piled or leaning against each other. The whole room was full of it. And then I knew.
I went quietly back out of the room without leaving the cassettes and closed the door behind me. When I passed Tehogo in the passage in the main building a little while later, whistling to himself as he pushed a trolley along, I nodded to him and said hello.
11
Dr Ngema changed the schedule. But I didn’t go away on Tuesday. I had things on my mind, things to brood over. On Tuesday night Laurence and I were in the recreation room, watching the television, both of us wrapped up in private thoughts, until I suggested we go down to Mama’s place for a drink.
‘I don’t think so, Frank. Not tonight. I’m not in the mood.’ ‘Come on, it’s on me. There’s something I need to talk about.’ He perked up a bit at this. Gossip and intrigue; something to take him out of himself. And when we were down at Mama’s, the mood and energy lifted us both. It was hard to believe that this little courtyard – so brightly lit, so full of people – was in the middle of so much desolation and emptiness. You stepped out of gloom into warmth, talk, loud music.
‘What’s going on here?’ Laurence said. ‘Is it a party?’
‘There’ve been some changes since you were here.’
He’d heard about the soldiers. But he’d never seen them, or thought anything might be different because of them. But even I was amazed at what had happened: there were at least twice as many people as before, twice as much noise. Something really did seem to have changed.
‘I’m going to get a pool table soon,’ Mama told us happily as she had two extra chairs brought in for us. ‘Business is good.’
I felt eyes on me and saw Colonel Moller in a corner of the courtyard, alone at a table, with a glass in front of him.
‘Are they really doing something, these soldiers? Or are they just sitting here drinking?’
She pretended to look shocked. ‘They are working very hard. Every day they are going out to look for people.’
‘But do they ever catch anybody?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, with a shrug and a smile. That part of their presence had nothing to do with her. She brought our drinks and went away again, into the loud, busy crowd.
‘What did you want to talk about, Frank? Is it the clinic?’
‘Oh, no, no. Nothing to do with that. I have an ethical dilemma.’
‘Really? Tell me about it.’
So I told him – flatly, without colour – about going into Tehogo’s room, about what I saw there. When I’d finished, his face didn’t change. Then it did. It took a moment for comprehension to break through, like a finger rummaging through his ordered version of the world.
‘You mean...?’
I nodded heavily.
‘He’s been stealing...? Been taking...? He’s the one?’
‘Well, it looks that way, doesn’t it? Maybe there’s another explanation, of course...’
‘What other explanation?’
I shrugged.
‘There isn’t one. There’s no other explanation. Oh, wow, Frank, I can’t believe this.’ He’d actually gone pale. His expression had the shock of somebody forced to look directly at something he’d been trying to pretend wasn’t there. Then it cleared. ‘But what’s your dilemma?’
‘Well, obviously... I don’t know what to do now.’
‘Don’t know what to do? But you must tell Dr Ngema.’
‘It’s not as simple as that, Laurence. There are issues to be considered.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Tehogo’s background. He’s had a rough time. It doesn’t feel right just to —’
‘But he’s stealing.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s the only issue, Frank. You can’t think about anything else.’
So simple: one issue, all the complexities and contradictions reduced to a single moral needle-point. And that was Laurence. Something was either good or bad, clearly and definingly so, and you acted accordingly.
‘I don’t think it’s that easy,’ I said with sad satisfaction.
‘Why not?’ The shock was back in his face now, tinged with dismay; he was balanced on a brink, dark gravity pulling at him.
‘Let’s leave it. We don’t see things the same way.’
‘But I’m trying to understand, Frank. Tell me!’
‘I don’t know how to explain.’
‘You’re too good, Frank. You have too much sympathy.’
‘Anyway, it’s my problem.’
But I could see – though we didn’t talk any more about it then – that I had handed the problem on to him. He looked troubled and preoccupied for the rest of the evening, while some of the noise and ribaldry of the place rubbed off on me. I had a good time.
