Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [81]
He nodded vigorously.
“Go now, and do not try to cheat me.”
The man turned away and began to run along the rough path with his odd, animallike gait. Watching him disappear into the gathering darkness, Jean-Pierre thought: The future of this country is in your filthy hands, you poor mad wretch. May God go with you.
A week later the malang had not returned.
By Wednesday, the day before the conference, Jean-Pierre was distraught. Every hour, he told himself the man could be here within the next hour. At the end of each day, he said he would come tomorrow.
Aircraft activity in the Valley had increased, as if to add to Jean-Pierre’s worries. All week the jets had been howling overhead to bomb the villages. Banda had been lucky: only one bomb had landed, and it had merely made a big hole in Abdullah’s clover field; but the constant noise and danger made everyone irritable. The tension produced in Jean-Pierre’s clinic a predictable crop of patients with stress symptoms: miscarriages, domestic accidents, unexplained vomiting and headaches. It was the children who got the headaches. In Europe, Jean-Pierre would have recommended psychiatry. Here, he sent them to the mullah. Neither psychiatry nor Islam would do much good, for what was wrong with the children was the war.
He went through the morning’s patients mechanically, asking his routine questions in Dari, announcing his diagnoses to Jane in French, dressing wounds and giving injections and handing out plastic containers of tablets and glass bottles of colored medicine. It should have taken the malang two days to walk to Charikar. Allow him a day to work up the nerve to approach a Russian soldier and a night to get over it. Setting off the next morning, he had another two days’ journey. He should have got back the day before yesterday. What had happened? Had he lost the package, and stayed away in fear and trembling? Had he taken all the pills at once and made himself ill? Had he fallen in the damn river and drowned? Had the Russians used him for target practice?
Jean-Pierre looked at his wristwatch. It was ten thirty. Any minute now the malang might arrive, bearing a pack of Russian cigarettes as proof that he had been to Charikar. Jean-Pierre wondered briefly how he would explain the cigarettes to Jane, for he did not smoke. He decided that no explanation was necessary for the acts of a lunatic.
He was bandaging a small boy from the next valley who had burned his hand on a cooking fire, when there came from outside the flurry of footsteps and greetings which meant someone had arrived. Jean-Pierre contained his eagerness and continued wrapping the boy’s hand. When he heard Jane speak he looked around, and to his intense disappointment saw that it was not the malang but two strangers.
The first of them said: “God be with you, Doctor.”
“And with you,” said Jean-Pierre. In order to preempt a lengthy exchange of civilities he said: “What is the matter?”
“There has been a terrible bombing at Skabun. Many people are dead and many wounded.”
Jean-Pierre looked at Jane. He still could not leave Banda without her permission, for she was afraid he would get in touch with the Russians somehow. But clearly he could not have contrived this summons. “Shall I go?” he said to her in French. “Or will you?” He really did not want to go, for it would mean an overnight stay in all probability, and he was desperate to see the malang.
Jane hesitated. Jean-Pierre knew she was thinking that if she went she would have to take Chantal. Besides, she knew she could not deal with major traumatic wounds.
“It’s up to you,” Jean-Pierre said.
“You go,” she said.
“All right.” Skabun was a couple of hours away. If he worked quickly and if there were not too many wounded, he might just get away at dusk, Jean-Pierre thought. He said: “I’ll try to get back tonight.”
She came over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,