The class cut and stitched until the pigs’ feet bristled with sutures, like five-day stubble. Michael moved from desk to desk.
‘Take equal bites of tissue.’
‘Smooth hand movements.’
‘That’s a granny knot. Undo it, and make a reef knot with a double throw on the first tie, and bed that first throw down.’
‘Take your second bite closer to the skin edge. Nine cells out is enough.’
At the back of the room, windows opened onto a dusty lawn. A gardener was roping a bed of canna lilies on the far side with water from a hose, the stream slapping the broad leaves. Flying insects drifted in and out of the windows, taking a keener interest as the pig feet warmed up. One made straight for Michael as if on assignment.
‘Sir! There’s a hornet on your collar. Don’t move, sir.’
It made no difference. A sharp stab made his neck muscles twitch but he held himself composed and did not wince. He flicked the hornet off with his hand. The scorching afterburn made his eyes water. ‘It’s stung me!’
‘Ah – we’re so sorry,’ the class groaned, and Michael saw their pain. He had travelled to their country, at his own expense, was their honoured guest, and had been mugged in front of them – and they had been helpless to prevent it.
One student, face contorted with rage, got up and chased the hornet, waving his surgical blade. It disappeared out of the window and for a moment it seemed that the student was going to jump out after it, but instead he shouted something at the gardener. It sounded to Michael like an accusation.
He lifted his hands to calm the atmosphere. A searing pain travelled down to his fingertips. ‘Please – it’s nothing. We must carry on. We’re engaged in a most important pursuit which requires our total and undivided concentration. When you’re operating nothing must get in the way of your work or take up your thoughts – only how to perform better than the last time.’
The students quietened, looking at him as if overwhelmed anew at the privilege of studying at his feet. He felt ennobled and humbled, although he wondered how much worse the pain could become.
Back in his room at the McCrees’ house, Michael took paracetamol and recited memory verses to himself – a distraction technique. The more obscure, the better. ‘And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezontamar.’ It was not much help. The hornet had punctured his equanimity with its sting. The pain had reached a peak and he had a tightness in his throat, but he was more disturbed by the hornet’s abnormal behaviour than the pain. Pain was just physiological, attenuated or damped by the psychological – he could understand that – but the hornet’s actions seemed deliberate. It was as if the insect had exhibited human sentience, as if it had been going about its business, seen him through the window and thought, ‘Great bats! There’s a white man with a pink neck. I hate them and I have a sack full of venom to unload. What am I hovering about for?’
He smiled grimly to himself at his anthropomorphising. If this was what the human mind could ascribe to a winged insect, no wonder it readily ascribed sinister intent, with the slimmest of pretext, to peoples of a foreign culture. Wars started that way.
At least he had reacted in a controlled manner. Reaction to an emotion was so destructive, and set off further events – perhaps the gardener would go home and beat his wife out of frustration at being unjustly accused by the irate student. Michael’s own past proved that it was quite possible to generate ill consequences. Far better to apply logic, analyse, make rational decisions and then act to turn the event to benefit – after all, when attending crash victims in casualty, or stemming the blood loss from a ruptured abdominal aorta in theatre, his coolness under pressure had saved lives.
He could see himself coming to the conclusion that it was not only controlling behaviour that was possible, but that emotion itself was voluntary. It might be possible to turn it off. He wasn’t alone: he had read about a father of a young girl killed in an accident who chose not to feel grief. Her father was extremely sorry she was gone and would have given his life for her; but now she was dead what was the point of torturing himself with grief? Want was another powerful emotion, but the Holy Men of the East attained a state of not feeling want at all. They achieved a peace of mind that culminated in something they equated to paradise.
James knocked at the door and came in with a sock filled with ice. ‘The sock’s clean,’ he said.
Michael turned his head stiffly and attempted a lopsided smile. ‘Thank you. I’m sure it’ll settle soon.’ The woollen sock felt cold and wet on his shoulder, like a bedraggled guinea pig.
