Contagion

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The unusual events described in this story took place throughout the world. Everyone agreed that, considering their somewhat extraordinary circumstances, they were totally lost. For its normalcy, is what strikes one first about the general mood in the US.

The country, let us admit, is out of control. It has a smug, placid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts of the world. How to conjure up a picture of a country without a moral compass, where you never hear honest explanations is a thoroughly negative place, in short?”

The baskets of flowers are brought in from the suburbs by the truck load; it’s a spring cried in the marketplaces. During the summer the sun bakes the streets bone-dry, sprinkles our walls with grayish dust, and you have no option but to survive those days of fire indoors, in air conditioned spaces. In autumn, on the other hand, we have deluges of rain. Only the first signs of winter brings welcomed relief.

Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die. In Providence, one wonders, is this an effect of the climate? All three are done on much the same lines, with the same feverish yet casual air. The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting ahead. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, “doing business.” Naturally they don’t focus on such simpler pleasures as love-making.

In the evening, on leaving the office, they show, at an hour that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same streets, or take the air on their balconies. The passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to golf, to banquets and “socials,” or clubs where large sums change hands on the fall of a card.

It will be said, no doubt, that these habits are not peculiar to our town; really all our contemporaries are much the same. Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living. Nevertheless there still exist towns and countries where people have now and then an inkling of something different.

Hence I see no need to dwell on the manner of loving in our town. The men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called “the act of love,” or else settle down to a mild habit of fraternization. We seldom find a mean between these extremes. That, too, is not exceptional. In the US, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.

What is more exceptional in our city is the difficulty one may experience there in dying. “Difficulty,” perhaps, is not the right word, ‘discomfort” would come nearer. Being ill’s never agreeable but there are people that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick; in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go.

Think what it must be for a dying man, trapped behind hundreds of hospital walls all sizzling with fever, while the whole population, sitting in cafes or hanging on the telephone, is discussing shipments, bills of lading, discounts! It will then be obvious what discomfort attends death, even modern death, when it waylays you under such conditions in a baron place.

These somewhat haphazard observations may give a fair idea of what our city is like. However, we must not exaggerate. Really, all that was to be conveyed was the banality of its appearance and of life in it. But you can get through the days there without trouble, once you have formed habits. And since habits are precisely what is encouraged, all is for the best.

It is only fair to add that the Northeast is grafted on to a unique landscape, ringed with luminous hills and above a perfectly shaped bay. All we may regret is the region being so disposed that it turns its back on the bay, with the result that it’s close enough to see the sea, you always have to go to look for it.

Such being the normal life of Providence, it will be easily understood that our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place in the late winter of the year in question. In any case the historian has no claim to competence for a task like this, had not chance put him in the way of gathering much information, and had he not been, by the force of things, closely involved in all that he proposes to describe. This is his justification for playing the part of a historian. Naturally, a historian, even an amateur, always has data, personal or at second hand, to guide him.

But perhaps the time has come to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks and to launch into the story. The account of the first days needs to be fully described. When leaving his office on a morning in late February, Dr. Lionel Bentham felt something soft under his foot. It was a dead bat lying in the middle of the driveway.

On the spur of the moment he kicked it to one side and, without giving it a further thought, continued on his way to his car. It was not until he noticed a neighbor’s reaction to the news that he realized the peculiar nature of his discovery. Personally, he had thought the presence of the dead bat on the street, no more than that; the neighbor, however, was genuinely outraged. In vain the doctor assured him that there was trash, presumably discarded, on several areas of the neighborhood. There “wasn’t any trash in the yards,” he repeated, so someone must have brought this one from outside. Some youngsters were trying to be funny, most likely.

That evening, when he was standing in the entrance, feeling for the key in his pocket before starting into to his house, he saw a hooded figure coming toward him from the dark end of the passage. It moved uncertainly, and he was sopping wet.

He wasn’t thinking about the bat. That glimpse of a night prowler had switched his thoughts back to something that had been on his mind all day. His wife, who had been ill for a year now, was due to leave next day for a clinic in the AZ mountains. He found her lying down in the bedroom, resting, as he had asked her to do, in view of the exhausting journey before her. She gave him a smile.

“Do you know? I’m feeling ever so much better!” she said. The doctor gazed down at the face that turned toward him in the glow of the bedside lamp. His wife was thirty, and the long illness had left its mark on her face.

Next day, at eight o’clock the neighbor button holed the doctor as he was going out. “Our neighbor down the street is very sick”, he said. The neighbor had lingered in the doorway for quite a while, keeping a sharp eye on the passers-by, on the off chance that those passing by would give themselves away by coughing or by some facetious remark. His watch had been in vain.

The doctor decided to begin his round in the old part of the city, where his poorer patients lived. The scavenging in these districts was done late at night and, as he drove his car along the straight, dirty streets, he cast glances at the garbage cans aligned along the edge of the sidewalk. In one street alone the doctor counted as many as a dozen overturned barrels with vegetable and other refuse in the street.

