"Resnick, Mike - Bibi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "They know we're bringing food and medicine. They should be swarming out to greet us."
"Have you ever seen a reaction like this?"
"No," she said, frowning. "Not even when I was a little girl."
"They don't act afraid," he noted. "Just...I don't know..._wary_."
Next to one of the huts was a mound of heaped dirt. Even though it had been encircled by a crude fence that must have caused someone a lot of trouble to construct and erect, the ground was trampled, the clods scattered in places, as if something had tried to dig it up. Jeremy felt a muscle along his jaw jerk. They wouldn't have had a whole lot of strength to spare to dig the man's grave deep enough -- and there was always the problem of how to get out of the pit once it had been dug.
Two children squatted by the roadside, waving at him. When he waved back, they rose slowly. He thought he recognized them. They'd been fed in the camp for almost a week, but the long walk home had sweated the newly-gained weight off of them. Already their ribs were showing above their bellies, which, thank God, had at least not started to swell out in severe malnutrition's dreadful parody of fat. Squatting outside the nearest hut, the healthier -- or rather, the least sick -- of the dead man's young wives tended a few scrawny chickens. Beyond the huts, an emaciated ox raised its head at the newcomers, then went back to the all-important business of grazing the near-grassless land. The oldest child pushed at the ox, driving it toward two cows in equally poor condition.
Still, concluded Jeremy, these villagers were better off than a lot he had seen. They had posho from the relief center. They would have milk. They might even have eggs and meat. It was a wonder they had anything left at all. For years, this entire country had been little more than the scene of a crime that called itself a government -- and now, hardly a step up, it had become a plague site.
_God help them all._
Tall and thin, her head high, the mother of the dead man appeared in a doorway. She had an infant in her arms, two others clinging to her legs. She walked over to the squatting woman and handed her the child. The younger woman opened her dress, and the child began to nurse -- or to try to.
"That'll infect the baby!" Jeremy muttered.
"You want them to talk to us? Then be quiet!" Elizabeth got out of the truck, raised a hand in greeting and spoke in a formal Swahili, totally different from the "kitchen Swahili" Jeremy had learned.
Jeremy killed the motor, opened the door, stepped down, and joined Elizabeth just as the woman raised a hand. Greetings should have gone on ceremoniously, with an invitation to a meal to follow, but there was little food and less time to spare, as her apologetic gestures seemed to indicate. Abruptly, she clapped her hands. The children scattered, disappearing into various huts to emerge wearing the ragged Michael Jordan T-shirts they had received -- each decorated with a loop of red ribbon. Jeremy grinned. He remembered giving out those ribbons and slipping a dime to one of the kids, who had lost a front tooth the day before. _The Tooth Fairy comes to Uganda. Right. I'd grant you three wishes, kid, if I could._
"We know you mean well, _Memsaab_," the old woman was saying, "but we have no faith in your magic. We prefer our own. That is why we came home."
"But who will help you?" asked Elizabeth, trying to ignore the word 'Memsaab', which was only offered to whites and outsiders, never from one black Ugandan to another. "Your grandchildren are too young. Your son is dead, and his wives are sick. She paused. "It is not right that you live alone, without family to share your burdens."
"I wish you would let us bring you back!" Jeremy blurted in English.
"Damn it, Jeremy!" hissed Elizabeth. "I know you mean well, but that's an insult."
The old woman turned to Jeremy. "My father is dead," she said. "My husband is dead. My sons are dead. My grandsons are too young to give me orders. Uganda has been independent for 30 long rains. I will not take orders from you or any other European. I need no longer call you Bwana."
When Jeremy had finally stammered an apology, Elizabeth took pity on him.
"Why don't you unload the truck?" she suggested. That won her a look of awe from the old woman. For all her dedication, her Swahili, her attempt to make herself seem like a good daughter of the tribe, Elizabeth was still a European to them. She was all the more alien for being a black European and a woman who could give orders to men, especially white men, in this society where brides were still bought and sold.
"If you will have us--"
Instant protest, invitation, and apology followed in order: how could she doubt her welcome?
"--we shall stay for a few days and observe the children. We can make ourselves useful to you."
The woman smiled. Surprisingly, given her age and health, she still possessed most of her teeth, and they glinted in the sunlight.
"But I have help, _Memsaab_." Elizabeth flinched. That word again. So much for Sisterhood and fitting in. "My _bibi_ has come to help me."
"Her baby?" asked Jeremy, trying to translate.
"_Bibi_ is 'mother'," answered Elizabeth. "You've seen those signs in the burnt-out stores and _dukas_ along the road to Kampala, the ones that say _Babito_? That's a contraction, or actually an acronym, for Baba, Bibi, and Toto -- father, mother, and baby. In other words, stores for the whole family." She paused. "Now please go unload the truck before you offend her again."
Jeremy unloaded sack after sack of _posho_, the cornmeal that the Africans made into a porridge (and which Jeremy thought had the consistency and taste of library paste), and finally a precious box of powdered milk that they could use for the babies when (never _if_, only _when_) their mothers' milk ran dry. If he had anything to say about it, they'd be drinking it now: if a mother was HIV positive, a baby could pick it up from breast milk if it hadn't already contracted it in the womb.
