‘That is good,’ assents Díaz. He sits still, and waits: for their intrusion to end, for Luke to return in a few days’ time, for the ambulance to come, for the verdict on his life.
* * *
Díaz finds it hard to believe that the tired, red-haired girl facing him is a doctor. She is far too young. He feels sorry for her as she looks so harassed, so exhausted. No doubt she has worked long hours here, and slept too little. It is hot and stuffy in her small office, and the curtains are missing. They have probably been stolen. Her eyes are pale islands of light in a pale face.
‘I would like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, Mr –’ She looks down at her clipboard. ‘Mr Diaz.’
‘My name is Díaz,’ he says, pronouncing it correctly for her. ‘Bernal Díaz del Castillo.’
‘It just says Díaz here,’ she replies.
‘That is sufficient.’
‘I see your date of birth isn’t filled in. What is your date of birth, Mr Díaz?’
‘I cannot remember,’ he says. ‘I am very old.’
‘Do you have any kind of identity document?’
‘Not here,’ he replies vaguely. ‘I lost it, not long ago.’
She frowns. ‘I would imagine that you are in your late eighties, at least. Possibly ninety, or more?’
‘I am older than that. Much older.’
‘Much older?’ she replies, irritated. ‘How much older than ninety can you be?’
‘I am older than ninety.’
‘Let’s leave it, then. Older than ninety.’ She taps her pen on her teeth, and realising that she is doing so, puts it down. She blinks, as if trying to remember what she is about to say. It comes out too quickly, too directly, almost shocking her: ‘Mr Díaz, you have a tumour in your brain. Actually, you have more than one. There are three tumours, of different sizes. They have different implications.’
Her tongue flies over the technical terms more swiftly than over the ordinary words. Bernal Díaz listens with detachment. The explanation wrings all the tiredness out of her bones, lending her enough enthusiasm to banish it temporarily. She shows him the dark patches on the X-ray, shapeless and incomprehensible as blemishes on the face of the moon. She doesn’t know if they are benign or malignant. She doesn’t think it has spread elsewhere, at least not yet. It is too early to say. Further tests will show the direction of the growth, one way or another, and how it might respond to treatment.
‘It is as I thought,’ he remarks. ‘I am old enough now, I have earned my peace.’
She is unable to respond, cannot use this information. She continues as if he hasn’t spoken, explaining that surgery isn’t an option, not at his age, and how the radiotherapy will work. It takes a long time to explain, as it is a complex treatment.
He listens courteously, though he has no intention of returning.
‘Do you understand me, Mr Díaz?’ she asks, more than once, convinced that his calmness is a reflection of shock, of denial, doubtful he is competent to understand.
‘There is nothing to understand,’ he replies in the end. ‘It is unexceptional to die, even for very young doctors. We both know that your treatment is a waste of time.’
She blushes then, and taps the pen on her teeth.
* * *
It is mid-afternoon on the day he returns to his house. He is glad, since it is too late to go to work. He is tired and needs to rest. He unlocks the door and enters, then opens the kitchen window and the single front window, as he always does, to air the place. The covered plate of fish in the refrigerator is still there, but it has gone off. He frowns at the smell, and throws it out. He washes the plate and briefly considers cleaning the fridge, but decides not to. Instead, he pours himself a glass of white rum, and takes a chair out onto his tiny front porch.
The sky is pearl, the atmosphere in Schotsche Kloof strangely peaceful. The air is heavy with petrol fumes. Somewhere nearby, starlings call to each other. Despite their lucid whistle and graceful flight, he doesn’t like these birds: they are insolent. He sips his rum slowly. Gradually, the liquor begins to ease the burden of his years, if only temporarily. It eases the burden of a particular responsibility that has grown on him during his time in hospital.
At last he notices the little girl from next door. She is like a cat, waiting for him to see her, expecting nothing more. The gentian violet stain on her cheek has faded, the ringworm has grown more pronounced.
He raises the glass to her, this time remembering her name: ‘Your health, Quanita.’
Of course, she makes no reply.
He says, through the distorted sweetness of rum, ‘To your history and your future, and the many strange things that will happen to you.’
You are a child consecrated to suffering, he thinks, merely because you are poor and a woman, and your mother neglects you. That is only the beginning of your misadventures. You will flourish briefly, give life, and wither away, your biography unrecorded.
Anger grips him suddenly: that he is staring death in the face, but has never chronicled his own remarkable passage through the world. And how could he do that, anyway? He has never written a book in all his many years, and wouldn’t know how to begin. The only recording skills he possesses are those of a tattoo artist. The only blank page he understands is human skin.
Tuna
A woman stands behind the counter in a dusty shop that sells books on African themes. Her skin is smooth and pale. A cigarette dangles from generous lips. She has short silver-blonde hair and grey eyes. Her ring and index fingers are stained by tobacco, particularly the flesh on either side of the large middle knuckle. There are five small gold rings in the upper rim of her right ear. She stares at me silently, as if I have not spoken to her.
I explain the problem that confronts me, and request her assistance.
She remains silent, refusing either to speak or hear. The silence between us – bear in mind that we have known each other for ninety seconds – reminds me of certain beaches. Long stretches of white sand, rimmed with biting cold water, scored by wind. Whiteness hurts your eyes, the muscles of your calves ache as you walk for miles, getting nowhere in soft, abrasive material.
I repeat my problem.
Behind her, books are stacked up to the ceiling, thousands of them, extending down this long, narrow bookshop, this ark of words. Millions of words, probably billions, arranged with infinite flexibility and intelligence. Her eyes widen slightly as she begins to acknowledge my existence, they focus, the irises engage: I could swear that they begin to dilate, and then halt their progress, as if I have been successfully calibrated.
She takes the cigarette out of her mouth. It descends with her hand to the glass counter, where it sticks up fuming between ring and forefinger, an obscene chimney. The silver ring on her thumb flashes. Her mouth is attractive, I note that, mobile, interesting, the flesh naturally dark in a pale face. She bites her lower lip – she has uneven teeth – and lets go. Her mouth opens, and a single word falls out: ‘What?’
Later, I begin to understand that she has heard only what a cat would hear as feline speech, the flex and slide of vowels, but not all of them. My voice, in her ears, is a flat trombone of feeling, a murky jazz organised around one double question of desire: do I want her, and if so, how much?
* * *
We stand in the small space next door to the bookshop where she works. It is a tattoo shop in Long Street, a cupboard hollowed out between more significant spaces. I have fetched her here. She kneels down beside the old man lying on the floor, unconscious. I crouch above them, curious about what she will do. Her odour rises as I stoop over her – nutmeg, tobacco, mildly sour almond milk – from her neck,