Borderline

by Marita van der Vyver

  Only when Doctor Casanova nods just as solemnly as Ruben and asks her to take a seat on the examination bed, does it occur to her that there might be listening devices hidden somewhere in the consulting room. Although the room is furnished so sparsely that she can’t imagine where something like that could possibly be hidden. Underneath the stacks of paper on the desk?

  No, she was becoming ridiculously paranoid now. She walks meekly to the high bed in one corner of the room. The two men probably just have to ensure that no one could accuse them of violating the ethical code of the medical clinic. Ruben by bringing a foreigner to a doctor under a false pretext. Oscar by going along with the charade.

  When the doctor asks her to lift up the back of her cotton shirt so he can place his stethoscope against her naked back, she is hit by a new wave of panic. What if he takes the game so seriously that he asks her to remove her shirt? That would be simply too humiliating, not only for her, perhaps even more for poor Ruben. They have never even seen each other in their swimwear. Imagine what a shock it would be for him, having to contemplate her in her underwear under the merciless fluorescent lighting in this consulting room.

  With her clothes on she generally looks quite decent – for her age of course – but underneath her clothes is another story. Her body has become a battleground, scarred beyond repair, a landscape of craters and trenches and unnatural bumps despite a lifetime battling against an invincible enemy. Time was the enemy, the thief, the winner. Always.

  Ruben keeps his back discreetly turned towards them while Oscar slides the stethoscope across her body and underneath her shirt, now and again instructing her to breathe deeply. But that’s precisely what I’m struggling to do, she protests weakly, merely to soothe the doctor’s conscience.

  ‘It’s very strange,’ he muses, stroking his neat little goatee. ‘I will have to ask my colleague’s advice. Doctor Morales speaks English,’ he adds with a meaningful look into her eyes. ‘Please wait here.’

  And he rushes out of the room.

  Theresa sits upright on the bed and looks at Ruben quizzically. ‘Why is he behaving so bizarrely? He knows I’m not really—’

  Ruben holds up his hand to prevent her from saying anything more.

  Well fine, if that is how they want to play this game, she doesn’t have a choice. She will just have to play along.

  They wait for what seems like hours, Ruben silently sweating on the plastic chair in front of the desk, she on the tall bed swinging her legs like a bored child. She studies her bare feet while an old-fashioned alarm clock on the desk ticks away too loudly. She likes her feet, lean and sinewy and without the corns and callouses that disfigure the feet of so many middle-aged people. Actually the only part of her body that she still prefers naked these days.

  When she starts thinking she may faint from heat and thirst, Doctor Casanova finally returns to the room, in the wake of a small, slightly built woman wearing a white doctor’s coat with short sleeves.

  ‘Tell Doctor Morales everything you told me,’ he says with a nervous smile. ‘I’m going to get a quick cup of coffee.’

  And before Doctor Morales can say a word, he has disappeared at a trot.

  Despite her lack of height and her delicate physique, the doctor doesn’t look frail or helpless. Theresa involuntarily compares her to the Bambi-like companions Theo used to find so irresistible, but this one doesn’t have the eyes of an innocent deer. Doctor Morales’s eyes are a rare green colour with brown flecks, her gaze direct and self-possessed. Her thin arms are muscular under the short sleeves of the little white coat, her bare brown calves athletic in practical running shoes, her dark hair cut in a blunt boyish style. She is wearing a narrow wedding band, no other jewellery or ornaments anywhere on her body. Her skin is brown with large black freckles like peppercorns sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. Not the kind of beauty that takes your breath away, but the longer you look at her, the harder it is to look away.

  Theresa’s next deep breath is to strengthen her resolve, not to prop up the fiction of her mysterious disease. To fill her heart with courage, not her lungs with air. This is her last chance, she doesn’t dare blow it.

  She looks straight into Miguela Morales Lopez’s unusual green-brown eyes. ‘I have a very important letter that I have to get to Mercedes Perez Amat. Her father wrote it to her forty years ago, shortly before he died in Angola, but it was never sent.’

