For four days Mish sat in the bay window of her new apartment in Cape Town looking with hardened intensity at the great glistening bowl of the city that swept away to the harbor below. Her job at the hospital did not begin until October 10th.
It had been raining almost all the time, but on Tuesday a wind off the Atlantic ripped open the clouds and the sun came out again, heating the moist air instantly. Mish looked cautiously down on the silvery roofs below the apartment and decided to go for a walk.
It couldn’t rain forever. And a lot of the roofs below were flat. Winter in South Africa was summer above the equator. “North of the equator,” she reminded herself, thinking again of the globes she had seen mounted upside-down in the airport shop.
Her teacup had gone cold. She walked it over to the kitchenette and went to put on a sweater and her raincoat, checking her hair in the hallway mirror before she went out. It had grown in the month since she had left SF General—she would need to cut it again before she reported to Red Cross Children’s here. She had a lopsided mouth, lips thin on one side, full on the other. Her eyes were narrow and dark.
Things were always hard after you first relocated. But usually she could count on the tension and activity of O/R work to guide her back to normal. Life in an operating room had a way of demanding your attention. It was because she had not been able to go immediately to work that she felt so uneasy.
In a way the hills that sloped up to the flat rimrocked highland above Cape Town reminded Mish of the steep streets in San Francisco she had walked with Mark. Well, not really. She dragged the heavy wooden door shut behind her and worked the key. Table Mountain, the most distinctive feature of this city, loomed behind. What did you have in San Francisco? Twin Peaks and the Sutro communications tower. And Mark. She knew she should give him a call.
There were so many people in the world. Over six billion souls on this rain filled day in South Africa, with millions more being made each week, hundreds of thousands each day, and here she was. Mish knew it had to be some sort of search for meaning that always made her leave. It was Mark this time. Before that Eddie, before that Jonathan. She found her vision reach longingly to probe the growing group of pedestrians who were emerging after the rain let up, searching each passing face for someone who looked more like him, like any of her former lovers.
On the sidewalk ahead an ancient homeless person was still holding cardboard over his head, although it had stopped raining. He raised a bent shoulder, bent elbow, crooked wrist and hand imploringly to the sky. “Reënboog.” Mish reached to her pocket, wondering how much she should give. Then she looked. The street and the buildings opened to the same downhill view as she had seen from the apartment. Only now color was everywhere. It was a sweep of spectrum so broad and brilliant that it seemed to be a part of the air.
“Oh…Rainbow!” she said, getting it. She looked back at the man. He was not as old as she had first thought, but he was pitifully thin, with dirty, starved skin, his smiling mouth studded with broken teeth. “Ja. Jaah!” he said, and the two of them laughed as they shared the revelation of the mutual translation.
“Please,” Mish said, selecting one of the colored notes from her pocket and pressing it into the man’s grasp. He took the money without shame or thanks. “So many people in the world,” she thought again. Her mantra. It meant something different each time.
“Pardon me, Miss.” The voice came from nearby, and Mish raised her eyes to focus on a well-dressed Indian man. “I wonder if you really meant to give this old bergie such a handsome present.” She blinked, calculating. It was about five bucks. “Well, yes, I think so,” she said.
“You really shouldn’t give such money to the poor,” the man continued disapprovingly. “It just encourages them. “I wanted to,” Mish flashed. What business was it of his?
“It’s not as though the rainbow is his personal attraction,” the passerby said. “Actually, they’re quite common here. The humidity, the high water particle count in the air here makes them quite spectacular.”
He laughed and patted the man’s shoulder through the thin blue-checked fabric of his short-sleeved shirt. “Geluk, Broer!” The condescension of the gesture angered Mish almost as much as its familiarity surprised her. “Thank you for showing me the rainbow,” she said to the figure seated on the pavement. She turned deliberately downhill, dismissing the other man. “Thank you for your concern.”
“Oh, pardon me again. I didn’t mean to tease. It was by way of saying, ‘Welcome to South Africa…’ It was easy to see that you are new to the city. Not many here would wear a woolen sweater in this season. The United States, is it?”
