‘Hello, Mr Woods. You not in bed yet?’
‘Look, could you come round at once? And bring serum – for a krait bite.’
‘Who’s been bitten?’ The question came so sharply it was like a small explosion in my ear.
‘No one. No one yet. But Harry Pope’s in bed and he’s got one lying on his stomach – asleep under the sheet on his stomach.’
For about three seconds there was silence on the line. Then speaking slowly, not like an explosion now but slowly, precisely, Ganderbai said, ‘Tell him to keep quite still. He is not to move or to talk. Do you understand?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll come at once!’ He rang off and I went back to the bed-room. Harry’s eyes watched me as I walked across to his bed.
‘Ganderbai’s coming. He said for you to lie still,’
‘What in God’s name does he think I’m doing!’
‘Look, Harry, he said no talking. Absolutely no talking Either of us.’
‘Why don’t you shut up then?’ When he said this, one side of his mouth started twitching with rapid little downward movements that continued for a while after he finished speaking. I took out my handkerchief and very gently I wiped the sweat off his face and neck, and I could feel the slight twitching of the muscle – the one he used for smiling – as my fingers passed over it with the handkerchief.
I slipped out to the kitchen, got some ice from the ice-box, rolled it up in a napkin, and began to crush it small. That business of the mouth, I didn’t like that. Or the way he talked, either. I carried the ice pack back to the bedroom and laid it across Harry’s forehead.
‘Keep you cool.’
He screwed up his eyes and drew breath sharply through his teeth. ‘Take it away,’ he whispered. ‘Make me cough.’ His smiling-muscle began to twitch again.
The beam of a headlamp shone through the window as Ganderbai’s car swung around to the front of the bungalow I went out to meet him, holding the ice pack with both hands.
‘How is it?’ Ganderbai asked, but he didn’t stop to talk; he walked on past me across the balcony and through the screen doors into the hall. ‘Where is he? Which room?’
He put his bag down on a chair in the hall and followed me into Harry’s room. He was wearing soft-soled bedroom slippers and he walked across the floor noiselessly, delicately like a careful cat. Harry watched him out of the sides of his eyes. When Ganderbai reached the bed he looked down at Harry and smiled, confident and reassuring, nodding his head to tell Harry it was a simple matter and he was not to worry but just to leave it to Dr Ganderbai. Then he turned and went back to the hall and I followed him.
‘First thing is to try to get some serum into him,’ he said, and he opened his bag and started to make preparations, ‘Intravenously. But I must do it neatly. Don’t want to make him flinch.’
We went into the kitchen and he sterilized a needle. He had a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a small bottle in the other and he stuck the needle through the rubber top of the bottle and began drawing a pale yellow liquid up into the syringe by pulling out the plunger. Then he handed the syringe to me.
‘Hold that till I ask for it.’
He picked up the bag and together we returned to the room. Harry’s eyes were bright now and wide open. Ganderbai bent over Harry and very cautiously, like a man handling sixteenth-century lace, he rolled up the pyjama sleeve to the elbow without moving the arm. I noticed he stood well away from the bed.
He whispered, ‘I’m going to give you an injection. Serum Just a prick but try not to move. Don’t tighten your stomach muscles. Let them go limp.’
Harry looked at the syringe.
Ganderbai took a piece of red rubber tubing from his bag and slid one end under and up and around Harry’s biceps; then he tied the tubing tight with a knot. He sponged a small area of the bare forearm with alcohol, handed the swab to me and took the syringe from my hand. He held it up to the light, squinting at the calibrations, squirting out some of the yellow fluid. I stood still beside him, watching. Harry was watching too and sweating all over his face so it shone like it was smeared thick with face cream melting on his skin and running down on to the pillow.
I could see the blue vein on the inside of Harry’s forearm, swollen now because of the tourniquet, and then I saw the needle above the vein, Ganderbai holding the syringe almost flat against the arm, sliding the needle in sideways through the skin into the blue vein, sliding it slowly but so firmly it went in smooth as into cheese. Harry looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes and opened them again, but he didn’t move.
When it was finished Ganderbai leaned forward putting his mouth close to Harry’s ear. ‘Now you’ll be all right even if you are bitten. But don’t move. Please don’t move. I’ll be back in a moment.’
He picked up his bag and went out to the hall and I followed.
‘Is he safe now?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘How safe is he?’