Rushing to Paradise. Rivka Galchen

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      ‘Of course not!’ Dr Barbara seemed genuinely puzzled by Neil. ‘Their minds were already dead, they’d given up long before. Only their bodies were alive, covered with sores and ulcers. All I did was put their bodies to rest.’

      ‘Then you did …’

      ‘Neil …’ Dr Barbara smiled at him indulgently. ‘Doctors have to do a lot of things that people would rather not know about. Some of these patients were only minutes away from their deaths, but cruelly the clock had stopped. I merely started it again for them. Old women deserve special care, they’re not looked after as gently as old men. Think of them – exhausted, incontinent, riddled with cancers, only able to breathe sitting up, crying out with pain if you even touched them. What I did, I did openly, because I knew it was right. Even the judge didn’t dare send me to prison …’

      As if tired of having to justify herself to this moralistic teenager, Dr Barbara turned to the bouquets lying on the table by the television set. Beyond the chrysanthemums and gladioli was a visionary kingdom of her own, filtered through the scented petals, where she could walk untainted by any moral opprobrium and where the albatross would forever fly above her head. A film of moisture, as pale as hope, ran from her high forehead to the tip of her strong nose.

      ‘I’ve made you famous, Neil.’ She pointed to the childishly scrawled messages. ‘They all love you.’

      Neil flexed his numbed foot, counting his toes under the sheet. ‘They’d love me even more if I died – that would really save the albatross, doctor.’

      ‘Neil …’ Dr Barbara shook her head at this mischievous sally. ‘Think how proud your father would have been. You do remember him?’

      ‘All the time. It’s my mother who’s trying to forget him – that’s why she’s …’

      ‘Drawing away from you a little? You can understand that. In bereavement there’s a time to remember and a time to forget. Sometimes they’re the same thing. When does she expect you in Atlanta?’

      ‘Next month. But I might stay on here for a while.’

      ‘Well, we leave in three weeks, Neil. You’ll have to decide. Kimo and I want you to come with us. We need someone your age who’ll encourage other young people to join the sanctuary. In time they’ll take over from us. It’s not a crusade but a great relay race. Will you come?’

      ‘Well … there might be a nuclear test. I’ll have to think about it.’

      ‘Good. I’ve always depended on you, Neil. When you’re older we’ll be very close …’

      This unveiled threat, uttered in a quietly confident tone, floated through Neil’s mind during his days of convalescence at the swimming-pool. When he left the hospital, blushing through the crowd of teasing nurses, Dr Barbara drove him in the jeep to his rooming house, but she set off immediately for the docks. There were stores to be loaded aboard the Dugong, cabins and the galley to be equipped, satellite communications gear to be installed.

      Neil promised vaguely that he would help, but he had secretly decided not to join the expedition. Television and press reporters were already visiting the shrimp-trawler in Honolulu harbour, describing in provocative detail the preparations for the ecological sea-raid on a military outpost of the French colonial empire. The Defence Ministry in Paris neither confirmed nor denied that nuclear tests were to re-start on Saint-Esprit, but warned that any unauthorized vessel entering the exclusion zone would be boarded and seized.

      Neil returned to a quixotic mission of his own, the marathon swim across the Kaiwi Channel. The months in hospital had softened the muscles of his legs and shoulders, and his first twenty lengths in the university pool left him too exhausted to climb from the shallow end. Weeks of intense body-building and pool practice would be needed to return him to fitness. Rising at six, determined to work himself back to a hundred lengths a day, he tried not to think of Dr Barbara, Saint-Esprit or the albatross.

      But memories of the disbarred physician and her passionate breath tugged like the waking nerves in his injured foot, distracting him as he mapped the currents of the Kaiwi Channel on the U.S. Navy charts. Curious to see her before she sailed, and aware that he might never meet her again, he decided to drive to the harbour to say his goodbyes. The revelation that she had killed her elderly patients lay in the back of his mind like an old newspaper in an attic, fading in a moral climate that took a more tolerant view of euthanasia and, tacitly, even approved of the process. Few of her new-found admirers had lost faith in her or stepped back for a moment to ponder her multiple murders. Paris-Match now lauded the transformation of ‘Dr Death’ into ‘Dr Life’. All lives were precious, but the albatross and manatee now outranked the lowly human being.

      Moreover, Neil knew, he missed Dr Barbara, her strong will and her disconcerting coarseness and affection. He remembered how she bullied him during the voyage to Saint-Esprit, while her fingers forever ran across his chest, reading the braille of some invisible desire in his urgent skin. He thought of the thuggish French marines with their rubber truncheons, and wondered how to dissuade her from sailing to the atoll.

      On the first Sunday after leaving the hospital he parked the jeep near the harbour and hid himself among the strolling tourists. The Dugong was moored beyond the inter-island ferry station, high bows already pointing towards the open sea. On a steel platform below the bridge a satellite dish cupped the sky. A military staff car stood on the quay, and men in camouflage fatigues climbed the gangway.

      Neil limped forward, pushing between the tourists. He hoped that the American government, under pressure from the French, had decided to impound the vessel before it could set sail. But when he reached the staff car he found a driver with a bandit moustache and shaven head lounging behind the wheel. Transfers of a dugong, manatee and great white shark were stuck to his neck, and a rondel on the door was emblazoned with ‘Wild-Water Kingdom Inc. Live and Love—an Irving Boyd Planetary Project’.

      Neil approached the gangway, stepping past a dozen crates packed with tents and camping equipment, cartons of macrobiotic and vegetarian food, a portable ocean of bottled mineral water, camera lights and silver umbrellas. Gazing calmly upon all this from the bridge was Captain Wu, the Hong Kong Chinese skipper, a small, trim figure in white shorts, knee-length socks and peaked cap. Beside him was the philanthropist and software genius, pale eyes taking in every detail through his over-large spectacles. He noticed Neil standing uncertainly at the foot of the gangway and gave a gentle wave, like an absent-minded pope extending his benediction.

      ‘Neil, don’t fall in!’ Dr Barbara stepped from the cabin below the bridge. She waited by the gangway and caught his arm when his numbed foot missed a worn rubber cleat. She pulled him onto the deck, surprised but glad to see him, weighing the stronger muscles of his arms like a farmer’s wife pleased with the growth of a prize bullock.

      ‘Neil, we’ve all missed you. Are you coming with us?’

      ‘Dr Barbara, I wanted to—’

      ‘Good. I knew you would.’ Dr Barbara stood back and then embraced him fiercely, strong hands searching his rib-cage and shoulder blades, reassuring herself that the bones of old still lay within the newly confident muscle. ‘We couldn’t have gone without you.’

      ‘Dr Barbara …’ Neil wiped her gaudy lipstick from his forehead. ‘What about the French navy? They’re waiting for you …’

      ‘Don’t worry! There’s a new wind blowing.’ She consulted her roster. ‘We’ll find a cabin for you later, but first I want you СКАЧАТЬ