“No, I live in Cape Town now.” Mish chewed down on the right side of her lip. “I work at the hospital.” She turned, relieved to see that he had stopped several steps back. He was tall, with dark brown skin the same color as his eyes, exaggeratedly handsome features—a wide strong jaw, curved nose, wavy black hair.
“Oh ho. That’s interesting. Red Cross Children’s, I assume.”
“That’s right. How did you know that?”
“Just a good guess. It’s a coincidence. My mother and I are in the medical business as well. I happen to know that Children’s is quite involved in the international exchange programs.”
“Actually, I’m supposed to report to the Senior Theatre Sister on October 10th,” Mish admitted, remembering the letter. “I thought it would be nice to come to South Africa early, to see more of the country before I began work. So far, I’m afraid most of what I’ve seen is rain.”
He seemed impressed. “The Senior Sister, is it. You must be highly recommended. What is your specialty?”
It was sometimes hard for Mish to explain. “None, really. I’ve worked on a lot of procedures. I like learning new things. I guess I like open-heart. Cape Town has a great tradition, of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated, somewhat ironically. “Of course, things have changed a lot since Dr. Barnard did his transplant these many years ago.” He seemed about to continue, then held back. Instead he offered a soft and solicitous handshake.
“Srinivasa Kasumarti,” he said. “Please call me Srini.” She smiled at the obvious pride with which he spoke his name, thought it odd that he would instead be willing to accept a tinkly, almost childish substitute. A little like me, Mish realized. “Michelle Berghoff,” she said.
She could feel the signs already.
It was not that Mish had ever been unfaithful, except for once. Actually she had stayed friends with almost all her old boyfriends, except for one. She would always call the relationship off as soon as she sensed it was going to happen, except for with Mark.
“Is there someplace we could go for a cup of tea?” she asked Srini.
Mish found she was pleased that she had not succeeded in getting rid of Srini. After half-an-hour in a small restaurant nearby she had learned fifty times as much about the city of Cape Town and its inhabitants as she had previously known. Srini had a sharp sense of humor.
“It’s truly a new era for South Africa, Mish,” he told her. “Today you’ll find Cape Town’s citizens take great pride in living in the city in which President Mandela was incarcerated for so many years. It’s very remarkable.” Mish rocked in her wooden chair with amusement. The realtor who had shown her the apartment had taken pains to point out the location of the not-visible prison island off the coast.
“How long have you lived in this country?” she asked. “A long time?”
“Ja, it seems like a very long time indeed,” Srini said. “All of my life. Last month I turned thirty-one.” That meant he was almost the same age as Mish.
“I keep telling myself it’s a prime number,” she said sympathetically. “That must be how you know so much about Red Cross Children’s—you were born there, weren’t you?”
Srini looked thoughtful. “No. Actually, the fact that my mother did not go to Red Cross maternity to give birth is a large part of the reason I know a thing or two about it. Even today, in our part of the city at least, most women do not check in to hospital for delivery.”
It was hard to imagine two people with such different stories. Mish’s eyes sparkled as she listened to Srini describe growing up shirtless in the central section of Cape Town. “You have a nice shirt on now,” she observed. “Oh, Mish,” he said. “I’m not complaining. I’ve been very fortunate. The medical supplies business has been good to me. Now what about you?”
“I’m a butterfly,” Mish admitted with her lopsided smile, and it hurt as she said it. It was Mark who had called her that. “It isn’t that I don’t care, but something makes me keep trying to change things, and if I can’t change things, I wake up and find myself on a plane to somewhere else. It’s weird.”
“I wonder if that’s why you became a nurse, as well,” Srini said perceptively. It was true. After school she had found right away that she could sign up for these yearly contracts in different cities—so far Chattanooga, Toronto, Seville Spain, San Francisco. It was a great way to stay current, learn more about people, see the world. But she could also see it was a way to avoid long-term plans, hold her relationships at a distance.
“That’s not exactly what I mean,” Srini pursued. “Sometimes in a strange way becoming a healer can shield a person from caring as much, I think.” Mish thought about it. How many lives had she helped save during her work in O/R? Hundreds, for sure. But how many of those patients had she ever seen again?
“Maybe,” she said. “Results, though. That’s what counts.” She leaned closer toward him, tilting her nearly empty teacup. Such a serious guy. She liked it better when he was funny.
