The Good Doctor Read online

  THE GOOD DOCTOR

  DAMON GALGUT Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Impostor and In a Strange Room, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award. Damon Galgut lives in Cape Town.

  International acclaim for The Good Doctor

  ‘The Good Doctor is, quite simply, one of the best novels I have read in years, one of the most profound and luminous testimonies to the transition between the old and the new in South Africa... Damon Galgut transcends the familiar territory of South Africa today to grapple with essential human darkness... I have now read Galgut’s novel three times; I can foresee returning to it many more times in the future. It may well turn out to be one of the most shining milestones on our literary, moral and philosophical journey from past to future.’ Andre Brink, Sunday Independent (South Africa)

  ‘A work of impressive depth and focus... Deservedly shortlisted for the Booker, The Good Doctor is a triumph of understatement, drawing its reader subtly into the political debris which forms the unspoken motivation for its characters’ every move. With his narrator’s sparse and poignant use of language, Galgut brilliantly encapsulates the languor of a society still reeling from the past, not yet confident of its future, and unwilling to confront the hard realities of either.’ Ed Halliwell, Observer

  ‘The Good Doctor is a sustained meditation upon the unreliability of new dawns... Damon Galgut has written a parable which turns on a question crucial to South African life: who has been lying to whom – about politics, about change, about past and future? Put another way, how much of the uncomfortable truth can people take – and what good will it do? Hanging over this fine novel is an air of angry melancholy... Galgut makes mincemeat of the sustaining hypocrisies, slogans and political pieties of the South African dream. And yet, this is not a bleak book; mostly, I think, because it has the brazen ring of truth.’ Christopher Hope, Guardian

  ‘Darkly impressive... A latter-day Heart of Darkness, which powerfully depicts the dangers both of and to idealism... It well deserves its places on this year’s Man Booker shortlist.’ Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

  A taut exploration of the shifting landscape, cultural and moral, of the new South Africa. In recalling not only a book such as Coetzee’s Disgrace, but also with a strong whiff of Graham Greene about it.’ Erica Wagner, The Times

  ‘There are echoes of Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer and Joseph Conrad, all of whom have written with an exacting emotional precision about the European’s place in Africa. Galgut’s story of a doctor attempting to carve out his place in a run-down local hospital vibrates with an eerie sense of foreboding... A gripping read, laced throughout with powerful emotional truth and Damon Galgut’s extraordinary vision.’ Julie Wheelwright, Independent

  A subtle but tremendously powerful novel... Galgut creates a distinct world with an atmosphere reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, where each event has an unpredictable impact.’ Daily Telegraph Summer Reading: Thirty Best Novels

  ‘Galgut handles the crackling tension between races with subtlety and sympathy... The “hot, dense country” is made palpable, and the density is moral as well as topographical... Galgut’s book is sensory and reflective in equal and impressive measure.’ Sunday Times

  ‘Genuinely compelling... Damon Galgut evokes a landscape made dangerous and strange by precipitous social changes, with the weight of history as emotional a burden for the individual as it is for the wider society... An eerie, fluently written novel.’ Metro

  ‘Written with economy and grace... The Good Doctor is a novel about guilty memory and the instability of the past... It is also about how we can never evade the truth of what we have done, especially in a country as tainted as South Africa.’ Jason Cowley, New Statesman

  ‘Of the six novels shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker prize for fiction, easily the most subversive is Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor... The passing of apartheid robbed South Africa’s white novelists of a great artistic cause. Some, like Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Andre Brink, are trying to reinvent themselves. Of the younger generation, Mr Galgut, with his spare, unhurried sentences, his carefully chosen words, is the most talented.’ Economist

  ‘Galgut’s book is full of arresting images... and its evocation of the African landscape is superb. Equally good is the treatment of the relationship between the two men, and their gradual realisation of the philosophical gulf which exists between them... [A] fine, disquieting novel.’ Jewish Chronicle

  ‘The novel is structured with... unobtrusive expertise, and expressed in spare, tough prose that can sketch deftly the behaviour of both inanimate things and people... It is the contradictions and strange details of his bleak landscape that lend compulsiveness to The Good Doctor’s serious concerns.’ Times Literary Supplement

  A sense of heightened unease runs through the novel, one that seems calculated to reflect not just Frank’s anxious state of mind but also the mood of the country as a whole... Slim, thoughtful and readable, it should bring Damon Galgut the international recognition he deserves.’ Literary Review

