The strangest thing was the silence. It blew in your ears and it bloated your eardrums.
The second strangest thing was the darkness. Blinking and blinking, but never night vision. Just strips of lightlessness, all swaddled together; so tightly, compactly, that creation was snuffed.
The third strangest thing was Marcus: his very presence here, in the landscape. The way he dropped to his knees and lugged across the ground like an animal. The way he no longer thought about spiders or snakes or snails. The way his fingers grazed against the bark of a tree. He shot up a bough with surprising dexterity; stretching his legs out and falling asleep.
The sun was turning its spotlight. You could just about make out his skin marbled with white ash, or was it clay? Naked down to the boxers; a blanket swaddling his shoulders. Two rows of chattering teeth. He was unevenly balanced and looked ready to fall. A gecko sat on his kneecap.
The sun twisted the stage lights: the whole world lit up. His hands relaxed around the blanket. The gecko walked away. His forehead grew shiny with balls of sweat. His eyes opened up and they looked only pupil.
Marcus slid down the tree and walked further into the foothills. He wolfed down a breakfast of cricket clicks and chirping birds, sun streaks and sky. He tried to ignore the grumbles in his belly, which vibrated all the way through to the tissue.
Soon, the walking turned to gentle climbing. He walked like this for measurements of time that he no longer measured. The sun scorched his skin and he now used the blanket for protection, not warmth. He found another cluster of trees and yanked off giant lobes of leaves that he tied together with vine to make an impromptu hat. He found a long white feather, which he tucked into the vine, behind his ear. He did all these things with consummate care and attention, and these small tasks took up considerable mind power. He was so distracted with the now and what that he did not look into the past or future or ask himself why he was doing any of it at all.
At one intersection of time, there was a sound like shushing water. He changed direction and ran through yellow grassland, through a passing of trees, where a boulder was sheltering a dancing stream. He skulked about the edges, the thirst overtaking him; an intolerable urge to slurp up the water. Some latent and rational self was clawing him back, making him question the purity – was it safe to drink? He cursed his parents for not sending him to Boy Scouts: those hardy brats who always had a compass and penknife and the smug cotton blur of beige and khaki. Well, he could be just as prepared. He could be just as physically strong, as mentally awake and morally straight as those bastards. Those motherfucking Scouts.
He bashed a stone on the head of a lulling fish. It tossed about, pathetic. He did this several times until the water turned red. He didn’t know a fish could bleed. Why had nobody told him that fish could bleed? Would a Boy Scout have known?
He picked up the fish and held it on the flat of his palm. There was still the odd flinch, the odd tussle with life. But these were lessening. So he gazed in wonder at the gaping mouth and darting eyes, things he had seen before, in some distant life, he remembered that now. He lay that fish out on his palm for many measurements of time, until there was only stillness, and the water babbling, and the sun following its inevitable trajectory across the sky.
He sat for some time like that, swallowing and swallowing, trying to produce extra saliva to slake his thirst. His eyes wafted over the horizon, automatic, without apparent thought. He stuffed the fish into his underpants. This didn’t feel odd. While he stood there, his eyes kept wafting, until he saw a sheet of greyness ascend from the earth. It had to be woodsmoke.
There was running, and more running, until it caused his chest to explode. He broke down to a trot, then back to the beat of the walk. His skin peeled into dark pink strips. He licked his lips to stop them cracking. It cracked them even more so.
What Marcus found was a village that looked like the other one. Peroxide grass. Mud huts. Chickens. There were some gasps when he staggered into the centre and roared. Some women wailed. The men came out and stepped around him, in circles, jabbering words he did not recognise. One ran a finger down Marcus’s side. He turned the finger over and gazed at the clay. He held up that finger and showed it to the growing crowd of people. There were no more human words or sounds. Just the chickens clucking, oblivious, locked inside private conflicts.
People moved away, then, as if Marcus had gone invisible. They moved behind him, in front of him, around him – almost right through him. He stayed there upright, his energy sapped, his mind in tailspin. He felt the gentle tug of his fish, but was unable to stop it. Then he slumped to the ground and covered his face in his hands.
The smell of food lifted him up again. Someone set down a couple of bowls: sweetly cooked chambo, a mound of mashed nshima. A jug of drinking water, which he turned to first. Then he scooped out the maize, loading it into his mouth so his cheeks puffed out. He went back to the water to wash it down. Then he picked delicately at the fish, like a chef or a gourmand; thinking thanks for its existence, for its role in his life.
He went over to the women. ‘Thank you.’ He was surprised by his voice; surprised it belonged to him.
Their eyes swivelled upwards. They didn’t say anything in return and he could not read their faces. They went back to working. He assumed a lack of English held them back. But they stared at him, hard, as he staggered back into the thicket.
When the distance had gobbled him up whole, the people looked at each other in a deep and enduring silence. A man held up a hand to his throat, but the laugh ran away from him. Others were now laughing. Soon the women and children were clapping their hands and shrieking. They gestured at their underpants and told dirty jokes. A couple of jesters dragged out some fish from the nets and popped them into their trousers. The man who got the biggest laugh of all was the one with a fish head sticking out of his waistband. He moved the head up and down, made it speak in white-man language. ‘Please, please,’ he said, like the Queen. ‘Thank you very much, please. Marks & Spencer, lovely jubbly.’ A woman laughed so hard that she cried. ‘Oh don’t, don’t,’ she protested, and the children gibbered and grinned and touched her face. ‘He tried to white himself when he is already white! A white man, but whiter!’ She snorted. ‘And he is a grown man, too!’ This set them off again, and the fish got re-stuffed into underpants and paraded around. Any fear of white men and bogeymen was well and truly dissipated by recalling this spectacle: a strange and unusual sight and so completely hilarious.
