From: Dr Sevanand Singh, Anandpur Sahib Rd, Nangal 140124, Punjab
To: SA Health Commission, Citi Centre Building, 11 Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide South of Australia
Dear Sir or Madam
Let me make it clear—I have no intention of repaying the $7328. My reasons for returning to India are set out in my last two letters. Still, I have more to add. My address has changed so there is no point sending more correspondence. I no longer live beside the Nangal Fertiliser and Heavy Water Factory but have found a small home in the country. Here I can recover and lick my wounds (if that is how it is said). I can talk to pandits and thank God I realised my mistake before it was too late—before I brought my wife and son to Australia, to your outback, to Coober Pedy. You say I only worked three days—true. You say you paid my airfares—true. Also, I thank you for paying for my motel in Adelaide. But you did not pay for my taxi, accommodation or meals in CP. In fact, nothing was paid for or arranged as promised. And now I will tell you more of the story of my not repaying.
Dr Sevanand Singh stared out of the football-shaped window. The landscape had changed from brown to red to off-Fanta. As the small jet descended, sheds, petrol stations and even shrubs gained definition. There was a road, and a small white car, and you could see sand ridges that stretched towards the horizon. As he waited, he thought without thinking. About why God had made so much nothing. What was the point of creating a void? No dams or powerhouses, no towns or shops, or apartment buildings. No forests. No petrol tankers. No animals. No ants. No bacteria. Had God abandoned this place? Was He displeased with it or was it an experiment of some kind? Or was He just resting, and yet to cover the sand with trees, rivers and animals, or pine trees, or anything?
No, he thought. This is it. God has finished. Maybe there’s an order, a system, a hierarchy of animals and plants that can’t be seen from ten thousand feet.
He looked at the brochure in his lap and remembered. Flicked through the photos of polished opal and thought, So what? Remembered his wife saying, ‘These are the eyes of Buddha, or a cat, or snake.’
‘But snakes’ eyes are black,’ he’d said.
‘No, turquoise, with runs of red and silver.’
Yes, perhaps it is God’s work, he guessed. Hiding beauty in the most inaccessible places. Challenging pale-skinned, bow-legged men to find it. He could even hear God’s voice: Come and get it, boys. But you’ll need to dig through sand, clay and rocks. What, you want to look into my eyes? Not likely!
As Sevanand studied his brochure he saw images of life in the outback. Hawker Gate—one small opening in an eight-thousand-mile-long fence—an attempt to keep dingoes out of God’s nothingness, and a sign threatening six months’ imprisonment for not shutting the gate. A man in overalls peeling the skin off a dead kangaroo. Alice Springs, its homes lined up like overcooked cupcakes. Quonset huts full of tractor parts and fence posts, a deserted railway siding called ‘Nevertire’, and the Tibooburra Post Office with its promise of a radio trunk line to all states. A hundred and one pictures of nothingness, in the place he’d chosen to live. To bring his family, to make their future. Australia—a picture of two men asleep in a swag as a lamb licked chop grease from their lips.
They were descending, and he could feel the engines slowing. As they banked he saw thousands of peach-white pockmarks on the landscape. Each had its own slag-pile and there were small iron huts, trucks with drilling rigs and even a few people wandering between the shafts. Faint tracks connecting the mines like a dot-to-dot. Reminding him of his mother’s lace tablecloth, laid out across their particleboard table whenever a rich uncle came to visit.
They landed, and taxied, and the jet stopped in front of a cream-brick terminal with the words ‘COOB R P DY’ in cracked plastic. He thanked the cabin assistant, gathered his briefcase and climbed out. Stepped onto the tarmac and stopped to get his breath. Sweat on his forehead. Shirt and pants sticking to his body. ‘Hot?’ he said to another man, who had fat red cheeks and three or four days’ stubble.
‘Warm.’ Pulling his underwear out of his arse.
Sevanand could feel the heat through his rubber soles. He put down his briefcase, took off his jacket and draped it across his arm. An Aboriginal man wearing shorts and steel-capped boots removed bags from the luggage compartment and threw them onto a trolley. He stopped to finish a cigarette, step on it and say, ‘You’re a funny sort of black fella.’
Sevanand was unsure. ‘I’m the new doctor.’
‘Good for you. We just lost one. Pommy fella. He lasted a few weeks … or was it that long?’
‘A few weeks?’
‘Yeah.’ The man ran his tongue over his yellow teeth, spat and motioned for him to come closer. ‘See, problem was, he couldn’t see the funny side of things.’
‘No?’
