For a few moments it seemed possible that I was in the wrong place. But when I got out of the car the outline of the shack was visible: a square paler than the surrounding soil, like the mark of a plaster on sunburned skin. A few loose planks and bits of plastic lay around.
Everything had happened here. On this little patch of sand. It had felt like a whole world, and now I saw it was just any piece of bush. In two weeks it would be covered again by weeds and thorns and grass.
The dust I’d kicked up drifted like smoke in the headlamps. I walked away from the light, along the little footpath to the village. It was a distance of twenty or thirty steps, but I’d never walked it before. As I got closer a dog barked at me; another took up the sound, and it was accompanied by this angry chorus that I made my entrance into the naked circle of earth at the heart of the village. The little mud houses ringed me around. It was all dust and dung and the ash of old fires; it was what I knew it would be.
Nobody was around. No lights were burning and the only movement was the dogs, skulking closer. I stood there as if somebody was coming to meet me. But I had never been so alone.
I knew then that she could be anywhere. She could be five steps away from me, in one of those houses, or in any one of the countless little villages scattered in the bush. Or she could be under the ground, in a shallow grave. For me, she had fallen off the edge of the world.
The anguish that rolled down then was like the first feeling ever to touch me: its rawness, its power, was almost like love.
The dogs were coming closer. I was an intruder. I didn’t come, like Laurence Waters, in the daytime, with medicine and good advice; I came in out of the dark with the snarling of skeletal dogs for company. And there was nothing to be done except hurry back along the path to my car and drive back to town.
I drove at a wild speed. It was as if I was rushing to keep some assignation, but there was nowhere to get to, no destination at the end of the road.
Unless it was the hospital room, with Laurence sitting up in bed, writing something on a piece of paper.
He glanced up at me. ‘Hello,’ he said, sounding preoccupied. ‘I’m planning.’
‘Planning?’
‘My clinic. Never mind. Oh, wow, I almost forgot!’ He looked sharply up at me. ‘How is she doing?’
‘She’s doing all right,’ I said, turning my face away from him. He must’ve seen how I felt and thought he understood the reason, but he didn’t understand.
In the morning I went back to the village. I parked next to where the shack had been; I walked the little footpath again. And now there were people: children playing, a woman shelling beans in a doorway, two old men deep in conversation. In the mud a fat pig lolled and the same dogs from last night started up out of the shade, barking.
I hoped to see a familiar face, the woman who brought food or water to Maria, somebody I knew. But no. And the man I did speak to, who was the only person I could find who spoke English, didn’t know much about Maria. Yes, the shack had stood there. But now it was taken down. He thought the people had gone there somewhere, over there. He gestured at the blue hills in the distance.
Yes, yes, some of the older women sighed in agreement. They had gone over there.
Did they know Maria, I asked. Was any of them her friend?
But I could see in their puzzled faces that they hadn’t heard the name. It was as I’d thought: her real name was something different, something she hadn’t told me.
I didn’t have much hope, but I made a little speech. If any of them could find Maria, I said, if any of them sent her to me, I would pay a reward. I took my wallet out to show them.
‘Who are you?’ the young man, my translator, asked me.
‘My name is Frank Eloff. I’m a doctor. I work at the hospital in town.’
At this their baffled faces broke into smiles. There was a buzz of talk around me. The hospital! The clinic! And the memory of that recent event set loose a happy spirit amongst them, similar to the new mood amongst the staff at the hospital.
I’d almost forgotten. But of course it had happened here. And I heard one of the old women, who couldn’t otherwise speak a word of English, say ‘doctor Laurence, doctor Laurence’ with a toothless grin of pleasure.
When I got away from them, back to the hospital, the weight in me had altered shape a little. Yes, it was Maria I was looking for, but her absence had spilled over into other, adjoining areas. For the first time the things I had done and said over the last few days began to look like a kind of madness. And the dark stranger in my head, who was so easy to blame for everything, seemed less separate from me than before.
It went on through the long, hot afternoon. Laurence was out somewhere and I lay, sweating on my bed, thinking. I felt my guilt towards Maria as a massive neglect and blindness. I was wretched. And what I’d done, or failed to do, to her, was no different in the end from what I’d done here, closer to home. In the hospital. In this room.
When Laurence came in, it was fully dark. This was hours later, but I hadn’t moved from the bed. He put the light on and stared at me in amazement. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why was the light off? Were you asleep?’
‘No, I was thinking about things.’
‘About what things?’
It was a huge effort for me to swing my legs over and sit up. Then nothing further would come.
Laurence stared at me. ‘What?’
All of it rose against my teeth, a pressure that couldn’t be released, and so I said nothing. In the silence I shook my head.
He smiled at me, his broad face gleaming like a badge. ‘You shouldn’t sit by yourself so much, Frank, it makes you depressed.’
‘Laurence …’
‘I haven’t got time now. I’ve got to shower quickly, then I’m going out with Jorge and Claudia for a drink. Want to come?’
‘No.’ He was closed to me. I wanted to talk quickly, to say as many words as possible in the hope that one of them would be the right one, the word to absolve me, but he was already moving away, through the bathroom door. ‘Laurence.’
‘Ja?’ He stopped, looking back, then he shook his head. ‘Hey, relax, Frank, it doesn’t matter.’ He went through the door.
I sat on the bed, hearing the water splash and run. But it didn’t wash anything away.