Euphoria

12

2/21 Bankson returned then fainted dead away on the women’s road and now he lies burning with fever in our bed. We soak him with water then fan him with palm leaves until our joints ache. He trembles & shudders & sometimes slugs the fan across the room. Can’t find the thermometer anywhere but I think it’s a very high fever — or maybe it just seems so because of his Englishman’s skin. He has a flushed but plucked-goose look to him without his shirt on. His nipples look like a little boy’s after a cold swim, two hard tiny beads in his long torso. He sleeps & sleeps and when he opens his eyes I think he’s fully conscious but he’s not. He speaks in Kiona and sometimes in little phrases of French in quite a good accent. Fen grumbles about how Bankson avoided us all these weeks then shows up sick, how he didn’t want to be in our way but is now delirious in our bed. I can see that his complaining is worry. His sharp words, fierce looks — all concern, not anger. Sickness frightens him. It’s how he lost his mother after all. I’m seeing now from this vantage point that all the times he’s hovered over the bed, scolding me, hounding me to get up, it’s been fear, not fury. He doesn’t think I’m so weak. He’s just terrified I’ll die on him. I tell him B’s fever will break in a day or two and he lists all the people, whites & natives, we have known or heard about who have died from one of their malarial flare-ups. I’ve got him out of the house now, sent him off with Bani for water. It’s hard to get B to drink. He seems scared of the cup. He bats it away like the fan. I know he’s a bit scared of his mother so a few minutes ago I lifted his head and said in my best British battle-axe: “Andrew, this is your mother speaking. You will drink this water,” and I wedged the cup between his lips and he drank.

2/23 Fever has not broken. We are trying everything. Malun comes with soups & elixirs. She shows me the plants they are made from but they aren’t familiar to me. Bankson would be able to identify them. But I trust Malun. I feel calmer the minute she walks in. She holds my hand and feeds me her steamed lily stems which she knows I love. I have never had a mothering friend in the field before. I am so often the mother, in all my relationships, really. Even with Helen. Today Malun brought the medicine man Gunat who placed charms — little bits of leaves and twigs — in the corners of the house and sang a song through his nose. The Loud Painful Nasal Song, Fen called it. If it doesn’t kill you, nothing will. Gunat worried that the mosquito netting is trapping the evil spirits but Fen got him out before he started tearing it down.

I haven’t managed to feed B more than 2 spoonfuls of the broth Malun brought. Fen hasn’t either. But he has stuck with it. Hasn’t run away on an expedition. He’s been right here, insisting that I continue with my rounds in the afternoon, changing B’s sheets and placing wet cloths on his forehead and helping him to the chamber pot (a big calabash gourd). All this nurturing has erased doubt and reassures me that he will be a good father — if ever that day comes.

2/24 Fen found a Kiona navigational chart in B’s boat. It is such an intriguing thing, a crisscross of thin bamboo slats with small snail shells tied on in certain places. You hold it up to the night sky and align the shells with the stars to locate your position. It is the most exquisite instrument. I’ve not seen another like it. I wish the three of us could paddle out tonight and get all turned around and use it to find our way back.

2/26 B was quite lucid this morning, apologizing profusely and trying to get out of bed, insisting he should leave us be. But we settled him back down and he’s been asleep or delirious ever since.

2/27 Bankson had some sort of seizure while I was out. Fen is shaken & exhausted but won’t let me relieve him, won’t leave his bedside, keeps talking and talking, a sort of reverse Scheherazade, as if his words will keep B alive.