by Damon Galgut
She shook her head.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s true. Everything is possible.’ And I saw that it was. I saw how simple such a huge change could be.
But then the dream shifted. She shook her head, and the colour of her dress was different, and the future slid by me in the warm dark and was gone. The wrong feeling, the wrong time: everything was too late. All the power went out of me and I climbed down from the bonnet and drove back.
The white car was still there.
When I got back to the hospital the world was fixed in its usual place, waiting. The dark buildings, full of disuse and emptiness. The room, with my tiny collection of possessions. Laurence Waters, asleep, his head flung sideways on the pillow.
I stood there for a long time, looking down at him. In the dim glow from an outside light his face seemed even younger than it was. Not young enough to be innocent, but soft and pale and vulnerable to violence. And the violence was in me: from nowhere it occurred to me how simple it would be to break a sleeping head like this. One hard, heavy blow with the right object and it would be done.
Because he was the enemy. I saw it now. The enemy was not outside, at large, in the world; he was within the gates. While I had slept.
Night thoughts; but nothing like this had come to me before. And it was terrible how casual, how very ordinary, the idea of murder could be. I turned away from it, and from myself, and went to bed.
13
But the night thoughts weren’t confined just to the dark any more; they leaked into the normal daylight hours. I went about my usual routine, carrying out my duties and moving in the well-worn tracks of habit. But behind the visor of my face a stranger – not entirely unfamiliar, a dark brother who’d left home long ago – had moved in.
Of course he was only a temporary resident. I was tolerating his presence, not for long, a day or two, the duration of a rage; then I would evict him and become an honourable person again.
But in that day or two, which became three or four, then five or six, I watched Laurence wrestling with his dilemma. He brooded on it, he languished. And I became fascinated by the complexities of his agony, like the torments of a man who must solve some impossible equation.
Everything was hanging between two points, waiting. That was how it felt. And not just in our room: in the larger world too. Even the long streets of the town, when I drove or walked through them, felt charged with some imminent event. And in the little sites and places, too, that were the backdrop to my life, things weren’t quite the same as before.
Mama Mthembu bought her pool table. I was in the supermarket in town one morning when I saw it go past on the back of a truck. By the time I went round for a drink that night it was installed in the bar. And a bunch of soldiers and strangers was hanging around, playing and watching, getting drunk.
The crowd that came to Mama’s place was different lately. Maybe the soldiers had drawn them. A lot of the solitary figures hanging around were women, made up in tarty bright colours. I don’t know where they came from – the villages near by, or over the border, maybe – but they were here to do business, and it wasn’t long before truckers who plied the nearby main road were stopping too. That was new. So amongst the quiet, lost, familiar faces who used to head here for company, coarser faces were springing up. The atmosphere became looser and louder, jollier in a certain way, but also more violent. I was there on one occasion when a fight blew up out of nowhere – a hectic exchange of fists between a soldier and a trucker – then disappeared again, overtaken by the click of billiard balls and the jangle of loose change.
Then this strangeness, this violence, spilled over into the streets outside. One night there was a robbery in town. A gang of four armed men wearing balaclavas went into the supermarket. There were no customers inside at the time, but they beat up the manager and emptied the safe and drove down the main street, firing at the street-lamps. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The town had always been a place where boredom was a kind of violence, but for days afterwards the only talk was of the robbery, the gang.
The manager came to the hospital. He’d been pistol-whipped around the head, and I had to stitch up a deep cut above his eye. The man was in shock, and he kept telling the story over and over in broken phrases: how they’d just stepped in out of nowhere, faces blanked out.
‘What kind of car were they driving?’ I asked. ‘Did you see?’
‘I saw it clearly. A white Toyota.’
A white car. Was the one that stood outside Maria’s shack a Toyota? I didn’t know – the makes of cars were a foreign language to me – but the image became a kind of certainty in my head. Of course it meant nothing; there were thousands of white cars on the road. But for me it did mean something. And when I went out at night I was more watchful, more alert, than I had been before.
I didn’t go back to Maria. I was waiting now to see what Laurence would do. When I went out at night it was down to Mama’s place, and I didn’t leave before I was drunk.
Colonel Moller was often there too. Like me, he sat on his own, in a shadowed corner somewhere. Like me, he was always watching. You could see the glitter of his eyes in the under-lit gloom, and one night he raised his glass to me in an ironical greeting.
It took me a while to realize that part of the reason I was going there was to see him. Night after night, usually alone. Not to speak to him, I didn’t want that, but just to see his lean figure sitting still amongst the smoke and music and voices. Not a comforting sight – the memory he stirred up in me hurt like a broken bone – but one I somehow needed.
He wasn’t always there, of course. On some nights all the soldiers were away. Then I knew that they were setting up their roadblock, searching cars, looking busy. But I wasn’t the only one in town to wonder whether they ever did anything else. You saw them sometimes, driving up and down the main road in their jeep, very industrious, very fast. So much activity, so calibrated and intense: it had to mean something. But never once in all that time did I see them arrest anybody.