He found his first patient, an asthma case of long standing, in bed, in a room that served as both dining-room and bedroom and overlooked the street. The invalid was an old Italian with a hard, rugged face. Placed on the coverlet in front of him were two pots containing dried peas. When the doctor entered, the old man was sitting up, bending his neck back, gasping and wheezing in his efforts to recover his breath.

“Well, doctor,” he said, while the injection was being made, “they’re coming out, have you noticed?”

“The bats, he means,” his wife explained. “The man next door saw three.”

“They’re coming out, you can see them in all the neighborhoods. It’s disgusting!”

Bentham soon discovered that the bats were the great topic of conversation in that part of the town. After his round of visits he drove home.

“There was a call for you, sir,” the nanny informed him.

The doctor asked him if he’d seen any more vandalism.

“No,” the nanny replied, “there ain’t been any more. I’m keeping a sharp lookout, you know. Those youngsters wouldn’t dare when I’m around.”

His would be leaving soon in a tailor-made suit, and he noticed that she had used rouge. He smiled to her.

“That’s splendid,” he said. “You’re looking very nice.”

A few minutes later he was seeing her into the sleeping-car. She glanced round the compartment.

“It’s too expensive for us really, isn’t it?”

“It had to be done,” he replied.

“What’s this story about dead bats that’s going round?”

“I can’t explain it. It certainly is queer, but it’ll pass.”

Then hurriedly he begged her to forgive him; he felt he should have looked after her better, he’d been most remiss.”

“That’s it!” Her eyes were sparkling. “Let’s make a fresh start.” But then, she turned her head and seemed to be gazing through the car window at the people on the platform, jostling one another in their haste. The hum of the locomotive reached their ears. Gently he called his wife’s first name; when she looked round he saw her face wet with tears.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

Behind the tears the smile returned, a little tense. She drew a deep breath.

“Now off you go! Everything will be all right.”

He took her in his arms, then stepped back on the platform. Now he could only see her smile through the window.

“Please, dear,” he said, “take great care of yourself.”

Early in the afternoon of that day, when his consultations were beginning, a young man called on Bentham. The doctor gathered that he had called before, in the morning, and was a journalist by profession..

Short, square-shouldered, with a determined-looking face and keen, intelligent eyes, he gave the impression of someone who could keep his end up in any circumstances. He wore a sports type of clothes. He came straight to the point.

The Journal, the city’s only newspaper, had commissioned him to make a report on the living-conditions prevailing among the Hispanic population, and especially on the sanitary conditions.

The doctor replied that these conditions were not good. But, before he said any more, he wanted to know if the journalist would be allowed to tell the truth.

“Unqualified? Well, no, I couldn’t go that far. But surely things aren’t quite so bad as that?”

“No,” Bentham said quietly, they weren’t so bad as that. He had put the question solely to find out if Ed could or couldn’t state the facts without fudging with the truth. “I’ve no use for statements in which something is kept back,” he added. “That is why I shall not furnish information in support of yours.”

The journalist smiled. “You talk the language of a saint.”

Without raising his voice the doctor said he knew nothing about that. The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in, though he had much liking for his fellow men and had resolved, for his part, to have no patience with injustice and compromises with the truth.

His shoulders hunched, Ed gazed at the doctor for some moments without speaking. Then, “I think I understand you,” he said, getting up from his chair.

The doctor accompanied him to the door.

“It’s good of you to take it like that,” he said.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” Ed repeated, with what seemed a hint of impatience in his voice. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

When shaking hands with him, Bentham suggested that if he was out for curious stories for his paper, he might say something about the extraordinary number of dying bats that had occurred.

“Ah!” Ed exclaimed. “That certainly interests me.” He raced off to dig up more stories.

As it so happened, the doorman was the next person Bentham encountered. He was leaning against the wall beside the street door; he was looking tired and his normally vibrant face had lost its color.

“Yes, I know,” the old man told the doctor, who had informed him of the potential heath risks. “I keep hearing of the increase of illness by twos and threes. But it’s the same thing in the other houses in the street.”

He seemed depressed and worried, and was scratching his neck absentmindedly.

Bentham asked him how he felt. The doorman wouldn’t go so far as to say he was feeling ill. Still he wasn’t quite up to the mark. In his opinion it was just due to worry.

When the doctor arrived home, his mother offered him a cup of coffee. He told her that he was concerned that there was a strange illness afoot.

“It’s like that sometimes,” she said vaguely. She was a small woman with silver hair and dark, gentle eyes. “I’m so glad to be with you again, Lionel,” she added. “The health professionals can’t change that, anyhow.”

He nodded. It was a fact that everything seemed easy when she was there.

However, he rang up City Hall. He knew the man in charge of the department concerned with sanitation of public facilities and he asked him if he’d heard about all the garbage in the streets.”

Bentham couldn’t give a definite opinion, but he thought the sanitary service should take action of some kind.

The manager agreed. “And, if you think it’s really worth the trouble, I’ll get an order issued as well.”

“It certainly is worth the trouble,” he replied.

His crew had just told him that several hundred garbage spills had been collected in the area where her husband worked.

It was about this time that our neighbors began to show signs of uneasiness.

