Georg Letham (31 page)

The heron calmly rises from its swaying perch and is soon floating in the moonlight, turning in ever higher circles, its long neck outstretched, its sharp bill thrust forward, its great wings barely moving.

After a long while, far behind our ship, now the size of a butterfly, it lets itself back down with motionless wings onto its own vessel, the swimming sea turtle of the species
Chelydra
from the Galápagos or the Gulf of Panama. The turtle's tiny head has long since vanished in the bright, moonshiny wake of the
Mimosa
, and the officers, yawning, tired and sleepless, go back to the clink of glasses in the lighted mess.

Other signs of approaching land are becoming more frequent. Limbs of jungle trees as long as the ship drift by in the night. Gnarly treetops without leaves. But hardy creepers with lilac-colored flowers are still hanging like nests in the smooth olive or dark green branches. The tree trunks, which have floated to the sea from the great South American rivers, are covered with birds. Pink flamingos, standing on one leg, heads tucked under wings, asleep, travel on branchy rafts carried by the current under bluish white moonlight almost as bright as day.

If only rest were possible! If only sleep were possible! I have been a stranger to the deathlike release and celestial comfort of the deepest sleep since the first night here on the
Mimosa
.

No wind disturbs the hot night air. The chains of the rudder rattle, the little steering engine chuffs, the big engines work steadily, the screw propeller turns underneath the sick bay at the stern of the old steamer. From the mess comes the sound of the officers laughing and talking loudly, unable to sleep in the tropical night any more than I can. Nor is there rest down in the convicts' dungeons. March's gramophone plays constantly, the monotonous blare of the records does not cease. From my porthole, the one that the faithful March broke, the only one that is open, a white cloth is blowing. Perhaps laundry that has been wrung out and left to dry.

A rat scampers past my feet toward the restless, cruelly harnessed
food animals and disappears beneath their bundles of hay. A soft squeaking, a weary baaing from all the sheep, a rattling of the chains of the cattle.

From the bridge can be heard the low, muffled commands of the officer to the helmsman over the ship's radio, answered promptly by the clanking motions of the long chains that work the mechanical steering, and abruptly the ship, which for miles has been making a beeline and leaving a straight wake, shifts its course to port in a long curve.

The drifting branches are gone. On the wavering shimmer of the horizon are the contours of something solid, either hills on one of the many islands or just cloud formations.

Just an hour of rest! To lie down on the deck, look up into the inexpressibly clear sky filled with stars, constellation next to constellation, the Milky Way a wide, swollen, luminous river, tender, all-redeeming, and full of deathly repose. Different areas of the inexhaustible light, power, and grandeur of the heavens come into view with the rolling of the ship.

A patient is moaning in his berth. I tear myself away from the sky and go to him.

But he seems to be the only one not awake on this almost palpably humid, starlit, moonlit night, the only one catching up on his long-denied sleep; and he will stay undisturbed. Die if you can, live if you must. You will not escape yourself, base yet pitiable heart.

Sky, stars and firmament, turtles and herons and branches peacefully traveling over the water with a crew of animals, a great school of dolphins dancing and playing and spraying fountains of water in the distance–who would credit this witchcraft! But this is only nature's painted mask. Everything beautiful, nothing true. The unearthly beauty
of nature is just as excruciating as March's love. What does it mean to me, what could it mean? The dream of a doomed man before his execution. Morphine without an injection. If only belief were possible! Knowledge is necessary–belief is not possible. Not for me.

Better for me to return to the foul-smelling, hideous typhus patient, disinfect his sleeping area thoroughly, submit to the hardest physical labor in the breathtaking humidity and heat of this endless night–so that I won't be alone with myself for long.

Then, in a corner of the vestibule, the hall with doors leading to the patients' berths, the ship's pharmacy, and the patients' lavatory, make a bed out of blankets and an old straw sack, throw myself down, and seek the sleep of the just, the most wonderful thing of all, until, toward daybreak with its purple glow, the one bearable time of the day, it comes at last. For now, at five o'clock, a cool, refreshing wind blows, stronger, drier, one that gives some consolation.

