In A Strange Room: Three Journeys

by Damon Galgut

  It dawns on me very quickly that, without anybody to help, I can never leave this room. Every hour of every day somebody must be on hand. My dismay at this prospect is tempered when I start speaking to a few of the other people around me, the stories in that room put my own plight into perspective. One family has been taking it in turns, relieving each other in six hour shifts, for months. One woman, who has nobody to assist her, has been literally living there with a bag of clothes and a toothbrush, for five weeks and no end in sight.

  Caroline has gone back to the village with the hotel owner and the night yawns away in front of me like a black and empty space. But not long afterwards a Dutch tourist by the name of Sjef arrives, whom I know a little from the past two seasons. He’s come to take over for the night, he says, so that I can go home and sleep. His kindness makes me cry, but I can’t bring myself to leave. It’s my expectation, though I don’t say it aloud, that my friend will die tonight and I want to be here when it happens.

  So Sjef and I undertake this first vigil together. At eight o’clock, to my surprise, there’s a stirring in the room, everybody gathering around the door of the ward. What’s going on, I ask, and somebody explains that twice a day, in the night and the morning, the friends and family of patients are allowed inside for five minutes. So we pass into the inner sanctum, with its two rows of beds and its atmosphere of spectral suspension. Anna is on a heart-lung machine, with all kinds of tubes and wires pushed into her. Her face has returned to its normal colour, but in the midst of so much humming technology she herself seems lifeless, a form wrapped around emptiness, a version of the corpse she wants so badly to be.

  I touch her hand and whisper to her. You have to fight, I tell her, you have to come back to us. There’s no response at all, and then a nurse walks briskly through, ushering us out.

  That first night is very long and almost sleepless. Aside from the missions to the pharmacy, the hours pass in a tedium under the fluorescent lights. The bathroom which everyone must share is filthy, and has two bins overflowing with hospital refuse from which rats scatter in all directions every time the door is opened. When he eventually lies down on the floor to sleep, he puts screws of newspaper into his ears to stop the ubiquitous cockroaches from crawling in.

  But morning returns eventually and the door is opened again. Anna is lying exactly as she was last night, a princess frozen by a witch’s spell. For her there is no dirty floor to endure, no passing time, no rats or insects, these elements belong to the rest of us, and to the days that follow. But I’m rescued by Caroline and by Sjef and his English wife Paula, who between them take turns helping me stand guard outside the door. We ride back and forth between the village and the hospital, an hour each way, in overlapping shifts.

  The time I spend in the village is mostly occupied with e-mails and phone calls, messages both personal and official stitching across the sea. The biggest ongoing conversation is with Anna’s girlfriend in Cape Town. The devastation is enormous. I can feel her helplessness from the other side of the world, a witness who’s not even present. Of course she wants to come over immediately. But the practicalities are complicated, there is the visa, which will take a few days to organize, and also the flights are still full. But I try to dissuade her for another reason as well. It would be terrible for her to come here, only to discover that Anna doesn’t want her but somebody else instead. The memory of the last few weeks is still heavily with me, all the talk about Jean, her knight in shining armour, who has expressed no interest in rushing to her side, even though he’s been told what’s happened. He’s still a secret, but eventually I have to speak. There is something, I say, something I have to tell you.

  Yes.

  Anna had an affair over here.

  There is a silence. I knew, she says at last, I knew it.

  I’m sorry.

  With a man.

  Yes. She was determined to do it, I say, and any man would do. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. But I thought you should know about it before you come out here. She’s been saying her relationship with you is over, that she wants to be with this guy.

  Now I spill out all the details, everything that’s been kept under wraps. We seem to have arrived at some confessional core, where there are no more secrets, no more concealments. We are turning ourselves inside out, as if the truth might absolve us, but it only brings more pain. It may be in this conversation, or perhaps in another soon afterwards, that I walk with the phone into the middle of an empty field next to the hotel and bawl. I’m sorry, I tell her, I’m sorry I said I could look after her, I had no idea what I was taking on.

  He returns to Anna’s journal and spends hours reading it, from the very first page. He feels no compunction about delving into her private thoughts and feelings, if she has brought us to this moment of truth, well, let it embrace her too. What he finds there is sad and shocking. It’s as he realized in the end, her act was not a momentary impulse, on the contrary, it was a goal she yearned for from the outset, one she worked herself up to by degrees. Her girlfriend has meanwhile discovered, hidden in their home somewhere, a letter that Anna left behind before her departure. It’s almost, but not quite, a suicide note, further proof that her plans were made far in advance. So she was never on their side, on the side of everybody who loved her and tried to make her well. Instead she was in league with the dark other stranger inside her, the one who wants her dead. It’s hard not to feel profoundly betrayed. Even as they made plans for the trip, with all the talk about how good it would be for her, she was already dreaming up this other scenario, in which she needed him as the helpless bystander, the custodian of her remains. If she recovers, which it begins to seem she might, he doesn’t know how he will ever be able to speak to her again.

