The Sweetest Dream

Aaron was vivacious, eager, on the verge of a new life: he was going to the Old Mission to continue his studies to become a priest. Father McGuire was leaving. Everyone was leaving. And the library? ‘I am afraid the books are not many now, because you see, with Tenderai dead, and Rebecca dead and you not here, who was to look after them?'

‘And Clever and Zebedee?'

Aaron had never liked them, nor they him, and all he said was, ' Okay. '

He parked the car under the gum trees and went off. It was late afternoon, the light going fast from gold and pink clouds. On the other side of the sky a half moon, a mere whitish smear, was waiting to acquire dignity when the dark came.

As she arrived on the verandah the two lads came running. They stopped. They stared. Sylvia did not know what was wrong.

While ill she had lost her sunburn, had become white as milk, and her hair, cut offbecause of the sweats, was in wisps and fronds of yellow. They had only known her as a friendly and comfortable brown. 'It is so wonderful to see you' – and they came rushing at her, and she put her arms around them. There was much less substance to them than she was used to.

' Isn't anyone feeding you?'

‘Yes, yes. Doctor Sylvia, ' they hugged her and wept. But she knew they had fed badly. And the bright white shirts were dingy with dirt because Rebecca was not there to do them. Their eyes through the tears said, Please, please.

Father McGuire arrived, asked if they had eaten and they said yes. But he took a loaf from the sideboard, and they tore it in half and ate hungrily as they went down to the village: they would return at sunrise.

Sylvia and the priest sat in their places at the table, the single electric lightbulb telling him how sick she had been, and she that he was an old man.

‘You'll see the new graves on the hill, and there are new orphans. I and Father Thomas – he's the black priest at the Old Mission – we' re going to set up a refuge for the AIDS orphans. We've got funding from Canada, God reward them, but Sylvia, have you thought that there will be perhaps a million children without parents, the way we are going?'

' The Black Death destroyed whole villages. When they take pictures of England from the air they can see where the villages were.'

' This village will not be here soon. They are leaving because they say the place is cursed. '

‘And do you tell them what they should be thinking, Father?'

‘I do. '

The electric light suddenly failed. The priest lit a couple of emergency candles, and they ate their supper by their light, served by Rebecca's niece, a strong and healthy young woman – well, she was now – who had come to help her dying aunt, and she would leave when the priest left.

'And I hear there's a new headmaster at last?'

'Yes, but you see, Sylvia, they don't like coming out to these far-out places, and this one's already had his problems with the drink. '

‘I see. '

'But he has a big family and he will have this house.'

They both knew there was more to be said, and at last he asked, ‘And now, what are you going to do with those boys?'

‘I should not have set up their expectations and I did. Though I never actually promised them anything. '

‘Ah, but it is the great wonderful rich world there that is the promise.'

‘And so, what should I do?'

‘You must take them with you to London. Send them to a real school. Let them learn doctoring. God knows this poor country will be needing its doctors. '

She was silent.

' Sylvia, they are healthy. Their father died before there was AIDS. Joshua's real children will die, but not these two. He's waiting to see you, by the way. '

‘I am surprised he is still alive. '

' He is alive only to see you. And he is quite mad now. You must be prepared for that. '

Before giving her a candle to take to her room, he held his high to look into her face, and said, ' Sylvia, I know you very well, my child. I know you are blaming yourself for everything.'

'Yes.'

' It is a long time since you have asked me to confess you, but I do not need to hear what you have to say. In the state of mind you are in, when you are low from the illness, you must not trust what you are thinking about yourself. '

'The devil lurks in the absence of red corpuscles.'

'The devil lurks where there is bad health – I hope you are taking your iron pills.'

'And I am trusting you to take yours.'

They embraced, both needing to weep, and turned away to go to their rooms. He was leaving early, and said he probably wouldn't see her, meaning he didn't want to go through another parting. He was not going to say, like Sister Molly: See you around.

Next morning he was gone: Aaron had taken him to the turn-off where he would be picked up by the Old Mission's car.

Zebedee and Clever were waiting for Sylvia on the path to the village. Half the huts were empty. A starving dog was nosing about in the dust. The hut where Tenderai had looked after the books stood open, and the books had gone.

‘We tried to look after them, we tried. '

' Never mind. '

The village before she had left had been afflicted, it had been threatened, but it had been alive: now its spirit had gone. It was Rebecca who had gone. In institutions and villages, in hospitals and in schools, often it is one person who is the soul of the place, though he or she may be the janitor, a chairman, or a priest's servant. When Rebecca died, the village died.

The three went up through the bush to where the graves were, getting on for fifty of them now, Rebecca's and her son Tenderai's among the newest, two oblongs of red dust under a big tree. Sylvia stood, looking, and the lads, seeing her face, came to her and she held them close and now she did weep, their faces on her head: they were taller than she was.

‘And now you must see our father. '

‘Yes, I know. '

' Please do not be cross with us. The police came and took away the medicines and the bandages. We told them you paid for them, with your money. '

'It doesn't matter.'

'We told them it was stealing, they were your medicines.'

'Really, it doesn't matter.'

'And the grandmothers are using the hospital for the sick children.'

Everywhere in Zimlia old women and sometimes old men whose grown-up children had died were left trying to feed and keep young children.

‘How are they feeding them?'

'The new headmaster said he will give them food. '

‘But they are too many, how can he feed them all?'

They stood on a small rise, opposite the one where the priest's house stood, looking down into Sylvia's hospital. Three old women sat in the shade under the grass roofs, with about twenty small children. Old, that is, by third world standards: in luckier countries these fifty-year-old women would be dieting and finding lovers.

Under Joshua's big tree lay a heap of rags, or something like a big python, mottled with shadow. Sylvia knelt beside him and said, ' Joshua. ' He did not move. There are people who, before they die, look as they will after they are dead: the skeleton is so close under the skin. Joshua's face was all bone, with dry skin sunk into the hollows. He opened his eyes and licked scummy lips with a cracked tongue. ‘Is there water?' asked Sylvia, and Zebedee ran to the old women, who seemed to be protesting, why waste water on the nearly dead? But Zebedee scooped a plastic cup through water that stood in a plastic pail open to dust and any blown leaves, and brought it to his father, knelt, and held the cup to the cracked lips. Suddenly the ancient man (in late middle age by other standards) came alive and drank desperately, the cords of his throat working. Then he shot out a hand like a skeleton's and grasped Sylvia's wrist. It was like being held in a circlet of bone. He could not sit up, but he raised his head and began mumbling what she knew must be curses, imprecations, his deep-sunk eyes burning with hatred.