At seven I am awake again and quickly get up to put all the areas of the sick bay in order. The lavatory door is unlocked, I open it, and there sits–the brigadier general on his throne, an unlit cigar in his mouth, deep in thought. He does not move. If such weighty, profound meditation could take the place of the work of a creative scientist, his voyage would be destined to succeed. God be with him! I gently close the door, wash and feed my typhus patient, the mugger, and think about nothing.

The brigadier general is expending the sweat of his brow on a lot of little slips of paper, some round, some square, of various colors. He has been going through a mountain of medical journals and pinning
the slips of paper (with the pins between his long front teeth, the good man resembles an old seamstress) onto a large map, to the horror of the captain, who did not permit the use of his valuable map for
this
purpose. But the rank of brigadier general is too godlike. Everyone bows in awe and deference.

Through unremitting hard work, the worthy Carolus has evidently obtained two results. No, he has not discovered the yellow-fever pathogen. This can be achieved only on the battleground of the most terrible, most dangerous epidemic since the bubonic plague. If it can be achieved. Nor has he discovered the epidemic's mode of transmission, its precise epidemiology. Here we have as many theories as there are scientists who work on this tropical enigma.

One of them, an old physician on C., even wanted to make mosquitoes the culprit. Without proof, of course. Mosquitoes!
Anopheles
!
Stegomyia
! As though this disease, the “yellow plague,” were a kind of malaria, which is known to be spread from person to person by the bites of mosquitoes. What a difference, what a confusion, what a flight of imagination!

Carolus has at least one thing going for him. He has no imagination. He has clumsy hands, worse, he has unclean paws, he is incapable of isolating a pure bacterial strain, he is afraid of living flesh, of the pain of his victims! He pokes infectious material into the faces of poor, defenseless convicts, he forces them to wait for hours, exhausted and hungry, while he makes statistical tabulations of strictly academic interest–but he has one thing going for him: he believes only what he knows.

A simple principle. And yet this is the only solid difference between a man of exact science and an amateur.

The first of Carolus's two results has to do with the air temperature of all the places where cases of yellow fever have been reliably documented. Yellow fever requires an average night temperature that does not fall below twenty-two degrees centigrade and an average daytime temperature that does not fall below twenty-five.

The second result concerns the geographic range of the epidemic and its history, which he dictates to me as follows:

“Yellow fever, also called yellow plague, is an infectious disease, reports of which began reaching Europe soon after the discovery of America. The accounts of Father Du Tertre in the nineteenth century, when yellow fever was widespread in the Antilles, are the first in which the disease is unmistakable. It is, in fact, native to tropical America. From there it spread to North America, West Africa, and Europe.
Its primary zone lies between the two tropics
. That is, in the equatorial region.

“Within the two tropics–the area below the twenty-third parallel in the northern and southern hemispheres–it is the American and African coasts opposite one another where cases of yellow fever are attested. That is, the east coast of Africa and the west coast of America. To be geographically precise, the region of the Gulf of Panama and vicinity, and in Africa the Ivory Coast and Gold Coast. The disease cannot spread significantly in temperate zones.

“
Susceptibility
of the races: Europeans more susceptible than mixed-race individuals. African Negroes and Mongolians appear to be immune; that is to say, they may live in epidemic areas, may come into contact with the ill, and yet are not infected. The most susceptible” (what a sardonic smile, you old Pharisee–do you think your general's insignia is going to give you some protection from the disease that we
poor felons don't have? Not likely!) “–the most susceptible is the newly arriving European, the more so the cooler his country of origin.” (All of us! The righteous and the unrighteous, thank heavens!)

