by Giles Foden
“The owl of Minerva rises after dusk.”
“What?”
“Wisdom is hindsight. The Greeks thought owls were the servants of the goddess of wisdom.”
“They thought everything was like that, didn’t they?” she said, brushing some crumbs off her. “Everything full of magic, everything following a pattern.”
I thought, Lord knows why, that it was a hint. That this was the moment to lean over her, sending a tremor, a wake through the two of us under that hot sun, to put my hand lightly on her stomach, delicate as where the lake’s slate-like layers of green and silver met the sky. Instead, I kissed her tenderly on the arm, just below the sleeve of her summer dress.
She sat up with a start, her shoulder bashing into my nose, and scrambled to her feet.
“What are you up to?” she shouted. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
She brushed frantically at where I had kissed her, as if there was an insect there.
“I…”Istuttered.
“Take me back now,” she said. “Right now. I don’t know what you thought, but it obviously wasn’t what I was thinking. I’m married to the British Ambassador!”
She went towards the boat, getting her dress wet. Sheepishly, I started putting the picnic things back in the basket, before joining her. She was looking out over the water again, her hands clutching her sopping dress, her face pinched like a pair of pliers.
The outboard played up when I tried it, and for a dreadful second I thought we were going to be stranded on the island. Castaways indeed. But on the fifth pull the cord snickered back into the housing at the right tension, and a burst of blue smoke came out.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, after we’d gone a little way. “I got the wrong end of the stick.”
“There is no stick,” she said. “I don’t know what you were thinking of. I don’t know what idea you had of me, but I had a very different idea of you.”
We passed the journey back to the mainland in silence, me looking ahead for the landmark of the village, her staring coldly at the fishing rod lying in the bottom of the boat. I felt vaguely guilty, but not as uncomfortable as perhaps I ought to have been.
∗
Vagueness, a freedom and an evasion. Vagueness, it could be something to do with feathers, or waves. Trying to be exact as I write, the material resisting me, I think about what that word means on days like today – days when the wind moans in the loose pane of the bothy and the seagulls sound like children in the grey, leaping skies.
It is a winter wind, lost in April and venting its frustration on ships and trees. There’s a myth – up here in the north-west – that the island was whipped up in a storm, that it disappeared and landed elsewhere, settling, as one of the tourist brochures rather poetically has it, ‘like a butterfly on the churning waters’.
The poor rowan outside is back in leaf, but it is still bitterly cold. There is some honeysuckle growing round the porch which I am amazed has survived the storms. I myself have been keeping indoors, alternating coffee with whisky late into the nights, breaking off every now and then to watch television. They’ve just shown a programme in which a princess is executed in Saudi Arabia. I imagine Amin, with a big scimitar.
There was a phrase in the programme – “malignant destiny” – and I found myself thinking it applied to me, to my time in Uganda and what happened to me there. Then I knew it was the old thing again, that special vision of myself that took me there in the first place. My problem is that because the world doesn’t deliver what I seek, I don’t admit facts. It’s no way to be going on.
It is terrible the way you think time is going to change you. The way you think of some future time when things will be all right. And all that happens is that you drop back into the previous stream of time and it closes over your head.
The kettle whistles on the stove. Uncle Eamonn’s old-fashioned kettle. I should get an electric one, but I’ve grown attached to it.
22
It was about a week after the boat trip that Wasswa called me at the hospital. Choosing a reverse, vaccinatory way of trying to cheer myself up after the Marina disaster, I’d taken a long lunch to visit the Kasubi tombs. These were the long, dark grass huts in which the Kabakas, the Baganda kings, were laid to rest. An official called ‘Keeper of the King’s Umbilical Cord’ kept watch there. According to legend, the cord was the living king’s twin and any harm done to it would affect him physically. Like voodoo, or sympathetic medicine. But at that time, as I have explained, the king was dead, and his young son living in exile in England. The new king, I suppose, if you can be king without a land.
Wasswa was frantic when he got hold of me, having tried to reach me for the last two hours. “Come quick,” he said, “the President is sick. He is at Nakasero.”
It was stormy that day, too, and busy. Though it was about three o’clock, there were still patients huddled in little groups outside the hospital. Several of them tugged at my clothes as I ran to the van with my emergency bag in my hand.
As I drove, I passed four women walking along the tarmac, shawls pulled over their heads as a pointless protection from the heavy rain. Suddenly there was a screech as a VW Combi overtook me and skidded to a halt in front of the four women. I passed the Combi in turn, just in time to catch a glimpse of the sliding door opening at the side and one of the women being pulled in. It was like something from a Punch and Judy show, but very disturbing all the same. I didn’t see it properly, as it was raining so hard, and in trying to look in the mirror I nearly hit something – there were rocks and mud in the ruined road.
So I was pretty shaken up by the time I reached Nakasero. One of the guards led me over to the door of the Lodge, and I rushed up the steps to where Wasswa was waiting.
“He is inside, he has a pain in his stomach,” he said.