Not all the change was out there, far away; some of it was closer to home. Tehogo had always been unreliable, but now he started to miss work regularly. Two or three times over the next couple of weeks I found myself on duty with nobody around to assist me. And I heard the Santanders complaining about it at lunch one day too. But when Tehogo did come sauntering in, hours late, he didn’t even try to excuse himself. There was just a shrug and, towards me, a surly silence full of words.
Nor did it help to go looking for him. On the third occasion I went to his room and knocked. But the door, this time, was locked, and the air on the other side felt unused and old. Hours later I saw him come in through the gate. By then I didn’t feel like talking to him, but when he passed me a little later he smelled of sweat and his eyes were bloodshot and tired.
I tried to speak to Dr Ngema about it. But she wasn’t too interested and the ghost of our earlier talk about Tehogo still hovered near by.
‘He’s working impossible hours, Frank,’ she told me. ‘He’s doing the work of three people, remember.’
‘I know that. But he hardly seems to be here any more.’
‘He’s having a hard time at the moment. Be patient, Frank. It’ll all settle down.’
I didn’t push it. Recent events were too close, and there were too many questions around me. I waited for somebody else to notice and complain, but it didn’t happen. People were too distracted, maybe, caught up in the new buzz and thrill around the hospital.
Because it didn’t go away. The excited feeling that Laurence had conjured up with his clinic seemed to linger long afterwards. I heard people talking at meal-times, or in the recreation room at night. There was a lot of discussion about the next clinic and what it might lead to.
One night, as we were getting ready for bed, Laurence said, ‘She’s decided to stay, you know. Claudia Santander. She doesn’t want to go back to Cuba any more.’
‘Oh, really. That’s good.’
‘There’s a sort of programme with field clinics in Cuba that she’s been telling me about. It sounds like we may be able to get something similar going here. She says she feels like she’s discovered her purpose. In being here, I mean.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘It only took her ten years.’
That was the only way I could see it. All this energy and renewal: it had saved the Santanders’ marriage. No matter that the world out there was still full of disease and calamity, as long as peaceful silence reigned on the other side of the wall.
One day when I was on duty an old man came in. He had a boy with him, a nephew or a grandson, who told me that the old man had been at Laurence’s clinic. That was why, he explained, they’d come in today. Before that they didn’t even know that the hospital existed.
He was all smiles, this old man, though he didn’t speak a word of English himself. He seemed to have been touched by the same excitement that was running through the hospital corridors. But when it came down to an examination, it turned out that his complaint – a cataract developing in one eye – was something we weren’t equipped to deal with here. He would have to go to the other hospital, the real and functioning one, over the escarpment. I wrote out a referral for him, addressing it to the young doctor, du Toit, I usually dealt with there.
The old man’s face fell in confusion when I sent him away. But there it was: all the good feeling that the clinic had generated running out into nothing.
I didn’t tell Laurence about the old man. He might have taken it, in spite of everything, as a victory. But perhaps not. There was, in that waiting, hanging time, a heaviness to Laurence that hadn’t been there before.
It was because of Maria, I knew that. He was trying to decide what to do. He didn’t mention it to me again, but the question was between us all the time and he kept looking at me, at odd moments, to see what I thought. But I said nothing. I still had every intention of doing something, taking some action, but I wanted to push things to the point where Laurence’s easy rules would break.
Then one day he collected a few basic instruments and utensils together. He didn’t make a show of it, but he wanted me to see him. He got a big bowl and a cake of soap from the kitchen. A clean sheet from the linen cupboard. He laid out a pair of gloves, a speculum, a catheter, a cervical dilator, on his bed, as if he was carrying out an inventory. Then he sat down on the windowsill, his chin on his knees, and looked out.
I understood that he’d made his choice, and now he was offering one to me. There was still time. I could stop him. Up to the final moment, when he walked out of the door, I could still hold up a hand and say, Wait, Laurence. Let me go instead. Or: Don’t do it, Laurence. Let me speak to her first.
But many days had gone by and I hadn’t spoken to her, and this day was going by and I didn’t stop him; and I knew now that I would let it be. What I’d said was the truth: she’d spoken to him, not to me. And the child, after all, was probably not mine; and if it was, this was probably the only answer in any case. There was nothing I could do to change the course of events. So I watched him and said nothing.
Later that night he collected everything together, moving slowly, like a person in pain. He put on his white coat. Then he walked to the door and stopped.
‘Frank.’
‘Yes?’ I said, speaking too fast and too loud.
‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘I’m not sure. I think I’ll just hang out. I’m tired.’
‘If you feel like it, we could go out later. For a drink or something.’
‘Where? To Mama’s? I was there last night, I don’t know if I can face it again.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘And I’m tired. Let’s see how we feel.’
‘Okay.’
I didn’t look up, but I could sense when the doorway was clear. He’d gone. I sat for a little while and then I went to the window to watch his lonely figure cross the car park to his car and drive out slowly into the dark.
