“I dunno. Did you ever help beat up a new one?”
He said with remarkable gentleness: “You could almost guess the answer to that one.”
“Uh-huh — you never did.”
“Almost right. I never helped beat up anyone, but to offset that, I never had the guts to try to stop it either. Except once.”
“And that time?”
He rolled up his left sleeve and showed me his arm in the dashboard light. The scar was nearly white, running from elbow to wrist. “I’m proud of that hash mark,” he said. “It tells that on one occasion I did have a little guts, and it taught me something.” Still I heard nothing in his voice except a reflective serenity neither sad nor happy. “It taught me: unless you’re a gorilla, don’t interfere with the pleasures of chimps.” And somewhat later he said: “Punishment — that’s the idea that taints the whole system, reform schools, prisons, four fifths of the criminal law. Cure the curable, keep the incurable where they can’t hurt others — anything else is just humanity picking at a sore and half enjoying the pain.” He was talking to himself as much as to me. “From all I’ve read, Will, it seems that enlightened people with experience have been hammering that idea for at least a hundred years. Reckon the law will catch up with them in another hundred?”
“First you need a science of human nature, that doesn’t exist. I don’t blame the law for being not much impressed by the battle of terms we call psychology. The various Freudianities can’t stop to hear the various behaviorisms, and vice versa. We have the beginnings of a knowledge of human nature, but it’s a study that has to creep slowly because it scares people to death. It was all right for the Greek to say, ‘Know thyself’ — but how many would dare to do it even if they had the means?”
I spoke mainly because I hoped he would go on talking to me, in any way he chose. He would have, I think, but the world stood still.
Is it my biased sense of history, Drozma, that makes me use those curious eroded human phrases for such a thing as this?
I saw the man step off the sidewalk half a block away. It was a well-lit street near the bridge approach, and quiet. There were no headlights behind me, only one red taillight a block or two away. Endless time. No urgency. My foot found the brake, without panic, for we were not moving fast, and there was no possible danger of hitting the man, who had dropped to his knees in front of us, under my lights, under the orange glow of a sodium street lamp. All in control. I came to an easy, soundless stop five or six feet away from him. He was in profile to us but never turned his head, only knelt there, first with his hands raised toward his chin in the ancient attitude of prayer. The arms dropped, limp; I saw the fingers of the left hand go into a lively dance as if he were scratching the air at his thigh. His mouth hung open and he began to sway from the knees as I forced myself to clamber out of the car and go to him.
He was toppling over when I reached him. I was able to ease him down on his back and keep his head from striking the asphalt. A small, elderly man, well dressed, clean. He made me think of a sparrow, with his little jutting nose and brilliant eyes that would not shut. His cheek was flame-hot. I never felt such fever but once before, long ago, in a human friend who died of blackwater malaria. I think this man was trying to say something; nothing came out but “Uh — ah—” sounds without control of throat or tongue. There was no choking. For several moments the glitter of his eyes was firmly, intelligently focused on me. I am sure he would have liked to speak.
I stared across him at Abraham, who had also touched his burning flesh. There was no speech for us either, then.
7
Only today comes the first newspaper announcement of the disaster. Last night at ten o’clock — Wednesday night, just one little week after I heard Sharon’s miracle — there was confusing mention of trouble on the radio. We heard it, Abraham and I, heard the repressed hysteria in the broadcaster’s voice as if someone were plucking a taut deep wire behind his rapid gabble. He said only that there were “several” cases of what might be a new disease in Cleveland, Washington, New York, and the West Coast. Medical circles were interested, although there was “obviously” no occasion for alarm. “West Coast?” said Abraham. The broadcaster lurched on hastily to the most recent vital information on a divorce case involving a video star and a wrestler.
“Plane travel,” I said. “Paris and London are only a few hours away….” Abraham brought me a drink. We couldn’t talk much, or read. He sat near me most of the evening in my dull little living room, which seemed to me more than ever like a well-upholstered cave in a jungle of the unknown; both of us haunted, understanding the panic in each other’s minds. Now and then we tried the radio again, but there was nothing except the usual loud confusion of trivialities. Toward bedtime Abraham telephoned Sharon. It was just a lovers’ conversation — “What’ve you been up to all evening?” — and since he didn’t mention the broadcast to her I assumed she hadn’t heard it. After hanging up he simply said: “I couldn’t….”
The three days since Sunday had allowed us to crawl back on a flimsy raft of hope. That man we found in the street — oh, it could have been pneumonia, a dozen other things. So we told each other then and for three days. Abraham had called an ambulance, which came quickly and whisked the fallen man away, after a few inquiries from an intern who seemed to have a worry in the back of his mind that wouldn’t come into words. Other similar cases? I almost asked the young doctor that, but held my tongue. As we drove home Abraham and I began passing each other counterfeit words. We knew they were counterfeit, but they bought us a little phony peace.
This morning the Times as usual had the best soberly factual account, offering statistics with a rather terrible restraint. There have been 50 hospitalized cases in the New York metropolitan area, and 16 deaths. In Chicago, 21 reported cases, 6 deaths. New Orleans, 13 and 3. Los Angeles, 10 and 3. This is the fourth day since Sunday, the sixth since Friday. The first reported case, according to the Times, was a Bronx housewife — Sunday morning. She died Monday afternoon.