  Doctor Morales’s face remains expressionless while she listens to her, although Theresa imagines she sees her eyelids flicker when she hears Mercedes’s name. But she says nothing, just folds her arms across her chest and takes a step backwards, as if she wants to pre-emptively protect herself from whatever the fake patient on the bed is going to blurt out next.

  ‘My late husband fought in the same war. On the enemy’s side. I found the letter among his possessions after he died.’ Theresa’s voice becomes increasingly urgent as her fear grows that the doctor may simply turn on her heel and walk away. ‘I am sure it would mean an enormous amount to Mercedes if she could read it.’

  ‘You are a South African.’ It is not a question. Doctor Casanova will already have informed his colleague of her nationality. Instead, it sounds like an accusation.

  ‘I am.’ Theresa nods. ‘My husband never wanted to be in that war and he had to do things for which he could never forgive himself. If I could give this letter to Mercedes … it is the only way I could ever do penance … on my husband’s behalf … for his share in the war.’

  ‘So you are actually doing it for yourself, to feel better, not for Mercedes.’ Doctor Morales’s voice is as cold as the look in her speckled eyes.

  ‘No! It isn’t about me, it’s about Mercedes … and about my husband … The war damaged him for ever – he died in an asylum … I couldn’t help him while he was still alive … Now it seems to me I should at least try to help him after his death …’

  Now she really does feel a tremendous pressure on her chest, a burning wave rising inside her, a wall of self-protection that is about to burst.

  A flash of concern in Doctor Morales’s eyes is enough to make everything fall apart.

  The next moment tears are streaming down her cheeks and an almost animal sound comes from her throat. Theresa Marais, the woman who always cries soundlessly, sobs like an inconsolable child in front of a stranger, for the first time in her adult life. And Miguela Morales Lopez abandons her professional detachment for a few moments to wrap her sobbing patient in a maternal embrace.

  ‘Of course I am doing it for myself too,’ Theresa confesses between sobs against Doctor Morales’s shoulder. ‘For all of us.’

  Only once Doctor Morales takes a step backwards, Theresa remembers Ruben, who is sitting at the desk as calmly as always. It doesn’t look as if her outburst has embarrassed him in the least. On the contrary, he looks almost proud, as if they have accomplished something together.

  She blows her nose in the paper towel the doctor passes to her.

  ‘I hoped you could give me a contact address for Mercedes.’ Theresa cringes at the pleading tone in her voice, but she is desperate enough to go down on her knees before the doctor if it would help her reach Mercedes. ‘I have searched for her all over Cuba for over a week, and I only heard yesterday that she might be in South Africa. If she is still there, I’ll be able to deliver the letter to her in person. But if she has meanwhile returned to Cuba …’

  She pauses, because her voice is sounding dangerously shaky again. Emotions are still clogging her throat, but she absolutely must not start weeping again. In a few minutes Doctor Casanova will return to his consulting room. She has to finish what she came for; she can’t keep wasting the time of these two doctors and all the real patients in the waiting room.

  ‘Please.’ She is shamelessly begging, now. ‘I’m flying back to South Africa tomorrow.’

  ‘As far as I know, she is still down there,’ Doctor Morales says after a long silence. ‘It is two years since I last heard fr
om her. I do not dare contact her again. Her Cuban colleagues are all supposed to avoid her, both here and in South Africa. Although here they probably do not know what happened yet.’

  Theresa frowns confused. The woman pushes her hands deep into the pockets of her white coat, looks over her shoulder as if to make sure her colleague hasn’t returned yet.

  ‘You also don’t know?’ she asks Theresa.

  ‘I know nothing about her,’ Theresa murmurs.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the shock of Miguela Morales Lopez’s next words.

  ‘She betrayed her country and failed her fellow Cubans. That is how the Cuban authorities see it. She married a South African. She cannot return to Cuba.’

  ‘A South African?’ Theresa repeats, stupefied.

