“A few symptoms,” Con said. “But typhus is bred by filth, lice usually, as you well know, and Danny is extremely clean. The people he worked with are clean and there is no history of typhus in that particular area presently, or for several years past. Danny has no tick bites or he would have reported them immediately to our base; we are both well aware of Japanese tick typhus and have the greatest respect for it.
“If he has typhus he’s gotten it since he’s come out of the jungle. This is impossible because the incubation period for typhus is roughly twelve days. Further, typhus has a very drying effect to the mouth and tongue. Danny is foaming slick saliva. He has no splotches or rash of any kind and his mental capacity has been by no means dull the past few days; a primary symptom of typhus. Yet I will concur that he has some of the symptoms.”
“You have an M.D.?” Dr. Bagtu asked.
“No.”
“You have studied?”
“Only what’s been relative to me. But that’s immaterial now.”
“What is your opinion,” Carla asked Con respectfully.
“From my experience I would say Danny has cerebral malaria. Yet I know of no history of cerebral malaria.”
“Possible. Very possible,” the Doctor said.
“The important thing is to find out exactly, quickly,” Con said. “And execute the proper treatment.”
The Doctor agreed. He needed speedy transportation to the laboratory below. Con said he would go see Gus Regas about getting the use of his car to be put at the Doctor’s disposal. Doctor Bagtu gave Danny a sedative and said he would obtain additional sedatives to leave with them in his absence. They agreed Carla would stay with the patient and that no one else be admitted to the room in case Danny had a contagious or communicable disease. They re-secured Danny, Con left while the Doctor was bandaging Carla’s cheek.
CHAPTER XVIII
Gus Regas was sitting on the chaise longue of his sittingroom off his second floor bedroom in his privately owned “cottage” two blocks from the Turners’. The perfect picture of sartorial splendor he had on a black silk lounging robe over black silk pajamas with a white scarf and Nickie was doing his nails.
“All right,” he was saying. “You may have the young Britisher to dinner; the one who passed out whatever his name.”
“Guy Wilson,” she said.
“But no performances at the dinner tonight, you hear.” He was smoking a Turkish cigarette in his ivory holder.
“I promise,” she pouted.
“You may have several drinks before the dinner. None after.”
“I promise. I don’t really have to have the Englishman.”
“You go ahead. I think it a rather good idea now that you’ve brought it up.”
She was concernedly filing at his little fingernail with an emery board. “Why won’t you marry me?” she asked abruptly.
“Don’t be foolish, Nickie. This arrangement is perfectly suited to both of us. You know that.”
“But I want you to marry me. I promise I’ll be good.”
“Nonsense. You’re still quite in love with that Filipino and you know it.”
“I know it. But it would still be better for me to be married to you.”
“You’d hate it. In the first place it would impose too much on your freedom. Besides you wouldn’t want to sleep with a fat pig like me and I wouldn’t allow myself to sleep with you. Why I’d be working for you in no time at all.”
“I wouldn’t mind. You’ve been good to me. No one has ever been so good,” she said her head bowed, working now with the cuticle scissors. “You’ve got a hangnail.”
“Well, take it off,” Gus sighed thoroughly. “Look, child, if you’d find some interest as I suggested you’d be much better off with this world than doing all this running around that you do.”
“But you want me to run around. Besides being your hostess it’s part of my job, isn’t it? You said that when I run around and your back is turned people think you a fool and have sympathy for you all at once. It’s easier for you to do business with them?”
“True. True. But do you have to get drunk and sleep with every one of them? Make a spectacle so that Filipino you’ll probably never see again will know that you don’t care.
“Or to pacify some of your own foolish guilts by making a beat up chap like this Wilson feel good for a couple of weeks. Do you think that’s the only way you can help him; by getting drunk and sleeping with him. You know better than that. Down deep you do,” he patted her arm. “I know you do.”
“I know there is more,” she said sullenly.
“I told you before that if you got yourself straight, really straight, we’d consider marriage if you still wanted it. Didn’t I?”
Her raven black hair lay placidly, resting against her white terry cloth robe. She looked up at him tilting her head like an inquisitive puppy. “But you sleep with other women.”
“Nickie, Nickie,” Gus chuckled all over. Where ever did that come from? he asked himself. “But shouldn’t I? My God with you running half-naked about the house with that pagan body of yours. Who wouldn’t be stimulated?”
She smiled, going to work on his nails again. “Do you really take opium and women too?”
He giggled, vibrating all over. “How many times have I told you we Greeks have an infinite capacity for vice.”
“I wish I knew you.”
“And if I slept with you, you would.”
“Then it’s final,” she said slightly bitterly. “You won’t even consider marrying me.”
“Not now.”
“Then I’ve decided. I wish to go help in the war. I’ll help my country. I’ll work hard,” she said determinedly.
He felt the tightening pressure of her fingers on his hand.
“I’ve given it much, much thought,” she said. “You said you would arrange it if I were serious.”
“You really are serious,” he said seriously. “Why?”
“I don’t know. But I must. I must,” she said with a deep inward invocation, but still intent with his nails.
“I’m happy for you, child,” he said paternally, his eyes misting.
