Читать книгу Integrity - Anna Borgeryd - Страница 11

4

‘Are you starting to figure out how money works?’ Cissi asked. They were lunching on baguettes at the only campus coffee shop that was open during the summer.

Vera hesitated. In truth, Cissi was one of the best teachers Vera had ever had, but it felt weird to say so. Instead she said: ‘Definitely more than before, in any case. It’s really interesting. It’s always good to know the history of things.’

Cissi smiled. ‘Well, you’re definitely taking the right course, then. But now you need to tell me why a nurse would suddenly start studying economics.’

Vera looked at Cissi. ‘The short or long version?’

‘The long one, I guess.’

‘I was a volunteer with Basic Needs, in two of the wealthiest countries in the world if you measure wealth in terms of natural resources. The Congo is as big as Western Europe and has huge reserves of minerals, especially the kinds that we need to make computers and other modern electronics. Colombia’s natural environment is fantastic, and they export a huge amount of biomass. Unfortunately, the resources are worth an enormous amount of money.’

‘Huh? What do you mean, ‘unfortunately’?’

‘Because of the market value of the resources, people are willing to use violence to get control of them. I think there are four factions in the Congo, five in Colombia. Ordinary people who just want to live in peace are exposed to violence and suffer from shortages of everything – clean water, food, shelter, healthcare… Those are the people we try to help. In the Congo a lot of people suffer from cholera and are victims of sexual violence. Ironically, we were transferred to Colombia because it became too dangerous to be in the Congo.’

Cissi watched as Vera gently rested her leg on the sofa next to her. ‘Is that where you hurt yourself?’

‘Yeah, but I’m glad I got to see northern Colombia; that’s where we were. It’s so unbelievably beautiful! Have you ever heard of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the world’s highest coastal mountain?’

‘No.’

‘Imagine an area of a few thousand square kilometers that contains all the world’s climates. From coral reefs in the Caribbean to mangrove swamps and rainforests, deserts, steppes and tundra – all because the mountain rises out of the sea to a height of 5,700 meters. The mountaintops are always covered with snow; at the top it is -20 all year round.’

‘Sounds gorgeous!’

‘Yeah, what an experience it was! A completely unique people lives there… Kogi, the only indigenous civilization that still lives as it did before Christopher Columbus.’

‘There are people left that still live like that?’

‘The Kogi have lived on agriculture for thousands of years. They moved higher up into the mountains when the conquistadors came.’

‘And that allowed them to survive?’

Vera heard doubt in Cissi’s voice, and a feeling of sorrow arose in her as she admitted, ‘Many of them died.’ Vera stared down at her tea, remembering. ‘And I got to visit them. It was unreal, because they usually keep to themselves, and it is difficult to find them.’

‘So how did you get to them?’

‘The other people on my team were away doing vaccinations. I was doing inventory in the room where we kept the medicines. Suddenly he just appeared – a long-haired Kogi man dressed in white. He said: “We are in need of you. Can you trust me, please?” I just stared at him. As it turned out, I was forced to wear a blindfold when I went with him.’

The corner of Cissi’s mouth twitched and she mumbled, ‘Secret dream number… 86?’

‘What?’

‘No, but I mean, blindfolded… why?’

‘They don’t want people to be able to find them,’ Vera said simply.

‘But weren’t you scared?’

‘Yes, there was one thing I was afraid of… I usually don’t go out alone on difficult deliveries, and I was afraid that things would go so badly that I would be forced to do a fetal dismemberment.’

‘What? Is that what it sounds like?’ asked Cissi with a grimace.

‘Yeah. I still remember in Kivu, when Pierre had to crush the little head of a fetus that was stuck. But sometimes you have to do it, for everybody involved. I was usually the one who talked to the relatives, and when I had to tell the grandmother… oh, how I cried when I told her…’

‘What?’

‘That the baby was dead and would be buried with his mother, unless we tried to save the mother by breaking the baby’s skull. I can barely even manage to talk about it, and I was afraid that I might also be forced to do it.’

Cissi was pale. ‘I understand. It was the best thing to do given the situation. So it got… stuck to death?’

