The Alphabet of Birds

by SJ Naudé

  Mrs Nyathi stares at her. ‘I sang for my patients sometimes, at night when they were dying.’

  A tiny trail of sound, Sandrien thinks, illuminating the route.

  Mrs Nyathi gets up and goes inside. She leaves her glass half-full on the table, perhaps annoyed that Sandrien has permeated the air with such sudden gloom. Sandrien stays until the fires of Vloedspruit burn out one by one. She is a revelation to herself in Mrs Nyathi’s company.

  She rolls around in her bed, then dozes off restlessly. Not long afterwards, drunken girls’ voices wake her.

  Mrs Nyathi stands in her bedroom door. ‘He is here for you,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’ asks Sandrien.

  Mrs Nyathi winks.

  It is Walter Mabunda. He has brought plums in a basket.

  How squeaky clean the little rolls of fat in his neck are, she thinks when he bends over and delicately removes one of the fruit. He sits forward with a slight groan, holds it out to her between fingertips. She waves it away.

  ‘Mr Mabunda—’

  ‘Call me Walter.’

  He bites into the plum with precision. It is the same colour as his lips.

  ‘Walter, I don’t want to make assumptions, but let me immediately clear up any possible misunderstandings. I am a married woman.’

  He nods his head slowly. ‘Oh, but a married woman of exceptional beauty!’

  He looks at her shoulders.

  She attempts to resist his gaze. From the corrugated-iron houses voices are carried uphill by the wind. A few large flakes of ash drift onto the veranda.

  ‘I notice that the village market was almost completely washed away.’

  ‘Yes,’ Walter says, and shakes his head with a concerned frown. ‘Unfortunately they built it on a flood plain. But I’m going to make an investment,’ he says, and pushes out his chest. ‘I’m going to erect stalls. The government will help with funding. Shirley Kgope’s brother will build it for us. He was also the contractor for the college.’

  His gaze rests in the vicinity of her chest.

  A moth with false eyes on its wings descends on Walter’s cleanly shaven head. It flies up as he bends over to her.

  ‘Just be careful. People have their ways here.’

  She does not know what he is trying to convey.

  Then he talks loudly, his voice high, as if meant to be overheard. ‘But, yes, my enterprises and investments are nothing. Your Mrs Nyathi,’ he gestures with his head over his shoulder, ‘she has her contacts, oh yes she does! It is thanks to her that the college was built. And look what she got out of it.’ He gestures towards the house.

  After Walter has left, when they are sitting on the veranda above the village lights and fires, Mrs Nyathi says, ‘Yes, your Mr Mabunda got himself a nice little egg with that college. He knows how to wangle things.’

  Sandrien does not enquire further. She is thinking of the slap in the bathroom earlier.

  As if in response to her thoughts, Mrs Nyathi says, ‘There are things here that you would not understand, that aren’t your business.’ Mrs Nyathi smiles sweetly, holds her tumbler of brandy aloft in a vague toast to someone’s health.

  ‘Who built the original market at the bottom of the hill?’ Sandrien asks, not to be deterred.

  Mrs Nyathi thinks for a moment.

  ‘Dr Kgope’s brother,’ she says, her eyes slits. Her pupils dart back and forth. Then her head nods forward and her eyebrows rise. ‘She made a nice profit herself, our Shirley. Yes, that Shirley. Always so hush-hush.’

  Sandrien is tired of Vloedspruit tonight. Apart from Dr Kgope’s useful lectures about antiretrovirals and the prevention of mother–child transmission, she is not sure she is gaining any wisdom. She is relieved the six weeks are almost over.

  ‘By the way, I’ll be glad if someone could inform Mr Mabunda that I am not susceptible to courtship.’

  Through the veils of sleep she is waiting for the precipitation. She can hear it rumbling in the distance. She wakes up; it has arrived. Thundering against the corrugated-iron roof and windowpanes. She jumps up and jerks open the curtain. The ground is white. Hailstones are bouncing off the roofs. She is standing there, her body like a lamp, waiting for the glass to break. Moments after Mrs Nyathi pulls her away by the arm from behind, it happens: glass flying where she was just standing.

