Collected Short Fiction, page 995
What now? Notify the authorities? Which authorities? Shadrach looks about for a Citpol, but the street, busy a few minutes ago, is mysteriously empty. He feels responsible for the body. He can’t simply abandon it where it dropped. He enters the curio shop to find a telephone.
The proprietor is a sleek, plump Indian, sixty years old or so, with large liquid eyes and thick dark silver-flecked hair. He wears an old-fashioned business suit and looks dapper and prosperous. Evidently he has witnessed the little curbside drama, for he bustles forward now, palms pressed together, lips clamped in a fussy oh-dear expression.
“How regrettable!” he declares. “That you should be troubled in this way! They have no decency, they have no sense of . . . of—”
“It was no trouble,” Shadrach says quietly. “The man was dying. He didn’t have time to think about decency.”
“Even so. To importune a stranger, a visitor to our—”
Shadrach shakes his head. “It’s all right. Whatever he wanted from me, I couldn’t provide it. and now he’s dead. I wish I could have helped. I’m a doctor,” he confides, hoping the disclosure will have the right effect.
It does. “Ah!” the shopkeeper cries. “Then you understand these things.” The sensibilities of doctors are not like those of ordinary beings. It no longer embarrasses the proprietor that one of his shabby countrymen has had the poor taste to inflict his death on a tourist.
“What shall we do about the body?” Shadrach asks.
“The Citpols will come. Word gets around.”
“I thought we might telephone someone.”
A shrug. “The Citpols will come. There is no importance. The disease is not contagious, I understand. That is, we are all infected from the days of the War, but we have nothing to fear from those who display actual symptoms. Or from their bodies. Is this not true?” the shopkeeper asks.
“It’s true, yes,” Shadrach says. He glances uncomfortably at the small sprawled corpse, lying like a discarded blanket on the sidewalk outside the store. “Perhaps we ought to phone anyway, though.”
“The Citpols will come shortly,” the shopkeeper says again, as if dismissing the subject. “Will you have tea with me? I rarely have the opportunity to entertain a visitor. I am Bhishma Das. You are American?”
“I was born there, yes. I live abroad now.”
“Ah.”
Das busies himself behind the counter, where he has a hotplate and some packets of tea. His indifference to the body on the street continues to distress Shadrach; but Das does not seem to be an unintelligent or insensitive man. Perhaps it is the custom, out here in the Trauma Ward, to pay as little attention as possible to these reminders of the universal mortality.
In any event Das is right: the Citpols do indeed arrive swiftly, three black-skinned men in the standard uniforms, riding a long somber hearse-like vehicle. Two of them load the body into the car; the third peers through the shop window, staring long and intently at Shadrach and nodding to himself in an unfathomable, oddly disturbing way. The Citpols finally drive away.
Das says, “We will all die of the organ-rot sooner or later, is this not true? We and our children as well? We are all infected, they say. Is this not true?”
“True, yes,” Shadrach replies. Even he carries the killer DNA enmeshed in his genes. Even Genghis Mao. “Of course, there’s the antidote—”
“The antidote. Ah. Do you believe there is indeed an antidote?”
Shadrach blinks. “You doubt it?”
“I have no certain knowledge of these things. The Chairman says there is an antidote, and that it will soon be given to the people. But the people continue to die. Ah, the tea is ready! Is there, then, an antidote? I have no idea. I am not sure what to believe.”
“There is an antidote,” says Shadrach, accepting a delicate porcelain cup from the merchant. “Yes, truly there is. And one day it will be given to all the people.”
“You know this to be fact?”
“I know it, yes.”
“You are a doctor. You would know.”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” Bhishma Das says, and sips his tea. After a long pause he says, “Of course, many of us will die of the rot before the antidote is given. Not only those who lived in the days of the War. but even our children. How can this be? I have never understood this. My health is excellent, my sons are strong—and yet we carry the plague within us too? It sleeps within us, waiting its moment? It sleeps within everyone?”
