He turned, crossed Via Diaz, and entered PBS Building from the side. For a while he stood before the red and white canvas sign that read FIFTH GENERAL DISPENSARY. He laid his hand on the bronze maniple of the door. It was as hot as a molten ingot to his palm. He was listening too to his heart throbbing, opening and closing like a spastic fist. It had beat like that when he lay in Marisa’s arms after their lovemaking. . . . Marisa. . . . He felt his knees begin to shake. There seemed to be a pool of ice water in his belly. But he stiffened his legs and pulled the door of the dispensary open.
It was cool in there. The floor was a pepper-colored parquet. The GI’s who worked there stood behind glass wickets like bank tellers. And in the coolness there was a reek of phenol and antiseptic. As they set up their cages for the day, the GI’s called out to one another their pissin and their moanin. They yelled back and forth criticisms of the breakfast they’d just eaten.
— I’ve had Naples! O Mr. Roosevelt, can’t I please go home?
To stop the trembling of his knees and the turbine in his chest, he sat down on a bench near the door. He wondered were his eyes bloodshot. He felt like an ulcerous scarecrow sitting alone in the middle of that cool noisy dispensary, with the click and hum of the dental clinic just beyond. The other GI’s were unconcerned and gay.
Finally he got up, clutching his cap, and walked to a window that said ADMISSIONS. He ran his tongue over his lips and looked at the floor.
— Ya too early for sick call, sarge, the corporal back of the plate glass said. Go outside an wait a while . . .
— But I took a blood test . . . five days ago, he murmured.
— Oh ya did? Imagine that! Blood tests is SOP in Napoli . . .
— Will ya please do me a favor an look? he said, giving his name.
— Okay, okay, sarge, the corporal said. I hate to see a guy sweat.
Out of a pigeonhole the corporal took a sheaf of small pink slips and leisurely ruffled through them. With tormenting indifference.
— I don’t seem to find ya name, sarge. . . . Oh wait, here it is. . . . Outa alphabetical order . . . damn that lab. . . .
Through a swimming mist he saw the pink slip thrust at him along the counter. A kettledrum was beating in his ears, thudding out Yes Yes Yes and No No No in acceleration. He saw the manicured fingers of the corporal holding the upper edges of the slip. He read down till he saw the brash rubber stamp and the red crayon comment:
Wassermann — Pos
Kahn — Pos
Everything inside him seemed to whirl up and go down in a crash. Besides the drumming there now came a ringing in his ears. His knees buckled. He gripped the marble counter to keep from dropping to the floor.
— Tough luck, sarge, the corporal said.
— What do I do now? he said, his vision clearing.
For his previous weakness there was now substituted an icy surety of horror that carried him out to a pinpoint in space. And he saw Marisa’s face, her mouth open, her eyes closed, murmuring:
— O come sai bene amarmi, tesoro mio. . . .
— Just step into number four, the corporal said briskly and professionally.
He stumbled along by the cages, clutching the pink slip in his palm, which seemed to be gushing hot butter. He steered through a railing and into a long corridor with clinics and rooms opening off it. He knocked on the door of number four. At a call he opened to find a medical captain washing his hands in a sink and chewing gum in rhythm with the oscillation of his forearms.
— Mind waiting outside, sergeant? the doctor called sharply.
So he all but lay down on a bench, the slip dangling from his hand. He tried to close his eyes and swallow the searing sensation in his eyes and throat. Finally the sound of running water stopped and the doctor beckoned him in. He thrust the pink slip into the cool moist hand.
— Well, got the dreadfuldreadful at last, hey? You’re one of the bright joes who thinks that the signs and the films are for everybody in the army except himself. . . . And you won’t be sergeant much longer, boy.
— Yessir, he said.
— Well, we’ll start treatment at once. . . . We don’t mess with this.
— Is there . . . any hope, sir? he said hoarsely.
— I’m no great believer in this new treatment. . . . Take down your pants.
Then began the questionnaire, which the captain wrote down.
— Take a pro after your last exposure?
— Nossir.