  ‘A South African?’ Ruben echoes. For the first time he sounds just as astonished as she is about the direction their search has taken. But he composes himself more quickly. ‘So that means she will still be there?’ He gets up from his chair to join them. He towers over Doctor Morales. The difference in height is so great that she has to bend her neck right back to look him in the eye, somewhat suspiciously. ‘Ruben Torres Márquez,’ he introduces himself. ‘I am Theresa Marais’s interpreter and guide. I have been helping her look for Mercedes all week.’

  ‘He’s my friend.’ Theresa’s voice is still weak from shock. ‘I trust him one hundred per cent. Without him I would’ve given up hope long ago.’

  Ruben shoots her a surprised glance, but she keeps her eyes on the doctor.

  ‘I do not know if she is still in South Africa,’ Doctor Morales says. ‘Perhaps she has searched for asylum in another country.’

  ‘Could she not get asylum in South Africa?’

  For the first time there’s the hint of a smile at the corners of the doctor’s mouth, a suggestion of humour in her eyes. ‘No, your government is now on the same side as ours, not so? The war is old news.’

  Theresa also tries to smile, but her mouth is numb from shock.

  ‘A South African man.’ She shakes her head, still dazed, then remembers the previous day’s misunderstanding and asks: ‘Or is it not a man?’

  Doctor Morales’s eyelids flicker again, but she manages to keep her voice neutral. ‘Of course it is a man. They are married.’

  ‘In South Africa a woman can also marry another woman,’ Theresa explains.

  ‘Not here,’ Doctor Morales says with a rueful little smile.

  ‘You don’t perhaps remember his surname? It could help me to continue the search …’

  ‘No. Sorry. I remember it was a strange surname I could not pronounce at all …’

  That’s not surprising, Theresa thinks. A quarter of a century after the dawn of democracy in her own country, she and most of her white friends still struggle to pronounce the names of their black colleagues and acquaintances correctly. The spirit is willing, but the tongue keeps tripping over itself.

  ‘But perhaps you have her last address?’ Ruben asks without much hope.

  ‘I have a copy of the last email she sent me. At home, among my personal documents.’

  It is an admission, Theresa realises, of how much that final message meant to her.

  ‘I can send you that email address,’ Doctor Morales says. ‘And the name of her husband. That is all I can do.’

  ‘That is already a great deal,’ Theresa assures her. ‘Would you possibly be able to do it tonight? So at least I won’t fly back from here with empty hands tomorrow?’

  ‘I am on duty tonight, so I cannot promise anything.’ The doctor suddenly seems in a rush to end the conversation. She takes a small notebook and a worn-out plastic pen from the top pocket of her white coat and presses them into Theresa’s hands. ‘Quickly write down your email address for me, then I will see what I can do.’

  She must have heard her colleague’s footsteps in the passage, because moments later Doctor Casanova appears in the doorway and looks at them expectantly.

  ‘You were right,’ Miguela Morales Lopez tells her colleague in Spanish. ‘It is a classic panic attack. Caused by stress. Or agotamiento.’ By now Theresa recognises the phrase ‘ataque de ansiedad’ because Ruben and Doctor Casanova have used it repeatedly. ‘Estrés’ must be stress. ‘Agotamiento’ she doesn’t understand. Doctor Morales glances at her and switches to English. ‘Fatigue. There is no medication we can prescribe – you just have to get enough rest.’

  ‘I feel better already.’ Theresa quickly hands the notebook with her email address back to the doctor. ‘And if I receive that email address tonight, I will feel better still.’

  ‘Safe journey.’ Doctor Morales nods, businesslike and professional, no trace of the motherliness with which she held the crying Theresa in her arms a few minutes ago. ‘My patients are waiting.’

  ‘Thank you very much!’ Theresa calls after the woman’s receding back.

  Doctor Morales doesn’t look around.

  ‘I have to say you are looking much better. Both of you,’ Doctor Casanova says once his colleague has left the room. And for the first time he allows himself to direct a conspiratorial grin at Ruben and Theresa.

