I’m powerless, either to close my eyes or to avert them, as a slight indentation appears in the skin of my left forearm. The compulsion to watch the irrevocable action that can end my life in inescapable agony is irresistible, not to mention unavoidable. The anaesthetic sedative in my system has induced paralysis of my limbs and a sensation of drowsiness, of exaggerated slow motion. The minute tube has passed through the sparse downiness onto the warmly tanned surface. The pressure increases; the tiny depression suddenly pops up level again. I don’t feel a thing.
The proboscis of the tsetse fly has penetrated the epidermal layer, an injection achieving inoculation of its protozoa into the subcutaneous tissue - instant access to the capillaries carrying my life blood. The infection will quickly move into my lymphatic system, later into my blood stream, subsequently crossing into my central nervous system and invading my brain, leading inevitably, over a period of months, to my death. Unquestionably and irrevocably, I am doomed to a seriously disagreeable future.
After several seconds, the tsetse’s tiny tube withdraws. The murderous act is complete. It could be a few weeks before the first symptoms will manifest; extreme lethargy, headaches, itchiness, fevers, joint pains. My half-brother, Eustace, will easily ensure no medical assistance reaches me. Helplessly under his control I will, within a few months - weeks perhaps - be dead. And no one will ever know how, or at whose hand, if indeed at anyone’s hand, I contracted the infection. Yet another of his devious schemes.
As I abruptly switch my fascinated gaze, I notice that my aspiring and, judging by the dew on his brow, actually perspiring, assassin has been watching as intently as have I, but for a markedly different reason. Unless I can access appropriate medical treatment, ideally in the next few hours, I will enter a protracted period of wastage of body and brain before dying a very unpleasant death. Eustace, bastard-with-murderous-intent that he is, will inherit the £37,000,000and the covetable Gloucestershire acreage bequeathed to me by our mutual progenitor in a highly complex testamentary jest, a testamentary technicality cottoned onto by the misanthropic, murderous misogynist now standing over me as, with rubber-gloved hands, he meticulously, if somewhat nervously, removes the innocent instrument of his lethal intent and returns it to the security of my lab in the next room.
It isn’t really about the money; I feel an inward smile begin as the cliché crosses my mind. Of course, it is. It all arises from the unfortunate quirk of character that for some twenty years has motivated one potential premeditated murder after another – all so cleverly conceived, concealed and planned that, up to now, although I’ve frustrated his many moves, the bastard, (yes, the epithet is genetically applicable) has, due to the remote isolation of my medical practice, defied legal detection of his multiple homicidal schemes. This time, as in times past, Eustace has erred in one, perhaps slightly obscure, detail. Slightly obscure maybe; but it should not have escaped him. Once again, I will thwart my brother’s plan and continue to head the line of familial succession.
It is, our paternal grandfather claims, a long and honourable line, dating back to Henry, a fifteenth century yeoman freeholder. Our ancestor found favour with the local aristocracy and minor royalty when he provided shelter and soldiery during Owain Glyndwr’s Rebellion, as it fluctuated across the length and breadth of Wales, just over the nearby border, against the dominant and domineering English military and the Celtic collaborators and turncoats. Over the more recent century, our forebears have favoured the medical profession while preserving and enhancing the fabled family fortunes.
My inheriting of that £37,000,000, along with the title to a substantial Gloucestershire acreage, ‘in fee simple absolute in possession along with all buildings (actually a small village) forestry appurtenances and livestock domestic and indigenous thereon and therein at the relevant date extant’, to paraphrase while preserving the legal profession’s obsessive abhorrence of punctuation, is dependent on one particular conditional clause in our eccentric grandfather’s will.
The will, Gramps told us, by-passes our father who, in any case, a couple of decades ago disappeared somewhere in the Congo basin with his beautiful blonde partner-in-adultery, mother to my half-brother of murderous intent. Instead it leaves me the whole shebang, provided that, at the time of his death (grandfather’s that is) I am a registered voter on the relevant electors’ register of our home parish and also physically present, at least at the estate if not actually in his presence, at the moment of his passing. Oh, and the estate must be my registered home address.
