Do you remember my old English teacher, Mr. Dudar? When I was in tenth grade, he came down with cancer of the esophagus. It turned out he was a Christian Scientist, which we never knew. He refused to have chemotherapy even. And guess what happened? Absolute and total remission.
The tin door of the outhouse rattled shut and the German woman emerged into the sun again. Her towel had a wet stain. Mitchell put down his letter and crawled to the door of his hut. As soon as he stuck out his head, he could feel the heat. The sky was the filtered blue of a souvenir postcard, the ocean one shade darker. The white sand was like a tanning reflector. He squinted at the silhouette hobbling toward him.
“How are you feeling?”
The German woman didn’t answer until she reached a stripe of shade between the huts. She lifted her foot and scowled at it. “When I go, it is just brown water.”
“It’ll go away. Just keep fasting.”
“I am fasting three days now.”
“You have to starve the amoebas out.”
“Ja, but I think the amoebas are maybe starving me out.” Except for the towel she was still naked, but naked like a sick person. Mitchell didn’t feel anything. She waved and started walking away.
When she was gone, he crawled back into his hut and lay on the mat again. He picked up the pen and wrote, Mohandas K. Gandhi used to sleep with his grandnieces, one on either side, to test his vow of chastity—i.e., saints are always fanatics.
He laid his head on the bathing suit and closed his eyes. In a moment, the ringing started again.
*
It was interrupted some time later by the floor shaking. The bamboo bounced under Mitchell’s head and he sat up. In the doorway, his traveling companion’s face hung like a harvest moon. Larry was wearing a Burmese lungi and an Indian silk scarf. His chest, hairier than you expected on a little guy, was bare, and sunburned as pink as his face. His scarf had metallic gold and silver threads and was thrown dramatically over one shoulder. He was smoking a bidi, half bent over, looking at Mitchell.
“Diarrhea update,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fine?”
“I’m OK.”
Larry seemed disappointed. The pinkish, sunburned skin on his forehead wrinkled. He held up a small glass bottle. “I brought you some pills. For the shits.”
“Pills plug you up,” Mitchell said. “Then the amoebas stay in you.”
“Gwendolyn gave them to me. You should try them. Fasting would have worked by now. It’s been what? Almost a week?”
“Fasting doesn’t include being force-fed eggs.”
“One egg,” said Larry, waving this away.
“I was all right before I ate that egg. Now my stomach hurts.”
“I thought you said you were fine.”
“I am fine,” said Mitchell, and his stomach erupted. He felt a series of pops in his lower abdomen, followed by an easing, as of liquid being siphoned off; then from his bowels came the familiar insistent pressure. He turned his head away, closing his eyes, and began to breathe deeply again.
Larry took a few more drags on the bidi and said, “You don’t look so good to me.”
“You,” said Mitchell, still with his eyes closed, “are stoned.”
“You betcha” was Larry’s response. “Which reminds me. We ran out of papers.” He stepped over Mitchell, and the array of aerograms, finished and unfinished, and the tiny New Testament, into his—that is, Larry’s—half of the hut. He crouched and began searching through his bag. Larry’s bag was made of a rainbow-colored burlap. So far, it had never passed through customs without being exhaustively searched. It was the kind of bag that announced, “I am carrying drugs.” Larry found his chillum, removed the stone bowl, and knocked out the ashes.
“Don’t do that on the floor.”
“Relax. They fall right through.” He rubbed his fingers back and forth. “See? All tidy.”
He put the chillum to his mouth to make sure that it was drawing. As he did so he looked sideways at Mitchell. “Do you think you’ll be able to travel soon?”
“I think so.”
“Because we should probably be getting back to Bangkok. I mean, eventually. I’m up for Bali. You up?”
“As soon as I’m up,” said Mitchell.
Larry nodded, once, as though satisfied. He removed the chillum from his mouth and reinserted the bidi. He stood, hunching over beneath the roof, and stared at the floor.
“The mail boat comes tomorrow.”
“What?”
“The mail boat. For your letters.” Larry pushed a few around with his foot. “You want me to mail them for you? You have to go down to the beach.”
“I can do it. I’ll be up tomorrow.”
Larry raised one eyebrow but said nothing. Then he started for the door. “I’ll leave these pills in case you change your mind.”
As soon as he was gone, Mitchell got up. There was no putting it off any longer. He retied his lungi and stepped out on the porch, covering his eyes. He kicked around for his flip-flops. Beyond, he was aware of the beach and the shuffling waves. He came down the steps and started walking. He didn’t look up. He saw only his feet and the sand rolling past. The German woman’s footprints were still visible, along with pieces of litter, shredded packages of Nescafé or balled-up paper napkins that blew from the cook tent. He could smell fish grilling. It didn’t make him hungry.
The outhouse was a shack of corrugated tin. Outside sat a rusted oil drum of water and a small plastic bucket. Mitchell filled the bucket and took it inside. Before closing the door, while there was still light to see, he positioned his feet on the platform to either side of the hole. Then he closed the door and everything became dark. He undid his lungi and pulled it up, hanging the fabric around his neck. Using Asian toilets had made him limber: he could squat for ten minutes without strain. As for the smell, he hardly noticed it anymore. He held the door closed so that no one would barge in on him.
The sheer volume of liquid that rushed out of him still surprised him, but it always came as a relief. He imagined the amoebas being swept away in the flood, swirling down the drain of himself and out of his body. The dysentery had made him intimate with his insides; he had a clear sense of his stomach, of his colon; he felt the smooth muscular piping that constituted him. The combustion began high in his intestines. Then it worked its way along, like an egg swallowed by a snake, expanding, stretching the tissue, until, with a series of shudders, it dropped, and he exploded into water.