The English Patient

The English patient returns to his story, having promised to tell Hana how one falls in love. When he met Katharine, she was married, and no one expected Geoffrey to bring his wife on the expedition. After visiting the group in the desert, the Cliftons went back to Egypt for a month; when they returned to the desert, Katharine was quieter than before and spent most of her time reading about the desert, but Geoffrey was still loudly enthusiastic about his love for her. Katharine was discovering herself, realizing she did not have to be a socialite’s agreeable wife.

The English patient was 15 years older than Katharine and more cynical about relationships, but Katharine was smarter than he was. One day, when she ran out of books, she asked to read his copy of The Histories. He refused politely, saying he needed the notes it contained. He and Madox went into the desert on a week-long reconnaissance while the others stayed behind. Upon their return, Katharine greeted him with a cup of cold water and told the English patient that Geoffrey wanted her to read something out loud during the party later that night. The English patient gave her The Histories and told her to look through it for something. During the celebration, she read the story of Candaules, a man who was passionately in love with his own wife. As she read, the English patient fell in love with her, the story having revealed a path in his real life. He tells Caravaggio that words have power.

When the Cliftons were not in the desert, they were in Cairo working for the English government. They were popular among Cairo high society, while the English patient was an outsider. He hated social events but attended just to be near Katharine. He worked in the Department of Egyptology, writing a short book about his desert expeditions. He wanted to dedicate it to Katharine but instead dedicated it to a king. He grew increasingly awkward in her company until she approached him and said, “I want you to ravish me” (236). After they became lovers, he grew increasingly obsessed with her body, particularly the small indentation at the base of her throat.

Unbeknownst to the English patient, Geoffrey was deeply involved in the machinery of English government, and various government officials found out about Katharine’s affair. Only Madox knew about Geoffrey’s connections. Madox tried to warn his friend about Geoffrey’s connections by comparing Geoffrey to Oblonsky, a character in the novel Anna Karenina who is related to half of Moscow and Petersburg.

Katharine always loved words, which brought her clarity, but she eventually returned to Geoffrey while the English patient returned to the desert. He told Madox he had been courting a widow. He felt guilty about deceiving Madox, whom he had known and worked with longer than anyone else. A month after returning to his English village in 1939, Madox shot himself in the head during a church sermon in honor of the war.

Madox, who had always appreciated poetry more than any other Royal Geographical Society member, once asked the English patient if he liked the moon and called him Odysseus. When they said goodbye for the last time, he told the English patient the spot at the base of the throat is called the vascular sizood. Madox had described his village of Marston Magna in Somerset many times, emphasizing how green it was. In the crowded church, he shot himself as the priest blessed the men about to enter the war. The English patient thinks maybe the desert spoiled Madox but declares with certainty that Madox died because of nations. Meanwhile, Caravaggio injects the English patient with morphine and then injects himself.

The English patient is fond of jazz from the mid-1930s and enjoyed dancing in jazz clubs in Cairo on trips back from the desert. During the group’s last nights in Cairo in 1939, he took Madox to a bar with the Cliftons. Almásy drunkenly attempted to do a dance move of his own invention, the Bosphorus hug, with Katharine. Caravaggio’s thoughts interject in the narrative as he wonders who is telling the story now. Katharine was clearly upset with Almásy’s behavior. The rest of the group saw little of Almásy in Cairo between expeditions and were not amused by his behavior. Katharine eventually danced with him until he fell down. Geoffrey watched from his seat while strangers laughed at Almásy.

Almásy felt better after returning to the desert, where his only connection to human society was his copy of The Histories. In the desert, engaged in the study of its geomorphology, he was his own invention and his best self.

The English patient awakes to find Hana washing him. He closes his eyes, opens them again, and sees Madox holding the morphine injections but missing his thumbs. Caravaggio watches the English patient as he speaks, amazed at his disciplined refusal to admit that he is Almásy. The men have been taking morphine all day, and each time the English patient takes it, another door of his mind is opened. Caravaggio picks up The Histories and opens to a random page.