“Everyone,” Shadrach says. How can he explain? If he talks of the structural similarities between the organ-rot virus and the normal human genetic material, if he describes how the virus liberated during the long-ago war was capable of integrating itself into the nucleic acid, into the germ plasm itself, becoming so intimately entwined with the human genetic machinery that it is passed from generation to generation with normal cellular genes, a deadly packet of DNA that can turn lethal at any time, how much of this will Bhishma Das comprehend? Can Shadrach speak of the inextricability of the lethal genetic material, the inexorable way it must be incorporated into the genetic endowment of any child conceived since the Virus War. and get the meaning across? The intrusive organ-rot gene has become as intimate a part of the human heritage as the gene that puts hair on the scalp or the one that puts calcium in the bones: our tissues now are automatically programmed at birth to deteriorate and slough off when some unknown inner signal is given. But to Bhishma Das this may be as baffling as the dreams of Brahma. Shadrach says at last, after a moment’s pause, “Everyone who was alive when they turned the virus loose absorbed it into his body, into the part of his body that determines what he transmits to his children. It can’t be eradicated once it enters that part. And so we pass the virus along to our sons and daughters the way we do the color of our skins, the color of our eyes, the texture of our hair—”
“A dreadful legacy. How sad. And the antidote, doctor? Would the antidote free us from this legacy?”
“The antidote they have now,” Shadrach says, “keeps the virus from having a harmful effect on the body. It neutralizes it, stabilizes it, holds it in a state of latency. You follow me?”
“Yes, yes, I understand. In the deep freeze!”
“So to speak. Those who receive the antidote have to take a new dose every six months, at present. To hold the virus in check, to keep the organ-rot from breaking out in them.”
“More tea, doctor?”
“Please.”
“You have received this antidote yourself?”
Shadrach replies uneasily, after a moment’s consideration, “Yes. I have.”
“Ah. Because you are a doctor. Because we must keep the healers alive. I understand. It seemed to me you must have the antidote. There is something about you; you are like a man apart from us. You do not wake up every day wondering if this is the day when the rot will start in you. Ah. And some day we will have the antidote too.”
“Yes. Some day. The government is working on increasing the supply.” The lie sours his mouth. “I wish you could have your first injection today.”
“It is not important for me,” Das says calmly. “I am old and I have enjoyed good health, and my life has been a happy one even in the most troubled times. If the rot begins in me tomorrow, I will be ready for it. But my sons, and the sons of my sons, I would spare them. What do old wars mean to them? Why should they die horrible deaths for the sake of nations that were forgotten before they were born? I want them to live. My family has been in Kenya for 150 years, since we first came from Bombay, and we have been happy here, and why should we perish now? Sad, doctor, sad. This curse on mankind. Will we ever cleanse ourselves of what we have done to ourselves?”
Shadrach shrugs. There is no way to comb the murderous new gene out of the genetic package; but in theory a permanent antidote is possible, a hybrid DNA that can be integrated into the contaminated genes to absorb or detoxify the lethal genetic material. Somewhere in the PRC organization they are at work on such an antidote, Shadrach has been told. Of course, the rumor may be false. The research group may be only a myth. The permanent antidote itself may be only a myth.
He says, “I think these last twenty years have been a purge that mankind necessarily had to undergo. A punishment for accumulated idiocies and foolishnesses, perhaps. The whole history of the twentieth century is like an arrow pointing straight to the Virus War and its aftermath. But I believe we’ll survive the ordeal.”
“And things will be again as they once were?”
Shadrach smiles. “I hope not. If we go back to where we were, we’ll only arrive again eventually at the same place we’ve reached now. And we may not survive the next version of the Virus War. No, I think we’ll build a better world out of the ruins, a quieter, less greedy world. It’ll take time. I’m not sure how we’re going to accomplish it. Many bad things will happen first. Millions will die needless horrible deaths. But eventually—eventually—the suffering will be over, the dying will be done, and those who remain will live in happiness again.”
“How refreshing to hear such optimism.”
“Am I an optimist? I’ve never thought of myself that way. A realist, maybe. But not an optimist. How strange suddenly to find myself an apostle of faith and good cheer!”
“Your eyes were glowing when you said what you said. You were already living in that better world as you spoke. Do you want to withdraw your prophecy? Please, no. You believe that that happier world will come.”
“I hope it’ll come,” Shadrach says soberly.
