Lincoln walked up behind me and said hello. I hadn’t heard him coming and jumped at the sound of his voice. Lincoln became a Christian late last year and now helps out around the hospital. He’s taller than most Dwanigi men and the extra height makes him more awkward on the steep slopes. This morning he was wearing shorts and an old jumper unravelling at the collar. His arms were crossed against the cold, his eyes still puffy from sleep. ‘Dempu tetaua,’ he said, jutting his head towards the cloud, ‘Dempu’s shame, that’s what we call it.’ He began to explain that Dempu was a character in one of their legends, but when I asked what the story was about he wouldn’t say and suggested I ask Hisiu or one of the other old men who know the legends well.
Hisiu is a Dwanigi elder, a leader in the church. He came to the hospital this afternoon so I could dress a burn on his hand. Kneeling before him, smothering the blistered skin with antiseptic cream, I mentioned this morning’s cloud and asked about Dempu tetaua. His deep-set eyes widened with surprise. ‘Gracie, who told you of Dempu?’
‘Lincoln,’ I said, hoping I wasn’t getting him in trouble. ‘He wouldn’t tell me the story though; he said I should ask you.’
Bowing his head, Hisiu guided my gaze back to the afflicted hand. As I bandaged it, he told me Dempu’s story.
‘Dempu lived many, many years ago, long before the missionaries. Even as a boy he was strong and a good hunter. He had long black hair and teeth as white as an eagle’s egg and all the girls of the mountains thought him beautiful. Often they would talk of who would be his bride, of how many pigs they would offer his line. Sometimes their talk would lead to fighting and, like dogs hungry for tapioca, they would bite and scratch for his affection. But then, not long after he was made a man, rather than choose one of them, Dempu visited Ematea, one of Wonkori’s wives. Wonkori was a big man, and smart. Hiding in the bushes, he set a trap for Dempu and caught him with his wife.’
I kept my head down, winding the gauze around Hisiu’s flinching hand.
‘To punish him, Wonkori made words over Dempu so that no woman would ever lie with him again, because if she did her belly would grow fat with the children of a snake. In shame, Dempu left the mountain and for the rest of his days slept in a cave by the river. There he lived the life of a lonely man.’
I pinned the bandage to itself and Hisiu, seeing that I was finished, stood up. Saying thank you, he made a move towards the door. Calling out, I stopped him, asking how the sea of cloud related to Dempu’s story. He didn’t turn to face me, but stared through the window at the children playing marbles in the dirt.
‘We used to believe that those clouds were Dempu’s shame, the flow of his lonely seed, forever searching for a woman’s soil. Our old people would say that when Dempu tetaua came back to our valley it was a sign, a warning.’
Hisiu looked at me now, combing two fingers through his greying beard, smiling.
‘We don’t believe that any more. Now we know they are only clouds, sent by God to bring us rain.’
Washing instruments at the sink, I watched and listened as the Sister showed a medical student how to inspect a placenta. Dangling it from the umbilical cord, she slid a gloved finger between the brown spongy thing and the translucent sack surrounding it. Deftly teasing the membrane away from the darker tissue, allowing it to hang, she then, like a seamstress checking the length of a skirt, crouched a little to see that it wasn’t torn or ragged around the hem.
‘How does it look to you?’
The student had long auburn hair pulled back and braided into a ponytail. She was young and seemed embarrassed by this sudden request for an opinion. I turned back to the sink, concentrated on the dishes, thinking that might ease the pressure on her. How does it look to you? I thought about what I would have said — like something from the ocean, a giant jellyfish.
‘It looks … Is that a tear?’ The student tentatively pointed a finger at a tatty part of the membrane.
‘You tell me. Here, hold it, get a feel for it.’ The Sister passed her the placenta. ‘That’s it, between your thumb and forefinger. Now, how does that feel?’
Blushing, the young woman nodded and said, ‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ Smiling, the Sister instructed her to lay the placenta on the bench, to rub her hands over its veined, marbled surface and check it was complete, that none of it had broken off and been left inside the mother.
‘See, they don’t bite.’ Looking to me for confirmation, she added, ‘Do they, Josh?’
‘Not that I’ve seen,’ I said, reluctant to take sides.
Meeting with a puddle of water, the blood from the placenta had formed a delta of rivulets and started trickling down the bench towards my freshly washed dishes. Annoyed at the prospect of my work being undone, I made a show of stemming its flow with a rag. The medical student, not yet fully initiated into the hospital’s hierarchy, smiled and said sorry.
‘Put it on here.’ The Sister provided her with a shallow, rusted metal dish. ‘Now all we need do is weigh it.’
The student lowered the placenta onto the dish, then placed the dish on the scales. ‘It’s a big one all right. She could’ve kept quads going with something that size.’ Watching the young woman study the dial, she asked, ‘What do you make it?’
‘6.95?’
‘Not quite — 6.93.’ She opened the waste disposal unit. Its metal casing looked familiar, yet strange — like a water fountain without a spout. Reaching into its round, tapering sink, pulling out its rubber-ringed metal plug, she said, ‘Meet The Muncher!’
Unsure what she meant, the student stood staring at her, holding the dish in one hand while the oversized placenta dripped blood onto the floor.
‘Well, drop it in!’
I watched as she tipped the thing into the unit; heard it slither down the side of the bowl, making moist, sucking sounds as it slowly squeezed through the plug-hole before plopping into the cavity below.
The Sister demonstrated how the plug had to be aligned with the electronic sensor in the bowl, then said, ‘Okay, press the button.’ The student did as she was told. Water flooded into the bowl to flush the waste away, but the mechanical teeth designed to chew the placenta up before spitting it into the sea failed to work.
Brushing the student aside, the Sister tried to re-align the plug herself. Bloodied water began pooling in the bottom of the bowl. Soon it was lapping at the top of her surgical gloves. Following AIDS safety regulations, not wanting to get blood on her hands, she waited until the last second, then suddenly jerked her hand from the water as if bitten. Turning to me, she asked, ‘Could you .. ?’
My longer cleaning gloves allowed me more time to fiddle with the plug. As I plunged my hand into the funnel-shaped bowl, the Sister began bailing with a jug. By now it was threatening to spill into my glove.
I altered the plug’s position. But not before the bloody fluid had filled my glove. Just as it was about to overflow onto the floor, the student, who until then had been standing back watching, trying not to laugh, stepped forward and gave the metal casing a thump.
The whole unit shook; water splashed over the side. The Sister glared at her, but before