After the English patient carried Katharine to the cave in September 1939, he wrapped her in a parachute and built a fire. Since Katharine always wore makeup, he used paint from the cave paintings to mimic makeup. Leaving his copy of The Histories with her, he told her he had to walk to get help, but he had no navigation equipment. He walked for three days without food before arriving at the oasis town of El Taj, where English military jeeps surrounded him. They refused to listen to his pleas for help.

Caravaggio asks if the English patient gave the soldiers his name, and he says he told them Katharine was his wife and needed medical attention. He says that since the war had begun by that point, every strange person who came into a small town was immediately treated with suspicion. He became hysterical and was put into a truck, accused by being “just another possible second-rate spy” (251).

Caravaggio suddenly wants to leave the villa with Hana and Kip and return to real life. He decides it no longer matters which side the English patient, whom he still believes is Almásy, was on during the war. He asks if the English patient murdered Katharine, and the English patient says no. Caravaggio explains that he only asked because Geoffrey was not just a random man: He was an aerial photographer who had been ordered to spy on the Royal Geographical Society’s expeditions as part of the English government’s preparation for war in the desert. British intelligence had always known about Katharine and the English patient, even if Geoffrey did not, and were treating Geoffrey’s death as suspicious.

The English patient asks if Caravaggio came to the villa to apprehend him, and Caravaggio says he came because of Hana. He says he has actually become too fond of the English patient—Almásy—to turn him in. Caravaggio becomes quiet, and Almásy says the two of them can talk because they are both mortal, while Hana and Kip, being so young, are not mortal yet. He asks if Caravaggio sees him as just a book to be read. Caravaggio says that thieves like him were legitimized during the war as they could often engage in intelligence operations more successfully than government agents. He had been working for British Intelligence in the Middle East when he heard about Almásy. The British were afraid Almásy would use his knowledge of the desert to help the Germans.

Almásy says he only volunteered to take Eppler across the desert in 1942 so he could get back to the Cave of Swimmers. Caravaggio reveals that the British had broken the German code long before Almásy and Eppler’s journey but could not let the German general, Rommel, know that they knew. They had been watching Almásy for a long time and planned to kill him before he disappeared. They also believed Almásy had killed Geoffrey because of his affair with Katharine.

Almásy says that, as a private man, it is difficult to learn that people talked about him so extensively. Caravaggio asked what happened to Katharine after Madox went back to England. Almásy explains that he returned to the Gilf Kebir to pack up the last base camp, and when Geoffrey flew out ostensibly to pick Almásy up, he instead flew directly at Almásy and crashed his plane in the dunes. Geoffrey was killed, and Almásy buried his body later that night. Katharine, who had been in the passenger seat, was badly wounded. Almásy carried her into the Cave of Swimmers. He thought of himself as a jackal who would guide and protect her. He told her about all the animals associated with mythological deities. He imagined himself with Katharine, watching her, throughout her life, including the night she met Geoffrey.

That night, as Katharine was dying, Almásy carried her out of the cave. He tells Caravaggio it is important to die in holy places, which is why Madox committed suicide in a church. He thought about all the desert communities that had moved across the landscape and concluded that humans all contain collective histories.

Caravaggio comes into the villa’s kitchen, where Hana sits, and tells her the English patient is sleeping. She asks if he is Almásy, and Caravaggio says they can let him be. Hana says Kip is on the terrace, planning something for her birthday. Caravaggio says he wants to tell Hana a story about her father as a birthday present, but she refuses.

Kip prepares dinner that night, which Caravaggio dreads because he does not want a vegetarian meal. Hana offers to help Caravaggio get off morphine, saying she is a good nurse, and he tells her she is “surrounded by madmen” (266). Tiny lights illuminate the terrace, and Caravaggio thinks Kip has gone overboard with candles, but he and Hana realize they are actually shells filled with oil. Kip says there are 45 shells to honor the year 1945. Caravaggio is amazed to see three bottles of wine on the table, as he knows Kip does not drink.

