• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1376 0

(“I mean those who, when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, positively refuse to feel it, as if it were something mean and wrong.”) It was inspiring to think about the beekeeper, tending his bees in the high desert, raising his children and staying passionately in love with his wife (he often spoke of this), producing honey in every direction you looked. And out of this perfect life had come the need to break out of it, to bring it into real difficulty, even hardship, in order to relieve the suffering of others. It was to be around people like the beekeeper that Mitchell had come to Calcutta, to see what they were like and to have their goodness rub off on him.

The beekeeper turned his sunny face up to Mitchell’s.

“How you holding up today?” he asked.

“Fine. I’m just giving out the medicine.”

“It’s good to see you here. How long you been coming now?”

“This is my third week.”

“Good man! Some people poop out after a couple days. Keep on keeping on. We need all the help we can get.”

“I will,” Mitchell said, and he pushed the cart forward.

He finished the beds in the first and second tiers and turned back to get those on the other side of the aisle, against the inner wall. The man in bed 57 was propped up on one elbow, watching Mitchell in a lofty fashion. He had a fine-boned, patrician face, short hair, and a sallow complexion.

As Mitchell offered him his pills the man said, “What is the point of these medications?”

Momentarily startled by his English, Mitchell said, “I’m not sure what they’re for, exactly. I could ask the doctor.”

The man flared his nostrils. “They are palliatives at best.” He made no move to take them. “Where do you come from?” he asked Mitchell.

“I’m American.”

“An American would never languish in an institution of this nature. Isn’t that correct?”

“Probably not,” Mitchell admitted.

“I should also not be here,” the man stated. “Years ago, before my illness, it was my fortune to serve in the Department of Agriculture. Perhaps you remember the famines we had in India. George Harrison made his famous concert for Bangladesh. That is what everyone remembers. But the situation in India was equally calamitous. Today, as a result of the changes we made in those times, Mother India is again feeding her children. In the last fifteen years agricultural output per capita has risen five percent. We are no longer importing grain. We are growing grain in sufficient quantities to feed a population of seven hundred million souls.”

“That’s good to know,” Mitchell said.

The man went on as though Mitchell hadn’t spoken. “I lost my position due to nepotism. There is great corruption in this country. Great corruption! Then, a few years later, I acquired an infection which devastated my kidneys. I have only twenty percent kidney function left. As I am speaking to you, the impurities are building up in my blood. Building up to intolerable levels.” He stared at Mitchell with fierce, bloodshot eyes. “My condition requires weekly dialysis. I have been trying to tell the sisters this, but they don’t understand. Stupid village girls!”

The agronomist glared for a moment longer. Then, surprisingly, he opened his mouth like a child. Mitchell put the pills in the man’s mouth and waited for him to swallow.

When Mitchell finished, he went to find the doctor, but she was busy in the female ward. It wasn’t until he’d served lunch and was about to leave that he had a chance to talk with her.

“There’s a man here who says he needs dialysis,” he told the doctor.

“I’m sure he does,” she said, smiling sadly, and, nodding, walked off.

The weekend arrived, and Mitchell was free to do what he liked. At breakfast he found Mike hunched over the table, staring at a photograph.

“You ever been to Thailand?” he said as Mitchell sat down.

“Not yet.”

“Place is stupendous.” Mike handed the snapshot to Mitchell. “Check out this girl.”

The photograph showed a slender Thai girl, not pretty but very young, standing on the porch of a bamboo hut. “Her name’s Meha,” Mike said. “She wanted to marry me.” He snorted. “I know, I know.