Then, he got out, walked to the front door, and knocked.
When the door opened, Lucas’s breath caught slightly as he was washed in the warm light streaming from inside. He straightened, bringing the collar of his London Fog trench coat closer to his neck to soften the cut of the wind. The woman who stood before him was surprisingly tall, nearly six feet, with a pretty, angular face. It was Sarah Shabalala. She was older than she’d been in the photograph in her parents’ house, but her face had not changed much. He felt he knew her.
“I need blood,” Lucas said, incapable of pleasantries. “Please.”
The woman, regarding him with a look of surprise, shook her head. “Sorry . . . ?”
Another woman appeared in the doorway behind Sarah, wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe, and Lucas recognized her, too—or nearly did. She was not the woman he had seen in the photograph from the Miami Sun-News; she was older, slightly heavier in the face, her hair cut in a short natural almost identical to Sarah’s. But she had to be Jessica Jacobs-Wolde’s sister.
“Dr. Jacobs? I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Alexis Jacobs said, meeting his eyes nearly sharply. “You’re Dr. Lucas Shepard. And you’re a long way from home.”
From her tone, Lucas wondered if he had met this woman before. It was startling to be recognized in such a remote place. “I hate to come so early in the morning, but I need—”
Alexis stepped in front of Sarah in a protective gesture and gave him a smile that struggled to be polite, but failed miserably. “I’m sorry, Dr. Shepard, but we can’t help you. I hope you haven’t come a long way thinking there was something here worth looking for. There isn’t.”
Lucas hesitated before responding. Too long, as it turned out. Before he knew it, the polished oak door was closing, narrowing the light and warmth from the house.
“Sorry to have wasted your time,” Alexis Jacobs said.
But the man who used to be Lucas Shepard did not let the door close. Some of his earlier rage emerged, and he found he’d braced the door open with his palm much harder than he intended, nearly pushing it back far enough to hit her. He recognized a flash of fear in her eyes, inside of her anger. She took a step back.
“I’m so sorry,” Lucas said, apologizing as if someone else was responsible for his actions. “But I can’t leave. My son is dying, and I need the blood. I need it today.”
The door was flung open from the inside, and a well-built, young African man stood beside Alexis Jacobs, wearing only boxer shorts and two thick, hoop-syle, gold earrings, one in each ear. He looked as if he’d been asleep until Lucas knocked on the door, but all of his alertness had honed on Lucas in his angry, distrustful eyes. This time, instinctively, it was Lucas who took a step back when the man arched his face upward, threatening. “You almost hit this lady,” the man said with some kind of refined accent.
Lucas’s tongue seemed to swell in his mouth. He wasn’t afraid this man would hurt him, not at all. His overriding fear was that, if attacked, he might do something bad to this well-meaning young man. He had no idea what he might do next. “I said I’m sorry. I—”
“You can’t just push your way in here. She said go on, then.”
Miraculously, Lucas saw Alexis Jacobs rest her hand gently on the young man’s well-muscled forearm. “Wait, Stephen,” Alexis Jacobs said, and it only then did Lucas recognize the man as Stephen Shabalala. Alexis Jacobs’s eyes softened as she gazed up at Lucas. “Where’s your son?”
“In a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida. I wanted to bring him, but he was too sick.”
He saw something in her eyes flicker out, another door closing, and she glanced away from him. “Come on in out of the cold, Dr. Shepard. You look like you could use some tea.”
“And some food?” he heard himself say. “I forgot to eat yesterday. But I need some blood for my son. He’s barely breathing on his own. I have to get it to him soon.”
“Shhhh,” Alexis Jacobs said, as if hushing a small child. “Come on inside, Dr. Shepard.”
Lucas did, and all the hatred he’d felt for this house suddenly melted from his heart.