‘Where has he gone?’ someone asked, at last.
‘Into the trees.’
‘Do we help him? Do we give him food?’
They turned to the headman for consultation. He frowned and peered up at the sky.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It is all rather strange, but there must be a reason why he is here. We should protect him just in case.’
‘But he’s not even a boy…’
‘I have never known a white man take part in this ceremony. But if he wants to call himself an initiate, let’s hear him out.’
‘But we don’t have enough food…’
‘We have enough. We can give him some scraps.’
‘Give the rich white man scraps? This is madness! Appearances can deceive…’
‘We only have appearances, so we will judge only appearances.’
They gave up protesting. The headman always had the last word. But somebody did snarl: ‘We had the appearance of an idiot with a fish down his pants.’ It was an interesting addition to a familiar proverb.
The headman continued, getting caught up in his gusto: ‘We must respond to this moment, I know that good will come from this.’ He raised his eyes like he was thinking of God, but he was thinking of money: white-man remuneration; rapper-dollar bills; gargantuan tips.
Chigayo had a brother in the city, who had gone to Lilongwe to open a restaurant and find some fortune. There was talk of rich ex-pats who worked at embassies. There was speculation of other people coming, soon coming, still coming, coming soon – to blow all their bills on safaris and game. A ‘holiday’ they called it, a chance to find something different. Chigayo had never even seen an aeroplane, he could not imagine getting inside one and going to see something new. There was newness, every day. Each day was new, each second was new. Even though Edson, his brother, was the one with the steam in his eyes and an unfilled restaurant. Now Edson was changing his tune, he was babbling, ‘They say we’ll get richer, more people will eat out, we have to spend the money somewhere.’ Oh no, Edson – here there is only poor, very poor and very rich. And the very rich do not eat out in Lilongwe, they’d sooner travel to South Africa and stuff themselves there! But none of this meant he pitied his brother more than he pitied that man. There was already a holiday in the next life, that was already a given. That lot seemed so unhappy – even the ones without fish down their pants. What did it all mean? What sense should he make from it?
While Chigayo was pondering, Marcus sought natural protection in the trees. He would stay in the lowlands, at a reasonable distance from the village. He found this comforting, as he was far enough away that he didn’t see them as a threat. They had all seemed fairly normal, but he was in Africa now. He might be fast asleep tonight and one of them would come out to find him, wearing only a headdress and his goolies hanging loose; clutching a spear in one hand and something voodoo in the other. This was a primitive land, cursed by both humans and God. It was strewn with poison, disaster and death traps. Even McDonalds had no branch here.
Now – with time to think – Marcus mused on exactly how he had come to be here: in this continent, this wilderness, wearing only his boxer shorts. He could be, right now, in his perfect home, eating perfect food, picking up perfect women.
When these thoughts got too much to bear, he passed some other time by talking to the trees and hearing what it was like to be a tree. It turned out that trees were very remarkable and kept all kinds of secrets.
Then he passed other time by composing lists in his head: his top ten favourite films; his top ten favourite books; his top ten favourite lays. He said goodbye to the day while compiling his ten best sandwich fillings. This was more tricky to rank than he had ever expected.
That night, the cold whispered its way into his bones and lay flat like sediment. He seemed to sit in a husk, and he could hear himself rattle. Everything recoiling; everything turned inwards. He tried to stay still so he didn’t waste any energy, but his limbs echoed out into dark empty space.
Noises were heard, like heavy paw prints on leaves, like the head of a lion, pushing its fur through the bracken, like the pant of a beast with stomach juice dripping over jeering fangs. Then something like the whisper of humans, the sharpening of spears. His head became stuck in a whirl storm of thoughts. The blanket over his face now. His body still shaking, ready for foreseeable death.
He must have fallen asleep, since he woke with the lights back on and the world reformed. All the dangers had disappeared and there was now a renewed optimism for an indefinable something. His smile grew wider when he saw a bowl of food by the trunk – protected with cloth and a stone in the middle to stop it blowing over in the wind. He said some blessings and tucked into the fried potatoes.
Marcus had long finished eating, and was now digging a hole to squat, when he saw a shape just beyond. He stopped what he was doing. His eyes fixed ahead. His father was standing there. He was holding a horse.
Marcus blinked a few times but his dad did not go away. He wore his hair slicked back and that pastel blue suit, for the special occasions. A hand hovered to shoulder height and waved, a bit shyly. Marcus waved back. They didn’t know what to do next, so they both dropped their arms and their eyes settled over the forms of each other. It was all a bit awkward.
His dad stroked the horse’s face. It was a rare white thoroughbred. There was some grey dirt over its chest and haunch, but its face was clean, and the hair pristine white. Even the eyelashes were white: fluttering over large slits of liquid black.
His dad was the first to speak. There had been some build-up. He started to shake and a supernova of blood vessels appeared in his eyeballs. He said: ‘I can’t spend my money. They won’t take my money.’ He let go of the horse and they both watched it lope into a distant place that they could not see.
His dad started to pace. In and out, in and out, weaving in and out of trees.
‘Dad,’ Marcus said, but the pacing didn’t stop. He tried to catch his dad’s eye, but he was wringing his hands, his eyes wide with panic. He stopped, looked Marcus dead-on and screamed: walking backwards, running backwards, his mouth a great hole in the middle of his face. The hole stretched wider and wider until the face disappeared.
‘Dad!’ Marcus ran after him, but could not see him. He had gone. The scream had gone, too.
‘Marcus.’
He whipped around but saw nothing. Then a stone skimmed his shoulder.
‘Over here, Marcus.’
His mother was sitting on a swing above the ground. She was kicking higher into the air, like she might take flight.
‘Mum. Oh fuck, Mum. I just saw Dad.’