— Italian girl, I suppose. . . . Give me her name and address.
— Don’t know, sir.
— Don’t try to protect her through any mistaken notions of chivalry. She gave you a nice burning, and she’ll do it to others. I advise you to give me her name and address.
— I told ya, I don’t know, sir. . . .
He went outside the dispensary and hung around the several waiting ambulances, holding in his hand an admission slip to the hospital. One of the ambulance drivers, a tech five, had one of his boots through a window of the ambulance cab.
— What hospital ya goin to, sarge?
— Twenty-third General.
— Then hop in. Ya can ride in front with me. Just like an officer.
He climbed into the front, to the right of the driver’s seat. On the line he’d never had to ride in an ambulance. Now in the rear area of Naples, here he was going to the hospital in style, but not for a wound or for trenchfoot. The tech five pulled his boot inside the window and started his vehicle.
— What are ya goin to the Twenty-third for, sarge? Hepatitis? VD?
— Nope, neither . . . just a general checkup.
They drove along Via Caracciolo toward Bagnoli Tunnel. And, seeing the Bay of Naples in the August sun, seeing the fishermen already far out in their skiffs toward Ischia and Capri, he thought of how he and Marisa used to walk and dally here in the bright open moonlight. They’d lean on the parapet by the docks of Santa Lucia and watch the British sailors coming over the ramp on liberty. . . . But now he was riding in an ambulance with a tech five who talked all the time, having lit a cigar. The tech five made him listen to all the details of his last night’s shacking.
— I get me one gal an I stick to her, the tech five said. Then I don’t stand no chance of pickin up nothin nasty. See my point, sarge?
— Ya never can tell about them things, he answered vaguely.
He wished Marisa would quit his thoughts. He pressed down on his thighs and peered through the ambulance windshield. He knew that Marisa was very much with him. She was even in his veins.
They pummeled through the dark dripping gloom of the Bagnoli Tunnel. The overhead inset lights barely pierced the dusty gloom kicked up by the truck convoys. Marisa and her family used to sleep in this tunnel during the air raids. . . . And at Bagnoli they turned by the old tenements with the washing on the balconies, the arrows to direct traffic and show the way to the staging areas.
Then he got his first look at the Medical Center. Long low modern buildings with friezes and dominant stairs, like WPA American high schools. Unexpected gardens and trellises, phallic arches, and parapets skirmishing like roller coasters out of the pine trees. Excavated rifts piercing white and unfinished out of the hillsides. The tech five explained that Musso had built these grounds for a world’s fair or something, that now the Americans were using them for a concentration of hospitals. They passed plaster statues of ripple-thighed naked young men in Fascist attitudes of victory. A couple of swimming pools. The whole Medical Center had an air like an exhibition: sheets of windows, inscriptions everywhere.
The tech five stopped his ambulance on an avenue near an MP gate.
— That’s the Twenty-third right over there, sarge. Just walk straight up to that barbed-wire enclosure . . .
— Barbed wire? he said. But I ain’t no prisoner.
— Just wait, the tech five said, wisely chewing off the tip of a fresh cigar.
He got out of the ambulance and walked up a flight of stairs to the
barbed wire, over which hung the leaves of low trees and vines. Inside was a great press of people moving around. He thought of the courtyard of a jail during exercise period.
— No visitors here, Joe, the MP said, raising his carbine to port arms.
— I ain’t no visitor, he said, presenting his admission slip.
— Then welcome, the MP said. This the place where shackees repent their shackin. . . .
There was a series of arrows showing new patients where to go. It was as methodical and cold as his induction into the army. He entered first a long low hut where pfc’s sat at typewriters. In a window a major sat with bored but catty stare. To this medical officer he presented his admission slip. The major scanned it quickly, with the air of a movie usher seeing a picture for the hundredth time.
— So you got burned? the major said. And you’ll be losing those three stripes too.
— Yessir.