It was the next day, while he watched me throw some clothes into a suitcase, that he brought it up again. ‘Have you decided,’ he asked tentatively, ‘have you worked out... what to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But you’d better do something soon, or it’ll be too late.’
‘Better that way.’
He looked pained. ‘It’ll just go on. He’ll just carry on taking and stealing...’
I sat down, smiling. ‘Do you really care about it so much? It’s just an abandoned building, when you come down to it.’
‘No! I mean, yes – I do care about it.’
‘I think, in this case, human feelings are more important.’
After a pause he said awkwardly, ‘You know, I could do it if you like.’
‘Do what?’
‘Report... what happened.’
‘But you didn’t see it.’
‘Yes, I know that, but... somebody has to do something. And if it’s too difficult for you... I just thought that...’
He squirmed, the ethical dilemma all his now, while I looked down on his battle in the real world. I said, ‘I don’t know about that. It doesn’t seem right.’
‘It’s just a thought, Frank. I wouldn’t use your name at all.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you must follow your conscience, Laurence. Whatever you think is best.’
We didn’t talk more about it, but he seemed suddenly relieved. And so was I. The future was taking shape, untainted by my hands; and an unwitting complicity had drawn us closer.
He said, ‘Do you have time for some table tennis before you go?’
‘Um. Yes, okay. I’m only leaving tonight anyway, I prefer to drive in the dark.’
And over in the recreation room, while we jumped around in the sun, knocking the ball back and forth to each other, it was almost the way it had used to be – companionable and friendly, a happy connection. Later we got tired. He threw the bat down and collapsed on to the couch, pushing a long strand of hair out of his eyes.
‘I got a letter from Zanele,’ he announced.
‘That’s good.’
‘She’s split up with me. She says it’s over.’
‘But I thought you two had such plans and schemes.’
‘So did I.’
‘What did she say?’
For the first time today a real feeling touched his face: a distant pain, like a subterranean tremor. ‘Oh, you know. It’s false... the whole thing wasn’t working... too long apart, no connection any more.’ His expression closed over again. ‘The usual story. Blah blah.’
Now it came: the guilt, spreading in me like a stain. I avoided his ey
es. ‘I’m sorry, Laurence.’
‘That’s okay.’ He shrugged. ‘The funny thing is, I don’t care too much. You think you love something so badly, but when it’s gone you find out you don’t care so much.’
‘Sometimes that’s true.’
‘Work,’ he said. ‘Work is the only thing that matters.’
He really meant it. I stood looking down at him on the couch, considering this. He was almost sexless; his only real passion was in work. But work had never carried that sort of meaning for me; it was just one more version of futile activity, going nowhere.
He said abruptly, ‘I suppose you’re thinking about your wife.’
I was completely startled by this; I wasn’t thinking about her at all.
‘What does it feel like to be married?’
I didn’t know how to answer, but I had a memory of the first night after the wedding. We’d gone away into the country for a honeymoon. The woman who had somehow transformed into the other half of my life was in the bathroom and suddenly the whole world outside the room also seemed strange, unknown, maybe dangerous. I had a sensation of panic that was indistinguishable from happiness. The feeling was intense, but it passed quickly.
I said, ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
When I started on the long drive that night, I saw three things close to the town that became connected in my mind. The first came on the little stretch of tributary road, before I reached the main road. Whenever I got to the bend from where the old army encampment was visible I always slowed down; usually there was nothing to see, just blackness and bush, but tonight there was a light burning. It could have been a fire or a lamp: a tiny spark almost buried in the dark. Then it went out, or I was past.
That got me thinking. I’d been bothered by something the Brigadier had said to Zanele, that night in the garden: It is hard. Very hard. One day to be living here. Next day living in a tent. The point about a tent, of course, is that it can be uprooted and moved; he could have meant anywhere. But the old army camp still had its old tents, at least two or three of them, and it was the place, after all, from which he’d come. His ghost had always felt thicker there, more substantial; and now I wondered.
