by Thom Jones
“It doesn’t take Jane Goodall to see that,” said Hartman. He had flown the Americans in that morning, and had got a head start on the Canadian Mist that afternoon. To Koestler’s eye, the pilot appeared to be on the road to a mean, brooding drunk, rather than the more typical Hartman drunk—that of merriment, cricket talk, vaudeville routines, and bawdy songs. Koestler had recently run some blood work on his friend and knew that Hartman’s liver was getting a little funny, but he could only bring himself to give Hartman a perfunctory warning and a bottle of B vitamins, since Koestler liked to match Hartman drink for drink when he made his twice-weekly drops at the mission and, as Koestler told Hartman, chastising him would seem like a ridiculous instance of the pot calling the kettle black. Like himself, Hartman was an old hand in Africa, and while he was not a Kiwi, he was close, having been raised in Launceston, Tasmania. Those pretentious types from mainland Australia looked down their noses on Taz, as they did on New Zealand—the poor sisters.
While Hartman had the typical apple cheeks and large ears that made Tasmanians look almost inbred, he liked to claim that he was Welsh. “May the Welsh rule the world!” he often said, but at other times he admitted that a year in Wales, with forays into much detested England, had been the most boring of his life. Whenever the subject came up, whether he was drunk or sober, the English were “Those bloody Pommy bastards!”
From the moment Babbitt had refused the alcohol mash, the doctor had been in a good mood, and now he began to pontificate. “As a rule, a baboon will only get drunk once, a monkey every day. Incredible animals, really, are baboons. Very smart. Did you know they can see in color? Actually, their visual powers are astounding.”
“What happened to its neck?” the young doctor from Hammond, Indiana, asked. “It keeps rubbing its neck.”
“It’s a long story,” Koestler replied. His cheerful countenance turned sour for a moment. “George Babbitt is a long-term experiment. He’s come from the heart of darkness to the sunshine of Main Street. My goal is to turn him into a full Cleveland.”
“What’s a full Cleveland?” Indiana asked.
“A full Cleveland is a polyester leisure suit, white-on-white tie, white belt, white patent-leather shoes, razor burn on all three chins, and membership in the Rotary Club and the Episcopal church.”
“You forgot the quadruple bypass,” the other newbie, who was from Chicago, said.
“Well, he’s got a running start there,” said Koestler.
The baboon had stationed himself between Hartman and Koestler. Hartman held the stump of a wet cigar in his hand and seemed poised to relight it. Babbitt was intent on his every move.
“Georgie smokes a half a pack of cigarettes a day,” Hartman said.
“Used to smoke—”
“Still does,” Hartman said. “Whatever he can mooch from the Africans.”
“Well, I’ll soon put an end to that,” said Koestler. “He’s getting fat and short-winded. His cholesterol is up there. How long has he been smoking this time, the bloody bugger? He’ll end up with emphysema, too. And how come I didn’t know about this? I used to know everything that went on around here! I’ve got to cut back on the juice.”
“Dain bramage,” said Hartman.
“It’s not funny,” Koestler said.
“What’s the normal cholesterol for a baboon?” Indiana asked. His cherubic face made him seem impossibly young.
“Forty to sixty or thereabouts,” Koestler replied. “I couldn’t even get a reading on his triglycerides—his blood congeals like cocoa butter.”
Indiana began to giggle. “Jeez, I still can’t believe that I’m in…Africa.”
“Tomorrow you will believe,” said Koestler. “You will voice regrets.”
“I mean, I know I’m in Africa. I knew that when Mr. Hartman landed that DC-3. Talk about a postage-stamp runway—and those soldiers! Are those guns loaded?”
“That runway is a piece of cake,” Hartman said. “More than adequate. And the guns are loaded. The political situation is very uptight these days. Not that we can’t handle that; it’s just that it’s getting impossible to make a decent wage. I’ve got a mind to sell the plane and head back to Oz. I’m getting too old for this caca.”
“You won’t last a week in Australia and you know it,” Koestler said. “All the oppression of civilization. Sydney’s getting almost as bad as Los Angeles. Every other bloody car is a Rolls or Jaguar. Not for you, my friend. You’ll have to put on a fucking necktie to take in the morning paper.”