“Men more susceptible than women.” (Too bad!) “Adults more than children.” (Sad!) “Strong young people more than the old and weak.” (Eternal lunacy of “kindly,” “benevolent Mother Nature,” as we like to call it, that painted old whore.) “The poor more susceptible than the rich.” (From the circles of hell to the spheres of heaven and here too, preferential treatment for the moneyed classes!)

Finished, old itchbag? He drones on, mouth stretched wide, scratching himself with his apishly hairy hands, now on his chest, now on his long, columnar skull, with its patch of pale gray-blond hair seemingly in the wrong place, like a slipping toupee. No, he has a lot more theory to dictate, many more slips of paper to pin up. In one hand I have the pins, in the other the box of paper slips, and I'd need a third to write down all the important scholarly discoveries.

As the head of the commission, the brigadier general has the powers of a governor. If I can stay with him, everything will be fine, everything. I am going to be allowed to, will be, must be. He bosses me around sternly, orders me to join the other deportees when we land, but then to report to him. As a research assistant? Oh no! Only as a manservant, who will assist in autopsying yellow-fever cadavers and so forth. God does not forsake those He loves. He does not forsake them. So I'll be the first to be infected by the yellow-fever cadavers and will snuff it in no time. March, darling, you'll be avenged. Play your gramophone when they carry this old sinner to the grave. And don't cry for me. G. L. the younger doesn't deserve it!

My charge, the typhus patient, is fortunately on the road to recovery, and even the brigadier general is gracious to me. He addresses me again, from the depths of his narrow bureaucrat's breast. And what does he say? Does he thank me for my hard work? Does he commiserate with me? Does he marvel that a man of my background, of my (his) station, is a criminal convicted without possibility of appeal? Or is the good man thinking ahead, does he want to have a friendly chat about what he'll be up to on the other side in the near future? No, none of these. “You owe a great deal to your father.” Long pause. His eyelids lift behind the smoke-colored, horn-rimmed glasses, he focuses on me, and says again: “You owe your father a great deal.” That's it, and the tall, thin, impassive fellow, lightly clad, turns his endlessly long, stiff back to me, and with his storklike walk returns to his cabin to pore over encyclopedia volumes, study British, American, German, and French reprints, and copy out extracts from them.

But my troubles aren't over. Yes, the convalescing typhus patient has at last put his legs, sharp and bony, covered with black hair, over the edge of his bed, climbed down unsteadily, and taken his first faltering steps with my help; he eats solid food (in tremendous quantities), is mentally lucid (intent on thievery), keeps himself more or less clean–but the sick bay has a newcomer. The man who caught my attention during the chief's examination with his great, feverishly glowing eyes and hollow cheeks, their red circles the badge of jailhouse consumption in all its misery, has been hemorrhaging heavily due to congested pulmonary circulation, as is not uncommon in people with severe lung disease when they arrive in very hot regions. He is a young man, not much over twenty, a city kid, cunning, vicious, but fun, full of boisterous
humor (“There'll be pie in the sky by and by!”), of irrepressible high spirits. Lie down? Rest? Take it easy? Keep quiet? What for? Delighted with his unaccustomed freedom (he spent long years in prisons, busily sewing mailbags), he roves about all over the
Mimosa
. He even intrudes on three men suspected of having leprosy who live sequestered in a room of their own in the sick bay, tending each other's nasty wounds, spending most of their time in a twilight half-sleep, and preparing their own scraps of food, as apathetic as animals at rest. They are even heard singing at night or early in the morning. But the lung patient wants things, he leaves me no peace. At night he stands at the rail and admires the sea, spitting cigarette butts down, almost asphyxiated by the smoke; during the day he scurries past the guards with a polite smile and into the officers' galley, where he begs tasty morsels from the chef. If only he could stomach them! But nothing stays down. Incredible that this man, doomed in equal measure by pulmonary and intestinal tuberculosis and with the signs of both of them stamped all over him, is still alive at all, talking and moving around. Why does this candle go on burning when it has neither wick nor tallow left? No matter. It is burning.