So perhaps that inward smile, as I come around from the mild sedative my brother slipped into my dinner wine to keep me passive during his homicidal ministrations, is not quite as rueful as it might be. Contrary to his optimistic belief that I am irrevocably separated from the nearest source of medical assistance and supplies by some thousand miles of Africa’s second longest (but deepest) river, I already have the solution tucked away in the loft space above my rooms in the house (and clinic) we both occupy close to the never-ending flow of the Lualaba into the main Congo river.
It’s a small glass bottle containing pentamidine 300mg solution. Not much but, with my additional two years training in, and several years practical experience of tropical medicine, I am adequately equipped to deal with my present, potentially painful predicament. Something Eustace had no way of knowing when laying his plans. Of course, like everyone else for a thousand miles around, he’s aware of the tsetse fly’s predisposition to the innocent transmission of Trypanosomiasis; though he, like the majority of the sparse native populace, knows it only as African Sleeping Sickness. But he didn’t follow me into med school, so he’s unaware of the appropriate antidotally-applicable treatment. He’s also unaware that the monthly supply boat brings me a new stock of the short-shelf-life lifesaver. My insurance policy.
Because I witnessed, albeit unwillingly, the altogether natural behaviour of that tiny tsetse as it introduced its deadly dose to my subcutaneous tissue, I know I must inject the pentamidine before the dreaded protozoa has time to reach my central nervous system. I’m a jump ahead of the game.
For game it is. We both know - and each knows the other knows he knows – it’s been going on for years. Move and counter-move in what, until now I’ve enjoyed, aberrantly I suppose, as a pleasurable gamble. To Eustace it’s an altogether more desperate fixation: the stakes – the estate plus capital (aggregate a mere fifty or so million sterling) against my life, a life in which my greatest highs have come, and continue to come, when I thwart yet another of my brother’s murderous moves. It was a few years after our grandfather’s disclosure of the contents of his will, and the realisation of Eustace’s obsession, that the cynical nature of Gramps’ testamentary terminology struck me as an expression of his wayward perversity, his distorted sense of humour.
***
An hour or so later, the sedative has worn off. Eustace has gone to his room, I retrieve the pentamidine from the loft. I’ll do it now. I know I’ll have to deal with the extensive side effects of the drug, but that’s not a major problem. I realise how tired I am of our deadly duel of wits. I make up my mind how, when and where I’ll terminate the tragi-comedy in which I’ve been a leading player through all these pathetic years.
He’ll have to go …
It shouldn’t be difficult. Where I practise my profession, just downstream from the confluence where the Lualaba, one of its many tributaries, feeds into the Congo River, the turbulent white water often conceals the high density of crocodiles and hippos. Then, mercenary medic that I am, I’ll return to living in the Gloucestershire countryside, home of my childhood, watching and waiting as Gramps quietly lives out his final years … or months … or … Well, I suppose that decision is within my purview, too. Hmmm. Perhaps too obvious. I can wait, just a little longer.
Now, where did I put that pentamidine phial? Swab? Syringe?
Damn, I’ve dropped it.
MY GOD, IT’S SMASHED!
I’m powerless, either to close my eyes or to avert them, as those few ccs of liquid lifesaver spread slowly at my feet ……
Damn you, Eustace, you murdering bastard. You needn’t have done this. I always intended you to have a cut. You’ve finally won. You’ll get the lot. The bloody jackpot. May you rot in Hell. What’s that? … I rush to the window … our river launch is already pulling away from the jetty … out into the powerful Congo current … Damn him, he’s had this planned all along and I’ve missed it. By the
time Eustace reaches Gloucestershire, that tsetse’s protozoa will have done their job.
I walk up the riverside track to where the waters tumultuously merge – a scene of violence and thundering noise that has enthralled me for over two decades. There’s a substantial sandbank sheltering a stretch of calmer water; several crocs snoozing on the sand as well as half a dozen ostensibly lounging lazily on the bank ahead of me. They’re big brutes; some of them’ll be hungry, I expect.