“Darwin’s not so bad,” Hartman said, punching at a large black fly. “In Darwin an eccentric can thrive. Colorful characters. Crocodile Dundee and that sort of thing. I can make milk runs to New Guinea, do something—”
Suddenly Hartman seemed drunk, and he glowered at Indiana. “If you think this runway was crude, sonny boy, you’ve got a fuckin’ long way to go.” He sailed the half-empty bowl of banana mash into the wisteria bushes, and a few of the monkeys went after it, scrapping over the paste.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly O’Hare International,” Indiana said. “And how come the Africans sandbagged the tires?”
“To stop the hyenas from eating them,” Koestler said. “It’s hell to procure tires in these parts.”
“Eating tires?” Indiana said. “You’re shitting me!”
“The object of our little get-together is to ease you into your new reality,” Koestler said. “If you get hit with everything too fast, it can overwhelm. Tomorrow will be soon enough. The leper colony—a rude awakening.”
“What kind of scene is that?” the young doctor from Chicago asked. He was a dark man, with a hawk nose and a thick head of hair as black and shiny as anthracite; he was short, muscular, and had copious body hair. Koestler took him to be about thirty.
“It’s a bit smelly. Poor buggers. Pretty much Old Testament, if you know what I mean. Your leper is still the ultimate pariah. In the beginning, there’s ‘gloves and stockings’ anesthesia, and in the end, if we can’t interrupt the course of the disease, a great deal of pain. They only believe in needles—they love needles. So use disposables and destroy them. That’s the first rule. The second rule is this—if you have a patient who requires one unit of blood, do not give it to him. If he requires two units of blood, do not give it to him. If he requires three units of blood, you will have to give it to him, but remember that that blood will most likely be contaminated with HIV, hepatitis B, and God knows what all, despite the assurances from above.”
“AIDS—Slim,” Hartman said evenly. “The only safe sex is no sex. Do not even accept a hand job.”
“I’ve heard that they take great offense if you don’t eat with them,” Indiana said. “I’ve heard they’ll put the evil eye on you if you don’t eat with them.”
“It’s true,” Koestler said.
“So you eat with them?”
“Hell no! I don’t get involved with them on a personal level. You cannot let your feelings get in your way. If you do, you will be useless. Move. Triage. Speed is the rule. You’ll see the nurses doing things that your trauma docs can’t handle back in the States. Hell, you’ll see aides doing some very complicated work. It comes down to medical managing. The numbers defeat you.”
Johnson came out to the gazebo bearing a tray of chilled coconut puddings. He set a dish next to each of the men and then began to light the Coleman lanterns and mosquito coils as the sun did its orange flare and fast fade into the horizon. As it disappeared, Koestler said, “Thank God. Gadzooks! Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, huh, boys? Especially when you’re smack-dab on the equator.”
The new men said nothing but watched as, one by one, Johnson picked up the last of the drunken rhesus monkeys by their tails and flung them as far as he could before padding back to the kitchen.
Indiana looked out at the monkeys staggering in circles. “They don’t know what to do—come back for more or go into the jungle.”
“Those that make for the bush the leopard ge
ts. It’s one way to eradicate the bastards,” said Koestler darkly.
“I see—method behind the madness,” Chicago said.
“Johnson’s been using his skin bleach again,” Hartman observed. “He’s gone from redbone to high yellow in a week. Wearing shoes, yet. The Eagle Flies on Friday Skin Pomade for some Sat’day-night fun.”
“It’s not only Saturdays,” Koestler said. “He goes through two dozen condoms a week. His hut is littered with the wrappers. He’s insatiable.”
“Well, at least you got that part through to him. Use a rubber.”
“Johnson is no dummy, Jules. He knows the score, believe me. He’s very germ conscious. That’s one thing. A compulsive handwasher. I trust him with my food absolutely.”
As Indiana spooned down the pudding, he looked nervously at Hartman, who was a bulky man and was glowering at him. “What’s this ‘redbone, high yellow’ stuff?” Indiana said.
Hartman said nothing and continued to stare at the young doctor. Indiana looked at the other men and then laughed, “Hey! What’s with this guy?”
