by Mike Resnick
“I wish you would let us bring you back!” Jeremy blurted in English.
“Damn it, Jeremy!” hissed Elizabeth. “I know you mean well, but that’s an insult.”
The old woman turned to Jeremy. “My father is dead,” she said. “My husband is dead. My sons are dead. My grandsons are too young to give me orders. Uganda has been independent for 30 long rains. I will not take orders from you or any other European. I need no longer call you Bwana.”
When Jeremy had finally stammered an apology, Elizabeth took pity on him.
“Why don’t you unload the truck?” she suggested. That won her a look of awe from the old woman. For all her dedication, her Swahili, her attempt to make herself seem like a good daughter of the tribe, Elizabeth was still a European to them. She was all the more alien for being a black European and a woman who could give orders to men, especially white men, in this society where brides were still bought and sold.
“If you will have us—”
Instant protest, invitation, and apology followed in order: how could she doubt her welcome?
“—we shall stay for a few days and observe the children. We can make ourselves useful to you.”
The woman smiled. Surprisingly, given her age and health, she still possessed most of her teeth, and they glinted in the sunlight.
“But I have help, Memsaab.” Elizabeth flinched. That word again. So much for Sisterhood and fitting in. “My bibi has come to help me.”
“Her baby?” asked Jeremy, trying to translate.
“Bibi is ‘mother,’” answered Elizabeth. “You’ve seen those signs in the burnt-out stores and dukas along the road to Kampala, the ones that say Babito? That’s a contraction, or actually an acronym, for Baba, Bibi, and Toto—father, mother, and baby. In other words, stores for the whole family.” She paused. “Now please go unload the truck before you offend her again.”
Jeremy unloaded sack after sack of posho, the cornmeal that the Africans made into a porridge (and which Jeremy thought had the consistency and taste of library paste), and finally a precious box of powdered milk that they could use for the babies when (never if, only when) their mothers’ milk ran dry. If he had anything to say about it, they’d be drinking it now: if a mother was HIV positive, a baby could pick it up from breast milk if it hadn’t already contracted it in the womb.
Elizabeth Umurungi disappeared into the dark interior of the hut with her medical bag, leaving Jeremy standing outside. The children approached to watch him as he finished unloading the truck. Aware of their presence, he pocketed the keys, reached into the glove compartment, and slipped the revolver into his pocket. No sense putting temptation in their way.
When he walked to the door of the hut, Elizabeth and the old woman were kneeling beside a pallet that held the second wife. Jeremy remembered her from the relief center. He was surprised she had made it back alive.
“Get me some water,” Elizabeth ordered, not even bothering to turn around. “Rubbing alcohol too. We have to bring this fever down.”
One of the children immediately ran off to obey this not-quite-stranger with her shiny instruments and her way of commanding a man taller and stronger than their father had been. When the child sloshed back with a tin pan filled with dubiously clean water, Jeremy carried it and the rubbing alcohol inside.
Elizabeth sponged the woman on the pallet, while the other woman hovered and tried to sooth the patient. The sick woman’s face glowed, the life flickering in it like embers in an ebony lantern, building, flaring up…At any moment, he thought it would surely burn out into darkness.
“Help hold her still!” Elizabeth ordered when the patient began thrashing, and Jeremy, who had always worn sweatbands and gloves when working out in his West Side gym, leapt to obey.
When they finished, the old woman held her daughter-in-law against her shoulder while Elizabeth brought out a syringe and administered it.
Of the old woman’s “bibi,” there was no sign at all. Probably she was too shy or too frightened to even look at the strangers; Jeremy didn’t envy Elizabeth the task of coaxing her out where she could be examined.
* * *
Jeremy paused, sleeping bag in hand, and looked around the hut that had been allotted them. He was used to sweat blotching his shirts the instant he put them on. He was used to insects, used to animals, used to taking care of people in ways that would have made the men on the trading desk pass out. But the dark, claustrophobic hut with its long-unswept floor, its hovering, whining flies—his imagination conjured up sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and typhoid for starters, and then began dwelling on more exotic diseases.
