The fevers came again, stronger now. His body shook, his jaw clenched tight, his arms curled up against his chest, he tried to grab his shoulders but his hands only trembled, he shook the bed and the mosquito netting. The water basin on the table rattled as he moved. Miss Ma awoke and came and covered him, but he still was cold. He tried to thank her, but he couldn’t speak. The water basin on the table rattled to the edge.
He grew hot again, like the night before. He threw off the blankets. He was no longer shaking. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. He tore off his shirt, it was soaked, his thin cotton drawers stuck to his legs, and he fought the urge to tear them off too, I must be decent, he thought, and his body ached and he ran his hands over his face to wipe off the sweat, over his chest, his arms. He turned, the sheets were wet and warm, he tried to breathe and tore at the mosquito net. He heard footsteps and saw Miss Ma go to the water basin to moisten a cloth. She lifted the mosquito netting and pressed the damp cloth to his head. It was cold as she ran it over his body, and the heat retreated briefly, returning once the cloth had passed. Like this she chased the fever, but it burned deeper now. He lost consciousness.
And now he floats above the bed, he can see himself. Water rushes from his skin, pooling, it begins to move, it is no longer sweat but ants that crawl out of his pores and swarm. He is black with ants. He falls back into his body and he screams, slapping away at the ants, they fall on the sheets and turn to tiny fires, and as he brushes them off they are replaced by more, emerging from his pores like from an anthill, not fast or slow, but incessant, they cover him. He screams and he hears rustling at the bedside, there are many forms now, he thinks he knows them, the Doctor and Miss Ma, and now another figure, standing behind the other two. The room is dark and red, like a fire. He sees their faces, but they blur and melt, and their mouths become the muzzles of dogs, laughing mouths, and they reach for him with paws, and everywhere they touch him it is like ice, and he screams and tries to beat away their arms. One of the dogs leans toward him and presses its muzzle against his cheek, its breath stinks of heat and mice, and its eyes burn clear, like glass, and in them he sees a woman, she is sitting on the bank of a river watching a pair of bodies, and he sees them too, the brown arms gripping the broad white back, pale and dirty with sand, faces close and panting. There is one boat left on the sand, and she takes it and begins to paddle away, he tries to rise, but now he lies in the grip of the brown arms and he feels a slipperiness, a heat, and feels the muzzle part his lips, a rough tongue slip into his mouth. He tries to rise but others surround him, he tries to fight but falls back, exhausted. He sleeps.
He awakes hours later and feels a cold moist towel on his head. Khin Myo is sitting by his bed. One hand holds the towel to his forehead. He takes the other in his. She doesn’t move away. “Khin Myo…” he says.
“Quiet, Mr. Drake, sleep.”
16
The fever broke alongside the dawn. It was the morning of the third day since he became ill. He awoke and he was alone. An empty water basin sat on the floor next to the bed, two towels hung over its side.
His head ached. The night before was a feverish blur, and he lay back and tried to remember what happened. Images came but they were strange and disturbing. He turned over onto his side. The sheets were moist and cool. He slept.
He awoke to the sound of his name, a man’s voice. He turned over. Doctor Carroll sat at the bedside. “Mr. Drake, you look better this morning.”
“Yes, I think so. I feel much better.”
“I am glad. It was terrible last night. Even I was concerned…and I have seen so many cases.”
“I don’t remember it. I only remember seeing you and Khin Myo and Miss Ma.”
“Khin Myo wasn’t here. It must have been the delirium.”
Edgar looked up from the bed. The Doctor peered at him, his face stern and unexpressive. “Yes, perhaps only the delirium,” said Edgar, and he turned over and slept again.
Over the course of the next few days, the fevers came again, but they were not as strong, and the terrible dreams didn’t return. Miss Ma left his bedside to take care of the patients in the hospital, but returned to visit him throughout the day. She brought him fruit and rice and a soup that tasted like ginger and made him sweat and his body shiver when she fanned him. One day she came with scissors to cut his hair. The Doctor explained that the Shan believed this helped fight illness.
He began to walk. He had lost weight, and his clothes hung even more loosely on his thin frame. But mostly he rested on the balcony and watched the river. The Doctor invited a man to play a Shan flute for him, and he sat in his bed beneath the mosquito netting and listened.
One night, alone, he thought he could hear the sound of the piano being played. The notes drifted down through the camp. He thought it was Chopin at first, but the song changed, elusive, elegiac, a melody he had never heard.
Color returned to his face, and he began to share his meals with the Doctor once again. The Doctor asked him about Katherine, and he told him how they had met. But mostly he listened. To stories of the war, of Shan customs, of men who rowed boats with their legs, of monks with mystical powers. The Doctor told him that he had sent a description of a new flower to the Linnean Society, and that he had begun to translate Homer’s Odyssey into Shan, “My favorite tale, Mr. Drake, and one in which I find a most personal significance.” He was translating it, he said, for a Shan storyteller who had asked for a legend of “the kind that is told at night, around campfires.” “I am now at the song of Demodokos. I don’t know if you remember it. He sings of the sack of Troy, and Odysseus, the great warrior, cries, ‘as a woman weeps.’”
They went at night to listen to musicians play, drums and cymbals and harps and flutes mixing in a jungle of sounds. They stayed until it was late. When they returned to their rooms, Edgar went out onto his balcony to listen again.
After several days, the Doctor asked, “How are you feeling?”
“I am well. Why do you ask now?”
“I have to go away again. It should only be a couple of days. Khin Myo will stay. You won’t have to be alone.”
The Doctor didn’t tell Edgar where he was going, and Edgar didn’t see him leave.
The following morning, he rose and walked to the river to watch the fishermen. He stood in the brush of blooming flowers and watched bees flit between the patches of colors. He played football with some of the children, but tired quickly and returned to his room. He sat on the balcony and looked out on the river. He watched the sun move. The cook brought him lunch, a broth with sweet noodles and fried crisp pieces of garlic. Kin waan, he said when he tasted it, and the cook smiled.
Night came, and he slept a sweet sleep in which he dreamed he was dancing at a festival. The villagers played strange instruments, and he moved as if in a waltz, but alone.
The next day, he decided to write to Katherine, at last. A new thought had begun to bother him—that the army had notified her that he had left Mandalay. He had to convince himself that the military’s obvious lack of interest in her before he left—which had angered him so then—meant that they were even less likely to be in contact with her now.
He took out paper and a pen and wrote her name. He began to describe Mae Lwin but stopped after several lines. He wanted to describe to her the village above the mountain, but realized he had seen it only from a distance. It was still cool outside. A fine time for a walk, he thought, The exercise will do me good. He put on his hat and—despite the heat—a waistcoat he usually wore on summer strolls in England. He walked down to the center of camp.