‘Next thing you know, a bloke goes crazy. That’s what started happening to him.’
‘How’s that?’
He tapped his nose. ‘That’d be telling tales.’
Sevanand raised his head and tried to straighten his sore neck. The short, balding black man fought with a heavy case. ‘You got a sense of humour, Doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll need it. You like beer?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘All the time, mate. And what about sex?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You know, fuckin’. Plenty of it here. TV reception’s shithouse.’ He smiled slyly. ‘Listen, mate, you don’t need to be married. We’re pretty open-minded up here.’ And he laughed.
‘I must get along.’
‘Go on then. If you stay, we’ll make you an honorary black fella.’
As Sevanand walked towards the terminal he heard the man say, ‘Fuckin’ coon.’ He went into a hot shed choked with fumes, the smell of antiseptic and the cries of a pudding-faced baby. On one side, the shed opened to the desert, the other, tarmac. There were a few plastic seats, a ticket desk, a Coke machine and a brochure stand with one brochure: Ian and Judy’s Shell House, with a picture of Uluru and the Opera House made from cowries. Flies made a meal of dog biscuits, shit scrolls and urine in the pet bay before mingling with the tourists. Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ played on an ancient PA as a television flickered on the wall with grainy images of men in fake beards panning for gold as they explained the history of mining in Australia (although they never mentioned Coober Pedy).
He sat on a loose seat, took a freshly ironed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. He remembered the brochures the Health Commission had sent him: Barossa Valley vineyards, fishing off white beaches on the Eyre Peninsula and marvelling at the Naracoorte Caves.
Yes, some of this please, he’d written back. He was tired of living in the most densely populated place on the planet. A swarm of humans that just kept coming, filling his waiting room, his days, his nights, his dreams with broken bodies, malaria, typhoid and TB, floating through the small, hot room he worked in for sixteen hours a day.
Yes, some of this please.
But then came the next letter. We have shortages in remote locations. Very considerable financial incentives are involved.
Yes, some of that too.
So, sign here, Dr Singh, and we’ll pay your airfare, accommodation—the whole lot.
Almost.
He approached the ticket desk. A pimply girl picked the orange laminate until a biscuit-sized piece snapped off. The ticket clerk looked at her.
‘Oops.’ Grinning.
He looked at her loose, tie-dyed top with tassels. Pants—purple, silk, ballooning, tied off at the knees. Leather slippers. Unwashed dreadlocks—as if she, and the boyfriend, busy arguing over tickets, had just come off of the Shiva Ashram.
Cardboard people, he thought. Phonies! Hardly Indian.
Finally, he approached a tall, crisp meringue-looking woman behind the counter. ‘My name is Dr Sevanand Singh.’ He waited, assuming she’d know who he was.
‘Dr Singh?’
‘Yes, I’ve just been appointed by your Health Commission. I was told someone would pick me up.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone.’
They looked around the terminal, which by now was almost empty.
‘Anyone for Dr Singh?’ she called, but there was no reply.
‘Was a car sent?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t told.’
‘This is most upsetting. If someone says they’ll do something …’
‘That’s the government,’ she explained. ‘I wouldn’t expect too much. They don’t know anything exists outside of Adelaide.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Is there someone we can call?’
‘A taxi?’
He waited. ‘Yes … that please.’
Despite the fact that I had been forgotten I arranged my own lift, at my own expense. I waited for ninety minutes in the shed before I was asked to move outside (the airport was closing for the day). There was very little shade. You probably think I complain, but no. A thermometer in my bag read 54 degrees. Sir, I am a doctor. Six years of education earned as a scholarship from the Rupnagar Council. Two years as a junior doctor. So, in India I am respected. Cars are sent for me and rooms prepared in hotels. But CP? No wonder the man before me shifted to the Gold Coast, or (someone said) returned to Leeds.
He’d never known a straight road. Nangal drivers were catfish, navigating their asphalt rivers: the Satluj River Road, the road to the dam and Hydel Channel. The highway south, which led all the way to New Delhi, with never more than a hundred straight metres. Roads wrapped around hills, along valleys, fighting their way through towns, forests and tea plantations.
But this was different. A bamboo stake, a metre-rule, a million miles of English iron floating a foot (or so) above the sand. A road from and to nowhere. Grey tar and white paint rolling on and on towards a horizon that kept tumbling towards infinity, as far, as remote, as unthinkable as his lost Punjab.
The taxi driver was studying him in the rear-vision mirror. ‘I couldn’t have been no quicker, mate,’ he said, winding down his window. ‘When she called I had the carby in pieces.’
