been having trouble recruiting subjects for his vaccination research at his private medical practice across from the International School. The Virus was still taboo and his wealthy patients sometimes seemed more desperate to keep their status under wraps than to stay alive. They paid him generously not just to administer imported ARVs, but to remain discreet about it too. Even the promise of anonymity hadn’t convinced them to try experimental therapy.
Besides, if Lee wanted to replicate the Nairobi study, he needed to find a different kind of Virus patient – sexually active, asymptomatic, and willing to undertake great risk for money. This clinic was in a perfect location – a compound frequented by prostitutes and their clients. And Musadabwe, doctor or no, was the first person Lee had met who both felt the urgency of the problem and had the ambition to pursue a solution into the shadiest corners of Zambian society.
‘Fine,’ Lee said finally, swaying a little as he shook Musadabwe’s outstretched hand.
‘Yes, it is extremree fine!’ Musadabwe grinned greenly at him. ‘Velly-good.’
* * *
At first, Musadabwe’s One Hundred Years Clinic was simply a hole in Lee’s pocket. Lee funded the entire operation – building the sterile examination rooms, importing equipment and ARVs – and keenly felt its redundancy: did he not already have a private clinic? It was like he had just built its poorer, shabbier cousin in the compound, and worse, for patients who could not pay. If anything, these patients opened the hole in his pocket wider with their bleating pleas. They wanted fees for schooling, food for sustenance, medicines for opportunistic infections and for everything else besides – colds, coughs, rashes. And still, the holy grail of study subjects eluded him.
Things moved faster when Lee discovered Hi-Fly Haircuttery & Designs Ltd by chance a year later. Plying Sylvia with dinners and stories, Lee took samples from her and all of her ‘salon girls’ and followed their leads to other casual sex workers in the community. He began a side project of his own, an experiment of sorts, based on a hunch. Musadabwe ran some tests and after a year of sorting the data and sending samples to their collaborators in Kenya and South Africa, they confirmed the results.
Some of these women, just like the ones in Nairobi, indeed had a natural gene mutation for an immune cell receptor. The Germans had effectively cured an HIV patient by giving him a stem cell transplant from a donor with a mutation like this – they were calling him The Berlin Patient. And in October of 2009, Lee and Musadabwe received a new report from the lab in Jo’berg: one very special woman had a second receptor as well. Zambia had a Lusaka Patient. It was indisputable: they had revolutionised the hunt for the Virus vaccine.
* * *
To celebrate the results, Lee and Musadabwe and Sylvia went to a shebeen next door to the Kalingalinga clinic and drank for hours. By the time Lee got home that night, he was falling-down, head-over-heels cut. He stumbled through three doors – out of a taxi, through the front door, into the master bedroom – kicked off his shoes, and collapsed next to his wife. Thandi was still awake, lying in the fetal position, hands between her knees. Her white nightie and chitambala looked silver in the gloom.
‘And where have you been?’ she asked.
This was new. He thought they had a silent agreement. He paid; she stayed. He didn’t ask about Livingstone or her guest room visits; she didn’t query his nightly whereabouts.
‘Ah – work, you know,’ he said, closing one eye to stop her from bouncing in his vision.
‘Work.’
‘A forum at, uh, UNZA. The Swizzerlandians, I mean the Swiss…’ He began to drop off.
‘You smell like whisky.’
‘Good nose.’ He licked his chops sleepily.
‘Work,’ she said again.
Lee opened his eyes. Thandi’s eyes glinted malachite. He looked away from them and saw her hip under the nightie, curving up like the moon on a horizon.
‘Come here,’ he growled and put his hand on it. He expected her to resist but instead, her breath caught and she bit her upper lip. She was lovely in the faint light coming from the clock radio, her skin purplish at the creases of the elbow and armpit and neck. Before he could stop himself, he had rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him.
They lay pressed to each other for the first time in years. He felt himself grow hard against