James said, ‘Would you like to go down to the lake for a walk this afternoon? It’s a pretty sight. I’m tied up in a conference committee meeting myself and supervising preparations for this evening but my driver will take you. He has an errand to run for me that way.’
Yesterday’s shooting incident came to mind. Michael hesitated; he had promised himself not to take any pointless risks.
‘Alternatively you could have a cup of coffee with Audrey on the veranda. She loves having visitors – perks her up no end.’ James’s loud and enthusiastic voice was giving Michael earache. James leant towards him. ‘Be careful, though – she’s a fine one for finding out every wee secret.’
‘If Audrey doesn’t mind I’ll stretch my legs by the lake.’
Michael walked along a dirt track that afforded irregular views of the lake between thick reed beds, stands of broken bulrushes and scraps of forest. James had told him that Lake Victoria was the size of Scotland. Looking out at its limpid expanse under a heavy haze of sky, he thought it little wonder that when the explorer, Speke, had seen it, he reported that he had found the source of the Nile. Such a vast inland sea had to be the giant mother-reservoir for the river that gave birth to Egypt.
Small waves slapped the shore but, further out, curiously isolated patches of choppy water formed shadowy agitations. A long way out a solitary canoe with a single oarsman made its lonely way across the water. Michael was surprised to see a cloud of black smoke hanging over the surface half a mile out until he realised he was looking at a dense swarm of flies. He did not find the lake as beautiful as he had hoped and put this down to altered perceptions induced by the hornet sting: his senses had become abnormally raw and nettlesome; every few steps he found himself ready to retch or shiver at some rank fish stench or fetid miasma coming off the lake that he could taste as much as smell. He felt mosquitoes landing on the hypersensitive skin of his face. Near the water’s edge a crow with untidy feathers plucked the eye out of a rotting fish. Startled at his approach, it scrabbled into the air with a deafening smacking of its wings.
For reasons he seemed unwilling to discuss, the driver had insisted he go another way, but he had not gone far along the driver’s suggested route when he saw that the track came to a dead end by the lake. He turned back and took the forbidden route, desperate to get a little exercise and walk off the pain.
Michael strode on, skirting the lake but sometimes losing sight of it in thicker vegetation until the track became indistinct. Needing to relieve himself, he took a small side path into the trees. He was midstream when the buzzing of flies made him turn his head. By the ashes of a small fire near his feet he saw a dead cockerel with its belly slit open. Hello, he thought, someone was having a barbecue here. Then he saw the rodent nailed to the tree whose roots he was soaking. The desiccated creature was stretched thin and wrapped in leather strapping, which held in place a straggly covering of feathers – black feathers with a suggestion of a bronze sheen. A pricking sensation travelled up his back. He said to himself forcibly, ‘A fetish. How fascinating.’
And then he noticed the flies had gone. The grove had become eerily still. His urinary stream sounded torrential in the silence. Michael redirected his stream into the ashes to try to quieten it but that only amplified the sound. It occurred to him that there was sure to
be some taboo against desecrating a spiritual site – particularly in this way. Then he noticed the entrails strung out on a flat stone at the edge of the clearing. There was a movement in the long grass nearby. He splashed his shoes.
All was still again.
‘Hello! Is anyone there?’ he said loudly, and added, ‘I’m British,’ as explanation for his blundering. His privates were still exposed and he shut the stream off without completely emptying, hastily zipping his flies.
‘Damn it!’ he exclaimed, and unzipped again to free the nipped skin.
The grasses shifted once more, an ominously wilful movement towards him. His heart thumped, his hands came up. He took a step back to use the tree as a shield. As he did so, he heard the sound of beating wings. Some large bird lost itself in the reeds by the water. Michael exhaled, relieved at first and then annoyed that he had started to panic. He turned to go and then turned around again to face the small clearing, backing away, watching for anything unusual until he got back to the main path.
