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Authors: Damon Galgut
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why South Africa?’ Laurence was saying.
‘Opportunity,’ Jorge said.
‘Exactly. Opportunity. The chance to make a difference. There can’t be a lot of places in the world where that’s possible right now.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Jorge intoned solemnly.
‘Better money,’ Claudia said. ‘Good house.’
‘Yes, well, that too. But I’m talking about something different.’
‘You are talking about what?’
‘I believe it’s only the beginning. Of this country. The old history doesn’t count. It’s all starting now. From the bottom up. So I want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere else in the
world, where it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. It matters that I’m here.’
The Santanders were a middle-aged couple from Havana. They’d been sent out a couple of years before as part of a large group of doctors imported by the Health Department to help with the
staffing crisis. He was a plump, affable man with a big moustache and a genial intelligence. His wife was slightly hysterical, a good-looking older woman with not much English. My brief affair with
Claudia a year before had left her permanently embittered towards me. They had the room next door to mine and there had been many nights, more and more of them lately, when their voices carried in
strident Spanish argument through the wall. It was an open secret that she wanted to go home, she didn’t want to stay, while he wanted to make a future here. Their marriage was cracked down the
middle.
‘This country depends,’ Laurence said fervently, ‘on people like you. Committed people, who want to make a difference.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Jorge said.
‘They tell us, good house, good car,’ Claudia said. ‘But they don’t tell us, Soweto. Ooh, Soweto!’ I could picture her shudder.
‘I wouldn’t mind being in Soweto,’ Laurence said. ‘But this is better. This is really nowhere.’
I knew a little bit about how the Santanders felt towards Soweto. Claudia had told me during the throes of our affair. It was their first posting in the country, the place they wanted to go to.
Maybe, like Laurence, they wanted to make a difference. But they couldn’t handle the cases that came in all the time. The violence, the extremity of it, was something they’d never seen. On Saturday
nights in the emergency room it was knife-wounds and shotgun blasts and maimings and gougings with broken bottles. ‘Like war,’ Claudia wailed, ‘like big war outside all the time!’ And this was on
top of the usual load of illnesses and accidents that the hospital could barely deal with. After six months or so they asked for a transfer and landed up here.
In a certain sense it was her time in Soweto that led to my affair with Claudia. In the first few weeks after she’d arrived here a woman was rushed in one night. She’d been attacked by a lynch
mob in her village that had stabbed and beaten her and tried to burn her to death for being a witch. Her condition was critical. It was clear that she would die, but we all ran around madly, trying
to do what we could. In the end she did die. An ambulance came from the nearest hospital to take the body away and then afterwards, in the empty anticlimax of the small hours of the night, Claudia
and I were left alone in the office. And suddenly her neutral mask cracked and fell. She started to cry and shake uncontrollably and what was present in the room was all the pent-up months of
horror at what she’d seen in this country for the first time in her life. ‘How can people do like this?’ she cried, ‘how, how?’
I put my arms around her to comfort her, while she sobbed like a little child. I knew, I could feel, where this was coming from. Something in this country had gone too far, something had
snapped. It was like a fury so strong that it had come loose from its moorings. I could only hold her to console her, but then consolation turned to something else. It was very powerful – lust
fuelled by grief. We
‘Opportunity,’ Jorge said.
‘Exactly. Opportunity. The chance to make a difference. There can’t be a lot of places in the world where that’s possible right now.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Jorge intoned solemnly.
‘Better money,’ Claudia said. ‘Good house.’
‘Yes, well, that too. But I’m talking about something different.’
‘You are talking about what?’
‘I believe it’s only the beginning. Of this country. The old history doesn’t count. It’s all starting now. From the bottom up. So I want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere else in the
world, where it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. It matters that I’m here.’
The Santanders were a middle-aged couple from Havana. They’d been sent out a couple of years before as part of a large group of doctors imported by the Health Department to help with the
staffing crisis. He was a plump, affable man with a big moustache and a genial intelligence. His wife was slightly hysterical, a good-looking older woman with not much English. My brief affair with
Claudia a year before had left her permanently embittered towards me. They had the room next door to mine and there had been many nights, more and more of them lately, when their voices carried in
strident Spanish argument through the wall. It was an open secret that she wanted to go home, she didn’t want to stay, while he wanted to make a future here. Their marriage was cracked down the
middle.
‘This country depends,’ Laurence said fervently, ‘on people like you. Committed people, who want to make a difference.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Jorge said.
‘They tell us, good house, good car,’ Claudia said. ‘But they don’t tell us, Soweto. Ooh, Soweto!’ I could picture her shudder.
‘I wouldn’t mind being in Soweto,’ Laurence said. ‘But this is better. This is really nowhere.’
I knew a little bit about how the Santanders felt towards Soweto. Claudia had told me during the throes of our affair. It was their first posting in the country, the place they wanted to go to.
Maybe, like Laurence, they wanted to make a difference. But they couldn’t handle the cases that came in all the time. The violence, the extremity of it, was something they’d never seen. On Saturday
nights in the emergency room it was knife-wounds and shotgun blasts and maimings and gougings with broken bottles. ‘Like war,’ Claudia wailed, ‘like big war outside all the time!’ And this was on
top of the usual load of illnesses and accidents that the hospital could barely deal with. After six months or so they asked for a transfer and landed up here.
In a certain sense it was her time in Soweto that led to my affair with Claudia. In the first few weeks after she’d arrived here a woman was rushed in one night. She’d been attacked by a lynch
mob in her village that had stabbed and beaten her and tried to burn her to death for being a witch. Her condition was critical. It was clear that she would die, but we all ran around madly, trying
to do what we could. In the end she did die. An ambulance came from the nearest hospital to take the body away and then afterwards, in the empty anticlimax of the small hours of the night, Claudia
and I were left alone in the office. And suddenly her neutral mask cracked and fell. She started to cry and shake uncontrollably and what was present in the room was all the pent-up months of
horror at what she’d seen in this country for the first time in her life. ‘How can people do like this?’ she cried, ‘how, how?’
I put my arms around her to comfort her, while she sobbed like a little child. I knew, I could feel, where this was coming from. Something in this country had gone too far, something had
snapped. It was like a fury so strong that it had come loose from its moorings. I could only hold her to console her, but then consolation turned to something else. It was very powerful – lust
fuelled by grief. We
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