‘Carby?’
‘Car-bu-rettor. Petrol, Air!’
‘Well, how far is it?’
‘Another fifteen clicks.’ He narrowed his eyes to size up the small Indian. ‘What, you pissed off, fella?’
‘Not with you. But they were meant to pick me up.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone from the hospital.’
Silence. He studied the landscape. The small shrubs and groundcovers, something green growing in the cracks in the road, a few pine trees struggling beside a rest stop. He was acclimatising to the outback, to the small things. It was a geography of oxygen, dust, the wind exciting the sand like so many sine waves. He wondered how much Punjab could be squeezed into a single line of longitude beyond his tinted window.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked.
‘The hospital.’
More silence. Rubber rolling across road. The growl of five-and-a-half cylinders. Cold, stale air. Johnny Cash.
The driver was still looking at him. ‘Where you from?’
‘Nangal. The Punjab.’
‘India?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bet this is a bit of a shock, eh?’
He didn’t know what to say. Shock? ‘Perhaps I will get used to it?’
But the driver just grinned back at him.
Sevanand asked, ‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Long enough.’ He cleared his throat and spat out the window. Most of it came back. ‘So, you seen plenty of dead bodies?’
‘Many.’
‘They sorta … spook you out?’
Sevanand stopped to picture a dead body: an old man with sunken cheeks and prominent eyebrows. ‘It’s nothing, until the colour goes out of them.’
‘What then … like a leg o’ lamb?’ Half-grinned, half-grimaced.
‘The skin is surprisingly tough to cut … like leather.’
‘Christ, that’ll be us one day, eh?’
Sevanand imagined his own lifeless body sitting up in bed in a motel room, his tongue protruding from his mouth, his left hand clutching his Coober Pedy brochures. Or spread across the highway, his stomach cavity exposed, his intestines sizzling on the hot tar. He looked across the desert, then at his hands. ‘The Lord said, As a man casts off worn out garments and takes on new ones.’
He looked up at the driver, who smiled and asked, ‘You a Bible basher?’
‘Hindu. The Sankhya Yoga.’
‘Ah …’
‘The Bhagavad Gita.’
‘Fuck!’ He pumped the accelerator as the car lost power. They drifted to a stop.
‘This would be the carburettor?’
‘This would be, mate.’
They popped the bonnet and got out to look. The driver, Trevor (he could see his name badge), showed him the small metal part sitting loose in its cradle. ‘That’s what you get for rushing a job,’ he said, glaring at him.
‘I didn’t realise.’
Trevor kicked the front bumper. ‘Fuck!’
‘Perhaps, if it wasn’t ready you shouldn’t have used it.’
Trevor’s face turned redder as his hair follicles formed their own pockmarked landscape. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have fuckin’ called me.’
‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’
‘I don’t appreciate your …’
Attitude, colour, smugness, smell, race? He could just guess what Trevor was thinking.
Trevor took a deep breath. Stared at his passenger. Shot forward and attempted to wave down an old Dodge truck.
‘Can I help?’ Sevanand asked, but his voice was drowned by the truck’s engine, and a loud stereo. He fanned fine dust, coughed, wiped his eyes and spat the outback from his mouth.
Trevor approached the driver and said, ‘I need a lift.’
‘Get in,’ the man replied.
Trevor looked back at Sevanand. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Can I come?’
He indicated the truck’s load of scaffold and replied, ‘Just a few minutes … maybe an hour.’
‘What should I do?’
But he was already in the cab, waving, and the old truck was pulling onto the road.
Sir, in CP people do as they want. There is no such thing as punctuality, an appointment, deadlines, promises—the simplest bits of courtesy. No, the driver did not return that night so I tried to sleep in the taxi. It was very cold and I put on four or five layers of clothing. There were lights, and tooting, but no one stopped. I understood the outback was a place where people helped each other. Not the case. As trucks passed they rocked the vehicle. So, at two or three in the morning I decided it was safer to sleep on the grass beside the road. I gathered my bags and found a hollow in the ground.
Sevanand stood surrounded by a soup of stars, high cloud and the distant light of what he assumed was Coober Pedy. He turned on the spot, searching the desert, and after two complete orbits looked down to find himself buried up to his ankles in sand. He pulled himself free, sat down, took off his shoes and emptied them. Found himself placing them neatly together, taking out his wallet and arranging it beside them, removing his watch and placing it in his left shoe and finally, opening out his handkerchief and using it to cover his effects. ‘Lord Krishna,’ he called, but there was no echo, sound, companionship. Just a dampening, a deadening—of noise, movement and thought.
