Georg Letham (69 page)

It happened that we presented ourselves immediately after the high official's arrival and laid our results on the table.

Ten men, ten reports, ten experiments.

We all expressed ourselves freely. Now I must report something that will be difficult to understand. It may have been exhaustion due to the excessive strain of our work, or it may have been the effects of the Y.F.
that I had passed through and had still not properly recovered from–I don't know why, but
I
was now filled with doubts about our Axiom I. I doubted myself, I doubted everyone.

When our report was lying for review on the official's desk, I returned to our accommodations, uncommunicative and trembling as though with chills. I was now living with Carolus in the apartment of the late municipal medical officer, von F. the pharmacist, whose position I was going to assume. But was I up to the job? I didn't know. I saw none of our dearly won results as certain. I was filled with regrets. I had lost faith in my godlikeness. Walter's fate, March's, that of Walter's widow, the children, even Suleiman's death, weighed heavily upon me. Would I have done it all over again? Perhaps so! I would have done it again–and regretted it again!

And even if everything accorded with the truth, how was it possible to credit Axiom I? Were our experiments convincing? Perhaps we had done too few after all! How often investigators have deceived themselves! If the commission had refused to believe us, would it be possible to convince a governor? I think not even Carolus was free from doubt. It is very difficult to be a judge in one's own cause.

Even without speaking we understood each other very well, and soon I was able to master myself sufficiently that the next morning I ventured a small jest. A silly thing, hardly worth mentioning. Carolus used a rather worn-out old shaving brush to lather himself. He neglected to rinse his face properly after he shaved and there were bristles from the brush stuck in the creases on his cheeks. I pointed out with a laugh that he had become young and blond again. He replied equally gaily that I had become old and gray. It was as though he had responded to my innermost being and not to the silly thing I had said.

But how were things with him really? Only one who knew how to read his face could see the dreadful unease in it.

It was also in the words he whispered into my ear before we visited La Forest for the second time: “Whatever you do, Georg, keep calm!
I'm
not giving up on our cause, even if it costs me the last years of my life and the last coins in my pocket.” Nevertheless we came out onto the street in a very somber mood, and this state of mind did not become more cheerful when I ran into March on a street corner, again in the company of some completely wild riffraff. And he was no different, he was every bit as seedy looking, I might almost say every bit as brutalized, as those pitiable creatures that the colonial administration was allowing neither to live nor to die here. Shall I describe him and them, shall I repeat their snatches of cynical talk? Why should I? He looked past me, his eyes glittering abnormally. The pupils were tiny. He was evidently under the influence of alcohol and morphine. How he could have fallen so far, what had stopped him from finding his way home as anyone else in his place (except me, probably) would have done with boundless joy, what had become of the money that the generous Carolus had given him–of these matters I will not speak. They are of personal significance only.

Now the
enterprise
was front and center. And if anything could console me for the loss, the seemingly inexorable decline and fall of my friend, it was the discussion that we began with La Forest that afternoon and that stretched into the night, with short breaks. It was mostly between Carolus and La Forest. Since my experience with the commission, I had felt it was best not to push myself forward. I, the pardoned convict G. L., could serve our cause in no better way than to efface myself entirely. In all the scientific publications that would soon
appear presenting our work, I am cited only as “Case 4.” The honors that attached to these events in the course of the year accrued to Carolus and to Walter's memory. My name was not mentioned. Here in this report I have also concealed my real name.

The most important thing was that La Forest stood as resolutely with us as the American commission did against us. Neither had verified Axiom I. Such terrible experiments could not be simply and mechanically replicated, nor were they. But the governor, a practical administrator, showed us another way to validate them. He let the truth prove itself in practice. He devised a two-year program (later extended). He was going to wipe out the mosquito
Stegomyia
, genus
Culex
. Then (if our theory was correct–and it was, it was as sure as death) Y.F. would be wiped out too. In one of the camps, which bore the number 54, a fresh Y.F epidemic was just then breaking out (the first among the deportees in a long time). He drove out to the camp with us. First we reached an agreement with the director of the penal colony. We put together a new team; it was not the last. La Forest had not studied at my father's knee for nothing. He knew the art of handling people, he could strike a chord in everyone, play a tune anyone could dance to. For the first time in the history of the colony, all sorts of different departments worked together harmoniously. Success came. Quickly. Regularly. Unimpeachably. The statistician's heart in Carolus was gladdened. Mortality, which had attained monstrous dimensions, declined with every passing month. My old friend soared! He became young. He was in the pink for the three years that he held out before turning home.

The administrative district gradually became free of Y.F. Coupled with this were measures to combat malaria. We found that the two
closely related insect genera did not have at all the same habitat. The genus
Culex
prefers to lay its eggs, standing on end in the shape of an artful little boat, in artificial reservoirs of water, rain barrels, cisterns. But
Anopheles
, which causes malaria (actually it is the vector of the disease), places them in natural but small pools of water. The eggs are loosely arrayed, perpendicular to the surface of the water, so that any gust of wind will disperse them. Uncontrolled rivers and streams overflow almost everywhere in the tropics at certain times of year; puddles and stagnant pools are left behind when the waters retreat. This is where the mosquitoes live. This is where the public-health people must go to work. Free-running water does not harbor mosquitoes.

In the initial public measures, high-flow trenches, frequently cleaned, were used to drain bodies of standing water, or else they were filled in. We built. We had cheap human material in vast quantities; the work was beneficial, it was possible to substantially improve the circumstances of thousands of people who had been merely existing, their lives more wretched than those of animals. To combat the mosquitoes, we used asphyxiants, agents known from long experience in malaria regions, which work by sealing the surface of the water off from the air. The mosquito larvae die because they have to keep coming to the surface to breathe through their tracheae or respiratory tubes. We used disinfection and mosquito-proof doors and windows to inhibit the transmission of Y.F. We had an unbelievable amount of work, but an even greater amount of success.

We gradually cleaned up an area larger than Europe. We brought mortality down to a fraction of what it had been. We stamped out Y.F. here. Others followed us. The battle to eradicate the mosquitoes and
develop the fertile region was a fascinating one that lasted for years and turned out well.

The territory flourished.

This is where I leave the scene.

I disappeared into the crowd, and that is for the best.