Elizabeth simply shrugged and spread her sleeping bag out on the floor. Maybe it was only dried mud, but it certainly smelled like cow dung.
Dinner had come and gone—a scrawny chicken. They had protested that they had their own supplies, they could perfectly well feed themselves and everyone else; but the chicken had been killed and stewed, and they had had to eat it with every evidence of appreciation for the sacrifice it represented. Despite reprimands from mother and grandmother to let their guests eat in peace, Jeremy managed to feed at least half his dinner to the kids. He felt like a guilty child himself, feeding the family dog beneath the table, and then felt even guiltier for equating these starving children to household pets. It was a feast to them, and when their faces shone with the meager fat from the chicken skin, they started to yawn and soon wandered off.
Elizabeth and Jeremy left the hut and sat outside it, poking at a fire Jeremy had insisted on building. He promised himself that tomorrow he’d show the children how to toast things on it, wondering what he could substitute for marshmallows. He pulled out Ray’s letter, studied it thoughtfully, and then placed it back in his pocket, unopened.
Beyond the circle of the village and its tiny fields, darker than the night sky, lay uncleared land. The forest was coming back after the devastation of the past decades, and slowly, the wild creatures were returning. A hyena giggled maniacally, a lion coughed, and far off in the distance hippos grunted and bellowed.
Elizabeth picked up a green branch and maneuvered a few smoldering logs. They suddenly burst into flame, and a shower of sparks rose into the dark African sky.
“Where did you learn to tend a fire?” asked Jeremy, whose camp duty it was to build fires.
For an instant, her eyes lit with humor. “In Girl Guides,” she answered with a smile. “Certainly not in the bush.” Jeremy forced himself not to grimace. He still held his rolled-up sleeping bag. “Are you going to hang onto that security blanket all night?” she asked.
“Why don’t I sleep out in the truck?” he suggested. “More proper for the hired hand, wouldn’t you say?”
“Whatever makes you happy,” said Elizabeth. “Those kids look like they’d love to spend the night talking with you.” It was obvious that she would much rather have been able to say “us” than “you.” Suddenly she swatted a tsetse fly with surgical efficiency. It lay still for a minute, then got to its feet and groggily walked off.
“Nobody ever told me they were armor-plated until I got here,” said Jeremy, staring ruefully at the fly.
“If they get any worse, I may join you. We can take turns standing guard.” She sighed deeply. “I wish we had some light,” she continued. “Better than the firelight, I mean. I’d like to run some tests on that woman. She ought to be dead from that fever—she had a body temp of at least 105.”
“She was burning up,” Jeremy agreed. “I thought I’d be digging a grave.” He had been so careful to restrain the sick woman’s flailing hands. Face it: he had been afraid, just as he’d been every day since he came here. With every patient he touched, he faced the question: are you the one who’ll kick my T-cells out of balance? Will your AIDS be the death of me, too?
It was no different for him than for the other relief workers. He knew that. He was no one special. But he was ashamed to ask if the others were afraid, too.
“Did you see?�
� asked Elizabeth. At least, she could escape into the discipline of her profession. She could do something. “Her lesions actually seem to be shrinking.”
There was a drug on the market that reduced lesions—chicken pox or Kaposi’s sarcoma, it made no difference—but it was so expensive they’d need the treasure of King Solomon’s mines to pay for it.
“Any chance of remission?” Jeremy kept his face out of the firelight so she wouldn’t see the wild hope that heated it. At least, he hoped it was hope and not the first episode of night sweats.
Elizabeth put a hand out and gently touched his arm. “God only knows,” she said softly. “There’s always a chance, Jeremy. Always. And you’re a non-progressor. Every day, every month that you hold out increases the chances of a cure, and gives us more time to study you. When we get back to the compound, I’ll test your blood again.” She paused. “I wish we could bring her back. And I wish the old lady’s bibi would show up. You know, they tell me she cured one of the other villagers. They say he was dying of AIDS. That can’t be true, of course, but I’d still love to learn her methods.”