  The moment the hailstorm has passed, Mrs Nyathi summons some of her maids. They appear out of the rain to nail wooden boards to the broken windows. They clean up and dry the floors, change wet linen.

  Sandrien fails to fall asleep again.

  When she walks through Vloedspruit one last time the next morning, she notices the extent of the damage. Glass and blades of corrugated iron slice into the ground. A woman stops her at the market premises. The parts of the market that were still standing before have now gone too. The woman waves her arms. She is arguing animatedly, as if Sandrien is the cause of the floods, and responsible for repairing the market. Sandrien gives her money. The woman will not let her go. She sinks down on her knees in the mud, holding Sandrien back by her sleeve.

  A downy feather descends on the kneeling woman’s forehead. Sandrien looks up. Feathers are floating on the breeze. She shakes loose. She follows the feather trail. Like seeds at harvest time, down is hovering above the marshy area next to the river. Men are wringing the necks of herons and hacking off heads with pangas. Sometimes more than one blow is required. Dozens of water birds are dotted around, flapping with broken wings or trying to escape on snapped legs. The men do not even have to run to catch up with them.

  ‘Your van is ready.’ Sandrien clenches her fists after putting down the receiver: a minor triumph. The paperwork for her appointment at the municipal health department has been dragging on for more than two months. Since her return, she has been driving to the neighbouring farms with Kobus’s pickup truck. He had to postpone transporting his cattle feed, had to walk to his herd of Ngunis. First of all she went to Grace, of course. She looked slightly better than when Sandrien had left for Vloedspruit. Her raw coughing fits could still not move the dust gathering in her lungs, but she was out in the sunshine, washing laundry.

  For the umpteenth time she calls the municipal health director, her new boss. The phone just keeps ringing. She has to speak to the director to formalise her duties; she plans to drive straight to Aliwal North once she has received the vehicle.

  ‘That thing? That’s my van?’

  The man from the divisional council shrugs. ‘Dordrecht got a new one and threw this one out. It’ll have to do.’

  She walks around the vehicle. It looks almost like an ambulance, a pickup truck with a steel box on the back, yellow and red stripes down the sides underneath thick dust. When the doors at the back swing open, vapours of vinyl and iron emanate. The man helps her to hose off dust. The battery has to be jump-started.

  Hardly a hundred metres away, the engine cuts out. She does not get out, stays sitting in the heat. Drops are evaporating from the windscreen. In the rear-view mirror, she sees the divisional council man approaching.

  ‘The immobiliser,’ he says, ‘always been broken. What a time to start working.’ He hands her a device, shows her which buttons to press, wiping sweat from his black cheeks with a white handkerchief.

  In front of the municipal offices in Aliwal North there is a row of red geraniums. There is no one at Reception. She walks deeper into the building. The health director’s offices are locked.

  ‘We’re getting a new director,’ a secretary with a soggy chip between her fingers says. She puts it in her mouth. ‘Come again next week.’

  Back at Dorrebult she scrubs out the van. She checks all the medicine, throws out things that have expired. She washes the little cabinets, the steel floors and roof, scrapes old spots of blood from the examination bench. Plastic syringes that have baked brown in the sun crumble when she touches them. Kobus welds the rickety shelves firmly against the sides. She takes curtains from her laundry and hangs them in front of the bac
k windows.

  When she is done at dusk, she calls Kobus and they observe the vehicle in the bare yard. Except for the red and yellow stripes, it is almost white again, the Dordrecht Municipal Health Services address still on the back. Sandrien wishes it were pure white with a single red cross on each side.

  Kobus nods his head.

  ‘It is ready,’ he says, ‘your miniature clinic.’

  His fingers are counting the vertebrae in her lower back. Her sleeves are rolled up. Her blood is flowing.

  The corners of her demarcated area are Smithfield, Colesberg, Burgersdorp and Aliwal North. In the next two weeks, she drives to every farm in her district. In the mornings, she departs at dawn. After the first week, she is quiet over dinner, a slice of bread and a hard-boiled egg for both her and Kobus.

  ‘I could not have imagined,’ she says. ‘Invisible, just on the other side of these hills. Like proverbial flies. Under grain bags in the dusk. Dozens of them.’ She touches her forehead. The sore, sharp corners of bodies: they now populate her dreams.

