In my feverish condition, even this amount of thinking tired me out. I could hardly get to my feet again when, after a while, Dupont said we’d better walk back to the truck.
8
We advanced into the desert along the vaguest hint of a road. It was now four in the afternoon. We had to swath our heads in our shirts to keep from breathing in the sand, so I felt more ill than ever.
Dupont eventually nudged my arm.
“Look,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
Over the edge of the truck I could see a compound consisting of three white-painted, modern-looking buildings glimmering and floating on the far shore of a lake of the bluest colour. I blinked several times. I’d no idea there were lakes in the desert.
“The lake’s just a mirage,” Dupont said. “You get used to them. But the buildings are real. When the hospital was built this whole area was grasslands. The desert’s been encroaching for years now. That’s one of the big problems here, but not the worst. Some of the human beings around this area are determined to outdo the havoc caused by nature.”
Feeling so ill, I was intent only on finding a less painful position in our bumpy, mobile oven. So I didn’t ask him what he meant by that last comment.
SOON WE WERE coasting along a much smoother surface — an occasional landing strip for small planes — and came to a halt in a courtyard in the midst of the three buildings we’d seen. The middle block ran east to west and was larger than the other two, which were like prongs in a fork, pointing north. All three buildings had long, shaded verandahs facing onto the central courtyard. Some beds had been pulled out onto the verandahs, and patients were propped up in them, watching our arrival. The sheltered area contained a number of garden plots full of vegetables and flowers — a welcome sight in this arid landscape.
As Dupont helped me down from the truck, a straggle of house cats that had been lying in the shade wandered out to meet us, their tails erect — for a moment, in my fever, I thought of Deirdre’s herd of cats in her house in Glasgow, and I half expected to see her here, too.
But these desert cats were accompanied by several whiteuniformed female nurses. The welcoming party, cats and nurses, appeared as delighted to see Dupont as he was to see them. He greeted each of the nurses by name and stooped to pet each cat.
The last of the nurses, the only European, was a tall, thin woman with cropped black hair that was greying a little. Her face was lined from the sun. She wore thick, wire-rimmed glasses that gave her the huge stare of an owl.
She and Dupont hugged each other for quite a few moments while the others looked on, smiling.
Dupont, holding her hand, introduced us.
“Clara, this is Harry,” he said. “He has a persistent fever, so he’ll be with us for a while till he feels better.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said to me. “I do hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us.” She sounded like an Englishwoman.
Dupont wasted no time in assigning me to a little guest room at the back of the staff quarters in the main building. The window had no glass, only a fly screen, and the bed was protected by a tented mosquito net. He immediately injected me with something and ordered me to rest.
FOR THE NEXT forty-eight hours I lay in bed, sleeping off and on, nibbling on snacks of fruit and bread. Occasionally I’d awake to a soothing noise, like a machine running quietly. It turned out to be a little black and brown cat that had found a way under the mosquito net and would lie near me, purring happily. I was comforted by its presence when I drifted in and out of sleep.
Early on the third morning, Dupont came into the room a few minutes after I awoke. He lifted the net and felt my forehead.
“Your temperature’s very high,” he said. “The fever should break any time now.”
The little cat was at the bottom of the bed, watching and purring. Dupont stroked its fur.
“I see you have little Sadie looking after you,” he said. “The hospital’s cats were Clara’s idea. We got them at first just to keep down rodents and insects, but then we discovered that some of patients recovered faster with them around.”
I assured him that Sadie was the best of company.
“Speaking of which, I’m here with a dinner invitation for you,” said Dupont. “If, and only if, you feel a bit better tonight, Clara would like you to dine with her at six. Normally I’d be there too, but I’m afraid I’ll be gone till at least tomorrow. A village a hundred miles east is reporting an outbreak of yellow fever. I’ll go over and see what I can do. Clara will keep an eye on you till I get back.”
9
I dozed most of that day and got up around five. I wasn’t at all hungry, but I was feeling much stronger, so I shaved and put on my freshly laundered clothes.
At just before six o’clock, darkness, as usual, fell like a stone, and not long after that a nurse appeared at the door of my room to lead me to wherever I was to dine. She took me along dimly lit corridors, past rooms with open doors in which I could vaguely see patients settling down for the evening.
One door we passed bore the sign Delivery Room. The door was ajar and we could hear a bustle of activity and the sound of moaning from inside.
“One of our patients is having some difficulties,” said the nurse.
SHE BROUGHT ME to another well-lit room with a dining table set for two. A ceiling fan whirled silently as the nurse set off back down the hall. I had barely seated myself when Clara came in.
“I’m so glad you felt well enough to join me,” she said. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
The meal consisted of a spicy stew made from some kind of desert deer, followed by figs and various fruits. Clara encouraged me to try a little of each, so I did.
While we were at the table, aside from brief comments on the food, the state of my health, and the expected progress of my recovery, we didn’t talk much. Afterwards, we moved to a side room that had more comfortable chairs and drank some hot tea.
As she sipped her tea, Clara relaxed and became much more talkative. I discovered, amongst other things, the reason Dupont had been on the Otago in the first place. He’d been returning from a short visit to London where he’d been called to advise the ministry on the political situation here in the desert. Apparently it was worsening, daily.
“We can sometimes hear artillery in the distance at night,” said Clara. “It’s frightening for us all. The patients and the staff have to be prepared for instant evacuation if the hospital comes under threat.”
Now I understood what Dupont had been hinting at as we were approaching the hospital.
“We hope we won’t actually have to leave,” said Clara. “But we have to be realistic and acknowledge that an attack on the hospital isn’t out of the question.” She then gave me a brief history lesson.
Vicious intertribal wars had been going on in these regions for centuries. When the various colonial powers took over, they enforced an artificial peace amongst the tribes and put them together in equally artificial countries. The borders of the new countries were strictly for the foreigners’ administrative convenience and often lumped together peoples of the jungle, the savannah, and the desert — traditional enemies who didn’t share the same languages or world views. Naturally, when the colonial powers left, or were thrown out, the benefits of the peace and order they’d imposed were quickly replaced by instinctive, traditional animosities. Violence flared up over and over, usually aimed at not-quite-legitimate governments.