Chapter 11
Cracks
The first sign was so small that she did not notice it was a sign.
It was a fever. It came in the first week of June, on a Tuesday, at about four in the afternoon, a thin hot flush that rose up her neck and into her face, and left her, an hour later, drenched in sweat. She lay on the sofa in Mama Agnes with a wet cloth across her forehead and thought, Malaria. It was the obvious thing. It was the rains, and the mosquitoes, and the lake. She took four tablets from a strip she had in the cupboard, drank a great deal of water, and slept.
She woke at six, weak, but well.
It came back on Thursday. And the following Tuesday. It was a very regular fever, tidy, almost polite, arriving always in the afternoon and leaving by evening, and she took her tablets and her water and her cloth and did not think of it. She was a nurse. She knew what a fever was. It was the body, doing its work. It was a sign of a fight, and the fight, for her, was a small one, and would be over by the weekend.
It's nothing, she told herself.
It was a very old sentence, and it came to her mouth like water.
By July the fever had a companion. She woke, in the middle of the night, soaked from head to foot. The sheet was wet. The pillow was wet. She lay in a pool of her own sweat, in the dark, with her heart going and the mosquito net hanging round her like a ghost, and felt, in some far corner of her mind, a very small, very cold, very clear voice, saying: Night sweats.
She turned over. She dragged the sheet from the bed, and put on a dry T-shirt, and lay down on the other side.
It's the weather.
She did not look at the voice. She did not turn her head. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, and counted the roses on the wallpaper, as she did every night, and in the morning, when she woke, the voice had gone back into its room and shut the door.
It was not that she did not know.
That was the thing she would find hardest to forgive, afterward. She was not an ignorant girl. She had sat in a lecture room under a high white ceiling and listened to Sister Benedicta for six weeks on the subject of the immune system. She had drawn it. She had labelled it. She could have recited, in her sleep, the stages: the acute illness, with its fever and its rash, like a flu; the long quiet period, the latency, when the virus slept in the body for years, doing its slow work; and the third phase, when the soldiers of the blood were few and weak, and the ordinary world became a field of knives. A cough. A thrush. A weight that fell, slowly, until the skin lay on the bones like a wet cloth.
She had written it in her notes. She had underlined it twice. Early diagnosis. Early treatment. Do not wait.
She knew it as she knew her own name.
And she did nothing, because she was afraid.
It was a strange, sly, particular fear. It was not the fear of the thing. She was brave enough, she thought, to look at the thing. It was a fear of the knowing. It was a terror of the little blue door, and the chair, and the woman with the kind face, and the thin white strip of paper, and the moment when one line would become two. It was a fear of a word. Because as long as nobody said it, it did not exist. As long as she did not look, it was only a fever. It was a cloud, a mood, a thing that came and went. Once it was said, it would be a fact. It would have a number. It would have a file. It would walk with her down the street.
I would rather go quiet.
It was a sentence from a letter, in pencil, on a page torn from an exercise book. She heard it, in her own voice.
The cough came in August.
It was dry, at first. A small, irritating tickle in the back of her throat, which she cleared, and cleared, and could not clear. She coughed in the shower. She coughed in the car. She coughed at a dinner with Hajji Mugisha and his wife, so that the woman in purple looked at her with an eyebrow, and Mr. Walusimbi said, without turning his head, "You should see a doctor, my dear."
"It's the air-conditioning."
"Perhaps." He patted her hand. "I will send you to my doctor. He is excellent. He is discreet."
"No, thank you."
"It would be no trouble."
"I'm a nurse," said Nabirye, with a bright smile. "I'm capable of looking after myself."
He did not press. He never did. He sipped his wine, and spoke of something else. But she felt, in the quiet that followed, a small cool glance, an appraisal, like a farmer's eye on a heifer, and she knew, as she knew a pulse, that he had made a note.
She stopped coughing at the table. She excused herself, and coughed in the bathroom, with the tap running.
She began to lose weight.
It was not dramatic. She did not look in the mirror. She had a mirror, a full-length one, in the bedroom, with a gilt frame, and for weeks she walked past it with her eyes on the floor. But the clothes began to hang. The blue silk dress, which had fitted her like a skin in March, slid off her shoulders in September. The gold watch, the one that was not her father's, slipped down her wrist to the knuckle. She noticed it one night when she took it off. She held it up to the lamp. It swung from her hand, a little bright hoop, and she thought, with a curious vague pang, I have got so thin.
