Ghosts of derision chased themselves across his large, black pleasant face, displacing the frown. And now Rebecca spoke, direct to him, in their language, and it seemed well, for Mr Mandizi was listening, his face turned towards her, towards this woman to whom in his culture, he would not have to listen on such subjects, at least not in public.
He addressed Sylvia: ‘You think this sickness is here, in this district, with us? Slim is here?'
‘Yes, I know it is. I know it is, Mr Mandizi. People are dying from it. You see, the problem is diagnosis. People may be dying of pneumonia or TB or diarrhoea or skin lesions – sores – but the real reason is AIDS. It is Slim. And there are a lot of sick people. Many more than when I first came to the hospital.'
Now Rebecca spoke again, and Mr Mandizi was listening, not looking at her, but nodding.
'And so you want me to telephone the head office and tell them to send me the condoms?'
'And we have not had the malaria tablets. We haven't had any medicines.'
' Doctor Sylvia has been buying medicines for us with her own money,' said Rebecca.
Mr Mandizi nodded, sat thinking. Then, a different man, a petitioner in his turn, he leaned forward and asked, ' Can you tell by looking if someone has Slim?'
‘No. There are tests for it. '
‘My wife is not well. She coughs all the time. '
' That needn't be AIDS. Has she lost weight?'
' She is thin. She is too too thin. '
‘You should take her to the big hospital. '
'I did. They gave her muti but she is still sick.'
'Sometimes I send samples to Senga – if someone isn't too sick.'
‘You are saying that if someone is very ill you don't send samples?'
' Some people come in to me when they are so ill I know they are going to die. And there is no point in wasting money on tests. '
' In our culture,’ said Mr Mandizi, regaining his authority because of this so often used formula, ' in our culture, we have good medicine, but I know you whites despise it. '
'I don't despise it. I am friends with our local n'ganga. Sometimes I ask him for help. But he says himselfhe cannot do anything for AIDS.'
' Perhaps that is why his medicine didn't help her?'
But hearing what he had said, his whole body seemed to freeze up in panic and he sat rigid, staring, then jumped up and said, ‘You must come with me now – yes, now-now – she is here, in my house, it is five minutes.'
He swept the two women before him out of the office and through the silent petitioners, saying, 'I will be back in my office in ten minutes. Wait. '
Sylvia and Rebecca were directed through the hot dusty glare to one of the new houses, ten of them in a row, like boxes sitting in the dust, but identical to the big new houses going up in Senga, scaled down to the importance of Kwadere Growth Point. Over them scarlet, purple and magenta bougainvillaeas marked them for distinction: here lived all the local officials.
'Come in, come in,' Mr Mandizi urged, and they were in a small room stuffed with a three-piece suite, a sideboard, refrigerator, pouffe, and then in a bedroom filled with a big bed where lay someone ill, and beside her a pretty plump black woman fanning the sleeper with a bunch of eucalyptus leaves, whose smell was trying to overcome the sickroom odours. But was the invalid asleep? Sylvia stood over her, saw with shock that this woman was ill, very ill – she was dying. She should have been a glossy healthy black, but she was grey, sores covered her face, and she was thin, the head on the pillow showed the skull. There was hardly any pulse. Her breath barely moved. Her eyes were half open. Touching her left Sylvia's fingers cold. Sylvia turned her face to the desperate husband, unable to speak, and Rebecca beside her began to wail softly. The plump young woman stared straight ahead, and went on with her fanning.
Sylvia stumbled out to the other room and leaned against the wall.
' Mr Mandizi,’ she said, ' Mr Mandizi. ' He came up to her, took her hand, leaned to stare into her face, and whispered, ‘Is she very ill? My wife...' 'Mr Mandizi...’ He let his body fall forward so that his face lay on his arm on the wall. He was so close to Sylvia she put her arm around his shoulders and held him as he sobbed.
‘I’m afraid she will die, ' he whispered.
‘Yes. I am sorry, I think she is dying. '
'What shall I do? What shall I do?'
' Mr Mandizi, do you have children?'
