Human Traces (46 page)

Nineteen

Kitty read Thomas's letter from Tanga with a widening smile. A cautious, chastened Thomas, grieving for the loss of Olivier and doubtful about his new home, was no use to anyone, as she had told him with the candour that always marked their conversations. He had to be impulsive reckless at times because it was only in those moments, even when he failed or overreached himself, that he had his moments of inspiration. There was always blood and disappointment, but without them there was no gain; that was the nature of the man, and from his letter it seemed, to Kitty's relief and despite the misgivings she had had about his safety, that the African adventure was going to give him back his self-belief. She read parts of it to Charlotte and Martha, then showed it to Daisy, who, in her opinion, understood Thomas as well as anyone. Flattered by Kitty's confidence, Daisy pored over the letter and was thrilled by the talk of porters, guns, gin cocktails, wild animals and the "Interior'. She worried a good deal for the doctor's safety, but since her admiration of him was almost limitless, she knew he would triumph in the end. Daisy had undergone a course in the administration of electrical treatments. One of Jacques's early heroes, Moritz Benedikt, had been an enthusiast and Jacques had retained some faith in the treatment for that reason; Thomas viewed it as old-fashioned but harmless. His lukewarm attitude did nothing to diminish Daisy's pride in the 'electrical room' that had been handed over to her in the back of the main building. At the Schloss Seeblick they had had a galvanic machine that produced a powerful and continuous current, but they had given it to the public hospital in favour of two new faradic machines, which mildly stimulated all parts of the nervous system and whose electrodes did not have to be placed directly on a nerve or motor point. One was a machine which had been nomilar through the sanatoria of Europe for more than a decade, but Daisy's treasure was a mighty American continuous-coil apparatus, which bore the words "Dr. Jerome Kidder. Inventor. New York' on a smart brass plate. The patient, stripped to the waist and bare-footed, sat in a chair with her feet on a copper pedal. After Daisy had switched on the machine and made sure the current was at the correct setting, she attached her own right hand to a damp sponge electrode wired to the front of the machine, and took in her left hand the brass ball electrode and applied it to the patient's bare back. With the circuit complete, the patient reported a tingling sensation, not unpleasant, which could be intensified by an increase in amperage. Most of them were happy to chat with their therapist as the treatment continued, though Daisy was careful not to instigate the conversations, seeing her role as the listener and questioner only. Silence was equally acceptable to her because she was delighted simply to have such modern equipment entrusted to her. Mary was intrigued by Daisy's new responsibility and acted as a guinea-pig when she was learning how to use the Kidder machine. "It's like having lots of little spiders running all over you," she said. "It's nice really' Her own simple art of massage was not subject to changes of fashion and, after more than twelve years, Mary's skill was such that many new patients asked for her by name. She took on a full-time and a part-time assistant as the numbers grew. In the summer, Mary was the first to be told that Daisy and Hans were to marry. She was to keep it a secret, however, until Thomas returned because Daisy wanted him to be the first to know. She also planned to ask him to give her away in church. Kitty: We left the last government rest house two days ago. They told us there that there was cattle disease in all the towns and Crocker was frantic to take another path through the wilds that would avoid contact with infection. Our guide said he could manage this, but I thought it unwise, since he is one of those men who always agrees to what you ask rather than risk displeasing you. Our water supply is already uncomfortably low, and in this wild uninhabited country we are entirely dependent on the memory of two guides. Three of our original porters deserted the party at the rest house, and if any more go it will be quite impossible to drive Crocker's eighty head of cattle through the thick bush. Yesterday afternoon, I went on a small scouting mission to climb a hill with one of the guides. I found pandemonium on my return. One of the porters had been shot through the chest, and was dying. Crocker told me that the fellow had been threatening to desert and take half a dozen others with him. He had meant to shoot above his head to frighten him, but had somehow misfired and caught him in the chest. I did what I could for the poor man with morhpia and bandages, but it was not much, and he died soon after nightfall. I then had to sit up all night talking to the men, begging them to stay. I