‘I’m Vishtar Loman by the way.’ He held out his hand and Tom took it.
They slopped along the corridor to the door of Lincoln’s room. Dr Loman opened it and slid inside. Tom waited. A smell of meat cooking tickled his nostrils. The little fire succumbed to the sprinklers and they cut out. The shreds of smoke and steam were inhaled by ventilation ducts. It fell silent, replete, and once more Tom could hear the natives in the parking lot baying for admission.
The doctor was back.
‘You can come in now.’ He leaned forward and whispered: ‘Lissen, mate, I’m not gonna bullshit you, yeah. Your man’s in a bloody bad way. No matter what antibiotics we pump into him, we can’t seem to get on top of the septicaemia. If it carries on like this, we’re gonna have to try to drain the core of the infection.
‘That’s why the Intwennyfortee mob’re here; Atalaya’s makkata’s gotta, like, purify me and Mr Bridges — that’s the house surgeon — before we do the op’.’
Peering into the darkened interior of the room, Tom could see that a battery of equipment had been installed since his last visit: metallic boxes with winking LCD readouts, a pump that kerchunked with machine vigour, a monitor upon which undulated eight real-time graphs. Yet, jibing with this high-tech were tiny oil lamps, each fashioned from half a tincan. They had been set upon every available flat surface, and the room was thick with their sooty smoke.
Still whispering, the doctor drew Tom inside. ‘I’ve given Reggie a shot of diamorphine so he can cope with the ritual, yeah. He’s a bit high.’
Growing accustomed to the gloom, Tom saw Reginald Lincoln’s etched features well up on the white pile of pillows. The old man’s eyes glittered feverishly as he lifted a claw from the snowy covers and beckoned. ‘Tommy.’ His voice was oddly strong and confident. ‘C’mere, kiddo, we need to have a pow-wow.’
As he made his way across, a body surged up and wiry arms bound him. Tom was drawn in to breasts so resolute their nipples felt like probing digits. Atalaya Intwennyfortee’s hair was arranged in the Tayswengo style, and the edge of the discoid coif brushing against Tom’s neck sent an erotic jolt from his nape to his base.
‘I knew you was coming down,’ she husked into his clavicle. ‘Now youse astande, any damn thing can go up rightways.’
Tom was rigid in her circling arms, but when she introduced her leg between his thighs, he enfolded her, his hands swarming over the dry matt of her beautiful black skin.
Reluctantly lifting his eyes from Atalaya’s hair, Tom saw that he could see — and be seen. The functional furnishings of the hospital room — its high bed, the Venetian blinds on the wide window, a brutal commode, an articulated electric light — were exposed in all their obscene prosaism.
In addition to Lincoln, Dr Loman, Atalaya and himself, there were five others in the room. A naked makkata sat beside the bed leafing through a golfing magazine. Side by side on the couch below the window were three Tayswengo women, all with discs of hair set at jaunty angles on their long, thin skulls. Standing by the glass door that opened on to the balcony was a fifth Tayswengo woman. Or was she a Tayswengo — or even a woman — at all?
She stood, cocksure, one skeletal leg advanced. She was naked and entirely hairless, with her eyebrows and pubis shaven as well as her head. A long time since, she’d had a radical double mastectomy, the scars of which marked her chest like two badly sewn darts in the back of a dress. In one hand she held a long-handled spoon, while between her scissor shins Tom could see a camping stove with a bubbling aluminium pot on top of it.
‘Intwakka-lakka-twakka-ka-ka-la!’
Tom half understood what the woman said. He somehow comprehended that she was an Entreati sorceress, from the wildest and least assimilated of the desert tribes; and, further, that she was Atalaya’s so-called manager.
Tom felt his scrotum tighten and one of his knees began waggling uncontrollably. There was no one in the hospital room save him and the sorceress: the night, the rain, the others had all receded. The sorceress was standing in the lumber room of Tom’s life, her feet like blades cutting into the poorly cherished memories of forgotten friends. She stooped to pick up a rusty ice skate, a mildewed college year book. Clearly, she was searching for anything she might use.
One of the Tayswengo women got up and opened the door to the balcony. It broke the spell. Rain and wind gushed in, the oil lamps guttered and went out. Dr Loman snapped on the overhead lights. Everyone started; their hands went to their eyes. Muttering, the sorceress retreated to the balcony.
The infection on the old man’s head had swelled massively. It rose to an angry red summit, and lava flows of sepsis wended into his sparse hair. The infection had a distinct and malignant psychic presence. Lincoln’s eyebrows and one of his cheeks were swollen and taut — yet still the eyes glittered, the arthritic finger beckoned. ‘C’mere, Tommy-lad,’ he said. ‘C’mere.’
‘Iss OK, you go fer ’im.’ Atalaya squeezed Tom’s arm. ‘You get smeared now — you astande.’
Another of the Tayswengo women rose from the couch and passed her a small pot. Atalaya poked a finger into this and withdrew it coated in a viscous substance. She reached up and anointed Tom on either cheek and on the bridge of his nose.
‘You go fer ’im,’ she reiterated. ‘Go.’
Tom approached the high bed warily, but Lincoln croaked, ‘C’mon, sit beside me.’
Careful not to disturb his tubes and wires, Tom propped himself on the mattress. Lincoln smelled meatier than the meat stewing on the sorceress’s stove. His decrepit body had been tenderized by thousands of carnal pummellings, cured by the smoke of sixty times that many cigarettes. Now it was putrid. He grabbed the neck of Tom’s shirt and pulled his face to his own. There was shit and mischief on the old man’s breath.
‘Get in there, boy,’ he grated.
‘I’m sorry?’ Tom queried.
‘Get in there, boy,’ Lincoln said again; and, following the pinpricks of the old man’s pupils, Tom noted first the preposterous engorgement tenting the bed covers, and then, beyond it, exposed by the wifely act of placing a urine bottle on a shelf, the gaping vulva of Atalaya Intwennyfortee.
‘Get in there, boy,’ Lincoln said, rasping the emphasis. ‘And when you’ve got out of there — get out of here! Don’t pack, don’t call anyone — just skedaddle. .’ Lincoln’s voice became croakier still, and ratcheted up until it sounded like a sheet of galvanized iron banging in a gale: ‘I’ve spoken to the Ambassador down south in Capital City — that pantywaist Winthrop Adams organized it.’ Dr Loman came over, but Lincoln waved him away. ‘You’ve got your pardon now, so get while the getting’s good, Tommy.’
Tom tried to pull away, but the old man’s grip on his shirt tightened. Gravy-coloured spittle spattered Tom’s chest. ‘Fix her up real good,’ he was almost shouting. ‘I need you to, boy — then get out. Get out!’
Lincoln spasmed, then collapsed back on the pillows. Atalaya came with a cardboard dish, and her husband coughed brown matter into it.
‘Engwegge,’ Dr Loman sighed. Then, turning to Tom, he said, ‘I think you’d better leave now.’
Atalaya smiled broadly at Tom as he followed the white coat out of the room.
The hospital had returned to some semblance of normality. There were medical and support staff in the main lobby. Drunken and damaged patients were slumped on moulded plastic seating.
‘What was going on earlier?’ Tom asked Loman. ‘They weren’t admitting anyone.’
‘It’s the engwegge,’ the doctor explained. ‘Look here.’