‘Yeah. But afraid… in Colombia there are lots of things to be afraid of, but I was never afraid of the Kogi. And the man who came to get me because his woman needed help, he was calm, despite the fact that it was urgent. He said he was named “Juan”, which I don’t believe for a second. Juan is a Spanish name, you know, but I just said… “Okay, where are we going, Juan?” And he said, “Al Corazón del Mundo”.’

‘The heart of the world… How lovely; he meant his wife?’

‘Actually, that’s what I thought too, but it wasn’t. I rode for what must have been an hour, blindfolded, on a bony donkey that climbed upwards though the jungle. I was glad when we got to a suspension bridge where he took off the blindfold and let me get off.’ Vera stopped talking and smiled inwardly at the memory. There was a long silence.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Cissi and looked at her, curious.

‘“Your trust is good,” he said. “That is good. Without it, you are alone and an easy target.’” Vera took a bite of her baguette. After a while she continued. ‘From the bridge I was allowed to walk; we continued upwards until we got to a village with round huts. We ran the last bit.’

Cissi swallowed the last bite of her baguette. ‘How were they?’

‘The village midwives had just got the boy out, feet first, just using their hands. It was fantastic.’

‘Was he alive?’

‘Yes, the son was okay. But the mother was bleeding a lot.’

‘Uh-oh… not good…’

‘No, you could say that I got there just in time. Juan translated what I said for the midwives, told them what I wanted to do to save her. They knew what stitches were, and they let me give her anesthesia and stitch her up where she had torn.’

Cissi squirmed like a worm on a hook; her sharp inward breath whistled between her teeth. ‘Did it work?’

‘I managed to stop the bleeding. She survived the evening and the night anyway, and I gave her our best antibiotics. I think she will have survived, so long as nothing unexpected happened.’

She had barely eaten anything and Cissi was finished. Vera took another bite and waved her baguette in the air. ‘This is what happens if you talk all the time!’

‘But the things you’ve gone through! What happened after that?’

‘They were very kind. The next morning Juan came and woke me up; I was supposed to go with his father-in-law. Later, when I got home to Sweden and searched online for information about the Kogi people, I understood that he was their Kogi Mama, shaman and leader. The old man took me to a lookout point and pointed and talked. I stood there – I had just woken up; the sunrise was fantastic… The jungle spread out over majestic mountains, crops far down in the valley and the turquoise ocean all the way at the bottom. And yet, what I remember most is his face… completely lined. You know, beautifully old and dignified, but worried like a child. And I tried to listen. “This is our work, our responsibility,” I think I got about half of what he said, but later I saw a film on the internet, and I understood what he was talking about – From the Heart of the World, The Elder Brothers’ Warning.’

‘El Corazón del Mundo was actually the place?’

‘Yeah. The Kogi say that their Sierra Nevada is the heart of the world, that they are older brothers and the rest of us are ignorant little brothers and sisters. They feel a responsibility to maintain the balance in the world and… protect the river of life, but now they can’t do it alone any more. El corazón enfermo, the mountain that is the heart of the world, is sick. What he pointed at wasn’t the beauty that I first saw; it was spots of bare earth at the foot of the mountain and clear-cut areas that were like sores on the side of the mountain. Since ancient times the Kogi have lived in balance with Mother Earth, but we little brothers and sisters don’t understand anything; we dig her to pieces and destroy her. He said that we live in a new time. And if the mountain dies, then the whole world will die. And she is critically ill; the river of life is weak.’

‘River of life? What was he talking about? Something spiritual?’ Cissi’s big eyes shone.

‘Maybe, but I think he was mainly talking about the water; that’s how I understood it later. When the water doesn’t flow like it should…’

‘I get it,’ Cissi said and looked worried. ‘Climate change. The glaciers are melting; the tundra is drying out, too little water in the rivers.’

‘Yes. Kogi Mama described it as Mother Earth is sick and the world is out of balance. “When death comes to the top of the world, it continues downward too.” And it isn’t just superstition. They have problems with their harvests; they’re finding it harder and harder to feed everyone.’

‘Yeah, it’s scary how dependent we are on one another, how much we influence one other. And them too, even though they’ve tried to hide themselves on a mountain,’ said Cissi thoughtfully.

