White Gardenia (22 page)

‘Take her to the hospital,’ the nurse said. ‘That’s where they are going to keep the sick and the mothers with young babies.’

Ruselina took the child from the woman’s arms and Irina and I helped her towards the hospital. ‘Where’s the father?’ asked Irina. ‘Gone,’ replied the woman, her eyes distant. ‘He left me for another woman two months ago.’

‘And he didn’t even come back to help his child?’ Ruselina shook her head and whispered to me, ‘Men are no good.’

I thought of Dmitri. Perhaps it was true.

The hospital was already crowded when we arrived. Doctors and nurses were pushing the beds together to make room for more stretchers. I recognised Mariya and Natasha, busy nailing planks across the windows. Ivan was dragging a cupboard in front of a door. A harried-looking nurse took the child from Ruselina and led the woman to a bench where another young mother was nursing a child.

‘Can my grandmother stay here too?’ Irina asked the nurse. The nurse threw up her arms and I could see that she was about to say no when Irina flashed her dazzling smile. The nurse’s refusal never left her mouth. Her lips twisted, as if she were resisting the smile that was breaking out across her own face. She nodded towards the rooms at the back of the
hospital. ‘I can’t give her a bed,’ the nurse said. ‘But I can put her in a chair in a consulting room.’

‘But I don’t want to be here alone,’ protested Ruselina when we helped her into a chair. ‘I’m well enough to come with you.’

‘Don’t be foolish, Grandmother! This building is the best on the island.’ Irina rapped her knuckles against the wall. ‘Look! It’s made of solid wood.’

‘Where are you going to go?’ asked Ruselina. The frailty in her voice pricked my heart.

‘The young people have to run to the top of the island,’ Irina said, trying to be cheerful. ‘So you will have to imagine Anya and myself doing that.’

Ruselina reached out and grabbed Irina’s hand, pressing it into mine. ‘Don’t let go of each other. You’re all I’ve got.’

Irina and I kissed Ruselina and hurried back out into the rain to join the line of people picking up the ropes and torches and scrambling up the mountain track. Ivan struggled through the crowd to meet us. ‘Actually, I’ve saved a special spot for you two,’ he said. We put down the ropes but kept one torch and followed him to a small Nissen hut in a clearing behind the hospital.

The hut had three barred windows and was dark inside. Ivan shuffled in his pocket and produced a key. He tugged my palm towards him and dropped the key into it.

‘No, we can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s a solid building. You should give it to the sick or the children.’

Ivan raised his eyebrows and laughed. ‘Oh, so you think I’m giving you some special privilege, do you, Anya?’ he said. ‘I’m sure you two get a lot of favours on account of your good looks, but I’m putting you to work.’

Ivan gestured for me to unlock the hut. I pushed the key into the lock and opened the door but I couldn’t see anything but darkness inside. ‘I have no spare volunteers left to look after them,’ he said. ‘All the nurses are occupied elsewhere. But don’t worry. They are harmless.’

‘Who are “they”?’ asked Irina.

‘Ah, my Irina,’ Ivan said. ‘Your voice has won my heart. But you need to win my respect too if you want me to truly admire you.’

Ivan laughed again and bounded off into the rain, leaping over fallen branches and debris with the nimbleness of a stag. I watched him disappear into a grove and out of sight. There was a ‘crack!’ in the sky and a palm tree crashed to the ground, splattering mud over our dresses and missing us by no more than a foot. Irina and I clambered into the hut and struggled to close the door behind us.

The air inside reeked of sun-parched linen and disinfectant. I stepped forward and bumped into something hard. I ran my hand around the edges of it. A table.

‘I think it’s a storeroom,’ I said, rubbing the bruise on my thigh.

Something scuttled by us. Fur brushed across my feet. ‘Rats!’ I cried. Irina flicked on the torch and we found ourselves face to face with a startled kitten. She was white with pink eyes. ‘Hello, cat,’ said Irina, crouching down and stretching out her hand. The kitten scampered to Irina and rubbed her chin against her knees. The cat’s fur was shiny, not dusty like most animals on the island. I jumped back when Irina did, both of us staring at the same thing: a pair of human feet illuminated by the circle of torchlight. They were lying toes up on a sheet. My first thought
was that we were in the mortuary but I realised it was too hot for that. Irina traced the beam up the striped pyjama pants to the face of a young man. He was asleep, his eyes tightly closed and a sliver of drool glistening on his chin. I edged closer and touched his shoulder. The man didn’t stir but his flesh was warm.