‘I know you did. Don’t swear, dear.’
‘Mum; he didn’t look happy.’ Marcus paused; refocused. ‘Mum – you look happy. What’s going on?’
‘Oh yes, I’m good, Marcus, I’m good. It’s so much better here. It’s so much better not to be real, anymore.’
He swallowed. His insides churned. ‘But of course you’re real. I can see you.’
‘Everything you see is you. You make it what it is. Your brain makes it. I am you. This is you.’ She gestured around her. ‘Everything is you. You’re talking to yourself!’ She laughed. ‘How does it feel?’
‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘I never knew I was so interesting.’
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘I always thought it was a shame we couldn’t clone ourselves and then we’d have our best friend sorted forever. After all, we only talk to other people so we can validate our own opinions.’
‘That’s very cynical,’ he said.
‘That means you’re very cynical,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right.’
‘I’m always right. I’m your mother.’
‘But I thought you were me.’
She drew a circle in the air. ‘And everything is complete.’
‘You’re being very cryptic,’ he said. ‘You’re talking like Yoda or Mr. Miyagi. Like somebody in a film.’
‘I don’t know who those people are.’
‘You must do if you’re me.’
‘Yes, but there has to be some realism involved, doesn’t there? The playwright writes the play, but he still tries to write this panoply of characters – not just versions of himself. Anyway, I can guess what your point is. And I’ve got a riposte.’
‘I’m not sure I ever heard you use the word “panoply” when you were alive. But anyway – what’s the riposte?’
‘Well, how would you like it if I started talking to you about the weather? Or asked you for the latest on Eastenders?’
‘I suppose it would be disappointing.’
‘Yes. Yes, it would be.’
They both mused on that for a moment, and then he ventured: ‘Mum. I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t know if I am. I mean – I really hated you. Since Dad died, but also, maybe, before that. I hated you for falling apart. I hated you for not being like Dad. You were so wishy washy, you had no energy or ambition. You just seemed happy to die like you’d lived. I felt like you’d be happy with that lot for me, too. I felt like you suffocated me, like you could stop all my potential. I resented your genes. I didn’t want to be like you.’
She stopped swinging. She folded her arms and sighed. ‘Marcus, I know all of this. Why are you telling me again? I get it. I do.’
‘I don’t know. I guess it’s freaking me out. That there’s something else.’
‘What something else?’
‘That…’ He didn’t know why, but he was crying. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You know this is what initiates do, honey? They’re meant to commune with their ancestors. This is what’s meant to happen.’
‘I remember now.’
‘You’ve always remembered. People pick and choose what they remember, but it’s always there.’
‘I thought I read somewhere that people never remember a memory the same way. There are only false memories. Memories change.’
‘Oh, that’s certainly true. The very act of remembering distorts it. But the thing itself, the core of it, is always there, like a photo: just waiting for retrieval.’
‘You never talked like this in real life.’
‘Of course, I didn’t! That was real life. Oh you are funny, dear.’
‘I don’t like it here, Mum. I miss everything about home. I miss all the little things. I miss going to the cinema, broadband, my Friday night wine, a bit of steak béarnaise…’
‘But you couldn’t talk to me like this if you were back home, could you, honey? We couldn’t commune.’
‘So this is…communing?’
‘Yes! How do you like it?’ She resumed her swinging. ‘Oh please stop crying, Marcus. I’ve not seen you cry since you broke your arm on that god-awful caravan trip in Wales.’
He tried to sniff away the tears. ‘Yes. I think that was the last time.’
‘You know that it wasn’t. Stop pretending. You’ve cried a lot in the last few weeks. And of course you did cry when your father died; you just didn’t show anyone. You cried in secret. To yourself. To the walls.’
‘How do you know that?’ His tone was defensive, embarrassed.
‘Oh Marcus, do we really have to have this conversation again?’
His head dropped. ‘No. No, I guess not.’ He’d stopped crying. He put his palm up to his forehead, to feel his temperature.
‘Are you feeling better now, honey?’
‘Yes, Mum. I guess I got a bit overwhelmed.’
‘How come?’
‘Seeing Dad. Then seeing you.’
‘A bit of a shock?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did it make you feel?’
‘Shocked.’
‘But what else? Anything else?’
‘Oh Mum, stop it.’
‘Honey, this is why people commune with ancestors. To get to the bottom of things! To set them up for the next leg of the journey. To become a man.’
‘I guess I was just really pleased to see you. I guess I realised how much I’ve missed you. I miss you so much.’ The tears turned back on, and they felt cool and remarkable.
‘There you go, that’s what we were waiting for. Why did you run away here? Was it to stop yourself crying?’
‘I haven’t been crying that much. You’re exaggerating.’
‘You know that anger is a kind of love, too? The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.’
‘Oh, that’s such a cliché.’
‘Such a cliché? Well, I suppose you’re right. Someone should sack the scriptwriter.’ They both laughed quietly at that.
‘Well, OK, I’ve got something I want to know: why didn’t Dad commune with me? Why did he look so sad?’
His mum stopped swinging again. She jumped down from the swing and sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘You were the one that did it to him. Why did you make him so sad?’
‘I’m not sure. I thought he was a happy man. That’s how I remember him.’
‘Ahh, remembering again. Are you sure that’s how you remember him? As happy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing contrary to that, which you may wish to retrieve?’
‘No.’
‘Okey doke, then.’
‘Oh Mum.’ He dropped to his knees. ‘Mum, I don’t feel so good.’
‘Oh my little boy.’
He stumbled towards her, his arms outstretched. All he wanted was her arms, her big, grown-up arms.
‘No, Marcus.’ She held up her hand. ‘If you come closer, I’ll disappear.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘I will. Trust me. Trust you.’
‘OK, then.’ He stopped and stayed very still, his head dropped on to his thighs.