• • •
The quick breakfast of boiled eggs and toast did wonders for Lucas’s frame of mind, even though the numbing memory of his last conversation with Jared still sapped most of his strength. He sat at the dining room table in near silence while he scooped food into his mouth under the watchful, curious gazes of Alexis Jacobs and Stephen and Sarah Shabalala. After a few minutes, Alexis Jacobs signaled the others that she wanted to be left alone with their visitor. Stephen Shabalala gave Lucas one last lingering gaze, as if to say, You better watch yourself, friend, and then he and his sister walked toward the back of the house, talking softly to each other in Zulu. Almost arguing, it seemed.
“You found us all the way from the States, Dr. Shepard?” Alexis asked him.
Lucas nodded. “Thanks to Atlantic Monthly. It took some work, though.”
Alexis looked dismayed, staring behind him at the window for a moment. She sighed. Feeling more like himself, Lucas was capable of courtesies. “Please call me Lucas. To my mind, Dr. Shepard was my father, not me.”
“I’m Alexis.” She extended her hand for an awkward shake. “What’s wrong with your son?”
“Advanced leukemia. Autologous bone-marrow transplant didn’t work. He’s in ICU at the cancer center in Tallahassee with end-stage leukemia, and he’s nearly gone. Like Sipho was.”
At the South African child’s familiar name, Alex couldn’t hide her surprise. But when she spoke, she only said, “Sipho was lucky. He had a spontaneous recovery.”
“After you injected him with blood.”
At this, Alex sighed again and swayed uncomfortably in her chair. “Lucas . . . I don’t know where you’re getting your information—”
“I’ll tell you all about that, if that’s what you want.”
“—But you didn’t let me finish,” she said slightly curtly. “What I was going to say is, there is no blood. I don’t know how that rumor got started. All we’re dispensing is a mixture of indigenous herbs and plants that traditional healers have been using in this region for centuries. My version is just very concentrated, administered through injection. There’s a pink tinge, so maybe that’s why people keep saying it’s blood. But I wouldn’t even feel right about telling you to take some of it home and inject your son with it, not with a condition that serious—”
“You don’t believe me,” Lucas said, the realization rocking him as he gazed at Alex’s impassive eyes. “You think Dr. Voodoo just walked through your front door to try to capitalize on your miracle cure. Well, you’re wrong.” He reached for his wallet. “I have a picture of Jared. If you have a telephone, we can call the hospital.”
“There’s no phone here.”
Lucas slapped the picture of Jared on the table in front of her. “He’s ten years old. His mother died four years ago, and he’s the only goddamn thing I have in the world. Do you know what I’ve risked by coming here? Do you understand he could die while I’m gone?”
Alex stood suddenly. “Let’s go out to the living room, Dr. Shepard.” She had reverted to the more formal address; that was a bad sign, Lucas decided. Very bad.
Even though there was no one in the living room, it still carried the scent of perspiration from the people who had trekked to visit on previous days, a vague smell that reminded him of a high school gymnasium, and a few splotches of dirt were on the thin, worn carpeting. The furniture—a matching suede sofa and love seat, a coffee table, and a half dozen white director’s chairs—was merely functional, with little sentimentality. The only adornments on the wall were Zulu beadwork he guessed the women must have brought with them from South Africa. And a daily calendar of black-and-white photographs by Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee, where someone was marking off the days with strokes of a red pen. That month’s photograph was of a well-dressed 1920s-era black father sitting with a wide-eyed infant
in an old-fashioned dressing gown on his lap, Lucas noticed. The photo made his stomach ache.
Plain as the house was, this looked like a home, not like a clinic at all. Apparently, they had tried to make their site as innocuous as they could, probably in case of visits just like this. “One of our neighbors gives us the tea leaves,” Alexis Jacobs said, emerging from the kitchen with a plain, white ceramic teapot. She poured an aromatic green-brown liquid into Lucas’s matching teacup. He found himself gazing at the delicate construction of Dr. Jacobs’s wrist, which was so small he was nearly certain he could encircle it with his pinkie and thumb with room to spare. But he could not be fooled by that small wrist, not so long as her strong, unwavering eyes were in sight. “They also give us what they call kadi, sort of a homemade beer, but it’s too early in the morning to inflict that on you. Besides, to tell you the truth, I’d be surprised if my nurse’s brother hasn’t finished the liquor off by now.”
