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Another Justified Sinner

Page 14

by Sophie Hopesmith


  ‘How come?’

  ‘Seeing Dad. Then seeing you.’

  ‘A bit of a shock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did it make you feel?’

  ‘Shocked.’

  ‘But what else? Anything else?’

  ‘Oh Mum, stop it.’

  ‘Honey, this is why people commune with ancestors. To get to the bottom of things! To set them up for the next leg of the journey. To become a man.’

  ‘I guess I was just really pleased to see you. I guess I realised how much I’ve missed you. I miss you so much.’ The tears turned back on, and they felt cool and remarkable.

  ‘There you go, that’s what we were waiting for. Why did you run away here? Was it to stop yourself crying?’

  ‘I haven’t been crying that much. You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘You know that anger is a kind of love, too? The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.’

  ‘Oh, that’s such a cliché.’

  ‘Such a cliché? Well, I suppose you’re right. Someone should sack the scriptwriter.’ They both laughed quietly at that.

  ‘Well, OK, I’ve got something I want to know: why didn’t Dad commune with me? Why did he look so sad?’

  His mum stopped swinging again. She jumped down from the swing and sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘You were the one that did it to him. Why did you make him so sad?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought he was a happy man. That’s how I remember him.’

  ‘Ahh, remembering again. Are you sure that’s how you remember him? As happy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing contrary to that, which you may wish to retrieve?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okey doke, then.’

  ‘Oh Mum.’ He dropped to his knees. ‘Mum, I don’t feel so good.’

  ‘Oh my little boy.’

  He stumbled towards her, his arms outstretched. All he wanted was her arms, her big, grown-up arms.

  ‘No, Marcus.’ She held up her hand. ‘If you come closer, I’ll disappear.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘I will. Trust me. Trust you.’

  ‘OK, then.’ He stopped and stayed very still, his head dropped on to his thighs.

  ‘Mum, am I a bad person?’

  ‘If you’re asking the question, then you probably are.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You’re not a bad person, but you’ve got bad inside you. That’s like everyone, really. You’re probably no better or worse than anyone else.’

  ‘Have I done bad things?’

  ‘Of course. Terrible things.’

  ‘Did I kill Nancy?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Why am I out here?’

  ‘What difference does it make? Here, there. There’s always you.’

  ‘Is there a God?’

  ‘That’s not an important question.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s the most important question of all.’

  ‘No. It’s not. The answer’s important, but not the question.’

  ‘But surely I won’t get the answer unless I’ve asked the question?’

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed. ‘You haven’t understood anything.’

  He felt the heat whirl up within him. He looked up and she had gone. There was no swing. There was no mother. He did not know what had or had not happened. He felt consciousness drift in and out. He didn’t feel so good.

  The Tombe villagers found him collapsed with his limbs buckled up and his head all skew-whiffed. His eyes were open but he could not see. He stared at and through and into something. His face was all sweat and colour. The lips were moving but no words dripped out.

  At first, they panicked. They worried that something had gone wrong with the fried potatoes. There was a bit of a debate. ‘But nobody has ever been sick from fried potatoes’ was the general consensus. Potatoes were solid and mild, all waxy starchiness. Somebody pointed out the toxicity of green potatoes and potato leaves, but the majority scoffed at this. They had not served the man green potatoes! They were not idiots. Beatrice, wife of the village headman, was brought forward, and confirmed she had not fried any green potatoes. Anyway, she had also given these fried potatoes to her family – and were they not upright and well and joining in with the discussion?

  The debate died down quickly after that. Marcus’s bones were dragged like firewood. He was shifted to one of the mud brick houses and his body lain out on the floor, in the dust, so that his hair streaked with grey and the beetles scuttled over him.