‘Mum, am I a bad person?’
‘If you’re asking the question, then you probably are.’
‘Really?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You’re not a bad person, but you’ve got bad inside you. That’s like everyone, really. You’re probably no better or worse than anyone else.’
‘Have I done bad things?’
‘Of course. Terrible things.’
‘Did I kill Nancy?’
‘In a way.’
‘Why am I out here?’
‘What difference does it make? Here, there. There’s always you.’
‘Is there a God?’
‘That’s not an important question.’
‘What do you mean? It’s the most important question of all.’
‘No. It’s not. The answer’s important, but not the question.’
‘But surely I won’t get the answer unless I’ve asked the question?’
‘Oh,’ she laughed. ‘You haven’t understood anything.’
He felt the heat whirl up within him. He looked up and she had gone. There was no swing. There was no mother. He did not know what had or had not happened. He felt consciousness drift in and out. He didn’t feel so good.
The Tombe villagers found him collapsed with his limbs buckled up and his head all skew-whiffed. His eyes were open but he could not see. He stared at and through and into something. His face was all sweat and colour. The lips were moving but no words dripped out.
At first, they panicked. They worried that something had gone wrong with the fried potatoes. There was a bit of a debate. ‘But nobody has ever been sick from fried potatoes’ was the general consensus. Potatoes were solid and mild, all waxy starchiness. Somebody pointed out the toxicity of green potatoes and potato leaves, but the majority scoffed at this. They had not served the man green potatoes! They were not idiots. Beatrice, wife of the village headman, was brought forward, and confirmed she had not fried any green potatoes. Anyway, she had also given these fried potatoes to her family – and were they not upright and well and joining in with the discussion?
The debate died down quickly after that. Marcus’s bones were dragged like firewood. He was shifted to one of the mud brick houses and his body lain out on the floor, in the dust, so that his hair streaked with grey and the beetles scuttled over him.
A village meeting was called, although not everybody could come: people were in the field; some had gone out to beg. But there was a relatively good attendance and decisions were made. A rich white man could not survive alone for long in Malawi, wearing only his underpants and waving whole fishes about, without even a pocketknife. They estimated that he had been wandering the land for no more than two to three days. They guessed that he had not gone far. They surmised that even yesterday some sickness had hollowed him out and sucked out his soul: hadn’t he worn his eyes all wild? Hadn’t his face been all puffed and paled, like the weight of the sky was pressed on it? No, this wasn’t the work of the fried potatoes: or even the fish or the maize or the sunburn or thirst. This was the work of the insides. The eternal internal thing that winds us up like a spring but can suddenly snap or turn rusty. Whether a mechanism in the head or the heart, it was impossible to know. But something had failed him. What these wealthy westerners didn’t realise is that somebody can be dead but not physically dead; just like someone can be physically dead but forever alive. This man was dead. The sing’anga, the village herbalist, wholeheartedly agreed. He beckoned a few people to help him roll Marcus onto a straw mat in the corner, as a sign of respect. Duly respected, the crowd wandered out.
Tombe fell between two other villages. They summoned a man called Dixon, to run to the one to their east. They knew a charity was based there, full of white smiling folk, always burnt and bitten. It was the obvious place to try first.
This village lay at a distance of 15 miles. Dixon had made the trip before. He was the village messenger and he was as lithe as a leopard and as fierce as a hippo. He had calves as wide as fire pits.
He went back to the house, to look in on Marcus. He made a mental photograph of his features, his height, his hair and eye colour. He stored this information and banged the soles of his feet to the earth, felt the earth shudder through him.
This was when Dixon was happiest: with the wind sailing through his hair and the feel of his body in motion. The only thing that saddened him was that he would eventually grow tired and would eventually stop. It was sad to think that he could not run forever. It was sad to think that he could not run over borders and continents and oceans. He wanted to explore every corner of the world. He wanted to know where rich white men came from. He was twenty-four and had never left his district. He just ran to and fro and back and forth and in and out of the square metre. If this district were the entire world, he would be the world’s most travelled traveller. He might even be famous.
Stephanie was the first to notice Dixon; an ever-growing speck on the horizon. She called to Philippa and they spoke in raised, dramatic voices. Then they sat on the wooden bench on the compound’s porch: hypnotised by Dixon’s thrashing legs, their thoughts excitable and keen. When he was within hollering distance, they gazed at their hands and the ground, at the scurrying of insects. It seemed wrong to maintain eye contact at such a close distance. It seemed to break something human and sacrosanct. They waited out his running in their own discomfited ways. The silence thronged between them.
In the final few seconds, Stephanie looked up and rose to her feet. A hand was held to her forehead, eyes wincing from the glare of the afternoon sun. She recognised Dixon, and waved.
‘Dixon,’ she croaked. Philippa stayed seated.
‘I have message,’ he said, as he slowed to a halt. His English was rough, but he knew a few basic phrases. He had been practising these in his head for most of the journey. He coughed into the mounting tension, then spat on top of it.
‘Man,’ he continued. ‘White man. We have white man.’
‘Marcus?’ Philippa stood up too now; she was smoothing down her skirt and trying to look composed. Inside, she was a maelstrom of insurance claims and solicitor bills and bad PR for the charity. They had never lost a volunteer before. It was unheard of.
Dixon shook his head, but this was because he did not understand. Stephanie, recognising the difficulties, turned to Philippa: ‘I’m going to get Kondwani.’ Soon, Kondwani was standing among them, the smile tugging at his cheek, his usual sanguine self in the face of adversity. As he chattered to Dixon, the smile only grew wider.
‘He talk of man. I think it Marcus. He sick. He cannot speak or see. They think…’ He trailed off and tapped his head.
