Georg Letham (36 page)

The director told me briefly who this was. She was a girl of fourteen and a half, Monica Zerlina Aglae, etc.; the family name, a Spanish-sounding name consisting of many individual names, is irrelevant here. He gave me to understand that the young thing was the only child of very well-to-do Portuguese parents. The father had worked for three years here in the old section of the city as the director of the large wood-utilization company. The child had been brought up in a convent in Europe. But at the fervent request of her unreasonable, doting mother, the old nanny had brought her here. Here? Certainly! She was lying there before us, was she not, looking at us with beautiful, velvet brown eyes already inflamed by the disease and smiling imploringly.

Her mother had known of the danger of Y.F. Indeed, she herself had long been in constant fear of it. So why stay here? And why in the devil's name bring an innocent child into this atrocious climate, this hell for criminals known the world over? Her husband was putty in her hands.
He had no choice but to stay, and he could not live without his wife. And she not without her Monica. Logical, no? He needed to earn a lot of money. The wife had led a life of luxury in Paris in recent years, had bought crazy amounts of jewelry and so forth; it was precisely here, in such a perilous post, that the husband could hope to recover a large fortune in a short time.

The child had evidently been in good hands in Europe. Everything going swimmingly, had not the foolish woman been afraid every moment of catching Y.F. And of having to die without seeing her one and only again, her child! And the husband weakened as men often weaken toward women they love, even to their downfall, and gave in. He accepted the mad notions in the doting mother's simple, stupid doll's head and had the child come. The ayah missed her little girl and had pushed for it, too.

When the ship was already en route, the epidemic, then in a quiescent period, broke out again with renewed virulence. What to do? Send a wire? In vain. There was no way to call it off (or was it that no one wanted to call it off? Any ship can be reached by wireless telegraphy!), but vows were made. The fearful mother (afraid for herself? for the child?) promised heaven everything, ten years of her husband's earnings, all her splendid jewelry (I would make the acquaintance of some of it). But heaven showed no consideration. Why should it?

Heaven showed no consideration, I say, but did I?

I must speak, I must tell how it all happened–and for the first time I am seized by a diffidence inexplicable even to me, I don't know what to say, what not to say.

My innermost feelings are now responding for the first time since the death of my wife, I am speaking of the only human being toward whom I have felt what I have heard described as “love.” Ill-fated love? I don't know. So positive a feeling as love can never be ill-fated, if it is genuine. Such an enormous test of the human heart can never be all for naught. What a load of sentimentality and slippery ideas. I have pledged, I have promised myself, that I will speak only of facts.

The first sound I heard from the child was a low, brief cry of pain. What I now saw of her was a small, brownish, plump, but long-fingered hand, feeling about on a slender neck beneath dark blonde pageboy-cut hair. But she did not find what she was looking for. All there was on her fingertips was a little blood, at which she gazed in wonderment with her large, still quite childlike, yet already womanly eyes. A mosquito, no doubt one of the young ones from my matchbox, had bitten her and, disturbed before it could finish its meal, not satisfied with that little bit of blood, was still humming about the bed, taking that unpredictable zigzag path that is familiar to us from moths in our climes and is so frustrating to hungry animals. The little insect, gleaming silvery and black, pleased with its newfound freedom, circled quite unconcernedly about the night table, upon which lay all sorts of fruit, little dishes of compote, bottles of mineral water, and a small bowl of ice chips in fairly large clumps. Finally the mulatto was able to shoo the mosquito away with one of her cotton kerchiefs. The insect flitted out the window and into the hospital courtyard, where its wings flashed in the afternoon sun and it vanished.

The little Portuguese girl had sat up and was looking at me. Despite her feverish condition, she was amused by the chase after the mosquito. Her strawberry-colored lips, which were swollen now and perhaps for
that reason had a somewhat sensual appearance, with a shadowy suggestion of dark fuzz over the mouth, curved in a smile. She seemed to be mocking herself for having taken seriously something so trivial as a bite on the neck by a mosquito. It was just this pluck, this mischievous irony, that I found so captivating. I couldn't take my eyes off her, and she returned my gaze. Or was she only looking at her new doctor with childlike curiosity? I have said that I had the gift of being able to awaken trust, and what could be more important for such a young creature, one who is seriously ill, than to find a doctor who inspires trust at first sight? Then she will hope, believe, and trust.