  A village meeting was called, although not everybody could come: people were in the field; some had gone out to beg. But there was a relatively good attendance and decisions were made. A rich white man could not survive alone for long in Malawi, wearing only his underpants and waving whole fishes about, without even a pocketknife. They estimated that he had been wandering the land for no more than two to three days. They guessed that he had not gone far. They surmised that even yesterday some sickness had hollowed him out and sucked out his soul: hadn’t he worn his eyes all wild? Hadn’t his face been all puffed and paled, like the weight of the sky was pressed on it? No, this wasn’t the work of the fried potatoes: or even the fish or the maize or the sunburn or thirst. This was the work of the insides. The eternal internal thing that winds us up like a spring but can suddenly snap or turn rusty. Whether a mechanism in the head or the heart, it was impossible to know. But something had failed him. What these wealthy westerners didn’t realise is that somebody can be dead but not physically dead; just like someone can be physically dead but forever alive. This man was dead. The sing’anga, the village herbalist, wholeheartedly agreed. He beckoned a few people to help him roll Marcus onto a straw mat in the corner, as a sign of respect. Duly respected, the crowd wandered out.

  Tombe fell between two other villages. They summoned a man called Dixon, to run to the one to their east. They knew a charity was based there, full of white smiling folk, always burnt and bitten. It was the obvious place to try first.

  This village lay at a distance of 15 miles. Dixon had made the trip before. He was the village messenger and he was as lithe as a leopard and as fierce as a hippo. He had calves as wide as fire pits.

  He went back to the house, to look in on Marcus. He made a mental photograph of his features, his height, his hair and eye colour. He stored this information and banged the soles of his feet to the earth, felt the earth shudder through him.

  This was when Dixon was happiest: with the wind sailing through his hair and the feel of his body in motion. The only thing that saddened him was that he would eventually grow tired and would eventually stop. It was sad to think that he could not run forever. It was sad to think that he could not run over borders and continents and oceans. He wanted to explore every corner of the world. He wanted to know where rich white men came from. He was twenty-four and had never left his district. He just ran to and fro and back and forth and in and out of the square metre. If this district were the entire world, he would be the world’s most travelled traveller. He might even be famous.

  Stephanie was the first to notice Dixon; an ever-growing speck on the horizon. She called to Philippa and they spoke in raised, dramatic voices. Then they sat on the wooden bench on the compound’s porch: hypnotised by Dixon’s thrashing legs, their thoughts excitable and keen. When he was within hollering distance, they gazed at their hands and the ground, at the scurrying of insects. It seemed wrong to maintain eye contact at such a close distance. It seemed to break something human and sacrosanct. They waited out his running in their own discomfited ways. The silence thronged between them.

  In the final few seconds, Stephanie looked up and rose to her feet. A hand was held to her forehead, eyes wincing from the glare of the afternoon sun. She recognised Dixon, and waved.

  ‘Dixon,’ she croaked. Philippa stayed seated.

  ‘I have message,’ he said, as he slowed to a halt. His English was rough, but he kn
ew a few basic phrases. He had been practising these in his head for most of the journey. He coughed into the mounting tension, then spat on top of it.

  ‘Man,’ he continued. ‘White man. We have white man.’

  ‘Marcus?’ Philippa stood up too now; she was smoothing down her skirt and trying to look composed. Inside, she was a maelstrom of insurance claims and solicitor bills and bad PR for the charity. They had never lost a volunteer before. It was unheard of.

  Dixon shook his head, but this was because he did not understand. Stephanie, recognising the difficulties, turned to Philippa: ‘I’m going to get Kondwani.’ Soon, Kondwani was standing among them, the smile tugging at his cheek, his usual sanguine self in the face of adversity. As he chattered to Dixon, the smile only grew wider.

  ‘He talk of man. I think it Marcus. He sick. He cannot speak or see. They think…’ He trailed off and tapped his head.

  ‘What does that mean?’ urged Stephanie, the hysteria swelling up.

  ‘Something wrong in head.’

  ‘What?’

  Philippa shrugged. ‘He may have a medical history. Something we didn’t know about. We can’t be responsible for this.’