‘What does that mean?’ urged Stephanie, the hysteria swelling up.
‘Something wrong in head.’
‘What?’
Philippa shrugged. ‘He may have a medical history. Something we didn’t know about. We can’t be responsible for this.’
‘But we definitely got clearance from his doctor, didn’t we? In the application…?’
‘Oh, that doesn’t mean anything. You know what GPs are like. They’ll sign anything just to get you out of the door.’
‘Well, what are we going to do?’
Dixon continued to stand there, patient and statue-like. He had gone from post van to post-box.
‘We’ll have to drive him to the hospital in the sugar estate. His insurance will cover it.’
‘It’s still quite basic, though.’
‘If he needs anything more, we’ll have to get him out somewhere else. There are better hospitals in Zambia.’
‘Do you think we can do that?’
‘I don’t know. Worse-case scenario, perhaps we can fly him home? Or at least fly him into Europe. Sometimes the insurance covers that.’
‘I don’t think so. They usually do anything they can in the clause to wriggle out of that one. It costs them tens of thousands. No, I think we’re jumping ahead of ourselves. We haven’t even seen him yet. We can’t possibly know how he is. Let’s pick him up and take him to the hospital.’
‘One of us should do that, but one of us should stay here.’
‘You stay here and I’ll go pick him up.’
‘Are you sure?’ Philippa grimaced with relief. She didn’t like hospitals; especially not Malawian hospitals.
‘Yes, it’s fine – and I’ll have Kondwani with me.’
Kondwani nodded. He spoke all of this back to Dixon. ‘He say, plan good. He run back now.’
‘What? But that’s ridiculous. We can give him a lift in the car.’
Kondwani relayed this back to Dixon.
‘He run.’
Stephanie shrugged. ‘OK, then. That’s fine. Goodbye, Dixon. Thank you.’
Dixon understood these words, so he bowed his head and started to run again: both his legs and thoughts.
Kondwani and Stephanie bumbled into the car. As they drove off, they saw Aldo and a man called Chris; they strode towards Philippa, gesturing to the car, a keyed-up wonder about them, a closet delight in the drama. Kondwani’s habitual grin gave nothing away; Stephanie wore her best poker face. She didn’t like the idea of anyone feeding off someone’s bad fortune. She thought about this for a few minutes as Kondwani sped off down the dirt track, the car bumping up and down, grit spraying off into corners. She supposed she had this ridiculous righteousness about her. Everything was crystal clear. She found the world so frustrating. If only she could be prime minister, head of the UN, or something. She dreamed such impossible dreams. She taunted herself with–
‘Woah!’
‘What was that?’
‘You not look?’ Kondwani motioned in front of the car, perplexed but eyes twinkling. ‘We almost die, my Stephanie! We could die, and you think about… What you think about?’
‘Oh, I was a million miles away.’ She started to explain the expression…
‘Yes, I know, I know. You tell me that one.’
The car trundled on, past the gawping family that clutched the goat Kondwani had almost killed…
‘They come out of nowhere,’ he said, repeating another English express he liked. ‘Dead goat – dead family. You see? That goat is life. Goat feed them.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘These bloody roads!’ Kondwani had learned a lot of English swear words from the group. He enjoyed them immensely. ‘They are not roads!’
Stephanie had to agree with that one. Even the highways were just tracks of dirt. She had never been to a country with such poor infrastructure. It made her spin into hopelessness. There was so much to do.
Her thoughts drifted to her time in the charity: would she ever go home? Even Philippa returned to the UK every so often, to visit her grown-up children and take lunch with friends. Everybody went home eventually: either permanently or just to visit, to reconnect with a way of life that they all desperately missed. She was the only one who did not do that. She was the only one who had nobody in the UK that she really wanted to turn to; or whom she felt she could.
Stephanie glanced at Kondwani’s hands on the steering wheel. How the pulse of the car thudded right through those hands. How his legs twitched at the pedals. How his eyelashes fluttered over the eyes that stared right ahead of him. His chest breathing so regular. These roads were some of the most unsafe she’d known, but in a car with him, she only ever felt safe. She felt miraculously safe.
He looked over. She blushed.
‘I have food on my face?’ he asked. They both laughed.
‘No,’ she smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t staring at you, I was staring into the distance. But it must have looked a bit odd. I’m sorry.’
‘Even my wife not stare like that!’ he roared. And at the mention of his wife, Stephanie’s hands folded up into her lap and she crossed her legs very tight and peered out of the window beside her. She looked very still, but there was a trembling.
When they arrived into Tombe, the women yelped once more, and a crowd of wriggling children opened and closed their hands over the hot metal fizz of the car.
Kondwani spoke to the headman. Stephanie caught a few phrases, which Kondwani had taught her, but she couldn’t hold her own. The language was so painfully dialectical. She kept trying and trying to learn it.
Kondwani took her hand and led her into a house a few minutes’ walk away. The headman nodded, said something, and left them.
‘Shit.’ Kondwani dropped her hand and shook his head. ‘He look bad. They say he… What is word?’ Kondwani did an impression of somebody shaking, their eyes rolled back, the tongue sticking out.
‘Fitted? He had a fit?’
‘I don’t know if that is right word. I don’t know word.’
‘Does he have a fever?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Do you think it’s an illness? Something contagious?’
‘We hope not.’ He was now moving forwards. ‘I carry him. You stay. I am strong. I get no sickness.’ He made a spectacle of bending his arms, moving a small mound of muscle. ‘I carry him.’
The village stayed their distance but mumbled sympathetically as Marcus was lowered on to the back seat of the car. They offered food, which was refused. Instead, they gave thanks, and also offers of food in return: the villagers also refused. All grateful tokens of food refused, and everyone appeased, Stephanie and Kondwani slotted back into the car. They waved at the villagers as the engines revved up. The villagers waved back. There was no laughter about fish and underpants today. There was something too pathetic about this man, now. He had surpassed even laughter.