As they eat, they toast each other and the English patient. Caravaggio wants Hana and Kip to get married but cannot figure out the dynamics of their relationship. They talk about what they will do when the war in Japan is over. When Caravaggio asks Kip where he will go, Kip does not answer. Hana tells stories about Toronto but avoids telling stories about her childhood, wanting Kip to know her only as an adult. Caravaggio tells a story about Hana singing the Marseillaise as a child and Kip says he heard the song sung by men in his unit. He starts to sing it, but Hana takes off her shoes, stands on the table, and sings it instead. Caravaggio notices that her voice contains something “scarred” that was not there in childhood (269). He notes that she is definitely singing to Kip.

Kip and Hana often talk until sunrise when they spend the night in Kip’s tent. He tells her about the five great Indian rivers and the Golden Temple at Amritsar, a place central to Sikh worship that was built in the 16th century. Referring to Lord Suffolk, he tells Hana he has also lost a beloved father figure. Hana realizes that she cannot fully give herself to Kip as a lover: He is an outsider who can switch allegiances and quickly replace what he has lost, and while she does not fault him for this, she knows it makes them fundamentally different. Each morning when he leaves the tent, she knows she might never see him again and starts thinking of him as a knight.

In October 1943, 30 sappers, including Kip, were flown into Naples. When the Germans retreated from Italy, they left behind so many bombs that it took the Allies a year to clear the city of unexploded ordinance. Mines were everywhere and were made out of everything, from galvanized pipes to wooden boxes. The sappers became suspicious of any object that seemed randomly placed. After a few weeks, a German soldier turned himself in, telling Allied authorities that thousands of bombs were hidden near the harbor and were set to explode when the city’s dormant electrical system was turned back on. The Allies interrogated the German seven times and could not determine if he was telling the truth, but they evacuated Naples anyway. Kip was one of 12 sappers who stayed behind. As he waited for the electricity to be turned on at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, Kip experienced “the strangest and most disturbing” hours of his life (276).

Thunderstorms often roll over the villa at night. Kip returns each evening at seven o’clock, which is when the thunder begins, and Hana and Caravaggio watch him from the house. If the rain starts before he gets back, he takes off his wet turban, dries his hair, and puts on a new turban. During thunderstorms, the villa is lit up by lightning, and the four occupants might look to an outside observer like one of the religious tableaux that hang in local churches.

The 12 sappers who stayed in Naples were told to evacuate at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, an hour before the power was restored. In the empty city, Kip heard only barking dogs and birds left in apartments. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, he goes to the Church of San Giovanni a Carbonara and approaches a tableau depicting an angel and a woman in a bedroom. The figures are unnaturally large. He spread his cape out on the floor, alongside the bed in the tableau, having decided that if he was going to explode, he wanted to do it in a holy place next to these “parental figures” (280). Eventually, the lights came on.

Hana, looking out the window, sees Kip with his hands clasped over his head. She thinks he is in pain but then realizes he is holding his earphones tight against his ears. Suddenly, he screams and drops to his knees. After a moment, he goes into his tent, walks back out holding his rifle, and walks toward the villa. Passing Hana, he hurries to the English patient’s room, weeping and shaking. He fires the rifle out the window and then turns it on the English patient. He says he sat at the foot of the English patient’s bed and listened to him for months, which he did as a child listening to older, wiser people. He tried to immerse himself in English traditions, knowing that he would be rejected if he did not, but he cannot figure out why the English have this kind of power. He throws the rifle on the bed and puts the earphones on the English patient, who winces from pain.

Hana and Caravaggio enter as the English patient hears about the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With the rifle trained on the English patient, Kip imagines Asian cities full of fire and says his brother told him to never trust Europeans who make deals and draw maps. When Hana and Caravaggio ask what happened, Kip tells them to listen to the celebrations on the radio. They tell him he does not know who the English patient actually is. The English patient nods and tells Kip to shoot him. Kip says that once a country starts bombing “the brown races of the world,” it becomes a country of Englishmen (286).

