by Self, Will
They all got the same answer: ‘Dr Loman is busy assisting the surgeon today – you all know that, yeah.’
Prentice handed over his boxes of ribavirin to one of these nurses, who whisked them off without comment. The making of his reparations had been as anticlimactic as Tom’s. ‘Wampum,’ Adams muttered, then he led them down the corridor that ran the length of the building, pointing out the treatment rooms to one side and the wards to the other.
The dispensary, Tom thought, had been built and equipped perhaps two decades before as a small state-of-the-art hospital. Some time during the intervening years, it had begun to be severely neglected. Now the floors were unwashed – stained with blood, and worse. Perished rubber hoses dangled from oxygen cylinders, while used hypodermic syringes lay in the drifts of dead leaves that had blown in through the warped un-shuttable windows. In one ward there was a waist-high heap of soiled gauze pads; in a second, a broken pipe leaked bilious water on to the cracked tiles. The aircon’ wasn’t working, and the flies – unlike the medical staff – were in constant attendance.
They reached the end of the corridor and stood there, looking through the dirty window which faced the airstrip. On the far side of this some young Tayswengo men were breaking in an auraca bull. They circled the enraged animal, chucking dust and pebbles in its supercilious face. When, inevitably, it lunged at one them with its tiny head, the youth leaped up and neatly pincered its long neck with his legs. They both crashed to the ground and writhed there, their spasmodic movements compellingly pornographic. Tom looked away.
‘The scalpels I brought,’ he said to Adams. ‘They were for these operations, then?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the surgeon is–’
‘Erich – Herr Doktor von Sasser, you must’ve guessed that. I address him as “Herr Doktor” because he holds a medical degree. His father, Otto, had a Ph.D. in anthropology, but Erich’s own contribution to Songs, well, academics can be incredibly, ah, narrow-minded.’
‘He has to do lots of these operations?’ Tom persisted, while out of the corner of his eye he noticed Prentice, up against the wall, arms and legs crossed defensively.
‘As many as he possibly can,’ Adams answered. ‘These are relatively straightforward procedures, Tom, not too invasive. The patients can, in most cases, leave the dispensary the same day. At a modern hospital – say in Trangaden – they would be entirely routine; the costs are, ah, minimal. Out here, with the particular problems a community like this faces, they’re absolutely essential. That’s why Erich has devoted himself to them so, ah, single-mindedly.’
Lunch was on the veranda. Tom was hungry. He was finally getting accustomed to the local Anglos’ proclivity for stuffing themselves with wads of hot food in the very baking oven of midday. At Von Sasser’s the culinary accent remained resolutely Germanic: ham hocks stood in the top of a double-boiler, paddling in apple sauce. A fresh hayrick of sauerkraut had been pitch-forked, steaming, on to an aluminium platter. The potato was mashed today – and piping hot.
Gloria joined the three men at the table and poured herself a beaker of lemonade. At breakfast she had been in her black toga; now she was wearing the same cotton dress she’d had on when Tom first encountered her at the Swai-Phillips compound. It did flattering things to her bust – which Tom admired while eating. There was no sign of her crazy cousin.
Loman and Von Sasser came ambling through the eucalyptus grove from the direction of the dispensary. They climbed on to the veranda and helped themselves to large plates of pig, cabbage and carb’. Neither man had troubled to take off his scrubs, but only undone the tapes at the back, so that the green garments gaped open. Both were wearing short pants, and when they came to the table, the blotches of blood on their chests gave them the creepy – yet comic – appearance of patients who had escaped the knife in order to enjoy a hearty meal.
16
The others had finished their own food, yet no one made to leave the table; they stayed to watch a bravura performance by the men in theatre costumes. Von Sasser and Loman steadily tunnelled their way through their food mountains, pausing only to call for salt, water or beer. The anthropologist, predictably, drank his beer from a stein half a yard high. Overhead, the awning rat-a-tat-tatted in the rising sirocco. In his blood-stained scrubs, the skeletal Von Sasser was a giant praying mantis devouring its mate.