“That’s just what my mother would say.” Srini spoke with resignation. “If you have the time you should stop by and meet my mother.”
Mish made a joke herself. “This is a little sudden, don’t you think? Maybe we should just live together for a while first. My apartment is right up the street.” She gave Srini her best look, her lips full and open, her eyes aiming straight into his.
At first he didn’t understand. Then he got it and he blushed warmly, embarrassment radiating from his dark features. Mish didn’t look away, though it was all she could do to keep from biting down the side of her mouth again. “Ja, that’s right. You’re an American,” he said finally. Now Mish turned red herself in response to the man’s categorical dismissal. “I simply meant that you would enjoy meeting Dr. Pranhil Kasumarti, my mother. She runs a small community ‘kliniek’ near here.”
A few city blocks away a sign lettered in red on white advertised “K MART Medical Supplies--S. Kasumarti, Proprietor”. Beneath it a showcase held a folding wheelchair draped with a blue cotton blanket, a pair of wooden crutches leaned artistically against it, as if desirable luxuries were being purveyed. Mish touched Srini’s arm reassuringly. “Cool,” she said. She felt him move clumsily closer.
Next to Srini’s shop was the Good Hope Clinic, a windowless storefront with an awning from which raindrops still dripped. Mish let him guide her through the door to a waiting room inside. Patients sat stoically on benches along the walls, some murmuring without sound, some supporting their heads with arms braced on knees. There were no magazines, only the dimmest light.
Srini’s mother, wearing a white lab coat buttoned tight over a pink and purple silk sari, soon appeared, a plump woman with hair pulled behind her head, a beaked nose, severe eyes circled deep. “We do things somewhat differently from the private hospitals here,” she said after Srini had introduced Mish. Mish had the immediate impression of a woman who was working far too hard. "To this day,” Pranhil Kasumarti declaimed, “Red Cross Children’s will not permit an abortion to be performed at their premises—not for any reason, whatsoever!”
“Mother.” Srini spoke gently. “Mish is not responsible for the sins and policies of the past. I brought her here because I am proud of what you have accomplished. I hope you can show her a little bit of your work.”
“There are simply too many people in the world to continue as we have.” Dr. Kasumarti said darkly, turning away from her son. Her imperious wrist-up gesture simultaneously selected an emaciated black woman and her small child from the gloom of the waiting room and directed them to the rear of the clinic. “Perhaps some practical experience, then, Sister,” she said to Mish. “In there you will find an extra gown. You can wash here. Please join us there as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be fine,” Mish told Srini, a little uncertainly. I’ll see you later, she promised him with her eyes. “Thank you. Are there any files on the patient?” she asked the doctor. The Indian woman wagged her head dismissively. “We have seen this woman only a time or two before. I’ll explain as we go, Mish. Please hurry.”
Here could be the work she wanted that would let Mish leave the United States, California, San Francisco, and Mark behind. She put on the medical smock hastily and rejoined doctor and patient. The doctor had laid her hand against the forehead of the listless woman. “A noticeable fever,” she reported. “Open your mouth, please.” She pulled a glass-rod thermometer from a beaker of disinfectant, wiped it and pushed it past the woman’s lips. “Tell me, Sister. What do you see?”
What Mish saw was the child. The boy was around three or four, dressed in a pair of striped cotton shorts, responding to her notice with some fear. Mish knelt, making a soothing pattern with her hands. She found herself trying to smile and gnaw at her lip simultaneously. “Is it HIV?”
“Very likely.” The doctor separated the woman’s arms from her sides and began to probe deep into the hollows beneath her skinny shoulders. The glass thermometer jerked upward as the doctor palpated swollen lymph glands. “This is good, though. A lot of normal immune activity. With our help she will survive this current disease.”
But the next one? Mish swallowed again. So many people. She reached a finger forward and poked it slyly against the child’s belly where it protruded from beneath his colored T-shirt. He exploded with a giggle and bumped happily toward her. Mish shared a look with the other two women.
We have this in common, she thought to herself, and she realized, as she did each time, that in some mutable, changing way this was the same discovery she had made a hundred times before. We all die. We all can have some joy. We have a choice to care.
February, 1998
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