Lucas brought the cup to his lips. A pastiche of sharp individual flavors, with a slightly sweet aftertaste.
“Good, ain’t it? We’re spoiled now,” Alexis said, sitting on the sofa across from him. “We’ll never be able to go back to Lipton, that’s for damn sure.”
“The tea leaves are a barter? In exchange for medical services?”
“Yes,” Alexis said, but she seemed eager to change the subject. “I hadn’t heard your wife was dead. What happened to her?”
“Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded mechanical. Despite the coolness of the room, Lucas could feel perspiration slick across his back and chest. In the long silence, he heard Stephen and Sarah Shabalala talking emphatically at the back of the house, behind a closed door. Lucas found himself wondering how old Alexis was. About forty? Maybe a bit younger? At the same time, he wondered why he was wondering.
“You and your sister help a lot of people here.”
“Yes, we do.”
“And you treat only children?”
At this, Lucas detected uneasiness as she shifted her weight. “Yes. Usually. But obviously, we don’t want to turn away anyone who really needs our help.”
“Oh, really?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“But we don’t perform miracles,” Alexis said, meeting his eyes. “Not what you need.”
“I’ve seen a few miracles in my time,” Lucas said. “Because of that, I’m sure you know many people think I’m a kook. Is that what you think?”
Slowly, wearily, Alexis shook her head, and Lucas felt his heart thunder to life inside his chest. God, he begged silently, please let me break through to this woman.
“I saw something very interesting in the Congo about thirty-five years ago, when I was in the Peace Corps,” Lucas went on. “I saw a man bring a woman who was practically dead back to life. Restored her to complete health. Know how he did it?” Alexis shook her head again. Lucas paused to give his words weight, so she would have no doubt of what he knew. “He cut open his arm and gave her some of his blood. Not much. Just a little.”
“That’s something,” Alexis said. But that was only her mouth at work; her face, at this point, was completely mismatched with the calm, detached tone she’d cloaked the words with. Her face looked as though he had just pointed a shotgun at her. The expression wiped twenty years from her features, as if an amazed young girl was asking How do you know?
“Do you believe that’s possible, Alexis?”
“I believe God makes all things possible,” she said, her voice a whisper. The words were honest, from her soul.
“I could have used an ally like you at the Office of Alternative Medicine, back when my colleagues were calling me a heretic. But it doesn’t matter what other people believe, not now. What matters now is that my little boy, my only child, can barely breathe. And he may never see his father again because I’ve already spent thirty minutes here with you.”
Alexis’s eyes looked trapped, shimmering almost to tears. She sat for a long time without answering him, a statuette with a teacup in her hand. “My sister lost a daughter,” she said. Lucas was about to ask if he could meet Jessica Jacobs-Wolde when Alexis went on, “She’s traveling now, but she has this idea in her head that she’d like to save all the children in the world. I tell her we can’t do that. But you know what? We’re doing the very best we can. And right now, if we aren’t very, very careful—careful enough to break our own hearts on a daily basis—we may not be able to help a single child again. So I have to tell you again, Dr. Shepard . . . Lucas . . . I can’t help you. I’d love to, but I can’t. I wish you could have brought your son with you . . . but you need to go home to him. You need to go hold his hand.”
The air was suddenly almost too thin to breathe. Lucas doubled over where he sat, folding his hands between his knees. Alexis had said as much as she planned to, now or maybe ever. He had come as close to her as she had allowed anyone, probably up to this very moment, but she had pulled back. Dear God, whom was she protecting? And why?
“Just tell me I’m right. Please,” Lucas said hoarsely. “Tell me about the blood.”
“I don’t know what you saw in the Congo, but there is no magic blood here,” she said, and in that instant he wished she’d said it convincingly enough to make him believe her. If he believed her, he would be free to leave. But if the blood didn’t exist, she wouldn’t look as if she was carrying Jared’s death on her own shoulders, as if her appetite was gone for the day and she might not be able to sleep for nights on end.
