Effendi

CHAPTER 18 9th October

That Raf cried worried the cat not at all. Tears salty as blood ran into his neat beard and trickled across his chin. The cat would happily have dined on the puddle of fresh vomit between Raf’s knees, but the tiny bats the man plucked out of the air were richer and warmer. And besides, they were being offered, the almost-kitten didn’t even have to steal or beg. All it had to do was kill and eat.

Leaving Raf to his own memories . . .

“T-cells down fifteen percent again.”

“Will he die?”

One could almost hear the shrug. Well, Raf could from where he sat in a window, staring out at the crooked tip of the Matterhorn. It was late spring and the lower meadow was alive with dog violet, speedwell and ladies smock. If he pushed his sight until his eyes hurt, he could just see a dark hawk frozen on the edge of the upper slopes, waiting to hit its prey.

“You know, sir,” said the first voice, “I’d really be tempted . . .”

“Would you?” The answering laugh was sour.

“Well, suppose . . .”

“Don’t suppose,” the second voice was suddenly cross. “Think instead. We can either carry over the costs or close the project and put the costs against this quarter’s bottom line. Which one do you suggest?”

The other person thought about that.

“Fit one of the new synthetics,” said the cross voice. “Ditto on the bone marrow.”

“Sir, we’re already over budget.”

The senior man sighed, heavily. “Take it off R&D. Slap a couple of new patent numbers on the chart. The usual . . .”

Twelve weeks followed in a blur of morphine until reality finally drip-fed its way into the analgesic fog and ruined the next three months of Raf’s life. The three months when Raf didn’t have to remind himself to eat or worry about whether or not he could get to sleep, because the snakes did that for him. They wove themselves under his skin and up his nose, into his throat and up his pee-pee. A fat one even came out of the side of his stomach.

One time when Raf grew bored exploring the walls inside his own head, he woke himself up to find a girl he didn’t recognize sitting on the end of the bed, crying.

“What’s wrong?”

She jumped and squeaked at the same time, and Raf smiled.

“You’re awake . . .” The girl sounded shocked. She checked the readout from a grey box sitting on a bedside cabinet. “It says you’re asleep.” Her words were to herself.

“Look at this,” said Raf and jerked the dancing line so that it peaked right off the screen, then he levelled it out until it looked like the flat bit at a valley bottom. “See, you just make it do what you want.”

The nurse looked at the small boy wired into the surgical slab. Her name was Anne Rigler and she was Scottish. The medical brokers were paying her less than nurses usually earned in Switzerland but much more than she could earn in Aberdeen now that the oil was gone.

“It’s a disgrace,” she said, sounding furious.

Raf stopped playing. “I’m sorry. Does it break the machine?”

“No, no . . .” Pink fingers folded over his own, swallowing them. Her grip was so tight that it hurt. “I don’t mean what you’re doing to their machine.” Anna’s voice had a sob in it. “This.” She jerked her chin towards the electronic bed, then round the small room. “All of this.”

“They’re mending me,” Raf explained patiently.

“Mending you?”

The boy nodded. “New kidneys,” he said, “improved breastbone and something to make my body mend faster when I get hurt. I don’t mind, it’s better than lessons.”

“Lessons?”

“I have to do lessons . . .”

She smiled. “I wasn’t mad about school either. Why don’t you like yours?”

“Boring,” said Raf. “ Boring, boring, boring. . . No one ever says anything new. It’s just what’s already in the textbooks.”

“You can read?”

He looked at Anne as if she was mad. “Of course I can read,” he said. “I’m five.”

The nurse thought about that for a while. As she did so, she jotted notes on a chart and swung her foot, so her sole scuffed the floor with each swing. Wherever the thoughts went, they didn’t lead her anywhere she wanted to go.

“Do you like it here?”

Raf shrugged. “It’s okay. Better than the Tigris. . .”

Her look was a question.

“My mother’s ship. It smells dirty and I get sick. All that static . . .”

“She’s a sailor?”

“No,” Raf laughed. “She saves whales . . .”

She did too. And cut together award-winning films from hours of footage taken with a tiny camera taped to the side of her mask. The whales were killers and ate seals like Scooby snacks. Raf often wondered why she didn’t save the Scooby snacks instead.