The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 29
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"Your grandfather was a courageous man, and I am his daughter," Robyn said simply. "Now eat up your lunch. I expect you both to assist me this afternoon." Behind the church stood the new ward that Robyn had built since the death of her first husband in the BMatabele war. It was an open-sided go down with low waist-high walls. The thatched roof was supported on upright poles of mopani. In hot weather the breeze could blow through the structure unhindered, but in the rains or when it turned cold, then woven grass mats could be unrolled to close in the walls.
The sleeping-mats were laid out in rows upon the clay floor, no attempt being made to separate families, so that healthy spouses and offspring were camped with the sick and suffering. Robyn had found it better to turn the ward into a bustling community rather than have her patients pine to death. However, the arrangement was so congenial and the food so good, that it had been difficult to persuade patients to leave after their cure had been effected, until Robyn had hit upon the ruse of sending all convalescents, and their families, to work in the fields or at building the new wards. This had dramatically reduced the clinic's population to manageable proportions.
Robyn's laboratory stood between the church and the ward. It was a small rondavel with adobe walls, and a single window. Shelves and a workbench ran around the entire curved inside wall. In pride of place stood Robyn's new microscope, purchased with the royalties of Trooper Hackett, and beside it her working journal, a thick leather-bound volume in which she was now noting her preliminary observations.
"Subject. Caucasian female at present in good health. she wrote in her firm neat hand, but she looked up irritably with pen poised at Juba's tragic tone and mournful expression.
"You swore on oath to the great King Lobengula that you would care for his people after he was gone. How can you" honour that promise if you are dead, Nomusa?" Juba asked in Sindebele, using Robyn's Matabele praise name "Nomusa Girl Child of Mercy".
"I am not going to die, Juba," Robyn snapped irritably. "And for the love of all things holy, take that look off your face." "It is never wise to provoke the dark spirits, Nomusa." "Juba is right, Mama," Vicky supported her. "You have deliberately stopped taking quinine, not a single tablet in six weeks, and your own observations have shown the danger of blackwater fever is increased-" "Enough!" Robyn slapped the table with the flat of her hand. "I will listen to no more." "All right," Elizabeth agreed. "We won't try and stop you again, but if you become dangerously ill, should we ride into Bulawayo to fetch General St. John?" Robyn threw her pen onto the open page so the ink splattered and she leaped to her feet.
"You will do no such thing, do you hear me, girl? You will not go near that man." "Mama, he is your husband," Vicky pointed out reasonably.
"And he is Bobby's father," Elizabeth said quickly.
"And he loves you," Vicky gabbled it out before Robyn could stop her.
Robyn was white-faced and shaking with anger and some other emotion that prevented her speaking for a moment, and Elizabeth took advantage of her uncharacteristic silence. "He is such a strong-2
"Elizabeth!" Robyn found her voice, and it rang like steel from the scabbard. "You know I have forbidden discussion of that man." She sat back at the desk, picked up the pen and for a long minute the scratching of her nib was the only sound in the room, but when she spoke again, Robyn's voice was level and businesslike. "While I am incapacitated, Elizabeth will write up the journal she has the better handwriting. I want hourly entries, no matter how grave the situation." "Very well, Mama." "Vicky, you will administer treatment, but not before the cycle has been established beyond any chance of refutation. "I have prepared a written list of instructions for you to follow, should I become insensible." "Very well, Mama." "And me, Nomusa?"Juba asked softly. "What must I do?" Robyn's expression softened then, and she laid her hand on the other woman's forearm.
"Juba, you must understand that I am not reneguing on my promise to take care of your people. What I will accomplish with this work is a final understanding of a disease that has ravaged the Matabele and all people of Africa since the beginning of time. Trust me, dear friend, this is a long step towards freeing your people and mine of this terrible scourge." "I wish there was another way, Nomusa." "There is not." Robyn shook her head. "You asked what you should do to help, will you stay with me, Juba, to give me comfort?" "You know I will," Juba whispered, and hugged Robyn to her. Robyn seemed slim and girlish in that vast embrace, and Juba's sobs shook them both.
The black girl lay on her sleeping-mat against the low wall of the ward. She was of marriageable age, for when she cried out in delirium and threw aside the fur kaross, her naked body was fully matured, with a wide fertile spread of hips and hard-thrusting nipples to her breasts, but the heat of fever was burning her up. Her skin looked as brittle as parchment, her lips were grey and cracked, and her eyes glittered with the unnatural brilliance of the fever that was rushing down upon her.
Robyn pressed her hand into the girl's armpit, and exclaimed, "She is like a furnace, the poor child is at the climax," and she pulled her hand away and covered her with the thick soft kaross. "I think this is the moment. Juba, take her shoulders. Vicky, hold her arm, and you, Elizabeth, bring the bowl." The girl's bare arm protruded from under the kaross, and Vicky held her at the elbow while Robyn slipped a tourniquet of whiplash leather over her forearm and twisted it up until the blood vessels in the Matabele girl's wrist swelled" up, purple black and hard as unripe grapes.
"Come on, child," Robyn snapped at Elizabeth, and she prof erred the white enamel basin and drew back the cloth that covered it. Her hand was trembling.
Robyn picked up the syringe. The barrel of brass had a narrow glass inset running down its length. Robyn detached the hollow needle from the nipple at the end, and at the same time with the thumb of her free hand she pumped up the veins in the girl's wrist with a stroking motion, and then pierced the skin with an angled stab of the thick needle. She found the vein almost immediately, and a thin jet of dark red venous blood shot from the open end of the needle and pattered onto the clay floor. Robyn fitted the syringe nipple into the needle, and slowly withdrew the plunger, watching intently as the fever-hot blood flowed into the brass barrel and showed through the glass inset.
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