‘We had a little girl but she died. '
Tears were splashing on to the cement floor.
'Mr Mandizi,' she whispered – she was thinking of that plump healthy woman next door, 'you must listen to me, you must, please do not have sex without a condom.'
It was such a terrible thing to say at that moment, it was ridiculous, but the dreadful urgency of his situation compelled her. ' Please, I know how this must sound, and don't be angry with me.' She was still whispering.
‘Yes, yes, yes, I heard what you said. I am not angry.'
' If you want me to come back later, when you are... I can come back and explain it to you.'
‘No, I understand. But you don't understand something.' He pulled himself off the support of the wall and stood upright. He spoke normally now. ‘My wife is dying. My child is dead. And I know who is responsible. I shall consult our good n'ganga again.'
' Mr Mandizi, you simply can't be saying...’
‘Yes, I am saying it. That is what I am saying. Some enemy has put a curse on me. This is the work of a witch.'
‘Oh, Mr Mandizi, and you are an educated man...’
‘I know what you are thinking. I know how you people think. '
He stood there before her, his face contorted with anger and with suspicion. 'I will get to the bottom of this.' Then he commanded. 'Tell them at the office I will be returning in half an hour.'
Sylvia and Rebecca began to walk away towards the lorry.
They heard, ‘And that so-called hospital at the Mission. We know about it. It is a good thing that our new hospital will soon be built and we shall have some real medicine in our district. '
Sylvia said, ' Rebecca, please don't tell me that you agree with what he is saying. It is ridiculous. '
Rebecca was first silent and then said, 'Sylvia, you see, in our culture it is not ridiculous. '
‘But it is a disease. Every day we understand more about it. It is a terrible disease. '
‘But why do some people get it but other people don't get
it? Can you explain that? And that is the point, do you understand what I am saying? Perhaps there is some person who wanted to harm Mr Mandizi, or who wanted to get rid of his wife? Did you see that young woman in the bedroom with Mrs Mandizi? Perhaps she would like to be Mrs Mandizi herself?'
'Well, Rebecca, we are not going to agree.'
'No, Sylvia, we are not going to agree.'
At the lorry people were already waiting to clamber in but Sylvia said, ‘I am not driving home yet. And I will let six people come, only six. We are going to the new hospital and it is bad road.' She could see the beginnings of it, a rough track through the bush.
Rebecca issued urgent commands. Six women got in the back.
‘I’ll pick you up in half an hour, ' Sylvia said, and the lorry lumbered and lurched over roots, stones, potholes, for another mile or so, and they arrived where the outlines of a building had been laid down in a clearing among trees. These were big old trees; this was old bush, a bit dusty, but full and green.
The two women and the children got out of the cabin of the lorry, and the six women followed them. The women stood staring at what was described as the new hospital.
Swedes? Danes? Americans? Germans? – some country's government, devoted to the sorrows of Africa, had caused a lot of money to be directed here, to this clearing, and in front of them were the results. As with an architect's plan, these observers had to use their minds to work out the shape of things to come from these foundations, and walls begun and not finished, for the trouble was, it ha
d been a good while arriving, the next instalment of aid money, and the rooms, wards, corridors, operating theatres and dispensaries were filling with pale dust. Some walls stood waist high, some were at knee level, blocks of concrete had holes in them filled with water. The women from the village, seeing the hope ofsomething useful, went forward and retrieved a couple of bottles, and half a dozen tin cans, which they shook, getting rid of dust, and then put them carefully into big hold-alls. Someone had had a picnic here or a wanderer had built a fire for the night to keep off animals. The faces of these visitors had on them the expressions seen so often in our time: we are not going to comment, but someone has blundered. And who had? And why? Rumour said that the money earmarked for this hospital had been stolen on the way; some said that the government in question had simply run out of funds.
On the other side of the clearing, under the trees, large wooden cases lay about. The six women went over to look and Sylvia and Rebecca followed. A case had split open. Inside was dental equipment: a dentist's chair.
'Pity I am not a dentist,' said Sylvia. 'We could certainly do with one. '
Another case, split at the sides, showed that inside was a wheelchair.
