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examine. Leszek had smeared the rash with gentian violet, but Rayner felt sure now that it was not fungal. He did not know what it was. He imagined it must spring from some hormonal imbalance, or be the benign result of nerve-cell tumors. But it did not resemble anything in his experience.
    The man said, “Well?”
    “I”ve got nothing to add,” Rayner said. “We”ll await tests.” The woman sat up shakily, pulling on her dress. “Once we”ve established the cause, your skin will return to normal with treatment.”
    “Who the fuck are you telling?” The man”s fists were flailing at his sides. “That disease isn”t curable, is it? Are you saying you can change it back to white? You come clean with me, doctor, that”s the savage disease, isn”t it?” He rammed his kepi back on his head and glared at the woman. “That”s one fucking low disease.”
    Rayner turned on him. “Who says it”s a savage”s disease? Where did you hear that?”
    The man said, “It”s around town. It”s spreading.”
    What was spreading, Rayner wondered, the disease or the fallacy of its origin? He said, “This is the first case I”ve seen.”
    “Well I”
ve
heard of others.” The man pushed his wife away from him. “Another woman … two other women. And d”you know why they don”t report it? Because they”ve been going with
them,
that”s why.”
    The woman began to sob. Leszek put out a hand to her, withdrew it.
    “You”ve been listening to fairy tales.” Rayner lost histemper. “Is this town going mad, or what? This condition can”t be sexually transmitted, so don”t punish your wife with your ignorance!” If the woman had not been there he would have added: it may be a symptom of cancer. But instead he said, “What do you know about disease? Anything at all?” The man was silent. “Then listen to doctors and not to eyewash.”
    But the man”s bluster concealed an animal fear, he knew. Rayner knew because he felt the same fear, faintly, in himself: an irrational tremor of unease. The discoloration was only a symptom of inner disorder, of course, but the singularity of its deep shade and outline disturbed him as if it were some magic.
    The woman was trying to put on her shoes, but in her weakness she could not buckle them. Rayner bent down and helped her. He squeezed her arm. “It”s not a crime to be ill.”
    After they had gone, Leszek gazed at him. “I don”t understand.” He lifted the blood sample to the window light, as if his naked eye might discern something strange. Normally he did not ask Rayner for advice, but now he said, “What do you think?”
    Rayner said brusquely, remembering the reception area full of patients, “It”s probably hormonal.” He suddenly did not want to think about it.
    “I don”t believe that.” Leszek”s face—a landscape of too-thin bones and tissues—was accusing him. “And you don”t think so, really?”
    “It”s impossible to tell.” Now he was treating Leszek as if his partner had contracted some contagion. Leszek had always been too susceptible, he thought: a taxing mixture of frailty and pride.
    Leszek turned away and repeated thinly, “It”s not hormonal.”
    Rayner noticed that his head was trembling. But his partner had always been like that, he thought—over-imaginative. Leszek”s past, haunted by czarist Russia, hadtaught him to fear. Years ago, Rayner remembered, Leszek had lent him one of his old suitcases, the battered luggage of his refugee years, and Rayner had seen that it was glazed with shallow scorch marks. Methodically, scrupulously, Leszek must have burnt away all the labels stuck to it, so that nobody would be able to tell from where he had come.

CHAPTER
6
    I f the town had a heart—and cynics doubted this—it beat in the mall. All the town”s nervous sense of purpose, its buoyancy, its latent unease, emanated outwards from this paved half-kilometer of hectic commerce and social rendezvous. Its long bars were always packed.