1
The first time I saw him I thought, he wonāt last.
I was sitting in the office in the late afternoon and he appeared suddenly in the doorway, carrying a suitcase in one hand and wearing plain clothes ā jeans and a brown shirt ā with his white
coat on top. He looked young and lost and a bit bewildered, but that wasnāt why I thought what I did. It was because of something else, something I could see in his face.
He said, āHello...? Is this the hospital?ā
His voice was unexpectedly deep for somebody so tall and thin.
āCome in,ā I said. āPut down your bag.ā
He came in, but he didnāt put down the bag. He held it close while he looked around at the pink walls, the empty chairs, the dusty desk in the corner, the frail plants wilting in their pots. I
could see that he thought thereād been some kind of mistake. I felt sorry for him.
āIām Frank Eloff,ā I said.
āIām Laurence Waters.ā
āI know.ā
āYou know...?ā
He seemed amazed that we should be expecting him, though heād been sending faxes for days already, announcing his arrival.
āWeāre sharing a room,ā I told him. āLet me take you over.ā
The room was in a separate wing. We had to cross an open space of ground, close to the parking lot. When he came in he must have walked this way, but now he looked at the path through the long
grass, the ragged trees overhead dropping their burden of leaves, as if heād never seen them before.
We went down the long passage to the room. Iād lived and slept alone in here until today. Two beds, a cupboard, a small carpet, a print on one wall, a mirror, a green sofa, a low coffee table
made of synthetic wood, a lamp. It was all basic standard issue. The few occupied rooms all looked the same, as in some featureless bleak hotel. The only trace of individuality was in the
configuration of the furniture, but Iād never bothered to shift mine around till two days ago, when an extra bed had been brought in. I also hadnāt added anything. There was no personality in the
ugly, austere furniture; against this neutral backdrop, even a piece of cloth would have been revealing.
āYou can take that bed,ā I said. āThereās space in the cupboard. The bathroomās through that door.ā
āOh. Yes. Okay.ā But he still didnāt put down his bag.
Iād only heard two weeks before that I would have to share a room. Dr Ngema had called me in. I wasnāt happy, but I didnāt refuse. And in the days that followed I came around, in spite of
myself, to the idea of sharing. It might not be so bad. We might get on well, it might be good to have company, my life here could be pleasantly different. So in a way I started looking forward
with curiosity to this change. And before he arrived I did a few things to make him welcome. I put the new bed under the window and made it up with fresh linen. I cleared a few shelves in the
cupboard. I swept and cleaned, which is something I donāt do very often.
But now that he was standing here I could see, through his eyes, how invisible that effort was. The room was ugly and bare. And Laurence Waters didnāt look to me like the person Iād pictured in
my head. I donāt know what Iād imagined, but it wasnāt this bland, biscuit-coloured young man, almost a boy still, who was at last putting his suitcase down.
He took his glasses off and rubbed them on his sleeve. He put them on again and said wearily, āI donāt understand.ā
āWhat?ā
āThis whole place.ā
āThe hospital?ā
āNot just the hospital. I mean...ā He waved a hand to indicate the world out there. He meant the town outside the hospital walls.
āYou asked to come here.ā
āBut I didnāt know that it would be like this. Why?ā he said with sudden intensity. āI donāt understand.ā
āWe can talk about it later. But Iām on duty now, I have to go back to the office.ā
āI must see Dr Ngema,ā he said abruptly. āSheās expecting me.ā
āDonāt worry about that now. You can do it in the morning. No hurry.ā
āWhat should I do now?ā
āWhatever you like. Unpack, settle in. Or come and sit with me. Iāll be finished in a couple of hours.ā
I left him alone and went back. He was shocked and depressed. I understood that; Iād felt it myself when I first arrived. You came expecting one thing and were met by something else
completely.
You came expecting a busy modern hospital ā rural maybe, and small, but full of activity ā in a town where things were happening. This was the capital of what used to be one of the homelands, so
whatever the morality of the politics that gave rise to it, you expected a place full of administration and movement, people coming and going. And when youād turned off the main route to the border
and were coming in on the one minor road that led here, it might still look ā when you saw the place from a distance ā like what youād expected. There was the main street, leading to the centre
where the fountain and the statue stood, the shop-fronts and pavements and streetlights, and all the buildings beyond. It looked neat and calibrated and exact. Not a bad place to be.
And then you arrived and you saw. Maybe the first clue was a disturbing detail; a crack that ran through an otherwise pristine wall, or a set of broken windows in an office you passed. Or the
fact that the fountain was dry and full of old sand at the bottom. And you slowed down, looking around you with vague anxiety, and suddenly it all came into clear focus. The weeds in the joints of
the pavements and bricks, the grass growing at places in the street, the fused lamps and the empty shops behind their blank glass fronts and the mildew and damp and blistered paint and the marks of
rain on every surface and the slow tumbling down of solid structures, sometimes grain by grain, sometimes in pieces. And you were not sure any more of where you were.
And there were no people. That was the last thing you noticed, though you realized then that it was the first thing to give you that uneasy hollow feeling: the place was deserted. There was,
yes, a car cruising slowly down a back road, an official uniform or two ambling along a pavement, and maybe a figure slouching on a footpath through an overgrown plot of land, but mostly the space
was empty. Uninhabited. No human chaos, no movement.
A ghost town.
āItās like something terrible happened here,ā Laurence said. āThatās how it feels.ā
āJa, but the opposite is true. Nothing has ever happened here. Nothing ever will. Thatās the problem.ā
āBut then how...?ā
āHow what?ā
āNothing. Just how.ā
He meant, how did it come to be here at all? And that was the real question. This was not a town that had sprung up naturally for the normal human reasons ā a river in a dry area, say, or
a discovery of gold, some kind of historical event. It was a town that had been conceived and planned on paper, by evil bureaucrats in a city far away, who had probably never even been here. Here
is our homeland, they said, tracing an outline on a map, now where should its capital be? Why not here, in the middle? They made an āXā with a red pen and all felt very satisfied with themselves,
then sent for the state architects to draw up plans.
