‘I hear these NGOs have very good benefits,’ he says. Then he walks past me, and takes a seat inside at the bar.
* * *
In my room, I wash my face at the sink. The water is cold and I imagine the dark walls of the well and the smell of the damp stone encasement. The bed is too short so I have to lie at an angle, from corner to corner. I turn out the light, but the room is not dark. Light from the hallway shines over the top of the doorway. There is no ceiling above the rooms, only the pitch of the roof. So the walls are no more than privacy screens. Light and noise breach the walls with ease. It is impossible to sleep as I can hear the men drinking in the bar, low banter and laughter and the loud wah-wah of the radio.
Then, about ten, the generator cuts out. The darkness is sudden and complete. The radio stops and the voices mute and an entirely new layer of sound surfaces. The wind shaking the leaves of the bougainvillea bushes outside my window. The scuffing of feet and chair legs on the floor in the bar. A cough from one of the other rooms I didn’t know was occupied.
After a while, the men in the bar finish their drinks and wander out into the street. I can hear them talking as they walk away and the conversations fade or end one by one as they diverge into the night. ‘Exactly,’ someone is saying in forced English, ‘that is my point exactly.’
There is a brief hiatus of silence, then a dog barks. And a faint, rhythmic squeak begins, as if off stage. It grows louder, approaching, and I know it’s a bicycle. I have in my mind that it is the man in the pink shirt whom I saw on the way here. I get out of bed and go to the window. But he has passed and there is only the empty street and the long, deep shadows of the moon upon the dirt road that goes nowhere, to nothing.
Magulu, April 29
Gladness is sweeping. The dust particles tremble in the sunbeams. I am eating breakfast: tea and a greasy chapatti. Even though the menu is extensive, Gladness admits only the chapattis are available.
‘Not even a blood-pressure cuff,’ Dorothea says, sitting down. Today her wig is a red pageboy and she wears a black-and-white harlequin trouser suit. She orders Gladness to bring her a Coke, and I note Gladness’s hesitation. There’s something in the doctor’s tone she resents. A touch of superiority? But she obeys.
As Gladness puts down the Coke, Dorothea announces, ‘Everyone here has an STD.’ Gladness accidentally spills the Coke, grabbing it before it tips all over Dorothea — who continues regardless: ‘Gonorrhoea, syphilis, genital warts. They are all infested. They are all having unprotected sex. I don’t know about AIDS. What is the point of testing? There are no retro-virals available.’
Dorothea is so small that her feet, in worn-down kitten heels, barely touch the floor below her chair. The silky red strands of her wig sway in opposition to her almost continuous movement. She cannot sit still.
I turn my head toward her. This is encouragement enough. I learned through my years with Tom — dinners, cocktails, luncheons, barbeques, embassy functions, speeches, gatherings, get-togethers, Christmas parties — that most people require only the slightest response to believe you are listening. The flicker of a pulse, really, is sufficient.
‘Do you know I chose to come here? I chose it! Yes! I believed it was my duty. All the others in my year, they wanted postings in the cities, in big hospitals. Me, I said, “It is my duty, it is my responsibility to provide medical care to the poor people in the countryside.” Do you know our first president? Julius Nyerere? Mwalimu. Teacher. He was a teacher, a humble man and he wanted a nation of humble people. He sent people from the cities, he forced them to go and live in the country so they would not think they were superior. They would know the life of a peasant. But the joke is that I have no blood-pressure cuff. Sometimes I don’t even have antibiotics because there is no distribution. The government pretends we do not exist. I gave my last Ciprofloxacin to your friend.’ She pauses to order another Coke from Gladness, then hurries on. ‘How can I get some? Anything? Betadine. Antimalarials. There is no vehicle, not one in this town, not one for many miles, and the District Medical Officer never sends anything to me. What kind of medical care can I provide? How can I be a doctor? Can you tell me?’
I mumble the sympathy she must be expecting.
Dorothea hasn’t finished: ‘I cannot treat people so of course they do not come to me and they continue to go to their mganga and so nothing changes. We are still living in a primitive time and they believe if they take tea from this root or that tree bark it will cure venereal disease, will cure glaucoma, will make it possible to have a baby even though the woman’s uterus is full of infections. Her ovaries are scarred. No eggs can come out.’
Now she sighs, leans back, and again I am struck by the physical dichotomy: her neat, doll-like features belong to those of a young girl, but her skin is slack at the jaw; she’s older than I had first thought.
I realize that I’m quite glad of her company, for she apparently requires nothing of me. She doesn’t want to know. She just wants to talk, to complain, and her voice is like an idling car; it gently pads the otherwise blank air. I drink my tea, tear at the chapatti and wonder where to wipe my greasy fingers.
The dust lifts from Gladness’s broom, sparkles, and the stillness revolves around me and I’m in the middle of it, sitting very still. But there is something beyond it — movement, and I feel a tiny quiver at the base of my spine.
On the periphery there is the rushing.
On the periphery there is glass bursting.
Little bouquets of flowers.
Mrs Gassner trying to tie her shoelaces.
A little girl moving like a beetle on its back—
‘Friend? Would you like a Coke, friend?’ Dorothea says.
I wade back toward her. I see her clearly and precisely in the chair beside me, her head cocked to one side, smiling, but also with the same look of concern she had for Melinda. I feel a momentary rush of gratitude, as if she’s pulled me from rough water. I want to touch her small hand to confirm she’s here, I’m here. The dread in my stomach uncoils.
‘Do you have a fever?’ she peers from under the red pageboy. ‘You look somehow unwell.’
‘No, no.’
She laughs, a little snort, ‘And what could I do anyway! No stethoscope. No antibiotics!’
Later, I look up the word mganga. It means witch doctor.
Arnau, March 12
I went out the door and down the stairs. Mrs Gassner was sitting on the hall bench, putting on her shoes. She glanced up with her watery gray eyes.
‘Grüsse, she said.
‘Grüsse,’ I replied, fumbling even with this basic Swiss German greeting.
‘I go to the doctor,’ she said, trying English now. ‘My arthritis, it is true pain.’ She shook her hands at her shoes.
Her shoes. Stout leather lace-ups. Swiss made. Of course.
‘Look, my hands do not work.’
‘Can I help?’
‘Like a child. I cannot do my own shoes.’ But she moved her feet toward me in request.
I bent down and pulled the laces tight, tied them in double bows.
‘Is that okay?’
‘Danke. This a bit tighter. Okay. Danke, thank you.’
Mrs Gassner’s handbag was there beside her feet. It was slightly open, enough to reveal several white billing envelopes inside.
‘It will rain in one hour,’ she said, standing up, adjusting her hat. ‘I feel my old bones.’