Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“I’ve heard of gonorrhea being incurable.”

“Not in Nyasaland.”

“I was thinking of Vietnam.”

“That is a different story.”

“Don’t you think you should examine me?”

“It is not necessary,” he said. “But take all the tablets. Don’t stop taking them just because the symptoms go away. You must finish the course. And it’s a good idea not to drink alcohol or milk.” He plunged a hypodermic into a small bottle. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

“What for?”

“If I give you an injection of penicillin it will get started a little quicker,” and he stabbed my shoulder.

When he was done I said, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. It is free. This is Emergency Outpatient — no charge.”

“I’d like to give you something.” I was embarrassed: he had made it so easy for me. Already I felt better. I wanted him to ask for a bribe.

“You can come by and help me someday.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do!”

“Just orderly work. We are so understaffed.”

“I don’t have any training.”

“I don’t have much myself,” Mr. Nunka said. “But you can be useful.”

The leak stopped the next day, and then the itching. But it was still sore. It felt useless — not dead but battered and limp. The thought of sex made it limper. It had lost its personality and so had I. No dick, no drinking — it was strange. At school I thought: I have no secrets, I am exactly what I seem. One whole side of my existence had vanished. I was surprised that people treated me the same. I felt bored and simple and rather unfunny. Jokes annoyed me. But I was grateful to be cured.

On the following Saturday, conscious that I was repaying a debt, I went to The Queen Elizabeth and asked for Mr. Nunka.

“You are better,” he said.

He had confidence in his medicine. And I was thankful that he did not browbeat me. The Peace Corps doctor would have given me a lecture and made me feel guilty. He would have taken the view that I had caught the clap because I had done something I shouldn’t have. But that was not true — I had done nothing wrong. I had merely been unlucky.

But this African so-called savage was enlightened. He didn’t make moral judgments. I had picked up a germ and he had killed it — a simple matter. I was glad to be dealing with Africans. I was so reassured by his attitude I thought I might never go home.

The cure left me feeling as I had some years before, when I had gone to confession: purer, cleaner, in a state of grace. I was healthy again. Today was Saturday but I had no plans to go to the Beautiful Bamboo.

“I came here to help you.”

“Put this on,” Mr. Nunka said, and gave me an orderly’s green smock. It was stiff with starch.

I imagined assisting at operations, handing him a scalpel, holding a tray of instruments. He would pass me a newborn baby and I would lay the infant in a cradle and whisper to the mother It’s a boy .

Mr. Nunka led me down a dirty corridor that smelled of disinfectant and we entered a crowded ward.

“The volunteers don’t come here anymore,” he said. “We used to have plenty of Europeans who worked as hospital visitors.”

“Why don’t they come?”

“They left the country,” he said. “They were frightened of what would happen at Independence.”

“But nothing has happened.”

“We are not independent yet,” Mr. Nunka said.

Did that mean anything?

Most of the whites had gone, though. That was why The Nyasaland Trading Company was so empty and the reason the Blantyre Sports Club was closing. The tea was not being picked, the ministries were closed.

“They used to wash the patients,” Mr. Nunka said.

There were forty-seven males, old and young, in the ward, but only thirty beds. The ones without beds slept on the floor. I mentioned this to Mr. Nunka. He said, “They are used to it.”

“They look sick,” I said.

“They need baths,” Mr. Nunka said.

He brought me a big enamel basin and a bar of yellow soap. He explained that it would take two of us to do this — one to prop the patient up, the other to scrub. We took off their pajamas and went at it, sloshing their heads first, then their arms, their torso, and lower, the disgusting rest. The first few made me retch, but then someone turned on the radio, and it played The Drifters’ song “Saturday Night at the Movies,” and I thought of Abby at the Rainbow Cinema. We washed a few more men, and after a while it was like scrubbing furniture.

The old African men simply lay there and groaned while we soaped them. Several of them were full of tubes and catheters and it required a certain amount of care to wash them. One of the sickest, and hardest to wash, was a man called Goodall. While we were doing him I thought: Maybe Abby gave me the clap? But then the radio played a new song, Elvis’s “Return to Sender,” and I forgot about Abby. We couldn’t scrub Goodall. We dabbed him carefully, cleaning him like an antique. He stank, and his skin was like a lizard’s, rather cold and slippery, with white flakes and scales. But I had the impression that he was enjoying his bath — he smiled faintly as he felt the warm water on him — and his pleasure took away my nausea.

“All these tubes,” I said.

“Strictures have formed in his urethra,” Mr. Nunka said, and he whispered, “He has been a martyr to gonorrhea for sixty years.”

When we came to the last bed and washed the old man in it and the one underneath I had a view of the Outpatient Clinic. I was scrubbing a foot — I had the battered thing under my arm — and I saw a familiar figure walking up the gravel path — Gloria, heading for Emergency. She wore her red dress and a red turban, very stylish for the hospital; but she looked rather gray and gloomy.

I simply watched her as I did the foot. I knew she would have a long wait — there was the usual crowd of desperate people waiting to be seen.

“What about a cup of tea?” Mr. Nunka said, when we had finished.

I did not have the tea habit, and this tea was the color of the bathwater in the basin, a resemblance that turned my stomach. But the Staff Room was adjacent to the clinic, and I sat there and read an old issue of The Central African Examiner so that I could watch Gloria. She was on a bench near the wall of health posters. Perhaps she was reading Toby Toothbrush says, “Use me every day!” or In Case of Burns —first aid in pictures.

“Busy day.”

“Every day is busy,” Mr. Nunka said.

“Goodall seems a nice guy.”

“That old man is an institution. He is a chief of the Sena people, on the Lower River.”

“He seems to be in terrible pain.”

“He is used to it.”

Mr. Nunka pushed out his lips like a fish and sucked his tea noisily. How could he, in a such a smelly place? But it seemed he did not notice.

He said, “I want a packet of biscuits, and then I must do some bandages. I will find you here.”

I waited until I saw Gloria stand up, hearing her name being called. She was treated by someone I could not see, behind a curtain. After she had gone, clutching her bottle of tablets, I discovered why she had come. It said so on the medical record that was flung into the tray for filing. Her name was given as Lundazi Gloria. She had gonorrhea.

This aroused me — not the disease, but the fact that she was being cured. So was I! As far as I knew, we were the only two people in the country who were being treated for the clap. It made me amorous. In a week we would be completely cured; we would be safe. For the first time in a week I tasted desire, and with it came a renewed feeling of mingled optimism and secrecy. But I did not follow her. There was always time.