  ‘Damon Galgut has done the most difficult thing possible for any novelist in The Good Doctor, drawing the changing political landscape in post-apartheid South Africa without a hint of polemics. A simple and very intimate story, eddying out into a more powerful exploration of ethnic issues.’ Hugo Hamilton, Books of the Year, Irish Times

  ‘Absorbing... In spare, declarative prose, Galgut spins a brisk and bracing story; but he’s also in pursuit of something murkier; the double-edged nature of doing good in a land where “the past has only just happened”.’ New Yorker

  A sobering story... told in luminous prose... This is a good, provocative and cautionary tale of a good man trying to do good at the wrong time and in the wrong place.’ Washington Times

  ‘Exquisite... It is a testament to Galgut’s skill that this mostly quiet novel can leave such a lasting sense of urgency. And shame. That, after all, is what great fiction is meant to do.’ Boston Globe

  ‘Taut and compelling... Galgut’s fine, unsettling novel... feels freighted with mystery and moment, replete with significant incident.’ The Nation

  ‘Galgut writes conversation that is delicate, compelling and mysterious. His prose... is utterly seductive and suspenseful. Tragic and brilliant... The Good Doctor is informed by the alienation of Albert Camus, and deeply resonant with Thomas Mann’s moral interrogations of politics and society... Remarkable.’ Globe and Mail (Canada)

  A wonderful book... Galgut has terrific insight into characters, completely free of cliche.’ Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

  ‘Damon Galgut is a real find... The Good Doctor is classy from the first page... Because there are subtle ambiguities throughout, different readers will come to different conclusions about Frank – but I don’t think anyone will be unsure about the quality of this writing.’ Courier-Mail (Australia)

  First published in Great Britain in 2003 by

  Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  This paperback edition published by Atlantic Books in 2011

  Copyright © Damon Galgut 2003

  The moral right of Damon Galgut to be identified as

  the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts of 1988.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,

  characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work

  of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

  a
ctual persons, living or dead, events or localities

  is entirley coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of both the copyright owner and the above

  publisher of this book.

  13579 10 8642

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 085789 172 3

  eBook ISBN: 978 085189 172 3

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26-27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  Hundreds of miles of desolate, monotonous, burnt-up steppe cannot induce such deep depression as one man when he sits and talks, and one does not know when he will go.

  CHEKHOV

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  1

  The first time I saw him I thought, he won’t last.

  I was sitting in the office in the late afternoon and he appeared suddenly in the doorway, carrying a suitcase in one hand and wearing plain clothes – jeans and a brown shirt – with his white coat on top. He looked young and lost and a bit bewildered, but that wasn’t why I thought what I did. It was because of something else, something I could see in his face.

  He said, ‘Hello...? Is this the hospital?’

  His voice was unexpectedly deep for somebody so tall and thin.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Put down your bag.’

  He came in, but he didn’t put down the bag. He held it close while he looked around at the pink walls, the empty chairs, the dusty desk in the corner, the frail plants wilting in their pots. I could see that he thought there’d been some kind of mistake. I felt sorry for him.

  ‘I’m Frank Eloff,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Laurence Waters.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know...?’

  He seemed amazed that we should be expecting him, though he’d been sending faxes for days already, announcing his arrival.

  ‘We’re sharing a room,’ I told him. ‘Let me take you over.’

  The room was in a separate wing. We had to cross an open space of ground, close to the parking lot. When he came in he must have walked this way, but now he looked at the path through the long grass, the ragged trees overhead dropping their burden of leaves, as if he’d never seen them before.

  We went down the long passage to the room. I’d lived and slept alone in here until today. Two beds, a cupboard, a small carpet, a print on one wall, a mirror, a green sofa, a low coffee table made of synthetic wood, a lamp. It was all basic standard issue. The few occupied rooms all looked the same, as in some featureless bleak hotel. The only trace of individuality was in the configuration of the furniture, but I’d never bothered to shift mine around till two days ago, when an extra bed had been brought in. I also hadn’t added anything. There was no personality in the ugly, austere furniture; against this neutral backdrop, even a piece of cloth would have been revealing.

  ‘You can take that bed,’ I said. ‘There’s space in the cupboard. The bathroom’s through that door.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Okay.’ But he still didn’t put down his bag.

  I’d only heard two weeks before that I would have to share a room. Dr Ngema had called me in. I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t refuse. And in the days that followed I came around, in spite of myself, to the idea of sharing. It might not be so bad. We might get on well, it might be good to have company, my life here could be pleasantly different. So in a way I started looking forward with curiosity to this change. And before he arrived I did a few things to make him welcome. I put the new bed under the window and made it up with fresh linen. I cleared a few shelves in the cupboard. I swept and cleaned, which is something I don’t do very often.

