The Good Doctor (11 page)

When I got back to the room he was lying on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling and smoking a cigarette. A sort of midnight melancholy had come over him, because he wasn’t keen on the
Santanders any more. ‘You know, Frank,’ he said sadly, ‘I think you’re the only one here who really understands me.’

‘Come on.’

‘No, really. The rest – they’re selfish. They don’t get it.’

‘I’m selfish, Laurence.’

‘That’s just a game with you.’

‘No, it’s not. I’m the most selfish person in this place, I promise you.’

‘That’s not true. You like to think badly about yourself, Frank. You mustn’t undervalue yourself.’

‘Come on. Let’s go to sleep.’

‘I don’t think I can sleep now. What were they doing – hitting each other?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You’re my friend, Frank. You must remember that.’

The declaration had come out of nowhere. I got into bed and pulled up the sheets. After a minute he sat up and I could feel him looking at me.

‘I had this idea, you see.’

I knew immediately, without it being said, that this was the conversation we hadn’t had earlier that day, by the river. I waited, and he told me: ‘I’ve been thinking about the hospital.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s a failure. It obviously doesn’t work.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I thought, if the people won’t come to the hospital, then let the hospital go to them.’

He drew on his cigarette. In the pause I suddenly knew, understood, everything. But I let him speak.

‘I thought... take a village. Not just any village. The most remote one, the one that’s hardest to find. And go out there. You know, with medicine. Give out condoms, talk about Aids, do
vaccinations, I don’t know, do something.’

‘Run a clinic.’

‘Yes. Basically. We can’t just sit at the hospital, feeling hopeless. At least let’s go and tell them where the hospital is.’

‘You wanted to run a clinic this morning?’

‘No, no, this was just a recce. I wanted to have a look. See what they might need. I don’t know what I’m getting into. Is this a crazy idea, Frank? Tell me. I need to know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s a fucking crazy idea, Laurence.’

‘But why?’

I didn’t answer him; I didn’t have the words. Instead I asked, ‘What is the point of finding some remote village in the middle of nowhere? You could’ve taken any village. The one behind Maria’s
place – why not?’

‘Maria?’ He blinked in confusion, then remembered. ‘Oh, her, yes, yes.’

‘So why?’

‘It was just a gesture, Frank, you know? A symbol. If you can do it in the furthest place, you can do it in the nearest one too.’

He’d done the same thing by coming to the hospital. It wasn’t enough for him to go where life or fate assigned him. No, he had to grandstand with some big display that meant nothing to anybody
except him. Irritably, I told him, ‘Symbols have got nothing to do with medicine.’

‘Haven’t they?’

‘Where do you come from, Laurence? What country are you living in?’

He sat in injured silence for a while, looking at his cigarette. The curtains billowed on a cool gust of wind. ‘Anyway,’ he said at last.

‘Anyway.’

‘It was only an idea. And we don’t have to fight about it, because I couldn’t find the village in any case.’

‘I want to sleep now, Laurence. Come on. Enough.’

‘Okay,’ he said. He got quickly into bed. There was a long silence, full of sighing and breathing, then he said, ‘Sorry, Frank.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘I don’t want to upset you.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘Because you’re my friend, Frank. I wouldn’t want anything to change between us.’

‘Nothing will change.’

‘Do you promise that, Frank?’

‘I promise that, Laurence. Good night.’

‘Good night, Frank. Good night.’

8

Nothing changed. That was the way of things up there. One day resembled another in the sameness of its intentions, the level graph of its ambitions; and I’d become used to it.
I wanted to keep everything fixed and rooted in its place, for ever.

Not even the seasons changed much. We were too near the tropics for that. There was a dry season and a rainy season, but the temperature that ran through them both didn’t rise or fall too much
on the chart.

When Laurence arrived we were in the middle of summer, the rainy season: in the afternoons there was a restless, electric sheen to the sky and thunderclouds clotted into a solid mass. When it
stormed, the lightning was spectacular. Then often it cleared and in the evenings the flying ants swarmed. In the mornings the floor was full of their transparent wings. But now we had moved into
winter, with its clear, brittle light. Certain trees in the forest were bare and on some mornings a thin frost lay on the ground.