He hurried along telling himself that there was no need for fear, but disturbed at the way a little hocus-pocus had taken power over him – its grip on his emotions. He wondered if humanity could ever break free from superstition and if so, how humanity would change. It must have some evolutionary explanation, but he could not imagine there would be much to lose.
He glanced at his watch. It was getting on. The driver would be wondering where he had got to, and he had to be back in time to give his lecture. When the path gave him a view of the lake again Michael was surprised to see that the canoe had disappeared. That was strange: it had not been ten minutes since he had last seen it making imperceptible progress across the vast expanse of water. Perhaps the oarsman had fired up an outboard motor. He looked again. Something dark lay in the agitated water. It bobbed in and out of view. Was that an arm raised, or the head and neck of a cormorant? Perhaps he was imagining things – his over-sensitive state playing tricks with his eyes. Scanning the lake again, he saw nothing. If the oarsman was in the water he was miles out. There would be next to no chance of rescue. He had read somewhere that few Africans, even lake dwellers, could swim. Time was passing; he had done enough rescuing in the last twenty-four hours, and it had not been appreciated. Worse, he had broken his vow to avoid putting himself in potentially unpredictable situations by taking off on his own down a forbidden track. James had reminded him of the operatic dimensions of life here. He must not get caught up in it. The dense grasses and thick groves pressed in behind him. He convinced himself he had seen a cormorant and walked on.
Putting a hand in his pocket to find a handkerchief to wipe his brow, Michael felt the feather he had picked off the dead man’s leg in the aeroplane. An intense irritation welled, turning to anger. His action in keeping the feather, far from being a snub to superstition, had given credence to it – as if he acknowledged its power and was fighting it. The sane action would have been to ignore the thing. He scooped it out of his pocket and let it drop, but then had to flick it off his trouser leg when it attached itself as it fell, as if by static.
When he got back to the road the driver was waiting, pacing a small distance to and from the car, as if tethered.
‘That is a bad place, down there,’ the driver said.
‘I didn’t find it so. It was . . . anthropologically interesting,’ Michael said.
‘There’s some water in the bottle. Have a drink, Dr Lacey. You’ll feel better. Remember that Jesus is stronger.’
He was thankful of the water, as he felt sweaty, but who wouldn’t with the heat and the sting.
‘I don’t believe in any of that.’
‘That is a shame, sir. You’ll die sad.’
‘Why’s that? Superstition causes fear.’
The driver looked at him as if he felt for him. ‘Sir, there are good spirits and bad spirits. If we make peace with the good spirits we can die happy. If we bow to the bad spirits we die fearful. If we don’t know any spirits we die sad.’
‘Why do we die sad?’ Michael asked, a little patronisingly as if trying to humour a little child’s misconceptions.
The driver took his empty water bottle and put it on the back seat. ‘Maybe, sir, it’s because we’re lonely.’
‘Well, I hope I’ve found a good companion – a flesh and blood one – by then.’
It seemed a long way back to the McCrees’ house, and he was racked by uncertainty concerning the oarsman: whether he should have raised the alarm. Logic dictated not, emotion pleaded otherwise. He supposed his decision was in keeping with the naval submarine commander that Naomi saw in him.
Later, when he was being driven to the university for his lecture, Michael thought he could still smell the lake on his hands: fish guts and rotting weeds. It was only when he took the lectern and saw the crowded audience that he put the memory of the lake behind him. To illustrate his lecture – Latest Innovations in Bowel Anastomosis, Illustrated with Slides – he had brought from London an example of the latest staple gun for joining the colon. No more tedious double-layer stitching in the deep and miry pit of the pelvis. The staple gun was passed around the audience, its smooth white plastic form stroked by most and its trigger squeezed by all.
‘When you fire a gun you don’t pull the trigger weakly, in two minds, hoping you will only half kill your attacker. So it is with the staple gun. Pull the trigger firmly and completely, otherwise you will repeat the error of my registrar who spent an hour removing three dozen half-closed staples from the wall of the sigmoid colon last month.’