And then, on the second Sunday of October, she opened her mouth in front of the mirror to brush her teeth, and saw her tongue.
It was white.
It was not a pale white, or a coated white, of the kind that comes after a bad night. It was a thick, creamy, curdled white, in a patchwork, across the whole length of the tongue and into the corners of the mouth. She scraped it with the toothbrush. It did not come away. She scraped harder. It left, behind it, a red, raw, tender surface that stung when she swallowed.
She stood with her mouth open and the toothbrush in her hand.
She did not move for a very long time.
She knew what it was. She knew its name. She had seen it, in the third bed from the end of a long green ward, on a girl called Mercy, in the first week of her training, and had been told by a short square nurse: This is oral candidiasis. This is thrush. It is a sign. It is the body telling you that its guard is down.
It is a sign.
She put the toothbrush on the basin. She put her hand on the cold marble, and held on.
It is not necessarily, said the voice. It was shaking. There are other causes. Antibiotics. Diabetes. A bad diet. You have been eating badly.
Yes.
You have been under stress.
Yes.
It could be anything.
She looked up.
The girl in the gilt-framed mirror looked back at her. She was a thin, grey-faced woman, with sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes. Her braids lay on her shoulders like dead snakes. Her collarbones stood out like the handles of a cup. She was wearing a silk nightdress, an expensive one, in pale apricot, and it hung from her as from a coat hanger.
Who is she?
She did not know her. She had never in her life seen anyone so tired.
She did not go to the clinic.
She did, however, take a small, practical, furtive step. She went to a pharmacy in Entebbe, a long way from the hotel, in a headscarf and dark glasses, and bought a bottle of antifungal mouthwash. She paid in cash. She took it home in a paper bag, and put it at the bottom of a drawer, under a pile of silk scarves, and rinsed and spat four times a day, in the bathroom with the tap running, until the white faded.
It faded. That was the horror of it. It faded, within ten days, to a dull pink, and then to nothing, and she stood in the kitchen with her mouth wide open in the light of the window and thought, triumphantly, There.
It was only a thing.
She ate a plate of rice. She ate it all. She sat on the veranda in the evening sun with her hands round a cup of tea and told herself that she was better. She had been run down. She had been working too hard. She would eat well, and sleep, and take a vitamin. In a week or two she would be a new woman.
The cough went on.
It went on through November. It was no longer dry. It rattled. It had begun to bring things up, in the morning, in the basin, thick and yellowish, and once, a thread of red. She wrapped it in tissue and dropped it down the toilet. She flushed twice.
It is the dust.
She no longer slept in the bed. She slept on the sofa, with a cushion under her head, because lying flat made her breathless. She sat up at night, at the window, watching the lake, with a blanket round her. She counted the fishing lamps. A fever came every afternoon now, not tidy, not polite, a violent shaking chill that sent her to her knees in the kitchen with her teeth chattering, and left her, an hour later, like something cast up on a beach.
She lost nine kilos in two months.
She knew the figure. She had a set of bathroom scales. She stood on them, naked, at six in the morning, with her eyes shut, and opened one eye, and read it, and shut it, and stepped off. Fifty-one. And then fifty. And then forty-eight and a half. She remembered, absurdly, the diagram of a healthy woman in a textbook, a smiling cartoon, in a blue dress. BMI: 18.5 and above.
She did not do the sum.
Mrs. Walusimbi came on the first of December.
It was a bright, hot, blustery afternoon. Nabirye was on the sofa, with a blanket, and a cup of tea she could not drink. She heard the car on the pebbles. She heard the gate. She did not get up. She thought it was the driver, with the weekly bag, and lay with her eyes shut.
There was a knock.
It was not Mr. Walusimbi's. It was too light, too deliberate, a succession of three small precise raps, like a person who has been knocking on doors all her life and has never once had to knock twice. She opened her eyes.
"Come in," she called.
The door opened.
