The Backpacker

by John Harris

  It all sounded very probable, and if I hadn’t become sick we would have believed it to be the truth. But I did get sick; I caught dengue fever, and the truth behind the severed finger was finally revealed.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE GREAT ESCAPE

  ONE

  The jungle at night can be a mosquito-infested scene from a horror film: mozzies come out at dusk, fly around with a high-pitched buzzing sound that’s more like a squeak, suck the blood of humans and then go back into hiding before the sun rises at dawn. It’s a nightmare; we all know that. What I didn’t know, however, was that there’s another kind of mosquito, one with stripy legs, that’s not like a vampire. It does suck blood but isn’t afraid of daylight, and hangs around jungle paths like ours during the daytime waiting for people like me to pass by. The reason I’m explaining all this, and my ignorance of the species, will become clear in a moment.

  It was about six o’clock at night, just a few days after Dave’s birthday, and the three of us, as usual, were getting ready to defend against the evening’s onslaught of blood suckers. We were sitting atop Dave’s platform, enjoying the sounds and smells of the vegetation around us and discussing our plans for the future. The mosquitoes were a pain in the neck but it was far too hot to sit inside, the fans we had were next to useless and only moved the same sweat-laden warm air around the room. Dave was telling us how he’d like to live in a huge jungle mansion, somewhere not dissimilar to this. We had a nice place but he wanted a bigger house, preferably one built with his own hands.

  ‘How ’bout you, John?’ he said, stretching out and pulling a leaf from the top of the nearest tree.

  ‘Hmm, dunno,’ I said. ‘Don’t like to make plans really, they always seem to fall through. The best things always happen by accident, I reckon.’ I looked out at the trees. ‘Take this place for instance. When I went to India for a holiday I never imagined I’d be here a year later. OK I have to put up with you... ’

  He wagged a palm leaf at me. ‘Careful, Lord John, this is my throne you’re sitting on now.’

  I asked them if they wanted a beer and brought up the remaining cans of Singha that hadn’t already been consumed, heaving myself back onto the platform with great effort and much groaning.

  ‘Getting old, John,’ Rick said, taking a can from me. ‘I’d better drink it for you.’

  I sat back down and tried to cross my legs, once again letting out a long sigh. ‘Strange, I feel really tired. I think it’s this bloody platform. Couldn’t you have made some steps up on to it, Dave?’

  ‘Hey, that’s a regulation entrance gantry.’ He took a beer and opened it, spraying his face with froth. ‘Shit.’

  ‘See,’ I said with some satisfaction, ‘if that step had been lower the beer wouldn’t have been shaken up. And if you had remembered to keep it in the cooler, instead of leaving it on the floor since yesterday morning, the bubbles wouldn’t have expanded and exploded in your face now would they Dave?’

  ‘Fuck,’ he swigged and belched. ‘Who do you think I am, Einstein?’ He drained the can before continuing. ‘Rick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Plans?’ he added, lighting a candle and dripping some wax onto the bamboo floor to set it in place.

  Rick drew his knees up to his chest and looked up at the overhanging trees. ‘Think I might marry Ta.’

  I put down my beer and stared at him.

  ‘I mean, if it all works out with the millions from her father, why not?’

  ‘Because she might not have millions from her father, that’s why not.’ Dave let go of the candle and it fell over. ‘Because her father’s probably poorer than us guys, that’s why not.’

  Rick wasn’t going to be drawn, and just grinned, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket and lighting up before offering them out. He’d been through this argument a thousand times before with us and had grown used to it.

  ‘Man, you don’t still believe that shit about her being royalty?’ Dave took a cigarette. ‘Shit.’

  ‘You believed that he was knighted by the Queen of England,’ I said, ‘that’s pretty unbelievable.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s before I found out that they don’t knight North Sea fishermen.’ He leaned forward and took a light off the candle that Rick had managed to stand upright. ‘How the hell was I supposed to know what you British get up to in that weird country of yours. Fuckin’ bunch o’ goddamn homosexuals the lot o’ ya. Beats me how you ever won two world wars. What is it you call those guys who wear skirts into battle? Scottish? Jeesus!’