'Oh, doctor,' said one of the women, 'we must not take this chair. Perhaps one day the hospital will be built. ' She was pulling the chair out.
‘We need a wheelchair,’ said Rebecca.
'But they'll want to know where it came from and our hospital doesn't run to a wheelchair. '
‘We should take it,’ said Rebecca.
' It's broken,’ said the woman. Someone had tried to pull the chair out of its wooden shelter and a wheel had come loose.
Four more cases lay about. Two of the women went to one and began wrenching at the rotten wood. Inside were bedpans. Rebecca, without looking at Sylvia, took half a dozen bedpans to the lorry and came back. Another woman found blankets, but these were eaten by insects, and mice were nesting in them, and birds had pulled out threads to line their nests.
' It will be a good hospital,’ said one woman, laughing.
'We shall have a fine new hospital in Kwadere,' said another.
The village women laughed, enjoying themselves, and then Sylvia and Rebecca joined in. In the middle of the bush, miles from the philanthropists in Senga (or, for that matter, London, Berlin, New York), the women stood and laughed.
They drove back to the Growth Point, picked up the waiting people, and proceeded slowly to the Mission, all listening for a burst tyre. Their luck held. Rebecca and Sylvia took the bedpans down to the hospital. The seriously ill people, in the big new hut built by Sylvia when she first came, had been using old bottles, cans, discarded kitchen utensils. 'What are those things?' asked Joshua's brother's little boys, and when they understood, they were delighted and ran about showing them to anyone well enough to care.
Colin opened the door to a timid ring, and saw what he thought was a mendicant child or a gipsy and then, with a roar of ' It's Sylvia, it's little Sylvia, ' lifted her inside. There he hugged her, and she shed tears on his cheeks, bent down to rub hers, like a cat's greeting.
In the kitchen he sat her at the table, the table, again extended to its full length. He poured a river of wine into a big glass and sat opposite her, full of welcome and pleasure.
‘Why didn't you say you were coming? But it doesn't matter. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you. '
Sylvia was trying to lift her mood to his height, because she was dispirited, London sometimes having this effect on Londoners who have been away from it and who, while living in it, have had so little idea ofits weight, its multitudinous gifts and capacities. London, after the Mission, was hitting her a blow somewhere in the stomach region. It is a mistake to come too fast from, let's say, Kwadere, to London: one needs something like the equivalent of a decompression chamber.
She sat smiling, taking little sips of wine, afraid to do more, for she was not used to wine these days, feeling the house like a creature all around her and above her and below her, her house, the one she had known best as home when she had been conscious of what was going on in it, the atmospheres and airs of every room and stretches of the staircase. Now the house was populous, she could feel that, it was full of people, but they were alien presences, not her familiars and she was grateful for Colin, sitting there smiling at her. It was ten in the evening. Upstairs someone was playing a tune she ought to know, probably something famous, like 'Blue Suede Shoes' – it had that claim on her – but she couldn't name it.
' Little Sylvia. And it looks to me that you need a bit of feeding up, as always. Can I give you something to eat?'
‘I ate on the plane. '
But he was up, opening the refrigerator door, peering at its shelves, and again Sylvia felt a blow to her heart, yes it was her heart, it hurt, for she was thinking of Rebecca, in her kitchen, with her little fridge, and her little cupboard which to her family down in the village represented some extreme of good fortune, generous provisioning: she was looking at the eggs filling half the door of the fridge, at the gleaming clean milk, the crammed containers, the plenitudes...
' This is not really my territory, it's Frances's, but I'm sure...’ he fetched out a loaf of bread, a plate of cold chicken. Sylvia was tempted: Frances had cooked it, Frances had fed her; with Frances on one side and Andrew on the other, she had survived her childhood.
‘What is your territory, then?’ she asked, tucking in to a chicken sandwich.
‘I am upstairs, at the top of the house. '
' In Julia's place?'
' I, and Sophie. '
This surprised her into putting down her bit of sandwich, as if relinquishing safety for the time being.
