by John Collee
He was cut short by a rapid succession of bleeps from the call-box. The noise stopped briefly and he heard Dhangi saying with renewed urgency, 'Six o'clock . . . six o'clock . . . you must . . .' Then Dhangi in turn was interrupted, this time by the mocking rattle of the dead line.
Kingsley smeared a hand over his forehead and returned to theatre. He stood over Steve Jennings's shoulder.
'Problems, sir?'
'No.'
Jennings had opened the duct to the gall bladder. Now he was carefully feeding a catheter into the opening. He secured it in place, drew back bile, and injected contrast medium. 'Ready for X-ray.'
Kingsley glanced at the clock on the theatre wall. Four thirty. If the bile duct was clear they'd be finished by five. Forty minutes to check the wards and finish up at the office. Ten to reach the Carriage Bar.
He had already been round McCallum ward with Sister Taylor when the rest of the team arrived. There were no major decisions to be made on the male wards. Kingsley jostled them round with the sister whipping files out from the trolley like hot toast and the houseman scribbling furiously on drug charts.
He left Barton ward till last. It always took longest.
'We're in a bit of a rush, Sister McReady.'
McReady barred his path, hands on hips. 'Leslie Cairns wants to know about her breast lump.'
'I know,' said Kingsley, failing to sidle past.
'Dr Jennings said it was malignant.' She fixed Steve Jennings with an accusing stare, then looked back to Kingsley.
'Provisionally that's right,' he said.
'Mrs Cairns doesn't know that,' McReady persisted. 'I told her seeing she's not scheduled for a mastectomy she could assume it was OK.'
Kingsley grunted in agreement. 'That's right, isn't it?'
'Yes, sister . . . well, no.'
She turned on him. From the utility room there came a clattering of bed-pans and the flushing of the sluice. Down the ward, his patients had already set about the cosmetic adjustment of bed-linen which signalled they were aware of his presence.
'Why are we doing all these routine cases,' Sister McReady wanted to know, 'all these hernias and gall bladders?'
'They're on the waiting lists.'
A nurse passed. McReady stopped her and adjusted the girl's hat. 'But you 've had a couple of mastectomies waiting for the past week . . . and the woman with the sarcoma.'
'Yes, I'm trying to avoid cancer surgery for the meanwhile. We're having a few problems with the specimens.'
'There's been a lot of anxious ladies on the phone wondering about the stoppages. It's worrying for them, you know.'
'It's worrying for me, sister. We'll get it sorted out.'
McReady hung in like a newshound. 'How long d'you think it's going to go on for?'
'Oh, a couple more days.'
'What are you going to tell Leslie Cairns about her breast?'
Kingsley scanned the faces in the wards. Half hidden behind the nursing station he could see Leslie Cairns in a floral nightie, pretending to read. 'I'm not going to tell her anything just now. I'm in a bit of a hurry . . . ,' he said. But when they reached her bed his sense of duty got the better of him.
It was a quarter to six when he got to his office. Rhona was wearing a pair of tight black trousers, and a beige tunic, belted at the waist.
'You're still here?'
'I'm waiting for a lift.'
She took out a small bottle, tapped some perfume on to her index finger and dabbed it behind her ears.
Kingsley walked through to his office. There were two more lengthy pathology reports on his desk. Rhona came through.
'There was a journalist on the phone today.'
'What did he want?'
'He was doing something for the Courier. I don't know.'
'Roland Spears. It'll be about his wife.'
'That's the one,' said Rhona, writing it down.
'Tell him I'm presenting her case at the Royal. He's welcome to come if he wants.'
'Are you? – Is he?'
'Yes,' said Kingsley.
'If he rings again I'll tell him,' said Rhona, then she looked over his head, through the window. 'Here's my lift. 'Bye.'
The vestiges of her perfume hung over Kingsley's desk as he packed his briefcase. He checked his watch – ten to six – and pulled on his coat.
The car park was half empty. Kingsley threw his briefcase in the side door and locked it. His collar was uncomfortable and a sensation not unlike hunger was dragging at his stomach. Near the gate he noticed his secretary stepping neatly into Richard Short's idling Porsche.