  A sudden heavy weight of fatigue seemed to push down on me and I found I was too tired to support my own weight, so I got up and staggered off the wooden deck.

  ‘You all right, John?’

  ‘Just a bit tired, I think.’ I blinked heavily, the strain hurting my eyelids. I massaged my temple and sighed. ‘Think I might have flu coming on. Anyway, I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Bed?’ Dave checked his wrist where the watch used to be. ‘It can only be seven-thirty.’

  ‘Yeah I know but I feel wasted. My arms and legs ache. Are there any candles left?’

  ‘There’s one in my room,’ Rick answered. ‘The girls have gone into town, I told them to get some more. They’ll be back in an hour or so.’

  I said I couldn’t wait that long and left them opening another can of beer each. As I walked into Rick’s room I could hear Dave in the background still arguing with Rick about how unlikely it was that Ta was the daughter of a millionaire. I picked up the stubby remains of the candle and lumbered down the hallway, closing my bedroom door behind me and falling onto the bamboo floor mat that served as a bed. The candle remained unlit and I fell asleep with it in one hand.

  I awoke in a pool of sweat, my face stuck to the pillow, little rivulets of water tickling the back of my neck like ants. The candle was still clutched in my hand and had deformed under the combined heat and pressure. I sighed and rolled over onto my back to try to see if there was any light coming through the window. It was still night but there were no longer any voices outside so it must have been quite late. My ears picked up the sound of cicadas in the trees outside but definitely no voices.

  I reached across in the darkness to put the candle down and blindly elbowed a face. Muck twitched and groaned but remained asleep. Although the bed was at the same level as the floor I still thought of the edges of the mat as a bed. Years of sleeping on raised, Western-style mattresses had conditioned me into thinking that a bed must always have defined borders, and I went to unnecessary pains to place the candle on the floorboard side of the line, before collapsing onto my back again.

  Directly above my face, on the pitched roof joists, an insect of some kind had made a little mud home the size of a golf ball. Through a gap in the roof’s palm frond weather-proofing, a sliver of dusty moonlight struck the nest, bathing its uneven sides in cool blue light. The flying insect that had built it popped in and out of a hole in the bottom every few minutes to tidy its home. Even when it didn’t come out I could just see it as it walked across the hole, occasionally letting a careless, silvery wing drop and catch the light. I pondered on the possibility that if I snored the whole thing – mother, father, eggs, house and all – could drop silently into my upturned mouth. With a snake-like slither I moved my body an inch to the left, just out of range.

  I watched that mini beehive of activity most of the night. That and the mouse that came under the inch-wide gap at the foot of the door. ‘Ledged and braced,’ I muttered, remembering the correct technical term. The ping-pong ball with fur and a tail stopped, turned ninety degrees and followed the gap to the door jamb. To test the mouse’s reflexes, and make sure that it had decent hearing, I drummed my fingers on the floorboards. It froze as though caught in headlights. I tapped again and it moved on.

  I blinked the sweat out of my eyes and buried my face into the hot pillow to wipe away the moisture. A noise outside the door made me stop and listen. Voices and then the shadows of some people
walking past the gap. Thai noises, Thai voices and a high-pitched Thai laugh. I tried to sit up but couldn’t move, except for a simple sideways roll. Jesus, what was wrong with me?

  An hour or so later, unable to stay awake alone any longer, I began to make exaggerated movements to wake Muck. She stirred a little and sniffed the air like a rat, opening one eye. I immediately pretended to be asleep, waking up only because she had. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Why you wa’ up so early?’ She stretched and opened both eyes. ‘Shi’, wha’ wrong wi’ you, man?’

  ‘Don’t know, I feel terrible.’

