The English Patient: Chapter VI Summary & Analysis

After Hana injects the English patient with another dose of morphine, he begins to tell her about his time in Cairo. In 1937, he went gone on an expedition with Madox to Uweinat. The English patient asked Madox what the name for the small hollow at the base of a woman’s neck was. Madox simply stared at him. “Pull yourself together,” Madox said.

Later, Caravaggio tells Hana a story about a Hungarian named Almásy who aided the Germans during the war. Almásy was a desert explorer who knew all about the landscape and the local dialects of the native people. When the war began, Almásy guided German spies across the desert. The point of Caravaggio’s story, he tells Hana, is that he doesn’t think the English patient is English.

Hana is dubious and tells Caravaggio that his suspicions about the English patient are ridiculous. Caravaggio reminds of Hana of when they named the stray dog. The English patient had suggested three names: Cicero, Zerzura, and Delilah. Cicero, Caravaggio says, is a code name for a German spy thought by the British to be a triple agent. Hana tells Caravaggio that she has already heard all about Zerzura from the English patient. Caravaggio nods. The “spy-helper” Almásy is upstairs, he says.

According to Caravaggio, the Germans sent a spy named Eppler to Cairo in 1942 with a copy of the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier as a code book to send messages back and forth. Almásy guided Eppler through the desert. After leaving Eppler in Cairo, Almásy went back into the desert and British Intelligence lost track of him. Plus, Caravaggio says, the man who caught Eppler in Cairo was named Sansom, which explains why the English patient wanted to name the dog Delilah.

Hana tells Caravaggio that it makes no difference who the English patient is. After all, she says, the war is over. Caravaggio isn’t convinced. He wants to give the English patient a Brompton cocktail, which is a combination of morphine and alcohol, and see if he starts talking. Hana tells Caravaggio to leave the English patient alone, but he promises not to hurt him. If anything, the cocktail will ease his pain, Caravaggio says.

After giving the English patient the Brompton cocktail, he begins to tell Caravaggio all about Cairo and the desert. Caravaggio asks him about 1942, and the English patient says he had just come to Cairo and was headed back into the desert when his truck exploded. The war meant that many vehicles were sabotaged, and the English patient was forced to travel to the buried plane by foot. It was an extra plane, owned by Madox, which the expedition didn’t use anymore.

After four days walking in the desert, the English patient finally reached the Cave of Swimmers, where he had left Katharine years earlier. Her dead body was still there, wrapped in a parachute. Still very much in love with her, he “approached her naked as [he] would have done in [their] South Cairo room, wanting to undress her, still wanting to love her.” “What is terrible in what I did?” the English patient asks. “Don’t we forgive everything of a lover?” The English patient carried Katharine’s body out of the cave. She had been injured three years earlier, in 1939. Geoffrey had attempted a murder-suicide of himself, Katharine, and the English patient by crashing his plane. He killed only himself, however, and badly injured Katharine. She couldn’t be moved, and the English patient’s only choice was to go get help.

After the English patient’s affair with Katharine ended, he became angry and introverted, and grew suspicious that Katharine had taken a new lover. Just before the war, he returned to Gilf Kebir to take down base camp. Geoffrey was scheduled to pick the English patient up in his plane, and when he arrived, Geoffrey flew the plane directly at the English patient, attempting to hit him. Geoffrey missed, and the plane crashed to the ground. Geoffrey was killed instantly, but Katharine, who was a passenger in the plane, was not.

When the English patient took Katharine’s broken body from the plane, she asked him why he hated her so. Geoffrey began to suspect their affair long after it was over because the English patient treated her so badly. As the English patient talks, Caravaggio places another morphine tablet in the English patient’s mouth, and the English patient tells him he left Katharine in the Cave of Swimmers with his copy of The Histories.

When the English patient finally reached Madox’s plane buried in the desert in 1942, he loaded Katharine’s body into it and took off. The plane, however, was beginning to rot after being left in the desert for so long. Oil leaked all over, saturating the English patient’s lower legs. A spark ignited the oil and the plane began to burn. He slipped into a parachute and ejected from the plane, and it wasn’t until he was flying through the air that the English patient noticed he was on fire.

Later, Hana enters the English patient’s room to find Kip standing at his bedside. The English patient claims he and Kip get along so well because they are both “international bastards.” They were both born in one place but choose to live in another, and they spend their lives “fighting to get back or get away from [their] homelands.”

Kip tells Hana and the English patient about his time as a sapper, diffusing bombs all over Europe. The English patient claims that Kip’s teacher must have been Lord Suffolk, and Kip confirms that he was. Lord Suffolk, along with his secretary, Miss Morden, and his chauffer, Mr. Fred Harts, were known as “the Holy Trinity,” Kip says, until they were blown up in 1941 at Erith.