The cure left me feeling as I had some years before, when I had gone to confession: purer, cleaner, in a state of grace. I was healthy again. Today was Saturday but I had no plans to go to the Beautiful Bamboo.
“I came here to help you.”
“Put this on,” Mr. Nunka said, and gave me an orderly’s green smock. It was stiff with starch.
I imagined assisting at operations, handing him a scalpel, holding a tray of instruments. He would pass me a newborn baby and I would lay the infant in a cradle and whisper to the mother It’s a boy.
Mr. Nunka led me down a dirty corridor that smelled of disinfectant and we entered a crowded ward.
“The volunteers don’t come here anymore,” he said. “We used to have plenty of Europeans who worked as hospital visitors.”
“Why don’t they come?”
“They left the country,” he said. “They were frightened of what would happen at Independence.”
“But nothing has happened.”
“We are not independent yet,” Mr. Nunka said.
Did that mean anything?
Most of the whites had gone, though. That was why The Nyasaland Trading Company was so empty and the reason the Blantyre Sports Club was closing. The tea was not being picked, the ministries were closed.
“They used to wash the patients,” Mr. Nunka said.
There were forty-seven males, old and young, in the ward, but only thirty beds. The ones without beds slept on the floor. I mentioned this to Mr. Nunka. He said, “They are used to it.”
“They look sick,” I said.
“They need baths,” Mr. Nunka said.
He brought me a big enamel basin and a bar of yellow soap. He explained that it would take two of us to do this — one to prop the patient up, the other to scrub. We took off their pajamas and went at it, sloshing their heads first, then their arms, their torso, and lower, the disgusting rest. The first few made me retch, but then someone turned on the radio, and it played The Drifters’ song “Saturday Night at the Movies,” and I thought of Abby at the Rainbow Cinema. We washed a few more men, and after a while it was like scrubbing furniture.
The old African men simply lay there and groaned while we soaped them. Several of them were full of tubes and catheters and it required a certain amount of care to wash them. One of the sickest, and hardest to wash, was a man called Goodall. While we were doing him I thought: Maybe Abby gave me the clap? But then the radio played a new song, Elvis’s “Return to Sender,” and I forgot about Abby. We couldn’t scrub Goodall. We dabbed him carefully, cleaning him like an antique. He stank, and his skin was like a lizard’s, rather cold and slippery, with white flakes and scales. But I had the impression that he was enjoying his bath — he smiled faintly as he felt the warm water on him — and his pleasure took away my nausea.
“All these tubes,” I said.
“Strictures have formed in his urethra,” Mr. Nunka said, and he whispered, “He has been a martyr to gonorrhea for sixty years.”
When we came to the last bed and washed the old man in it and the one underneath I had a view of the Outpatient Clinic. I was scrubbing a foot — I had the battered thing under my arm — and I saw a familiar figure walking up the gravel path — Gloria, heading for Emergency. She wore her red dress and a red turban, very stylish for the hospital; but she looked rather gray and gloomy.
I simply watched her as I did the foot. I knew she would have a long wait — there was the usual crowd of desperate people waiting to be seen.
“What about a cup of tea?” Mr. Nunka said, when we had finished.
I did not have the tea habit, and this tea was the color of the bathwater in the basin, a resemblance that turned my stomach. But the Staff Room was adjacent to the clinic, and I sat there and read an old issue of The Central African Examiner so that I could watch Gloria. She was on a bench near the wall of health posters. Perhaps she was reading Toby Toothbrush says, “Use me every day!” or In Case of Burns—first aid in pictures.
“Busy day.”
“Every day is busy,” Mr. Nunka said.
“Goodall seems a nice guy.”
“That old man is an institution. He is a chief of the Sena people, on the Lower River.”
“He seems to be in terrible pain.”
“He is used to it.”
Mr. Nunka pushed out his lips like a fish and sucked his tea noisily. How could he, in a such a smelly place? But it seemed he did not notice.
He said, “I want a packet of biscuits, and then I must do some bandages. I will find you here.”
I waited until I saw Gloria stand up, hearing her name being called. She was treated by someone I could not see, behind a curtain. After she had gone, clutching her bottle of tablets, I discovered why she had come. It said so on the medical record that was flung into the tray for filing. Her name was given as Lundazi Gloria. She had gonorrhea.
This aroused me — not the disease, but the fact that she was being cured. So was I! As far as I knew, we were the only two people in the country who were being treated for the clap. It made me amorous. In a week we would be completely cured; we would be safe. For the first time in a week I tasted desire, and with it came a renewed feeling of mingled optimism and secrecy. But I did not follow her. There was always time.
Mr. Nunka returned and we washed more patients; bandaged some burns and emptied Goodall’s bottles. It was cold in the men’s ward, which dulled the smell somewhat but caused the men to bury themselves in their ragged blankets. A light rain spattered the windows.
At the end of the day, Mr. Nunka said, “It was very good of you to help us here. I hope we will not see you again.”
He meant I think—they often confused the English words when there was only one word in Chinyanja.
“Why not?”
“We don’t have money to pay you.”
That did it. I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The next day I worked alone, washing the old men again. I realized that I would have to wash them a few more times before they were completely clean. But I was making a visible difference. They were so dirty that one or two baths were not enough to get the grime off.
Goodall said, “Be careful, father. Don’t hurt me.”
I kept at it and when I finished the old chief was clean, perhaps for the first time in years. His skin was shining. He smiled. But the bath had tired him; he lay back on his raised pillows and went to sleep.
The men were so silent and inert and uncomplaining it really was like washing furniture. There were stitched-up legs and snakebites and thick plaster casts and wounds being drained. I took care to wash around the obstructions. I had spent the day alone here, and when the rain started at five, and I switched on the feeble orange lights — three bulbs in the ceiling — I slopped an old African’s skinny arm in my basin. A big fly was buzzing and bonking against a window, trying to get out. It stank of sickness here, and now the daylight was gone. It was damp and cold. I was happy.
During the week at Chamba Hill Secondary School, I was fully alert and got more done than I ever had. I had never felt so rested. I had had nothing to drink, I hadn’t brought any girls home over the weekend; I had spoken only to Captain. He told me he believed there were monsters in the Shire River. One he described resembled a whale-sized snake that could wrap itself around the ferry and sink it. Instead of setting him straight, I encouraged him, and he described more monsters. I listened and felt virtuous, which was also a sense of physical well-being. I was cured of the clap and living one life. Still, I thought of Gloria, taking her penicillin.