My Secret History (32 page)

“Later!” I said, and ran into my office. I slammed the door and massaged my penis, trying to ease it. But the tickle, which had become an itch, was now a fiery agony.

The pain was inside. It was enclosed, it was not visible, it was within me. It did not occupy a large space. It did not need to. It hurt like a sliver of blue flame. And as the hours passed it was like something molten, a hot pellet was forming in a vein of fire, and when I tried to soothe it I succeeded only in enlarging it and extruding it through the length of my penis. The pain was intense. I could not think of anything else.

I went back to my classroom and told them to start an essay, using as many gerunds as possible; and then I sat in my office and suffered.

The other effect, just as bad, was that it deadened my penis. And it was worse than dead—it was desecrated, mocked and humiliated. It was useless—impossible to erect, forever limp, and unimaginably painful to piss with. It could not function, and I hated myself for the euphonious phrase that it was neither a hose nor a horn. When the throbbing pain subsided it felt like a hot noodle. I imagined that it had turned black. I expected it to drop off. I tried to keep myself from clawing it, and yet—sitting there in my office—it felt as insignificant as a piece of string.

I was reminded of how important I regarded it. It was essential to me. Now it was inflamed and unusable, and I knew that something had gone seriously wrong. I was depressed. I canceled my afternoon class so that I could sit in my office and worry.

I wanted to peek at it, I kept having urges to look. Rockwell was still bricking in the latrine, so I went behind the filing cabinets and unzipped and took the sore thing in my hands. It was soft and swollen and looked mangled, like a half-cooked sausage.

“Mr. Parent?”

Miss Natwick had toppled in, flourishing a copybook.

“I think we have a plagiarist in the Fifth Form.”

“Just checking the paintwork here,” I said.

My surprise made me pretend to be very serious, and she immediately became suspicious.

“The paintwork?” she said in an incredulous way.

She stepped beside me as I finished stuffing the sore thing into my fly. I hitched up my trousers. I hated my penis. To divert Miss Natwick I knelt and began looking at the wall with regretful scrutiny.

“There’s nothing wrong with the paintwork,” she said, in a way that suggested that there was something wrong with me.

“It’s raw, it’s been scorched, it’s all coming apart. If you scratch it the whole thing will collapse. I just noticed it this morning. It’s like an infection—”

What was I talking about?

I think Miss Natwick knew. She narrowed her eyes at me and made pitying lips. She seemed disgusted when she left.

Then I looked again. I was leaking.

Growing up, I had been taught to regard sickness and disease as something I had brought on myself. I was to blame for whatever illness I had. A weakness in me had made me give in to the ailment. I had a cold because I had gone out without a hat, or had gotten my feet wet. I had a toothache because I ate candy and didn’t brush regularly. It was a terrible equation, because whenever I was sick I was made to feel guilty.

Now I had the clap. This was the ultimate penalty and it was peculiarly appropriate. The very organ I had misused was now blazing with infection. It was like being struck dumb for telling
a lie, or blinded for staring at something forbidden. The clap was not merely a disease—it was a judgment on me.

That was what I had been taught. But I resisted it. I knew better than to think that this was a moral fault. It was a physical ailment, not a blot on my soul. It was germs. You killed them and then you were cured. I told myself that it was simply an inconvenience. And yet the guilt remained.

There was a practical side to the guilt. If the Peace Corps found out I could be sent home. It was not only that I was a blunderer, I was also a health hazard. But I was too far from the capital to see the Peace Corps doctor that day. I would not have seen him in any case. I didn’t want it on my record. It had to be concealed: another secret.

The small hospital in the town of Zimba was called The Queen Elizabeth. I had taken a student there for stitches once: Emergency Outpatient. It had been a five-hour wait for him.

I went there late that same afternoon, grimly cycling. Ahead of me on the pewlike benches of Emergency Outpatient were twenty wounded and ailing Africans. On one bench alone, there was a sniveling child in a bloodstained shirt, a man with a slashed neck, another with a swollen bandaged foot, a woman with yellow liquid leaking from her bulging eye, a small whimpering girl clutching her head, and a young man with smashed toes—he had probably hit them with an ax. There was a stink of infection and rags—and the pain was audible in the gasps and sighs. I did not feel so ill here. I sat, determined not to touch my aching penis.