  Kobus says nothing, presses her hand underneath the table. She walks through the cool house, heading for bed without having eaten, ready for an early start.

  When she enters the offices in Aliwal North, it is Lerato who is sitting there. She is leaning back in the chair, filling it.

  Lerato calls out gregariously, as if old friends are reuniting. ‘Meisie!’

  ‘Lerato?’

  ‘But I’m the new director, meisie! See?’ She points to the nameplate on the door.

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘We must talk, we must talk. You’re one of my nurses, aren’t you? A travelling one at that.’

  ‘There are lots of things we have to discuss, yes.’

  ‘Wait, wait, let’s get a quick lunch.’

  Lerato takes her to the Wimpy at the petrol station.

  ‘See,’ says Lerato when she has managed to get comfortable, ‘this is a meeting. Get it? A me-eating.’ She roars with laughter.

  ‘Lerato, I have to get straight to the point. The situation is beyond belief. The numbers of HIV patients in my area are unimaginable. I don’t know what my predecessor did, but nobody is on antiretrovirals and children aged five have not had any vaccinations. On most of the farms they cannot remember when someone last—’

  ‘Wait,’ says Lerato. She orders a milkshake from the passing waitress. ‘Oh, and there’s the mayor!’

  Lerato waves. The mayor’s car window shifts down. His head is as round as a bullet. He smiles from behind his sunglasses. Lerato struggles out of the booth with a sigh, instructs the waitress to pack her food and have it delivered to the municipal offices.

  Over her shoulder, handbag tucked under the arm, she shouts, ‘Send me your agenda, meisie, then we’ll set up a proper meeting!’

  Sandrien stays behind in the booth. At the petrol pump Lerato leans into the mayor’s window. He says something and she laughs. Then she gets in on the passenger side. The dark window closes and they drive away. Sandrien pays the bill. An icy milkshake is left behind on the table.

  That same evening she faxes a long report to Lerato. She requests clinic facilities in Venterstad one day per week. She lists requirements: HIV testing kits, vaccinations, a long list of medicines. The items at the top of her agenda are a discussion about the provision of antiretrovirals and strategies for the prevention of mother–child transmission.

  A week later, not having had a response, she calls. The secretary answers. Lerato has allocated an office in Venterstad to her, the secretary tells her. She immediately drives there. When she finds it, it turns out to be a small storeroom. She drives to the farm again, where she collects a table and two chairs. Back in Venterstad, she arranges these as best she can. She then builds shelves with bricks and planks that she finds behind the building. Driving to the farm once more, she looks down Venterstad’s white, dusty streets. The town buildings are mostly run down, nailed shut. The only movement is at the town bar, a small brick building with one window behind bars and a steel gate in front of the open door. A man exits and gets into his pickup truck. When he is gone, the street is empty.

  ‘The entire team together again, aren’t we?’ says Dr Shirley Kgope, and smiles when Sandrien tells her about Lerato’s new position.

  They are sitting in Dr Kgope’s air-conditioned office in Colesberg. Sandrien is excited to hear that Widereach is establishing a branch and that Dr Kgope has moved here to become the regional representative.

  ‘The government policy regarding antiretrovirals has been so complicated and so defensive for such a long time, and there has been so much hostility towards NGOs who want to provide them,’ says Dr Kgope. ‘The policy of course changed some time ago, but in practice it’s not simple. Let me get back to you on this. I’m still new and am trying to gain influence. Currently it is not Widereach’s policy to provide antiretrovirals to government agencies, especially when we’re not managing the infrastructure. Let’s see how things work out.’

  ‘But surely you understand the urgency of this matter, probably better than anyone else!’

  ‘Believe me, I get it.’ Dr Kgope’s head nods slowly. ‘We can let you have HIV testing kits immediately. But antiretrovirals? Much more problematic.’

  Sandrien starts her rounds on Helpmekaar, where Grace lives. It used to be her parents’ farm; now it belongs to her and Kobus. Here, in the outbuildings, was the weaving mill. At ninety-three, Ma Karlien is roaming through the half-remembered rooms of the homestead, wasting away. She refuses to move in with Kobus and Sandrien. Sandrien can recognise nothing in her mother of the woman she remembers. And it is someone other than Sandrien whom her mother is searching for in the dim rooms.

