“What reason was given?”
“They said I wasn’t needed. But I’m able-bodied and an experienced nurse, also an expert in infectious African diseases.”
There’s silence again.
“Name?” he says.
“Mary Kingsley.”
He writes the name down. There’s a moment of recognition, some paper shuffling. He reads through a letter, peering up at Mary every couple of lines. He’s developed a nervous twitch in his right eyebrow. He puts the letter down and laces his fingers together. There’s a surge of thought happening now, some intense deliberation.
He says, “You are not needed. Sorry for your trouble.”
“This is ridiculous,” she says. “Nurses are needed. People are dying. And I’ve just spent the last three weeks on a boat.”
“Nurses are needed,” he says. “Not authors. Not celebrities.”
“I’m not leaving,” says Mary. “Not until you give me an assignment.”
The man searches about for some response. Mary thinks of M’bo, who could converse in English in certain situations, and not at all in others. M’bo could do this man’s job as effectively as is being done.
“Madame—”
“It’s Miss, and I hope you like company.” Mary digs around in her bag and pulls out the knitting—socks for soldiers, what every nurse is knitting right now—and starts looping and clicking, swinging her foot in time.
“Come back after lu—”
“No.”
“Miss—”
“No.” Mary refuses to look up from her knitting. “If you find me a job, I will go do it. Otherwise, you had better get used to me.”
How does it go? That line from Horace? Of course Mary has the obvious ringing in her ears—Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—although, after the third hour of carting bedpans and chasing hallucinating men down the aisles of the hospital ward, she knows that it is neither “dulce” nor “decorum” to “mori” “pro patria.” There are better lines from Horace. There are probably better lines than Horace, and why she chose that book of Roman poetry to take her through the jungle (was she seeking to improve herself?) seems like an odd choice now, an odd choice then, another reason to look at all the choices she’s made and have a good laugh about it.
Ellen comes up behind her with the lunch cart.
“Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam,” says Mary.
“What was that, Mary?” says Ellen.
“And translated, ‘Life’s brief total forbids us cling to long-off hope.’”
“Does it?” says Ellen. “Maybe it does.”
“It’s Horace,” says Mary.
Ellen nods, and Mary, done—for the moment—with the bedpans, done scrubbing her knuckles, her eyes watering from the carbolic reek, makes her narrow way between the narrow beds. “You should take a break, Mary,” says Ellen. “Didn’t your shift start at five?”
“I came on at three,” says Mary. “Ruth had an attack of—”
“She had an attack of being Ruth,” says Ellen. “I want you to try and sleep, just a couple of hours. I’ll get you up. No worries.”
“I’ll sleep with my boots on.”
But Mary is too tired to nap. Here, in Simon’s Town, her patients don’t sleep unless they’re never waking up. She knows the officials thought she would turn down this position—nursing prisoners of war—as if the shameful thing was not the war itself. At least now, her German is nominally useful. She can cough up a word or two to ease some suffering. Earlier that day (or is it the previous night when it’s three in the morning?), she had the oddest sensation as she held the hand of a farm boy, bayoneted through the intestines, who was quickly dying. She could feel herself draining through her hand into his. She could feel him taking some vital thing from her, although it did him no good. His eyes were round like saucers and an unnatural cornflower blue. His hands were coarse—already a life of hard work completed, although he was only fifteen—and for a long moment they sat there, Mary feeling quickly depleted, his eyes lighting up like an electric bulb. Then he died, falling a little deeper into the pillow, and as the spirit left, there was the usual chill. Mary made her little prayer to Allah, just a few seconds of respectful mourning for this terrible waste of life, but then there was a man showing himself at the end of the bed. Mary could see him between the two screens—patients died when they saw others dying, as if the sight of it were enough to create a contagion—his eyes wide and hysterical.
