A Burnt Out Case (13 page)

It was dusk when the inhabitants of the leproserie heard the bell of the long-overdue boat; the sound came to Colin and Querry where they sat over the first drink of the evening on the doctor’s veranda. ‘At last,’ Colin said, finishing his whisky, ‘if only they have brought the new X-ray . . .’

White flowers had opened with twilight on the long avenue; fires were being lit for the evening meal, and the mercy of darkness was falling at last over the ugly and the deformed. The wrangles of the night had not yet begun, and peace was there, something you could touch like a petal or smell like wood smoke. Querry said to Colin, ‘You know I am happy here.’ He closed his mouth on the phrase too late; it had escaped him on the sweet evening air like an admission. ‘I remember the day you came,’ Colin said. ‘You were walking up this road and I asked you how long you were going to stay. You said – do you remember? –’

But Querry was silent and Colin saw that he already regretted having spoken at all.

The white boat came slowly round the bend of the river; a lantern was alight at the bow, and the pressure-lamp was burning in the saloon. A black figure, naked except for a loincloth, was poised with a rope on the pontoon, preparing to throw it. The fathers in their white soutanes gathered on the veranda like moths round a treacle-jar, and when Colin looked behind him he could see the glow of the Superior’s cheroot following them down the road.

Colin and Querry halted at the top of the steep bank above the river. An African dived in from the pontoon and swam ashore as the engines petered out. He caught the rope and made it fast around a rock and the top-heavy boat eased in. A sailor pushed a plank across for a woman who came ashore carrying two live turkeys on her head; she fussed with her mammy cloths, draping and redraping them about her waist.

‘The great world comes to us,’ Colin said.

‘What do you mean?’

The captain waved from the window of the saloon. Along the narrow deck the door of the Bishop’s cabin was closed, but a faint light shone through the mosquito netting.

‘Oh, you never know what the boat may bring. After all, it brought you.’

‘They seem to have a passenger,’ Querry said.

The captain gesticulated to them from the window; his arm invited them to come aboard. ‘Has he lost his voice?’ the Superior said, joining them at the top of the bank, and cupping his hands he yelled as loudly as he could, ‘Well, captain, you are late.’ The sleeve of a white soutane moved in the dusk; the captain had put a finger to his lips. ‘In God’s name,’ the Superior said, ‘has he got the Bishop on board?’ He led the way down the slope and across the gang-plank.

Colin said, ‘After you.’ He was aware of Querry’s hesitation. He said, ‘We’ll have a glass of beer. It’s the custom,’ but Querry made no move. ‘The captain will be glad to see you again,’ he went on, his hand under Querry’s elbow to help him down the bank. The Superior was picking his way among the women, the goats and the cooking-pots, which littered the pontoon, towards the iron ladder by the engine.

‘What you said about the world?’ Querry said. ‘You don’t really suppose, do you . . . ?’ and he broke off with his eyes on the cabin that he had once occupied, where the candle-flame was wavering in the river-draught.

‘It was a joke,’ Colin said. ‘I ask you – does it look like the great world?’ Night which came in Africa so quickly had wiped the whole boat out, except the candle in the Bishop’s cabin, the pressure-lamp in the saloon where two white figures silently greeted each other, and the hurricane-lamp at the foot of the ladder where a woman sat preparing her husband’s chop.

‘Let’s go,’ Querry said.

At the top of the ladder the captain greeted them. He said, ‘So you are still here, Querry. It is a pleasure to see you again.’ He spoke in a low voice; he might have been exchanging a confidence. In the saloon the beer was already uncapped and awaiting them. The captain shut the door and for the first time raised his voice. He said, ‘Drink up quickly, Doctor Colin. I have a patient for you.’

‘One of the crew?’

‘Not one of the crew,’ the captain said, raising his glass. ‘A real passenger. I’ve only had two real passengers in two years, first there was M. Querry and now this man. A passenger who pays, not a father.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He comes from the great world,’ the captain said, echoing Colin’s phrase. ‘It has been difficult for me. He speaks no Flemish and very little French, and that made it yet more complicated when he went down with fever. I am very glad to be here,’ he said and seemed about to lapse into his more usual silence.

‘Why has he come?’ the Superior asked.

‘How do I know? I tell you – he speaks no French.’

‘Is he a doctor?’

‘He is certainly not a doctor or he wouldn’t be so frightened of a little fever.’

‘Perhaps I should see him right away,’ Colin said. ‘What language does he speak?’

