4
“I came to know about the illness,” writes Din Furyk of the Harvard Medical School in his diary, “because Dr. Clarkwell was a former student and whenever he came across difficult cases he would often call me for advice. His description of this particular case so aroused my curiosity that I dropped everything and went to New York. I was taken past security right to the Ruler’s suite, the top three floors of the Fifth Avenue VIP Hotel, where I quickly consulted with Dr. Clarkwell and Dr. Kaboca, and the gravity of the situation was accentuated by the shaking of their heads from side to side in disbelief saying that, according to the preliminary exam, everything about the Ruler, except for his swelling up, seemed normal. I entered the Ruler’s room. I would ask other questions only after I had seen the patient.
“The patient was seated on the floor, his back to the wall. I felt his forehead, took his temperature, listened to his heartbeat. All was normal, though he seemed to be panting a bit from fatigue. But his eyes, those eyes, I have never encountered a look like that in an adult. They looked scared and helpless, like the eyes of a child stricken with fear at the unexpected and the unknown.
“The Ruler, as his followers invariably called him, seemed to have lost the power of speech. Fortunately he could still read what was put in front of him and he would then nod for yes or shake his head for no. But even these gestured yeses and nos were rare and rather abrupt.”
Din Furyk tells of how he asked for blood samples to be taken to find out whether the patient exhibited symptoms of hyperthyroid-ism, nephrotic syndrome, polycystic kidney disease, or some form of Cushing’s syndrome brought about by cortisal hormones in the blood, or any disorders associated with obesity known to science. He was also concerned about the possibility of steroid-induced obesity, despite Dr. Wilfred Kaboca’s assurances that the Ruler had never taken any steroids, that Viagra was the only drug for which he had shown an insatiable appetite.
Furyk then describes his attempts to get a sense of the Ruler’s medical history from his entourage of ministers and security folk. “No one was able to shed any light on the matter. When I asked them a question, such as When did the illness strike?’ or When did you first notice signs of the illness?’ they would look in the direction of the Ruler, then at one another, and would say that they did not know. Africans, or shall I say black people, in general, are strange.”
At this point the professor digresses to discuss the African character. The diary is full of phrases like “faces that cannot be easily read,” “a face like a mask,” and “the ministers could not look me in the eye; they had a shiftiness suggesting mendacity.” The Ruler’s own personal physician is also questioned, and he is described as being no different from the ministers, volunteering bits of information grudgingly and only when he was outside the hearing of others.
The only person praised in the diary is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Machokali, who spoke without an accent and was direct in his manner. He was presumed to have been educated in the West. “A rare mind, this, quite exceptional. Could easily have been a product of Harvard or another Ivy League school.”
“Because they were all hopeless,” Professor Furyk writes, “I thought it better simply to wait for the results from the lab.
“Imagine my shock when they showed that everything about him was functioning normally! How was this possible? Why this continued self-induced expansion of the body? His belly was as taut as a drum, and whenever I tapped it a sound issued from the mouth. Crr, or was it coral or crawl or cruel”? I took Dr. Clarkwell and Dr. Kaboca outside for a conference. What could the Ruler be signifying by coral or crawl or cruel? Dr. Kaboca’s response was strange: he was a physician of the body, not a decipherer of words; it was better to ask the ministers because they were politicians and politicians are known for their words.
“I confronted the ministers. All turned their eyes to Machokali.”