Constitution Street was turgid with evening traffic, bumper to bumper, engines choking. The bus queue stretched the length of the Co-op. Kingsley turned away, down the side of the Douglas Calder, past the scrawled gang slogans on Causeway Lane. He walked past the wrestling hall, a poster on the wooden ticket booth: ‘DR DEATH, THE MASKED MEDIC – LEARN THE SCIENCE OF PAIN'. A sheet of newspaper blew around Kingsley's ankles as he passed the social security. Crossing the road he joined the stream of traffic now nosing over the harbour bridge. Kingsley kept pace with it. At the traffic lights he crossed the road again, past the burnt out slums and the old port authority. He could see the Carriage Bar from here. One small bright fire, like a baker's oven, in the black tenement block. For the first time he faltered, then, pushing both hands into his pockets, he crossed the cobbles and hurried towards it.
Chapter 7
Inside the Carriage Bar the single low, dark room was crammed with drinkers. Kingsley squeezed inside. Dockhands were three deep at the bar, those in front greedily downing pints, those behind waving pound notes in some obscure benediction over their heads. Above them a line of plastic hops had grown a tacky skin of cigarette tar. The same brown film covered the once white walls and wrestling posters. There was no sign of Dhangi.
Kingsley moved towards the bar. A man burrowed out from in front of him and the crush of humanity sucked Kingsley in, shoving and shouldering him on his way. Someone pushed away from the counter and Kingsley fought his way into the gap. He called his order several times before the barmaid consented to pour him a whisky. The drink sloshed onto his hand. Kingsley paid her and pushed back into the body of the pub. The press of workmen closed in on the gap he had left.
There was a lot of activity round the podium to his right. Kingsley scanned past it, wrestling this way and that to get a clear view of the tables at the back of the room. Something told him that Dhangi had already arrived – a physical sensation of the man's presence that was so far removed from anything he had previously experienced that Kingsley would never have acknowledged it. But sure enough, in a far corner, he eventually spotted the ragged Indian.
Kingsley elbowed his way towards the corner, pushing occupied chairs forwards in order to squeeze between them, grunting apologies to their occupants. Dhangi seemed completely oblivious of his approach. As Kingsley drew nearer he noticed that Dhangi's eyes were closed and his breathing slow and regular. One hand rested on the table, index finger and thumb touching lightly across the palm, as if encircling the stem of a glass. Kingsley stopped just short of Dhangi's table. Dhangi made no sign of acknowledgement, nor did he respond to his name. Kingsley turned to leave.
'Mr Kingsley.'
Dhangi's eyes were suddenly wide as if he had been wakened from a deep sleep. Kingsley felt irritated and insulted by the gambit. He remained standing. 'Look I've had second thoughts, Dr . . . Dr Dhangi. I can't see this meeting is going to be of much value to either of us.'
'No, you are wrong . . . sit, please.'
'I mean if you think you're going to impress me with gamesmanship . . .'
'I have no games.'
'. . . I've honestly got no idea why I came here.'
'Stay . . . I beg you.' Kingsley pulled a chair back and consulted his watch. 'I'll give you five minutes.'
'This may take some time.'
'Better get on with it then.'
Dhangi fidgeted with
the sleeve of his shirt. From somewhere to Kingsley's right the blare of a jukebox rose above the hubbub. Kingsley glanced sideways to see a girl in a black nylon negligee mount the podium. The dockers aggregated round her, jostling for position.
'I cannot tell you how long I have looked forward to this meeting,' Dhangi began.
'Don't.'
'You must understand . . . it is difficult for me to explain . . . we have such different backgrounds.'
'You told me you were medically trained.' Kingsley made no attempt to hide his scepticism.
'That is correct.' Dhangi continued to pull at a thread on his cuff. 'I studied in Jalore . . . my family were very poor . . . I was awarded a scholarship on account of my school grades . . . they had high hopes for me . . . but other things have developed since then.'
'You didn't qualify?'
'Oh yes, I am qualified . . . it is not about medicine I wished to speak . . . it is about the other thing.'
'What other thing?'
Dhangi's eyes raked Kingsley's face, as if seeking some fingerhold on its stony surface. 'Do you believe in God, Mr Kingsley?'