‘English. I tried him in Latin,’ the captain said. ‘I even tried him in Greek, but it was no good.’

‘I can speak English,’ Querry said with reluctance.

‘How is his fever?’ Colin said.

‘This is the worst day. Tomorrow it will be better. I said to him, “
Finitum est
,” but I think he believed that I meant he was dying.’

‘Where did you pick him up?’

‘At Luc. He had some kind of introduction to the Bishop – from Rycker, I think. He had missed the Otraco boat.’

Colin and Querry went down the narrow deck to the Bishop’s cabin. Hanging at the end of the deck was the misshapen life-belt looking like a dried eel, the steaming shower, the lavatory with the broken door, and beside it the kitchen-table and the hutch where two rabbits munched in the dark; nothing, except presumably the rabbits, had changed. Colin opened the cabin door, and there was the photograph of the church under snow, but in the rumpled bed which Querry had somehow imagined would still bear, like a hare’s form, his own impression, lay the naked body of a very fat man. His neck as he lay on his back was forced into three ridges like gutters and the sweat filled them and drained round the curve of his head on to the pillow.

‘I suppose we’ll have to take him ashore,’ Colin said. ‘If there’s a spare room at the fathers’.’ On the table stood a Rolleiflex camera and a portable Remington, and inserted in the typewriter was a sheet of paper on which the man had begun to type. When Querry brought the candle closer he could read one sentence in English: ‘The eternal forest broods along the banks unchanged since Stanley and his little band –’ It petered out without punctuation. Colin lifted the man’s wrist and felt his pulse. He said, ‘The captain’s right. He’ll be up in a few days. This sleep marks the end.’

‘Then why not leave him here?’ Querry said.

‘Do you know him?’

‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘I thought you sounded afraid,’ Colin said. ‘We can hardly ship him back if he’s paid his passage here.’

The man woke as Colin dropped his wrist. ‘Are you the doctor?’ he asked in English.

‘Yes. My name is Doctor Colin.’

‘I’m Parkinson,’ the man said firmly as though he were the sole survivor of a whole tribe of Parkinsons. ‘Am I dying?’

‘He wants to know if he is dying,’ Querry translated.

Colin said, ‘You will be all right in a few days.’

‘It’s bloody hot,’ Parkinson said. He looked at Querry. ‘Thank God there’s someone here at last who speaks English.’ He turned his head towards the Remington and said, ‘The white man’s grave.’

‘Your geography’s wrong. This is not West Africa,’ Querry corrected him with dry dislike.

‘They won’t know the bloody difference,’ Parkinson said.

‘And Stanley never came this way,’ Querry went on, without attempting to disguise his antagonism.

‘Oh yes he did. This river’s the Congo, isn’t it?’

‘No. You left the Congo a week ago after Luc.’

The man said again ambiguously. ‘They won’t know the bloody difference. My head’s splitting.’

‘He’s complaining about his head,’ Querry told Colin.

‘Tell him I’ll give him something when we’ve taken him ashore. Ask him if he can walk as far as the fathers’. He would be a terrible weight to carry.’

‘Walk!’ Parkinson exclaimed. He twisted his head and the sweat-gutters drained on to the pillow. ‘Do you want to kill me? It would be a bloody good story, wouldn’t it, for everyone but me. Parkinson buried where Stanley once . . .’

‘Stanley was never here,’ Querry said.

‘I don’t care whether he was or not. Why keep bringing it up? I’m bloody hot. There ought to be a fan. If the chap here is a doctor, why can’t he take me to a proper hospital?’

‘I doubt if you’d like the hospital we have,’ Querry said. ‘It’s for lepers,’

‘Then I’ll stay where I am.’

‘The boat returns to Luc tomorrow.’

Parkinson said, ‘I can’t understand what the doctor says. Is he a good doctor? Can I trust him?’

‘Yes, he’s a good doctor.’

‘But they never tell the patient, do they?’ Parkinson said. ‘My old man died thinking he only had a duodenal ulcer.’

‘You are not dying. You have got a touch of malaria, that’s all. You are over the worst. It would be much easier for all of us if you’d walk ashore. Unless you want to return to Luc.’

‘When I start a job,’ Parkinson said obscurely, ‘I finish a job.’ He wiped his neck dry with his fingers. ‘My legs are like butter,’ he said. ‘I must have lost a couple of stone. It’s the strain on the heart I’m afraid of.’

