Night Calypso

by Lawrence Scott

  ‘Do you remember that day on the wards when… no, it was in the book-binding shop. That young Indian fella. I’ve forgotten his name for the moment. You know?’

  ‘Raj. Raj Jaikaransingh.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Raj.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? His hand. He had beautiful hands with long slim fingers, completely intact. They were soft and supple, not like fingers stiff with arthritis. But they were useless. He was trying to pull that string through the binding on the book. The thumb and four fingers of one hand were curved in, and pressing against each other, the classic claw hand.’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’ Thérèse was involved.

  ‘But do you remember what our diagnosis was then?’

  ‘Paralysis.’

  ‘Yes, paralysis from nerve damage.’

  ‘I wrote down what you said, because it tallied with what I remember my professor saying in Tulle when I was training. That’s what this disease does, paralysis, plus complete anaesthesia. I can hear Professor Rothmann at this moment.’

  ‘Yes, Raj couldn’t feel the string, to pull it through the loop in the binding.’

  ‘And then you asked him to shake your hand, and to press hard. You thought it might not have any strength. I remember you yelping, shocked, when he kept on squeezing.’

  ‘Absolutely. I had to cry out, stop. That’s exactly when I realised, as my hand lay between his bent thumb and fingers.’

  ‘Raj was so surprised. He didn’t understand you, because you asked him to squeeze and then you were telling him to stop.’ Thérèse laughed.

  ‘He had no idea how much he was hurting me. But it sent another kind of jolt right through me, that shock. I realised as I’ve gone over it many times in my mind since, that though his hand was useless, nevertheless, concealed there, in that apparent uselessness, were powerful muscles. This wasn’t paralysis.’

  ‘No?’ Thérèse and Vincent had stopped at the foot of the stairs to the adult ward. They were transfixed by their debate. This was when everything else collapsed: the war far away, the absence of her father’s letters, his concern for his brother Bernard, the war that was building here in the gulf, the yellow star. Above all, those kisses, and holding hands in the darkness, in the white light of the infirmary, out in the glare of Salt Pond. Those kisses on her cracked lips faded in the excitement of their work. Their work held them close.

  At that moment, there was the drone of a surveillance plane disappearing behind Cabresse Point. They both looked up, and followed the direction of the flight with their eyes.

  ‘The mystery was on Raj’s face,’ Vincent continued.

  ‘Mystery?’

  ‘Well, a question. Why were we treating this whole thing as if we were dermatologists? When what was staring us in the face, was an orthopaedic question. Look at the deformities we’ve got before us each day. Why had not medicine, my training, your training, not asked the orthopaedic question about leprosy?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Thérèse was a student again.

  ‘There are probably many reasons. But a known one for sure is that leprosy is not looked at like other diseases. We, in our profession, have put it continually in another category. At the worse end is the conviction that it is a curse from God. Many of our patients come with that view, pursued by the fear of their villages, terrified by priests, pandits, imans and obeah women.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, I do. When I spoke to my professor in London, he commented, when I told him that I wanted to work at this leprosarium, that only mad people, missionaries and priests worked in leprosariums. They never had good physicians and never a specialist in orthopaedics. I’ve had my hunch for a while that dermatology was not the only place where our answer lay.’

  ‘So, is that what I am? A mad missionary?’

  ‘Thérèse. You know…’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘You’ve got to admit. Dr Escalier! What did he do, but inject with Chaulmoogra Oil, while the nuns prayed, and the government banished the buggers to this island.’ He smiled, checking his language. ‘What’s been going on here is an eternity of bandaging. You know exactly what I mean. A system in various degrees of neglect, by state and church. No one is thinking about doing the research. Not now, while we fight this confounded war. We do charity. But it isn’t charity. Because, in the end, we affect very little.’

  ‘I think you’re unfair.’ They were raising their voices at each other. A group of children were standing around them staring. ‘I think you should credit the sisters with more. I know your differences. I know you. You’re like my father. You’re a Communist. That’s what I think you are. You’re a Communist. A Bolshevik. Quite soon you’ll have us singing the Internationale.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Thérèse. What’s this about? What’s Communism got to do with it?’

