“There’s a guy called String,” Della said, handing me another bottle of beer and lobbing a log onto the fire. “He may be able to help.” So casual. So matter-of-fact. It was as if she were talking about the weather, rather than my fading life.
“String?” The name intrigued me, and repeating it gave me time to think. He’d been all over the news a few months ago, but then I’d thought nothing of it. At the time I’d had no need of a cure.
Della stared over at me, the light from the fire casting shadows that hid her expression. Calm, I guessed. Content. That was Della all over. She had short hair, which she cut herself, and her clothes consisted of innumerable lengths of thin coloured cloth, twisted decoratively around her body and giving her the appearance of an old, psychedelic mummy.
She had no legs. They had been ripped off in a road accident, just at the beginning of the Ruin. She was too stubborn to wear prosthetics.
“Lives in Greece. On one of the islands. Can’t remember which.” She frowned into the fire, but I did not believe her faulty memory for a moment.
“So what could he do? What does he know?”
Della shrugged, sipping her beer. “Just rumours, that’s all I’ve heard.”
I almost cried then. I felt the lump in my throat and my eyes burning and blurring; a mixture of anger and resentment, both at my fellow humans for tearing the world apart, and at Della for her nonchalant approach to my fatal condition.
“I’m pretty fucking far past rumours, now. Look.” I lifted my shirt and showed her my chest. The growths were becoming visible, patterns of innocent-looking bumps beneath my skin that spelled death. “Just tell me, Della. I need to know anything.”
She looked at my chest with feigned detachment. It was because she hated displays of self-pity rather than because she didn’t care. She did care. I knew that.
“His name’s String — rumour. He’s a witch-doctor, of sorts — rumour. Rumour has it he’s come up with all kinds of impossible cures. I’ve not met anyone who’s gone to him, but there are lots of stories.”
“Like?”
She shrugged, and for the first time I realised what a long shot this was. I was way beyond saving — me and a billion others — but she was giving me this hope to grab onto, clasp to my rotting chest and pray it may give me a cause for the few months left to me.
“A woman with the Sickness eating at her womb. She crawls to him. Five days later, she turns up back home, cured.”
“Where was home?”
“London Suburbs. Not the healthiest, wealthiest of places since the Ruin, as I’m sure you know. But String, so they say, doesn’t distinguish.” Della poked the fire angrily with a long stick. I could see she wanted to give this up, but she was the one who’d started it.
“Which island, Della?”
She did not answer me, nor look at me.
“I’ll know if you lie.”
She smiled. “No you won’t.” From the tone of her voice I knew she was going to tell me, so I let her take her own time. She looked up at the corrugated iron roof, the rusted nail-holes that let acidic water in, the hungry spread of spider’s webs hanging like festive decorations.
“Malakki,” she said. “Malakki Town, on the island of Malakki. He’s got some sort of a commune in the hills. So rumour has it.”
“Thanks, Della. You know I’ve got to go?” I wondered why she had not mentioned it before. Was it because it was a hopeless long shot? Or perhaps she just did not want to lose me? Maybe she relied on me a lot more than she let me think.
She nodded. I left a week later, but I did not see her again after that night. It was as if we’d said goodbye already, and any further communication would make it all the more painful.