He was a huge man. In his cot, Mary had noticed his feet sticking out the end, his arms hanging down so that his knuckles rested on the floor. Upright, Mary wasn’t sure she could handle him. The giant was twisting his standard-issue nightshirt in his hands, wrinkling the coarse cotton, nervous, like a child.
“Where have you hidden my pants?” he asked, in the odd Germanish gibberish, but she could understand.
“Let me take you there,” she responded in German. She reached out her hand.
And then she’s walking this giant through Fang land. Hand in hand, like Hansel and Gretel, two lost people wandering around Africa.
“Mary! Mary, wake up!”
“Hello!” says Mary, startled. Ellen and Ruth are standing at the foot of her bed, giggling away.
“How long was I out?” The window’s already flattened out with darkness.
“Four hours? Five?” says Ellen.
“Bloody hell. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Good day to you too, my lady!” says Ruth. She’s hiding something behind her back, which she reveals with great ceremony. It’s a bottle of wine. “And I’ve got two more.”
“Did those come from the butcher?” asks Mary.
Ruth nods.
“You know he’s married,” says Mary.
“I thought,” says Ruth, who’s too clever by half, “you said that men should have lots of wives.”
“Not that,” says Mary, “but something like it.”
Ellen has already wrenched the cork out of one bottle and is pouring it into tumblers.
“Is this really a good idea?” says Mary.
“I think it’s a great idea,” says Ellen.
Mary takes the glass, has a good mouthful. “But what about the patients?”
There’s a moment of silence, during which some poor soul’s groaning can be heard from the ward.
“The patients?” says Ruth. “But we’ve only got the three glasses.”
And who wouldn’t laugh at that?
Besides, how else would these women survive without their smoking and their wine and their endless gallows humor? It’s not as if they can stop the men from dying. Typhoid’s the problem, and what can you do for that? The work done by bayonets and shot—a second’s work—can’t be undone by her, or even a doctor most of the time. The body needs to heal itself and that’s where she comes in, clearing bedpans, keeping skin clean, responding to questions, being able-bodied almost as an example for the indisposed: remember you used to walk around like this, arms swinging, shoes clicking on the tile floor.
“You’re not going to tell the doctor, are you, Mary?” asks Ruth. She means her love affair with the butcher.
“Tell him,” asks Mary, her glass extended for more wine, “about what?”
Simon’s Town is not a bad place, once you leave the hospital. Mary likes to get up early in the morning and go walking on the beach. There’s a spot just offshore where monstrous boulders are worn to sculpture, imposing, glorious. Allah’s work. Something to balance against all the smells and clotting, fly-flecked blood back in the ward. One morning she’d woken weeping and couldn’t remember her dream; whether the dream had made her cry, or if it was being returned to her life that had so upset her. She’d walked to the beach and unlaced her boots, waded through the frigid water, and in the day’s cold first light scrambled onto a boulder (some effort here) to sit and watch the world grow bright. At first she didn’t know what they were, but someone had mentioned the whales to her. She could se
e them playing, unmolested, powerful. There were just a pair of them exploding out of the water, falling onto their backs. The spray shot up, flashing bright white with sunlight. The whales were gone, then back again, floating calmly. She knew they were going to leave. She knew she was going to lace her feet back into her boots, spend her day walking the ward, facing all that death, which meant accepting her whole life, her life alone. Alive. What did it feel like to live in the water unexposed, cradled, unlike the nakedness one felt in air? She used to think this all the time, a girl who wanted to be a fish. “But now I’m a nurse, who was once an explorer.” She’d broken the spell by speaking out loud. The whales, as if sensing this, descended, leaving oily circles on the surface of the sea. And Mary? The tide had shifted and she knew she’d have to swim back to shore, that the water was ice cold, and that she’d do it—just as always—in her skirts.
Mary’s sluggish today. And clumsy. She gets up off her knees, having mopped up another spill—bedpans. No matter how close to death these people are, they still manage to fill the bedpans.