The evening papers that day took up the matter and inquired whether or not the city fathers were going to take steps, and what emergency measures were contemplated, to abate this particularly disgusting nuisance. Actually the municipality had not contemplated doing anything at all, but now a meeting was convened to discuss the situation.

An order was transmitted to the sanitary service to collect the garbage at daybreak every morning. When it had been collected, municipal trucks were to take them to be burned in the town incinerator.

But the situation worsened in the following days. There were more and more vermin in the streets, and the collectors had bigger truckloads every morning.

At night, in passages and alleys, the coughing and sneezing could be clearly heard. In the mornings the dead bats were found lining the gutters. Even in the busy heart of the town you found bats piled in little heaps on landings and in backyards. Some was found in the halls of public offices, in school playgrounds, and even on cafe terraces. Our townsfolk were amazed to find such busy centers as the mall, the boulevards, the promenade along the waterfront, dotted with repulsive piles. After the daily clean-up of the town, which took place at sunrise, there was a brief respite; then gradually the garbage began to appear again and went on increasing throughout the day.

Only the old Italian whom Dr. Bentham was treating for asthma went on rubbing his hands and chuckling: “They’re coming out, they’re coming out,” with senile glee.

In April, when HHS the announced that 100 cases of flu had been discovered, a wave of something like panic swept the city. There was a demand for drastic measures, the authorities were accused of slackness, and people who had houses on the coast spoke of moving there. At this stage, the President and his congressional lackeys were in total denial while they engaged in political game playing. But the next day the department informed them that the phenomenon had abruptly ended and health services hadn’t found any more flu cases. Everyone breathed more freely.

The old man was leaning on the arm of a priest whom the doctor knew. It was Father James, a learned and militant Jesuit, whom he had met occasionally and who was very highly thought of in our city, even in circles quite indifferent to religion. Bentham waited for the two men to draw up to him.

The old man’s eyes were fever-bright and he was breathing wheezily. The old man explained that, feeling “a bit off color,” he had gone out to take the air. But he had started feeling pains in all sorts of places, in his neck, throat, chest and had been obliged to turn back and ask Father James to give him an arm.

“Go to bed at once, and take your temperature. I’ll come to see you this afternoon.”

When the old man had gone, the doctor asked Father James what he made of this queer business about the illnesses.

“Oh, I suppose it’s a possible epidemic.” The Father’s eyes were smiling behind his big round glasses.

After lunch, while Bentham was reading for the second time the letter his wife had sent him from the clinic, announcing her arrival, the phone rang. It was one of his former patients, a clerk in the City Office, ringing him up. He had suffered for a long time from a constriction of the aorta, and, as he was poor, Bentham had charged no fee.

“Please come at once.” He sounded out of breath.

The doctor thought quickly; yes, he could see the doorman afterwards. A few minutes later he was entering a small house in Pawtucket, on the outskirts of the city. Halfway up the drafty, foul-smelling stairs, he saw the clerk, hurrying down to meet him. He was a man of about fifty years of age, tall and drooping, with narrow shoulders, thin limbs, and a gray mustache.

“He looks better now,” he told Bentham, “but I really thought his number was up.”

He blew his nose vigorously.

On the top floor, the third, the doctor noticed something scrawled in red chalk on a door on the left: “Come in, I’ve hanged myself.”

“I got him down just in time.” He seemed always to have trouble in finding his words, though he expressed himself in the simplest possible way. “I was going out and I heard a noise. When I saw that writing on the door, I thought it was a prank. Only, then I heard a funny sort of groan; it made my blood run cold, as they say.” He scratched his head. “That must be a painful way of doing it, I should think. Naturally I went in.”

They opened a door and were standing on the threshold of a bright but scantily furnished bedroom. There was a brass bedstead against one of the walls, and a plump little man was lying there, breathing heavily. He gazed at them with bloodshot eyes. They stopped short.

Naturally there was some asphyxia. An X-ray would be needed.

Meanwhile the doctor gave him an injection and assured him he would be all right in a few days.

“Thanks, doctor,” the man mumbled.

When Bentham asked the friend if he had notified the police, he hung his head.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t. The first thing, I thought, was to?”

“Quite so,” the doctor cut in. “I’ll see to it.”

But the invalid made a fretful gesture and sat up in bed. He felt much better, he explained; really it wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Don’t feel alarmed,” Bentham said. “It’s little more than a formality. Anyhow, I have to report this to the police.”

“Oh!” The man slumped back on the bed and started sobbing weakly.

The clerk, who had been twiddling his mustache while they were speaking, went up to the bed.

“Come,” he said. “Try to understand. People could say the doctor was to blame, if you took it into your head to have another shot at it.”

The patient assured him tearfully that there wasn’t the least risk of that; he’d had a sort of crazy fit, but it had passed and all he wanted now was to be left in peace. The doctor was writing a prescription.

“Very well,” he said. “We’ll say no more about it for the present. I’ll come and see you again in a day or two. But don’t do anything silly.”

On the landing he told the clerk that he was obliged to make a report, but would ask the police inspector to hold up the inquiry for a couple of days. He left as a cold dark feeling settled over him.