  ‘It has everything to to do with it. You think we don’t know what Singh, Jonah and you are up to here. You mentioned Karl Marx the other day.’

  ‘Thérèse, can you lower your voice! Whose voice are you speaking with, your superior’s? Is that what you think of me? I thought we were the same.’ He was almost touching her, in the full glare of the yard.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she whispered sharply. The stooping children were giggling. ‘Run along. The bell has gone. Recess is over.’

  ‘Thérèse, listen to me. I want to tell you about my research.’

  They mounted the stairs to the verandah outside the women’s ward. The rain came down while the sun was still shining. ‘God and the devil fighting. That’s what the children say.’ Thérèse was retreating.

  ‘Yes, thinking of children. I need feathers and cocoyea sticks.’ From the verandah, Vincent noticed Theo on his own, gazing out onto the bay from outside the pharmacy. Then he saw Christiana leaving the pharmacy. Singh welcomed Theo back in, as he waved to the young girl.

  ‘Science students!’ Vincent said cynically.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Nothing. Theo. Singh.’

  ‘Feathers and cocoyea sticks?’ Thérèse interrupted. ‘And come to think of it, you protest too much. I heard my mother tell my father that one day.’ Then Thérèse started crying all of sudden. ‘Sorbonne. They were the brightest pair that year. The Ecole Normale, Montmartre, the little squares with the artists and the musicians, the bars, the cafés. Poor Papa. I still haven’t heard anything. No letters. There’ll be no letters. Paris. They both loved Paris. The Seine, Notre Dame, and the little street La Rue du Chat qui Pêche on the left bank, near where they had a room. The narrowest street in Paris!’

  ‘La Rue du Chat qui Pêche?’

  ‘Oui. What is it?’

  ‘Non, non.’

  ‘No, tell me. What is it?’ They were now both laughing at the name of the street and the coincidence. Vincent blushed. ‘Non. Ah, a girl I once knew. She told me about that street, as we walked by the river. Her father had lived near there once.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Simone.’

  ‘You remember her name?’

  ‘Yes.’ He remembered watching her closing the shutters and the room growing dark while the afternoon sunlight leaked through the jalousies, like the light in Pizzaro. Light from here and light from his island, he had thought then. He remembered her naked back, the nape of her neck, and the length of her legs. Her hands closed over his eyes, when she returned to the bed and kissed him all over, asking him if it was his first time. He had gone in his mind, from that room above the street in Paris, to the turret room at Versailles, where he had first lain with Odetta, and then to the cocoa house with the leaking light through the cracks above himself and Odetta under the rolling roof. He smiled, pretending that it was his first time, so Simone could have her fantasy and teach him to make love.

  ‘It’s a pretty name, Simone. I had a school friend called Simone.’

  ‘Yes. And you
?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A boy friend?’

  Thérèse looked up surprised, caught unawares by the question. ‘Yes. Oui, of course, Marcel. He was the brother of my best friend Sophie-Marie.’ She had not thought of him for ages. Questioned, she built his identity. ‘He loved to hunt, with a sling-shot when he was younger and then with a rifle. He once gave me a rabbit’s paw for good luck.’

  Vincent did not want to elaborate on Simone. He did not want to confess to Thérèse that this was an afternoon of love, in Paris, and that he had paid for it with the few francs he had had as a student, and could not really afford. But, to be in Paris and not be in love!

  How could he tell Thérèse about all of that now? What was he doing? Would he tell her about Odetta…

  What had they done last night, and before that at Salt Pond? And she, taking his hand more than a year ago, so impulsively? He could be sacked from his post and made a disgrace in the local press. He could hear the gossip of the chattering family on the verandahs of Versailles and the other estates.

