S. Naudé - The Alphabet of Birds

‘The enzyme tests are suggesting renewed cancer growth, but we need further tests to determine the location. Can we make an appointment for you?’

‘It won’t be necessary, thank you.’

He remains silent for a moment.

‘Surely you understand the need, the urgency.’

‘I appreciate your concern.’

For days on end she tries to get hold of Walter Mabunda at his provincial offices. As a last resort, she calls Mrs Nyathi.

‘Do you still have contact with Walter?’ she asks. ‘Would you know how to get hold of him?’

‘Of course,’ says Mrs Nyathi, ‘we talk often. He was once my husband, after all!’ She laughs.

Sandrien remembers the set of friendly teeth. Mrs Nyathi always catches her unawares.

‘No, that is news to me, Mrs Nyathi. I was under the impression that you’re a widow.’

Half an hour later Walter calls Sandrien. She takes a deep breath. ‘I am informed that you’re an important man now, Walter.’

He laughs his lazy little laugh.

‘You know, I serve the community according to my abilities, Sandrien. Make my contributions where I can.’

‘Well, Walter, I similarly try to make my contributions. But there is one respect in which I feel myself severely handicapped.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘See, I run a mobile clinic in the municipal district of Aliwal North. And this brings me in contact with the ill, especially the large number of people who, as you know, have HIV or Aids in advanced stages. People are dying, Walter. My patients are dying in droves. How would I go about obtaining antiretrovirals for them? How do we turn things around? Government policy about this, after all, changed some time ago.’

‘Hmm,’ he says, ‘Edith Nyathi told me what you were doing these days. You may know that we want to provincialise health. We could use someone like you well.’

‘You know, Walter, I feel flattered. Politics aside, though, what about the antiretrovirals?’

‘Well, you know, it’s a complex matter, this. Funds, budgets, jurisdictions, infrastructure … You can imagine. Hmm.’ The alto voice, the camp voice.

She remembers the finely stitched shoes, his beer belly underneath the perfectly ironed shirt. For a while neither of them says anything; they are contemplating the silence.

‘You can come and discuss the matter with me here,’ he says.

‘If it would make a difference, yes,’ she says. ‘Port Elizabeth is far, though, and I prefer to be near my patients if possible, not to spend an entire day away from them.’

‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you come to PE for a weekend? Come and stay with me. I have a swimming pool and all.’

A feeling of despair takes hold of her.

When she does not immediately object, he continues: ‘I have no doubt that you are still as beautiful a woman as always.’

She takes a breath. ‘Walter, I am desperate to obtain medication. Over the last eight months I have seen eight people die. What can be done?’

‘Hmm, come for a weekend. You won’t regret it. A swimming pool and all.’

She visits Lerato once again. She is cool towards Sandrien. Has she got wind of the fact that Sandrien approached the province?

‘I don’t want to tell you something that you don’t already know, Lerato, but there is enormous urgency. As I understand it, the central government policy is now clear, namely universal provision—’

‘Understand one thing,’ Lerato says, her finger tapping irascibly on the desk, ‘we don’t do hurry here.’ She presses an index finger to her chest. ‘ I set the pace.’

Seven days a week, she travels the dirt roads and tarred roads. The backlog on vaccinations has been cleared. Pap smears, blood tests and children’s diseases make up the routine. She is waging a war against the odds with her Aids patients. She feeds them tiny spoonfuls of porridge. She looks after the children; helps the children to look after sick parents; helps orphans to look after younger children. She treats infections, tries to halt diarrhoea. She rubs feet. (Gently; the bone is just below the skin.) Early on a Sunday morning she loses another. A man, completely blind, walks straight into the veld. He falls on his face and stays like that.

‘I think there is the prospect of a solution, Sandrien. I think we can stay at Dorrebult, make it work again.’

Kobus has returned from Venterstad’s bar. His eyes are shining. As always after a few drinks, he is talkative and awkward, like a boy who has done something naughty.

‘Manie from Mara was in the bar. He has a proposal. You know about his funeral business. He says you’ve seen his facilities. At first, he only set aside a hectare or so for graves. It’s almost full — he’s expanding. He’s also an undertaker. He provides coffins, embalming, flowers, the lot. The coldrooms that they previously used for cattle carcasses now chill cadavers. These people’s funerals are also feasts, you know, they slaughter cattle every time. The profits are phenomenal.’

She stares at him. His face is beaming.

‘He wants to sell off land, and all his cattle, to invest more in the business. In the future, he wants me to be the exclusive provider of slaughter oxen.’

She does not say a word. He takes a deep breath.

‘Sandrien, you know we are here on borrowed time. Even on Dorrebult and Helpmekaar together, we can’t make a living from the land. When last did we earn a liveable income? Four, five years back? Input costs are going through the roof, prices are falling. All that works here now is game farming. And where would we get the capital to develop a game farm?’

‘Why don’t we just burn the dead in piles outside?’ She hears herself, her tone calm and lethal. ‘Then we’ll live in eternal shadow, with a cloud of ash between us and the sun.’

‘Be reasonable, Sandrien.’ He is now pleading like a child. ‘The dead must be buried. And what else? Do you think your endless driving with a steel box on dusty roads pays more than the children’s school fees? All you’re doing is alienating our neighbours. You’re making the owners of the hunting lodges queasy, you’re startling their guests. I can see how they suddenly fall silent when I enter the bar.’ He sits back, his shoulders hanging. ‘I must do something , Sandrien, we must live. One must adapt, one must naturalise. In this way, you start belonging here.’

When she speaks again, she does so slowly and emphatically. ‘If you make as much as a cent from the slaughter, Kobus, I will never look you in the eye again.’

A shadow across his face.

Between Knapdaar and Burgersdorp the van swerves and skids some distance across the dust. It comes to a halt with the front end in a thorn bush. Her chest has hit the steering wheel with a thud. She gets out and walks around the vehicle. The left front tyre has burst. Oil is dripping through the grid over dry leaves. She pushes the vehicle a few metres back, almost collapsing from exertion. She sits down in the dust. On the horizon appears a cloud the size of a man’s fist. She takes dust in her hands and rubs it in her hair, over her white uniform. It sifts through her lashes. When the silence releases the sobs, she stuffs a handful in her mouth, but it does not dampen the sound. The sobs multiply and roll in a cloud back to her across the plain. Her teeth grind on dust. She opens her eyes. The bush bursts into flame. It hisses like a blowtorch. She sits utterly still until it burns down to the roots, until the ash settles in a pattern around the stump.

She gets up.

Where the spare tyre should be is an empty hole. She drives to Aliwal North with rubber flapping around the rim. She parks in front of the municipal office. Lerato is pushing two combs in her hair in front of the mirror behind her desk. She observes Sandrien in the mirror, swivels around on her chair. Dust is sifting from Sandrien, her eyes are glowing.