That night in a dream he saw a woman he hadn't seen for many years, a white woman with a beautiful face whom he'd always loved and who had never loved him. In his vision she wasn't saying anything to him, only gazing lovingly into him, which was enough and more. In real life this woman was dying or had already died.
~ ~ ~
It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves. . The passions, in turn, owe their origin to our needs, and their increase to our progress in science.
J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality (1755)
The phlebotomist rolled on white rubber gloves before she stuck him. When she asked questions for the case record, she looked right through him. When she was finished the doctor came in. The doctor was tall and muscular like a gym teacher. He didn't bother to shut the door.
Drop your trousers, said the doctor.
He looked at the door.
Drop your trousers, I said.
He dropped his trousers.
The doctor rolled on white gloves with an angry and disgusted face.
Doctor, do you see anything?
Take a deep breath, said the doctor.
The doctor slammed the culture probe up his urethra. He grunted with the sudden stunning pain. The doctor almost smiled.
Doctor, what do you think my chances are of having the virus?
How would I know? I don't know how you've been spending your life. What's more, I don't want to know.
Do you think I have a fifty-fifty chance?
You've been doing a lot of stupid things, said the doctor, writing something onto the chart.
He rose and flipped a box contemptuously down. - Have some condoms, he said. Maybe your wife can still be saved.
~ ~ ~
He knew and sensed that everything was going according to timetable. There was no need to interfere. They knew everything themselves. It would only make people nervous. They were good lads.
Yaroslav Golovanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer (1975)
As small black vermin-birds fluttered through the air of the Greyhound platforms, which then whirred behind picket by picket through the scratched windows, he thought: Well, in a few hours my life will be different.
Rolling down the concrete tube fringed by stalled buses, they proceeded across the Bay Bridge, whose replicated girders sickened him through the windows. Pale shining bluish-whitish-grey water gazed at him. He was so tired.
He got to the clinic and they kept him waiting for an hour and said: You see that the numbers match.
Well, it says right here: HIV ANTIBODIES PRESENT.
You have the virus.
So I finally won the lottery, he said. That's good. That's very good.
I wouldn't be smiling like that if I were you.
No, he said, I'm sure you wouldn't. But I'd be smiling if you were me. I'd really like to see how you coped with that.
Here are some brochures on AIDS resources which you might like to look over. .
Oh, I have all the resources I need if I want to get AIDS.
You certainly are upbeat about it.
Then why aren't you? the husband laughed. He went out smiling.
You can notch the fish's fin, harden the removed bit of tissue with epoxy, and then slice it with a diamond saw, slice it thin for the microscope. Now turn the brass knob on the stem, your eye gazing passionlessly into that other world that used to be a fish; when it comes into focus you'll see the fish's age straightaway; it's just like counting tree-rings; it's no different than half-listening to the interpreter explaining the difference between Soviet pistols (he never did learn the difference between the K-54 and the K-59) while gazing out the car window at the houses on stilts over the squishy river, houses connected by gangplanks; you can see the people inside looking out; there is no privacy. That's how it must be for those mercilessly illuminated fish-cells. When he was six or seven his parents told him that he was a big boy, but he got sick and then he was little; they wouldn't use the oral thermometer. They made him pull down his pants on the bed and then the anal thermometer went in, cool and greasy. The whole world saw. He lay still. When they pulled it out and told him that he could move, he continued to lie there with his face in the pillow. He'd gone out of himself; the worst thing now would be if anyone saw him coming back into himself; then that would prove that this thing had happened. But you do it; you look, see, stare, observe, count, measure and categorize. You have to do it! You suck into your eyes the naked children squatting in the mud, coffee-colored puddles in the muddy road, grass-roofed wooden booths in the mud. You match the numbers, my dear technicians. HIV ANTIBODIES PRESENT. Then you continue on down the wide almost empty mud road so beset with puddles that the driver must snake along on brown ridges between them while whitish-pale beggar children hold out their hands screaming. But you do it; you undress it. The fish has been caught; that is the end for the fish there between tall lush pale green trees.
Vanna's husband didn't believe any of it yet. He remembered so many other false alarms.
There had been that night outside the hotel when a cyclo driver came to him and said that he and the photographer were in danger. So he had to buy the cyclo driver orange juice.
What sort of danger are we in? said the husband. I haven't noticed any danger.
So much the worse for you, Monsieur. Pardon me, but I speak frankly; excuse me, Monsieur, but so much the worse for you.
Well, what do you want, exactly? I'm only a poor stupid American. We Americans cannot understand mysteries.
Ah, tomorrow I will bring you a souvenir, Monsieur. No obligation, but I am a very poor man. Five sons. My situation is intolerable.
That is sad; I'm sorry, but I can't save the world. What is this souvenir? You say you speak frankly; then speak frankly. I give you five more minutes.
The situation is grave, Monsieur. Very grave for you. What do you do tomorrow?
I go to work.
With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
Yes.
I would not get in the car, Monsieur.
Why? This is very fatiguing for me, complained the husband. Your French is full of obfuscations. .
You quit me now?
Yes.
So much the worse for you.
I think I've heard that before.
The husband went back to the hotel and told the photographer. The photographer agreed with him that it was probably nonsense but wondered where he could hide his film. The next morning they stood on the hotel balcony together, watching bright-green uniformed police gathering on the sidewalk. The official car did not come on time. It was the first instance of the car not coming on time. The husband went and called the Ministry and they said they knew nothing about it. Then the car came and nothing had happened and everything was fine. .
He had a sore throat.
~ ~ ~
This is a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Look, young man! For you have been born (may heaven avert the omen!) into an age when examples of fortitude may be a useful support.