offered them the last of the rupees and paid them double wages of cloth; I also gave them some of the trinkets we had been reserving a small mirror, a harmonica, one of Martha's old rag dolls and by dawn had just about quelled the rebellion. The natives not engaged in negotiation with me howled all night for the departed. Crocker slept throughout. The next day was taken up with the obsequies, with the dead man wound in a piece of cloth and carried slung on a pole, as though in a hammock. It was noisy and prolonged; it cost us a whole day and a great deal of water. The following day we pressed on through dense scrub and growing heat. We made about twelve miles, but spirits are low. Two days later: In the afternoon, we came to a feverish river, stagnant and hung about with old creepers hanging from dead trees. Mud-coloured crocodiles basked by its edge, and at dusk I saw a giraffe come down to drink, slowly spreading out its legs one by one, like a tent being lowered at each corner, so that its neck could be brought down low enough to sip the brown water, as it looked round all the time for predators. This scene may not have changed for several million years. In any normal world, all these peculiar animals would long ago have been extinct these freaks of nature. But here in Africa, time stopped and nothing changed. There was a rope-and-wood bridge across the river, which Crocker urged his cattle over, before any of us could question him. He is quite fanatical about these wretched animals (which now number fewer than sixty). In my view, the bridge was not well made in the first place and was very much weakened by the passage of the cattle; I undertook the crossing with extreme trepidation. Sure enough, I found some of the wooden planks broken or missing; but mercifully I made it over, and so did our guide. The donkeys were not all so fortunate. Two of them fell twenty feet into the river, and within seconds one saw little but churning hooves and bulging eyes as the brown water turned red to the sound of their terrified cries. The indolent crocodiles moved with appalling haste. I am very sorry to say that we lost one of the porters in the same way. Loaded onto one of the donkeys were several calabashes of water and onto the other were all my photographic plates, films and my old Underwood everything photographic not related to the map-making, including every single record of the trail of footprints. I am afraid that the footprint itself, safely wrapped and preserved as it was, went down too, and will remain on that prehistoric riverbed for the remainder of time. It was growing dark, and we were forced to pitch camp not far from this evil place. A hippopotamus sniffed round my tent during the night, but Crocker assured me that the hippo is a harmless vegetarian and would only attack if I got into the river. I said that in the circumstances that was an unlikely move on my part. I was beginning to hate this man. The next day Thomas found he had contracted a fever. There were so many flies and sources of infection that it was surprising only that he had been well for so long. He wanted to lie in the shade and do nothing. He had never known lassitude like it; it was as though he had smoked ten pipes of opium. However, the mood of the party was for moving on as fast as possible, so as soon as the funeral rites of the dead porter had been observed (more quickly this time, since the body could not be retrieved from the river), he was helped up on to a mule and strapped into the saddle. The heat intensified in the closed scrub through which they were travelling. Towards noon, they saw a group of Masai, who had wandered many miles from the Serengeti in search of food; they were dying off each day, and a flock of vultures followed them, barely waiting for the corpse to stop moving. Thomas found it difficult to stay upright in the saddle, and was tormented by a desire to drink, but knew that he could not take more than his share of water. "You are fortunate to be on the move," said Crocker. "There is nothing worse for fever than to be stuck in one place." They were kept awake that night by lions roaring. Crocker sat up by the fire with his rifle to keep them off his cattle, four more of which had perished by day. The next evening, just after they had pitched camp, the guide came to see Crocker and Thomas. He began to weep as he explained why he had come. Crocker struck him in the face, and he wept more bitterly. "What is going on?" said Thomas. "He says he is lost." "But I thought he knew the way' "He said he has made the journey before, but only once. When he was a child." Thomas estimated that the man was now about fifty. "But we are in a plain," he said. "Once we get out of this bush, then surely we will see landmarks by which we can navigate. Anyway, we have a compass." "He said there is only one path through the wilderness, and he cannot remember it." Thomas did some calculations, though his fever rendered them approximate. The distance