“Don’t tell me you believe in witch doctors?” asked Jeremy with a smile.
“I don’t believe in all the superstition that goes along with it, but some of these folk healers have stumbled on medicines that are new to science. There are plants that no one has classified yet, and it’s a fair bet that some of them will be effective against certain diseases. There’s a Nobel Prize waiting for the scientist who brings back the right plants.” She stared at the fire. “Yes, I wish I could convince the old woman to introduce me to this bibi of hers. Who knows what we might learn from her?”
“Maybe after a few days, when they see we don’t mean any harm…” began Jeremy.
“They already know that, Jeremy,” said Elizabeth. “Half of them have been to the camp at one time or another.” She poked at the fire with the stick, silent for awhile. A sudden chorus of warning screams and barks from a troop of baboons told them that a leopard was in the neighborhood. The noise continued for a couple of minutes, growing gradually softer as the troop retreated higher up their trees and the leopard decided to seek other prey.
Jeremy fumbled again for the letter in his pocket, brought it out, stared at the once-familiar handwriting for perhaps the tenth time that day, and began to tuck it back into the pocket.
“You’re driving me crazy with that letter!” snapped Elizabeth. “Either read the bloody thing or throw it into the fire!”
“I don’t feel like reading it,” said Jeremy.
“Then I’ll read it!” she said, snatching it from him. She bent over and began reading aloud by firelight:
* * *
“Dear (that’s a joke) Jeremy:
“After I stopped shaking and walked out on you and got back to the Keys, Bud wanted to head North after you with his AK. But Steve said what the fuck, Bud tested clean—no point throwing away his life along with yours and mine. And Steve’s. He’s real sick. ARC pneumonia. He calls it ARC-light bombing when he’s got enough breath to talk. I’ve moved in with the two of them to try to help out. Money goes farther that way, and I like to think I’m useful. It’s hard to watch him come apart and know this is how I’m going to end up.
“Then I think it’s how you’re going to end up too, and it’s not so bad. For once, you’re not going to be able to weasel your way out of something. Only you call it negotiating, don’t you? It’s part of that important stuff, like attention to detail and execution, that makes you such a big success on the Street. Wall, that is, not 42nd, where they sell themselves another way. Not much difference, is there, when you come right down to it? Talk about ‘execution’—you’ve sure executed the two of us like a pro.
“‘We can fight this,’ you said. Maybe you can turn what’s left of your life into a holy crusade against this thing you gave me. Me, I just want to live what years I’ve got left. In a way, I envy Steve. He’s out of it now, and he’s got Bud with him. I don’t know what Bud’ll do after he goes. Write, maybe. I’m using his computer. Don’t mind the spelling mistakes. Bud’s trying to get some rest, and if he knew I was writing to you, he’d probably pitch a fit.
“‘Why in hell are you bothering? he’d ask. For one thing, I want you to know what you’ve done.
“And I wanted to return these cufflinks to you. Bud was all for pawning them, sending you the ticket, and throwing one hell of a party, but that was always your job, wasn’t it? With your Platinum Card, easy come, easy go, right? I don’t want to drink your booze, and I don’t want my friends to, either. And I don’t want to keep these things around. I saw the catalog you ordered them from. 18 karat gold. I know what you paid. You must have been out of your mind.
“You want to look right, you said. You belong here. You belong with me. Dammit, if I belonged with you, why didn’t you ever bring me home? I saw that picture of your folks you hide in your desk. They look nice. Your father—he’s a big guy, maybe big enough to take in another son. Maybe he even valued the one he had—you, never mind the clone you stitched up out of bits of grad school, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The New Yorker, or whatever the hell. Instead, Tiffany cufflinks. And the bloody Hamptons and why don’t I move up to the City from the Keys, full-time, and take the goddamned Series 7 and you’d help me find a job. Then I could dress up and go to banquets for Greg Louganis or something with you and get my name on program committees. And if you died first, then I’d be the right kind of person to be written up as ‘companion of’ in The New York Times obituary section with all the other guys who are dying too damn young.