‘Coober Pedy!’
A car sliced through the night.
‘Thank you very much,’ he whispered. ‘Mate.’
Then, his wife appeared before him. She was smiling, and laughing, and said, You’ll always remember your first night in the outback.
He wasn’t laughing. And last.
Come on, think of why you’re doing this.
Why?
For us.
And he could hear the voices of his children in the distance.
We can’t continue in this flat, she said. There’s a whole new life itn the West. We’d be mad stay here.
He could see the desert full of people: Buddhist monks, drink sellers, lepers, children, a taxi navigating the crush of bodies and police chasing a gang of child thieves. Millions of bodies crowding his world of nothing. The din of conversation, singing, prayer, ads for Pepsi blaring from a speaker, floating in the cold air and settling on the warm, hi-vis sand. There were five, ten, maybe fifteen million people, but no one person. Just numbers, like ibis crowding an estuary, or pigs waiting in a slaughterhouse yard.
Would you forgive me? If this didn’t work? he asked his wife, but she just turned, and walked towards a spice seller.
Sevanand rolled his jumper and used it as a pillow. He laid back and looked at the millions of stars and eventually whispered, ‘All beings are in Me, I am not in them.’
Later, I discovered that when Trevor returned in the morning, he’d called for me, and looked, but mustn’t have looked far. He fixed his carburettor and returned to CP. Meanwhile, it seems, I was in a deep sleep.
Sevanand stirred slowly. He could feel the sun on his skin. He sat up and started removing clothing. Looking towards the road, he noticed the taxi had gone.
He stood and studied the area. ‘Trevor?’ Ran to the side of the road and looked left and right. Perhaps the car had been stolen? Maybe someone had retrieved it for Trevor without knowing he was asleep? If so, he would just have to wait and they would come back for him. Then he thought, Maybe Trevor couldn’t find me … but he mustn’t have seen me walking into town. Perhaps he thought I’m returning to the airport and he’s checking there?
Either way, I just have to wait.
He repacked his clothes and returned to sit beside the road. Every time a car or truck went by he stood and tried to hitch a lift. People slowed, looked at him strangely and continued.
By nine am it was hot again. He used his jacket for shade. By ten he was soaked with sweat and could smell himself. Out of desperation, he emptied his case again, set it up as a sort of tent and slid under it. By lunchtime he’d given up. Repacked his belongings and started walking towards Coober Pedy.
Not long after, a police car passed, slowed, completed a U-turn and drove up behind him. He put down his bags and turned to face the constable as she approached him.
‘Dr Sevanand Singh,’ he said, extending his hand.
She was unsure, but shook it. ‘Should I ask?’
Yes, it was a town, he guessed, but barely. Someone or some people had avoided resurfacing the highway that ran into town, paved as few footpaths as possible, abstained from fixing gutters or installing stoplights and put off replacing the plywood police station. When he saw children playing on the primary school’s old monkey bars and kicking balls on the dusty oval he wondered if he had come all that far from Nangal.
Beyond the dry-cleaners, delis, supermarkets and newsagents of Hutchison Street, there were openings in the earth where suburbs should have been.
‘These are the famous underground homes?’ he asked the constable.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘This is no place for human beings.’
‘But people adapt?’
‘Apparently … until they escape.’
She slowed, stopped, got out and moved a shopping trolley from the middle of the road. When she got back in she said, ‘Some of these wog miners, they’ve been here for sixty years. They’re the ones go and dig out these homes. But if you ask me’—and she drove off as she looked across at him—‘some of their circuits have fried.’
She stopped in front of the hospital and helped him with his bags. ‘Well, Dr Singh,’ she half-sang, ‘I’m sure we’ll be in contact.’
‘You’ll keep me in work?’
‘Long as you’ve got a good supply of stomach pumps.’
He thought of the baggage handler—humour, beer and sex—although he was unsure of the order.
He climbed a few stairs littered with cigarette butts and walked into a terrazzo foyer with an almost life-size portrait of the Queen. A faintly reassuring antiseptic smell, the sound of plates being thrown onto a metal trolley, guttural moans and a distant cricket match on a tinny-sounding radio. An old Aboriginal man with a bandage around his throat approached him and asked, ‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Yes.’ Proudly.
The man started undoing his bandage.
‘I can’t look at you now,’ Sevanand explained, holding the man’s arm.
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t started work yet.’
‘When do you start?’
‘A few days.’
The man was confused. ‘So I gotta see that other fella?’