I approach noisily. One by one they slip away into the water. From the very edge I watch them as they haul out onto the sandbank and turn, watching me. Their eyes are quite large, you know. They don’t blink like we do. I suddenly feel stupid as I kick off my boots. There’s a big one still in the water, sinking lower, holding against the sheltered backwater current with a few swings of his massive tail. Suddenly his whole body explodes into a powering, thrusting drive, up towards me. I dive straight at him. … he’ll get my head first …
The proboscis of the tsetse fly has penetrated the epidermal layer, an injection achieving inoculation of its protozoa into the subcutaneous tissue - instant access to the capillaries carrying my life blood. The infection will quickly move into my lymphatic system, later into my blood stream, subsequently crossing into my central nervous system and invading my brain, leading inevitably, over a period of months, to my death. Unquestionably and irrevocably, I am doomed to a seriously disagreeable future.
After several seconds, the tsetse’s tiny tube withdraws. The murderous act is complete. It could be a few weeks before the first symptoms will manifest; extreme lethargy, headaches, itchiness, fevers, joint pains. My half-brother, Eustace, will easily ensure no medical assistance reaches me. Helplessly under his control I will, within a few months - weeks perhaps - be dead. And no one will ever know how, or at whose hand, if indeed at anyone’s hand, I contracted the infection. Yet another of his devious schemes.
As I abruptly switch my fascinated gaze, I notice that my aspiring and, judging by the dew on his brow, actually perspiring, assassin has been watching as intently as have I, but for a markedly different reason. Unless I can access appropriate medical treatment, ideally in the next few hours, I will enter a protracted period of wastage of body and brain before dying a very unpleasant death. Eustace, bastard-with-murderous-intent that he is, will inherit the £37,000,000and the covetable Gloucestershire acreage bequeathed to me by our mutual progenitor in a highly complex testamentary jest, a testamentary technicality cottoned onto by the misanthropic, murderous misogynist now standing over me as, with rubber-gloved hands, he meticulously, if somewhat nervously, removes the innocent instrument of his lethal intent and returns it to the security of my lab in the next room.
It isn’t really about the money; I feel an inward smile begin as the cliché crosses my mind. Of course, it is. It all arises from the unfortunate quirk of character that for some twenty years has motivated one potential premeditated murder after another – all so cleverly conceived, concealed and planned that, up to now, although I’ve frustrated his many moves, the bastard, (yes, the epithet is genetically applicable) has, due to the remote isolation of my medical practice, defied legal detection of his multiple homicidal schemes. This time, as in times past, Eustace has erred in one, perhaps slightly obscure, detail. Slightly obscure maybe; but it should not have escaped him. Once again, I will thwart my brother’s plan and continue to head the line of familial succession.
It is, our paternal grandfather claims, a long and honourable line, dating back to Henry, a fifteenth century yeoman freeholder. Our ancestor found favour with the local aristocracy and minor royalty when he provided shelter and soldiery during Owain Glyndwr’s Rebellion, as it fluctuated across the length and breadth of Wales, just over the nearby border, against the dominant and domineering English military and the Celtic collaborators and turncoats. Over the more recent century, our forebears have favoured the medical profession while preserving and enhancing the fabled family fortunes.
My inheriting of that £37,000,000, along with the title to a substantial Gloucestershire acreage, ‘in fee simple absolute in possession along with all buildings (actually a small village) forestry appurtenances and livestock domestic and indigenous thereon and therein at the relevant date extant’, to paraphrase while preserving the legal profession’s obsessive abhorrence of punctuation, is dependent on one particular conditional clause in our eccentric grandfather’s will.
The will, Gramps told us, by-passes our father who, in any case, a couple of decades ago disappeared somewhere in the Congo basin with his beautiful blonde partner-in-adultery, mother to my half-brother of murderous intent. Instead it leaves me the whole shebang, provided that, at the time of his death (grandfather’s that is) I am a registered voter on the relevant electors’ register of our home parish and also physically present, at least at the estate if not actually in his presence, at the moment of his passing. Oh, and the estate must be my registered home address.
So perhaps that inward smile, as I come around from the mild sedative my brother slipped into my dinner wine to keep me passive during his homicidal ministrations, is not quite as rueful as it might be. Contrary to his optimistic belief that I am irrevocably separated from the nearest source of medical assistance and supplies by some thousand miles of Africa’s second longest (but deepest) river, I already have the solution tucked away in the loft space above my rooms in the house (and clinic) we both occupy close to the never-ending flow of the Lualaba into the main Congo river.