Chicago picked up his pudding and began to eat. “And now for something completely different,” he said. “The evil eye.”
Hartman’s face brightened. He relaxed his shoulders and laughed softly. “I remember a doctor—an American, tropical medic—didn’t believe in the superstitions, and in the course of things he humiliated a traditional doctor. The old boy put a curse on this hotshot, and it wasn’t more than a week before the American stepped on a snake. I had to fly him to Jo’burg, since he was really messed up, was this chap. A year, fourteen months later he’s back, forty pounds lighter, and a rabid animal bites him on the second day in. It took us three weeks to get a rabies vaccine, and it came from a dubious source. He took the full treatment, but came down with the disease anyhow. Bitten on the face. Travels to the brain faster. Funny thing about rabies—makes a bloke restless. Nothing to do for it, either. Dr. Koestler, Johnson and I had to lock him up in one of those chain-link-fenced compartments in the warehouse.”
“Excessive scanning,” Koestler said. “Hypervigilance. You could see the whites of his eyes—”
“From top to bottom,” Hartman said. “Very paranoid, drinking in every sight and sound.”
“What made it worse,” Koestler said, “was the fact that he knew his prognosis.”
“Yeahrr,” said Hartman. “The paranoiac isn’t necessarily wrong about things—he just sees too much. Take your hare, for instance. Your hare is a very paranoid animal. Your hare has basically been placed on the planet as food. He doesn’t have a life. When you are an instant meal, you are always on the lookout. So, paranoid. Well, our friend was a lion, which all doctors are, present company included—they’re tin gods from Day One—and, while it may work in America, it doesn’t cut any ice down here; he humiliated this old witch doctor, so there wasn’t any way out. No need to go around asking for trouble in this life, is there? The hare sees too much, the lion not enough—and there’s the difference between happiness and hell, provided you are a real and true lion, not some bloody fool who is misinformed.”
Hartman had the fleshy, broken nose of a pug, and as he spoke he kept brushing at it with his thumb. He sneezed three times in rapid succession.
“The curious thing,” Koestler said, “is that the stupid bleeder died professing belief in science. He had a little slate and a piece of chalk, and when we finally went in to remove the body, I read his last words: Amor fati!’ ‘Love your fate.’ A stubborn bloody fool.”
“Wow,” Indiana said. “What did you do for the guy? Did he just die?”
“Of course he died. ‘Slathered like a mad dog’ is no mere cliché, let me tell you. I was inexperienced back then and had to play it by ear. All you had to do was say the word ‘water’ and he had esophageal spasms. You try to anticipate the symptoms and treat them, but we just aren’t equipped here. The brain swells, you see, and there’s no place for it to go.”
Koestler accidentally bumped his pudding onto the floor with his elbow, and Babbitt quickly stepped forward and scooped it up in neat little handfuls.
Indiana picked up his dessert and tasted another spoonful. “This is good.”
“Good for a case of the shits. Did you boys bring in any paregoric?”
“Lomotil,” Chicago said. “Easier to—”
“Transport,” Hartman said, picking up a greasy deck of cards and dealing them out for bridge.
“Mix it with Dilaudid and it will definitely cure diarrhea,” Koestler said.
“You got some cholera in these parts?” Chicago said. He was beginning to sound like an old hand already.
“No,” Koestler said vacantly. “Just the routine shits.” He picked up his cards and fanned through them.
As Indiana finished his pudding, Johnson padded back out to the gazebo with a bowl of ice, another quart of Canadian Mist, and four cans of Coke Classic.
“I had this patient call me up at three in the morning,” Indiana said.
“Called the doctor, woke him up,” Chicago recited.
Indiana said, “Hypochondriac. Right. She’s got lower G.I. pain. Diarrhea. Gas. The thing is—she’s switched from Jell-O pudding to Royal pudding.”
“Doctor, what can I take?” Chicago sang.
“I said, ‘Delilah, remember how you—Delilah, I don’t think you have a ruptured appendix. Delilah! Remember when you switched from RC Cola to Pepsi?’ ”
“Doctor—to relieve this bellyache,” Chicago sang.