‘Yes.’ For the first time in weeks he felt like a doctor. ‘Now, return to your room. Do you know the way?’
The man shrugged, and indicated. ‘That way, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘Is it?’
‘I’m asking. Do you remember?’
And then he turned and walked off.
Under a sign that read ‘Dial 9 for Assistance’ (which somebody had changed to ‘Arse-istance’) he found an old touch-phone and called for help. An irritated voice answered and he explained who he was. ‘I’m very tired. Could someone please come rapidly?’
‘Hold your horses, Doctor.’ The line disconnected.
As he waited he read the names on an honour roll. ‘Directors of the Coober Pedy Area Hospital’. Starting with 1928: ‘Dr HV Kimber’. He noticed there was a new name nearly every year. Dr White had lasted for five years in the fifties, but apart from that.
A tall man in his early thirties, wearing jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, entered the foyer through a swinging door. ‘Nice,’ he said, staring at him. ‘You’re our next fella, eh?’
Sevanand looked surprised. ‘Next?’
‘But I’m sure you’re the one … are you?’
‘Which one?’
The young man shook his hand. ‘We weren’t expecting you until next week.’
‘I arrived yesterday, but I’ve slept in the desert.’
‘The desert?’
Sevanand explained and the man said, ‘I’m sorry, I was going to come and get you.’
‘It’s done now.’ Thinking of his wife and his promise.
The man introduced himself as Mark Ash, Director of Nursing, and took him into a small room. Made him watery coffee, sat down and said, ‘You should’ve called.’
‘I didn’t think, but I’m here now. If you can show me my room I’ll shower.’ He noticed the look on Ash’s face. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘The thing is, the last fella left it in a bit of a mess. So we’ve had the painters in.’
‘Are they finished?’
‘Started.’
‘I was promised a room.’
Ash tried to smile. ‘Yes, we’ve got one … Might even be able to arrange some new curtains.’
Sevanand tried the coffee and the taste made him madder still. ‘I really do need a rest and a shower. Someone should’ve told you when I was coming.’
‘You see, there’s your problem. You never assume anything with the government. If you want something done you gotta do it yerself.’
‘It’s been a long few days.’
And with these few words Mark Ash knew that Sevanand was not the one. He could already guess how long he’d last—four, five, maybe six months.
‘Listen, Dr Singh, Sevanand,’ he said, ‘up here you gotta take things as they come. It’s bush time. You know? Outback time. Like the black fellas. Doesn’t bother them if it takes six months to change a tyre. A year, ten years, so what? Get what I mean?’
Sevanand tried to smile. ‘And people enjoy their sex?’
Ash slapped his knee and laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s it, that’s how you wanna be.’
‘Flexible?’
‘That’s one way, eh?’ And he broke up laughing.
‘Beer?’
‘Plenty of beer.’
‘And humour?’
Ash stopped. ‘That, my friend, is the most important thing of all.’
‘So, I wait for my room? In the meantime?’
And smiled. ‘A few nights’ kip? I’ve got the perfect place.’
Yes, I agreed to be flexible, and I tried, but a professional man must maintain some dignity. The following night I stayed in a backpackers’ hostel run by one of Mr Ash’s friends. When I first met the landlord (Mr Bruce Grierson) I thought that things were looking up. He wore a business shirt and tie and the carpeted foyer within the underground bunker was clean, well lit and decorated with posters of German castles and Greek islands. But then I discovered that Mr Grierson had just returned from a funeral (a Swiss man who’d fallen down a mineshaft and broken his back, waiting nine days for help that never came). So, looks are deceiving. Very much so.
Mark Ash said his goodbyes and climbed the carpeted steps to the surface. Meanwhile, Bruce Grierson pulled off his tie and started to unbutton his shirt. ‘Punjab, eh? We don’t get many Indians. Mainly Brits and Germans. Germans seem to love underground bunkers, eh?’
Grierson removed his shirt to reveal a landscape of saltbush, and a pair of nipples that had hardened in the cold air. ‘Should be able to squeeze you in,’ he said, before pulling on a T-shirt (‘If you’ve got the shaft, I’ve got the drill’). He led Sevanand through double doors into a classroom-sized chasm lit with half a dozen bare globes hanging from a ceiling of chicken wire over red rock. ‘We’re pretty full up, but there’s always people coming and going.’