When she spotted me, the nurse at the table in front beckoned me forward and told me I had come to the wrong place. She did not say so, but I knew that it was because I was white. It was unheard-of for a
mzungu
to come here.

“I have to see the doctor.”

“What is wrong, bwana?”

“It is my leg, sister,” I said in her language.

She smiled at that—perhaps she guessed I was lying?—and said, “Mr. Nunka will see you when he is free.”

“These other people were here before me.”

“They can wait.”

“They’re sick.”

She wagged her head. “They are used to waiting.”

It was unfair, and yet I seized the chance to cut ahead of them. A seam of pain ran from my throat to my penis.

“Room Three,” the nurse said.

On the way down the corridor, it began to throb again. I tried to wring its neck, and tears sprang to my eyes.

Mr. Nunka was washing his hands in Room Three. His back was turned to me. Drying his hands, he glanced at the slip of paper the nurse had given me and he said, “Injury to leg.”

I was closing the door to the room as he turned to face me.

“Doctor,” I said.

“I am not a doctor,” he said. “I am a medical assistant. Livingstone Nunka is my name. Go on.”

“It’s not my leg,” I said. Not a doctor—did he know anything? “There’s something wrong with my penis. I mean, inside it.”

“Any discharge?”

I nodded. “Sort of greeny-yellow.”

“There is pain when you pass water?”

“Yes.”

“Chinsonono.”

I glanced around, thinking he was calling the orderly. But he smiled and repeated the word, and I knew he was describing my condition.

“Gonorrhea.”

“Are you sure?”

“It must be,” he said. “Have you been going about with African girls?”

“Yes. Now and then.”

He threw his handtowel into a laundry basket and opened a cabinet over the sink.

“When did you last have contact?”

“Sunday.”

“Excuse me for asking these questions. And before then?”

“Saturday.”

“Any other times?”

“Friday.”

He smiled and removed a large jar of tablets from the cabinet.

“She is probably a carrier.”

“They,” I said, and cleared my throat. “It wasn’t the same girl.”

Now he looked directly at me, but he was no longer smiling.

“Three girls,” I said.

“African girls.”

He spoke very gently. He said
chinsonono
was very common, and he tipped some of the white tablets from the jar onto a square of paper and counted them.

“How do you know it’s not syphilis?”

“It might be, but syphilis is much rarer. Anyway, these will cure syphilis too. And any other infections you have.” He was printing on the label. “Don’t worry. The symptoms will clear up in a few days. It will be gone in week.”

“I’ve heard of gonorrhea being incurable.”

“Not in Nyasaland.”

“I was thinking of Vietnam.”

“That is a different story.”

“Don’t you think you should examine me?”

“It is not necessary,” he said. “But take all the tablets. Don’t stop taking them just because the symptoms go away. You must finish the course. And it’s a good idea not to drink alcohol or milk.” He plunged a hypodermic into a small bottle. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

“What for?”

“If I give you an injection of penicillin it will get started a little quicker,” and he stabbed my shoulder.

When he was done I said, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. It is free. This is Emergency Outpatient—no charge.”

“I’d like to give you something.” I was embarrassed: he had made it so easy for me. Already I felt better. I wanted him to ask for a bribe.

“You can come by and help me someday.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do!”

“Just orderly work. We are so understaffed.”

“I don’t have any training.”

“I don’t have much myself,” Mr. Nunka said. “But you can be useful.”

The leak stopped the next day, and then the itching. But it was still sore. It felt useless—not dead but battered and limp. The thought of sex made it limper. It had lost its personality and so had I. No dick, no drinking—it was strange. At school I thought:
I have no secrets, I am exactly what I seem. One whole side of my existence had vanished. I was surprised that people treated me the same. I felt bored and simple and rather unfunny. Jokes annoyed me. But I was grateful to be cured.

On the following Saturday, conscious that I was repaying a debt, I went to The Queen Elizabeth and asked for Mr. Nunka.

