Then I looked again. I was leaking.
6
Growing up, I had been taught to regard sickness and disease as something I had brought on myself. I was to blame for whatever illness I had. A weakness in me had made me give in to the ailment. I had a cold because I had gone out without a hat, or had gotten my feet wet. I had a toothache because I ate candy and didn’t brush regularly. It was a terrible equation, because whenever I was sick I was made to feel guilty.
Now I had the clap. This was the ultimate penalty and it was peculiarly appropriate. The very organ I had misused was now blazing with infection. It was like being struck dumb for telling a lie, or blinded for staring at something forbidden. The clap was not merely a disease — it was a judgment on me.
That was what I had been taught. But I resisted it. I knew better than to think that this was a moral fault. It was a physical ailment, not a blot on my soul. It was germs. You killed them and then you were cured. I told myself that it was simply an inconvenience. And yet the guilt remained.
There was a practical side to the guilt. If the Peace Corps found out I could be sent home. It was not only that I was a blunderer, I was also a health hazard. But I was too far from the capital to see the Peace Corps doctor that day. I would not have seen him in any case. I didn’t want it on my record. It had to be concealed: another secret.
The small hospital in the town of Zimba was called The Queen Elizabeth. I had taken a student there for stitches once: Emergency Outpatient. It had been a five-hour wait for him.
I went there late that same afternoon, grimly cycling. Ahead of me on the pewlike benches of Emergency Outpatient were twenty wounded and ailing Africans. On one bench alone, there was a sniveling child in a bloodstained shirt, a man with a slashed neck, another with a swollen bandaged foot, a woman with yellow liquid leaking from her bulging eye, a small whimpering girl clutching her head, and a young man with smashed toes — he had probably hit them with an ax. There was a stink of infection and rags — and the pain was audible in the gasps and sighs. I did not feel so ill here. I sat, determined not to touch my aching penis.
When she spotted me, the nurse at the table in front beckoned me forward and told me I had come to the wrong place. She did not say so, but I knew that it was because I was white. It was unheard-of for a mzungu to come here.
“I have to see the doctor.”
“What is wrong, bwana?”
“It is my leg, sister,” I said in her language.
She smiled at that — perhaps she guessed I was lying? — and said, “Mr. Nunka will see you when he is free.”
“These other people were here before me.”
“They can wait.”
“They’re sick.”
She wagged her head. “They are used to waiting.”
It was unfair, and yet I seized the chance to cut ahead of them. A seam of pain ran from my throat to my penis.
“Room Three,” the nurse said.
On the way down the corridor, it began to throb again. I tried to wring its neck, and tears sprang to my eyes.
Mr. Nunka was washing his hands in Room Three. His back was turned to me. Drying his hands, he glanced at the slip of paper the nurse had given me and he said, “Injury to leg.”
I was closing the door to the room as he turned to face me.
“Doctor,” I said.
“I am not a doctor,” he said. “I am a medical assistant. Livingstone Nunka is my name. Go on.”
“It’s not my leg,” I said. Not a doctor — did he know anything? “There’s something wrong with my penis. I mean, inside it.”
“Any discharge?”
I nodded. “Sort of greeny-yellow.”
“There is pain when you pass water?”
“Yes.”
“Chinsonono.”
I glanced around, thinking he was calling the orderly. But he smiled and repeated the word, and I knew he was describing my condition.
“Gonorrhea.”
“Are you sure?”
“It must be,” he said. “Have you been going about with African girls?”
“Yes. Now and then.”
He threw his handtowel into a laundry basket and opened a cabinet over the sink.
“When did you last have contact?”
“Sunday.”
“Excuse me for asking these questions. And before then?”
“Saturday.”
“Any other times?”
“Friday.”
He smiled and removed a large jar of tablets from the cabinet.
“She is probably a carrier.”
“They,” I said, and cleared my throat. “It wasn’t the same girl.”
Now he looked directly at me, but he was no longer smiling.
“Three girls,” I said.
“African girls.”
He spoke very gently. He said chinsonono was very common, and he tipped some of the white tablets from the jar onto a square of paper and counted them.
“How do you know it’s not syphilis?”
“It might be, but syphilis is much rarer. Anyway, these will cure syphilis too. And any other infections you have.” He was printing on the label. “Don’t worry. The symptoms will clear up in a few days. It will be gone in week.”
“I’ve heard of gonorrhea being incurable.”
“Not in Nyasaland.”
“I was thinking of Vietnam.”
“That is a different story.”
“Don’t you think you should examine me?”
“It is not necessary,” he said. “But take all the tablets. Don’t stop taking them just because the symptoms go away. You must finish the course. And it’s a good idea not to drink alcohol or milk.” He plunged a hypodermic into a small bottle. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”
“What for?”
“If I give you an injection of penicillin it will get started a little quicker,” and he stabbed my shoulder.
When he was done I said, “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. It is free. This is Emergency Outpatient — no charge.”
“I’d like to give you something.” I was embarrassed: he had made it so easy for me. Already I felt better. I wanted him to ask for a bribe.
“You can come by and help me someday.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do!”
“Just orderly work. We are so understaffed.”
“I don’t have any training.”
“I don’t have much myself,” Mr. Nunka said. “But you can be useful.”
The leak stopped the next day, and then the itching. But it was still sore. It felt useless — not dead but battered and limp. The thought of sex made it limper. It had lost its personality and so had I. No dick, no drinking — it was strange. At school I thought: I have no secrets, I am exactly what I seem. One whole side of my existence had vanished. I was surprised that people treated me the same. I felt bored and simple and rather unfunny. Jokes annoyed me. But I was grateful to be cured.
On the following Saturday, conscious that I was repaying a debt, I went to The Queen Elizabeth and asked for Mr. Nunka.
“You are better,” he said.
He had confidence in his medicine. And I was thankful that he did not browbeat me. The Peace Corps doctor would have given me a lecture and made me feel guilty. He would have taken the view that I had caught the clap because I had done something I shouldn’t have. But that was not true — I had done nothing wrong. I had merely been unlucky.
But this African so-called savage was enlightened. He didn’t make moral judgments. I had picked up a germ and he had killed it — a simple matter. I was glad to be dealing with Africans. I was so reassured by his attitude I thought I might never go home.