There were nine or ten triple bunks against each wall and three more rows extending across the room. Someone lazing on each bed, or a backpack and clothes as a claim. The entire floor was covered in sleeping bags, piles of washing and food and maps and books, more bodies (some wearing nothing more than bathers and shorts, one girl in a bra and undies), beer and spirit bottles scattered everywhere (although Grierson had said alcohol was banned), a pair lying on a bunk kissing and someone’s pet rat in a cage on top of an old fridge. A school group, perhaps nine or ten boys, throwing a basketball to each other while singing a riff on some sort of hymn:
The blessed saint,
A sacred start,
The Lindisfarne Creed,
A holy fart …
‘Here we go,’ Grierson said, creating a space on the floor. ‘Got a sleeping bag?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve got some spares. Make yourself at home. Gratis, too, eh? Mark said the hospital will pay yer bill.’
Sevanand searched for a suitable response. He’d learnt something about sarcasm (No, that’d be far too generous) and a lot about incredulity (Exactly how much do you charge for half a square metre of beer-soaked shag pile?). There was always aggression (Do you know who I am? Do you know who’ll be removing your appendix when it bursts?), bile (You wouldn’t house animals like this!) or acceptance (Here? Yes, that’ll do nicely).
Still, what was the point? He could see his wife smiling down at him, her face highlighted by hot, yellow globes. At least it’s shag pile, she said.
‘Thank you, Mr Grierson, and if I could borrow a sleeping bag?’
Half an hour later he was stretched out on a Camp-Masta 690. He’d showered, combed his hair and doused himself in powder before dressing in a pair of light summer pyjamas and returning to his square of carpet to rest.
Strange, he thought, as he closed his eyes. So much emptiness. So few people. And here I am back in my apartment building. Then he drifted off, his children’s voices mingling with muffled AC/DC.
‘Oi, mate, you’re on me jocks.’
Sevanand opened his eyes to see a caramel-coloured Aussie towering above him. Apart from a towel around his neck, he was naked. Sevanand studied bulging, steel girder legs that led up to a tight, dimpled scrotum frosted with grey hairs, a lopped cock dangling like overstretched taffy, a sixpack like the gorilla in Mumbai Zoo.
‘Me undies?’
Sevanand felt under his sleeping bag and found the underpants. Handed them over, and the giant put his legs through the holes, eventually gathering his tackle and packing it away in a manner that left nothing to the imagination. Then he pulled on some shorts and a singlet and said, ‘You sleepin’ next to me?’
‘Do you mind?’
He sniffed the air. ‘What you got on?’
‘Powder.’
‘Fuck, I’ve got some Old Spice if you want it.’
‘What sort?’
‘Old fuckin’ Spice!’
‘No thank you.’ He extended his hand.
The giant shook it, combed his hair and said, ‘My name’s Rob Foster, from Broome.’
‘Dr Singh.’
‘Doctor?’
‘Yes.’
Foster smiled at him. ‘What you doin’ here? Did yer kill someone?’
Sevanand sat up and crossed his legs. ‘My room at the hospital is being painted.’
‘Doctor, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Some of the fellas are goin’ down the pub. You wanna come?’
Sevanand stopped to think. Yes, he had to make an effort to fit in, but no, these weren’t locals. ‘Thank you anyway, but I’ve just arrived.’
‘Suit yerself.’
And with this Foster slipped on a pair of thongs and headed for the big double doors. Sevanand returned to his resting position, interlocking his fingers across his stomach, crossing his legs at the ankles and breathing deeply.
It was late, and dark, when he woke. The only light came from the fridge, the door having been left ajar. He could hear movement and a guttural moan, and he froze. A girl’s voice, laughing, and Foster’s, whispering. He kept his eyes closed and tried to control his breathing.
The voices stopped and he could hear lips and tongues and slurping and sucking. It wasn’t subtle. Bodies moving and clothes and sleeping bags rustling and then, an even longer silence. A few moments later the rustling became regular—a slow, acrylic whoosh getting faster and faster. He dared open his eyes just a few millimetres and made out the giant’s frame moving on top of the girl. He could see his monstrous buttocks rise and fall in the Kelvinator’s dim light. Before long the movement became forceful and louder and the girl started to moan. Foster soldiered on, grunting as if he was shovelling a pile of dolomite. And then there was a sort of frenzy of clothes and skin and oohs and ahs and, ‘Just there … don’t stop now.’
He heard them fall apart, and laugh and whisper, and then Foster burped and said, ‘Ssh, careful, you’ll wake the Paki.’
‘He’s probably been listening,’ she replied.
‘Oi, Paki, you awake?’
They laughed again.
Sevanand was petrified. He’d gained his own erection and feared they’d be able to see it through his light summer pyjamas. He improvised a roll to the right and they laughed again.
