curtain of pain was fear that his body would hang on.
And now, was he grateful? He was swept with numbness.
On the second day in the hospital, the old man next to him muttered under his breath, “Nosa tshingwana yotlhe.” Water the whole garden. “Dilo tse di swabile.” These things are dried up.
It came to him then. “Monna mogolo,” he said. “I know you.”
The man turned his head and squinted at him. “I don’t know you.”
“You gave me seeds. Hot pepper seeds. I met you in the garden. I dug a big hole like yours. I hit the water main.”
The old man’s face crinkled into a smile. “Ke gakologelwa,” he whispered. I remember. And then he laughed, setting off a chain of coughing. Isaac reached for the towel between their two beds, and handed it to him. The man gathered his breath and closed his eyes. His face looked as though he’d seen two hundred dry seasons. He breathed hard for a few minutes, then turned to Isaac. “Why are you here?”
“I was in prison in South Africa.”
“You lived.”
I am dead, Isaac thought. As empty as that sack they put over my head. He felt the old man looking at him.
“Are you sleeping at night?” Isaac asked him.
“Dikgopo tsa me.” My ribs.
“Do you have night sweats?”
“Ee, rra.” He caught his breath. “But no matter. Soon it will be finished.”
“You have somebody visiting you?”
“Nnyaa, rra. There is no one left.”
She brought soup with her, and a book she thought he might like, Peter Matthiessen’s The Tree Where Man Was Born. The Sister met her at the door. “You are not allowed in the TB ward,” she said.
“Can Mr. Muthethe come out?”
“You must wait two weeks after treatment begins.”
“If I wear a face mask?”
“No exceptions.”
“I see.” She shifted to her other foot. “But I’ve already visited him.”
“On the TB ward?”
She realized she shouldn’t have spoken. “The room where he was in isolation.”
“You should not have been allowed.”
“So the answer is no?”
“The answer is no. I will see that these things are taken to him.”
A young nurse in training brought him a parcel containing a tin of beef and tomato soup. And a large book. He was not hungry for anything but the book. He propped it on his belly and turned to the first page. There was a picture of a baobab tree, its trunk dark against golden grass standing as though nothing could ever move it. And on the second and third pages, a large blue mountain with two tops. The left side and the right side were like two brothers, rising equally, and the tops so high they turned to cloud. On the next page was a cheetah sitting on its haunches, looking to one side. Its coat was golden white, covered with dark spots. Running from its eye to its mouth was a dark line, like a trail of tears. He turned to the next page, and then he returned to the cheetah’s face. He studied its neck fur sticking up as though a breeze ruffled it, the long tufts in its ears.
On the page following, he found an old Dinka song from the South Sudan.
In the time when Dendid created all things,
He created the sun,
And the sun is born, and dies, and comes again.
He created the moon,
And the moon is born, and dies, and comes again;
He created the stars,
And the stars are born, and die, and come again;
He created man,
And man is born, and dies, and does not come again.
They had put his thumbs in casts, and they stuck up as he held the book. He read the words again. He heard the old gardener straining next to him, his breath creaking in and out, his eyes closed, as though his lungs were saying, and does not come again, and does not come again. He would be fighting for air until his heart stopped beating, and then he would be finished with this world.
Wes came to his bedside and told Isaac that he must walk. He got him up and grasped him firmly by the elbow. Isaac shuffled like an old man. When they reached the door, the sun was so bright, he needed to close his eyes until they were nothing more than slits. The pain in his knee made his mind go numb. They walked out onto the grounds, where the dirt had been swept clean with stick brooms. He thought of the people inside: the old man laboring for breath, women laboring for babies. Wes told