— I never said you had kidney trouble. Your eyelids are the right colour.
— But doctor –
— Psychosomatic. Or sciatica. I’ll give you some pills to cheer you up. Next please.
— It can’t be the lavatory because that’s here.
— I suppose not.
— And it’s not the doctor and it can’t be offices.
— No.
— Do you think it’s one of the wards?
— I don’t know.
The floor is mottled all the way to the pairs of feet lined up opposite, in canvas shoes, with legs denimed or bare.
— It isn’t marked. I mean they usually have a name, don’t they, a benefactor or someone.
— Yes.
— It can’t be the theatre either, that’s upstairs. Or the X-ray room. That’s at the back near Physiotherapy.
— Is it.
The Bahuko nurse emerges from the doctor’s door in pink and white calico and the neighbouring thigh tenses. A name is called out. The thigh relaxes. A large pale lady in a black cotton dress rises slowly from further down the line, collects innumerable bags and waddles in, all basketed around. The freckled hands lie limply on each of the neighbour’s thighs. And yet the pale green corridor is full of flies, buzzing in the heat.
— And yet, you know, I’ve seen them going in and coming out of that door.
It is not merely that I desire you intensely, but that I want to die. Sometimes it is insufficient to disimagine. It is not possible at all. The thing exists and floods the consciousness. I would prefer him out of the way, since he might drown, if you would be kind enough to tell him. He is your servant and one has to speak to them. The thing exists and we cannot pretend that it does not. I hope therefore, and shall inform you of further progress as it occurs.
— Excuse me but would you do me a favour?
The conventional weapons are ranged all round, pointing downwards and converging. The lights above the microscopes glare a heavy heat.
— Did you say yes?
— Yes. What is it?
— When you go in there, could you ask them, oh the nurse will do, it doesn’t have to be the doctor.
The neck is freckled, the face a greenish, yellowish colour, the hair ginger. The eyelids are pink and swollen, the skin beneath the eyes trembles slightly.
— Ask them what?
— Well, about that door. I’ve tried but they never tell me anything. They go all mysterious whenever I ask a question. You know, evasive. As if I had no right to ask, as if there were a secret sect and I wasn’t initiated, you know what I mean. But I’ve been coming here a long time, six years, close on. I swear to you that door wasn’t there when I first came. Have you been coming a long time?
— No.
— Oh, well, I expect you’re just lucky then. They’d probably answer you. You may have been initiated for all I know.
All the dancers on the ballroom floor are dressed in black to mourn the death of the Governor. The faces and hands of the gentlemen are black, the faces, shoulders and arms of the ladies are black, all glowing with vitality, and every gentleman holds one lady at arm’s length, jerking tremulously, then convulsively as the ladies quiver and quake in their shimmering black gowns. The Governor’s wife watches benignly through a gold lorgnette, her eyes two gold-framed pictures on a dark velvet wall. Through the gold lorgnette the dancers quiver on the ballroom floor which is as round as the eye of a microscope. The dancers lean backwards, putting out their bellies, and then forwards, bouncing out their behinds in dignified postures and a steady rhythm. Mrs. Mgulu, hand on hip, leans her plunging neck-line forward in a dignified posture and a steady rhythm and says let me introduce, no, but really, you haven’t got a clue, have you?
— Have you?
— What?
— Been initiated.
The Bahuko nurse emerges in pink and white calico and calls out the correct identity, the recognisable label, the dog’s dinner bell. Hope rises with the body on the weight of tingling legs.
— I thought you had. You won’t forget?
— No.
— You will wait for me, won’t you?
— This way.
It depends which kind of Chinese the doctor is, a renegade from Chinese Europe or a refugee from Sino-America, or even a renegade from Sino-America. Or an Afro-Eurasian born and bred, by chance descendance perhaps or any number of individual circumstances.
— So we were a psychopath, were we? We have a sense of humour, yes? Sit down. Strange, that is not what Mrs. Mgulu gives me to understand in her letter. Hmmm.
The gesture is one of careful record-keeping. The fingers move swiftly over the white paper, holding a black pen. The eyes move from right to left in their slits, following the letter. Dear Dr. Fu Teng. I am sending you one of my workers who suffers from humour deficiency. Who suffers from an imbalance of all the humours. Dear Dr. Fu Teng, kindly weigh this patient in the balance and find him wanting me, Mrs. Mgulu. It is important that he should declare himself. The fingers move swiftly back to the beginning of the line. Dear Dr. Fu Teng. Kindly provide this patient with a technique for living.
— Yes. Well, clearly you don’t in fact need psychoscopy. However, if that’s what Mrs. Mgulu wants, we’ll have to give it to you.
— But doctor –
— Yes?
— Aren’t you going to examine me?
— I have examined you. We have our methods if you don’t mind. I can tell you one thing, you haven’t got what you think you have, oh yes, I know what you’re thinking, you all think it, the existence of this thing has turned you people into drivelling hypochondriacs. However, if you insist, you can have routine tests. Nurse, blood count, steroids, M.S.U., B.M.R., P.B.I., the lot. And a form for psychoscopy please.
Mrs. Mgulu emerges from behind the screen in a gold helmet and a mauve dress. She takes the pulse carefully, looking down at the gold watch that hangs upside down on her left breast. She holds the watch a little outwards with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand.
— How are you feeling now? Does it hurt?
— Yes.
— Let me fix your pillows for you. There, that’s better.
The gold watch sways, the gold chain on the nostril and cheek trembles with the motion, the scent is of aloes and hair fixative, the eyes strike deep, a rich chromatic chord expressing secret knowledge and concern perhaps that bears a strong resemblance to the real thing. It is not merely that I desire you physically, which would be understandable in any circumstances, but that he watches me desire you, peering at me with bland inscrutability in his lidless eyes, the lower edges of which are straight and upwards slanting, the upper edges of which are curved but vanishing, into the skin of the face itself. Mrs. Mgulu leans her plunging neckline forward and says you know, don’t you, it’s only kidney trouble.
— What’s that? Who said you had kidney trouble? What books have you been reading? Speak up now, I can’t hear you.
— I haven’t been reading any books.
— Well, you must have got these items from somewhere. But they’re all wrong you know. You mustn’t imagine things.
— It’s so difficult, living in the present.
— Who said you had to live in the present? The present contains the future. Who have you been talking to? You mustn’t get ideas, you know.
— Doctor, tell me, is there a secret?
Dr. Fu Teng writes busily. The vibration of the voice has not been sufficient to carry the question over to him and the question evaporates, leaving no trace of error in the air, except perhaps a residue at the back of the mind, to be answered by Mr. Swaminathan in his own good time, slow time. Clearly Dr. Fu Teng is an Afro-Eurasian born and bred, by chance descendance perhaps, or any number of individual circumstances.