Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [49]
The woman nodded.
“Does he have any brothers and sisters?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“Five brothers and two sisters,” the woman said proudly.
“He should sleep alone, or they will get sick too.” The woman looked dubious: she probably had only one bed for all her children. There was nothing Jean-Pierre could do about that. He went on: “If he is not better when the tablets are finished, bring him back to me.” What the child really needed was the one thing neither Jean-Pierre nor its mother could provide—plenty of good, nutritious food.
The two of them left the cave, the thin, sick child and the frail, weary mother. They had probably come several miles, she carrying the boy most of the way, and now they would walk back. The boy might die anyway. But not of tuberculosis.
There was one more patient: the malang. He was Banda’s holy man. Half mad, and often more-than-half naked, he wandered the Five Lions Valley from Comar, twenty-five miles upstream of Banda, to Charikar in the Russian-controlled plain sixty miles to the southwest. He spoke gibberish and saw visions. The Afghans believed malangs to be lucky, and not only tolerated their behavior, but gave them food and drink and clothing.
He came in, wearing rags around his loins and a Russian officer’s cap. He clutched his middle, miming pain. Jean-Pierre shook out a handful of diamorphine pills and gave them to him. The madman ran off, clutching his synthetic heroin tablets.
“He must be addicted to that stuff by now,” Jane said. There was a distinct note of disapproval in her voice.
“He is,” Jean-Pierre admitted.
“Why do you give it to him?”
“The man has an ulcer. What else should I do—operate?”
“You’re the doctor.”
Jean-Pierre began to pack his bag. In the morning he had to hold a clinic in Cobak, six or seven miles away across the mountains—and he had a rendezvous to keep on the way.
The crying of the five-year-old had brought an air of the past into the cave, like a smell of old toys, or a strange light that makes you rub your eyes. Jean-Pierre felt faintly disoriented by it. He kept seeing people from his childhood, their faces superimposed on the things around him, like scenes from a film cast by a misaligned projector onto the backs of the audience instead of on the screen. He saw his first teacher, the steel-rimmed Mademoiselle Médecin; Jacques Lafontaine, who had given him a bloody nose for calling him con; his mother, thin and ill-dressed and always distraught; and most of all his father, a big, beefy, angry man on the other side of a barred partition.
He made an effort to concentrate on the equipment and drugs he might need at Cobak. He filled a flask with purified water to drink while he was away. He would be fed by the villagers there.
He took his bags outside and loaded them onto the bad-tempered old mare he used for such trips. This animal would walk all day in a straight line but was highly reluctant to turn corners; on account of which Jane had named it Maggie, after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Jean-Pierre was ready. He went back into the cave and kissed Jane’s soft mouth. As he turned to leave, Fara came in with Chantal. The baby was crying. Jane unbuttoned her shirt and put Chantal to her breast immediately. Jean-Pierre touched his daughter’s pink cheek and said: “Bon appétit.” Then he went out.
He led Maggie down the mountain to the deserted village and headed southwest, following the riverbank. He walked quickly and tirelessly under the hot sun: he was used to it.
As he left his doctor persona behind and thought ahead to his rendezvous, he began to feel anxious. Would Anatoly be there? He might have been delayed. He might even have been captured. If captured, had he talked? Had he betrayed Jean-Pierre under torture? Would there be a party of guerrillas waiting for Jean-Pierre, merciless and sadistic and bent on revenge?
For all their poetry and their piety they were barbarians, these Afghans.