  Outside the clinic, under the first shady tree they find, Theresa stops and looks at Ruben, dumbfounded. ‘Can you believe that Mercedes left her own country? The same “treason” of which she accused her cousin?’

  ‘People do impossible things for love,’ Ruben says.

  ‘But to give up everything, your country, your family, your friends, everything you believe in, because you love someone?’ Such a love she has never known. It makes her feel almost envious. ‘I am becoming more and more curious about this Mercedes.’

  ‘You will let me know when you find her?’

  ‘Of course. You have become part of the quest. I’m not going to forget about you just like that when I fly away from here tomorrow.’

  ‘I hope not.’ He runs his fingers through his beard, gazes over her head at the large green leaves in the tree. ‘Thank you for saying in there that I am your friend.’

  ‘But it is true, Ruben.’

  She would have liked to look into his eyes when she said that, but he has already started walking away.

  ‘Come!’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘It’s a long way back to Havana!’

  24. A DRONING COMPUTER

  This time she doesn’t even pretend to hesitate when Ruben says she can sleep in his son’s bedroom again. She would do anything rather than spend her final night in Cuba alone in a guesthouse. She is going to miss this gentle giant and his garrulous nephew and friends. Lazaro in the wheelchair and Miles who despite his name never learned to play the trumpet – or any other musical instrument. And since they cannot travel to other countries – and even if they were allowed they wouldn’t have enough money for it – she can’t invite them to visit her in Cape Town.

  That is why she also promptly agrees when Ruben suggests they should all meet up again on the Malecón tonight to listen to music, drink rum and smoke cigars, just live it up a little. For old times’ sake, he says.

  But first she asks him to turn on the ancient computer on the round dining-room table so she can check if there is a message from Doctor Morales. The lumbering machine rumbles like a truck and boots up so slowly she has to grit her teeth in order to keep from swearing. She remembers how placidly the patients waited at the clinic this morning, especially the blind old woman with the toothless grin, and tries to stifle her impatience.

  ‘I would go mad if I had to live here,’ she nevertheless mumbles.

  Ruben, who has walked over to the kitchenette to wash the dishes, looks up with his hands in the soapy water. She catches his eye and quickly looks back at the screen. He wasn’t supposed to hear her complain.

  ‘Patience is a virtue.’ He holds a glass up to the light to check that it is clean. ‘That is what my mother always said.’

  ‘My mother had a similar saying. “Good things come to those who wait.” But I never really believed it.’ She
watches him at the sink, amazed by how carefully those large hands handle every glass. ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘She is in her eighties and she shrinks a little more every year. Her head is only reaching my stomach by now. And yours?’

  ‘Dead fifteen years, already. My dad is still alive …’

  ‘But he no longer watches cowboy movies?’

  She is surprised that he has remembered her confessional rant about her senile father while they were riding in the Plymouth. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Also long dead.’

  Why did she wait until her last night in Cuba to ask him anything about his family?

  She wishes she could turn back the clock, start this whole week over again. There are so many things she would do differently.

  When at last she manages to open her email, there is nothing but the usual spam and a string of work-related messages from colleagues that she will ignore until she is back home.

  ‘Nothing from Viñales.’ She hopes her voice sounds less disheartened than she feels.

  ‘She did say she is working tonight,’ he reminds her.

  ‘She also said she wasn’t promising anything,’ she reminds him.

  He dries his hands on a dishcloth and walks towards her. ‘Come, let us go party on the Malecón. Perhaps she will send something by the time we get back.’

  He flashes his rare wide smile at her again. And it cheers her up, as it does every time she sees it.

  In the course of this final night beside the sea, while she drinks rum (from the bottle) with Lazaro and Miles and Oreste, and smokes a fat hand-rolled cigar (that even Ruben takes a few careful drags of), it dawns on her that they all believe that she and Ruben have slept together. That Ruben is simply too discreet – too much of a gentleman, her mother would have said – to brag about it. That he and she are both too proud and too embarrassed to give the rest of the company any sign of the physical intimacy between them.