Many physicians have this ability. It can be seen in pediatric clinics when an exhausted tiny creature, in the midst of its suffering–suffering that can only be bewildering and thus all the more terrifying for it–will instantly stop all its wailing at the sight of a certain doctor, wipe away its tears with hands almost too weak to do anything, and with an indescribable expression of pure submissiveness, of courage, indeed of faith and even delight in the midst of distress, give itself up to the physician who, responding to the illness, not the gaze of the sick child, is preparing to examine it.

I was given this ability, as are many others. I don't know why. The venerable age or imposing beard or practiced manner of the physician or friend to children cannot be the reason for this mysterious trust, this devotion, this touching absorption of the suffering little creature in the strange doctor.

But why the theoretical discussion? All because I am unable to bring myself to report my love for the child. Let the reader fear no new horror stories! Let him expect no weepy fiction, either. What is at issue here is the typical medical history of a girl somewhat older than fourteen,
and the futile efforts of an older man disillusioned with himself and the world to save her and become at one with himself and the world once again.

It was, as grotesque as it sounds, love at first sight. Can that have been an accident? Or did I, Dr. G. L. the younger, sentenced to lifelong hard labor on C., embark upon this absolute self-abandonment, hopeless from the outset, because I suspected that it could never be fulfilled? That Monica was just as doomed in her way as I was in mine? Or was I still hoping, in some corner of my heart? That is the question.

I don't know, and I didn't think about it. I had no thought of the future. My heart beat, I was with her. It was that simple.

I stood on the left side of the bed and began the examination. The mulatto on the right side, breathing heavily with agitation, watched tensely. She wanted to be in the room at all times, would no doubt also want to improvise a bed for the night here on the cotton-covered reclining chair of the kind often provided for convalescing patients. Whenever I was with Monica, she was there. We were never alone, even for a minute. Or no, we were, before the end–nearly alone.

My examination yielded the following picture. She was a girl of normal development and stature, of the southwestern European type, with good, strong musculature and gracile, regular bone structure. The dentition was complete and well-formed. The fever was moderate, 38.9°c, the lips and pharynx swollen, though only slightly at first, the tongue coated, dry, the conjunctivae reddened and highly sensitive to light. Hence the red cloths over the windows. The liver was only negligibly enlarged, not sensitive to pressure, but the abdomen was somewhat distended, with dull pain. The onset of the disease had probably been three to four days previously. Carolus's statistical findings–the particular
vulnerability to infection of new arrivals from cooler regions, healthy, strong, muscular types, white people–were borne out here, except the fact that men tended to be more susceptible than women, which I had cynically regretted on the ship. At that time I had been sorry that men, the more highly organized of the sexes, were more sensitive to Y.F.; now this injustice angered me. For
now
, seeing this blossomlike, chastely sensual, truly enchanting creature with the slightly frowning, strawberry-colored lips and the downy shadow above them, when I had this creature afflicted by the great misery of Y.F. and the small misery of a mosquito bite before me, close enough to touch, and when I felt: here now in your life is what you have always yearned for and always dreaded–now I would have wanted all men to be subject to the epidemic and all women to be safe. What madness feeling is!

But what can words convey? For the first time I see the meagerness, indeed the factitiousness of what at the beginning I called my “report.” “Close enough to touch,” “chastely sensual”–what drivel that is, fraudulent, sentimental drivel. For the thing that really happened and happened with outward banality, yet with inward unfathomability, here as so often in life, I am unable to put into words. I doubt now that anyone will have any feeling for me in this part of my story, very likely with good reason, for I know that very likely no one will understand me.

The child had fallen back onto the hospital pillows without taking her eyes off me. The plump down comforters with embroidered cambric covers that she had brought with her into the hospital were sprawled on the reclining chair, which, covered with bright repp or cotton, stood in the corner of the room and which I have already mentioned.

