They were still nowhere when Ione stopped. She wanted to know what was wrong. He told her about the cuts. He couldn’t help it. She wanted to go back and find the sangoma. Her face was set.
He argued. He said the sangoma would be gone. He said it was getting too late. He told her she couldn’t. He had to get home.
She listened to him, finally, and drove in the right direction.
• • •
At certain moments he felt like a genius, or fox: only Ione knew about going to the sangoma. But he was sick. He was aware that he was fairly sick. His fever was up and his throat was bad. He was perspiring everywhere. But luck was with him. For months he had been warning Lo that everyone who came to Botswana got tick-bite fever sooner or later, which could actually be what he had, although he doubted it. Anyway, she accepted that tick-bite fever was what he had. His cuts were still his secret. They had to heal. Five of them had. The other part of the game was to keep the nurse from finding anything out.
He was getting sleep. He was taking sick days and sleeping all day. At night, if he heard the dogs they blended in with his fever dreams. They were still there. Lo was the best person to be around right now, because she distrusted doctors and loved taking care of him and would go along that way for time immemorial.
But then he was getting too weak. It was hard to really want to get well, because of the pleasure of sleeping. But he was getting too weak, for sure. So far, Lo was just giving him aspirin, because she was all gung ho for letting nature take his or her course, so naturally she was going along with the proposition that you just take aspirin for a week or so and let the tick-bite fever burn itself out and then you’re left immune for time immemorial, instead of going for tetracycline which knocks it out in twenty-four hours but leaves you still susceptible. But now it was time to get well fast, so it was time to go for his secret weapon: Elaine’s pharmacopeia. The glands in his armpits were hurting. Elaine always got doctors to give her their free samples of every damned thing. Elaine always had everything she might need for medication because she for one would never stand for being someplace in the Third World and finding herself where some doctor could say yea or nay. Somehow her medicine collection had wound up with his effects, not hers, after the split. So now it was his, all the Valium and all the rest. Why did he end up with it? He knew she had dynamite antibiotics in there. Why did he have her medicine? She must have forgotten. If she remembered, she might get a cable out on it. But now it was his.
He was having long dreams. It was always too hot. The walls were sliding up into the ceiling all the time. Lo was scared, he could tell. He was beyond food. Lo wanted the nurse. On the other hand, he would be all right any day because of Elaine. He was only tasting what Lo had given him — broths and so forth. It was too hot for broth. Lo was even letting there be air-conditioning. She loved him. He would be fine because of the neomycin he was taking — plenty of it. Elaine was saving him, Elaine, who got him going the first time they met by saying “Wreck me.” Neomycin saved Elaine once. It was the strongest thing there was. He was young when she said “Wreck me.” She knew what she was doing. Probably she was still doing it. Lo gave him a Compral to take. Compral was stronger than aspirin, and was from South Africa. He faked taking it. His eyes itched.
Before he could get better the nurse came, and then she was there all the time. She was gone, right now. They knew about the scabs on his back and were asking him about them. His throat was a good excuse not to answer things. He was keeping mum. He was worried about the knitting factory, because he was supposed to remind the women about something about business taxes. It was all right, because it was written down somewhere at work. He felt his hipbones by accident. They were like knives.
He was aware of arguments going on, but not really arguments. One thing he could tell was that Lo had been crying. It was after the nurse found his neomycin. There was telephoning to Pretoria. Now the nurse was giving him injections. Lo should be strong.
Ione woke him up, bringing him something, money, talking too fast. She was talking so fast that powder was falling out of the lines in her throat. He had a compress on his forehead. She put the money in his nightstand drawer, and she was whispering. She felt it was her fault about the sangoma, so that was the why and wherefore of the money. She said she had to talk fast because she had used a trick on Lois to keep her out, so she could apologize — that was why she had to talk fast. Some of it he understood. The sangoma was a fake, just an actor jumping ship from a troupe from South Africa putting on plays in churches in Botswana — morality plays. He was an illegal person. She had been duped. She had gotten suspicious when he was speaking English and wouldn’t use Setswana. Later on, she had realized he had the same voice as the go-between on the telephone, when she was searching for someone. And also, she found out afterward that he had taken the whole thing out of a book — it was Shona and not Tswana. She wondered if he had felt he had to do the incisions partly because he assumed she knew more about the ritual than she had. She was saying how sorry she was. And then when Lo came, she changed the subject. He felt sorry for Ione. He kept his hands under the covers. He was better, he told her. He was understanding more. She told him he looked like a carving.
Now he could get up all right. The world bounced when he walked, but he could walk. It was going away with the injections. People were watching wherever he went. Lo was sleeping on her exercise mat at the foot of the bed. He almost walked on her.
• • •
He woke up with a mystery to solve. It had to do with the night before. The dogs had been active, and he remembered that clearly. But somehow he had slept hard at intervals while — he was sure — they were doing their worst. The answer wasn’t sheer fatigue, because he was better. His tremor was fading. His appetite was back. Today he was going to read at least two back issues of Finance and Development, cover to cover.
Something told him the nurse was in the wings. He turned onto his side. He would pretend to be asleep, in the hope that she might look in and go away. Lo wouldn’t let the nurse wake him up. He closed his eyes.
Bacon was what he wanted, but American bacon. That was one thing to be said about going back. Because it was clear they were going to have to go back. He had to stop fighting it. It was important not to panic over it. At least in America they put the lettuce inside the sandwich, not strewn in shreds all over the outside. Money was going to be the problem. He was afraid. People would tell him to go into business, leave the agency. He was an expert on business. But the idea repelled him. Why was everything in the world for sale, exactly? In fact, he was with the government because selling things seemed repellent to him. The government gave things away.
But nothing could be done. He was leaving Africa to her dogs. Lo would have to forgive him. Lo had worked before. She had been a cashier. She could learn bookkeeping — he would teach her. He had never taken one thing from Africa. This was too much self-pity. He had never touched an African woman, never, even when he could have. And when Elaine wanted to hide jadeite and tiger-eye in their household effects to smuggle back into the United States, he had drawn the line. He was through here. He was being destroyed.