God's Children

by Mabli Roberts

  ‘There is no necessity, Monsieur Vilenbakhov, for are you not travelling with me?’

  He gave a light laugh, not mocking, rather fond. ‘And do you have God’s assurance that I too will escape being eaten by a bear?’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid I cannot promise you that.’ Seeing his disappointment but keeping my face implacable I added, ‘Finish up your supper. You may need all your strength to fight them off.’

  You do want to remember, don’t you?

  It is not a matter of wanting to or not wanting to. My memory will do what it will do, and I am no longer in charge of it.

  You remember places, people…

  Of course, but sometimes…

  Sometimes…?

  I think I know something, I believe that I am certain and then, it changes. It comes to me differently and that certainty is lost.

  Perhaps if you try to tell the story it will become clearer.

  I fear the opposite may be true: the more I attempt to recall the shadowy past the less clear it is, the more versions present themselves, so that I am afraid soon I may not hold the truth of it in my mind at all.

  The Hotel Normandie was a place in which I had stayed on several occasions when visiting New York. It was comfortable, yet the tariffs were reasonable, and being centrally placed I could attend meetings and give talks in a number of venues in a short space of time, with the minimum of inconvenience. During my fundraising tour of America, I had enjoyed my times there, and always found the staff and clientele to be helpful and friendly. My last experience of the Normandie, however, was memorable for quite the reverse reasons.

  I had been in the city for three days, and had already given two talks, both of which had been well attended and well received, and had garnered many promises of donations towards the building of the hospital. I was returning to my room, which was situated on the third floor, when a boy of about fourteen years, apparently accompanied by his mother, spied me as I walked along the corridor.

  ‘Aren’t you that woman who roamed across Russia on a leper hunt?’ he asked, bold and free, without so much as a word of greeting nor introduction. I looked to his mother for some application of manners, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘I am Kate Marsden, yes,’ I replied, wary of his tone but always ready to put forward the best representation of myself. I had learned even then how quick people are to cut down a tall poppy. One of the challenges that faced me during those times of pleading the cause of my lepers was to push myself forward so that their plight might be heard, and yet to remain humble and not to seem self-serving. It was ever a fine line to tread. This boy, however, had other, more specific questions on his mind.

  ‘It is her, Mama,’ he said to his parent without for one second taking his scrutinising gaze from my face. ‘She’s the one I heard tell of. Walked into leper colonies, stepped right up to those cripples with their rotting flesh and shook them by the hand, she did.’ When his mother gasped at this he added, ‘Embraced them too, true enough.’

  Three more residents of the hotel were now walking down the passageway and could not help but overhear our conversation. They slowed their pace, the better to listen, and I could see at once there was a reluctance on their part to pass close to me.

  I said clearly for all to hear, ‘I did indeed visit many settlements where sufferers of the terrible disease are forced to live out their lives. Their misery is very great, and if you have heard of me, you will no doubt know that my mission now is to see a hospital built for them.’

  The boy’s eyes were bright with mischief. ‘And you sat and ate with them, it’s been said. Slept in their filthy hovels.’

  ‘There was neither the space nor the necessity…’

  ‘And some people say that you caught the lepers’ curse yourself.’

  This time there was a collective gasp from all who stood around me. The boy’s mother instinctively put her hand on her son’s shoulder and pulled him towards herself and away from me.

  ‘That’s the truth isn’t it?’ he demanded.

  I fumbled for my key in my purse, but such was my sense of being surrounded, of being hounded, that my hands were trembling. ‘I am not prepared to answer such accusations.’

  ‘Why not?’ came a shout from one of the other guests, a man dressed in an expensive overcoat and carrying a silver-topped cane. ‘Let’s hear it, madam. Are you a leper or no?’

  ‘I refuse to be harangued in this manner! I must ask you to excuse me…’ At last I retrieved my key from my bag, but another guest – I will not call him gentleman! – had put himself between me and the door of my room.

  ‘We’ve a right to know,’ he insisted.

  ‘Sir, kindly allow me to pass.’

  The boy, delighted at the excitement he had stirred up, would not be stopped.

  ‘She is a leper herself!’ he declared, pointing a finger, though taking care not to get close enough to inadvertently touch me.

  A woman in the crowd gave a sharp cry of alarm. Two chambermaids had come upon the scene and I noticed them hurry away, no doubt bearing the news to others.

  ‘I simply refuse to be accosted in this fashion!’ I said, raising my voice to be heard above the growing clamour. With the route to my room still barred I found myself slowly beaten back along the corridor. As I reached the lift the doors opened and the manager, evidently alerted to the commotion, stepped forth.

  ‘I am pleased to see you indeed,’ I told him, but before I could ask his assistance, the man with the cane was berating him loudly.

  ‘This is monstrous!’ he cried. ‘That you should allow a person known to consort with lepers… to allow her into your hotel…’

  ‘What were you thinking?’ demanded the other man. ‘If there is a risk of infection, we have a right to be told!’

  The manager lifted his hands and adopted a soothing tone, but they would not listen. I tried to get into the lift, but more guests and staff had appeared and I found the only path left me was along the passageway. I turned and walked briskly to the stairs, but by the time I was at the top of them I was being chased!

