Paul Christelis is a South African writer living in London. His first novel, Rabbit Season, is published this week by M&GBooks/comPress. Here we excerpt a childhood flashback
The doctor searches all over me, with a magnifying glass, a stethoscope and a small cold hammer.
“Now tell me what this feels like?” and he jabs me.
“Ow! It’s sore!” I want to cry, but I’m being a big boy.
“Well, my little friend, I’ll be darned if I know what’s going on. Peculiar symptoms indeed!” He’s shining a bright light in my eye and looking into my eyeball from all directions.
“It started all of a sudden,” my mother is telling him, “First the rash, then the bruises and the swelling. And tell the doctor what else …”
“My tummy’s sore,” I say. “And my skeleton.”
“Well, I’ll be …” the doctor repeats.
We leave the doctor’s rooms none the wiser. But I’m given a prescription anyway and a doctor’s note excusing me from school for the next week. As Mom and I drive home, I wonder what it will be like, just me and her and Grace alone in the big house. I wish Dad and Mike could see how sick I am, how swollen and purple I’ve grown. Maybe then they would have stayed at home to watch what happens next.
The nights are different now. Grace leaves at six, as she always does, goes into her little room in the backyard and doesn’t come out till morning. Mom and I eat in the kitchen. The lounge table is too big for just the two of us.
“We’re going to have the best fun,” she says. “And before you know it, Mikey will be home and so will Daddy.”
I think something is wrong with her. She doesn’t look at me when she speaks, and she doesn’t call me nice names like “sweetheart” or “precious”. Not even “darling”. Then I wonder: maybe she is sick too. Maybe her bruises and her swelling are on the inside where no one can see them.
After dinner, she puts me to bed with a glass of Coke and some tablets. I swallow the coloured ones, but she holds on to the small white one.
“This is for when you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t go back to sleep.” She puts the tablet in a vial and leaves it next to the radio.
“What does it do?” I ask.
“It will make you go back to sleep and it will make you dream,” she says, tucking me in. The bedsheets scratch my skin. I wince, and she apologises, kisses me on my forehead where her lips activate a fresh wound.
She leaves me to attend to her bath. I listen to the sound of the running water, a constant stream until her hand disturbs the soundtrack with swooshing movements under the tap. The water stops, there’s a silence, and then the sound of her getting into the bath. Some isolated splashing.
I turn on Springbok Radio. The Eyes of Tracy Dark. I don’t really know what it’s about, I just listen to the voices. There’s a girl who is looking for things, solving mysteries. Words like “inspector” and “alibi”. And when they don’t speak, when they’re walking and all you can hear is footsteps, the sound of the water again, swirling down the drainpipe and being swallowed by the ground.
A week later and I am getting worse. My legs and bum are now one huge purple rash and new swellings are appearing on my face and scalp. My stomach and joints are in constant pain.
“Aw! The Chappie is very very sick! Gracie look after him nice.” She presents a peanut butter sandwich and a Coke. But I don’t want either of them, and when she comes in later to check on me, the tray is untouched and I have not budged.
I am taken to see a specialist in town. I sit on his desk, my mother takes off my dressing gown, and he surveys me. Seconds later I’m put back into my gown and the verdict is stated.
“Your son is suffering,” the doctors says (“suffering”, a very grown-up thing to have), “from a very rare condition called Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. Basically, it’s an inflammation of the blood vessels throughout the body, resulting in the rash, swelling and bruises that you see here. Some kidney involvement may be present, but we’ll have to conduct further tests. And there are also gastrointestinal and arthritic symptoms, which your son is experiencing very intensely.”
My mother listens stoically. “How did it start?” she asks.
“There is no known cause. It’s an old disease. There are cases dating back to the 1700s.”
“And treatment?”
“There’s no specific treatment. We’ll have to monitor it as we go along. But this case is severe.” He turns to me for the first time during his speech. “No school for you, my boy. Not for quite some time.”
We leave the consulting room, me with a lollipop and Mom holding a prescription with lots of writing on it.
“What’s ‘severe’?” I ask as we get into the lift.
“It means you are a sick little boy,” she says.
The lift stops on a floor, and when the lift lady draws back the iron gate, an old man is wheeled in by a nurse. His face is so thin that I can see his bones pushing up against his skin. His eyeballs are barely in their sockets, and when the lift gets to the ground floor and shakes upon landing, I fear that the eyes will become dislodged and fall out of his head.
I am a sick little boy. No school for me. Lots of rest.
“Am I going to die, Mommy?”
She kneels down and looks me in the eyes. I can see fine, even though my eyelids are swollen and feel sore when I move them.
“We are going to get better,” she says. “No one is going to die.”
I’m in bed listening to The Chappie Chipmunk’s Club. Mike and I listened to it together everyday. For me, it’s an occasion to dress up. I would slip into my ghost costume and settle on to the carpet with my Coke and a few pieces of Chappies bubblegum. Mike sat at his desk doing his homework while he listened. Even though I’m feeling bad, I manage to get myself into the costume, but my jaw is too sensitive to chew the gum, and my tummy doesn’t want it.
“Chappie! Daddy’s on the phone for you!”
I climb out of bed and walk to the phone in the corridor.
“How’s my little chap? Mommy says you’re very sick.”
I take off the ghost hood so that I can speak clearly.
“I’m almost dead!” I say with some pride.
“You’re going to be just fine! Here, Mike wants to say hello.”
Sound of a phone being passed.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Dad says you’re sick.”
“Severe, thanks.”
“You listening now?”
“Ja. You?”
“Nah. The radio doesn’t work in this room. I’ll see you soon, then,” and he passes the phone back to Dad.
“I’m missing my little chap. Look after Mom while I’m gone, okay. You’re the big boy now.”
“Where are you?”
“In a Holiday Inn.”
“You and Mike on holiday?”
“No. There’s some things I’ve got to do before I come home.” And before I can ask him why he’s taken Mike with him, he says he has to go and we say goodbye.
“Oh my word! Look at granny’s little sausage! All full of bumps and bruises!” She kisses me and puts a couple of colouring-in books on the table.
“My name isn’t sausage any more!” I declare. “It’s Hemlock. Hemlock Shone Line.”
“Darling,” says my perturbed mother, “you can’t call yourself ‘Hemlock’. That’s the name of a poison!” She explains to granny that I have Henoch-Schonlein, and granny says, “Well, I’m sure that’s a very important illness! All your friends must be very jealous!”
Yes, I think. They would be very jealous indeed if they could see me. But I’m stuck at home with no audience. What a waste!