“I said, ‘Put the lime in the coconut. Yeah, it does sound kind of nutty. That’s good. Now, haven’t you got a lime? You’ve got lime juice. One of those little green plastic lime things? Okay, that’s good, now listen closely—You put de lime in de coconut an’ shake it all up; put de lime in de coconut and you drink it all down. Trust me, Delilah, an’ call me in de morning.’ ”
“And she never called back,” Hartman said soberly. “Very clever.”
“Let me get this straight,” Koestler said. “You put de lime in de coconut?”
“Yeahrrr,” said Hartman. “Jolly good.”
“It’s not bad, but that’s his only routine,” Chicago said. “I’ve spent seventy-two hours with the man, and that’s it. That’s his one trick. Plus, he’s a fuckin’ Cubs fan.”
“Hey,” Indiana said. “Long live Ernie Banks! Speaking of weird, we brought in three cases of sardines,” Indiana said. “What’s with all the sardines?”
“They are an essential out in the bush,” Koestler said, removing a can of King Oscar sardines from his pocket and shucking the red cellophane wrapping. “Look at that, a peel-back can. No more bloody key. It’s about time.”
Hartman said, “They’ve only been canning sardines for ninety years.”
Koestler jerked the lid back and helped himself to a half-dozen fish, his fingers dripping with oil. “Why, Jules, don’t take personal offense. I’m sure His Majesty has enough on his mind without worrying about zip-open cans.” Koestler offered the tin around, and when everyone refused, he gave the rest of the fish to Babbitt. “King Oscar sardines are worth more than Marlboro cigarettes in Africa,” he declared.
“King Oscar, the nonpareil sardine,” Chicago said.
Indiana filled his bourbon glass with Coke, Canadian Mist, and a handful of ice cubes, which melted almost instantly.
Hartman fixed his hard stare on young Indiana. “What exactly brought you to Africa, sonny boy?”
“I came to serve humanity, and already I’m filled with a sense of the inexplicable. I can’t believe I’m in Africa. And fuck you very much.”
“Speak up. You sound like a bloody poof—‘I came to serve humanity,’ ” Hartman said.
“And you sound like a major asshole. Why don’t you try a little anger-management training?”
“Bloody poof, I knew it. Nancy girl!”
“Fuck!” Indiana said. “You’re drunk. I’m not even talking to you.”
“Won’t last a week.
Mark my words,” Hartman said.
“Tomorrow you will believe,” Koestler said. “The leper colony.”
“Separates the men from the boys,” said Hartman.
“Way down deep in the jungle,” said Chicago, “we have the leper colony. We have Hansen’s disease. That which we call leprosy by any other name would smell just as sweet: indeterminate leprosy, tuberculoid leprosy, lepromatous leprosy, dimorphous leprosy. ‘What’s in a name?’ ”
To Koestler’s astonishment, Chicago pulled out a fat joint and torched it up. He took a long drag and passed it to the other American.
“I did a rotation at the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, when I was in the Navy,” Chicago said. “I learned how to understand the prevailing mentality of the patient suffering from Hansen’s disease.”
“Put yourself in their ‘prosthetic’ shoes, did you?” Hartman said.
“The kid’s right,” Chicago said. “You’re a hostile person. Shut up and listen. I mean, these patients are in denial until a white coat gives it to them straight. Zombie denial, man. You should see the look on their face. It’s not a look like you’ve got cancer, which is a good one, instant shock. The you’ve-got-Hansen’s look is more like, ‘I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth—’ ”
“I know that look,” Koestler said. “I see it every morning whilst I shave. Jules, the man knows Shakespeare.”
“I suppose a leper colony in Africa is a hut made out of buffalo shit—”
“In your leper colony over there in the States,” Hartman said, “are all the lepers bloody nigs?”
“You really are a racist, aren’t you?” Indiana said.
Koestler attempted to deflect this inquiry. “I believe the current phraseology is ‘African-American,’ Jules, or, if you must, ‘black.’ ”
“Some are black. Some are white. Some are Hispanic,” Chicago said. “That word of yours is not in my vocabulary, and if you say it again—”
“You’ll what?”
“Jules, please,” said Koestler. “Don’t be bloody uncouth.”