Georg Letham (44 page)

Carolus was less thick-skinned than I had expected. “If that's all it is” (namely?) “I'm prepared to let myself be infected by one or two bites from
Stegomyia
mosquitoes. If the theory is right, we'll be accepting the risks of success and will obtain a positive result. If the theory is wrong, it's a mosquito bite, and let's not waste a lot of words over it.” Well roared, lion. You'll get your medal on your scrawny hero's chest, a sword-and-enema-syringe war decoration on a golden breast band. That takes care of
him
!

“But this is impossible, gentlemen!” croaked the servant of God with the blue “Amen” tattoo on his throat, an earnest look on his face. “Think a minute! You've seen what this disease is. The death rate is forty-five percent to . . .”

“Oh, isn't that old news?” said Carolus irritably. Here
he
was the expert.

Pharmacist von F. sat toying with his matchbox like an old abbé with a snuff tin. His eyes moved in bewilderment from one person to another; he apparently understood nothing. “Be that as it may,” said the man of God emphatically, and no one could mistake his tone of voice, except March, who was still grinning, the idiot, “be that as it may, I can only regard it as a sin, for one may not do experiments on living human beings, one may not interfere with Divine Providence.”

“Where in the Gospel is that forbidden?” I asked. And when he made no reply–doing up, then undoing, the worn cloth-covered buttons of his cassock, which was either gray with dust or green with age
(it varied between the two)–Walter spoke, his words like a shot from a pistol:

“I'm in.”

“‘I'?” I repeated thoughtfully. “
We
don't want to carry out this experiment as individuals, nor can we. Either we all agree or it won't be done.”

“Dr. Walter,” said the chaplain, “I'm not speaking on my own behalf. If, with my insignificant life, I can render a service to science and to the general welfare of humankind, I'm ready to do my part. I suggest that you restrict yourselves to those among us who have no dependents, no family, no obligations. I'm alone in the world. The families of the two of you at home” (he indicated March and me) “have no expectation that you'll ever return [?]. But you, Dr. Walter, have a wife and five children here, down in the old city. What would be permitted for the rest of us, perhaps even a moral imperative under a charitable interpretation of Holy Scripture, if that would leave your family helpless after your death, for you it would be . . .”

“One, two, three, March, you, and me, that's not enough,” I interrupted shortly. “We'll never wind this up if we start getting into personal matters. I propose that each of the six of us take a match. If he wants to be in, he'll toss it just as it is into this marmalade jar where the dead
Stegomyias
are floating in sugar water and chloroform. But if he has any reason to exclude himself, then he'll tear–no, he'll
snap
the top of the match off and toss the rest into the jar. The vote will be secret. Here are the matches, one, two, three, four, five, six. There's the jar in the corner. If all five matches (six, including mine) aren't intact, we'll drop the whole thing; unanimity is required. Each of us must speak for all of us. All of us must speak for each of us. Very simple.”

“Very simple,” echoed the steadfast March.

At that moment the telephone rang. It was the time when the dear wife usually called. “Would one of you be so kind,” said that gentleman Walter, his voice trembling with emotion, “as to tell my wife that I can't come just now and that I'll call without fail very early tomorrow?”

“With pleasure,” Carolus said. He proceeded to the telephone booth, closing the door behind him. Very soon the chirping of the hard-of-hearing wife, the human annunciator, came to us, her usual “What? Eh? What?” low in the distance, but clearly discerned. But Carolus was not one to lose his calm. Someone who is able to do statistical studies of a few hundred dog-tired felons by the light of an acetylene lamp on a ship en route does not lose patience too quickly. He nodded his long yellow head like a bent fire lily (also called Turk's cap), but by the time he left the telephone booth he had fixed everything.

It was evening, and the lights went out as they often did.

