Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

The doctor sat for hours on his hard chair and talked, because he had been watching people kill each other for months. Just before he left he had stood on the side of a track through a landscape dried to dust, watching refugees from famine file past. It is one thing to see it on television, as he said (trying to excuse his garrulousness), while he stared at her, but not seeing her, seeing only what he was describing, and it was another thing to be there. Perhaps Sylvia was as equipped as most to visualise what he was telling her, because she had only to set in her mind along that dusty track two thousand miles to the north people from the dying village in Kwadere. But he had watched, too, refugees fleeing from the killing troops of Mengistu, some of them hacked and bleeding, some dying, some carrying murdered children: he had watched that for days, and Sylvia's experience did not match with it and so it was hard to see it. And besides there was no television in Father McGuire's house.

He was a doctor, and he had watched, helpless, people in need of medicines, a refuge, surgery, and all he had had to aid them had been a few cartons of antibiotics which had disappeared in a few minutes.

The world is now full of people who have survived wars, genocide, drought, floods, and none of them will forget what they have experienced, but there are, too, the people who have watched: to stand for days seeing a people stream past in thousands, hundreds of thousands, a million, with nothing in your hands, well, this doctor had been there and done that, and his eyes were haunted and his face was stricken, and he could not stop talking.

A woman doctor from the States wanted Sylvia for Zaire, but asked was Sylvia up to it – it was pretty tough up there, and Sylvia said she was fine, she was very strong. She also said that she had performed an operation without being a surgeon but both doctors were amused: in the field, doctors not surgeons did what they could. 'Short of transplant operations, and I wouldn't actually go in for a by-pass.'

In the end she agreed to go to Somalia, as part of a team financed by France. Meanwhile she had to go back to the Mission to see Zebedee and Clever, whose voices when she spoke to them over the telephone sounded like the cries of birds caught in a storm. She did not know what to do. She described these two boys, now no longer children, but adolescents, to Sister Molly and to the doctors, and knew that one, who saw children like these every day of her working life, thought that both were destined for future unemployment (but she would keep a look out, perhaps they could be found work as servants?), and the others, with their minds full of starving thousands, endless lines of poor victims, could only with difficulty bend their imaginations to think of two unfortunates who had dreamed of being doctors but now... So what's new?

Sister Molly had to drive out fifty miles beyond Kwadere to resume work interrupted by Sylvia's illness. She had arranged that Aaron would collect Sylvia from the turn-off. Her complaints about the Pope and the churchly male hierarchy were interrupted by the sight of six great grain silos along the road whose contents – last season's maize – had been sold off by a senior Minister to another drought-ridden African country, the proceeds pocketed by himself. They were driving through hungry country; for miles in every direction stretched bush dry and starved because of the overdue rainy season.

'I wouldn't like to have his conscience,' said Sylvia, and Sister Molly said that it seemed some people had not yet understood that there were people born without consciences. This set Sylvia off on her monologue about the village at the Mission, and Sister Molly listened, saying, ‘Yes, that is so, ' and, ‘You are in the right of it there.' At the turn-off Aaron was waiting in the Mission car. Sister Molly said to Sylvia, ‘Well, that's it, then. I expect I'll see you around.’And Sylvia said, 'Fine. And I'll never forget what you've done for me.' 'Forget it.’And off she drove with a wave of the hand that was like a door shutting.

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. '