A woman stood on the threshold. She was in her fifties, tall and slim and straight-backed, in a long black gomesi with a gold border, and a black shawl. She had a long, smooth, handsome, sorrowful face, the colour of dark honey, and a mouth that was shut like a purse. Her hair was perfectly arranged. Her shoes were perfectly polished. On her left hand was a gold ring, thick, identical to the one that Mr. Walusimbi wore. She carried a small black bag. Behind her, on the veranda, stood another woman, younger, stout, in a green kanzu, whose expression suggested a strong desire to be somewhere else.
"Miss Kibirige," said the woman.
It was not a question.
Nabirye sat up. The room tilted. She put out a hand to the arm of the sofa, and held on.
"I am Mrs. Walusimbi."
"I know."
"Do you." The woman stepped into the room. She did not look round. She did not look at the lake, or the roses, or the carved bed visible through an open door. She looked at Nabirye, steadily, without hurry, with an expression of such grave and level attention that Nabirye felt, absurdly, that she ought to stand. "I did not think you would. My husband is very discreet. He has had a great deal of practice."
"I'm... I'm sorry."
"No." Mrs. Walusimbi raised a hand, as one stops a child in the street. "You are not to say that. I have come a very long way, and I am tired, and I want to say something, and I should like it to be said without apology. May I sit?"
"Please."
She sat. She did it slowly, in the armchair by the window, the one in which Mr. Walusimbi sat. She folded her hands on her lap. The stout woman remained in the doorway, looking at the wall.
"I will tell you what I know," said Mrs. Walusimbi. "Because I find it is better to begin with the facts. I have known about this house for eleven months. I have known about the girl before you, and the girl before her. There were four. Five, if you count the one in Mbarara, who did not stay." She spoke in a low, even, unemphatic voice. "I have been married for thirty-one years. I have raised five children. I buried a sixth. I am a woman of faith. I do not hit, or scream, or throw things. I did not come here for that."
Nabirye said nothing.
"I came because I wished to see you." The woman's eyes moved, over her face, her shoulders, her hands. They lingered. A small crease appeared between the brows. "You are very young."
"I'm twenty-one."
"You look younger. And you are not well."
"I'm fine."
"You are not." It was said so gently, and so flatly, that it did not seem a contradiction. "I have raised five children. I have nursed a husband through typhoid and a mother through a stroke. I know what a sick person looks like. You are thin. Your eyes are bright. You have a cough that you are trying to hide." She paused. "How long?"
"It's the weather."
"How long?"
The voice was so quiet. It held no accusation. It was the tone in which, long ago, in a kitchen in Kisaana, a woman had said, What do you think? Nabirye felt, rising in her throat, an absurd, heavy, shameful swell of tears.
"Since June," she said.
"Six months."
"Yes."
"Have you seen a doctor?"
"No."
"Why not?"
She opened her mouth. Nothing came. She sat on the sofa, in the blanket, with her hands in her lap and her mouth shaking.
"I see," said Mrs. Walusimbi.
She was silent for a long moment. Out on the veranda a bird began to sing, a long liquid whistle, and stopped. In the doorway, the stout woman cleared her throat.
"Miss Kibirige," said Mrs. Walusimbi. "I am going to tell you something, and I should like you to listen. It is not a threat. It is not a judgement. I am only a woman. But I have been sitting in that car for forty minutes, and I have thought a good deal, and I find that I cannot say what I came to say."
"What did you come to say?"
"That you must leave."
"I know."
"That I want you out of this house. By Friday. That my husband will not be returning, and that the arrangement, whatever it was, is at an end." Her voice did not change. "That I shall not be generous. I do not feel generous. I have been humiliated, in front of my children, in front of my church. I should like to see you ruined."
"I understand."
"But I cannot." She looked at her hands. "I have been sitting here, and I look at you, and I do not see a thief, or a harlot, or whatever I had in my head. I see a child. A thin, frightened, sick child, in a blanket, who is going to die if somebody does not take her to a hospital."
"I'm not..."
"Go to a clinic."
"I will."
"Not will. Go. Tomorrow. Today." She leaned forward. For the first time, something broke in her face, a small hard crack in the carved polish, and for an instant she looked her age, and tired, and very old. "I have buried a child. Do you understand? I know what it is to wait. I waited. I thought, it's only a cold. He was four. I should have gone on the first day."
Nabirye stared.