“Wonderful,” I said, “a sign from fate! May it always smile upon us. Now each of us can vote without being seen by the others. Just one thing. These matches don't all have the same weight. My vote will be cast by a man sentenced to lifelong hard labor for the murder of his wife, that of my comrade March will be cast by someone who cut down his friend as one butchers a rabbit. Why mention it? I only want to anticipate this argument so that no one makes it against us later. We're playing for keeps. Ethical scruples can be raised now, there's still time, but not later.”

In the marmalade jar were–five matches, all with their russet heads. Not six? Was the decision not unanimous? Of course it was. That ninny March had thrown in his lighter instead of his match and was now fishing it out, a smirk on his good-natured face. To proclaim his willingness, he had tossed not just a match but an entire lighter into the ballot box!
I could not deny myself the pleasure of giving him a good box on the ear out of sheer joy (I was as though inebriated and did not come to my senses until later)–I believe the only one I have ever given anyone in my quadragenarian's life.

I have no wish to make our decision seem more momentous than it was. Physicians have experimented on human beings from time to time for as long as medical science has existed. It has not been exactly the rule, but by no means the exception, either, that physicians have ventured to experiment on
themselves
. We were not the first and will certainly not have been the last. Whether this undertaking would involve murder (voluntary manslaughter?) or suicide in legal terms was our (my) ultimate worry.

We were prepared for difficulties. But only for difficulties, not for something that was plain unachievable. Our task did not require genius. Only courage. Method. Discipline. Were these too much to expect from the six of us?

Unfortunately they were. The initial obstacles came from the man of whom I would least have expected such a thing. From old Dr. von F. His mission and his duty coincided, and yet he shirked them. He could have perished honorably for his idea, but he preferred to wait out the final consequences of his chronic geriatric disorder and drink the cup of life to the dregs. He did not have courage, nor did he abide by the method, nor yet did he evince discipline. I said that he had appeared to me to be free of emotionalism. But the sentimental tears that now flowed down his sunken, leathery cheeks set me straight on that score. Pasteur certainly did not cry before his experiments. But let the old
imbecile von F. have his effusion, we were in his debt for the crucial hint.

Of greater importance was another point. It goes without saying that absolute secrecy had to be maintained as far as the outside world was concerned. The fact is that the average person, burdened by preconceived ideas, responds to such
experimenta crucis
, as science calls them, with ethical scruples. Further, financial considerations (such as the matter of the insurance) were involved; opposition from the high authorities was to be feared. Now that we were really going to poke our noses into the yellow plague, no one needed the goodwill of the gentlemen in the bowels of the bureaucracy as much as we did.

So were we not our own masters? Of course we were. But our experiments on ourselves were only the start–we all understood that. A problem like this one was not going to be solved by a series of experiments on only six specimens of
Homo sapiens
. Sooner or later we would have to have recourse to other “human material,” as one must bluntly call it, and if the voluntary decision to give up one's life on the altar of science should perhaps become something not entirely voluntary or clear-cut in one case or another, then the issue of murder would become more salient. What could happen to us? To me not much, certainly. Far more to our work, which we wished to finish, had to finish. March and I, individuals lost to civil society, admittedly had nothing to fear, for the threat of disciplinary action could not intimidate us. But the other four? One of them was a man of the highest social position whose rank of general meant that he had to bear responsibility for everything, a second was the husband of a faithful, unprovided-for wife and the father of five, humane, a gentleman, and a Christian, the third was a man of the cloth with old-time qualms of conscience and an inadequate
understanding of the ethics of bacteriology, and the last was the old pharmacist von F.

I had called him a humanitarian. And until then he may always have been one–at least nothing to the contrary was known. But I had not reckoned on his vanity. And I had given far too little consideration to the fact that the experiment we all faced was one he could have done on himself long ago, while his noble hidalgo blood was still fresh and sweet and would have been pure nectar to the hungry
Stegomyia
mosquitoes. He had not done it then because his fear of being infected had been even greater than his vanity and his desire to make the name von F. world-famous. We will not speak of his humanity. For he never put it to the test. And whether one believes it or finds it fantastic, the very next morning after the matchstick ballot, this man at the mercy of death from a chronic incurable illness fought tooth and nail against our plan to include him in our series of experiments.