“No, thanks.
“You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you. But that wasn’t good enough. You had to play around and go test positive for HIV and give that to me, too.
“Careless, that’s what you are. Stupidly, killingly careless. Like the rules don’t apply to you. I saw how your friends act when you’re not looking or maybe you don’t care. They stiff waiters. They cut lines. They shout at people on the phones, people who can’t shout back because they need their jobs. You probably even barged into the doctor’s for your blood test ahead of six other people who had to wait even longer because you were there and you were important.
“Well, it’s going to get you too, Jeremy Harris, just like it’s getting the guy with TB on the street corner, wishing to hell he was dying down here where it’s warm.
“Besides, I want to return the cufflinks because I don’t want to get to the point where I have to pawn them and use the money. I wasn’t smart, like you, at making money. Never had all that much. With luck, when I go, I’ll go quick. If not, I plan to be somewhere warm, somewhere maybe people will take care of me. That’s why I left New York. When Steve’s gone, I’ll probably head even farther south.
“If I had folks I was alive to, I’d go home to them, maybe, not hide their picture.
“It doesn’t matter a whole hell of a lot. State of mind is important, though; that’s what Steve’s doctors said when they sent him home. We’re not hoping for a miracle cure. He hasn’t got a whole lot of time left, and no one knows that better than he does. But he’s happier with his partner around and his garden and his boat in sight—we hauled it out in front of his window. He can hear the ocean, and sometimes, when he’s able to eat, one of us goes and catches him a fish.
“So here’s the cufflinks. Keep ’em, throw ’em away, or pay Tiffany’s to change the monogram for the next sucker. No use wasting good stuff.
“Steve just woke up. Got to go in a minute. Bud yelled in from his room, ‘If you’re writing to Jeremy, tell the sonofabitch to get a life.’
“You had one. You threw it away. It couldn’t happen to you: you were important. You were privileged. Well, it did, and now you’ve thrown away my life too. Get a life, for as long as you can. That’s what I plan to do. So I’m going to live as much as I can. First, I’m taking care of Steve. Did you ever help anyone up close? I’m not talking about writing checks and hand
ing out cufflinks. It’s kind of a mess, only helping someone who’s that sick makes you feel…it’s like you respect yourself. You know, I didn’t for awhile there. You were paying the bills. I had to go along, I thought. But I hated it.
“Don’t try to get in touch. This isn’t something you can negotiate until you talk me around. I know you’re better at it than I am. Thing is, as long as I don’t see you, I can remember the good things. But if I see you, I know I’ll get mad all over again. And scared, just like when I first heard, and I prayed for a heart attack right then and there so I wouldn’t have to go through what I know lies up ahead.
“Don’t look for me. Don’t even think about me. You know the old line, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’? Right now, I think that if I saw you, I’d kill you or die trying. And there’d go the few years I’ve got left. I’m not willing to throw them away too.
“Get a life, Jeremy. If you know how.
“Raymond”
Elizabeth stopped, her eyes glittering in the firelight. She was silent for a long time. Then she looked up. “I don’t know what to say…”
“Maybe now you understand why I didn’t want to know what was in it,” he said bitterly.
“It’s a terrible burden to carry,” she acknowledged. “But you’re not the only one this has happened to.”
“That’s a damned arrogant thing to say. At least you were able to come back here…”
She moved abruptly, then stopped. It was as if she wanted to take his letter—and his idiotic defensive statement—and toss the whole lot into the fire. “I didn’t mean to come back alone. I wasn’t alone in Paris. Ever. I could have had anyone. Bankers, oil men, Frenchmen whose blood was so blue it was a wonder they could still breathe.” She sighed. “What I chose was Paul. That was his Western name, the one he used in medical school. He was an Ibo.”