“I think you need a break,” says Ellen. “Go have a cigarette. Things can wait a few minutes.”
“I’m all right,” says Mary.
“I really don’t think you are,” says Ellen. She puts her hand on Mary’s forehead. “You’re warm. Go see the doctor.”
“I’m fine.”
“Remember, I’m a nurse.”
Mary puts her own hand on her forehead. “Remember, I am too. And I’m fine.” But Ellen is right. It’s not just the wine from last night. Mary tells herself, let’s pretend it is. Is it really possible to lie to oneself in this way? And since she’s doing this, is something really wrong? Must be. Keep going, Mary. You’re strong and always come through in the end. The war will end soon. They’re running out of Boers to slaughter and Australians to slaughter them. And when it’s over, you can pack up your belongings, your Horace, your fish-collecting jars, your notebook, your cache of gin and tobacco to swap for fetish and ivory, and you’ll go wandering again, where Charley can’t find you, where you won’t have exchanged one bedside for another.
“Mary! Mary!”
Mary’s lying on the floor. When did that happen? And there’s the doctor and Ruth. Why is Ruth crying? Must be something to do with the butcher.
“I’ll take a little nap,” says Mary. “Leave my boots on.”
She can hear the doctor whispering to Ellen outside the door. “She’s adamant that we leave her alone in the final stages. There are two things she insisted upon—that, and she wants to be buried at sea.”
Finally, the doctor had heard her. He hadn’t wanted to hear anything about final wishes, since it was inconsiderate to admit that someone was dying—such a perversity of politeness. But in the end, he saw that Mary knew, and knew what she wanted. She was articulate through the exhaustion, despite the enteric fever sucking at her, wracking her with chills and abdominal pain.
Although “pain” is a small word to throw at what’s actually happening. She closes her eyes, desperate to have it stop, then flings them open worried that this thought—such a small weak thought—might be her last. What did M’bo used to say to her? He’d say, You kill? And Mary would answer, Not much. For a moment she thinks he’s somewhere close. But it’s just a memory, and memories exist without the primary players making actual appearances. She’s calling ghosts, the ghost of M’bo and Flannel Shirt and Pagan and all her guides. Who will guide her now?
Something’s at the foot of her bed—moving there on the chipped iron rail. Maybe a cockroach, and then there’s another, and then there are four of them, and then five.
“Hello, Mary,” says a fairy.
Mary feels awake now, nervous somehow.
“Mary looks awful,” says the clever one. “Doesn’t she? Awful, awful!” And all the fairies giggle, then stop themselves.
She feels the pressure of tiny feet as the clever one begins to make her way across the bed covers, wings folded neatly and hidden. “Oh, Mary looks terrible! Even Mother never looked so bad.”
“Never! Never,” agree the other fairies. They take to the air, flitting close to Mary’s face. She can feel the air stirred by their wings.
“Why are you here?” Mary can hear the thick sluggishness in her speech.
“To help you,” says the clever one, now by her ear.
“To help me?”
“You’ve no one else. Mother’s dead. Father’s dead. Mary’s dead—” says the clever one.
“Not yet, not yet,” say the fairies.
“Matthew Nathan doesn’t care. Alice only cares from far away—only cares about anything when she can write it down. Ellen and Ruth only care because it’s their job. No one to love you.”
“No one. No one. No one at all,” sing the fairies, mournfully now.
“I don’t care,” says Mary, waving them off of her. But they’re back quickly. Mary can hear the doctor in the hallway arguing with Ellen, who wants to go to her.
“You’re going to the sea, aren’t you, Mary? And we’re going with you.”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Don’t be frightened, Mary. Don’t you remember? You’ve always wanted to be a fish,” says the clever fairy.
“And you’re so dirty now,” say the others. “You smell awful. But soon you’ll be clean.”
“When they throw me in the ocean?” asks Mary. She can hear Ellen sobbing by the door.