I could have gotten over it. Even five is a good number to start with. But the accursed man could not manage to keep his triumph to himself–that he had at last been taken seriously. While his mosquito eggs were still hatching in the incubator and we were racking our brains behind closed doors and windows about the proper way to set up an insectarium for them, and while the deeply distressed but resolute Walter was evading his wife's calls under always novel but ever more implausible pretexts, that old blockhead von F. had long since spilled the beans about our plan down in C. Walter found out from his wife that his intention was known. He, and we too, had to listen to the pregnant wife threaten in utter despair to throw herself and her children out the window and onto the street. What choice did he have? He swore to her by all the saints that it was all mad talk on the part of the pharmacist.
That we had wanted to indulge the old sick fool von F. during his last days, but had not taken his fantasies seriously for a minute, and as proof he proposed to meet with her in three days if she found the courage to get near him. Yes! Was she thrilled! She'd love to, that dear, faithful wife! He'd help her in making the long-planned move from C. She'd finally be allowed to take the children and leave this awful place. He suppressed his sighs, sketched out the travel plans with seeming coolness. And the wife was happy, overjoyed to hear this. At bottom she expected that she would be able to take her husband with her when the time came. She had every confidence in the power of her love.

So then one day, after a long private talk with Carolus, the good Walter disinfected himself from head to toe and, resplendent as a bridegroom, freshly pressed and bemedaled, but reeking of cresol instead of eau de cologne, he tried to leave us, to hie to the waiting arms of his yearning wife. For the time being the children would not come into contact with him, until he had proven to be free of infection.

How long should he wait to press his father's kiss to their brows? Not a living soul in the inhabited world knew. Each did what he felt he could accept responsibility for, and it was left, how shall I say, to the divine grace of God or to chance.

The good Walter did not promise us that he would be back punctually in a week's time (the wife had already bargained the three days originally granted up to that much). He had never been a man of particularly many words.

We expected that the insects would have pupated and matured in six to eight days (though it took longer) and be ready to feed on the blood of the Y.F. patients and hungry enough to bite five people after that. That is: since each of us could be used only once in the important
experiment, others would have to be present to carry out the necessary observations, tests, and examinations, record the findings, and so on. So at the last minute, while Walter was already looking impatiently out the window at the sea, the ship, and the islands, a plan was devised whereby first March and I would deliver ourselves over to the experiments while Carolus and Walter made their observations of us and took charge of our care. The chaplain was conceived as a reserve. He would step in either as an experimental subject or as a record keeper. But he could not replace even a Carolus, never mind a Walter.

What I am going to say will sound brutal and repugnant. But I cannot express it otherwise than comports with the facts. Our plans were unfortunately disturbed once more by the foolish, garrulous pharmacist, who did not even understand what damage he had done. We suggested to him–Carolus, that is, with the gentlest, mildest face in the world, while the rest of us shrugged indifferently and looked down–that upon further consideration we had thought better of our decision to do the experiments. So he was released from his promise. Go in peace! Give us your blessing and clear out! But the dismayed face of the old fool when he heard the bad news was something to see. He had been so sure we would stick to our guns and make his name known the world over.

Walter stood up at last, after he had asked March to get one of the experimental dogs out of its cage, the same one that he had walked. He wanted to take it to his children. What a kind heart! Pharmacist von F. smiled, but he did not go. Pharmacist von F. stayed. We looked askance at him, but he was not ashamed of his intrusiveness. He even became a pest. If there was anything good about it, it was that at least he was able to tell us about his latest, most exhaustive observations of the life
history of the insect under suspicion. If these had been no more reliable than his self-control and discretion, they would have been unusable. However, it became apparent that a weak personality and a vain and craven character have no bearing on the precision, fidelity, and subtlety of one's observations of nature. We checked his statements about the biology of the
Stegomyia
mosquito insofar as we were able. Almost all were dead right.