‘Mmm… When I did some more online research I found a coalition of Indigenous Americans. There was stuff about Koyaanisqatsi, and then everything fell into place. I understood that I had been given a task that morning with the Kogi Mama.’

‘Koyanis… what did you say?’

‘Koyaanisqatsi. It’s a word in Hopi that means life out of balance – an insane, unsustainable lifestyle.’

Cissi considered Vera over her teacup. ‘Oh. You think you got an assignment, a mission?’

‘Kogi Mama asked me, “Little brothers and sisters, what are you doing?”‘

Cissi looked quietly at Vera, thinking, before she finally said, ‘A big question.’

‘Yes. And what we’re doing has to do with money, so now I need to study economics.’

Cissi smiled crookedly, ‘But that clear-cut area he asked about, maybe it was to grow drugs?’

‘Yeah, most likely. Forty years of war, millions of refugees, everything seems to be about controlling the drug trade.’

‘Listen, that guerrilla attack, how did you manage to survive it?’

Vera felt a tingling sensation through her body. How many times had she brooded over all those questions. Did anyone survive? Eliza? Pierre? Stuart? Camilla? Was it a difficult end? Why was I spared? How can I repay the debt?

Vera swallowed. ‘Pure luck. I was in bed, but awake. We girls slept upstairs, and that gave me a little time. I jumped out of the window, hurt my knee, hit my head on the side of the building and fainted. I was found later by some colleagues from town who came when they couldn’t contact us.’ She shivered again, down to the bone. Violent strangers had kidnapped the people who had become her closest friends, and she had lain there, injured and helpless, in the dark, protected by a small tuft of grass.

‘What about the others?’

‘The guerrillas took them. They’re still missing. Maybe dead in the jungle? I don’t know.’ Vera looked down.

Pure luck. And of course Pierre.

Seven weeks after she had come home to Sweden, it was time for a follow-up appointment with the orthopedic specialist. Vera lay barelegged and freezing on the paper-covered bed in the doctor’s office. She looked down at her stiff left leg and then up at the doctor in the white coat.

‘Yes, it’s still quite swollen…’ The 60-year-old man’s hairy fingers squeezed her left knee in practised fashion. He shifted his hands quickly to the right knee, squeezing and comparing it with the left. Then he tried pushing her left knee downwards towards the bed. The pain caused Vera to jerk her right foot beneath her other leg to protect it.

‘Ouch!’

‘Okay, okay. Take it easy. It’s going to be difficult if you don’t let me examine you properly.’

He pulled her right foot out and moved the healthy leg out of the way. ‘What about this direction?’ More carefully this time, he tried to bend Vera’s knee by pushing her lower left leg backwards. That didn’t work either. ‘Are you sure you can’t straighten out your leg or bend it either?’ The doctor looked at her in concern and felt the fluid-filled joint yet again.

‘No, I can’t.’

‘And you’re still using crutches.’ He turned towards the computer screen and read from it. ‘After almost eight weeks?’

Vera heard the doubt in his voice. ‘Yeah, I know, it’s strange. But it’s healing really slowly.’

‘You can stand up. Show me. What happens when you try to walk on it?’

‘I can support myself on it a little bit, like this.’ She stepped cautiously and fumblingly forward on her bent, stiff leg. ‘But I know that it isn’t normal; maybe we need to do an MRI to find out what’s wrong?’

The doctor looked disapprovingly at her.

‘Or maybe laparoscopic surgery?’ she tried, but she could tell by his body language that this wasn’t the right thing to say either. Vera suddenly remembered a messy situation that had occurred about six months ago. The team had been faced with several difficult-to-diagnose patients who had fled from the South. Camilla had pulled her off to the side and warned her against drawing too many of her own conclusions around the doctors. ‘You take care of anesthetics; let them do the diagnosing.’ Then Camilla had whispered kindly, ‘Not because you can’t, but they’ll soon figure it out for themselves; you’ll see.’

‘No, an additional examination is not appropriate at the moment,’ said the doctor firmly.

‘But there’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ pleaded Vera.

He told her to get dressed and turned towards the computer. She wondered what he was writing in her medical records. He ended the appointment with a quick handshake, and his white coat rose on his chest as he sighed. ‘Once the swelling has gone down you’ll be able to move it. You’ll see. I’ll put you down for another visit on November 5th, but my guess is that you won’t need it. I suspect that by then you will have trained the knee and regained stability on your own.’