“Me too, I guess,” she said, getting up, seeing his misting eyes. Poor Gus, she thought, he was really so sentimental. “I’ll put the polish on before dinner. I’ll go fix the place cards.”
He studied her for a moment; the tawny smoothness of her neck against the white robe and the eyes; those deep black, puppy’s eyes. The eyes of a Bernadette, he thought. A Bernadette in Dante’s cave.
“Be sure you put Con next to Carla,” he said.
“You started that, didn’t you?”
“In a negative way.”
“You love to put people together to see what will happen. Don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
“I guess,” she nodded smiling. “I guess I do,” she meditated. Yes I do, she concluded. Then walked gracefully away laughing to herself.
He waited until she had closed the door. He sighed deeply and sprang agilely from the couch removing the key for his padlocked brief case from his handkerchief pocket. There was work to be done.
There were piles of coded messages to break, letters and orders to initial, and the brief for the secret meeting at Mountbatten’s secret headquarters. And, too, he had almost forgotten, his own recommendation on the Prisoner of War Exchange to prepare. It would be a long night after the party tonight, maybe a whole night’s work. Well tomorrow he would rest on the plane. Tomorrow? Colonel Piccolo, he asked himself. That was stupid. He hadn’t finished today.
Gus hadn’t been working a half-hour when Nickie ushered in Con who quickly explained his situation. Gus was all but obsequious. Of course his car and chauffeur would be at the Doctor’s disposal and further if any of the miracle drugs were required Gus had the proper improper connections, he inferred. He offered to have his own personal physician brought in from Delhi but when Con told him that they were flying in an American medical man, G
us seemed to think that would suffice. Finally Gus offered to come over and have a look at Danny himself.
Con said he didn’t think it wise, please not to repeat it, but there was a good chance that whatever Danny had it was contagious; it would be best if no one called. Gus said he would spread the word they weren’t to be imposed upon.
Heading back for the hotel in the half-dark Con wondered why he had bypassed the Turners and gone directly to Gus for aid. Con noted Gus had seemed to be the only one that had presumed, as he had, that Danny’s condition was really very serious. Yet Gus hadn’t even seen him.
Going over it all once more, remembering what Gus had said about the drugs, Con tried hard not to believe that Gusto might have anything to do with the fortunes in medical supplies that had been stolen from U. S. warehouses in Bombay and Calcutta.
When Con reached the hotel he dispatched Dr. Bagtu off with his specimens, the Doctor promising to call as soon as he had any definite analysis.
Con checked Danny and ordered tea and a sandwich for Carla, then as he was building up the fire Carla came in from Danny’s room, a thermometer in her hand.
“You better take a look,” she said worriedly. “His temperature’s a hundred-five and in spite of the blankets he’s not sweating at all.”
She turned and went back into Danny’s bedroom. Con followed. She had turned the lights down because, she said, it seemed to quiet him. Danny was burning with fever but in spite of the blankets he was caky dry. Carla began to massage him, trying to soothe him, and when she touched the area of his kidneys he winced with pain.
“We should get a urine specimen,” she said.
“The Doctor got one.”
“No he didn’t,” she said. “He wouldn’t give and the Doctor thought it better not to wait.”
“What would we do with it?”
“I can tell,” she said. “When I was a child in Budapest we were very poor. We had to be able to tell.”
Con got a small specimen by dipping Danny’s hand in some warm water. They took it into the bathroom. She held it to the light studying it, then sniffed and sniffed it. She put her forefinger in it and tasted. She didn’t make the slightest grimace, Con saw. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Do you have to?”
“It tastes of dry blood when the kidneys are plugged. And they are. He’ll have to be sweat.”
“I’ll get blankets.”
“No. Goblets from the dining room. Water goblets. Thick ones. We’ll give him vendousis. Set fire to cotton in the glass and place the glass on his back. When the cotton burns the air out a vacuum will form, the skin will be sucked up into the glass and the waste drawn out.”
“I’ve seen it. In Greece. And once in America when I was a small boy,” he said. “My father made my mother give them to him. She didn’t like it. She thought it was primitive,” he smiled.
“Then you know it works.”
“Yes. I know there is no better way to get out the waste.”
They stood there under the brighter than bright bathroom light for an awkward suspenseful second embarrassed over the finding of this new strange kinship.
They got the glasses. They stuck vaseline to the bottom of the glasses, the cotton to the vaseline, and lit a candle. They lined up the glasses and she lit the first one and set it firmly to his back. The cotton flickered out and then the skin on his back turned pinkish red swiftly as it sucked up into the glass. They covered his back with them and finally he broke into a profuse sweat. She ran her forefinger across his now lobster red back and touched it to her tongue.
“He’s rotten,” she said her face an expressionless mask.
She asked for some tea. He got it. Danny rested easy for a while, then about midnight he started to get violent again. They gave him another sedative. He quieted. They decided there was a possibility he would swallow his tongue if he had another delirium fit and would take turns watching him while the other rested in the sitting room.
Con let her sleep during her last shift and she didn’t awaken until the phone rang around nine. It was a wire from Allied Headquarters that Captain Travis, Medical Corps, U.S.A. would arrive late that day. He told her.