  But now that he was standing here I could see, through his eyes, how invisible that effort was. The room was ugly and bare. And Laurence Waters didn’t look to me like the person I’d pictured in my head. I don’t know what I’d imagined, but it wasn’t this bland, biscuit-coloured young man, almost a boy still, who was at last putting his suitcase down.

  He took his glasses off and rubbed them on his sleeve. He put them on again and said wearily, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This whole place.’

  ‘The hospital?’

  ‘Not just the hospital. I mean...’ He waved a hand to indicate the world out there. He meant the town outside the hospital walls.

  ‘You asked to come here.’

  ‘But I didn’t know that it would be like this. Why?’ he said with sudden intensity. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We can talk about it later. But I’m on duty now, I have to go back to the office.’

  ‘I must see Dr Ngema,’ he said abruptly. ‘She’s expecting me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now. You can do it in the morning. No hurry.’

  ‘What should I do now?’

  ‘Whatever you like. Unpack, settle in. Or come and sit with me. I’ll be finished in a couple of hours.’

  I left him alone and went back. He was shocked and depressed. I understood that; I’d felt it myself when I first arrived. You came expecting one thing and were met by something else completely.

  You came expecting a busy modern hospital – rural maybe, and small, but full of activity – in a town where things were happening. This was the capital of what used to be one of the homelands, so whatever the morality of the politics that gave rise to it, you expected a place full of administration and movement, people coming and going. And when you’d turned off the main route to the border and were coming in on the one minor road that led here, it might still look – when you saw the place from a distance – like what you’d expected. There was the main street, leading to the centre where the fountain and the statue stood, the shop-fronts and pavements and streetlights, and all the buildings beyond. It looked neat and calibrated and exact. Not a bad place to be.

  And then you arrived and you saw. Maybe the first clue was a disturbing detail; a crack that ran through an otherwise pristine wall, or a set of broken windows in an office you passed. Or the fact that the fountain was dry and full of old sand at the bottom. And you slowed down, looking around you with vague anxiety, and suddenly it all came into clear focus. The weeds in the joints of the pavements and bricks, the grass growing at places in the street, the fused lamps and the empty shops behind their blank glass fronts and the mildew and damp and blistered paint and the marks of rain on every surface and the slow tumbling down of solid structures, sometimes grain by grain, sometimes in pieces. And you were not sure any more of where you were.

  And there were no people. That was the last thing you noticed, though you realized then that it was the first thing to give you that uneasy hollow feeling: the place was deserted. There was, yes, a car cruising slowly down a back road, an official uniform or two ambling along a pavement, and maybe a figure slouching on a footpath through an overgrown plot of land, but mostly the space was empty. Uninhabited. No human chaos, no movement.

  A ghost town.

  ‘It’s like something terrible happene
d here,’ Laurence said. ‘That’s how it feels.’

  ‘Ja, but the opposite is true. Nothing has ever happened here. Nothing ever will. That’s the problem.’

  ‘But then how...?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘Nothing. Just how.’

  He meant, how did it come to be here at all? And that was the real question. This was not a town that had sprung up naturally for the normal human reasons – a river in a dry area, say, or a discovery of gold, some kind of historical event. It was a town that had been conceived and planned on paper, by evil bureaucrats in a city far away, who had probably never even been here. Here is our homeland, they said, tracing an outline on a map, now where should its capital be? Why not here, in the middle? They made an ‘X’ with a red pen and all felt very satisfied with themselves, then sent for the state architects to draw up plans.

  So the bewilderment that Laurence Waters felt wasn’t unusual. I’d been through it myself. And so I knew that the feeling would pass. In a week or two the bewilderment would give way to something else: frustration maybe, or resentment, anger. And then that would turn into resignation. And after a couple of months Laurence would be suffering through his sentence here, like the rest of us, or else plotting a way to get out.

  ‘But where are they all?’ he said, talking more to the ceiling than to me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people.’

  ‘Out there,’ I said. ‘Where they live.’

  This was hours later in my room – our room – that night. I had just put out the light and was lying there, trying to sleep, when his voice came out of the dark.

  ‘But why do they live out there? Why aren’t they here?’

  ‘What’s there for them here?’ I said.

  ‘Everything. I saw the countryside when I was driving. There’s nothing out there. No hotels, shops, restaurants, cinemas... Nothing.’

  ‘They don’t need all that.’

  ‘What about the hospital? Don’t they need that?’

  I sat up on one elbow. He was smoking a cigarette and I could see the red glow rising and falling. He was on his back, looking up.