I whispered to Irina, ‘He must be sedated because I don’t see how else he could be sleeping through the commotion outside.’

She curled her fingers around my wrist, crunching the bones, and flicked the torch over the rest of the room. There was a wooden table with a pile of paperback novels neatly stacked on it and a metal cupboard near the door. We searched behind us and both jumped when we saw an old woman squinting at us from a bed in the far corner. Irina redirected the torchlight out of the woman’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Irina said. ‘We didn’t realise there was anybody else here.’

But in the instant the beam had illuminated the woman’s face, I had recognised her. She was better fed and cleaner than the last time we had met, but there was no mistaking her. All that was missing was her tiara and her worried expression.

‘
Dusha-dushi
,’ the old woman said.

Another voice, a man’s, called out from a shadowy corner. ‘I’m Joe,’ he said. ‘Joe like Poe like Poe like Poe like Poe. Although my mother called me Igor. It’s Joe like Poe.’

Irina gripped my wrist, making it ache. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

But I was too occupied trying to believe what Ivan had done to answer her. He’d put us in charge of the mental patients.

By the time the head of the storm hit the island, the hut was rattling and shaking like a motorcar on a bumpy road. A stone struck one of the windows and a crack began to zigzag across the glass. I searched the cupboard for tape to seal it. I managed to paste some down before the fracture reached the frame. We couldn’t hear anything outside above the howl of the wind. Only once did the young man wake up, looking at us through glazed eyes. ‘Whaat’s thaat?’ he asked. But before we could answer him, he turned over on his stomach and lapsed back into a deep slumber. The kitten sprang onto his bed and, after some deliberation over the most comfortable spot to settle, curled herself into a ball in the crook of his knees.

‘They must both be deaf,’ said Irina.

The old woman slipped out of bed and twirled around the hut in a silent ballet. We wanted to preserve the torchlight so Irina switched it off, but as soon as she did the woman began hissing like a snake and shaking the latch on the door. Irina switched the torch back on and held the beam on the woman, who danced in the spotlight like a girl of sixteen. ‘Joe’ stopped his monotonous self-introduction to applaud her performance and then announced that he wanted to go to the toilet. Irina searched under the beds for a pan, and when she found one, handed it to him. But he shook his head and insisted that he be let outside. I made him stand with one foot in the door and clutched his pyjama shirt while he urinated against the side of the hut. I was terrified that he was going to run off or get blown away by the storm. After he had relieved himself, he stared up at the sky and
refused to come back inside. Irina had to keep the torch on the old lady while helping me drag Joe back into the hut. His pyjamas were soaked and we had nothing to change him into. We struggled to pull off his wet clothes and wrapped him in a sheet. But once he was warm again, he flung the sheet off and insisted on remaining nude. ‘I’m Joe like Poe like Poe like Poe,’ he muttered, parading up and down the length of the hut on his skinny legs, bare as the day he was born.

‘You and I are never going to make good nurses,’ Irina said.

‘They’re sedated too. That makes us extra hopeless,’ I replied.

Irina and I laughed. It was the only spot of joy we would know all night.

The howling outside rose to a frenzy. In one gust, an airborne tree was propelled into the hut. It rammed into the wall, denting the metal inwards. The cupboard doors flung open and trays and cups crashed to the floor. The old lady stopped dancing, startled like a child caught playing past her bedtime. She clambered into her bed, pulling the blankets over her head.

The wind was battering the tree against the wall of the hut. Small tears sprung up everywhere and leaves poked through the gaps. Irina and I knocked the books from the table and turned it on its side, jamming the top against the wall as a brace.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Irina, turning off the torchlight. ‘I can hear the waves coming.’

‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s something else.’

‘No,’ said Irina. ‘It’s the ocean. Listen.’

‘It’s Joe like Poe, you know,’ Joe shouted out.

‘Shhh!’ I scolded him.

Joe sniffed and climbed under his bed, continuing to mutter under his breath.

Raindrops struck the sides of the hut and rang like bullets. The screws holding the walls to the cement floor groaned under the pressure of the wind. Irina grabbed my hand. I squeezed it back, remembering what Ruselina had said about not letting go of each other. The old lady threw her arms around me and clung on so tightly that I couldn’t move. The young man and his cat slept on peacefully. Joe retreated somewhere deeper into the shadows. I couldn’t hear him.