  ‘Stand back!’ ‘Do not let her touch you!’ ‘Leper! Leper!’ came the shouts behind me, so that I was forced to run.

  I tore through the foyer of that establishment and out of its gleaming doors as people recoiled in front of me, hurrying from my path, lest they come into contact with this foul, leprous creature!

  We came to the shaman’s yourt late in the afternoon and the sun was hastening to meet the horizon. The snow was already tinged pink with the dusk. There was smoke pluming from a hole at the centre of the roof of the padded dwelling. Monsieur Vilenbakhov and I were helped from our sleigh by our guide. The shaman’s home was set apart from the rest of the village, and most of the other dwellings were closed against the cold of the encroaching night, their inhabitants nowhere to be seen. Our guide hailed the shaman, we heard a gruff answering word or two, and we were shown through the reindeer-skin door.

  Inside there was little by way of natural light, and small oil lamps threw irregular patches of illumination through the smoky gloom. Richly coloured rugs formed the inside walls of the space, and there were many low cushions and curious collections of stones and feathers about the place. In the centre stood the shaman, a man of Mongolian appearance, impossibly old, his bright red coat adorned with intricate embroidery, ribbons, bells and more feathers. His headgear was equally ostentatious. We exchanged polite bows. With a curt gesture he invited us to sit upon some reindeer skins which I feared were not free of vermin. Once seated, I asked Vilenbakhov to translate for me, though it was quickly apparent that the shaman spoke scant and corrupted Russian. My young translator did his best.

  ‘Tell him,’ I instructed, ‘how honoured I am that he has agreed to see me. Tell him…’

  But he interrupted me, holding up his hand. He uttered a few words.

  Vilenbakhov translated. ‘Madame Marsden, he cannot speak with you until you have accepted his hospitality,’ he e
xplained.

  The shaman picked up a stone jug. He took the stopper from it and poured a greyish foamy liquid into a bowl. Next he picked up a feathered stick tied with bells and this he proceeded to wave above the bowl while he uttered some strange words. He held the bowl out towards me.

  ‘Is strong drink,’ my translator informed me. ‘Traditional.’

  Gingerly, I took the proffered bowl and set it to my lips. The fumes of the alcohol alone in the fermented mare’s milk were sufficient to give this follower of temperance a dizzy spell! Still I forced myself to take a sip before offering it back to my host. He shook his head, frowning.

  Monsieur Vilenbakhov said somewhat apologetically, ‘The guest must drain the bowl, madame.’

  There was nothing to be done but drink, or our journey would have been wasted, and the precious herb no nearer. Closing my eyes and holding my breath I tipped the entire serving of the sour, powerful liquor down my throat, fighting the urge to retch. At last it was gone. I kept my face as impassive as I was able and returned the bowl to the inscrutable shaman.

  As he spoke, Vilenbakhov searched for meaning in his words.

  ‘We are both people of medicine. Healers,’ the shaman said.

  ‘It is for this very reason that I have sought you out.’ I waited while my reply was translated, and so our halting conversation continued.

  ‘I know what it is you want,’ the shaman told me. ‘You want the flower.’

  ‘You have used it yourself?’ I hoped that the translation would not carry my own breathless excitement.

  The shaman merely nodded.

  ‘Where might I find it?’ I asked.

  ‘A nurse from Moscow must have much medicine in her bag,’ was his reply.

  ‘We have many medicines, it is true, but none yet that can cure a leper.’

  ‘I have heard Moscow doctors speak of an elixir that can trick the mind so it no longer hears the roar of pain. And another that brings on sleep.’

  ‘Yes, we have these things.’

  The shaman shrugged. ‘We have them also. I am told you have a device to take the blood from one person and give it to another?’

  ‘Indeed, this is true also.’

  The shaman waved his hand dismissively. ‘We can do this without the use of a device. The magic of a shaman is powerful. And your doctors use a machine to listen to the workings of a man’s heart?’

  ‘A stethoscope. A useful diagnostic tool.’

  ‘What need have I of such a machine when I can listen to the heart of a man with my ears and look into his soul with my shaman’s eyes?’ He paused to allow his words to sink in and then continued. ‘Medicines can be used up. Devices and machines cease to work. Yakutsk people are better served by their shaman. Which is why you have come, for only here is the plant you seek to be found. And yet,’ he added, shaking his head, ‘there is nothing I want from you.’

  His suggestion that I had nothing with which to bargain was clear.

  ‘I hope,’ I told him as levelly as I could, ‘that a fellow healer will understand my wish to help rid the world of this terrible disease.’

  ‘A Yakutsk shaman understands more than you will ever know,’ he stated boldly. ‘He understands that the world is a wide place, with many people. There is not enough of this flower for all of them. If I show you where it grows you would take every plant until there is nothing left.’

  ‘No. We would take only seedlings and seeds to grow the plant ourselves.’

  ‘It will not grow somewhere else. It will not work unless given by a shaman. Will you harvest all the shamans in Yakutsk also?’