— I don’t say: Welcome to our hospital. You’re not going to have a good time here. Our whole setup is guaranteed to make you hate everything about us. We don’t want men coming back here, do you see? There’s no excuse for getting VD. No excuse whatever. We give you treatment here, but we do it in such a way that you won’t care to come back as a repeater. Yet I see the same faces again and again. Well, it’s their skin. . . . Take down your pants. . . .
— Pretty sight, aren’t you? the major said after the examination. Just as pretty as you saw it in the movies. I’ll bet you said: That’ll never be me.
— Nossir.
After the major had got through with him, lashing softly and insistently with his tongue, he was sent over by a wall where there were chairs with armrests, rubber compresses, and a lot of little glass vials with red stuff in them.
— Roll up your sleeve, the pfc attendant said.
— But I already had a blood test, he said.
— Roll up your sleeve. You’ll be takin blood tests from now on like you would a bath. . . . An you can’t give none of your blood to the Red Cross an get ten dollars for it, neither. . . . Make a fist.
He did as he was told. He felt the rubber hose go about his upper arm and the pressure mount as though an anaconda were squeezing. His blood began to bang in his arm. Looking down, he saw that a blue vein was bulging from his elbow. The pfc took a needle and inserted it into the obvious blood vessel. He felt the cold point go in, and he watched his crimson blood seep into the syringe as its handle was drawn back.
— At this point, the pfc said, the jigaboos usually faint. . . . Now go an draw ya clothes.
He got up from the chair, crooking his elbow against the patch of cotton to stop the slow ooze of his blood into the elbow joint. The GI took the vial of his blood and pasted his name to it on a piece of adhesive tape. This he put into the rack along with the other vials.
— Looks just as pretty as new wine, the pfc said, indicating the file of vials. Only no wine has got what these tubes have.
Next he filed past a counter where another GI leaned on his belly cushioning it and picking his teeth. He had that spleen of all supply sergeants.
— Take off ya clothes, boy.
He undressed himself there in the half-light of that corridor. Outside swarms of men milled in what looked like a desolate and unweeded garden pricked with pyramidal tents. All his clothes went into a little barracks bag tagged with his name. In return he got a set of frayed but freshly laundered green fatigues, shirt and trousers. On the back of the jacket and on the trouser legs were painted these large smeary letters:
VD
— Guess this is about the last time ya’ll be wearing ya stripes, the supply sergeant said. — There ain’t no rank here in them green fatigues. Ya’ll sit down next to a major an never know it . . .
— Take it easy, take it easy, he said, buttoning up the fatigues, which were a casual fit and chafed his crotch.
— Ya shoulda taken it easy yaself, the supply sergeant replied.
— Where do I go now?
— Ya’ll hafta see about accommodations, I guess. We’re full right up in this hotel. An ya never wired us for a reservation.
So he walked down, stumbling a little in his fresh fatigues, to another window, where a pfc in harlequin spectacles was reading his Stars and Stripes.
— What can we do for you? Have you got number one or number two?
— I got the worst ya can possibly get, he said.
— Well, lawsy. That entitles you to our very best accommodations. The kids with clap get stuck in tents all over hell. But our guests with syph are put in the bridal suite. You’ll get the very finest attention. Every three hours, rain or shine, for a hundred and eighty hours. . . . You’ll find the bridal suite in the first door on your right off the court.
He went out into the hot light of the courtyard. Now he understood clearly the confused and mobbed movement he’d seen through the barbed wire. Among the tent pegs walked hundreds of men in green fatigues like his own. It seemed a holiday crowd promenading at a carnival. But those who had their backs turned showed VD signs on their jackets and pants in letters high enough to be read half a mile away. They were like a chain gang without chains.
He entered the indicated door into a long shed, half-ruined and rambling as a cattle barn. Canvas cots with mosquito netting tied up over their racks stretched as far as his eyes could see. On these cots more men in green fatigues stretched reading or playing cards or shooting craps in small knots. He knew that they were set apart from all the other men in the world, though they looked perfectly healthy. When he crossed the threshold, a shout went up. Nearly all who weren’t asleep turned to look at him and yell:
— You’ll be sor-ry! Only a hundred and eighty hours more!
