‘General medicine.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ Dr Juárez said, and ordered the group to break camp.
Bruno and I went back to look for our rucksacks, which we had left on the other side of the thalweg. When we returned, Lotta asked us to hand over the rifle to Jibreel, a tall, well-built man in a turban. Relieved, Bruno did as he was told. We set off, Dr Juárez and the guide in front, Lotta and Dr Orfane in the middle, and the two nurses bringing up the rear. Bruno and I trotted behind a ragged young man dragging a cart on which an old, weary-eyed woman lay — it wasn’t exactly a cart, more a clever assembly of wooden planks fitted with arms from a barrow and mounted on two moped wheels. The rims of the wheels scraped on the stones, making the cart sway. The old woman was very slight, like a mummy removed from its sarcophagus. Her wasted body shuddered each time there was a jolt. It was a pitiful, tragic sight. The young man was pulling his cart with unflinching energy, at an even pace, as heedless of the effort he was making as an automaton.
‘Is she your grandmother?’ Bruno asked him.
‘My mother,’ the young man said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry! … Is she sick?’
‘Can’t hide anything from you, can we?’
The young man’s tone was sharp. Bruno offered to relieve him, and received a respectful but categorical refusal.
‘My friend here is a doctor,’ Bruno said. ‘If you like, he can examine her.’
‘There’s no need, sir.’
‘What she has may be serious,’ Bruno insisted.
‘There is nothing serious in life, except the harm we do.’
The young man had started walking faster, to make it clear to us that he wanted to be left alone.
Ahead of us, the line of survivors dragged themselves along as best they could, bundles on their heads, babies on their backs, giving me an overarching image of a terrible world whose infamy I barely grasped and for which nothing in my life had prepared me. A world whose merciless gods had lost all the skin from their fingers, so often had they washed their hands of it. A Sisyphean world abandoned to the cowardice of men and the ravages of epidemics, a world of torture and violence, where contingents of the living dead wandered from place to place through a thousand torments, hope crucified on their foreheads and their shoulders collapsing beneath the weight of a nameless curse.
At the first stop, I took Bruno to task. I pointed out to him that I was old enough to offer my services without needing an intermediary. He was taken aback. In point of fact, I was scared to approach these people myself. Their misfortune both overwhelmed and horrified me. I could find a whole heap of unanswerable excuses for myself, justifying my attitude by the fact that I had been through an incredible ordeal and pretending that having not washed for so long I had developed a kind of hypochondria. Yes, I could invent all kinds of get-out clauses, but I wouldn’t be able to hide my face. Never having had to deal with this kind of patient, and having neither gloves nor masks nor any other kind of protection at my disposal, I was afraid of being contaminated by some tropical microbe. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I couldn’t help it.
Bruno unwound his scarf and ran to give a hand to Lotta, who was busy calming the delirious teacher. Even though he had refrained from judging me, I was convinced he was disappointed in me.
An hour later, I found myself with a child in my arms — his mother had fainted and could no longer carry him. He was a puny boy, his skin withering on his bones. Dressed in something resembling a vest, his belly bloated and his skull bald, he stared at me with his empty eyes. I took his fingers out of his mouth; he kept them on his chin for a moment then stuffed them between his lips again. I took them out once more; understanding that I didn’t want him to put them back in his mouth, he turned away and flopped onto my shoulder. Without thinking, I put my hand out and hugged his sparrow-like body. I felt his little heart beating against mine. Something in me was falling back into place. I was becoming a human being again.
10
In the evening, at the time when the earth turns upside down like an hour glass, I took my seat on a pile of loose stones and watched the sun dying on the horizon. The heat had abated, and a hypothetical silence, like that of a truce, hung over the plain. A line of ragged trees wound through hills as polished as shells reflecting the light of the sunset. Under less inclement skies, such a fresco would have filled me with contentment. But my heart had learnt to resist such spells. What had once fascinated me now saddened me, because I fear that I could no longer revive my old joys, no longer look at things in the same way. My passions had broken free of their moorings, and the happy, indulgent observer I had once been could not forgive talent its imperfections. No magic spoke to me now, no Rembrandtesque tableau or idealised image. The only light I cared about was the one at the end of my tunnel. When would it appear? I wanted time to speed up, I wanted the sun to disappear and reappear the next minute, I wanted some conjuring trick to make tomorrow arrive faster than tonight. Ever since the guide had promised us the end of our wandering, I had been unable to keep still. Urged on by some feverish drive, I often found myself going ahead of the convoy until Bruno called me back. The day before, noticing that I was wearing shoes unsuitable for a forced march, the father of a family had offered me his son’s espadrilles. ‘He won’t need them where he is now,’ he had said. My feet were still bleeding, but the pain had eased. Anyway, it wasn’t my legs that were carrying me, but the hope of an imminent end to all this; I felt almost like praising the saints in whom I had never believed.
Dr Juárez brought me coffee. She sat down beside me and gazed at the sunset. She was a very pretty woman, with the profile of a goddess and large dark eyes, which, when they came to rest on you, enveloped you entirely. She must have been in her thirties, in spite of her dimpled face and youthful figure. Her long chestnut hair cascaded down to her hips, when she didn’t gather it in a bun. During the two days’ walking we had done together, not once had I heard her complain. Of course, whenever she got the chance she slept like a log, but as soon as she was on her feet she pushed herself onwards. The previous day, she had come to see me; my limp worried her and she wanted to take a look at the state of my feet. Her voice was so soft I hadn’t paid any attention to what she was saying. While she spoke, I couldn’t take my eyes off her crimson lips, which had made her uncomfortable. It had taken me a good five minutes to realise that she had left.
‘It feels like a sandstorm is coming,’ she said now.
‘Oh, no!’
‘Yes. We’re going to have to get our cheches out and pray it isn’t a big one.’
She placed her lips on the rim of the glass and took a small sip. She had pretty hands with slender fingers, but no ring or any other adornment, except for an old watch with a leather strap and a crucifix around her slender neck.
‘We lost another old woman,’ she said.
‘I know.’
She shook her head, and a loose lock of hair fell over her eye. She again lifted her glass to her mouth, which was round and full, and squinted at the sunset. I wondered how shoulders as frail as hers could bear such heavy and unpredictable responsibility, how a woman her age managed to live with danger, what motivated her to that extent when the mere fact of going to the aid of some poor devil automatically exposed her to major risks? I tried to imagine her fleeing across the scrub, a pack of fanatical killers at her heels, or held captive in a sordid hideout at the mercy of depraved kidnappers, and her devotion seemed to me as inhuman as the conditions faced by these tribes she was trying to save.