Read The Ghost Road for Free Online Page B

been a
recent change in bowel habit? And was it simply constipation, or was there
alternating diarrhoea? But his attempts to convey 'alternating diarrhoea' in a
mixture of pidgin and mime threatened to bring the proceedings to a halt entirely, and he gave up, while Namboko Taru wiped tears of
laughter from her cheeks. He might not be contributing to the cure but he was certainly
taking her mind off the condition.
    Meanwhile the movements of Njiru's hands began to
focus on a region below and to the left of the navel. He was chanting under his
breath, swaying backwards and forwards, scooping the slack flesh together
between the heel of his palms, like a woman gathering
dough. The constant low murmur and the rhythmic movement were hypnotic.
Suddenly, with a barking cry, Njiru seemed to catch something, shielded it in
his cupped hands while he crawled to the door, and then threw it as far as he
could into the bush. A brief conversation between doctor and patient, then
Namboko Taru fastened her cloth and went into the bush, from whence, ten
minutes later, a far happier woman emerged.
    Meanwhile Rivers and Njiru talked. Namboko Taru's
complaint belonged to a group of illnesses called tagosoro , which were
inflicted by the spirit called Mateana. This particular condition— nggasin —was
caused by an octopus that had taken up residence in the lower intestine, from
where its
    tentacles might spread until they reached the throat. At this
point the disease would prove fatal. As so often happened, one could detect
behind the native belief the shadowy outline of a disease only too familiar to
western medicine, though perhaps this was not a helpful way of looking at it.
Namboko Taru believed she was cured. And certainly as a treatment for simple
constipation the massage could hardly have been bettered, and had not differed
in any essential respect from western massage, until very near the end.
    Rivers pointed to himself and then to the coconut oil.
Njiru nodded, poured oil into his palms and began the massage, chanting, rocking... Once again that curious hypnotic effect, a sense
of being totally focused on, totally cared for. Njiru was a good doctor,
however many octopi he located in the colon. The fingers probed deeper, the
chanting quickened, the movements of the hands neared a climax, and
then—nothing. Njiru sat back, smiling, terminating the physical contact as
tactfully as he'd initiated it.
    Rivers sketched the movement Njiru hadn't made. 'You
no throw... nggasin?'
    A gleam of irony. 'You no got nggasin.'
     
    *
* *
     
    But you have, Rivers thought,
sponging yesterday's black lines off Moffet's legs.
    'And tomorrow,' he said authoritatively, measuring
with his forefingers, 'this area will be normal.'
    Moffet glared at him. 'You are consciously and
deliberately destroying my self-respect.'
    'I think you'll find that starts to come back once you're
on your feet.'
    Sister Carmichael was hovering on the other side of
the screens, waiting to snatch the trolley from him. She was shocked by his
insistence on doing everything himself, including the washing off of the
previous lines. Consultants do not wash patients. Nurses wash patients. She would have been only marginally more distressed if she'd
come on to the ward and found him mopping the floor. What he could not get
across to her was that the rules of medicine are one thing, the rules of ritual
drama quite another.
    Wansbeck had had a bad night, she said, once the
trolley had been snatched away. Temperature of 103, and he kept trying to open
the window.
    'All right, I'll see him next.'
    The nurses had just finished sponging Wansbeck down,
and he lay half naked, his skin a curdled bluish white against the snowy white
of the sheets. As Rivers watched a shiver ran along his arms and chest,
roughening and darkening the skin. They finished drying him, covered him up,
and he was free to talk, though too weak to manage more than a few words.
    Rivers was beginning to feel concerned about