So the bewilderment that Laurence Waters felt wasnāt unusual. Iād been through it myself. And so I knew that the feeling would pass. In a week or two the bewilderment would give way to something
else: frustration maybe, or resentment, anger. And then that would turn into resignation. And after a couple of months Laurence would be suffering through his sentence here, like the rest of us, or
else plotting a way to get out.
āBut where are they all?ā he said, talking more to the ceiling than to me.
āWho?ā
āThe people.ā
āOut there,ā I said. āWhere they live.ā
This was hours later in my room ā our room ā that night. I had just put out the light and was lying there, trying to sleep, when his voice came out of the dark.
āBut why do they live out there? Why arenāt they here?ā
āWhatās there for them here?ā I said.
āEverything. I saw the countryside when I was driving. Thereās nothing out there. No hotels, shops, restaurants, cinemas... Nothing.ā
āThey donāt need all that.ā
āWhat about the hospital? Donāt they need that?ā
I sat up on one elbow. He was smoking a cigarette and I could see the red glow rising and falling. He was on his back, looking up.
āLaurence,ā I said. āUnderstand one thing. This isnāt a real hospital. Itās a joke. When you were driving here, do you remember the last town you passed, an hour back? Thatās where the real
hospital is. Thatās where people go when theyāre sick. They donāt come here. Thereās nothing here. Youāre in the wrong place.ā
āI donāt believe that.ā
āYouād better believe it.ā
The red coal hung still for a moment, then rose and fell, rose and fell. āBut people get injured, people get sick. Donāt they need help?ā
āWhat do you think this place means to them? Itās where the army came from. Itās where their puppet dictator lived. They hate this place.ā
āYou mean politics,ā he said. āBut thatās all past now. It doesnāt matter any more.ā
āThe past has only just happened. Itās not past yet.ā
āI donāt care about that. Iām a doctor.ā
I lay and watched him for a while. After a few minutes he stubbed out the cigarette on the windowsill and threw the butt out of the window. Then he said one or two words I couldnāt hear, made a
gesture with his hands and sighed and went to sleep. It was almost instantaneous. He went limp and I could hear the regular sound of his breathing.
But I couldnāt sleep. It had been years and years since Iād had to spend a night in the same room with anybody else. And I remembered then ā almost incongruously, because he was nothing to me ā
how there had been a time, long before, when the idea of having somebody sleeping close to me in the dark was a consolation and comfort. I couldnāt think of anything better. And now this other
breathing body made me tense and watchful and somehow angry, so that it took hours before I was tired enough to close my eyes.
2
For a long time now there had only been the seven of us: Tehogo and the kitchen staff, Dr Ngema, the Santanders and me. Once upon a time it was different. There had been an Indian woman doctor when I first arrived, but she was long gone, and a white man from Cape Town whoād got married later and emigrated. There had been four or five nurses too, but theyād been retrenched or transferred, all except Tehogo. There were too many of us to deal with the tiny trickle of human need. So when somebody went away they were never replaced, the empty space they left behind immediately sandbagged and fortified as a bastion against final collapse.
So Laurenceās arrival was a mysterious event. It made no sense. When Dr Ngema told me there was a young doctor coming to do a year of community service, I thought at first that she was making a joke. I had heard about the community service ā it was a new government scheme, aimed at staffing and servicing all the hospitals in the country. But we seemed too obscure to qualify.
āWhy?ā I said. āWe donāt need anybody else.ā
āI know,ā she said. āI didnāt request anybody. He asked to come here.ā
āHe asked? But why?ā
āI donāt know.ā She was looking in perplexity at a letter that had been faxed to her. āWe donāt have a choice, Frank. We have to find a place for him.ā
āWell, all right,ā I said, shrugging. āIt doesnāt affect me.ā
Dr Ngema looked up and sighed. āIt does affect you, Iām afraid,ā she said. āI have to put him into the room with you.ā
āWhat?ā
Nothing like this had ever happened before. She saw the dismay in my face.
āIt wonāt be for long, Frank. When the Santanders go Iāll put him in there.ā
āBut... we have a whole passage full of empty rooms. Why canāt he go into one of those?ā
āBecause thereās no furniture in those rooms. The only thing I can provide is a bed. But what about tables, chairs . . .? Heās got to sit somewhere. Please, Frank. I know itās hard. But somebody has to compromise.ā
āBut why me?ā
āWho else, Frank?ā
This wasnāt a simple question. But there was one other room, down at the end of the passage, that was under dispute.
āTehogo,ā I said.
āFrank. You know thatās not possible.ā
āWhy not?ā
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair and her voice rose a note or two in protest. āFrank. Frank. What can I do? Please. I will sort something out, I promise you. But I canāt just evict him.ā
āYou donāt have to evict him. Why canāt they share?ā
āBecause... Tehogo isnāt a doctor, you are. It makes sense for two doctors to share.ā
Behind the words were other words, not spoken. It wasnāt just that Laurence Waters and I were doctors; it was that we were two white men, and we belonged in a room together.
When the alarm woke me in the morning he was already up and dressed, sitting on the edge of his bed, smoking a cigarette.
āI want to meet Dr Ngema,ā he said immediately.
āYou can. But youāll have to wait a bit.ā
āI could go over to her office. You donāt have to take me. I could go on my own.ā
āItās six in the morning, she isnāt there yet. Rel...