Over the next hour she returned to her giant three times. After this they stood, walked through the minefield of bodies and made their way to the showers. When Sevanand guessed it was safe he jumped up, pulled on some clothes over his pyjamas, gathered his bags and made for the foyer.
Twenty minutes later he was heading back to the hospital. With his briefcase in one hand and bag in the other he tried to balance, occasionally tripping on a gutter, slipping on gravel or stumbling on an old beer bottle. He could hear the grunting, and the baggage handler’s words: one of three things. Not because of any sense of sloth, laziness or stupidity (he supposed, as he passed the Chicago Motor Repairs with a herd of white utes parked out front) but out of necessity, a lack of alternatives, an acceptance of a life composed of imperfect things. Maybe, he guessed, as he looked up at the stars in the bruised, black sky, this was a sort of alcoholic perfection, a utopia sparkling with veins of red and green. Yes, colour. That’s what it was all about. Finding the perfect in the imperfect. But still, he mused, it was the life of a gambler. Sixty years of body odour, lung disease and frozen food for a few small stones. But if that’s what people wanted.
Three small consolations.
Or the story of the man who’d come from Russia. Three weeks later he was a millionaire. First shaft he’d ever put down.
A car slowed and pulled up beside him. A few young men stuck out their heads and said, ‘I’ll have a vindaloo, please,’ and, ‘How hot’s your masala?’ They all laughed.
‘Do you do butter chicken?’
‘I’ll have a fuckin’ laksa.’
And his mate. ‘That’s not fuckin’ Indian, y’ prick.’
The driver planted his foot and they disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Would you forgive me? Sevanand asked his wife, as he stood collapsing under the weight of his bags. As I sat listening to that pair, I was thinking how I could arrange it.
How? she asked.
He put down his bags. I could write a letter to the Health Commission explaining how the heat has triggered my asthma. Or maybe depression … or something like heart disease?
Or you could tell the truth?
Yes, I could write it all in a letter, couldn’t I?
And with this realisation, that the world wasn’t about to end just yet, he found the strength to pick up his bags and keep walking.
He passed what seemed to be a spaceship, a blocky, beyond-this-galaxy Nebula Class cruiser (yes, he could remember, sitting in his uncle’s lounge room, watching a grainy Star Trek) that promised an escape from one hostile planet to another. This led to a fish shop where he ordered whiting and chips and sat in front of a 60-minute dry cleaner to eat his meal. The fish was flavourless, full of bones and speckled with scales, cold in the middle, tasting of old cooking oil. The chips were undercooked and flaccid, soaked in vinegar and sprinkled with pepper (he’d seen the girl pick up the wrong shaker, but thought perhaps that this was the way the locals liked their chips).
He passed the Commercial Hotel, and for a moment thought about going in for a drink. He too could succumb, adapting to local conditions, joining the choir of teenagers vomiting on the weary Digger in the car park across the road. He watched as one of them flashed his arse at the traffic, held up his bottle and chanted, ‘Lindy, Lindy, Lindy, oi oi oi.’ But why should he? He needed order, routine, structure—a hierarchy of people in their places. He wanted to hear the words appendectomy, sclerosis, staphylococcus and peritoneal. To be around people who knew what CCF, ESR and FRC meant. He’d never be able to make conversation with people who were proud of their genitals.
His plan had been to walk to the hospital and find a bed—a treatment room, a spare mattress, anything. But he’d run out of puff. Up ahead he saw a motel sign, so he quickened his pace.
He entered the office and a man with cracked glasses greeted him. ‘Good evening, sir.’
‘Good evening. A standard room, please.’
As he filled in the register the clerk asked, ‘Come far?’
‘India.’
He smiled. ‘Best cricket team money can buy.’
Sevanand shrugged. ‘How much?’
‘The team?’
‘No, a room.’
‘One twenty, my friend.’
He searched his wallet but could only find eighty dollars in cash. ‘Will this do until the morning?’
‘You have a credit card?’
‘No.’
‘Well …’ He pointed to a sign on the wall. ‘All rooms must be paid for in advance’.
Sevanand shook his head. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Tell me.’
‘The new doctor in your hospital. Apparently they couldn’t get an Australian to work here.’
The clerk just stared at him.
‘I take it you don’t plan on getting sick.’
‘No need to get nasty.’
‘Well?’
And then he slid a key across the desk.