“You are better,” he said.

He had confidence in his medicine. And I was thankful that he did not browbeat me. The Peace Corps doctor would have given me a lecture and made me feel guilty. He would have taken the view that I had caught the clap because I had done something I shouldn’t have. But that was not true—I had done nothing wrong. I had merely been unlucky.

But this African so-called savage was enlightened. He didn’t make moral judgments. I had picked up a germ and he had killed it—a simple matter. I was glad to be dealing with Africans. I was so reassured by his attitude I thought I might never go home.

The cure left me feeling as I had some years before, when I had gone to confession: purer, cleaner, in a state of grace. I was healthy again. Today was Saturday but I had no plans to go to the Beautiful Bamboo.

“I came here to help you.”

“Put this on,” Mr. Nunka said, and gave me an orderly’s green smock. It was stiff with starch.

I imagined assisting at operations, handing him a scalpel, holding a tray of instruments. He would pass me a newborn baby and I would lay the infant in a cradle and whisper to the mother
It’s a boy
.

Mr. Nunka led me down a dirty corridor that smelled of disinfectant and we entered a crowded ward.

“The volunteers don’t come here anymore,” he said. “We used to have plenty of Europeans who worked as hospital visitors.”

“Why don’t they come?”

“They left the country,” he said. “They were frightened of what would happen at Independence.”

“But nothing has happened.”

“We are not independent yet,” Mr. Nunka said.

Did that mean anything?

Most of the whites had gone, though. That was why The Nyasaland Trading Company was so empty and the reason the Blantyre Sports Club was closing. The tea was not being picked, the ministries were closed.

“They used to wash the patients,” Mr. Nunka said.

There were forty-seven males, old and young, in the ward, but only thirty beds. The ones without beds slept on the floor. I mentioned this to Mr. Nunka. He said, “They are used to it.”

“They look sick,” I said.

“They need baths,” Mr. Nunka said.

He brought me a big enamel basin and a bar of yellow soap. He explained that it would take two of us to do this—one to prop the patient up, the other to scrub. We took off their pajamas and went at it, sloshing their heads first, then their arms, their torso, and lower, the disgusting rest. The first few made me retch, but then someone turned on the radio, and it played The Drifters’ song “Saturday Night at the Movies,” and I thought of Abby at the Rainbow Cinema. We washed a few more men, and after a while it was like scrubbing furniture.

The old African men simply lay there and groaned while we soaped them. Several of them were full of tubes and catheters and it required a certain amount of care to wash them. One of the sickest, and hardest to wash, was a man called Goodall. While we were doing him I thought: Maybe Abby gave me the clap? But then the radio played a new song, Elvis’s “Return to Sender,” and I forgot about Abby. We couldn’t scrub Goodall. We dabbed him carefully, cleaning him like an antique. He stank, and his skin was like a lizard’s, rather cold and slippery, with white flakes and scales. But I had the impression that he was enjoying his bath—he smiled faintly as he felt the warm water on him—and his pleasure took away my nausea.

“All these tubes,” I said.

“Strictures have formed in his urethra,” Mr. Nunka said, and he whispered, “He has been a martyr to gonorrhea for sixty years.”

When we came to the last bed and washed the old man in it and the one underneath I had a view of the Outpatient Clinic. I was scrubbing a foot—I had the battered thing under my arm—and I saw a familiar figure walking up the gravel path—Gloria, heading for Emergency. She wore her red dress and a
red turban, very stylish for the hospital; but she looked rather gray and gloomy.

I simply watched her as I did the foot. I knew she would have a long wait—there was the usual crowd of desperate people waiting to be seen.

“What about a cup of tea?” Mr. Nunka said, when we had finished.

I did not have the tea habit, and this tea was the color of the bathwater in the basin, a resemblance that turned my stomach. But the Staff Room was adjacent to the clinic, and I sat there and read an old issue of
The Central African Examiner
so that I could watch Gloria. She was on a bench near the wall of health posters. Perhaps she was reading
Toby Toothbrush says, “Use me every day!”
or
In Case of Burns
—first aid in pictures.