  ‘But we definitely got clearance from his doctor, didn’t we? In the application…?’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t mean anything. You know what GPs are like. They’ll sign anything just to get you out of the door.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’

  Dixon continued to stand there, patient and statue-like. He had gone from post van to post-box.

  ‘We’ll have to drive him to the hospital in the sugar estate. His insurance will cover it.’

  ‘It’s still quite basic, though.’

  ‘If he needs anything more, we’ll have to get him out somewhere else. There are better hospitals in Zambia.’

  ‘Do you think we can do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Worse-case scenario, perhaps we can fly him home? Or at least fly him into Europe. Sometimes the insurance covers that.’

  ‘I don’t think so. They usually do anything they can in the clause to wriggle out of that one. It costs them tens of thousands. No, I think we’re jumping ahead of ourselves. We haven’t even seen him yet. We can’t possibly know how he is. Let’s pick him up and take him to the hospital.’

  ‘One of us should do that, but one of us should stay here.’

  ‘You stay here and I’ll go pick him up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Philippa grimaced with relief. She didn’t like hospitals; especially not Malawian hospitals.

  ‘Yes, it’s fine – and I’ll have Kondwani with me.’

  Kondwani nodded. He spoke all of this back to Dixon. ‘He say, plan good. He run back now.’

  ‘What? But that’s ridiculous. We can give him a lift in the car.’

  Kondwani relayed this back to Dixon.

  ‘He run.’

  Stephanie shrugged. ‘OK, then. That’s fine. Goodbye, Dixon. Thank you.’

  Dixon understood these words, so he bowed his head and started to run again: both his legs and thoughts.

  Kondwani and Stephanie bumbled into the car. As they drove off, they saw Aldo and a man called Chris; they strode towards Philippa, gesturing to the car, a keyed-up wonder about them, a closet delight in the drama. Kondwani’s habitual grin gave nothing away; Stephanie wore her best poker face. She didn’t like the idea of anyone feeding off someone’s bad fortune. She thought about this for a few minutes as Kondwani sped off down the dirt track, the car bumping up and down, grit spraying off into corners. She supposed she had this ridiculous righteousness about her. Everything was crystal clear. She found the world so frustrating. If only she could be prime minister, head of the UN, or something. She dreamed such impossible dreams. She taunted herself with–

  ‘Woah!’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You not look?’ Kondwani motioned in front of the car, perplexed but eyes twinkling. ‘We almost die, my Stephanie! We could die, and you think about… What you think about?’

  ‘Oh, I was a million miles away.’ She started to explain the expression…

  ‘Yes, I know, I know. You tell me that one.’

  The car trundled on, past the gawping family that clutched the goat Kondwani had almost killed…

  ‘They come out of nowhere,’ he said, repeating another English express he liked. ‘Dead goat – dead family. You see? That goat is life. Goat feed them.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘These bloody roads!’ Kondwani had learned a lot of English swear words from the group. He enjoyed them immensely. ‘They are not roads!’

  Stephanie had to agree with that one. Even the highways were just tracks of dirt. She had never been to a country with such poor infrastructure. It made her spin into hopelessness. There was so much to do.

  Her thoughts drifted to her time in the charity: would she ever go home? Even Philippa returned to the UK every so often, to visit her grown-up children and take lunch with friends. Everybody went home eventually: either permanently or just to visit, to reconnect with a way of life that they all desperately missed. She was the only one who did not do that. She was the only one who had nobody in the UK that she really wanted to turn to; or whom she felt she could.

  Stephanie glanced at Kondwani’s hands on the steering wheel. How the pulse of the car thudded right through those hands. How his legs twitched at the pedals. How his eyelashes fluttered over the eyes that stared right ahead of him. His chest breathing so regular. These roads were some of the most unsafe she’d known, but in a car with him, she only ever felt safe. She felt miraculously safe.

  He looked over. She blushed.