Caravaggio sits down, knowing Kip is right: Those bombs would never have been dropped on nations full of white people. Kip walks out, leaving Hana and Caravaggio to bury the English patient when he finally dies. He knows they will bury everything except The Histories. Kip goes back to his tent but cannot eat or sleep. He eventually takes the insignia off his uniform and strips the tent of everything related to bomb disposal or military work. He does not know anything about nuclear weapons; all he knows is that his name is Kirpal Singh and that he does not know why he is in Europe.

From the villa, Hana watches Kip take down his tent and remove the tarpaulin from his motorbike, which he keeps behind the chapel. Hana goes outside and asks him what she and Caravaggio have to do with the nuclear bombs. She leans her head against his chest, listening to his heart. Kip gets on his motorbike and rides down the path. Caravaggio stands at the open gate, holding the rifle. Kip stops and Caravaggio hugs him, saying he will have to learn how to miss Kip. Kip rides away and Caravaggio returns to the villa.

Kip heads south, avoiding Florence. He rides against the direction of the invasion and ignores his own memories of the war. Back at the villa, Hana opens the knapsack Kip left, pulling out a pistol, a toothbrush, and some pencil sketches, including a drawing of her. She also finds a picture of eight-year-old Kip with his family.

In Cortana, Kip rides his motorbike up the steps of a church and goes inside. He is drawn toward a statue “bandaged in scaffold” but cannot get close to see it through his rifle scope (291). He leaves Cortana and rides into the mountains, passing through a region where he fought during the war, and then heads toward the coast.

Hana writes Clara a letter, the first she has written in years. In the letter, she claims to have forgotten the year but remembers the month and day because it is one day after the bombs were dropped on Japan. She says that her father died in a dove-cot, which is a large house built just for doves, and she says the dove-cot is a sacred, comforting place.

Kip arrives in Ortona, riding his motorbike through the rain. He does not allow himself to think of Hana, but he does imagine the English patient with him, sitting on the gas tank, talking about Isaiah and the Sistine Chapel fresco. He remembers when the English patient tried to hand Kip his copy of The Histories and Kip told him he had his own holy book. He tries to remove his goggles while riding across a bridge over the Ofranto River and his motorbike skids on the wet road. Kip and the bike fly through the air and into the river.

In Hana’s letter, she tells Clara about Patrick’s burns and says that she, a nurse, could have taken care of him. She bemoans “the sadness of geography” and says she is sick of Europe and wants to come home (296). In the river, Kip’s head emerges from the water.

During a thunderstorm, Caravaggio fashions a rope bridge leading from the roof of a neighboring villa to the Villa San Girolamo, roping it around the waist of a statue. He wonders how valuable the statue is. As Hana seals the letter, she looks at Caravaggio from the window, balancing on the rope bridge between the two villas. She holds her cupped palms out the window and runs rainwater through her hair.

At three o’clock that morning, the English patient wakes, sensing a presence at the foot of his bed. He hopes it is Kip and stays awake to see if it is, but the shadowy figure never moves.

Years later, Kip, now a doctor with a wife and two children, still thinks about Hana. Sitting in his garden in India, he pictures her in her own country, with longer hair, completing mundane tasks. He can only see her life in silence and cannot see the people surrounding her, but he can tell she is an adult now. He pictures her like this every month or two, as if replying to the letters she wrote him for over a year, letters to which he did not respond. Something has reminded him of her recently and he feels the urge to talk to her. Kip watches his children and wife, feeling at ease with their customs.

In Canada, Hana is 34, beautiful and idealistic but still without the company she truly wants. She still thinks of the English patient and the poems he read her. She hits the edge of a cupboard with her shoulder, knocking a glass from the shelf. As the glass falls, Kip’s hand catches a fork his daughter dropped before it hits the floor.