from the Crater to the railway the length of the entire journey was not more than 200 miles. In the early days they had made 20 miles a day and they had left the Crater roughly 18 days ago. Even if their average had fallen to only ten miles a day quite possible with the deaths and the river-crossing they must be almost there. He was able to see the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, and took a bearing north-east from it. He turned to Crocker. "Tell the guide that we will travel by night when our thirst will be less tormenting. Meanwhile, we are going to kill one of your cows and drink its blood." "You can't do that, you ' "Yes, we can. If you had not shot one of the natives we would be a day closer to our destination. And the damage your wretched cattle did to that bridge has cost us another death and another day." He did not mention the photographs or the footprint. "That is quite untrue. Without me, you ' "From now on, you will do as I tell you." In a fever of irritation, Thomas ripped the spectacles from Crocker's face, threw them to the ground and stamped on them. "Look what you have ' "Listen to me, Crocker. I did not come to this beautiful country to die like a pathetic animal. I came here to discover and to understand then take my knowledge home to my family and my colleagues. Tell the natives we will strike camp in half an hour and walk till dawn." Crocker moved off, grumbling, and unsure where to place his feet. Some of the bearers came up to Thomas, grinning, to congratulate him; one offered him a handful of grass as a mark of his respect. They had three calabashes of water left between twelve humans and all the animals. Early the next morning, they saw a large number of rhino tracks, which the guide thought might lead to water. They found a place where once there might have been a pool, but the rhino had rolled in it and reduced it to mud. The men got down and licked the puddles, or picked up handfuls of mud and squeezed the moisture onto their tongues. By afternoon they had no water left at all, and one of the natives looked close to death. Thomas bathed his forehead with the damp mud and offered him some whisky, which he sucked at greedily; he knew the alcohol would dehydrate him further, but the short-term relief improved the man's morale. They found some shade and rested until the evening, but Thomas felt they were now all so depleted that it was better to continue, however slowly, than to stay still. "Crocker, tell them that the white man's compass said that we are very nearly at the railway line and that they must not despair. Have you got that? No despair." They were prevented from moving off in the cool of the evening by the death of one of the Masai bearers. His body was taken, in accordance with tribal custom, to an open place where it was left for the hyenas and the vultures; but the other porters, from the Wanderobo and Wachagga tribes, would not continue until a respectful time had passed. Now that his fever had left him, Thomas felt elated and quite clear in his thinking. There was no longer any reason to be angry with Crocker; in fact, he felt sorry for a man who, for all his bombast, was a trader of pathetically small ambition, trying to scratch a living in a hard place. Late that night, over the remains of the fire, he apologised to him. "I was not myself. I was feverish, and I am sorry for what I did. I think I was also upset by the death of the bearer." "When you have spent as long as I have in the dark continent, Doctor, you will learn that the loss of a native life is not a cause for great concern, even to the family. Look what they have done with the corpse thrown it to the jackals." "I meant what I said, though, about not wanting to die. I have a scientific purpose. When I think of the dead warrior over there, behind the trees, I am thinking of his mind, and what it looks like. Have you ever seen a human brain?" "No." "But I sense that you are curious." "I am a little tired. To put it mildly' "I see no disrespect in a post-mortem," said Thomas. "His tribe has finished with him. It is us or the vultures." "No disrespect, perhaps," said Crocker, 'but what would be the point?" "I am here to learn and to make notes. That is the curse of scientific curiosity. It never leaves you. But there is an aesthetic pleasure also. The brain is a beautiful organ." "Do you suppose the Masai brain is different from ours?" "On the contrary, everything I have learned and everything I believe is predicated on its being identical, because we are one species. However, I cannot deny that I am curious to see. Indulge me, Crocker. We may die tomorrow. I should like to think that my last act on earth was an effort to understand or educate. I have humoured you and your cows for long enough. Just keep me company for half an hour." "I don't know where you find the strength." Crocker looked doubtful, but as though he felt obliged to do what was asked of him. "The fever has left me light-headed," said Thomas.