He was gone a long time. Three or four hours at least. I felt nothing, but I could observe from my own behaviour that feeling was loose in me somewhere. I walked up and down the tiny square of floor like some kind of big, predatory animal in a cage. Later I got into bed and turned off the light, but there was no possibility that I would fall asleep.
I heard his car come back, turn in at the gate and stop. I heard the car door and his footsteps coming, slow and heavy, along the path.
When he opened the door I lay still, but he showed no interest in me. His bag seemed to be loaded down with stones. And he was like a man who’d carried stones a long way. He bumped into his bed, said something to himself in the dark, went into the bathroom. I could hear the water running and running, the sound of him washing himself over and over.
I got up and put the light on again. It was a still and airless night, warm with returning summer, and I felt suddenly how hard it was to breathe. I went and opened the window, knelt on his bed for a while to feel air on my skin.
When he came back in he was naked and still dripping with water. He looked at me and went over and sat on my bed, facing me. Neither of us said anything for a long time. I was in my underwear, and with both of us so stripped down in the disarray of the room, it was as if we were lost in some labyrinthine intimacy. But his face, which was dark and different, was like the face of a stranger to me.
It was only afterwards that I realized: the quality, whatever the quality was, that had given his face its distinction, was gone.
He said, ‘Why have you done this?’
It was an odd question.
I said, ‘But I’ve done nothing. I’ve been here the whole time.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded, and it felt that something else would follow, but nothing did.
Then it came. Not from him; from me.
‘If you want to blame somebody,’ I said, ‘blame yourself. We were all okay here. It was all going along fine. Then you came. And you couldn’t leave everything as it was. No, you had to make it better. You had to sort it out, improve life for everybody. Now see where we are.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Exactly where we were. Except that none of us feels okay any more.’
‘I don’t think we’re where we were. It is better than before. I’m not sorry about that.’
‘Because of one little clinic in the bush.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘I wasn’t there. But I know. What did you achieve? Nothing. Talk, talk, talk. A lecture about Aids. A lecture on hygiene and health. For God’s sake, Laurence. Those people need drugs and treatment, but of course they’re not available. All you can give them is talk.’
‘It’s just a beginning. Other things will follow.’
‘What will follow? Another clinic in a few weeks. Along with electricity.’
‘Do you think electricity means nothing? That’s because you’ve never lived a day without it in your life.’
‘I don’t think it means nothing. But the fact that one tiny village is getting it means nothing. It’s a sop, it’s a symbol. It’s like your medicine, Laurence. There are still millions of other people out there who aren’t being helped. Do you really think talk and a few bright lights will save the world?’
‘How will you change anything by doing nothing?’
‘You can’t change the way things are.’
‘Of course you can!’
We looked at each other with astonishment and loathing.
‘They’re right about you,’ he said slowly. It was a bitter realization. ‘I couldn’t see it before. But now I see.’
‘What do they say about me?’
‘That you’re not part of... of the new country.’
‘The new country,’ I said. ‘Where is it, this new country?’
‘All around you, Frank. Everything you see. We’re starting again, building it all up from the ground.’
‘Words,’ I said. ‘Words and symbols.’
‘It is
n’t. It’s real. It’s happening.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why? Why are you like you are?’ It was an angry question, but he didn’t sound angry. He sounded curious and sad. ‘You’re not a bad man.’
‘Maybe I am.’
‘You’re not a bad man. But you say no to everything. It’s written on you. I don’t know what’s happened to you. You just don’t believe in anything. I don’t think you even believe what you’re saying now.’
‘I do believe it.’
‘That’s why you can’t change anything. Because you can’t change the way you are.’
‘Do you think it’s so simple? At the middle of your life there’s just one word, yes or no, and everything follows from that?’
‘Maybe it is like that.’
I looked at him, but I didn’t see him. I was seeing something else. A picture had come to me, and it was of Laurence and me as two strands in a rope. We were twined together in a tension that united us; we were different to each other, though it was in our nature to be joined and woven in this way. As for the points that we were spanned between – a rope doesn’t know what its own purpose is.
The image stayed for a moment, then it went again, but we had both fallen quiet by then. All the high emotion was receding; he looked tired and grey. After a minute he rolled over and pulled the sheet over him. I waited a while, then put off the light and also lay down. We were in the wrong beds, but somehow that didn’t feel so strange.
I was also weary now, my bones full of sand, but sleep took a long time to come. Everything that had just been said was wrong; it was the wrong conversation; it had nothing to do with the real business of the evening. And yet it was also the only real, the only possible talk.
In the morning it was past. When he got up the weight he’d carried in with him last night was gone. He moved quickly around the room, whistling through his teeth. When I sat up he grinned at me.
‘Morning, Frank. Sleep okay?’
It was as if last night hadn’t happened for him. I was the heavy one now. The weight had moved from him to me; some subtle exchange had taken place in the night. I was older and bigger and slower than before.