  ‘I have food on my face?’ he asked. They both laughed.

  ‘No,’ she smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t staring at you, I was staring into the distance. But it must have looked a bit odd. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Even my wife not stare like that!’ he roared. And at the mention of his wife, Stephanie’s hands folded up into her lap and she crossed her legs very tight and peered out of the window beside her. She looked very still, but there was a trembling.

  When they arrived into Tombe, the women yelped once more, and a crowd of wriggling children opened and closed their hands over the hot metal fizz of the car.

  Kondwani spoke to the headman. Stephanie caught a few phrases, which Kondwani had taught her, but she couldn’t hold her own. The language was so painfully dialectical. She kept trying and trying to learn it.

  Kondwani took her hand and led her into a house a few minutes’ walk away. The headman nodded, said something, and left them.

  ‘Shit.’ Kondwani dropped her hand and shook his head. ‘He look bad. They say he… What is word?’ Kondwani did an impression of somebody shaking, their eyes rolled back, the tongue sticking out.

  ‘Fitted? He had a fit?’

  ‘I don’t know if that is right word. I don’t know word.’

  ‘Does he have a fever?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think it’s an illness? Something contagious?’

  ‘We hope not.’ He was now moving forwards. ‘I carry him. You stay. I am strong. I get no sickness.’ He made a spectacle of bending his arms, moving a small mound of muscle. ‘I carry him.’

  The village stayed their distance but mumbled sympathetically as Marcus was lowered on to the back seat of the car. They offered food, which was refused. Instead, they gave thanks, and also offers of food in return: the villagers also refused. All grateful tokens of food refused, and everyone appeased, Stephanie and Kondwani slotted back into the car. They waved at the villagers as the engines revved up. The villagers waved back. There was no laughter about fish and underpants today. There was something too pathetic about this man, now. He had surpassed even laughter.

  The hospital was a slow and matted mess of insurance claims and misunderstandings. Stephanie spent a long time on the phone, wrangling and scrambling. She located the nitty-gritty detail o
f his policy: no, it did not cover medical evacuation; yes, it would cover medicine. She then set work on her best negotiation skills, via Kondwani, to guarantee Marcus a private bed. This mostly involved bribing. However, she did not have any notes on her, and her pleas about Marcus’s credit card – which he would access when better – did not work. There was not enough space. Besides, Marcus’s condition was assessed as non-urgent, so he was wheeled into a long corridor with a line of other trollied beds. She sheltered herself around him.

  His eyes were now open. He was blinking at the windows. He went to speak, but felt a surge of embarrassment. He was going to pretend to fall back asleep, but Kondwani prodded him. ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice rested strange on his lips. His lips were dry.

  ‘You take drugs?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They want to know if you’ve taken medication in Malawi,’ said Stephanie. ‘Or drugs.’

  ‘You know,’ grinned Kondwani. ‘Malawi gold? Smoke some?’

  ‘No!’ Marcus tried to sit up, but failed.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here? You’ve been sick. You ran away from the camp. Do you remember that? What do you remember?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Marcus. But then – ‘I saw my parents.’ A bit more came back to him… ‘I think I slept in a tree.’ His eyes were wide and lunatic. ‘Oh god. Oh god!’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, Marcus. Something has happened and we’re just trying to figure out what that is.’

  He swallowed. ‘Aspirin. Something else for headaches – something stronger, I forget what it is called. But I only took it a couple of times. Oh, and my anti-malaria medication.’

  ‘Yes, they were particularly asking about that one.’ She beckoned to a passing nurse. ‘You wanted to know about his anti-malarial medication?’

  ‘It’s Mosaquine.’

  She said something to Kondwani. He translated. ‘She ask, is it one? A week, I mean?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a weekly medication.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Stephanie. ‘I thought they were always daily.’

  ‘I didn’t want to take daily. I always forget to take things daily. I got this one – Mosaquine – because it’s a weekly one. I wanted weekly.’

 

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