He flushed, cast his eyes to the ground, and walked between the cots looking for an empty bed. He found one between a Negro who lay looking at the ceiling and an Ayrab in a red fez.
— They ain’t no pick on the sacks, the Negro said, rolling his eyes slowly around. Ya cain’t never get moren three hours sleep at one time anyhow, boy.
— What’s that Ayrab doin here? he asked in a whisper.
— Mohammed? Oh all the Allied GI’s gits their shots here . . . we got Goums and Eyeties too. . . . Lend-lease. . . .
He sank down on his cot and looked at his shoelaces. He was casting about in his mind for some way to enter into conversation with the Negro and get answered some of the questions that flopped like flounders in his brain. The Negro may have been waiting, but he merely looked at the low ceiling of the shed with his deep eyes.
— Is it . . . rough . . . here? he asked, untying his shoelaces and frigging with the buckles on his boots.
— Well, it ain’t no rest cure, the Negro said. But it done me a good turn in takin me away from mah woman. Ah’d a shot her. She gimme bad blood, bad blood . . .
— What I mean is, do they . . . cure you fast here? he pressed.
He was conscious of a fluttering fright now that the panic and fever of first discovery had ebbed.
— They claims they does. But man, them needles . . . every three hours. Ah feel like mah Aunt Delilah’s pincushion . . .
— Needles?
— Sho, boy. What does yo think they does to yo here? They sticks yo an then they sticks yo again. Every three hours. Sixty times in all. . . . But it ain’t doin me no good. Ah cain’t do thout mah lovin. So ah’ll go right out an do it agin. . . . Yessir . . . but them needles sure does go over big with us colored boys.
He had a dozen more questions to put. But he was confronted by a sharp sergeant standing by his cot.
— You. Didja just come in?
— Ya.
— Then get down to the lab for ya first Dark Field.
— An that ain’t no grope, the Negro said, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling.
He went past the double file of canvas cots out into the sunlight. He passed through the crowds of men in fatigues who walked alone or together, brooding or laughing aloud. He crossed the clearing of the pyr
amidal tents to the swinging sign that said LAB. Inside was another long room with desks where microscopes stood in their metal frames like scrubwomen resting on their brooms.
— You’ve come for your first Dark Field? a sergeant asked him.
— I guess that’s what they call it, he said.
He had visions of being smothered in black gauze, of pain and probings.
— Then down with your pants, the sergeant said.
The sergeant’s face assumed the expression of one who handles the entrails of a sick rabbit. He put down his cigarette and drew on a pair of rubber gloves. Into his shiny false fingers he took a large toothpick wadded with cotton on its tip. Then he bent over and went to work.
— Whaddya doin? . . . Hey . . . you’re openin it up . . .
— That’s what I mean to do . . . and if you think I enjoy doing this . . .
— But ya hurtin like fire . . .
— I’m swabbing. . . . Okay, up with your pants.
The sergeant straightened up, brushed the swab against a glass slide and dribbled on the square of glass some drops of staining chemical. This he slipped under a microscope near him.
— Now, he said, I want you to see what death looks like.
The sergeant stepped aside blandly, allowing him to apply his own eye to the lens of the microscope.
— Focus it to your taste, the sergeant said languidly, picking up his cigarette.
He finagled around with the brass screw till he saw the field of the slide clarify and harden like setting Jello. He was looking at a shifting orange horizon that seemed to be clouds at sunset. There were strata that buckled and changed their densities.
— That, the sergeant’s voice said, is your own polluted blood. Keep looking.
Then he saw something swim into the pink blobs. At first he thought it was a sunfish. He maneuvered the focusing screw some more and found that it was a tadpole. It passed across his field of vision, delicately rowing, and disappeared gaily from his sight with a flip of its tail. He wondered if it hadn’t winked at him like a goldfish on the make.
— And that, the sergeant’s voice continued like a lecturer’s in a darkened room, is Sophie Spirochete. Just one of the girls, but what she can do to you! . . . Better than a bomb, though somewhat slower.
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