“You know it will.”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps I sounded sure a moment ago, but—” He shakes his head. He makes a determined effort to recapture that unexpected strain of positive thinking that had come so surprisingly from him a moment ago. “Yes,” he says. “Things will get better.” Already there is something forced about it, but he goes on. “No trend continues downward forever. The organ-rot can be defeated. The smaller population that exists now will be able to live comfortably in a world that couldn’t support the numbers of people who lived before the war. Yes. A purge, an ordeal by fire, a necessary corrective to old abuses, leading to better things. Dawn after the long darkness.”
“Ah. You are an optimist, doctor!”
“Perhaps I am. Sometimes.”
“I would like to see a man like you as the leader of that new world,” Bhishma Das exclaims rapturously.
Shadrach recoils. “No, not me. Let me live in that world, yes. But don’t ask me to govern it.”
“You will change your mind when the moment comes. They will offer you the government, doctor, because you are wise and good, and you will accept. Because you are wise and good.” Das pours more tea. His naive faith is touching. Shadrach takes a sip; then he has a sudden morbid vision of Bhishma Das, a year or two from now, crying out in surprise and delight as the new Chairman of the Permanent Revolutionary Committee appears for the first time on his television screen, and the face of the new Chairman is the finely wrought brown-skinned face of that wise and good American doctor who once visited his store. Shadrach coughs and sputters and nearly spills his cup. The face will be the face of Dr. Mordecai, yes, but the mind behind the warm searching eyes will be the cold dark mind of Genghis Mao. Shadrach has almost managed to forget Project Avatar, this day in Nairobi. Almost.
“I should be going,” Shadrach says. “It’s late in the day. You’ll want to close the shop.”
“Stay a while. There is no hurry.” Then: “I invite you to my home for dinner this evening.”
“I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Another engagement? Oh, how regrettable. We would provide a fine curry in your honor. We would open a fine wine. Some close friends—the most stimulating members of the Hindu community, professional people, teachers, philosophers—intelligent conversation—ah, yes, yes, a delightful evening, if you would grace our home!”
A temptation. Shadrach will dine alone, otherwise, at his hotel, a stranger in this strange city, lonely and in peril. But no: impossible. One of those stimulating Hindu professional persons will surely ask him where he lives, what kind of doctoring he does, and either he must lie, which is repugnant to him, or he must let it all spill out-member of privileged dictatorial elite, physician to the terrifying Genghis Mao, etc., etc., and so much for his new reputation as a humanitarian benefactor: the truth about him will sicken the friends of Bhishma Das and humiliate poor Das himself. Shadrach mumbles sincere-sounding excuses and regrets. As he edges to the door. Das follows him, saying, “At least accept a gift from me, a remembrance of this charming hour.” The merchant glances hastily about his shelves, searching among the spears, the beaded necklaces, the wooden statuettes, everything apparently too crude, too flimsy, too inexpensive, or too awkwardly large to make a fitting offering for such a distinguished guest, and it seems for an instant that Shadrach will get out of the place ungifted; but at the last moment Das snatches up a small antelope horn in which a hole has been drilled at the pointed end and plugged with wax. A cupping horn, Das explains, used by a tribe near the southern border to draw pain and evil spirits from the bodies of the sick: one applies the cup to the skin, sucks, creates a vacuum, seals it with the wax plug. He urges it on Shadrach. saying it is an appropriate gift for a healer, and Shadrach. after a conventional show of reluctance, accepts gladly. He has no East African medical devices in his collection. “They still use these,” Das informs him. “They use them very much just now, to draw forth the organ-rot spirit.” He bows Shadrach from the store, telling him again and again what an honor his visit has been, what pleasure has come from hearing the doctor’s words of hope.
On the seven-block journey back to the hotel Shadrach counts four dead bodies in the streets, and one that is not quite dead, but will be soon.
In the morning he flies onward, toward Jerusalem. He is aware of the curve of the planet below him, the enormous belly of the world, and he is amazed anew by its complexity, its richness, this globe that holds Athens and Samarkand, Lhasa and Rangoon, Timbuktu, Benares, Chartres, Ghent, all the fascinating works of vanishing mankind, and all the natural wonders, the Grand Canyon, the Amazon, the Himalayas, the Sahara—so much, so much, for one small cosmic lump, such variety, such magnificent multitudinousness. And it is all his. for whatever time remains before Genghis Mao calls upon him to yield up the world and go.