The hospital was a slow and matted mess of insurance claims and misunderstandings. Stephanie spent a long time on the phone, wrangling and scrambling. She located the nitty-gritty detail of his policy: no, it did not cover medical evacuation; yes, it would cover medicine. She then set work on her best negotiation skills, via Kondwani, to guarantee Marcus a private bed. This mostly involved bribing. However, she did not have any notes on her, and her pleas about Marcus’s credit card – which he would access when better – did not work. There was not enough space. Besides, Marcus’s condition was assessed as non-urgent, so he was wheeled into a long corridor with a line of other trollied beds. She sheltered herself around him.
His eyes were now open. He was blinking at the windows. He went to speak, but felt a surge of embarrassment. He was going to pretend to fall back asleep, but Kondwani prodded him. ‘Alive?’
‘Yes.’ His voice rested strange on his lips. His lips were dry.
‘You take drugs?’
‘What?’
‘They want to know if you’ve taken medication in Malawi,’ said Stephanie. ‘Or drugs.’
‘You know,’ grinned Kondwani. ‘Malawi gold? Smoke some?’
‘No!’ Marcus tried to sit up, but failed.
‘Do you know why you’re here? You’ve been sick. You ran away from the camp. Do you remember that? What do you remember?’
‘Nothing,’ said Marcus. But then – ‘I saw my parents.’ A bit more came back to him… ‘I think I slept in a tree.’ His eyes were wide and lunatic. ‘Oh god. Oh god!’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right, Marcus. Something has happened and we’re just trying to figure out what that is.’
He swallowed. ‘Aspirin. Something else for headaches – something stronger, I forget what it is called. But I only took it a couple of times. Oh, and my anti-malaria medication.’
‘Yes, they were particularly asking about that one.’ She beckoned to a passing nurse. ‘You wanted to know about his anti-malarial medication?’
‘It’s Mosaquine.’
She said something to Kondwani. He translated. ‘She ask, is it one? A week, I mean?’
‘Yes. It’s a weekly medication.’
‘That’s strange,’ said Stephanie. ‘I thought they were always daily.’
‘I didn’t want to take daily. I always forget to take things daily. I got this one – Mosaquine – because it’s a weekly one. I wanted weekly.’
Kondwani spoke some of this back to the nurse. She nodded. She wrote something down and walked away.
‘What did she say?’ asked Stephanie, anxiously.
‘She talk to doctor.’
They lived out the time as best as they could, in their different ways. Stephanie’s foresight meant she had a book in her rucksack. She read this very slowly, as her mind drifted on to different things. Kondwani entertained himself by talking to all the patients, hearing their life stories, offering sympathetic noises, touching pregnant bellies. Marcus just stared up at the ceiling and saw his past life spin into substance out of spider webs and blocks of shadow. Why had he run from it? Hadn’t he been happy? Hadn’t he been a success?
The doctor finally entered in a parade of handclaps. He shouted something jubilant at Kondwani, who dashed over from the dialysis room. ‘He says he read on internet… Mosaquine no good!’
‘On the internet?’ spluttered Stephanie. ‘But that’s… He’s a doctor, right?’
‘Yes, doctor. Nurse read at internet café. Drug side effect. Head side effect…’ He searched for the word: tripped it off his tongue, syllable by syllable. ‘P-sy-cho-sis?’
‘You pronounce it “ko”. Psy-ko-sis. And you don’t need to say the p. It’s a silent p. So, that’s what they think it is? Psychosis?’
‘I’m not psychotic.’ Marcus rolled his eyes. ‘We’re listening to a doctor in a third-world country who sent his nurse off to the internet café to look something up. I don’t think we have to automatically believe this diagnosis.’
The doctor said something more to Kondwani. Kondwani translated: ‘One in ten people dream strange. No sleep. Yes?’
Marcus paused. Then nodded.
‘Oh god, that nightmare you had… When you shouted out.’ Stephanie glanced around herself, frantic. ‘Could that have been a side effect?’
Kondwani continued: ‘More symptom. Sadness. Worry. Headache. Dizzy. Vomit. Memory all bad. Want to die.’
‘Suicidal?’
‘Probably. And see things. Pictures. Not real things.’
‘Hallucinations?’
‘Yes! Those. Like with Malawi gold.’
‘Yes, like Malawi gold.’
‘Oh god,’ groaned Marcus. ‘I think it was the tablets. I think they’re right. Oh fucking hell – those fucking tablets.’
‘All right, Marcus, it’s OK – calm down.’
‘But… Why didn’t they tell me any of this?’ His eyes swivelled up. He felt pathetically small just lying there, cramped into the corridor corner. He felt outraged by the impudence. He felt so embarrassed.
‘Oh!’ said Kondwani. The nurse had handed him something. ‘This…’ It was the nurse’s printout of the information.
Marcus snatched it and started to read. His vision blurred over. He couldn’t believe it. They didn’t even prescribe this junk in EU countries anymore: the UK had for some reason continued to hand it out to tossers like him, who didn’t have the mental aptitude to handle a daily pill… What an idiot he was! What an idiot! He shook in the bed and struck out at himself.
‘That’s not going to help. Why are you so angry? It’s all right. We’ll get you some other drug. There are lots of other ones. We can pay for a stash of it with your money and then claim it back with the medical cover. It’s fine. Really.’
‘This is all I need! Some poxy fucking psychosis! I’m getting out of here.’ He swung his legs over the bed.
‘No, no, no. Just stay here a bit longer. They need to do blood tests. We need to check that it’s all out of your system.’