‘It’s no use,’ Querry told Colin. ‘We’ll have to have him carried.’

‘I will see what can be done,’ Colin said and left them. When they were alone, Parkinson said, ‘Can you use a camera?’

‘Of course.’

‘With a flash bulb?’

‘Yes.’

He said, ‘Would you do me a favour and take some pictures of me carried ashore? Get as much atmosphere in as you can – you know the kind of thing, black faces gathered round looking worried and sympathetic.’

‘Why should they be worried?’

‘You can easily fix that,’ Parkinson said. ‘They’ll be worried enough anyway in case they drop me – and
they
won’t know the difference.’

‘What do you want the picture for?’

‘It’s the kind of thing they like to have. You can’t distrust a photograph, or so people think. Do you know, since you came into the cabin and I could talk again, I’ve been feeling better? I’m not sweating so much, am I? And my head . . .’He twisted it tentatively and gave a groan again. ‘Oh well, if I hadn’t had this malaria, I daresay I’d have had to invent it. It gives the right touch.’

‘I wouldn’t talk so much if I were you.’

‘I’m bloody glad the boat-trip’s over, I can tell you that.’

‘Why have you come here?’

‘Do you know a man called Querry?’ Parkinson said.

The man had struggled round on to his side. The reflection from the candle shone back from the dribbles and pools of sweat so that the face appeared like a too-travelled road after rain. Querry knew for certain he had never seen the man before, and yet he remembered how Doctor Colin had said to him, ‘The great world comes to us.’

‘Why do you want Querry?’ he asked.

‘It’s my job to want him,’ Parkinson said. He groaned again. ‘It’s no bloody picnic this. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, about the doctor? And what he said?’

‘No.’

‘It’s my heart, as I told you. Two stone in a week. This too too solid flesh is surely melting. Shall I tell you a secret? The daredevil Parkinson is sometimes damned afraid of death.’

‘Who are you?’ Querry asked. The man turned his face away with irritable indifference and closed his eyes. Soon he was asleep again.

He was still asleep when they carried him off the boat wrapped in a piece of tarpaulin like a dead body about to be committed to the deep. It needed six men to lift him and they got in each other’s way, so that once as they struggled up the bank, a man slipped and fell. Querry was in time to prevent the body falling. The head rammed his chest and the smell of hair-oil poisoned the night. He wasn’t used to supporting such a weight and he was breathless and sweating as they got the body over the rise and came on Father Thomas standing there holding a hurricane-lamp. Another African took Querry’s place and Querry walked behind at Father Thomas’s side. Father Thomas said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that – a weight like that, in this heat – it’s rash at your age. Who is he?’

‘I don’t know. A stranger.’

Father Thomas said, ‘Perhaps a man can be judged by his rashness.’ The glow of the Superior’s cheroot approached them through the dark. ‘You won’t find much rashness here,’ Father Thomas went angrily on. ‘Bricks and mortar and the monthly bills – that’s what we think about. Not the Samaritan on the road to Jericho.’

‘Nor do I. I just took a hand for a few minutes, that’s all.’

‘We could all learn from you,’ Father Thomas said, taking Querry’s arm above the elbow as though he were an old man who needed the support of a disciple.

The Superior overtook them. He said, ‘I don’t know where we are going to put him. We haven’t a room free.’

‘Let him share mine. There’s room for the two of us,’ Father Thomas said, and he squeezed Querry’s arm as if he wished to convey to him, ‘I at least have learnt your lesson. I am not as my brothers are.’

CHAPTER 3

I

Doctor Colin had before him a card which carried the outline drawing of a man. He had made the drawing himself; the cards he had ordered in Luc because he despaired of obtaining any like them from home. The trouble was they cost too little; the invoices had fallen like fine dust through the official tray that sifted his requests for aid. There was nobody on the lower levels of the Ministry at home with authority to allow an expenditure of six hundred francs, and nobody with courage enough to worry a senior officer with such a paltry demand. Now whenever he used the charts he felt irritated by his own bad drawings. He ran his fingers over a patient’s back and detected a new thickening of the skin below the left shoulder-blade. He drew the shading on his chart and called, ‘Next.’ Perhaps he might have forestalled that patch if the new hospital had been finished and the new apparatus installed for taking the temperature of the skin. ‘It is not a case of what I have done,’ he thought, ‘but of what I am going to do.’ This optimistic phrase had an ironic meaning for Doctor Colin.