  When they entered the ward, everyone wanted to talk to the doctor. ‘Okay, all of you’ll have my attention. After the bandaging, I want all nurses to collect on the verandah.’ Turning to Thérèse, ‘Feathers and cocoyea sticks. Get the children to help you,’ Vincent smiled. He loved to have her at his side.

  ‘Let’s have the nurses in rows.’ Thérèse was organising. Each nurse brought a chair from the ward and placed it at intervals along the long verandah, outside the women’s ward, as Thérèse instructed them.

  There were a dozen chairs. This was what she wanted most, to be assisting him in his work. She watched Vincent working himself down the ward, examining hands and feet. There were one or two bad cases of eye injury and one patient had malaria. She was always at hand.

  ‘We need new mosquito nets on this ward.’

  ‘You right, Docta, I get bite, for so, last night. Some big big fellas,’ one of the patients called out.

  ‘I bet you one of them is Anopheles.’

  ‘Yes, Docta, I hear his violin in my ears.’ They liked the ole talk.

  ‘Don’t forget the dengue fella, Aedes Aegypti.’

  ‘Gawd! He sounding bad!’ the patient laughed.

  Vincent smiled. He loved their spirit. Together, they would conquer this illness, no matter what superstitions their priests filled their heads with.

  The patients liked to hear Vincent raging against the authorities on their behalf. This morning, Singh was coming down the ward the other way with the daily doses of cod liver oil, and dressings for those who were having clean bandages. Vincent noticed that he had Theo in attendance. He was wearing a white coat. He beamed at Vincent.

  There was notice given of the dreaded Chaulmoogra Oil injections. Everyone still had a vivid memory of the meetings under the almond tree, or the riots as they were called. Between Singh and Vincent, the ward was in an uproar of laughter and revolt against the authorities. These were the moments when they could throw off their sorrows.

  Theo was witnessing a new side to life on El Caracol.

  Suddenly, there was a distinct quietening down at the end of the ward, near the ward-sister’s cubicle. Some of the patients began mumbling, ‘Good morning, Mother Superior, good morning, Mother.’ There was a kind of trained sycophancy in their voices. She progressed down the centre of the ward, her veil billowing out behind her with her stride, her black rosary beads, the Fifteen Mysteries, clattering.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Singh. Is everything in order here?’

  ‘Perfectly, Mother Superior. Things have never been better.’ There was often a trace of irony in Singh’s tone, and Vincent smiled, taking the lead from him. Theo looked on eagerly.

  When she came to Vincent, Mother Superior’s voice was more challenging. ‘Doctor Metivier. What is going on here?’

  All the patients were sitting up in bed, even Mildred Yard with her malaria. All eyes were on these well known rivals for their well-being.

  ‘Here, Mother Superior? The usual morning duties, plus a couple of miracles. Isn’t that so, Hilda?’ Vincent lifted Hilda Black’s notes hanging off the railing at the bottom of her bed. ‘Hilda’s sores are almost completely healed, and soon she will be picking up her bed and walking out of here. Isn’t that so Hilda? Right up to your hut and your garden.’ Vincent stopped himself from concluding with, as Christ once instructed the leper of Galilee.

  ‘You right, yes, Docta. Is garden I want to plant. You see Corpus Christi gone, and I ent plant corn this year.’

  Mother Superior stopped him short with, ‘Doctor, I mean, out there, on the verandah? What are all the ward nurses doing, standing in a row by chairs, rather than getting on with their duties? Sometimes, I just don’t understand what is going on in this hospital.’

  Thérèse left the ward. She did not like to witness the open rivalry between her superior and Vincent. It challenged too many conflicting beliefs, too many conflicting loyalties. She went and gathered up some of the children from the school. She recruited Theo, stealing him from Singh. He was delighted to do another new job. They needed a dozen good feathers and a similar number of sharp cocoyea sticks.

  Theo was put in charge of some smaller girls and boys, stripping coconut palms for the seam of the leaf. And others, chasing around the yard near Ma Thorpe’s chicken run for light fluffy feathers, were led by Ti-Jean. Both of the Doctor’s boys had an important job to do. Thérèse had found a way to combat any rivalry between the boys.