  Meanwhile he sweeps up the litter of discarded medicine wrappers from under the bed. It’s painful to be reminded every time he’s in the room, but there is another reason for this clean-up. Attempted suicide is a crime in India and there could be more serious trouble coming. When she was first admitted to the hospital in Margao, a policeman stationed at the emergency room came to speak to him and take his details. And at the hospital in Panjim a doctor approaches Sjef one day and tells him, if there is any hassle from the authorities, to give him a call.

  In preparation for possible trouble, he speaks to the South African embassy in Bombay, giving them all the details of what happened and emphasizing, in advance, that the drugs she took were of a legal nature. But he also knows by now from her journal that she was indulging in other drugs with Jean, so in case of an unexpected search he goes through Anna’s rucksack from top to bottom, to be sure there’s nothing incriminating.

  Around me, in the village where I have spent months of my life and come to know some of the locals quite well, there has descended a general air of suspicion. A number of people, some of them near-strangers, have felt free to question me aggressively about what took place. A few pretend sympathy, but it always leads to the same point. Your girlfriend, they say, why did she do it. Were you fighting with her. The inference is clear, and chimes exactly with my underlying guilt. She’s not my girlfriend, I begin, but I always fall silent. My protests only confirm what they believe.

  So I retreat into a tiny circle of refuge. Caroline and Sjef and Paula are my new and only friends. I spend a lot of time in their company and we talk endlessly about what happened and what might still be coming. We even manage to laugh at certain moments. I really want her to recover, I say one day, so that I can kill her myself.

  It’s around now that I become aware something else is afoot, something connected to Caroline. I hardly know her, yet we’ve been plunged into artificial intimacy, and in our scattered conversations I’ve learned a little bit about her. She’s mentioned that she was married but that her husband was killed in an accident long ago in Morocco. I gather, between the lines, that this is the central event of her life, one which has marked her deeply, despite the intervening time, and what’s happened now wi
th Anna seems to have revived the memory for her again. She talks about it now and then, always in sideways allusive terms, but a shadow creeps over her face, her eyes fill up with tears. That ride in the ambulance with Anna, she says one day, it was terrible, it reminded me of, oh never mind. On another occasion she says, I’ve been having the most terrible dreams, all about what happened in Morocco. She doesn’t go on, but on the far side of her words I sense a chasm falling away into darkness, and I don’t want to look over the edge.

  On the third day already there are signs of life. Anna makes the occasional movement, her eyelids flicker, and on the fourth day she’s awake. When I go through for the morning visit, she peers dimly at me and her mouth, stretched around a thick plastic tube, manages a smile. When I visit again that evening the tube is gone and she’s lying there, whole and restored.

  After everything that we’ve been through, this feels unreal. I stroke her hand and speak gently, a gentleness that in truth is almost genuine at this moment, as I ask her how it feels to be alive. She’s very weak and I have to crane to catch her whispered reply. Shit, she says.

  After this period of suspension and stasis, events start to move quickly again. First thing the next day they move her from ICU to the coronary ward opposite. They need the bed, one of the nurses explains, and she will be under intermediate care. And at first this new arrangement seems in balance. Because she has no physical power, she’s mostly docile and compliant, though she still requires constant care and attention and one of us must be on hand to provide it. For the first day or two she has terrible diarrhoea and every little while has to be helped out of the bed and steadied while she crouches over a bedpan. He remembers the conflicting sensations of pity and distaste as he holds her upright, his hands and feet being splattered with the watery discharge. She smiles sweetly up at him and murmurs, this is a test of our friendship. You have no idea, he answers.

  Afterwards it’s his duty to carry the brimming bedpan into the rat-infested bathroom and empty it out and wash it clean. It’s a job he repeats over and over through the day, a humbling task which is more than has ever been asked of him before, but he does it without protest, maybe only because he has no choice. All around him are other people similarly engaged, and there is a resigned solidarity in their efforts.

  At some point in the day she looks over at the next bed and whispers confidingly, look at that one, she’s definitely in here for an eating disorder.

  I glance across, perplexed. But she isn’t a patient, Anna, she’s a visitor.

  Anna raises her head and peers. Well, she ought to be a patient, she says. She’s enormous.

  No, she isn’t, I say, but before I can point out that the woman concerned is actually quite tiny, I break down in laughter. It’s a mad conversation, but for the first time in many days the madness is almost charming. Underneath the words is a glimmer of the friend I remember, eccentric and funny rather than demented.

  Sjef stays with her that night and I go back to the room. Relief at having emerged from the tunnel makes it possible for me to sleep properly, and it’s in a state of semi-replenishment that I return to the hospital next morning. But even before I can cross the threshold of the ward I realize something is amiss. Sjef is waiting, he takes me grimly aside.

  It’s been a difficult night, he says.

  Difficult. I glance across at where Anna is sitting up in bed, her arms folded crossly, glaring back at us. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with her, I say.