  Her warm hand landed on my forehead. ‘Jeez, you burn up, man. Loo’ at you face!’ She quickly left the room and came back a minute later with Ta and a wet towel. They both felt my head again and pronounced something morbid in Thai, one agreeing with the other’s diagnosis. ‘You no ha’ p’o’lem, we take good care,’ Ta said unconvincingly, and led her friend out of the room for a discussion in their own language.

  Well that’s really perked me up – reverting to their own language. Any moment now they’ll start sliding food under the gap in the door.

  The whole of that day was spent indoors alternating from bed to chair, with an occasional visit to the balcony to piss into the trees. The girls brought me all kinds of food and medicine, all local concoctions: mostly foul-smelling and even worse tasting. Rick and Dave agreed that it was just flu, and everyone said that after a full day and another night indoors I’d be as right as rain.

  When I woke up the following morning I could no longer walk.

  TWO

  Not only couldn’t I walk but I could barely move, and even while lying down, trying to turn over took most of the little strength left in my muscles. It wasn’t the muscles that hurt so much as the joints between the bones, especially elbows and knees, which meant that just straightening a leg or an arm brought me close to tears. It was like flu but twenty times as bad.

  My bodily functions had also started to cause problems. I was no longer able to hold my shit and it came out in foul-smelling jets of hot, brown liquid. No lumps, just dark water, which meant getting to the toilet on time was impossible, so I gave up eating to stem the flow. I didn’t like relying on others to take me to the toilet, even though they kept a vigil over me like true friends.

  Food was brought in on an hourly basis and rejected; left in a pile around me like offerings to a Buddha. Each and every time they came in to give me something or to test my temperature, they always asked me if there was anything I would like. I always gave the same reply: ‘my mum’, and received a gentle cuddle as a substitute. The surrogacy of the gesture always made me feel slightly worse, and seemed to extend the pain in my arms and legs to an unknown joint in my heart.

  The visits by any two or more people were always followed by hushed murmurings in the hallway outside my door. I wished they’d go further away and talk, at least then I wouldn’t have to guess what they were talking about. The girls were the worst, just standing right outside the door, sometimes absent-mindedly holding it open and whispering and pointing at me, usually shaking their heads morbidly. At least Rick and Dave kept it to a minimum: ‘Shit. Looks bad,’ Dave would say, and they’d both walk creakily down the hall discussing their own experiences of influenza, their common seafaring background usually providing the backdrop to the story.

  I was still the only person among us who thought that the illness was something other than flu, and when I suggested that it might be malaria they were shocked into silence. ‘Fuck, man, can’t you die from that?’ asked Dave, taking a cautious step back. I told him that it wasn’t contagious and not to worry; I had no intention of dying and letting him and Rick enjoy Ta’s millions without me.

  I thought it best if I was taken to see a doctor, and we all agreed that if my condition hadn’t improved by the third day, two volunteers should take me over to Koh Samui where, according to Dave’s guidebook, the best hospital in southern Thailand was situated. I felt sure they would know how to treat tropical diseases. The girls seemed to think otherwise.

  Ta was furious when she found out about the plan, saying that Thai doctors were useless and would probably make me worse; she’d had a grandmother who once went into hospital and... Rick pointed out that I was in a bad way and that the treatment I’d received from her and Toomy hadn’t exactly achieved much. Her response was simple: ‘He well tomo’ow, you see!’ and stormed out of the room adding, ‘You no ta’ him anywhere, man.’

  I sweated it out through the rest of that day and night with delirium, unable to sleep. My mouse companion came in through the door as usual, blissfully unaware of my predicament, and I flicked little morsels to him until I passed out from the effort. Dreams came and went, and usually involved obscure references to family and old school friends; nothing profound or earth shattering, just dreams. It was the first time though that I realised how much dreaming we all do. I had always equated one night’s sleep with one dream, but that’s not the case. For every time my brain drifted in and out of sleep, a dream went with it, like a neat package. I tried to predict the next dream, even direct it, but they never followed on from where the previous one left off.