  Each nurse, sitting on the verandah, was then given one of the softest feathers and a sharp cocoyea stick, which had been sorted by the children from the bundles they had deposited on the verandah.

  ‘I’m conducting an experiment, a piece of research, Mother.’ Vincent was, at the same time, ushering Mother Superior onto the verandah. ‘I need to do some tests on the hands of the patients. I’ve got a hunch.’

  ‘A hunch?’ She shook her head. ‘I do not know that word.’

  ‘An idea. A hypothetical theory, about hands.’

  ‘Do you think that this is what we need at the moment, Doctor?’

  ‘Well, we’ve nothing else. I cannot continue with this kind of nursing and doctoring. We’re getting nowhere.’

  Vincent often felt it was better to have things out with Mother Superior in public, rather than in the privacy of her office, where she could reign supreme. For instance, if he had gone and asked her permission to conduct this survey, she would have come down on it with a sledgehammer.

  The truth was that she still missed Dr Escalier of the old school, the old order, when everyone knew their place. She had known where she was with him. Vincent was not sure what she imagined. Coupled with Mr Singh, she might as well have had her leprosarium run by Communists. There was some bit of Mother Superior which almost understood the Germans and their National Socialism. Vincent wondered whether she gave her sisters talks on the subject before Compline. Was her hero Petain?

  ‘Nowhere? This is the path to heaven, Doctor. This is their cross and they are bearing it courageously to their Calvary. Everyone’s Calvary is different.’

  Vincent thought to himself, I’ve been here before. ‘Well, I’m not challenging you, Mother Superior. I just have quite good evidence that there is something else going on here. We’ve been looking at this disease with blinkers on. We need to try another strategy, and I want to conduct these tests on hands and feet, to see whether we should pursue it further. Have faith.’ Vincent smiled.

  ‘Faith, Doctor? You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word even if Karl Marx tried to persuade you of it. What would you know about it? Indeed.’

  He did not know why he said it. It just came out. ‘Sister Thérèse Weil is persuaded that we should try it.’

  ‘I’m sure she is. Let me just say Doctor, that Sister Thérèse Weil, as you call her…’

  ‘Isn’t that her name?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean, Doctor Metivier. Don’t pretend with me. You
may think me some kind of religious fanatic. Some old, what do the English call it, fogey?’

  ‘Fogey?’ You know that word. ‘Hunch’ not, but ‘fogey’, Vincent thought.

  ‘Dr Metivier.’

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘Listen to me.’

  ‘Mother Superior, how could you think…’

  ‘What I want to say is that that girl. For that is what she is, a bright girl. And willing as she maybe in her youthful enthusiasm, to be persuaded by you, precisely why, I’m not sure, is a religious first of all. Don’t forget that, and don’t put temptation in her way.’

  Vincent could feel himself physically recoil at the word temptation. He felt again like the naughty boy he had always been made to feel by priests and their church. He hoped he was not blushing.

  ‘Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, Doctor. I know that Sister Weil is from a medical family, may even have had a glittering career ahead of her in research, as you call it, but she has chosen to serve as a religious, first and foremost.’

  Vincent was relieved. It was the sin of pride that concerned the nun. He shook his head in grateful agreement. Mother Superior could not have doubted his approval of what she was saying.

  ‘Come and see, Mother. You may yourself be persuaded.’

  Thérèse had begun to line up the patients. While one Sister performed the test, another took notes. There were about twenty-four involved in all, two per patient, as they worked on twelve at a time.

  Firstly, they tested with the feather and then with the sharp end of the cocoyea stick, using it like a pin, tracing the sensitivity to touch and pain in the different parts of the hand. They measured the range of movement in the thumb, fingers and wrist. Then they repeated this procedure for the toes and feet, keeping the precise measurement of the lengths of the toes and fingers, noting which digits had shortened and which muscles seemed to be paralysed. Any paralysis in the face was also noted.