None of this was different; the same things happened every year, all in their usual place. My life looked as it normally did. But somewhere deep down, underneath, it wasn’t the same.

One night when I was visiting Maria, just as we’d settled down on the blanket together, I felt my sexual desire – which was almost habit by now – give way to something else:
another feeling completely, subversive because it was strange.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

My hands had fallen away from her, I was looking at her in the dark.

‘Let’s not do this tonight,’ I said. ‘Let’s do something different. Let’s talk.’

‘Talk?’

‘Why don’t you tell me something.’

She sat up, pulling her dress straight, staring at me.

‘Tell you something what?’

‘I want you to tell me everything about your life.’

‘I told you this everything.’

‘No, but I mean really. I mean everything. I want to know where you were born. I want to know about your mother and father. Your brothers and sisters. I want to know what you thought about when
you were growing up. I want to know how you got married. About your husband. Everything.’

‘I told you this!’ Alarm disguised itself as indignation, as if I was accusing her of something.

I went on, as if this thought was a continuation – and for me it was: ‘Maria. If you want to, we can stop this. You know that? If you want me to go and never come back, you can say that to
me.’

‘You want finish this?’

‘No. No. But if you want to, I will do what you want.’

But she shook her head. ‘I don’t want this talking,’ she said, and rolled over on to me. She’d heard, perhaps, a false note in my voice, and her hands moved me back into the old, true tracks of
habit. And nothing was different after all.

One day, while we were playing table tennis in the recreation room, Laurence said to me, ‘Listen, Frank. When you have people up here to visit, where do they stay?’

‘Nobody comes to visit me.’

‘Never?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ The plastic ball bounced off the table and rolled.

‘Who’s coming to visit you, Laurence?’

‘Zanele. My girlfriend. You know, from Lesotho.’

He hadn’t mentioned her for months. Every week or so, the letters on fine coloured paper came and went between them, but nothing more than that. The little shrine of photographs above his bed
was gathering dust. There were none of the breathless phone calls, the urgent longings, that I remembered from when I was young. I’d begun to doubt her existence.

But now she was coming up for a weekend. She hadn’t been able to come before now, he told me, because of her commitments in Lesotho.

‘There must be a hotel or something.’

I shook my head. ‘There was Mama Mthembu’s place, but she closed down that side of it. No business.’

‘Maybe she’d let out a room as a favour.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’ll get out of our room if you need it.’

‘No, no, that’s not right. But it would be great if you asked Mrs Mthembu. She likes you.’

That night, on my way to visit Maria, I stopped in at Mama’s to find out. I didn’t think she would help, but an odd coincidence was at work. Standing around the bar were two or three men I’d
never seen before, strangers in town. They were in civilian clothes, but their haircuts and their bearing looked military to me. And yes, Mama said, they were part of a group of soldiers who’d been
sent up here, who were being billeted in her hotel. The old rooms were being cleaned out and made ready. Good for business, she said, smiling broadly.

‘Soldiers? But what for?’

She leaned towards me confidingly. ‘I think they are a border patrol. To keep foreigners out.’

‘How many of them?’

‘I’m not sure. Five, six. So far there are only three. But more are coming soon.’

And even this was part of the different feeling in the town. All the old rules bending, solid objects rolling out of place.

‘So is there any chance that you will have an extra room for the weekend? There is a woman coming up who needs a place to stay.’

‘Hmm. Maybe. But you must check with me on Thursday. You have a little girlfriend?’

‘Not mine. She’s visiting Laurence Waters. He’s the young man who sometimes —’

‘Yes, I know Laurence. He is my friend.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

She had never learned my name, but Laurence was her friend. And still he sent me down to talk to her about a room, as if I had some special influence.

In two days the whole place was full of news of the soldiers. Different rumours flew around. But it seemed that they had been sent to plug up this stretch of the border, which was notoriously
porous. Not just people, but all kinds of other illegal and dangerous goods were going back and forth: arms and ammunition, drugs, poached ivory. The name most consistently mentioned in connection
with this traffic was that of the Brigadier, but all of it was gossip and innuendo, no hard facts. Now of course speculation was rife as to how the soldiers would deal with him.