Vera understood that the doctor was trying to cheer her up. Or, as Pierre used to say in his charming French accent, ‘The foremost duty of a médecin, is to amuse the patient, while she will naturally heal herself.’

But Vera was not amused. The doctor’s decision gave her a sick feeling in her stomach. The fifth of November! She left obediently, staring down at the yellow tape on the vinyl floor that led her to the next stopping point, the well-meaning physical therapist. She gave Vera a sheet of paper containing pedagogically illustrated exercises to do. Vera knew that she couldn’t even do half of them.

Vera was surprised. Her mother usually slept late after a night shift at the nursing home. But today Gunilla had set the table with four kinds of bread, three different sandwich fillings, tea, yoghurt and cereal.

‘How did it go at the psychologist’s?’ asked Gunilla.

‘Oh,’ Vera said evasively, ‘I’m finished with that. Finished working through the trauma.’

‘Are you sure? I agree with Erika. You aren’t yourself at all!’

Erika, Vera’s athletic best friend since school, had graduated from college with a degree in information technology and moved to Sydney. She had come home over the summer with some guy named Tom whom she’d met when she was surfing in the South Pacific. But Vera and Erika had only seen each other twice…

Vera put down her teacup. The memory of her friend’s uncomprehending effort to help her – ‘Come on now! You’re usually bursting with energy!’ – left her with a feeling of emptiness. Vera had thought a lot about the last thing Erika said before she left: ‘Where’s the old Vera?’

‘I noticed that you’ve hardly touched your medicines,’ her mother continued, pushing away her yoghurt bowl. ‘Not the Stilnoct or the one that helps against depression.’ Gunilla sounded reproachful.

Vera sighed. ‘It was nice of you to… get all that stuff for me, but I listen to music to help me sleep.’ They ought to prescribe Fleetwood Mac and Debussy, she thought and continued, ‘I’ve almost stopped having nightmares.’

‘You and your father and your music!’ Gunilla looked at her uncomprehendingly.

I don’t know what I would have done without it.

They were quiet for a minute, then Gunilla asked: ‘What about that course you’re taking? What is it about?’

‘I guess you could say it’s about the development of the modern economy and how to understand it,’ Vera said as she put a piece of bread in the toaster.

‘Economics? Not medicine?’

Vera sighed and refrained from trying to explain, something she had become quite practised at.

Gunilla looked at her daughter. ‘How are you? Are you at least eating enough?’

Vera nodded.

‘This studying, you aren’t borrowing money to finance it, are you?’

Vera shook her head.

‘Well, then you’re going to have to work in the fall, aren’t you?’

‘I’m going to take Economics I in the fall.’

A deep frown formed between Gunilla’s eyebrows, and Vera quickly added, ‘But I’m happy to work extra in the evenings and on weekends.’ She had been planning to do that anyway. Even if she usually didn’t need much money, you couldn’t live on nothing, and she hated being financially dependent on other people.

‘Uh-huh. Since you’re going to be in town anyway, do you want me to check if they need help at Solbacka?’ Gunilla wondered.

‘Yeah, sure, do that. But don’t promise anything, because what if I’m not better in the fall?’ She gently felt her left knee.

‘Of course you’ll be fine in the fall! If your knee were really that bad then they would have operated on it right away; you know that! You just have to stick it out, and then you can start working, and well… everything will go back to normal. You’ll see.’

Vera was almost finished eating when Gunilla finally forced out the question that she badly wanted answered. ‘What really happened between you and Adam when you came home in May?’

The food in her mouth seemed to expand; Vera caught her breath and couldn’t look up.

Gunilla gripped her hand comfortingly. ‘You know, Eva and Krister were down visiting him, and he is really sad. Eva called just to say that he really misses you. He wants everything to be back to normal again.’ Gunilla tried to catch Vera’s eye. ‘Just remember, however bleak things seem, he loves you.’

Vera took a deep breath. Yes, that felt like the truth. Despite everything that had happened, she knew that Adam loved her.

But what she said each time he contacted her was the only thing that she was sure she felt: I just don’t have the energy to see you at the moment.