Tearing his eyes from the grisly spectacle, Tom saw the little SUV standing where Prentice had parked it the evening before. Some Tayswengo kids were sitting inside. The one in the driver’s seat was wrestling the wheel; the others were aiming pretend cameras, miming Anglos on vacation. They captured the occupants of the veranda in their invisible boxes, then turned them on the tame auraca grazing the sparse grass in the paddock.
With the air of men who had for a long time been working as a team, Von Sasser and Loman finished their plates at the same time, then pushed them aside. Von Sasser called for coffee, and the Tayswengo waitress swished away in her humiliating dirndl. Von Sasser produced his long-stemmed pipe. He filled it with tobacco from a leather pouch, then lit it. The assembled company were all riveted by this matinée, but Tom was now convinced that Von Sasser’s spoken lines were intended for him – and Prentice – alone.
‘How does it all end?’ was how the anthropologist began today’s homily. ‘Isn’t that the question that torments the Anglo – bothers him like a fly in his eye? The Third Act problem, the thrilling climax . . . then the drowsy resolution. Yes, yes, the Anglos’ lust for this is blatantly bloody sexual – they’re not like the true natives of this great land. Those poor bastards have had it hammered into them for so long that they’re shit, that they just sit on their arses while the flies eat them! Especially the children – the poor bloody kids. It’s almost as if,’ – he shifted to confront Prentice – ‘they’re born with this fatalism.’
Von Sasser stopped. Prentice no longer had the energy to even quail beneath his raptor’s stare: his psoriasis was back with a vengeance; the badlands of cracked and humped skin had spread right up on to his face. ‘You!’ Von Sasser spat. ‘You can do whatever you like to the poor bloody kids . . . except’ – the shotgun eyes came back to Tom – ‘tell them stories with clap-happy bloody endings!’
He took a long draw on his pipe, then resumed more evenly: ‘You’re probably wondering why the Technical College is such a dump, when the rest of Ralladayo – thanks, in no small part, to those present’ – he nodded to Adams, Loman and Gloria in turn – ‘who have given their hearts and bloody minds to the community – is ticking over pretty damn efficiently.’
‘Uh, yeah, I guess I was kinda intrigued,’ Tom said lamely.
‘My father, Otto, is buried at Gethsemane Springs, forty clicks east of here, yeah, on the track to the coast. The Technical College was his own brainchild, right. He laboured for it – strived to make it a reality. He even went south, put on dress kit and gave after-dinner bloody speeches to raise money for it from Anglo fat cats, who – once his back was turned – went back to cursing the bloody bing-bongs.’
With forensic fingers, Von Sasser picked up his tiny espresso cup and took a sip. He smacked his lips with an ‘ah’, then went on. ‘Be that as it bloody may, when my dad was dying he made me promise that I’d sack the Anglo teachers and let the College decay back into the bloody dust.
‘ “Erich,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether our people study the sciences, the arts, maths or languages – the result is the same: it makes them lust for an end; that, Erich, is the true leitmotif of Western civilization, and it’s the very one we’ve come here to rid them of. Don’t let our people fall victim to the narrative fallacy of the Anglos!”
‘ ’Course, I’m not claiming that those were his actual last words – that’d be a bit bloody rich! But he was dead in days, and I respected his final wish – why wouldn’t I? By then I’d already begun the work he’d had me trained for; it’s true, the first results were not exactly, er . . . conclusive’ �
�� Tom noted the hesitation – ‘but in spite of that we were both confident we’d found a way forward, so that these people’ – he threw an arm wide to encompass all of Ralladayo – ‘would never, ever waste their lives waiting for the bloody end. Sitting in the dark and smelly multiplex of their minds, gagging to know how their lives would turn out, while completely neglecting to bloody live them!’
There was silence for a few seconds, then Tom heard an electronic whirr. Its source was Swai-Phillips: the lawyer was hovering at the corner of the chalet, a camcorder held to his good eye. He switched it off and let it fall by its lanyard on to his bare chest. He approached the table, walking normally and banging his big, square hands together with slow, resounding claps. He stopped, bowed low, then gravely intoned: ‘Here endeth the second lesson.’