  To prevent their labourers from obtaining lifelong tenure on the land, her parents let most of them go a few years ago. Only Grace, her daughter Brenda, and Xoliswe are left. Grace’s other daughter, Alice, is dead. Grace is looking after Alice’s baby. Brenda is looking after Ma Karlien.

  Sandrien ties Grace’s granddaughter to her back with a blanket while doing pap smears and drawing blood from the three women. When she is done, she sits down, right up against Grace. There is a small gust of wind. Grace’s upper body sways slightly, and Sandrien feels the joints hinging inside Grace.

  ‘I cannot stay for long; I have many other farms to take care of. I’ll come again tonight.’

  She rinses clothing for Grace, washes the child’s cloth nappies, builds and lights a fire. Further promises are on the tip of Sandrien’s tongue. As she drives away, she looks in her side mirror. Black veils of soot cling above the windows and doors of Grace’s little house.

  ‘At least I can do HIV tests now,’ says Sandrien, ‘thanks to Widereach.’

  Lerato sits authoritatively behind her desk, arms folded.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘the government also gives testing kits. But work with the Americans instead if you want.’

  ‘I cannot get antiretrovirals from them.’

  Lerato looks through the window. ‘Have you heard,’ she says, ‘that Walter Mabunda is now the provincial MEC for health? We must be careful, they want to completely provincialise health.’ But then she brightens and continues. ‘I’ve been invited, and the mayor too, for a hunting weekend at Twilight Lodge. A new hunting farm, a nice posh one. I’m not much of a hunter, but believe me, the mayor is – especially of girls!’

  Lerato laughs as if she and Sandrien are conspiring.

  ‘Can you please install a basin for me in my office in Venterstad? I have to sterilise my hands between patients.’

  Lerato frowns. She picks up the phone. She looks at Sandrien while she instructs someone to order the basin. See, her expression says, I give the orders here.

  ‘What is the situation with antiretrovirals, Lerato? We all know, after all, that the policy has been for some time to provide it universally.’

  ‘Not so simple, girl. Issues of distribution, of infrastructure. Only doctors may prescribe them. And the issue
of patient cooperation. We all know the risks if patients do not comply properly. We can only do what we can do. And what we have money for.’

  ‘And if I can get it elsewhere, how do I get a doctor to prescribe it?’

  Lerato frowns. She lifts her chin and looks down her nose at Sandrien.

  ‘We have a lot of vacancies for doctors at the moment. Everything in due course, my meisie.’

  Sandrien sits with her face in her hands opposite Kobus.

  ‘Yesterday two of my patients died, in a single day. This morning,’ she holds out an arm in front of her, ‘I lifted a man on the examination table – a twenty-nine-year-old man – like a tiny bird. As I lifted him, the diarrhoea poured out of him over my arm, down my leg.’

  Kobus remains quiet for a long time. He does not look up when he speaks.

  ‘You’re never here at Dorrebult any more,’ he says. ‘And even when you’re here, you’re not really here. You’re becoming a stranger.’

  When she arrives at her Venterstad clinic, the testing kits are there, compliments of Widereach. Her heart lifts. Each testing kit is in a little suitcase-like box, a clinic-in-miniature. Next to the queue of people in front of her door a basin is lying on the veranda. No pipes, no taps. She calls the works department, insists they come and install the basin today.

  ‘If I haven’t got a working basin by lunchtime tomorrow, I will complain to Lerato.’

  The man laughs and puts down the receiver.

  Late afternoon, after her last patient, she drives to Aliwal North. Dust clouds are emanating from the windows of the municipal offices. Scaffolding and canvas block the way to Lerato’s office. A team of workers. Sandrien greets one of them, the husband of one of her sickest patients.

  ‘Where is Lerato?’ Sandrien has to shout to render herself audible amidst the din of brick cutters.

  ‘We’re renovating,’ the secretary shouts back. ‘We’re remodelling! Lerato’s office will be lovely! And double the size!’