needs an easy one. This place should be called the Needa. Ha! Need a what? Need a whatever you can think of. Come along, I will show you.”
It seemed Manfred needed a tranquilizer. Well, Barrett had warned that he was a bit daft, so maybe his rudeness wasn’t intentional, but a symptom of that peculiar form of daftness summed up in the word bushed. The simmering anger, the lack of simple civility—Fitzhugh had seen it all before, in aid workers isolated too long, working sixteen hours a day because more than a few hours’ rest seemed an unjustifiable indulgence in the face of colossal suffering. That, and Barrett’s caution to be diplomatic, inclined him to humor the doctor’s idiosyncrasies.
He led them around the back of the hospital to a neat stone bungalow, picturesquely situated in ficus shade, overlooked by a soaring butte. A former British rest house, Manfred said, which he’d restored as a residence for himself. There was a lemon grove behind it, and a vegetable garden tilled by a young Nuban with a makeshift hoe. The doctor called to him in some local dialect, and the young man trotted toward them, a harlequin figure in patched denim shorts and a red and white T-shirt stamped with a faded legend PROPERTY OF OHIO STATE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT. Manfred seized the hoe by its thick handle and, as if to test Fitzhugh’s forbearance, thrust the blade at him with such violence that he had to step back to avoid being hit in the face.
“Do you know what this is?”
“I believe it’s a hoe.”
“No! This! What is this?”
Manfred brushed the dirt off the blade, revealing a couple of yellow cyrillic letters painted on the olive drab metal. Fitzhugh squinted at the writing and shrugged.
“It’s shrapnel from a Russian bomb,” Douglas said.
“Precisely! More precisely, a Russian cluster bomb, one of the four that fell on the mission six months ago.”
“That would be St. Andrew’s?” asked Fitzhugh.
“Twenty-seven people killed, sixteen of them children. Thirty-one injured. I know the precise number because I was summoned there to stitch the wounded back together. I did not entirely succeed.” He handed the implement back to the gardener, who returned to his labors. “So after the funerals, after the proprieties were observed—the Nubans set great store by the proprieties of death, they believe in the immortality of the soul, yes, they fear that if they neglect their obligations to the dead, the dead will neglect their obligations to the living and perhaps bring calamities, although one wonders what calamities could be worse than cluster bombs.”
Frowning, Manfred went suddenly silent. He appeared to have lost his original train of thought.
“You were saying, after the funerals?” Douglas reminded him.
“The funerals, yes. After the funerals, local farmers returned to the mission and collected the bomb fragments and from them made hoes. So that shows you how little we have here. The war has taken almost everything away, but sometimes it gives a little back. Swords into plowshares, bombs into hoes. Write that down in your little book. We need hoes so we don’t have to wait for another bombing to get new ones. Ah! This is all so silly.”
“Silly?” Douglas made a show of wriggling a finger in his ear, as if he hadn’t heard right. “What’s silly?”
“What is not?”
Turning sharply on his heel, Manfred stomped off. His two visitors didn’t realize they were supposed to follow until he looked over his shoulder and gave them a jerky wave. He brought them to a tukul identical to those in the village. Manfred flipped a light switch, and they beheld a spotless X-ray machine that rested on the dirt floor.
“A Siemens, my young friends. It was flown to Khartoum from Germany more than a year ago, then on to Abu Gubeiha and delivered from there by lorry. A fine instrument, not so?” He stroked the padded table and the smooth steel arm of the camera as if they were living things. “My X-ray technician is an Arab fellow, quite competent, trained in the U.K. Only one thing is missing. Can you guess what it is?”
Another riddle. Fitzhugh yearned for a smoke and a long nap.
“Film!” the doctor shouted into their silence and then laughed. “I have no film! I have not had any for six months! I have made several requests by radio for film to be sent, I have been assured it has been sent, but it never gets here. I have no idea what happens to it, though I have