Von Sasser ignored him, instead rattling off a series of commands: ‘Winnie, take Brodzinski here over to the comms shack; he’ll be needing to call his people. Brodzinski, you take your man Prentice along with – you wanna keep a close eye on that one. Vishtar and I’ve got more bloody carving to get on with s’arvo.’ He rose. ‘Till sundown, then!’ And, with Dr Loman in his train, swept off the veranda and back through the gum trees towards the dispensary.
Adams came to life. ‘ ‘C’mon,’ he said to Tom. ‘Erich’s right; the early afternoon’s the best time to patch across.’
Tom was about to protest at this assumption that he even wanted to call Milford, but something in Adams’s tone prevented him. This wasn’t to do with his calling home; it was about Prentice not being allowed to. Prentice, who was now a pitiful sight: a pile of dirty dude’s clothes slung over a seat back. Not one for his good lady’s album.
Tom, with an access of hypocritical pity, helped him to his feet and said, ‘D’you want me to get some ointment for you? I don’t mind putting it on . . .’
‘Don’t bother, old chap,’ Prentice muttered. ‘Let’s go make your call.’ Then he gave the lopsided smile of a beaten cur, and added: ‘Not long now.’
In the comms shack Adams adopted the persona of a radio ham. He put on headphones – or ‘cans’, as he pretentiously referred to them – and played with the switches and dials on the transmitter. Prentice dumped his bundle of a body form down on an upturned crate, while Tom took a swivel chair beside Adam’s. The ether whistled and warbled, then, once the appliance was humming nicely to itself, Adams took his headphones off.
‘There’s some news you, ah . . . might like to tell the folks back home,’ he said. ‘It’s, ah . . . concerning Mr Lincoln.’
Tom marvelled at how such a heavy lunch could rise up his gorge so easily: here it came, another hateful display of amateur dramatics by the Queen Ham. ‘What?’ Tom yelped. ‘Has the old man died?’
‘On the contrary.’ Adams chose his words as fastidiously as a spinster selecting Scrabble tiles. ‘Dr Loman spoke with one of his colleagues in Vance this morning. It would appear that Mr Lincoln has, regained, ah . . . consciousness. It’s an astonishing case – the infection is, ah . . . subsiding. It’s early days, but the feeling is that he may well make a full, ah . . . recovery. Of course, the consequences for your own, ah . . . situation – especially now an initial reparation payment has been made – can be nothing but, ah . . .’ – the longest pause, dry-stick fingers fondling the slack vocab’ bag – ‘. . . good.’
And with that Adams resumed his other communication duties, rapping out a call sign into the mic’ once, twice, a third time. Between each announcement his equine face quivered with the strain of listening. He pointed to some other headphones, and Tom put them on. He was in time to hear the radio operator in Trangaden say: ‘. . . receiving you RAL20–40. You’re faint – but you’re there, yeah. How can I help ya today, Winnie? Over.’
Adams read out the Brodzinskis’ home phone number and asked to be patched through. The sounds of the Trangaden man dialling were suddenly very loud: each digit a klaxon beep, then there came the leonine purring of the ringing phone. ‘WE’LL LEAVE YOU TO IT,’ Adams mouthed exaggeratedly, and Tom revolved to see him hoik Prentice unceremoniously to his feet and lead him out the door.
Tom pressed the headphones firmly against his ears, and the purring lion padded into his head: ‘pprrrupp-prrrup; pprrrupp-prrrup; pprr–’ Then stopped. ‘Martha Lambert speaking,’ said Martha’s voice. Hearing it, Tom allowed himself to fully accept what Prentice had said: it wasn’t long, now. Long before he would be back in Milford; long before he would be able to mend this crazy breach between them; long before he would be at home with her – and the kids.
He pushed his mouth into the mic’s steel mesh: ‘Martha, it’s me, Tom, can you hear me, honey?’ The etheric birds had been netted; every one of his words sounded as clear as a bell that resonated with cravenly hopeful expectation.
