He returned to the living room. “I’m going down to the river to bathe,” he said to Jane. “I’m too dirty to go to bed.”
She gave him the dreamy, contented smile she often wore when feeding the baby. “Be quick,” she said.
He went out.
The village was going to sleep, at last. Lamps still burned in a few houses, and he heard from one window the sound of a woman weeping bitterly, but most places were quiet and dark. Passing the last house in the village, he heard a woman’s voice raised in a high, mournful song of bereavement, and for a moment he felt the crushing weight of the deaths he had caused; then he put the thought out of his mind.
He followed a stony path between two barley fields, looking around constantly and listening carefully: the men of the village would now be at work. In one field he heard the hiss of scythes, and on a narrow terrace he saw two men weeding by lamplight. He did not speak to them.
He reached the river, crossed the ford and climbed the winding path up the opposite cliff. He knew he was quite safe, yet he felt increasingly tense as he ascended the steep path in the faint light.
After ten minutes he reached the high point he was seeking. He took the radio from his pocket and extended its telescopic antenna. It was the latest and most sophisticated small transmitter the KGB had, but even so the terrain here was so inimical to radio transmission that the Russians had built a special relay station, on a hilltop just inside the territory they controlled, to pick up his signals and pass them on.
He pressed the TALK button and spoke in English and in code. “This is Simplex. Come in, please.”
He waited, then called again.
After the third try he got a crackly, accented reply.
“Your party was a big success.”
“Twenty-seven people attended and one more came later.”
“In preparation for the next one, I need three camels.” In code that meant “Meet me three days from today.”
“I will see you at the mosque.” That, too, was code: “the mosque” was a place some miles away where three valleys met.
“Today is Sunday.” That was not code: it was a precaution against the possibility that the dullard who was taking all this down might not realize it was after midnight, with the consequence that Jean-Pierre’s contact would arrive a day early at the rendezvous.
“Over and out.”
Jean-Pierre collapsed the antenna and returned the radio to his pocket; then he made his way down the cliff to the riverside.
He stripped off his clothes quickly. From the pocket of the shirt he took a nailbrush and a small piece of soap. Soap was a scarce commodity, but he as doctor had priority.
He stepped gingerly into the Five Lions River, knelt down, and splashed icy water all over himself. He soaped his skin and his hair, then picked up the brush and began to scrub himself: his legs, his belly, his chest, his face, his arms and his hands. He worked especially hard on his hands, soaping them again and again. Kneeling in the shallows, naked and shivering beneath the stars, he scrubbed and scrubbed as if he would never stop.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The child has measles, gastroenteritis and ringworm,” said Jean-Pierre. “It is also dirty and undernourished.” “Aren’t they all?” said Jane.
They were speaking French, as they normally did together, and the child’s mother looked from one to the other as they spoke, wondering what they were saying. Jean-Pierre observed her anxiety and spoke to her in Dari, saying simply: “Your son will get well.”
He crossed to the other side of the cave and opened his drugs case. All children brought to the clinic were automatically vaccinated against tuberculosis. As he prepared the BCG injection, he watched Jane out of the corner of his eye. She was giving the boy small sips of rehydration drink—a mixture of glucose, salt, baking soda and potassium chloride dissolved in clean water—and, between sips, was gently washing his grimy face. Her movements were quick and graceful, like those of a craftsman—a potter molding clay, perhaps, or a bricklayer wielding a trowel. He observed her narrow hands as she touched the frightened child with light, reassuring caresses. He liked her hands.
He turned away as he took the needle out, so that the child should not see it; then he held it concealed by his sleeve and turned again, waiting for Jane. He studied her face as she cleaned the skin of the boy’s right shoulder and swabbed a patch with alcohol. It was an impish face, with big eyes, a turned-up nose and a wide mouth that smiled more often than not. Now her expression was serious, and she was moving her jaw from side to side, as if grinding her teeth—a sign that she was concentrating. Jean-Pierre knew all of her expressions and none of her thoughts.
He speculated often—almost continually—about what she was thinking, but he was afraid to ask her, for such conversations could so easily wander into forbidden territory. He had to be constantly on his guard, like an unfaithful husband, for fear that something he said—or even the expression on his face—might betray him. Any talk of truth and dishonesty, or trust and betrayal, or freedom and tyranny, was taboo; and so were any subjects which might lead to these, such as love, war and politics. He was wary even when talking of quite innocent topics. Consequently there was a peculiar lack of intimacy in their marriage. Making love was weird. He found that he could not reach a climax unless he closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else. It was a relief to him that he had not had to perform for the last few weeks because of the birth of Chantal.
“Ready when you are,” Jane said, and he realized she was smiling at him.
He took the child’s arm and said in Dari: “How old are you?”
“Five.”
As the boy spoke, Jean-Pierre stuck the needle in. The child immediately began to wail. The sound of its voice made Jean-Pierre think of himself at the age of five, riding his first bicycle and falling off and crying just like that, a sharp howl of protest at an unexpected pain. He stared at the screwed-up face of his five-year-old patient, remembering how much it had hurt and how angry he had felt, and he found himself thinking: How did I get
He released the child and it went to its mother. He counted out thirty 250-gram capsules of griseofulvin and handed them to the woman. “Make him take one every day until they are all gone,” he said in simple Dari. “Don’t give them to anyone else—he needs them all.” That would deal with the ringworm. The measles and the gastroenteritis would take their own course. “Keep him in bed until the spots disappear, and make sure he drinks a lot.”
The woman nodded.
“Does he have any brothers and sisters?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“Five brothers and two sisters,” the woman said proudly.
“He should sleep alone, or they will get sick too.” The woman looked dubious: she probably had only one bed for all her children. There was nothing Jean-Pierre could do about that. He went on: “If he is not better when the tablets are finished, bring him back to me.” What the child really needed was the one thing neither Jean-Pierre nor its mother could provide—plenty of good, nutritious food.
The two of them left the cave, the thin, sick child and the frail, weary mother. They had probably come several miles, she carrying the boy most of the way, and now they would walk back. The boy might die anyway. But not of tuberculosis.
There was one more patient: the