He is not, like Bhishma Das, ready to go whenever his marching orders arrive. The world, now that he is again out in the midst of it, seems very beautiful, and he has seen so little of it. There are mountains to climb, rivers to cross, wines to taste. He who has been spared from organ-rot does not want to succumb to another man’s lust for immortality. Shadrach’s passivity has fallen from him: he does not accept the fate in store for him. Bhishma Das called him an optimist, a wise and good man whose face glows when he speaks of the better days that are coming, and though that was not how Shadrach had ever seen himself, he is pleased that Das saw him that way, pleased that those unexpectedly hopeful words tumbled from his lips. It is agreeable to be thought of as a man of sunny spirit, to be a source of hope and faith. He tries the image on and likes the fit. It is a little like smiling when one is not in a smiling mood, and feeling the smile work its way inward from the facial muscles to the soul: why not smile, why not live in the hope of a glorious resurrection? It costs nothing. It makes others happier. If one is proven wrong, as no doubt one will be, one has at least had the reward of having dwelled for a time in a warm little sphere of inner light rather than in dark despair.
But it is hard to put much conviction into one’s optimism when the threat of immediate doom hangs over one. I must deal somehow with the problem of Project Avatar, Shadrach resolves.
December 8, 2001. So I am not to suffer the organ-rot after all. Today I had my first dose of Roncevic’s drug. They say that if your smears have shown no trace of the virus in its active state before your first injection, you are safe, but the antidote can do nothing for you if the thing has already entered into the lethal phase. My smears were clean: I am safe. I never doubted that I could be spared. I was not meant to perish in the Virus War, but rather to endure, to survive the general holocaust and enter into my own true time. Which now has come. “You will live a hundred years,” Roncevic said to me this morning. Does he mean a hundred more years? Or a hundred all told? In which case I have only about twenty-five years left. Not enough, not enough.
No matter what, I’ll outlive poor Roncevic. He has the rot already. It glistens and blazes in his belly. How hard he worked to develop his drug, how eager he was to save himself! But not in time. The disease went active in him too soon, and he will go. He goes, I stay: he plays his appointed role in the drama and leaves the stage. While I live on, perhaps another hundred years: My physical vitality has always been extraordinary. No doubt my bodily energies are of a superior order, for here I am, past seventy, with the vigor of a young man. Resisting disease, deflecting fatigue. They say that Chairman Mao, when he was past seventy, swam eight miles in the Yangtze in an hour and five minutes. Swimming is of no interest to me; yet I know that if there were need, I could swim ten miles in those sixty-five minutes. I could swim twenty.
Jerusalem is colder than Shadrach expects—almost as chilly as Ulan Bator on this late spring morning—and smaller, too, amazingly compact for a place where so much history has been made. He settles in at the International, a sprawling old mid-twentieth-century hotel stunningly located high on the Mount of Olives. From his balcony he has a superb view of the old walled city. Awe and excitement rise in him as he looks out upon it. Those two great glittering domes down there—his map tells him the huge gold one is the Dome of the Rock, or the site of Solomon’s Temple, and the silver one is the Aqsa Mosque—and that formidable battlemented wall, and the ancient stone towers, and the tangle of winding streets, all speak to him of human endurance, of the slow steady tides of history, the arrivals and departures of monarchs and empires. The city of Abraham and Isaac, of David and Solomon, the city Nebuchadnezzar destroyed and Nehemiah rebuilt, the city of the Maccabees, of Herod. the city where Jesus suffered and died and rose from the dead, the city where Mohammed, in a vision, ascended into heaven, the city of the Crusaders, the city of legend, of fantasy, of pilgrimages, of conquests, of layer upon layer of event, layers deeper and more intricate than those of Troy—that little city of low buildings of tawny stone just across the swooping valley from him counsels him that apocalyptic hours are followed by rebirth and reconstruction, that no disaster is eternal. The mood that came upon him when he was with Bhishma Das has survived the journey out of Africa. Jerusalem is truly a city of light, a city of joy. He remembers his hymn-singing great-aunts Ellie and Hattie clapping their hands and chanting—