‘I haven’t taken it for…’ He paused: poised on the bed, with his hands gripping the metal. ‘How long have I been gone?’
‘You left the camp two days ago.’
‘Is that long enough for it to have left my system?’
‘I don’t know. I mean – if it’s a weekly pill…’
‘Oh right. Yes. You’re right. Oh fuck. So today is…’
‘Wednesday.’
I always take it on a Sunday. It’s still going to be in my system, isn’t it? Oh fuck.’ He started to shake. It was like some bizarre horror movie, with the monster inside you, its claws in your blood.
Stephanie and Kondwani persuaded the hospital staff that Marcus was safe to leave. They both had a hunch that the environment was whisking him up into another mental episode.
The hospital staff, however, were disappointed to see them go. They’d all been getting along so well. Stephanie slipped the doctor some notes from her bag, to soothe over any ill feelings. The doctor took them with relish and held them close to his chest, as if cradling a newborn.
The atmosphere in the car was tense and terrible. Stephanie found her mind drifting again. She did not feel weighted in her body. She looked down at her hands and could not see the connection.
Kondwani was smiling his usual smile, but his hands shook on the steering wheel. He could feel the strain of Stephanie’s body, and he did not know how to help her. He had grown to like this strange and skinny white woman. But he had never known anyone so fragile and coiled. And now, if that wasn’t bad enough – as if he didn’t sense that she was burrowing herself into one of her moods – he had this psychotic in the back of the car. A man who, at any point, could leap up and bite his neck. Or crush his skull with a rock. Kondwani kept glancing into the rear-view mirror.
Meanwhile, Marcus was struggling. He couldn’t decide upon the least psychotic-looking pose. He sat with his arms crossed, but this seemed a tad surly and aggressive. With his legs flopped forward, he felt like a sexual predator. Even worse was the face: did he smile, like a manic, or risk looking blank like a sociopath? And woe betide if the corners of his lips drooped downwards, or his eyes accidentally watered from the winds.
Kondwani was first to break the silence: ‘There is no doctor in these villages.’
Stephanie roused from her head travels. ‘Sorry?’
‘If Marcus die. What if Marcus dead before Dixon run?’
‘Well,’ considered Stephanie, blinking. ‘That’s just how things are, Kondwani. There aren’t enough hospitals. There aren’t enough doctors.’
Marcus leaned forwards. ‘And the hospitals you’ve got aren’t much cop, if I’m honest.’
‘What?’
‘For god’s sake, watch the road, Kondwani – or we’re going to end up back at one. It’s an expression – “not much cop”. It means it’s not very good.’
‘We poor. Who cares?’ He sniffed, hurt. ‘But I change it. For our village.’
‘How?’
‘Get Madonna to build a hospital on top of it?’ quipped Marcus.
Kondwani swiped his hand through the air. ‘No, no, no. Serious, now. Government train people to care in village. Like doctors. Give drugs. Eleven weeks. Train and you get money, yes? More money than charity give.’
‘Oh yes, I’ve heard of this.’ Stephanie nodded, slipping back into her body. ‘They’re called Health Surveillance Assistants, I think…’
‘Yes!’ Kondwani clicked his fingers. ‘Yes. I want to be that.’
‘But Kondwani, I think you need to be a secondary school leaver.’
‘What now?’
‘You need to have finished school. Big school.’
‘No, no, no. Two years.’
‘Oh. I thought… Well, even so: did you do two years of school?’
He shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘Kondwani…?’
‘They want two years of big school. I have two years of big school.’
‘I’m not sure that’s how it works.’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. But why?’
‘Money. More money for family.’
Stephanie winced. ‘Yes. I can see that.’
He glanced at her. ‘You not happy.’
‘If you get through… If you complete it… Of course I am happy for you.’
‘I am most clever man in village. I not miss school.’
‘Yes, but secondary school. Big school.’
‘My father pay. He find money.’
‘Yes, but how long were you there…?’
He smacked the roof of the car and unease pervaded everything. ‘It no matter. Stop now.’
‘Kondwani, I’m sorry.’ She smiled, although her eyes stayed static. ‘I’ll just miss you, that’s all.’
An involuntary smile twitched at his mouth. ‘Really? Is that why you not happy?’ He leant over and kissed her cheek. ‘Princess Stephanie.’ A rumble of laughter. ‘Ahh, we have fun, yes?’
‘Yes.’
Marcus leant in again. ‘In all seriousness, I think it’s a great idea. The village needs a clinic. It’s living in the Stone Age… It’s backward.’
‘Marcus.’ Stephanie whistled through her teeth. ‘You’re not helping.’ She turned around to face him. ‘You’re volunteering in a developing country, one of the poorest in Africa. What did you expect?’
‘What you expect?’ repeated Kondwani. It was one of his favourites. He liked the tone of it.
Marcus flopped back again. ‘Just something more… You know, a drive to improve. A drive to get better.’
‘With what money?’
‘Look, they still believe in witchcraft, for god’s sake. It’s weird.’
‘They don’t all believe in witchcraft.’
‘Most of them do.’
‘Well, anything can be witchcraft. Science is like witchcraft to me. Religion, philosophy.’ She tried to move the conversation on. ‘Kondwani, you know these Health Surveillance Assistants… A lot of them don’t even get bicycles. There’s not enough. You’d have to do what Dixon does. You’d have to run around the villages by foot.’
‘I am muscle enough! No?’ He flexed his muscles and they laughed. He added: ‘I am not old.’
‘I know you’re not,’ she said, softly.
‘My children will laugh.’
‘Why?’
‘They see dad run to villages, red and hot and this belly.’ He grabbed it and gave it a shake. There wasn’t much to shake but he liked to see Stephanie laugh, her pale lips giving way into teeth. ‘I sweat now. This weather! Bad.’
