William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

It was cooler among the acacia trees and the path was well trodden and the going easier. But as the sweat began to dry on his brow this relief proved to be temporary: he started to reflect on what had happened over the previous few hours and he began to generate a potent anger at himself. What could have persuaded him to go to Sampaloc, to a bordello? But then, having made his choice, why had he not been more worldly with Wieland, more of a man among men? What was so disgraceful, in that company especially, of admitting that one occasionally visited a prostitute? Really, he must have seemed absurdly, laughably prim, stalking off through that door like a virgin importuned by a leering cad. And look where his sudden attack of craven dignity had landed him: a mosquito-infested, shame-tormented, mud-encrusted, exhausting, cross-country- He actually saw – actually saw – the arrow as it flew towards his unsuspecting face.

He had turned, alerted by a rip and flap of foliage, reflexively snapping his head to the right, and saw the missile fly at him. He could not remember if he had stopped or ducked or flinched but he felt the child's breath of its passing on his cheek and then he heard the whungggg of its impact in the acacia tree beside him. He turned. Head high. Its white fletch still vibrating.

He dropped to his hands and knees and scrabbled behind a bush, a little whimpering noise in his throat, waiting for other arrows to fly at him, waiting for his assailants to surge from the undergrowth, razoredged bolos swinging sharp in the morning air.

Silence. No twig-snap, no… Then he heard it, not far off. Laughter. Women laughing.

He pulled the embedded arrow out of the tree trunk and paced back along its trajectory, feeling the anger in him distort his face, drawing it down almost as if he were trying to make a snarling snouty point out of his features, to force his brows, nose, mouth, cheeks into a furious and threatening horn with which to gore his persecutors. The fear had gone, the terror was over: people were laughing at him, women were laughing.

He pushed brutally through a dense dark screen of cogal bushes, scratching the backs of his hands, and found himself blinking in the brightness of a sunlit lawn. In front of him stood three round canted archery targets and beyond them stood half a dozen women, white women, in leg-of-mutton-sleeved blouses and long drill skirts, wearing straw hats against the sun, carrying bows, with quivers of arrows slung across their shoulders. One of them was actually fitting another arrow to her bow, drawing it back – 'STOP!' he screamed, emotion cracking his voice. 'Stop now, you bitch of hell! God damn you!'

He strode out to confront them, brandishing the arrow.

'One inch more and this would have buried itself in my head,' he shouted at them. 'Less than an inch, you mindless idiots! Less than an inch and I would have been killed by your foolishness, your foolish stupid carelessness!'

They stared at him, big-eyed, ogling, mouths gaping, completely astonished. He felt his rage begin to vent from him, as if a plug had been pulled, and self-consciousness rush in to fill the void. He saw them now, clearly: these were respectable American women – Good God – young women. What must he have looked like advancing out of the wood, covered in mud, unshaven, screaming his anger? Had he sworn? Oh God, he had a sudden terrible memory of using an oath, a foul oath.

'Who is the person responsible?' he carried on gamely, not wanting now to lose the advantage his outrage gave him. 'Who is the person who fired this arrow?'

A woman stepped forward at once and he swivelled to confront her. A tall woman. Broad-shouldered. Pale strong freckled face. Some rare quality about that face, he thought, suddenly, throat tightening. Something he had never seen. Reddish brown hair held in a loose bun. The details came fast: she had a slightly hooked nose, he saw rapidly, with small arched nostrils, and he saw rapidly too, how the leather strap of her quiver separated the soft roll of her bosom into two distinct breasts.

She faced him. Square, strong. Small pale-lashed brown eyes. Odd, that combination. White skin, freckle-spattered, but very white. You'd think blue eyes. But no, brown, like unmilked coffee, a fierce stare. Tiny blisters of perspiration in the well-defined groove of her top lip.

'I shot it,' she said. A soft accent. Shaht. Southern, was it? 'I'm very sorry, it was a complete accident. I'm just learning-'

His tongue sat inert in his dry throat.

' – and it just sort of kicked up when I fired it. It went way high into the trees. I'm so sorry.'

'It's an outrage,' he managed to say, weakly. 'I could have died. Apology. I demand apology. Your name.'

'Look, I've already apologised several times. I'll apologise again: I'm sorry. No-one was hurt. It was an accident.'

'What is your name?' It came out almost as a shriek.

She looked at him.

She sighed. 'My name has nothing to do with this, or with you,' she said, her tone changing, becoming angrier, no-nonsense. 'Whoever you are, you silly little self-important man. Your behaviour is most unreasonable, not to say offensive. Would you now please be on your way as you are interrupting our lesson.'

The Chinese boy had died in the night, suddenly, but not unexpectedly. Ever since his operation it had been obvious he was ailing: he was feverish, he had absolute constipation, his tongue – which had been healing admirably – began to ooze pus and blacken around the sutures. Listerism and asepsis had achieved marvels. Even here in Manila, in San Jeronimo, the recovery rate in his wards was five times better than in Cruz's, but when he saw these signs he knew his ability to intervene was over. It was rare to find peritonitis associated with erysipelas of the throat, but he had encountered it two or three times before. He assumed the streptococcus reached the serous membrane through the blood somehow. Anyway, he had dosed the boy with opiates, tried to make him comfortable and stood uselessly by as he had died. He knew the worst when he had come into the ward and seen the boy lying on his back, his knees drawn up, his fluttering hands held above his head to increase the capacity of the thorax. His face was already gaunt, his eyes restless, his hands cold and damp. He began to vomit regularly and his abdominal wall grew rigid, board-like. Meteorism became present, the abdomen tense and tympanitic on percussion. He complained not only of a burning pain in his gut but of a tormenting thirst. He was given a rectal injection of cold water. He drank a little iced milk and soda water, the tongue was painted with a solution of glycerine in an attempt to keep it moist. To no lasting avail. The boy's pulse grew rapid, hard and wiry. He began to hiccough violently, a most disturbing symptom that Carriscant knew marked a serious failure in prognosis. He developed the classic face grippee, pinched and sunken, the naso-labial crease very deep. His tongue became coated and f6ul and the vomited matter was highly offensive. Sordes were present on the teeth and lips. Carriscant watched the boy's piteous restlessness -there was no blessed coma in cases of peritonitis to ease the suffering – and watched as his limbs became cold and blue. In the act of dying there was a great gush of foul and brownish fluid from the mouth and rectum. Moments like these tormented Carriscant with a vision of the huge void of his ignorance and helplessness. His instruments were sterile, his operating theatre clean and disinfected, his hands were scrubbed pink, he wore freshly laundered white gowns and yet somehow, from somewhere, the dreaded streptococcus infected the boy's blood, corrupting it. From 'somewhere'… that vague supposition alone was bad enough. An incision in the tongue had produced an infection of the serous membrane in the abdomen. He knew the intestines would be covered in an exudation of pus and fluid, a thick layer of lymph along the lines of contact between the various coils of the bowel. Once infected, the patient's body succumbed inevitably to the toxin of bad blood and a new impotency took over as you watched and waited for death. Bad blood… At times like these he understood his benighted precursors' vain obsession with leeches and bleeding.