Love in the Time of Typhoid
Liesl Jobson

Ian, my sister’s husband, often sat for hours at the piano improvising jazzy chordal progressions. With a clear tenor voice, he sang at my wedding two years ago. That Christmas he led the family in singing carols. His ability to mimic any orchestral instrument made him the children’s favorite uncle. He loved South Africa’s summer Christmas, which contrasts so starkly with Britain’s dark Decembers.

He was the only family member who beat me at Scrabble—even when I stayed sober and he was far down the Merlot. I suspect he wrote the book of solutions for those times when Q, Z, and Y are the only tiles left on the rack.

My sister wrote me after their summer holiday in Wales, telling how Ian had taken their boys camping and fishing. Aged four and six, they were old enough to start learning the manly arts from their dad.

Ian and I talked again in November. I gave him the South African low-down. Things looked grim: An outbreak of typhoid claimed four in Delmas. Johannesburg’s doctors advised patients to boil their drinking water. My husband and I had endured chronic bellyaches for a month. Our Deputy President, who was implicated in corruption, had been accused of rape, and a local soccer hero admitted under cross-examination to having unprotected sex with a fifteen-year-old girl.

Elegant Arvons
Foley, Karen
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At a personal level, I was burned out from a punishing work and study schedule and poor health. The prospect of 450 student assessments daunted me. I cheered up when Ian said they were coming to Cape Town for Easter.

A few weeks later, after giving piano lessons to three young boys in their home, Arthur, the youngest, went to open the motorized driveway gate for me. I thought he had the remote control, but instead he’d stretched his arm through the bars to press the security code into the keypad.

As I turned the car’s ignition, the fan and radio started loudly, and I reversed toward the gate in no mood for the rush-hour rainy trip. In the rear-view mirror, I noticed the gate was open only a foot. I sighed. Motorized gates are always troublesome. With Johannesburg’s high crime levels, they’re a necessary precaution, requiring frequent expensive maintenance. I looked over my shoulder, wondering where my little student was.

Then I saw him. My blood ran cold. The tiny eight-year-old was pinned against the gatepost, screaming, but I hadn’t heard. I leapt from my car. His arm, caught up to the shoulder between the post and the opening gate, was twisted at a most unnatural angle.

In the house, Arthur’s uncle sat in front of the TV, with the phone in one ear and his finger in the other. I kept thinking that I must not panic. Even if I screamed, nobody would hear. I didn't know whether to leave him and run for help, or stay and fumble alone.

I tried to pull the gate in the opposite direction, but it wouldn't budge. My mobile phone was in the car. Should I run for it? The arrival of an ambulance and paramedics might take an hour. Should I look for the remote control? If the gate opened more, would Arthur’s arm be ripped off? How would I stop the bleeding if it came to that?

Robert Frost’s tragic verse whizzed through my head:
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood

This was no moment for poetry. Think! Get him free.

I wondered if I could use the mechanical safety winch to lift it off the railing, but I was afraid it would fall and crush Arthur.

The gate miraculously closed—just an inch—then stopped again. Arthur wriggled free.

Though deep bruises covered his skinny arm and bird-bone fingers, and his skin was grazed where it had dragged against the wall, unbelievably, nothing was broken. He wiggled his fingers and flexed his arm.

How close I came to witnessing a hideous tragedy! The year couldn’t end soon enough.

I spoke to my sister on the Monday evening of the final week of the school term. She was taking Ian to the hospital for tests. He had a stomachache that wouldn’t let up. I meant to phone the next evening, but after the carol service I was tired. After Wednesday’s year-end Christmas party, I was too tiddly to call. Besides, I knew she’d phone if anything were serious. When I got home at eight Thursday night, my husband offered to take me out to dinner. Again, too late.

On Friday morning at five, the phone rang. My blood ran cold. Ian was dead. While undergoing emergency abdominal surgery, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Six weeks have passed since my brother-in-law and friend died so suddenly that his wife and children didn’t even get to say goodbye. It’s been a period of intense introspection, which yielded mostly questions and only a few incomplete answers.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The final lines of Out, out returned to haunt me, because I cannot bear to resume an unthinking routine in the wake of this tragedy.

For me, the notion of returning to the daily grind, simply because I’m alive, has provoked a profound rebellion. My response to Ian’s death is a re-evaluation of my life's choices. Why do I parent like I do? Why do I spend money as I have? Why am I still doing work I never wanted nor trained to do? Why do I live so fast, always feeling rushed, often panicking?

How can I live more respectfully of my total self—my body, home, finances, motorcar, time and development? How can I live so that when my last moment comes, I am not bitter or resentful? How can I plan so that my last moments are not endured in punishing poverty? Am I doing right by my children?

I ask myself how I can celebrate the day expressing gratitude for the blessings that arrive, even when I am sad, hurting, tired, or confused. Even when the blessings seem thin on the ground.

I have a renewed sense that every moment is a profoundly precious gift—even when I feel bewildered and disillusioned. Each day is an opportunity to realize again the person I have the capacity to be. I don’t plan to squander a day on petty meanness, stupid activities, power struggles, or self-abasement. Those days are done.

I live in Johannesburg not knowing if I have a minute or a month. It is such a fearsome city. I pray that I will fall foul of neither the General Hospital, nor corrupt cops and other criminals. I hope neither the water nor the taxi drivers claim me before I reach a ripe old age. I intend to stay out of jail and the psychiatric ward. I’m keeping away from loan sharks and reducing my debt.

Since Ian died, I contemplate three tough questions daily:

What will I die defending? The answer is my loved ones but please God, no blood or motorized gates for I am squeamish and easily frightened.

For whom will I kill to protect? Again, my loved ones. But this is a moot point, as I no longer have a gun, and I’m not adept at martial arts. It is good, I guess, to have a certain heart, to know where you stand on the matter.

And what will I fight against until my dying day, in order to live to the fullest every day I am granted? I will rise up against my own fear that silences me and keeps me nice and good and small. I will rebel against anything that diminishes what and who I love in this the time of typhoid and other tragedies.