‘You and Sophie!'
‘Of course, you didn't know. She came here to recuperate, and then... she was ill, you see. '
'And then?'
'Sophie is pregnant,' he said, 'and so we are about to get married.'
'Poor Colin,' she said, and then coloured up from shame -after all, she did not really know...
‘Not entirely poor Colin. After all, I am very fond of Sophie. '
She resumed her sandwich, but put it down: Colin's news had clamped her stomach shut. ‘Well, go on. I can see you are miserable.'
' Perspicacious Sylvia. Well, you always were, while apparently only little miss-I-am-not-here-at all. '
This hurt, and he had meant it to. ‘No, no, I'm sorry. I really am. I'm not myself. You've caught me at a... Well, perhaps I am myself, at that. '
He poured more wine.
' Don't drink until I've heard. '
He set down his glass. ' Sophie is forty-three. It's late. '
‘Yes, but quite often old mothers...’ She saw him wince.
' Quite so. An old mother. But believe it or not Down's Syndrome babies – ever so jolly I hear they are? – and all the other horrors are not the worst. Sophie is convinced that I am convinced she coaxed the baby into her reluctant womb, to make use of me, because it is getting late for her. I know she didn'tdoiton purpose, it is not her nature. But she won't let it go. Day and night I hear her wails of guilt: ' 'Oh, I know what you're thinking...'' ' -And Colin wailed the words, with great effect. ‘Do you know something? yes, ofcourse you do. There is no pleasure to compete with the pleasure of guilt. She is rolling in it, wallowing in it, my Sophie is, she's having the time of her life, knowing that I hate her because she has trapped me and nothing I can say will stop her because it's such fun, being guilty. ' This was as savage as she had heard ever from savage Colin, and she saw him lift his glass and down the lot in a gulp.
‘Oh, Colin, you' re going to be drunk and I see you so seldom. '
'Sylvia – you're right.' He refilled his glass. 'But I will marry her, she is already seven months, and we will live upstairs in Julia's old flat – four rooms, and I shall work down at the bottom of the house – when it's empty.' Here his face, reddened and angry as it was, spread into that exhilaration of pleasure that goes with the contemplatio
n of life's relentless sense of drama. 'You did know that Frances took on two kids with her new bloke?'
‘Yes, she wrote. '
‘Did she tell you there is a wife, a depressive? She is downstairs, in the flat where Phyllida was.'
‘But...’
‘No buts. It has worked out as well as might be. She has recovered from her depression. The two children are upstairs where Andrew and I used to be. Frances and Rupert are in the flat she always had.'
' So it has worked out?'
‘But the two children reasonably enough think that now their mother has broken off with her fancy man, then why shouldn't their father and mother get together again, and Frances should just fade out. '
' So they are being horrible to Frances?'
‘Not at all. Much worse. They are very polite and reasonable. The merits are argued out over every meal. The little girl, a real little bitch by the way, says things like, ' ‘But it would be so much better for us if you went away, wouldn't it, Frances?' ' It's the little girl really, not the boy. Rupert is hanging on to Frances for dear life. Understandably, if you know Meriel. '
Sylvia was thinking about Rebecca with her six children, two of them dead, probably from AIDS – but perhaps not – her usually absentee husband, working eighteen hours a day, and never complaining.
She sighed, saw Colin's look: ‘How lucky you are, Sylvia, to be so far away from our unedifying emotional messes. '
‘Yes, I am sometimes glad I am not married – sorry. Go on. Meriel...’
' Meriel – well, now she's a prize. She's cold, manipulative, selfish and has always treated Rupert badly. She's a feminist – you know? With all the law of the jungle behind her? She has always told Rupert that it is his duty to keep her, and she made him pay for her taking a degree in some rubbish or other, the higher criticism, I think. She has never earned a penny. And now she is trying to get a divorce where he keeps her in perpetuity. She belongs to a group of women, a secret sisterhood – you don't believe me? – whose aim it is to screw men for everything they can get. '
'You're making it up.'
The Sweetest Dream Page 35