‘Tom, is that you?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m in Ralladayo, where Atalaya’s – Mrs Lincoln’s – people live. Lissen.’ He couldn’t stop himself gabbling. ‘There’s fantastic news – it’s incredible. The old man – Mr Lincoln – he’s, he’s making a recovery, and I’ve, I’ve made the, like, restitution I hadta, so, it looks as if – I mean, I can’t be certain – but it looks like I might be home soon.’ He stopped. There was no sense of the half-world that separated them, only a voracious nullity, sucking on his ears with foam-padded lips.
‘That’s . . . excellent news, Tom . . .’ Had her voice ever sounded more like her? More completely Martha: each snicked syllable and sharply enunciated consonant a tight brush stroke, vividly describing her slim body – so very dear, so very familiar, so utterly strange. ‘I’m so happy for you . . .’ There was a small yellow-tinted perspex window in front of the table the transmitter sat on. As he listened to his wife, Tom Brodzinski stared at this acrylic of an alien land: the streaks of the gum trees’ trunks, the pointillism of their foliage, the brown splodge of a humpy in the mid-distance, the painterly distortions of the sun’s own strokes. ‘It’ll be good to have you back home, sometimes I think you don’t realize . . .’ Looking like Death, a figure in a black native toga walked into the picture from the left. ‘. . . how much the kids’ve . . .’ It turned towards the comms shack, and in the shadow of the hood bloomed a pale face. It was Gloria Swai-Phillips, talking on a cellphone. ‘. . . missed you . . .’ Martha’s words, which had pulsed along wires, been thrown into space, bounced off a satellite, then cast back down to earth, were now dubbed precisely on to Gloria’s lips. Tom registered this, because Gloria completed Martha’s sentence: ‘. . . especially Tommy Junior.’ Then she looked through the window straight at him and gave him a playful little wave.
Hispid and viscid: the sweat-damp hairs on Tom’s nape lifted and stretched themselves, each chafing against its neighbour. Hispid and viscid: Beelzebub’s proboscis was nuzzling at the sweet nooks and crannies of Tom’s cerebrum. It tickled.
Tom found himself outside without any awareness of having torn off headphones or slammed through doors. He was temporarily blinded – than he groped his way, hands on sunbeams, to where Gloria stood in her sack. The race was over; she snapped the cellphone shut and disappeared it in the folds of her robe.
‘You – she . . . W-What? W-What have you done? Are you – have you been fuckin’ copying my wife?’ He spluttered his childish accusation.
Gloria looked him up and down matter-of-factly. ‘If you want me to be your wife, Tom, then that’s fine, yeah?’
‘I – I dunno . . . Have you been talking – on the phone, to me?’ He ranged back in time to the night before the prelim’ hearing in Vance, and the rhythmic jingling trudge he had heard when he held his own cellphone to his ear. The Martha voice impersonating Gloria. What was it she – they – had said: you’ve gotta say these things to keep ’em happy, yeah? I mean, their pathetic little egos require it, yeah?
But that was then.
Gloria Swai-Phillips led Tom back towards the Technical College by the arm. She guided him between the gum trees, holding him firmly in case he should trip
on their roots. As they walked, she gave him an explanation – at least, that’s how she saw it.
‘Squolly – Commander Squoddoloppolollou – he read your rights to you when you were arrested, right?’
‘Rights?’ Tom murmured. All he remembered was Swai-Phillips ridiculing him for even raising the matter.
‘What I mean is, Squolly would’ve told you how the police were gonna investigate you, yeah? How they were gonna tail you, check out what your intentions were, yeah? Figure out what kinduv a guy you are.’
‘And those were my rights?’
‘So far as the Tugganarong and Anglo communities here are concerned, yeah, those are your rights. The thing is, Tom’ – still holding his arm, Gloria drew Tom round so that he was facing her – ‘Squolly’s men’ve been tailing you for a long time now – years in fact, yeah? Y’see, when you were a young bloke, Tom, you kinduv took your eye off the ball.’
‘Eye off the ball?’
They had reached the low wall that bounded the Technical College. Tom’s eye – still off the ball – rolled over crab grass, cracked earth, the sawn-off stumps of a mulga thicket. The thrift-shop donation that was Prentice was piled on top of the wall, smoking. There was something different about this small prospect – a change that bothered Tom. He fixated on this, instead of listening to the harpy.