  But nothing has prepared him for the transformation that’s taken place. The sweet, feeble angel of yesterday has disappeared, to be replaced by something else completely. The dark stranger has waxed to the full. The first sign comes when he tries to talk to her about the way she’s treated Sjef. You don’t understand, she says. That’s only half the story. The fucking bastard. The way he speaks to me.

  He’s spent the whole night looking after you.

  Who asked him to. I don’t need looking after.

  You do, but in any case somebody has to be here. It’s a hospital rule.

  Why didn’t you do it. Where were you.

  I was at the room, trying to sleep. Please, Anna, it was the first chance I’ve had. Sjef was helping me, so that I could rest.

  Rest from what. You’re making a big fucking drama about nothing. All I want is cigarettes, that fucking bastard won’t buy them for me.

  This is a coronary ward, you’re not allowed to smoke in here.

  Fuck that, I’ll do what I fucking please. Go and get me cigarettes.

  He looks at her, stunned. But before the conversation can go any further, she has another attack of diarrhoea. Help me, she orders, I have to go. There is the squatting down, the splattering. This is so horrible, she mutters. Horrible horrible horrible. It’s not much fun for me either, I say.

  Afterwards, while I empty the bedpan in the bathroom, I have an uneasy qualm about what she might be up to. Panic makes me slop the mess over my hands, and washing myself clean slows me even further. But my instinctive premonition is correct, when I get back to the ward Anna is out of bed and heading off somewhere. Her legs are still wobbly, or she would have covered more ground.

  Where are you going.

  To buy cigarettes.

  I told you, it’s not allowed, and anyway you have no money.

  Take me back to the hotel. I’m fine now, I demand to leave this minute. It’s unconstitutional to keep me against my will.

  The constitution won’t help you, this is India. And the more trouble you make, the longer you’ll have to stay here. Now get back into bed.

  Unexpectedly, she obeys, but when she’s properly settled she says smugly, I wasn’t going to buy cigarettes, I was going to throw myself out of the window.

  There are bars on the windows and they’re only on the first floor, but nevertheless he’s filled with furious despair. He tries to control his voice as he says, we are doing everything we can to keep you alive.

  Who asked you to. Just let me die. Walk away. I give you permission to just walk away.

  I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for other people who love you. And for me, so that I can look myself in the eye.

  Hah. She fixes a certain gaze on him, a disdainful calculating stare. This is all your fault, you know. You took responsibility for me when you brought me along, and look what happened.

  She is not too ill to sight and hit my most vulnerable spot, the truth that will hurt me for ever. My voice is choked when I answer. And you, you’re not responsible, I suppose. The fact is, you didn’t care about anybody else, you just did what you wanted.

  I couldn’t, because you stopped me.

  And I’ll keep on stopping you. You’re going back to South Africa alive and after that you’re not my worry any more.

  You’re not worried about me anyway, you just care what other people will say.

  Right now that’s true. Right now I hate you.

  So what, I hate you too.

  These ugly words have come from a deep core in me, part of the destructive essence that Anna has pared us to. It takes an effort of will to understand, even in a theoretical way, how very sick she is. It will be years before I’m able to acknowledge that she is psychotic, her mania full-blown, with no medication to subdue her and with a raging fever from pneumonia, and even then it’s hard to forgive her. Because from long ago, even in her sanest moments, she wanted this and worked hard to reach it, her toxic, terminal rapture. The rest of us are just walk-on parts in a drama centred only on her.

  I remember every accusing word, including my own, like a knife in the guts, like something that has shamed us both. Yet she herself is untouched. Later that same day, for example, Sjef and Paula and Caroline all arrive together to help me. In an attempt to bring down her temperature we buy ice from the canteen downstairs and press it all over her body. She wails and protests but also smiles, look at me, she says, I have a whole team working on me, and in that moment she is angelic again, my coy and flirtatious frien
d, and the awful exchange of that morning has disappeared. She remembers none of it, nothing of what is said and done, even by herself. She floats above all the pain and grief and guilt that she’s created, looking down on our scurrying and striving. There is a very real element of contempt in the way she treats us now, a quality of mocking laughter at our concern. She is far beyond us all, because she’s not afraid of death any longer, which is both her weakness and her greatest strength.

  And it only gets worse. Every day she is more powerful and wily, more resourceful in her self-destruction, and her demands become more insistent. I want my money-belt, she announces one morning, and when I tell her that I’m taking care of it she accuses me of stealing her money. Another time she wants her shoes. Look at me, she cries wretchedly, I have to sit here with nothing on my feet, you’re so cruel to me. These appeals move him not at all, with money and shoes she will be able to escape, he knows what she’s after. But when he refuses she starts to repeat it like an hysterical child, my money, give me my money, give me my shoes right now. He just keeps shaking his head. No. There is perverse pleasure in wielding that word, in being able to withhold death from her.