Wasswa led me upstairs, through a maze-like series of rooms. We finally came to the master bedroom, which contained a large four-poster bed. Through the pink gauze of the bed curtain, I could see a hunchback mound of sheets and quilts, suffused with a mildly genital light. I don’t know why I wrote that – did I just mean gentle? – but it seems right somehow, because that was the colour, and it was mild. And all around hung an animal smell: fox’s earth, badger’s sett – something, in any case, rank and bolt-holeish.
On one side of the bed was a vast wall of books: smart, red-hide bindings, and the letters in gold – Proceedings of the Law Society of Uganda, followed by a roman numeral. On the other side was an escritoire-type writing desk, and a white vanity unit with mirrored wardrobes to the left and right. Scattered on the floor were clothes, records (some out of their sleeves) and a couple of men’s magazines. A television was flickering grey and useless in a corner. Resting against the television cabinet was a baseball bat, with a leather catching-mitt lying on the carpet next to it. I noticed some pills scattered on the bedside table, next to a vial with the screw-cap off, and also several empty bottles of Simba.
“Your Excellency?” Wasswa said nervously.
The pile of sheets moved. Wasswa pulled back the gauze, and suddenly the linen flew off the bed, to reveal Amin lying on his front in a pair of khaki underpants, his torso twisted round and one hand emerging from under the pillow, holding a very big, very silver revolver.
“Oh, no, sir, sir, it is me, Wasswa,” shouted the Minister, jumping back into me.
“Eh?” Amin grunted.
Still pointing the gun, he turned over on to his back and squinted at us over the mound of his heaving belly. From the slow, gravid way the mattress was swaying about, and Amin with it, I could see that it was a water-bed.
“Go away,” he shouted. “I do not want you!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I understood…”
“Doctor – not you,” Amin said. “I mean my Minister. This is private thing, Minister.”
He put the gun into a cowboy-style holster hanging over the back of an antique chair next to the bed. Wasswa went o
ff, with a crestfallen look, and I began my examination. Finally, after several months in the post, I got to do my job.
“I am very ill. I have a pain here,” moaned Amin, touching his right side.
I leaned over him and gently palpated the area, just to the right of where the dark curls climbed to his high bellybutton. There was a slight swelling. He moaned again – it was a surprisingly high-pitched noise, not unlike that a cat gives when it looks up to a passing stranger and enquires about its supper.
“Tell me what you have been eating,” I said, quietly relishing the moment.
“Do not be stern with me, doctor. I have had matooke, two pieces of goat and also ice-cream one tub,” he said. “That is all.”
“What about those?” I said, pointing at the tablets on the bedside table.
He didn’t reply. I stared at the mass of flesh below me: ankles, shins, thighs – the hooded eye of his penis, which had fallen to one side like a weary fish, was peeping through the gap in his Y-fronts – abdomen, chest, shoulders, head. There was something hypnotic about the mauve, sausage-meat slices of Amin’s nipples. Nestling in their bed of black hair, they were almost all teat, no aureola. These stubby pistils had come smartly to attention as my hands had moved over them during the examination. It roused an intrigued disgust in me: never let it be said that doctors have an entirely neutral attitude to the bodies of their patients.
“Well?” I said, after a moment had passed.
He twisted his head to look. “Ah. That is just my medicine. It is aspirin.”
“Your Excellency,” I said. “You mustn’t take aspirin with beer. It is bad for the stomach.”
“It is my stomach that pains me, not drunkenness.”
I picked up a Simba bottle and waved it reprovingly in front of his face.
“This is why. Or maybe too much food.”
He sat up, resting his great weight on one of his elbows.
“No! It was paining me before.”
“That may be,” I said, “but these won’t have helped. Now you lie backdown.”
I reached over and palpated his abdomen again. There was a hard, but not totally resistant lump between the lower ribcage and the top of the pelvis. About the size of a hen’s egg. I could tell at once what was wrong.
“I think I know what your problem is. Now, I’m going to press quite hard. Try to lie still.”
I pressed on the lump, pushing it more downwards than inwards.
“It hurts, doctor,” said Amin, swaying on the bed. “I think maybe I need tablets.”
“That’s exactly what you don’t need,” I said, feeling secure in my command of the situation.
I tried again, but nothing happened.
“It’s no good, Your Excellency, I’m going to have to employ more drastic measures to alleviate you.”
“Anything is good that works,” he replied. “That I am feeling full of health is the thing. I do not worry how you will achieve this.”
“I need something long and hard,” I said. “It isn’t exactly standard procedure, but I’m going to have to burp you.”
“What is that?” Amin said. “What?”
“Like with babies,” I said.
“Babies?”
“Nevermind.”
My eyes wandered greedily round the room. I was intending to attempt an unorthodox combination of the Heimlich, anti-choking manoeuvre and the classic baby burp. But Amin’s abdomen was just too vast for me to do it without some kind of mechanical aid.
I looked about. Among the clothes strewn on the floor was a safari jacket with great wads of shilling notes bulging in the pockets, and a pair of brown boots. On one wall was a tall, badly painted portrait of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo patriot. I vaguely recalled that Amin had named one of his sons after him. I noticed a clip of high-velocity ammunition, and then I settled on the thing that would suit my purpose. Of course – the baseball bat. I walked over and picked it up.