The Minister of Health, himself a doctor and clearly pleased to encourage links with the outside world after years of isolation in the terror, led the audience in a standing ovation for the informative and captivating lecture. Michael looked out and recognised many of the students from the morning’s workshop. Afterwards a good proportion of his audience stayed to ask questions. He started to relax again. His neck felt better and he was touched by the warmth of the students; he wanted to do something for them that would extend beyond these three days. Perhaps he would set up a trust fund to offer scholarships to James’s most gifted students, so they could come over for extra training in London. He made a mental note to speak to James about it later. He hoped that his motive was not merely an attempt to convince himself that he was not a callous man – someone who might have left an oarsman drowning without raising the alarm.
Three
The conference dinner that evening was held at the McCrees’ home. Guests spilled off the wide veranda at the back of the house onto the candle-ringed lawn. Audrey McCree had emerged coiffured (her hair out of its bun and flowing in a lustrous black tide down her back) and perfumed. She wore a pepper-red gypsy blouse and a loose green skirt with a frilly hem. Michael had to look twice to confirm that it was her. The sodden languor of yesterday had vanished and another Audrey had burst forth: voluptuous, glossy, in bloom. Michael noticed how her eyes sparkled, although when she glanced across at him he found their dusky shine a touch wild for his taste. In a previous age he could imagine her being denounced as a witch. She busied herself around the tables arranging napkins and instructing the cooks. It was probable that an event like this had not occurred since before the years of terror. Maybe things were going to improve for the McCrees now that they were able to receive visitors again: life might become a little more predictable, and ordinary.
James took Michael by the arm, his sandy complexion flushed from rushing about, and guided him through the reception room towards the garden doors. He leant towards him and said, ‘Between you and me, my dear fellow, we have a zoo of eccentrics with us this evening. Everyone here, to a man, would be considered oddball in a stable institution. But here they’re institutions in themselves.’
They stopped on the veranda where a faint smell of grass cuttings, wood-smoke and gum from bleeding branches told of a day of frantic preparation in the garden beyond. James discreetly pointed out the guests. ‘That’s John Grey. He goes around the count
ry weighing human excrement. Ask him why yourself, although I can tell you that heavy is good. He says our western stools are too light – not enough roughage in our diets. Wouldn’t need any bowel surgeons if we took his advice. Talking to him is Peter Simms – bush doctor from Tanzania. Done thousands of operations using fishing line as a suture, and doubtless his teeth as scissors, to save money. I exaggerate only a little.’
James indicated a mountain of a man parked on the lawn, whose hand almost completely enveloped a bottle of beer. ‘That’s Leo Karwemera – specialises in the delicate repair of vesico-vaginal fistulas. It’s a terrible problem in some districts because of late presentation of obstructed childbirth. Does more repairs in a week than all the surgeons in Europe do in five years. By the door over there is Crawford Clarke – flown in from Kenya – treats the president. That makes him Surgeon for Life. Gupta, by the drinks, chatting up my wife, is an orthopaedic surgeon – gets polio victims walking again with clever tendon transfers. Next to him is Stanley Katura. With the thick glasses. He’s a mission doctor out near the Rwenzori Mountains – the legendary Mountains of the Moon in the Albertine Rift Valley. Serious chap. Frighteningly dedicated.’
The lights on the veranda faltered and then steadied again.
‘Excuse me a moment. I’m going to check we’ve enough fuel in the generator. There’s a power cut tonight. Frequent occurrence.’
Michael walked out onto the lawn, away from the house, past the citronella-scented candle flares to where darkness lapped the edge of the grass. He listened to the raspings, clicks and susurrus rustlings of the African night and sensed furtive movements, momentary flarings of strong winged insects, sudden and unexpected small deaths of small creatures in the darkness beyond. He looked down into the valley. Apart from the orange glare of a few fires there were no clues to the city’s existence in the power cut. He thought he heard a gunshot. ‘Popcorn’ they called it. No wonder the guests had needed a police escort from their hotels.
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