“Good. How’s Danny?”
“Resting easy.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I wasn’t tired. I knew I couldn’t sleep. I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done.”
“It had nothing to do with you,” she said rigidly. “I did what I thought I should.”
“Of course. You’d better go home and get some rest now,” he said compassionately.
“No,” she said fixedly. “I’d better wash.”
He smiled knowingly.
She had no makeup. Her disheveled hair was the color of golden wet sand. One lock fell over her forehead. He saw a delicate haze of sensuality that hid not a chiseled madonna face but a child’s face. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; all that he had ever searched for in a woman. All somehow there on the haze of that child’s face that he ever wanted to be within himself.
“I’d like breakfast,” she said from a distance. “Will you?” And walked majestically into Danny’s room.
Later in the morning Dr. Bagtu called. All Danny’s tests were negative. He would return at once. Colonel Pearson called saying he had spun the wheels. Con checked with Delhi as he had promised and was advised to meet Travis’s plane. Danny’s temperature went to one hundred six. Gus called that he had some quinine and sent it over. Con gave Danny fifteen grams and he puked it three times before Con forced it down to stay.
It was almost impossible to change his linen but somehow Carla managed fresh pillow slips and top sheet. She packed him with hot water bottles and piled blankets on him. He was sweating but not as much as the night before. About two in the afternoon he began chattering in his delirium again.
He rambled and rambled twisting and turning in the bed. Finally Con got a needle in his arm and his shouting gradually changed to an incoherent mumble, then finally he slept.
Dr. Bagtu came back. Con left and got Gus’s car and started for Dehra Dun to meet Travis. When he got to the field it was almost zeroed in, visibility fifty feet. He called Carla and she said she was sweating Danny again. The British Air Control Officer said the field was expected to clear any time. Con paced the airport and drank coffee with a Canuck maintenance crew. The plane arrived at five the next morning.
Con told the chauffeur to get in back and took the wheel of the black Jaguar sedan, motioning the Doctor into the front seat. The Doc was very slender, Con noted. He was above medium height with a crew cut and receding hair line, a very straight aristocratic nose. He spoke with a southern accent. Right away Con liked the way he had looked at him straight and unflinchingly, with dark, sullen eyes.
Without probing too much Con found out that he was from Nashville by way of Memphis, had gone to school at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins, and was a general practitioner who had leaned more and more toward surgery and was really very interested in psychoanalysis.
“There were a lot better doctors in our medical pool,” Grey Travis said. “But none of them went to Johns Hopkins. That name has a tendency to awe laymen. They seem to forget that only people go there.”
They came to the Mosorrie road and cut off and soon they started uphill; the road twisting and turning, spotted with thick vapor balls but with hardly any traffic, the Doctor ardently studying Con out of the corner of his eye. The Doctor hadn’t mentioned to the young officer that he had been briefed on him in Delhi. In Delhi, he had quickly found out, Con was almost a legend.
But the Doctor had never questioned why. He had never considered that in Delhi there were over two thousand staff men and nearly half of them in-on-the-know. Con being the only American actively in combat command in Asia, and behind the lines, too, had with the simplest of his exploits stimulated the easily activated eagerness and imaginations of anyone who had the slightest guilts over their own inactive participation, o
r the inactive participation of Americans as a whole in the war of the Far East. He had become the representative of them all. The symbol of themselves.
Carla was sitting by Danny’s bed when they entered. Danny was resting. She said he hadn’t been at all violent since ten the night before, but he was still in a state of delirium. His temperature hadn’t varied more than one half-degree since midnight; around one hundred-five. She told the Doctor she had managed to force some liquid down him but he was vomiting most of it.
Con went over and put his hand on Danny’s forehead. Then for the first time he noticed the twisted scar tissue on the deformed eyelid of Danny’s bad eye. He hardly looked the same Danny without his monocle, he thought.
He took Danny’s hand. Immediately, tightly and wetly, the hand grasped his. Con studied him. His lips were livid and his skin had a clayey tint, his breathing heavy and rasping. Con began to stroke his forehead, feeling the invisible brittle hairs of his shaven head, feeling Danny repose to the touch. Con’s chest filled with a sudden emotion, his throat a block as a mountainous wave of affection welled through him.
It was a strange emotion. It wasn’t sorrow, he discerned. It wasn’t sorrow, he learned that instant. What makes the kind of man that was the kind of man that would not permit you sorrow, he wondered. The Doctor came forward.
He and Carla left the room. She had sent out for some things and changed, Con saw. She had on grey flannel slacks and a white blouse and Roman sandals over bare feet. And in spite of her tired eyes her hair was neatly combed and she had on her usual moderate amount of makeup.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked finally.
“None.”
“Will you try?”
“We’ll see what the American doctor has to say. Did you sleep?”
“Yes,” he lied.
She knew it.
“I found your brandy,” she said. “That helped keep me awake. At the moment I’m not even very sleepy. Tired but not sleepy.”
“That’s what I need. Brandy. Where is it?”
“On the mantle. Behind you.”
Never So Few Page 30