‘He will work with them, of course, yes,’ Claudia said gloomily at the breakfast table. ‘It is only corruption, corruption.’

‘No,’ Jorge said. ‘They will arrest him, they will take him away. It is obvious.’

Variations on these two points of view were repeated by everybody, from the kitchen staff to the casual patrons at Mama’s place.

‘What do you think?’ Laurence said. The presence of the Brigadier had impressed itself on his psyche often enough to finally register there.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait and see.’

The truth was that I wasn’t sure about any of the rumours surrounding the Brigadier. He was such a mythical figure by now that any scraps of idle talk stuck to him like facts. It was possible
that he was just a lost and burnt-out piece of the past, not really here at all.

Not all of the speculation had to do with him. There was a sense that the arrival of the soldiers somehow marked a fresh life for the town. Rooms that were sealed up and empty were going to be
occupied. Who knew what else might follow? Maybe shops would open, people would come, something at long last might happen.

But I couldn’t see it. There were only three soldiers around the bar that first day; Mama had told me there might be three more. Six soldiers weren’t going to make any difference to anything,
but I didn’t speculate about this either.

I went back on Thursday. Another four soldiers had arrived, and they were still awaiting the commander of the unit. But there would be a place for Laurence’s girlfriend, Mama told me.

He was delighted. ‘Thank you for organizing that, Frank.’ He seemed to think that the room wouldn’t have been available without me.

‘What would you have done if there wasn’t a place?’

He considered this soberly. ‘Put off the visit, I guess.’

‘You could’ve just shared your bed while I was here.’

‘Oh, no. That wouldn’t be right.’

He went down to Mama Mthembu’s to see the room for himself. It was noisy, he told me, just above the courtyard, but fine. He put a vase of flowers, which he’d picked in the veld himself, on the
table, as well as a framed photo of him and his girlfriend in the Sudan.

But his mood, late on that Thursday night, was melancholic and troubled. He seemed preoccupied with private thoughts.

‘When did you last have a lover, Frank?’ he asked me.

‘Not since my marriage. Why are you asking? Are you worried about your girlfriend?’

‘Well. You know. It’s been a while since we saw each other. The last time was about a month before I came up here. I went to Lesotho to stay with her for a week.’

‘And how was it?’

‘Oh, that was wonderful. Great. Yes, we had a wonderful time.’ But he spoke too forcefully, and avoided my eyes.

‘You’ll just have to see how it goes.’

‘I was thinking of having a little party for her. Tomorrow night. Nothing too elaborate, just the people who work here. Would you come?’

‘Me? Sure. Of course.’

It seemed a bizarre notion to me.

‘Okay,’ he said, his face warming a little. ‘Say seven o’clock. That would be good, Frank. Thank you.’

I wouldn’t have been able to avoid the party, because it happened in our room. When I got back from duty the gathering was already in full swing. I stood in the doorway,
staring. It was an amazing picture. Everybody had come. Even Themba and Julius from the kitchen. Even Tehogo – who was there with the young man I’d seen hanging around, apparently his only friend.
It was just Claudia, who’d taken over from me in the office, who wasn’t there.

Nobody noticed me at first. Laurence had borrowed a music system from somewhere and a slightly stretched tape was playing too loudly. He’d filled several hospital bowls with peanuts and stale
crisps, and bought a few litres of cheap boxed wine. Some kind of coloured plastic was tied around the light and in the lurid yellow glow people were sitting around and talking with uneasy
jollity.

‘Frank! Where were you? I thought you’d run away!’ Laurence was very tense. He had a sort of desperate brightness as he came to get me at the door. ‘Come and meet Zanele, I’ve been wanting to
introduce you.’

I’d already noticed her from the doorway, standing rigidly in a corner, holding a glass of wine. She was small and pretty, with braided hair, wearing a bright West African dress; when she shook
my hand I could feel the tension communicated through her long, thin fingers.