VI
In the chilly conference room of the institute, at a gigantic table covered with a green tablecloth and stacked with reams of paper, P’an Tsiang-kuei sat in a presidential armchair, dressed in gray gloves and a scarf around his neck (to ensure that only the smallest surface area of skin came in direct contact with the pestilential air).
On either side of the table two stenographers simultaneously tapped out the texts of the two circulars he was dictating. The telephone on the table punctuated his work every other minute with the sharp lament of its ring, the black barrel of its receiver spitting out reports from various parts of the state.
The reports were seldom comforting. In spite of the extreme precautions, the plague was spreading slowly but surely across the newly founded state. P’an Tsiang-kuei decided to deal with it Asian style.
On the fourth day of the new republic’s existence a decree appeared on the walls of houses; the words were alarmingly frank. Contending that the plague in its currently rampant form had in practice proven incurable, and that those infected with it, being artificially sustained, were only spreading the epidemic, the decree declared that henceforth all those infected would be subject to immediate execution. Healthy citizens were obliged to report every case of illness they came across, without fail. Those found guilty of concealing plague victims would likewise be shot.
The laconic voice over the telephone constantly reported new executions. The plague met the challenge. Bets were placed on the baize table, though it was orders, not cards, that were dropped. Sunk in his high-backed armchair, P’an Tsiang-kuei put the zigzag of his name on decree after decree, as if tossing down trump cards. From somewhere afar, through the tube of the telephone receiver, his opponent responded with new casualty figures.
Having dictated all the circulars, P’an Tsiang-kuei dismissed both stenographers with a wave of his hand and was left alone in the thickening gloom. Worn out from the lopsided and sleepless struggle, his mind demanded rest. The telephone coughed up another tally of executions. P’an Tsiang-kuei angrily flung down the receiver, slamming it onto the table. Its helpless mouth gave a vain, spiteful hiss.
P’an Tsiang-kuei suddenly needed air. He’d been nailed to his chair and hadn’t left the room for three days. Pulling his cap down over his eyes, he locked the door behind him and ran quickly down the wide stone steps to the street, past the erect, Asian guards.
The streets were deserted. Solitary Chinese slipped here and there through the narrow, empty roads.
Walking down familiar streets, P’an arrived at the Luxembourg Gardens, which had been turned into the state crematorium. He was greeted by the dry crack of a salvo from somewhere deep below. P’an frowned and walked faster.
By a strange ricochet of associations the professor suddenly popped into his head, and a rare smile formed on his lips.
On the night of the coup the professor, as the only white man, was arrested by special decree, interned in one of the palaces of the Latin Quarter and kept in the strictest isolation.
The palace had been equipped with a model laboratory, where a dozen Chinese bacteriology assistants and students labored round the clock under the professor’s personal direction to find the grail of the vaccine to immunize against the murderous disease.
He had to confess that the professor had been conscientious, working day and night without rest. Caught up in dicing with the relentless plague, his academic pride had come to the fore. Though reluctant at first, each new failure spurred him on, and he vowed that he would triumph over this insidious microbe that had thwarted his academic ambitions and scoffed at the power of modern science. The more his attempts failed, the more obstinate the professor became in his impervious resistance. In the end, he had almost stopped sleeping entirely. He spent every moment in the laboratory, and stubbornly refused to eat unless force-fed. Shut up among his microscopes, test tubes, and retorts, drawn and yellow from the sleepless nights and exhaustion, his beard disheveled and wild, he resembled a medieval alchemist obsessed with discovering the philosopher’s stone, undeterred by any number of failures.
Ten days after the coup, P’an Tsiang-kuei visited the professor in his new apartment to find out if he needed anything. He found the professor feverishly shuffling test tubes and hovering over a microscope.
“I shall kill that cursed bacteria,” he cried, shaking a test tube under the light. “Swear to me, though, that the vaccine I discover will not be used only for the yellow districts, that you will distribute it to the white ones as well. I have no intention of rescuing only the Asians from death and leaving my white brethren to their doom.”
“If that’s your only concern, you can rest easy,” P’an Tsiang-kuei responded with a smile. “Though not every white district will benefit from the vaccine, it will certainly be shared with the most populous one: the workers’ district of Belleville. À propos, in case you haven’t heard, I might inform you that the workers’ districts of Paris – Belleville and Ménilmontant with its outlying boroughs – have recently separated from the rest of the city to create an independent Soviet workers’ republic. At present they have laboratories every bit as good as our own, where your colleagues are working to liquidate our common enemy. I suspect that information on their progress should interest you and that a mutual exchange of observations would not go unappreciated on either side. I have managed – at no small expense, I admit – to establish telephone contact with them. We had to run wires through all the districts in-between, which was no mean feat given Paris’s present fragmentation into independent states. We struck upon the idea of using the metro tunnels. This evening we’ll give you a telephone that will connect you to the Belleville Republic’s laboratory.”
The professor could not contain his delight:
“Incredible! That’s a brilliant idea! It will take a huge load off our work. If they have a well-equipped laboratory, we’ll be able to carry out simultaneous experiments. This will definitely speed up the results of my work. Yes, an excellent idea indeed.”
“Any other requests?”
“Of course. Please order the radio to be removed. The assistants can listen to the news, if it interests them, in some other room. I haven’t the presence of mind for it right now. It distracts me from my work.”
“As you wish.”
They shook hands like two old friends.
Going downstairs to the exit, P’an Tsiang-kuei bumped into an assistant, a small, chubby-cheeked Japanese man. They had once been friends at the Sorbonne. The small Japanese, spruce and fastidious in his grooming, not a speck of dust on his clothing, always reminded him of a carefully polished trinket.
The Japanese man was apparently waiting especially for him. P’an Tsiang-kuei was struck by his pale resolve, the determination with which he barred the way.
“What’s wrong? Do you have something to tell me?”
“I must ask you for a great request, an enormous request…,” the Japanese man mouthed through his thin, strangely out-of-sync lips, and those lips suddenly quivered, dove, and fastened themselves to P’an Tsiang-kuei’s bony, coarse hand.
P’an Tsiang-kuei tore his hand away in astonishment.
“Have you gone mad? What’s going on?”
“I must ask you for a great request, an enormous request…,” the assistant repeated, quickly chewing his words and slicing each one with his white buck teeth. “I’m sequestered here in total isolation. I’m allowed no contact with anyone. I got a call today from the city… My wife is ill. Pains. It might not be the plague at all. In fact, it definitely isn’t. She must have eaten something rotten. Her neighbors informed on her. She’s been taken to the barracks. She’ll be shot this evening at eight o’clock. You understand? This evening… If we could wait even just till tomorrow. We’re testing a new vaccine. The results will be in tomorrow. Everything seems to point to her testing positive. Tomorrow the plague may be curable. You understand? You can’t kill her today, not under these circumstances. Anyway, it might not be the plague at all. The first symptoms can be misleading. It might be a simple stomach flu. We have to wait it out, do some tests. Isolate her for a few days. Isolation won’t put anyone else at risk. The execution just needs to be suspended. Your order by telephone… You understand, comrade… Her name is…”