  By the next morning my condition hadn’t improved at all, and to add to my repertoire of misfiring body functions I had started to vomit. There was no food to bring up so I gave up drinking water to stem the flow of acid in the back of my throat. The early hours were spent heaving little spoonfuls of clear, sour water onto the floor that seeped slowly through the cracks in the floorboards.

  The debris was appalling, looking back I can see that, though at the time it wasn’t obvious to me because I’d lain in my own fetid juices for three days and had become accustomed to the smell. If I’d been more alert, however, I would have noticed how each person entering the room pulled a face, stopping just short of holding their noses, before turning on their heels.

  Rick, Dave and I sat in the room discussing our next move, and when Ta and the girls went into town to shop, we packed my gear and left, using a jungle path to get to the pier. Having to stop every few yards to rest, it took us nearly two hours to cross the small hill, skirt Hat Rin and make it to where the Koh Pha-Ngan to Koh Samui ferry left from.

  ‘You go back Dave, leave the guidebook with me.’ Rick lowered me gently onto a bench on the jetty. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘What d’you want me to tell Ta?’

  Rick thought for a moment and said, ‘Just tell her the truth. I’ll be back by eight o’clock tonight, with or without him.’ He glanced at me laid out on the bench. ‘Without probably.’

  ‘She ain’t gonna like it.’ Dave marked the relevant page of the guidebook showing the location of the hospital, and slipped it into my bag. ‘Good luck John,’ he said, squeezing my limp hand, and he left.

  The ferry was full when it pulled in and almost empty when it left. Fresh faces and clean backpacks coming one way, bedraggled, tired bodies going the other. We boarded and made the short crossing between islands without a word passing between us. Rick chain-smoked as usual, talking to one or two travellers he knew, most of whom had seen enough of Thailand to last them a lifetime. Rick propped me up against one of the red plastic buoys, and I spent the entire journey with my head lolling over the side of the boat, silently staring at the blue sea. I didn’t feel up to talking to anyone; all I could think about was how long it was going to take to get to this hospital.

  At the port in Koh Samui we didn’t bother to haggle for a jeep, instead jumping into one of the air-con taxis that plied between the port and the various resorts on the island. Like a sack of potatoes I was heaved in and slid across the back seat of the car, the driver pushing my feet in to avoid them being trapped in the door. My knee-joints almost exploded and I let out a painful cry.

  ‘Wha’ p’ob’em you flien’?’ the driver asked with alarm, quickly dropping my feet.

  ‘Sick,’ Rick replied. ‘You take us to hospital, quick-quick.’

  The driver
took the instruction to heart and seemed to think that his car was now an ambulance. He leapt over the bonnet, got behind the wheel and we sped off in a cloud of dust. ‘You f’ien’ no p’ob’em now, I ta’ you fas’,’ he said, cornering at ninety like a rally driver and almost killing half a dozen tourists in the process.

  Lying on the back seat, my head rammed against one door panel and my feet on the other to stop me from being thrown onto the floor, I was unable to see outside. Rick leaned over and locked the doors in case I slid out. ‘Don’t worry John, be there in no time.’ I wanted to say, ‘Alive please!’ but couldn’t muster the will-power to form the words.

  From wood and jungle to concrete and jungle, after what seemed like an age watching treetops and blue sky flash past, we came to a screeching halt outside a brand new three-storey hospital. Nurses in starched white uniforms (still drop-dead sexy and unable to disguise that beautiful Asian look) busily came out of one door and went into the next, while doctors with stethoscopes around their necks watched them wiggle.

  Rick went inside and came out with a wheelchair.

  ‘You’re fucking kidding?’ I exclaimed as he wheeled it up to the car. ‘I’m not getting in that.’ The journey to get there had almost killed me but there was no way I was going to get into a wheelchair. The driver helped me out of the car, I took one faltering step before my legs buckled and I hung on to him for support. ‘Shit!’

  Rick pushed the chair towards me. ‘You should see the nurses inside, John, I wish I was sick. Just imagine how much more sympathy you’ll get from them if you sit in this. Thai nurses... ’ he sighed.