“Yes, yes, they’re going to throw you in the ocean,” say the fairies.
“You’ll be happy there,” says the clever one.
The fairies start chanting. “Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be.” They chant it over and over. They won’t stop.
Where does that line come from? Mary remembers now. It’s from Uncle Charles’s book The Water-Babies. What happens to Tom? She can’t remember. Is he a water-baby at the end? Does he marry that little girl, Ellie, the one he discovers asleep in her bed? Is his wicked master, Grimes, punished? Are the wicked ever? What happens in the end?
Translation
. . . for no other had had so much natural talent nor the boldness to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done.
—Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage Around the World
1. Wind
At first were the endless stretches of water, weeks of static horizon, circumvolving heavens. And after that the tempests that tossed the ships like cats toss mice, and waves that towered then collapsed, shattering both timber and spirit. One might laugh when the storm was over, a short laugh, one of relief, because few things were funny. When one had tired of the sea and sky and their shared inconstancy, land was welcome: a beach of pale sand or maybe arching cliffs. And if you made it past the reefs, one still had to contend with natives—first a sparking on the cliff top, a quivering mass of darkness, then a rain of spears.
“Still, you say you’re not afraid?”
“Since you phrase it that way, I would be a fool not to be afraid. So yes, I am afraid. And possibly a yet bigger fool because I still want to go.”
“Do you know why I speak to you of natives?”
“I can guess,” said Pigafetta. “Everyone else speaks of a giant squid, which is impossible to fear. A cliff with no bottom. All these unknowns of the natural world invented to disturb the sleep of children, but natives—man—impossible to deny.”
The financier chucked his head quickly to one side. “Man is, by definition, the only one capable of perverting nature—his presence instantly corrupts the natural world.” He didn’t mind playing a little at philosophy if it did not take much time. “So this native is not natural because it is man. But primitive people—are they people? Are they sufficiently removed from nature to be called as such, when they have not yet learned—” And here the financier gestured at the roof beam, load bearer of civilization, and, unintentionally, a rat scuttling across. But his tolerance for philosophical discussi
on was spent. “I like the fact that you have money!” He laughed and Pigafetta trusted this: frank exploitation. “I need money,” he continued. “But I am not a wet nurse and what will you be doing on the ship?”
“I’m a scholar,” said Pigafetta.
“Is everything here learned?” and the financier waved into the street, where a steaming pile of horse dung was, in two strokes, delivered by two separate wagons’ wheels—one traveling north and one east—beatified.
“Yes,” said Pigafetta. “No.” Pigafetta thought to himself. “Are you waiting for me to beg you? Because I will. I have no pride. It makes my father angry, and my mother is sweet and fat and has never had reason to prostrate herself, but given one, her big behind would rise in the air very quickly. And I am more like her than him, only thin.”
The financier had a twinkle in his eye, so Pigafetta knew he had already earned passage, but he wanted to prove himself as useful. Being decadent and slothful required wealth, but wealth did not require decadence and sloth, and although money, in general, bought respect, after months and months on a ship it probably bought some derision too. “You’re going to need a translator,” said Pigafetta. “I can translate for you.”
“Translate what?” said the financier. “No one’s ever been there. That has defined the trip. To go where one cannot. If Pliny’s one-footed man who rolls about for ambulation exists, you will meet him. And do you speak his language?”
“If he has a mouth,” said Pigafetta, “I will learn.”
Twinkle, twinkle. “You will turn his language into my language. Sounds more like—” and there was a contemplative belch.
“Alchemy,” said Pigafetta.
He was back on the street, several thick and signed papers rolled into his hand. Had he purchased his own annihilation? He looked over his shoulder, at the man who had managed—through a certain kind of genius—to put a price on this process.
“God save us from the dreamers!” he heard the financier bellow, and this was followed by the pleasant clink of coin hitting coin: the wind behind dreamers’ sails.
Tales of the New World: Stories Page 7