Suddenly the door stopped rattling and was silent. The walls slid back into position. The flapping of canvas and trees ceased. I thought I had gone deaf. It took a few moments to register that the wind outside had calmed. Irina lifted her head and turned on the torch. Joe crawled out from under his bed. I could hear voices in the hills, moans and cheers. People were calling out to each other from their positions in the jungle. A man was shouting out to his wife, ‘Valentina, I love you! After all these years I still love you!’

But nobody moved. Even the calm had something evil in it.

‘I’m going to check on Grandmother,’ Irina said.

‘Don’t go out!’ All the feeling had gone from my legs. I couldn’t have stood up if I had tried. ‘It’s not over. It’s just the eye.’

Irina frowned at me. She snatched her hand away from the door latch, her mouth open in horror. The handle was vibrating. We stared at it. In the distance the ocean let out a roar. The voices in the jungle rose in panic. The wind lifted again, moaning through the stripped trees. Before long it changed form and was
screeching like a demon, moving in reverse and picking up all the debris lifted by the head of the storm. Branches crashed against the hut. Irina shook the young man awake and dragged him under the bed. She fixed the cat in the crook of his arm. Together we set the table upright and pushed Joe and the old woman under it with us.

‘I’m Joe like Poe. Like Poe. Like Poe,’ he whimpered in my ear.

Irina and I pressed our faces together. There was a fetid odour. Joe had emptied his bowels.

Something crashed onto the roof. Shreds of metal fell around us. Rain began to drip inside. A few drops at first, then a waterfall. The wind thudded against the walls. I cried out when I saw the side of the hut lift, held to the ground only by the screws on the other side. The metal screeched and the hut opened up like a bread box. We gaped at the furious sky. The books fluttered around us before being flung to all corners of the room. We clung onto the table legs but the table began to inch along the floor. Joe struggled from my grasp and stood up, reaching towards the sky.

‘Get down!’ Irina screamed. But it was too late. A flying branch struck him on the back of the head. The shock knocked him to the ground. He was blown across the cement floor like a leaf. Irina managed to catch him, scissor-like, between her feet before he was forced between the jaws of metal and the floor. If the wall came down again, he would be sliced in two. But Joe was wet and slipped from her grip. I tried to reach for his hand but the old lady was holding me and I couldn’t reach far enough. I grabbed him by the hair. He cried out because it started to tear in my fingers. ‘Let him go!’ Irina shouted. ‘He’ll pull you
with him.’ I managed to slip one hand under Joe’s arm and grip him by the shoulder, but in that position my head was out in the open. Leaves and sticks stabbed into me, stinging my flesh like marauding insects. I closed my eyes, wondering what object would strike me. What piece of flying debris would end my life.

‘I’m Joeee,’ Joe cried out. He slipped from my grasp and was blown against the cupboard. It toppled over but fell onto the bed under which the young man was hiding. The cupboard missed Joe’s head by an inch. He was trapped, but as long as the bed didn’t shift, he was safe.

‘Don’t move!’ I cried out. My voice was drowned by an ear-splitting shriek. I watched as the wall was ripped off its last hinges and flung into the air. It seemed to spin for ages, an ominous shadow floating in the sky. I wondered where it would land. Who it would kill.

‘God help us!’ Irina screamed.

Then, with no warning, the wind stopped. The wall dropped from the sky and spliced through a nearby tree, becoming stuck in the branches. The tree had given its life for ours. I could hear the ocean toss and roar, summoning the storm back into it.

Something warm dripped onto my arm. I rubbed it. It was sticky. Blood. I thought it must have been from Irina because I didn’t feel anything. I turned on the torch and searched her head with my fingertips but couldn’t find a wound. Still the blood continued to drip. I turned to the old woman. My stomach heaved. She had put her teeth straight through her bottom lip. I tore my petticoat and folded the material into a wad, holding it against her mouth to stop the bleeding.

Irina pressed her face into her knees, trying not to cry. I blinked the water from my eyes and surveyed the damage. Joe was sprawled on the floor like a fish stranded on the beach. There were grazes on his forehead and elbows but otherwise he seemed unhurt. The young man was awake but quiet. His kitten stood, drenched, back arched, hissing in the corner.