The words stung, the rejection a mild shock, then anger followed. His face flushed, Hanley felt the pressure in his head growing, the blood surging in his temples. Staring down at the sparse grass and dirt, he sucked in air through teeth, filled his lungs to clear his head, to damp down the urge to fight, an urge he seldom felt. Looking up, he said, “Fuck this” and followed the nun to dinner.
***
Hanley watched her striding toward the dining hall, looked back at the silhouette of the tree that moments before held the sun in its grasp, saw it appeared thinner in the dimming light and thought he should change his approach. After coming this far, he could not fail to find the answer. His commitment to the work was important and he would do it. The work was the payment. She should understand that. The answer was something else; it would not affect the work.
As he walked, a slow wind pushed at him from the south, warm and dry, carrying a smell of dried vegetation and even drier earth. There was an undertone of wood smoke and something else, something less recognizable. Hanley thought it might be the smell of wildness, pungent, rendering the air of Sudan elementally different from the air back home, as wild game differs from the chicken sheathed in plastic in a supermarket. Was there wild game nearby? How wild? Would he be eaten alive before being shot by the local militia or rebels? A rattle from the brush made his heart thump, but he saw nothing there in the failing light. Walking faster, he caught the nun just before she mounted the steps to the dining hall.
“Has anyone ever been attacked by a wild animal since you’ve been here?” Hanley asked, a bit of an edge to his voice.
“We lose a doctor a week on average,” she replied, looking back over her shoulder. As the nun entered the dining hall, she said loudly, “The doctors are weak and the lions carry them away, but bring them back as they taste bad, especially the Slovakians.”
“Why don’t you taste one for yourself and see,” said one of the Slovakian doctors. “The lions do not appreciate a good-tasting doctor, although, in the lion’s defense, Slovakian doctors are an acquired taste.”
“Like the Mopane,” a nurse said, causing those at her table to smile.
“Yes, very much like that, now that you mention it,” the same doctor said, smiling down into his bowl of soup.
“You’re a pig,” the nurse replied, realizing why the doctor smiled.
Sister Marie Claire laughed and said, “Let’s not offend Mr Martin. Pilots are more difficult to come by than doctors.” She wandered over to the small table where the prepared food sat. Little steam rose from the food that had been set out some time before she and the American arrived. There was a small kettle of soup, a thin broth with what appeared to be cubes of potatoes or turnips, some steamed beans and small pears, brown on the large end and green near the stem. Picking up an old white bowl, the nun ladled in some soup and picked a piece of flat bread from a plate, selected a dulled gray spoon and sat at a table where no one else was seated. Hanley took some soup, two pears and bread and sat with the nun.
“Have you told Mr Martin of your reputation with men?” another doctor asked the nun. There was smoke in the air of the dining hall, cigarettes in the hands of some of the doctors and nurses, the ceiling fan idle, leaving the slow wind through the screened door little help in clearing the air.
“I’m aware of it,” Hanley replied, then to the nun. “I have heard about it, you know.” He tasted the soup, grimacing, crunching what turned out to be a variety of turnip, undercooked and bitter.
“What have you heard?”
“Well, about your reputation with men. You’re known to be demanding and not afraid of confrontation and you’re a ‘hitter’. You like to punch an arm to express your surprise or dismay. Relax, my grandmother did the same thing. Otherwise, you’re known to be dedicated and a bit unhappy with the church’s role, or lack of it, in helping the people of Sudan. And, while you defend the church, publicly, at least, privately, you believe the church could be more of a force for change in Sudan,” Hanley said, holding a pear by the stem, twirling between his fingers while he talked.
“Sister Mary Kathleen talks too, much I think, at least she talked too much to you.”
Biting the pear, Hanley grimaced again. “Is everything bitter in this country?” he asked. “Everything,” she said.
Scratching the worn surface of the table with a fingernail, Hanley looked at the pear, considered another bite, then placed it next to his bowl. The smoke in the room caused his eyes to burn and water. He looked around, noting the faces and occasional smiles, the rigid mechanism of the smokers, the rotation of the forearms, the cigarette clamped between two fingers, the jet of smoke from the pursed lips. The clink and scrape of the nun’s spoon against the bowl brought him back to the conversation. He felt his anger rising