  ‘Might I not be taught by one such as yourself? Shown how to use it?’

  ‘A shaman is born not made. You must find the medicine of your own for your own people.’

  ‘But I wish to help your people too, do you not see that? Monsieur Vilenbakhov, make sure he understands. He must understand! Tell him about the hospital. It will help the families of Yakutsk who suffer so. Will you not share your knowledge so that, together, we can help them?’

  The shaman leaned back, his face impassive, his heart unmoved.

  ‘Our people do not need you. They have their shaman.’

  He picked up his pipe and sucked deeply upon it. The conversation was at an end.

  I strode from the yourt, infuriated, my frustration threatening to overwhelm me. Vilenbakhov followed and stood helpless behind me as I strode about in the gathering dark, icy snow crunching beneath my feet.

  ‘Such short-sightedness! Such arrogance! Does he think God made him alone keeper of the cure? Why will he not see my motives are pure?’

  My translator said gently, ‘The shaman is unaccustomed to sharing his patients.’

  I stopped pacing then and stared at him. ‘He is protecting his income? Ha! He will not share the whereabouts of the flower because he fears he will lose business if his patients are cured by someone else. Such shameless self-interest!’

  I was all for charging back inside and confronting the shaman again, but I heard shouts.

  Vilenbakhov put his hand on my arm. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing towards the village.

  Down the frigid path came a rag-taggle group of people, shuffling, stumbling, lame and blindly groping. They were clothed in rags, and the smell of them reached us before the poor wretches themselves were close enough for us to discern their ravaged features. My lepers had found me! Our local guide looked terrified and backed away, all the while shouting at them to stay back.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘Let them come.’

  The shaman emerged from his dwelling to see what was happening. One of the lepers stepped forward, chattering in a dialect so thick it defied translation so that Vilenbakhov had to ask him to repeat himself more slowly.

  ‘They heard of the English nurse who was come to help them. They are begging you for a cure,’ he said, stepping backwards to distance himself from the rotting limbs and sore-pocked faces which slowly advanced.

  I saw them and I wept. Not out of pity, for I had surely seen many such afflicted patients by this time. I wept because the scales had fallen from my eyes and I could see the truth. The truth of the flower, that no doubt grew nearby, and that the shaman no doubt used and made a profit doing so. But it was no cure. How could it be? For if the Yakutsk people had within their reach a remedy that might free their loved ones from the dreadful curse of leprosy they would surely have used it, and the hellish scene that was before me would not have existed. Even the self-serving shaman would not have passed up the chance to heal had it been within his power. I saw now that it was not. That flower I had travelled so very far to find did not, after all, hold within its fragile leaves the promise of a cure.

  ‘Do you ever wonder if we could have lived different lives?’ Rose put her hand behind her head as she reclined further on the wicker chaise. Her hair, ordinarily so neatly tamed, had come free of its pins and she was too languid, too hot, too at ease to bother with it. Its soft, tawny curls framed her face prettily. She closed her eyes against the sunshine that filtered through the cane blinds of the verandah, so that I was able to sit and gaze at her. Her skin was translucent, and I found myself burning with a desire to touch it, to feel its delicate perfection beneath my fingers. Instead I clasped my hands in my lap.

  ‘Different lives?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, might we not have become nurses? Might we have found other paths to tread? Other versions of ourselves? Do you not, on occasion, wonder what else we might have been?’

  ‘I have always known I would be a nurse.’

  ‘I know you have,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but there are times when I think, what if I had thrown caution to the four winds and become a painter?’

  ‘But, Rose, you do not care for painting.’

  ‘That’s just a for instance, silly. I could have said opera singer, or ballerina, or… oh, I don’t know, a fortune teller with a travelling circus!’ She laughed, opened her eyes, and threw a small cushion at me when she saw
how serious I looked. ‘Kate! Your face!’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were… discontent.’

  ‘I am not. I am merely dreaming.’ She sighed again, all the laughter quickly gone out of her voice.

  ‘I believe we are what we were meant to be,’ I said.

  At this she rolled her eyes. ‘Please do not tell me it is God’s will that I spend my life as a nurse. Not that.’

  ‘I cannot help what I believe,’ I told her.

  ‘And do you think we are God’s will? Us? Do you think He approves of us?’

  I had no answer for her then. I have no answer still.

  It was such a small church, and plain by the standards of the region. No gilt or purple paint here, simply whitewashed walls and wooden panels, simply carved. I know not how long I sat in that empty place, wearing that weighty silence. I had reached a point of epiphany the day before, on coming to the realisation that there was no magical cure. The flower might be a soothing balm perhaps, but it was not the miracle I had been led to believe. Not the wondrous deliverance I had hoped to find. There I sat, thousands of miles into a strange land, a land I had traversed on the promise of this hope. I listened for the voice of God in that church more keenly, more desperately than I had done in my life before. I had not needed to hear him so badly ever, I believe, not even as I nursed my siblings to their cruel end, nor watched helpless as a soldier died upon the battlefield. I waited for Him to give me a sign, to show me what I should do next, but all that came was more of the heavy silence that held me to that pew.