‘Now it’s my turn: what do you expect?’
‘Marcus…’
‘Isn’t this just Africa? It’s hot. It’s fucking hot.’
‘Why angry?’ bellowed Kondwani. ‘You big psychopath.’
‘I am not a psychopath.’
‘You are! Doctor say so. You big, crazy psychopath.’
‘I am not a psychopath!’
‘Please.’ Stephanie’s voice was tired and world-weary. ‘We’re almost back now. Can we just calm things down? And by the way, Marcus, we’re in Malawi. You shouldn’t just say “Africa”’.
‘I not drive you. I leave you in hospital with cockroach and rat. I tell you, this is rainy season. This is rainy season but no rain. We need rain. We have rainy season with no rain.’
‘OK, I get it. Rain.’
‘It rain in “Africa country” too, you know. Psychopath.’ He was really enjoying the sound. He liked to practise new words. Bonus points if it was something that could antagonise stupid white people.
‘I remember it was the opposite problem last year,’ recalled Stephanie. ‘I remember the rain just suddenly coming and pouring down and never seeming to stop. For so long, there was nothing, and then there was this… torrent.’
‘It sounds like you’re never satisfied, basically.’
‘The rains aren’t meant to be so unpredictable, Marcus. The rainy season is meant to be this steady, continuous rainfall. Not absolutely nothing and then a downpour that floods everything. All the crops died. It was terrible.’
‘Never like this when I boy,’ growled Kondwani. ‘Never like this.’
‘Oh, we’re here.’ The turning was coming up. Thank goodness. The medication had turned Marcus hostile and bellicose. Sharp words could pierce Stephanie like wasp stings. She couldn’t wait to get out of the car. Kondwani was sitting too close. She didn’t know what it was; she was getting worse… Just this horrible fixation, such disreputable daydreams. She was better off steering clear of him.
Darkness crept towards the village as the car pulled in. People were gathered in the porch. Some stood up and pointed at the car lights. A couple called out his name. ‘Marcus!’ ‘Good to see you again, Marcus.’ A few kept back in the shadows, wearily casting their eyes over him, now seeing him as the man who crossed lines. There was no greater societal sin.
Marcus tugged at Stephanie. ‘I just want to get into bed.’
‘Don’t you want to say hello?’
‘I can’t deal with this right now. I’m not even wearing trousers. Please just take me to bed.’
Philippa walked towards them, while the others stayed back. ‘Marcus,’ she smiled, but her body held back. She twitched briefly at the pants. ‘We’re so glad you’re back safely.’
He nodded, embarrassed. He twisted his body to the side so there was less of him to see.
‘He wants to go to bed. He’s really tired.’
‘Of course.’ Philippa waved her hands towards the sleeping quarters. ‘We can talk everything through in the morning. Good night, Marcus.’ He didn’t reply. He was trying to ignore the Christmas fairy lights, which had been strung up in his absence. He passed a shiny plastic tree on the way to the bedrooms.
Stephanie went to go with him, but he resisted. ‘I’m fine, honestly. I just need to get some sleep.’
‘You’ll remember to tie up the mosquito net and everything?’ Her eyes screwed up, worried and uncertain.
‘Yes, of course. I’m not feverish or anything right now… Honestly.’
‘All right, then. Well. Good night.’ Within seconds she was just a pair of shoes, clip clopping into night-time. He listened to the sound of her peter away. Then he faced a delicious near-silence: far better than the shock of true silence or the shriek of cacophony. Wordless voices swelled out on the veranda. He let it babble all over him.
In a short while (impossible to know how long), he heard voices in the corridor: more distinct, this time. He could just about make out what they were saying.
‘I’m not sleeping with a psycho.’
‘We think he’s all right now, Toby.’
‘I mean it; I’m not sleeping in there with him. He’s fucked.’
‘All right. We’ll see what we can do. All right? Anyway, let’s move along from here, or we’ll wake him up.’
Somehow he fell back asleep and then it was morning. Another day to live out. He thought about breakfast but the shame nailed him to the bed.
There was a knock on the door. The door creaked open. Annabelle.
‘Stephanie wants to know if you want any breakfast.’
He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. ‘I think I need some more rest. I mean – I feel too tired to get up.’
‘I could bring in your breakfast if you like.’
He thought about it. ‘Yes. Yes.’
She waited for a please, but it didn’t come. Biting her tongue, she went off to get his breakfast. Stephanie wasn’t in the habit of allowing people to have breakfast in bed, but at the same time, she couldn’t face having him there today. She was still so tired and wound up. ‘Yes, all right,’ she said to Annabelle. ‘If you’re OK bringing it to him…’
Annabelle went into the room with the breakfast tray and perched next to him on the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘All right.’
‘You’ve given us some brilliant drama,’ she grinned. ‘But don’t feel embarrassed. If you are. Because other things have been happening, too. Want the gossip?’
He didn’t. He hated gossip. But he wanted the drudgery to earth him, to cut out the live wire inside him that kept frothing and sparking.
She chatted to him, idly. He liked the way her face moved when she talked. It relaxed him. He felt his eyelids flutter. There was a gentle drift into a low sensory state.
When he awoke, it was dark, and Annabelle was gone. He thought he might have slept through the day. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept through the day. He panicked. Then he heard some sounds outside, the clatter of plates. Dinner?
He rose out of bed and dressed himself, then pattered out on to the veranda, where people were laying down plates and getting themselves seated for food. The chatter stopped, and people didn’t know what to say. They nodded at him, but wary. Stephanie said: ‘Oh Marcus, you feeling better?’
He said: ‘Yes, I am – thank you. Listen, I want to go to the school tomorrow, if that’s all right. I need to say goodbye to the children. I want to go home.’
But before she could answer, they heard the sound of screaming.