It’s a small glass bottle containing pentamidine 300mg solution. Not much but, with my additional two years training in, and several years practical experience of tropical medicine, I am adequately equipped to deal with my present, potentially painful predicament. Something Eustace had no way of knowing when laying his plans. Of course, like everyone else for a thousand miles around, he’s aware of the tsetse fly’s predisposition to the innocent transmission of Trypanosomiasis; though he, like the majority of the sparse native populace, knows it only as African Sleeping Sickness. But he didn’t follow me into med school, so he’s unaware of the appropriate antidotally-applicable treatment. He’s also unaware that the monthly supply boat brings me a new stock of the short-shelf-life lifesaver. My insurance policy.
Because I witnessed, albeit unwillingly, the altogether natural behaviour of that tiny tsetse as it introduced its deadly dose to my subcutaneous tissue, I know I must inject the pentamidine before the dreaded protozoa has time to reach my central nervous system. I’m a jump ahead of the game.
For game it is. We both know - and each knows the other knows he knows – it’s been going on for years. Move and counter-move in what, until now I’ve enjoyed, aberrantly I suppose, as a pleasurable gamble. To Eustace it’s an altogether more desperate fixation: the stakes – the estate plus capital (aggregate a mere fifty or so million sterling) against my life, a life in which my greatest highs have come, and continue to come, when I thwart yet another of my brother’s murderous moves. It was a few years after our grandfather’s disclosure of the contents of his will, and the realisation of Eustace’s obsession, that the cynical nature of Gramps’ testamentary terminology struck me as an expression of his wayward perversity, his distorted sense of humour.
***
An hour or so later, the sedative has worn off. Eustace has gone to his room, I retrieve the pentamidine from the loft. I’ll do it now. I know I’ll have to deal with the extensive side effects of the drug, but that’s not a major problem. I realise how tired I am of our deadly duel of wits. I make up my mind how, when and where I’ll terminate the tragi-comedy in which I’ve been a leading player through all these pathetic years.
He’ll have to go …
It shouldn’t be difficult. Where I practise my profession, just downstream from the confluence where the Lualaba, one of its many tributaries, feeds into the Congo River, the turbulent white water often conceals the high density of crocodiles and hippos. Then, mercenary medic that I am, I’ll return to living in the Gloucestershire countryside, home of my childhood, watching and waiting as Gramps quietly lives out his final years … or months … or … Well, I suppose that decision is within my purview, too. Hmmm. Perhaps too obvious. I can wait, just a little longer.
Now, where did I put that pentamidine phial? Swab? Syringe?
Damn, I’ve dropped it.
MY GOD, IT’S SMASHED!
I’m powerless, either to close my eyes or to avert them, as those few ccs of liquid lifesaver spread slowly at my feet ……
Damn you, Eustace, you murdering bastard. You needn’t have done this. I always intended you to have a cut. You’ve finally won. You’ll get the lot. The bloody jackpot. May you rot in Hell. What’s that? … I rush to the window … our river launch is already pulling away from the jetty … out into the powerful Congo current … Damn him, he’s had this planned all along and I’ve missed it. By the
time Eustace reaches Gloucestershire, that tsetse’s protozoa will have done their job.
I walk up the riverside track to where the waters tumultuously merge – a scene of violence and thundering noise that has enthralled me for over two decades. There’s a substantial sandbank sheltering a stretch of calmer water; several crocs snoozing on the sand as well as half a dozen ostensibly lounging lazily on the bank ahead of me. They’re big brutes; some of them’ll be hungry, I expect.
I approach noisily. One by one they slip away into the water. From the very edge I watch them as they haul out onto the sandbank and turn, watching me. Their eyes are quite large, you know. They don’t blink like we do. I suddenly feel stupid as I kick off my boots. There’s a big one still in the water, sinking lower, holding against the sheltered backwater current with a few swings of his massive tail. Suddenly his whole body explodes into a powering, thrusting drive, up towards me. I dive straight at him. … he’ll get my head first …