“What you do?” he cried, scrabbling for the gun hanging on the chair.
“It’s all right,” I said, holding the bat, cradling it. “Keep calm. It is the pain that is making you nervous.”
He looked at me for a moment, and then put the gun down on the bed. It looked strange there, surrounded by the softness of the linen.
“Yes, it is true. You are right. You are right because you are a doctor.”
“I am going to use this,” I said, soothingly, “to expel the pain from you. It may hurt a little, but you will feel much better.”
“I will?”
“You will.”
He looked up at me, a trusting expression in his eyes.
“Now,” I said, pulling over the antique chair with the holster on it, “if you could get yourself on to this.”
I lifted off the heavy holster and helped him swing his bare legs over. The hair on them had been flattened by the sheets, making the tight curls into hieroglyphs on his skin. His feet were calloused by years of marching in hard army boots, but they looked monumental, too. As if they could be removed from those delicate ankles and marvelled at on a museum pedestal.
“What you do?” he said, impatiently. “No doctor has done this before. Not the Cubans, not the Russians, and not the Koreans either. What is this trick known to Scottish doctors only?”
“If you could get yourself on to the chair,” I said. “Then we can get it over.”
He moved his great bulk awkwardly, like someone getting from a car into a wheelchair, finally plumping his body down on the leather seat. The flesh of his thighs, straining against the khaki underpants, spilled out over the sides. He put his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
“What you do?” The repeated question came out distorted this time, the sound of it twisted by his splayed thumbs over his mouth.
“Nothing. Just sit still.”
I walked behind him with the baseball bat and passed it over his head.
“What strange rite is this that you perform?” Amin asked nervously, from below me.
“I am going to press now on your belly. It will be better soon.”
“You speak truth?”
“I speak truth. Lean back.”
Squatting behind him, with the lattice-work of the chairback tight against my face, I fumbled the wood of the bat under the overhang of his stomach, moving it about to get it into the right place. I stood up, hunched over him.
“Now, lean forward.”
He did as he was told – and then I pulled on the bat at both ends, gently at first and then applying more pressure. I could feel the rubbery pad of his ear next to mine. What auricular secrets passed between us in that moment, I wonder now, what primeval tympanic drum-beats?
“Doctor Nicholas!” Amin cried. “You hurt me!”
I pulled again, and then one more time.
“Stand up!” I ordered.
He staggered to his feet, the moist skin of his thighs making a ripping sound, like sticky tape, as it peeled away from the leather seat.
“What was all that?” he said, staring at me as if I were a madman. “Why do you press me?” He rubbed his swollen stomach.
“It’s not finished,” I said. “Trust me. Now you must touch your toes.”
He did it. President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, King of the Scots and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular touched his toes. And then let out a flatus of a resonance appropriate to his size.
It was not, I thought as I pranced away, as long as that released by the woman with the sigmoid problem in the hospital, but it had more attack. And the smell, the smell was much worse.
Amin looked at me, and picked up the baseball bat. He approached me and for a moment I thought he was going to clout me with it. After all, I had made him suffer an indignity. But then he burst out laughing, banging his leg with the bat. It was a deep laugh, deep and dark, the laugh of one who saw comedy in t
he dead light and Stardust of the galaxies. A universal laugh.
“You!” he said, gripping my arm – I could feel his thumb where it pressed against the bone. “I thought you had gone crazy. With this.”
He held up the bat, and then flung it on to the bed, where it clunked against the revolver.
“You are a very clever man. You saw my problem. Now we must celebrate my cure. We must go to a bar.”
“I would like to give you a proper medical,” I said, “and then I ought to get back to the hospital.”
“Oh, that is not a problem. Tell them I have given you permission. And you can do the medical another time. We will go to the Satellite and drink waragi. But first I must wash, and put on my smartest clothes.”
“But I must…”
“There is no but, there is no must. I am above those things in Uganda,” he said, striding across towards the bathroom.
I sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly lowered by the whole experience. I stared at the flecks of grey snow on the dud TV screen and thought about winter in Fossiemuir. How one December morning, at the age of six or seven, I’d wanted my father to take me sledging and he wouldn’t and I’d run in a tantrum out into the garden, and round and round the house like a whirling dervish – until suddenly the large figure of my mother was in front of me and I’d been gathered up into her voluminous arms. That afternoon, looking down from my bedroom window, I had watched the tracks I’d made disappear under fresh snow.
In the near silence of another bedroom, I became aware of the scrape of a razor from next door and, intermittently, the frying sound of running water. A moment later, Amin poked his head round the door, his face half-covered in shaving cream – a clown, a minstrel.
“Do not be sad, doctor. Are you tired? You must be tired as you have done good work.”
“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m fine.”
“You will be rewarded for your professional behaviour. But first, waragi!”
Waragi was Ugandan gin, and in the bar Amin called for five bottles of it. Everyone crowded round, fawning at him and readily taking up his offer of free drinks. I had only a few sips. The fiery stuff made me gag, and the music made my head spin. At one point Amin got up and played the accordion with the band. Then he danced, and made me dance too.