Elizabeth Umurungi disappeared into the dark interior of the hut with her medical bag, leaving Jeremy standing outside. The children approached to watch him as he finished unloading the truck. Aware of their presence, he pocketed the keys, reached into the glove compartment, and slipped the revolver into his pocket. No sense putting temptation in their way.
When he walked to the door of the hut, Elizabeth and the old woman were kneeling beside a pallet that held the second wife. Jeremy remembered her from the relief center. He was surprised she had made it back alive.
"Get me some water," Elizabeth ordered, not even bothering to turn around. "Rubbing alcohol too. We have to bring this fever down."
One of the children immediately ran off to obey this not-quite-stranger with her shiny instruments and her way of commanding a man taller and stronger than their father had been. When the child sloshed back with a tin pan filled with dubiously clean water, Jeremy carried it and the rubbing alcohol inside.
Elizabeth sponged the woman on the pallet, while the other woman hovered and tried to sooth the patient. The sick woman's face glowed, the life flickering in it like embers in an ebony lantern, building, flaring up... At any moment, he thought it would surely burn out into darkness.
"Help hold her still!" Elizabeth ordered when the patient began thrashing, and Jeremy, who had always worn sweatbands and gloves when working out in his West Side gym, leapt to obey.
When they finished, the old woman held her daughter-in-law against her shoulder while Elizabeth brought out a syringe and administered it.
Of the old woman's "_bibi_", there was no sign at all. Probably she was too shy or too frightened to even look at the strangers; Jeremy didn't envy Elizabeth the task of coaxing her out where she could be examined.
* * *
Jeremy paused, sleeping bag in hand, and looked around the hut that had been allotted them. He was used to sweat blotching his shirts the instant he put them on. He was used to insects, used to animals, used to taking care of people in ways that would have made the men on the trading desk pass out. But the dark, claustrophobic hut with its long-unswept floor, its hovering, whining flies -- his imagination conjured up sleeping sickness, yellow fever, and typhoid for starters, and then began dwelling on more exotic diseases.
Elizabeth simply shrugged and spread her sleeping bag out on the floor. Maybe it was only dried mud, but it certainly smelled like cow dung.
Dinner had come and gone -- a scrawny chicken. They had protested that they had their own supplies, they could perfectly well feed themselves and everyone else; but the chicken had been killed and stewed, and they had had to eat it with every evidence of appreciation for the sacrifice it represented. Despite reprimands from mother and grandmother to let their guests eat in peace, Jeremy managed to feed at least half his dinner to the kids. He felt like a guilty child himself, feeding the family dog beneath the table, and then felt even guiltier for equating these starving children to household pets. It was a feast to them, and when their faces shone with the meager fat from the chicken skin, they started to yawn and soon wandered off.
Elizabeth and Jeremy left the hut and sat outside it, poking at a fire Jeremy had insisted on building. He promised himself that tomorrow he'd show the children how to toast things on it, wondering what he could substitute for marshmallows. He pulled out Ray's letter, studied it thoughtfully, and then placed it back in his pocket, unopened.
Beyond the circle of the village and its tiny fields, darker than the night sky, lay uncleared land. The forest was coming back after the devastation of the past decades, and slowly, the wild creatures were returning. A hyena giggled maniacally, a lion coughed, and far off in the distance hippos grunted and bellowed.
Elizabeth picked up a green branch and maneuvered a few smoldering logs. They suddenly burst into flame, and a shower of sparks rose into the dark African sky.
"Where did you learn to tend a fire?" asked Jeremy, whose camp duty it was to build fires.
For an instant, her eyes lit with humor. "In Girl Guides," she answered with a smile. "Certainly not in the bush." Jeremy forced himself not to grimace. He still held his rolled-up sleeping bag. "Are you going to hang onto that security blanket all night?" she asked.
"Why don't I sleep out in the truck?" he suggested. "More proper for the hired hand, wouldn't you say?"
"Whatever makes you happy," said Elizabeth. "Those kids look like they'd love to spend the night talking with you." It was obvious that she would much rather have been able to say "us" than "you". Suddenly she swatted a tsetse fly with surgical efficiency. It lay still for a minute, then got to its feet and groggily walked off.
"Nobody ever told me they were armor-plated until I got here," said Jeremy, staring ruefully at the fly.
"If they get any worse, I may join you. We can take turns standing guard." She sighed deeply. "I wish we had some light," she continued. "Better than the firelight, I mean. I'd like to run some tests on that woman. She ought to be dead from that fever -- she had a body temp of at least 105."
"She was burning up," Jeremy agreed. "I thought I'd be digging a grave." He had been so careful to restrain the sick woman's flailing hands. Face it: he had been afraid, just as he'd been every day since he came here. With every patient he touched, he faced the question: are you the one who'll kick my T-cells out of balance? Will _your_ AIDS be the death of me, too?
It was no different for him than for the other relief workers. He knew that. He was no one special. But he was ashamed to ask if the others were afraid, too.