'Look, I honestly don't have time for a philosophical debate. If you've got something to say, say it.'
'I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry . . . do not be distressed.' Dhangi held his hands up in supplication. 'Here,' he followed quickly, 'I will show you something.' He reached into his inside pocket. Kingsley half expected him to produce the wad of references he had presented at their last meeting but instead Dhangi brought out a battered leather wallet. His fingers rummaged through its contents and lighted on a folded slip of paper. 'Please study this.'
The paper was yellow with age and fragile from repeated folding. Dhangi opened it carefully to reveal a faded print with a heading in Hindi script. He smoothed it flat with his palms and passed it across the table where Kingsley regarded it with less than passing interest. It was an old photographic reproduction of a rock-carving, apparently ripped from a book. The rock-carving depicted a building of some sort. The lower corner of the page had trailed in a patch of beer. Kingsley was distracted by a roar from the vicinity of the podium as the stripper divested herself of her stockings.
'Do you recognize it?' Dhangi was asking.
'No.'
'The hospital . . . no?'
Kingsley looked at the picture again. The relief did bear an uncanny resemblance to the back of the Douglas Calder – steps leading from the water, a broad, cobbled forecourt, four storeys of high, arched windows flanked on either side by two squat minarets corresponding to the hospital's twin towers. There was even, at the bottom left-hand corner, a cubic outbuilding where one would expect to see the mortuary. He looked up. Dhangi did not smile, but his eyes bored into Kingsley like gimlets.
Kingsley was nonplussed. 'Interesting. Where did it come from?'
'The picture is from a book of archaeology . . . the carving can be found on the wall of a shrine in the Arravali mountains in Rajastan . . . However, the building it depicts exists only in myth. In Hindi it is called Nigambodh Ghat – the River Temple.'
'Nonsense. Let me see that picture again.'
Once more Dhangi passed the paper across the table. Kingsley spread it out and scrutinized it, managing for a few moments to forget the increasingly stifling atmosphere of the bar, and the vaguely fungal smell of Dhangi's clothes, immune even to the girl on the podium, now being exhorted to unclip her bra.
'Can I keep this?' he asked.
Dhangi shook his head. 'I am afraid that is not possible.'
'Can I take a copy of it?'
'I would be unhappy about that also,' said Dhangi spiriting the picture back inside his jacket.
Kingsley shrugged. He felt it was time to confront the real issue. 'Well then,' he said, 'as an expert in illusion, perhaps you'll tell me how you've been interfering with my work.'
'I was coming to that.'
'Let's stop beating about the bush. You're a doctor, right? You've just shown me you have some skill at forgery. I know for a fact you've been snooping round the pathology labs where Dr Mukesh fixes our slides. Now is it or is it not unreasonable to assume that the problems we've been having with certain specimens are in some way your doing?'
'It is not unreasonable,' Dhangi conceded.
Prevarication infuriated Kingsley at the best of times. 'Oh, for God's sake,' he shouted. Conversation stopped at the adjacent tables. Heads turned towards them.
Dhangi quickly turned his face to the wall. 'Please,' he implored. 'This is not simple . . . it will take some time.'
'That's what I don't have.'
'You see,' Dhangi continued, 'as a medical man you cannot be expected to believe what I am telling you . . . I would have felt the same once . . . perhaps I should tell you my own story.'
'I’m sure it's unnecessary.'
'It will help, I promise.'
Kingsley sighed and ran a finger under his collar then leant back and folded his arms. Dhangi took this as his cue. Where to begin? He closed his eyes and saw his village by dawn – a shambles of mud, dung and corrugated iron on the banks of the corrupted river, the yellow dogs and piles of smoking garbage. A young man – himself, Acharya Dhangi – was picking his way up the mud track at the start of his daily journey to medical school. 'I was a diligent student,' he began. 'I studied medicine day and night for five years. I won several prizes. My family were very anxious for me to succeed. Often my brothers said, "Why should this one be given money for clothes? All he does is read his books while we are working, working to support the family." But my mother encouraged me. If I had become a city doctor their problems would be over . . . however, it was not to be. Just before my final exams I began to suffer from nervous symptoms – depression and other things. I became severely ill . . . next thing I remember was the psychiatric hospital in Amedabad . . .'