“You don’t trust me to take it with me, is that it? Then why don’t you come and inject it yourself? I’ll never have it in my possession. Name a price, and I’ll pay it.”
She sighed. “Lucas . . .”
“I know you have it. It has something to do with your sister’s husband, doesn’t it?”
This time, he thought, he’d said the absolute wrong thing. Alexis’s face didn’t register recognition, fear, or anything else, but her eyes seemed to go empty. He knew too much, and that terrified her. Alexis’s mind was made up. “I think you should go now,” she said softly.
“I’ll leave your house if I’m asked,” Lucas said, staring at the carpeted floor, “but I hope you understand I can’t go home without what I need for my son. I hope your sister’s loss has taught you why I can’t.”
“Yes,” Alexis said. She had the striking, hypnotic voice of someone who was wiser than she wanted to be. “I know, Dr. Shepard. That’s why this is very hard for me, because I’ve admired you so much since you won the Lasker Prize. As a black woman who was premed at the time, that was one of the proudest days of my life. I know you’re an extraordinary man, but I don’t know you. And right now I’m very afraid for you, because I don’t think you know me well enough to understand that I mean it when I say I can’t help you. You don’t understand how many parents I’ve had to send away before you, that I’ve had to learn to live with saying no because I have no choice. And I’m telling you the truth when I say this is the farthest place in the world from where you need to be right now. Jesus is calling your son home, and you need to make your peace with that or your soul won’t be able to rest.”
Lucas blinked. Around him, with his head bent, the room wheeled.
“There’s no more peace for me, Alexis. No more rest,” Lucas said, as loudly as his dying spirit could muster.
24
Lalibela
“Where is he?” Dawit roared, his voice booming through the silent maze of chambers in the House of Meditation like an obscenity. He held an ebony-handled jambiya in his bandaged hand, poised to slash with the long, curved knife. “Where is the fool who allowed the shedding of my wife’s blood?”
Dawit stood in the passageway in the House of Meditation directly outside Jessica’s chamber, where Berhanu and Teka lingered near their visitors’ closed door. Both men’s faces turned grim at the sight of Dawit, armed and angry. They had no doubt seen him prevail in enough Flying Swords matches not to be fooled by his inj
uries; Dawit was formidable. But Berhanu, he knew, was not easily intimidated.
Berhanu stepped forward, glancing past Dawit’s weapon with unblinking eyes. “I am her guard, Dawit. And especially the child’s. I sensed Kaleb’s presence and deflected the knife’s course when it was close enough. I did not expect the woman to throw herself in its path. But that is no excuse. I am responsible.”
“No,” Teka interrupted, nudging himself in front of Berhanu with a twist of his slight shoulder. “This is my own shame. I knew the hazards when Teferi came to me, but he insisted that she was unhappy—”
Dawit tried to slow his breathing, gazing at his brothers. He had never had a quarrel with these men, so would he be any better than Kaleb if he harmed them in a mindless fury? Berhanu was a gifted warrior who had stood at Dawit’s side at Adwa, alerting him to an impending thrust from an Italian’s bayonet more than once. And Teka, so bound to his Path, was no longer a fighter at all. Besides, if Dawit injured Khaldun’s gentle attendant, it would be an insult to his father.
“No,” Dawit said. “You did as you were asked. Teferi is her guide, and only Teferi would dream such a foolish plan. To have her in the open! Where is he? Let him lose his own hand!”
At that, the door to Jessica’s chamber opened, and Teferi ducked beneath the doorway, appearing with his eyes fixed to the floor. “Your voice is disturbing her, Dawit,” Teferi said with a waver, crossing his arms contritely across his breast like a woman. Teferi could not even pretend courage! That was a crime, with this man’s imposing height.
“Then move from her door, lest your cries disturb her, too.”
“Do what you will to me, but take this away from our father’s House. Your thoughts are disturbing the air here, Dawit,” Teferi said. He was nearly whispering.
“Yes, I beg you, Dawit,” Teka said. “It is vulgarity. We are too near Khaldun.”