The eyes were glassy, the conjunctivae bloodshot, as one sees in drinkers in a state of advanced, blissful alcoholic befuddlement. I have
already reported this, have I not? But drinking! Befuddlement! This was remote from Monica. Not even fever was befuddling her now. She was lucid, and answered my questions in French as precisely as she could. She was bright beyond her years and perhaps had an idea what was happening. Speaking was already difficult for her. But she even raised herself off the pillows as if to make herself more clearly understood, pulled her cream-colored, brightly flowered chiffon pajamas, which were held around her throat with a green ribbon, still tighter, so that her somewhat too thin neck emerged like the stalk of a flower. The carotid artery could be seen throbbing beneath the fine skin with its blond down. The pulse was rapid, 125 beats per minute, the heart within normal limits, strong, as is generally the case in the flower of youth.

Presently she put her hand to her brow, behind which she felt severe pain, and I hastened to fill an ice bag with ice chips for her, first crushing them as finely as possible, and then placed it on her forehead. Crushing the ice chips required some strength. It is usually done with a mallet, not with the hand. But it seemed to be easy.

I had acquired new energies since entering this room.

Someone in the full bloom of youth–could I not hope to save her? If it was humanly possible. Nevertheless I was not able to devote myself to this patient alone. Two more Y.F. patients were brought in on the same day, or rather one Y.F. patient and a second man whose symptoms were similar to those presented by Y.F. sufferers, but who in fact had a different, less dangerous ailment.

This was a man in his late fifties, worn out before his time due to alcohol and nicotine abuse, a tavern owner from the docklands. His
establishment was said to be small, lucrative, and disreputable, as it was frequented by the most dubious elements of the city, freed slaves, thieves, and scoundrels, usually swindlers rather than murderers; also lepers–who furtively traded the poultry bred on their (officially) hermetically sealed leper farm for absinthe and whiskey–half-caste women, and the like. He had the best relations with the administration, for which he acted as an informer for love and money both. For who if not he was so knowledgeable about what the dregs of the population were up to? Needless to say, he took advantage of the trust placed in him by the authorities for the purposes of extortion of all kinds practiced against his peers. He shamelessly cut people's throats and then boasted about it later; he was one of the richest but most despised men in the city. He was proud of the livelihood he had created for himself and did not hide it from me. He had, by the way, also provided us with some of our experimental animal material and had not made a bad profit.

When he had suddenly fallen ill with ague and hematuria and a yellowish tint had appeared on his bloated, flat features, he had been hospitalized involuntarily. He was in a state of high anxiety that his house might be torched while he was gone or that he might or would become infected here. He ranted and raved, spat incessantly, would not stay in bed despite his patently serious condition, and his raucous presence had the quiet, gloomy hospital in an uproar. Bellowing like a chained bull being burned alive in its stall, he wanted to fly at the director, at the old nurses, and it took all the art of calm persuasion I could muster to at least get him to permit a thorough examination.

I have said that I possessed a certain power of suggestion, both with children and with raging patients. Here again it did not fail. No doubt it lay in my gaze and my laconic but strong-willed nature. He yielded
to me, mastering himself only with the greatest effort. His limbs still twitched. He rolled his eyes like a ham actor playing a villain; his head, with its oily, slicked-down hair, jerked back and forth on the bed under my hands while at the same time he strained to pull it backward away from me. But the instant I made the first exploratory maneuvers, he grew visibly tranquil, like a mesmerized rooster. Yes, he grinned at me, took my hand, looked me in the face, and he was off and running. He took me for one of his own kind, had known right away that I was not one of the hospital's staff physicians, but rather a convict (as he himself had been), and that (like him) I enjoyed the undeserved protection of the authorities. His eighteen years on the island, where there were always more sick people than healthy ones, more people dying than being born, had practically made him a doctor too. For the region was just not a healthy place to live. He took me by the wrist, guided my hand beneath his left costal arch, and had me feel a moderately hard mass jutting out into the middle of his left upper abdomen beneath his skin, which was feverishly hot and covered with dark hair.