"I am not telling you out of kindness," said Mrs. Walusimbi. "I have not got any. I am telling you because I could not live with myself if I did not. That is all. It is a very selfish thing." She stood. She smoothed her gomesi. "Go to the clinic. Do not come to my husband. Do not come to me. Go to a clinic and get a test. And take whatever they give you."
She turned. She walked to the door, tall and straight, in her black and gold. At the threshold she stopped, with her hand on the frame, and spoke without turning round.
"He gave me a ring, once, with a green stone. In nineteen ninety-four. I wore it for twenty years. He took it back, last January, to give it to a girl. I did not ask which." A pause. "I mention it so you know. You were not the first. You will not be the last. It is not about you."
"Mrs. Walusimbi..."
"Goodbye, Miss Kibirige."
She went out. The stout woman followed, with an apologetic glance, like a lady-in-waiting leaving a bad play. The car door shut. The engine started. A small cloud of dust drifted across the roses, and settled on the leaves.
Nabirye sat very still, on the sofa, in the empty room.
It was quiet. The lake shone through the window. A fishing boat was moving slowly along the shore. On the wall, over the mantelpiece, an old framed photograph of a woman in a headscarf, Mama Agnes, smiled down at her with her mild, kind, unsurprised eyes.
Go to a clinic.
She put her face in her hands.
They put her out on the Friday.
It was not done unkindly. A man came, a secretary from the hotel, a polite young person in a tie, and said that Mr. Walusimbi regretted any inconvenience. He gave her a brown envelope, which contained three months' rent and a note in an elegant hand, With every good wish. G.W., and he helped her carry her suitcase to a taxi. She did not take the dresses. She took the green exercise book, and a change of clothes, and, from the bottom of the drawer, wrapped in a scarf, her father's watch.
She told Brian on the phone.
She had not meant to. She had meant to leave it, and slip away. But she had rung him, in a spasm of terror, from the back of the taxi, and he answered on the sixth ring, with a noise of music and shouting behind him, in a voice already slurred.
"Nabi! Baby! Where are you?"
"I've left the house."
"What house?"
"Mr. Walusimbi's. I have been... it is over. I need somewhere. Just for a few days. I wondered if..."
"Ah." The music faded, as if he had walked into another room. His voice changed. It lost its slur. "Wow. That is... I'm sorry to hear that."
"Can I stay?"
"At my place?"
"Only a few nights."
"I wish I could." A long, awkward pause. "It's just, you know. My father is staying. He's in from Mukono. And my girlfriend's coming on Thursday."
"Your girlfriend?"
"You know I have one. I mentioned." His voice was airy. "She's a good person. We're getting engaged. I've been meaning to tell you. It was only a bit of fun, you know. You, me. I thought you understood."
"You said Dubai."
"I say lots of things."
"You said you'd take care of me."
"I did. I mean, I would have. If things were different." He laughed, uneasily. "Babe, you sound terrible. Are you sick? You sound congested."
She did not answer.
"Nabi?"
She hung up.
She sat in the back of the taxi with the phone in her lap, and her hand over her mouth. The driver, a young man in a cap, glanced at her in the mirror. He did not say anything. He drove on, through the sleepy hot streets of Entebbe, with the radio playing a slow, sweet song about a girl who left a village. At the roundabout, he turned the music down.
"Where to, sister?"
She did not know.
She sat with her father's watch in her fist, and the sun in her eyes, and a taste of salt in her mouth. She saw, clearly, as one sees things at the very bottom of a fever, a series of small bright pictures. A man with a dimple. A man with a green stone. A boy with a gold watch and a glass of wine. Each had promised her a good life. Each had given her a gift, and a name, and a room. Each had gone, in turn, with a courteous smile, like a guest at the end of a party. And she was standing in the middle of the hall, in the litter, among the empty glasses, with a suitcase.
I do not need anyone.
She had said it in a silver car, in a red dress, in the sun.
She heard it now. She heard it for what it was. It was not a boast. It was a prayer. It was the prayer of a very frightened child in a very large house, who has been told that if she cries, no one will come.
"Katwe," she said.
The driver nodded. He took the road round the lake, past the harbour and the golf course, toward the city. She sat with her forehead against the glass. And on the hill behind her, in a house with a green roof, among the roses, an old woman in a photograph went on smiling, to nobody, at the empty room.