Dhangi faltered. The mention of psychiatric illness obviously confirmed Kingsley's preconceptions about him. So what of the rest? Perhaps he should not tell Kingsley of the mystical inner voice which had beckoned him to Varanasi, of his flight from the hospital, or of those tormented, chaotic days which followed, wandering from town to town, village to village, without even a few paise to buy his fare on a bullock cart. Kingsley was looking pointedly at his watch. Panicking, Dhangi hacked through the confused, tangled memories and arrived at a stained mud doorstep in Varanasi.
'. . . The man who effected my recovery was not a doctor, he was a holy man, a Swami . . . I met him in Varanasi.'
Varanasi. Yes, Dhangi could still see the vast flights of steps to the water, the endless funeral processions, the temples decked with sculpture and draped in pigeon dung, the air full of tattered flags, of scavenger birds and of the smell of the dead.
'I was drawn to his house. I was very ill from malaria and roundworm. But he recognized me immediately from our past lives together. I believe he had sent for me. He took me in and I stayed with him till I was strong enough to return to Jalore and continue my studies. But Swami Vitthalnath had opened my eyes you see. I was pledged to devote my life to Lord Krishna . . .'
Dhangi hesitated again. Kingsley was still as far from comprehension as Dhangi's mother was that afternoon by the water tank. He could remember her slapping her saris on the flat stones, and he recalled with painful acuity her expression when he told her he was renouncing everything she had worked and suffered and prayed for all the twenty-seven years of his life. His hands shook as he took the folded betel leaf from his pocket and placed it in his mouth. He held the wad in his cheek, swallowed the acid saliva and continued.
'. . . I returned to Varanasi and lived for another five years with Swami Vitthalnath – a true holy man, a great man . . . he knew the Vedas entirely . . . our scriptures, every verse he knew by memory. Every day we spent in prayer and meditation . . .'Dhangi's voice softened as he recalled the guru – one eye dulled from trachoma and his torso scarred from neck to waist from the austerities he inflicted on himself. '. . . He knew,' Dhangi whispered.
'Yes . . . he alone knew the truth of the Hindu faith . . . the essential truth, that rebirth can only be achieved through decay . . . you see . . . it is so simple. We are surrounded by it – rotting and decay. Even here this harbour is rotting. In India it seems the whole country is rotting. You see! . . . the Gods provide the means and we ignore them. We build our houses from cowdung but cannot recognize the very bricks from which to rebuild Vrindaban on the banks of the Jumna!'
There was a pause. Kingsley shook his head coldly. I’m sorry,' he said, 'I really don't understand where all this is taking us.'
'I don't ask you to understand. I performed the pujas for five years and did not understand. I spoke with God without understanding! And the crowd who murdered Swami Vitthalnath did not understand. How could they? They had no knowledge, could not see the purpose of these practices. So, they dragged him down the steps to the river and beat him to death with sticks. How could I make them to understand, I who had no understanding!' Dhangi's inflamed eyes filled with tears and he covered his face convulsively with one hand. Kingsley had long experience of distancing himself from other people's emotions. He watched dispassionately as the Indian wiped his eyes, then blew his nose between finger and thumb. 'I'm sorry,' Dhangi resumed, 'I found him two hours later, you see, dead . . . lying by the water . . . the kites had already taken his eyes . . . but he had left a message in the sand . . . a reference to a certain verse in the shruti . . . it was there that I found myself.'
Dhangi grasped Kingsley's sleeve. A fierce light appeared behind his tears. 'I mean this truly. I found myself. A reference to myself. In the Atharvaveda – the oldest literature known to man. A collection of prehistoric hymns and chants, half of them beyond any sensible interpretation. I am in that book. As you are.'
'What am I doing?' Kingsley asked dryly.
'In the Atharvaveda it is written that a healer would cross the black waters in search of Nigambodh Ghat, there to perform the prescribed rituals . . . imparting to a man of the pandava – a palefaced one – the power to heal by touch, to the eternal glory of both our people and the salvation of the godless . . . so be it.'