Before you start saying this Singh was a lazy fellow, let me tell you, I have always been a hard worker. I was supporting my family at age twelve—washing windows, serving in a bread shop and c. Then to school, or university. Never more than six hours sleep, ever. Even on that third day I was at the hospital by 8 am, and Mr Ash showed me where to fetch a coat and eat lunch and who to ask for cultures, or referrals, or discharge planning. So, as you wave your finger at me, remember, I was only ever eager to please.
Mark Ash and Sevanand Singh stood at the door to the medical ward. Someone was watching Songs of Praise, someone else coughing sputum into a cup as a falsetto cursed Aunt Velma for having never married the surveyor from Hervey Bay.
‘What are my shifts?’ Sevanand asked.
‘Sixteen hours on, eight hours off. That’s over four days. Then y’ get two days off. Of course …’ He smiled.
‘Yes?’
‘You might be on-call for those two days.’
‘Might be?’
‘Well, you are. I mean, if Dr Lindsay is busy in surgery.’
Sevanand lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. ‘Exactly how many doctors are there?’
Ash waited. ‘Two.’
‘And me?’
‘Including you.’
‘For the whole town?’
‘Of course, there’s Dr Brooks, but he’s on extended leave.’
‘A holiday?’
‘You could call it that. And Dr Carey’s gone back to Adelaide. He’s on WorkCover, with his shoulder. So it’s just you and Brett Lindsay.’
Sevanand couldn’t believe it. ‘So when do we get some proper time off?’
Ash just stared at him, and grinned. ‘Listen, Sevanand … you’ve gotta get your head around this place. Yes, the shifts seem long, but some days you may sit there for hours with nothing to do.’
‘Doctor!’ a voice called from the far end of the ward.
Ash raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, shall we get started?’
Lung disease. A seventy-eight-year-old miner with a cup of phlegm in his hand. Sevanand checked his chart, sat him forward, listened to his chest and asked, ‘Are the antibiotics helping?’
The old man looked at him and replied, ‘You tell me, you’re the doctor … aren’t you?’
‘Are you having trouble with your breathing?’
The miner looked at Ash. ‘Where’s Dr Lindsay?’
‘Don’t worry about Dr Lindsay, this is Dr Singh. He’s just arrived from India.’
Dr Singh’s first patient stared at him with fierce, red eyes. ‘Well, you mob make pretty good doctors,’ he said.
Sevanand smiled. ‘Us mob?’ He looked at Ash, who grinned and repeated, ‘You mob.’
Sevanand told the miner he had to stop smoking.
‘Fuck, that’s what me mum told me sixty years ago. You know, Doctor, this isn’t from the fags.’
‘Nonetheless …’
‘I’m seventy-eight, Dr Singh. I haven’t found a decent bit of opal for thirty-five years, my wife’s dead and my son won’t talk to me. And you’re tellin’ me to stop smoking?’
Sevanand draped his stethoscope around his neck. ‘Maybe we can give you some oxygen, Mr Ball.’
‘Yeah.’ As he closed his eyes.
They moved on to the next bed. ‘This is Mr Elliot,’ Ash explained. ‘Again, lungs, isn’t it, Mr Elliot?’
But Mr Elliot looked confused. He retreated under his covers. Sevanand went to take his wrist but he moved his hand away. ‘I need your pulse,’ he said, but Mr Elliot drew his hand over his chest.
‘Come on, don’t be silly, Mr Elliot,’ Ash urged.
‘I pay my taxes,’ the man explained, studying Sevanand’s chocolate skin.
‘Mr Elliot!’ Ash scolded.
‘Has he cleaned his hands?’
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Then came the following Sunday, when I went for a walk around the town. I stopped outside the Commercial Hotel and looked in the dining-room window. And there, seated having lunch, was Mark Ash, Dr Lindsay, other nurses and administrators, and people who I supposed were their husbands and wives and children—all of them laughing, patting each other on the back.
Sevanand sat on the bench outside the CWA hall. Inside he heard more voices and the smell of cooking food.
Now do I have your permission? he asked his wife.
Yes.
I’ve been terribly lonely, he explained. I’ve already checked the bus timetable (over and over, as he sat in his motel room) and the next service leaves at four.
To whom it may concern—sirs, madams. Save yourself the stamps. I am home. In a way, back where I started, minus the money (you owe me) and many weeks of family life, sanity, work. Although I am disappointed, I am at least happy. To know that every infection I cure, is curable. Every word I speak, valued. Every hand I shake, of blood and tissue and bone. For a while this was not so. People not what they seemed. And so I sit, remembering the desert. Taken there (not in a pleasant way) in my own transporter. So much of value, hidden in the ground, never to be revealed.