An Imperfect Lens
Page 12
“A thank-you for a good report,” said the captain.
“Everything is fine,” said Eric Fortman.
“I know, I know,” said the Indian, “but it is our custom to thank you for your help in speeding us on our way.”
Did he say speeding or spending, it was hard to be sure because of the Indian lilt to the sentence. Had his examination of the boat and its cargo been sufficiently rigorous?
Once on shore, Eric opened the pouch. It was filled with piastres, as well as some pounds. Was this money for Marbourg & Sons, he considered. It could not be. He had not been instructed to pick up any payments. It was for him. The tables had turned.
A FEW DAYS passed, and then one morning Este reappeared at the laboratory. Her maid, Anippe, waited outside the metal door. Her mother believed that she was spending the morning at the dress-makers. Este offered to wash and boil the glass beakers. Roux looked around for Marcus, who should have already completed this work, but who was late as usual. “Thank you,” said Roux to Este.
Louis reported that there were no extraordinary deaths among the animals in Alexandria. The three men walked over to the rabbit cage. Este followed. The rabbits were nuzzling each other, scratching at the papers at the bottom of the cage. Drinking water from the small cups Edmund had placed there. These were not sick rabbits. They wrote down the condition of the rabbits in their notebooks. The rabbits had not contracted cholera yet.
Emile prepared more syringes filled with small drops of the victims’ fluids pressed from tissue. They would inject the rats this time. It might be possible to grow the cholera on a dish prepared with beef broth and gelatin. Louis dropped some bowel matter into a beaker and added a small amount of water. With heated pincers he sealed off the neck of the glass container so no air could enter. He repeated this procedure until he had six beakers sitting on a shelf. Perhaps when they opened the beaker in a few days the cholera would be visible in the water.
Marcus burst into the laboratory. He wanted to go for a swim down at the shore. He talked about the cool water, the smooth sand, the long jetty, the red algae floating near, the red and blue panels of the cabana drapes, the turtles he had been told slept on the rocks.
“Go,” said Roux.
“Please go,” said Louis.
“Bring back a turtle,” said Edmond. He was curious. The turtles of Egypt were said to be of a particularly large genus and were said to live five hundred years. Marcus went.
Roux wanted to talk to the family or lover or friend of a victim of cholera. The waiter at the café where he had gone for his cigarettes had told him that during the night the carts had come and taken off four more bodies right from the quarter in which he lived, as well as two children and a man who worked as a bee-keeper at a big house at the end of rue de France. Roux needed to find out what they had eaten last. The cholera, like the fly on his pastry, might have been in the meat, the lettuce, the flour, some ingredient of their last meal. He needed to find out what they had eaten before they got sick. Emile was not as discouraged as one might think. He had a new idea. There was more cholera in Alexandria than when they had come.
AFTER THE EVENING meal, when her father was reading his paper, Este came to him and said, “Papa, I would like to be of service to the French scientists.”
“I’m sure they would appreciate it,” said her father. “Are you going to give them a party?”
“No,” said Este. “I meant I would like to go to the laboratory and do whatever I can do to speed their work.”
Dr. Malina put down his paper. “But you know nothing of science,” he said. “I thought you liked poetry. You wanted that Keats book for your birthday. You said you were more interested in poetry than anything else in the world.”
“I did say that,” said Este, “but I was younger.”
Dr. Malina smiled. “And now,” he said, “you want to help the scientists. What do they say?”
“They say they would like my assistance. They will explain things to me. I am a quick learner.”
“It is dangerous work,” he said.
“Your work is dangerous,” she answered. “I will be careful.”
“Tell your mother I gave my permission,” he said, “but you must take Anippe with you. It will not look right otherwise.”
Lydia Malina was not disturbed by this plan. Soon enough her daughter would be married and have other things to think about besides the French scientists and their laboratory. Most likely she would be bored in a few days and this new interest would pass. It was agreed that she would continue to do those things required for her wedding as well as continue her German lessons, a language for which she seemed to have a gift.
“I think,” said Louis to Este, who had been waiting at the laboratory door when he arrived as the light was filling the sky, “I will examine the droppings of the birds on our roof this afternoon.” He had discovered that above the slanting roof of the lab a flock of starlings had settled. If he listened carefully he could hear their shrill whistle, their two-toned call as they landed or took off. He could see the droppings on the side of the building, a white stain with a brownish center. Just this morning he had found a dead member of the bird community in the alley. It had already been torn apart by a rat or some other sharp-toothed creature that lived in the holes in the stones that formed the gutter of the street. A thousand insects were crawling across the bird’s now-mangled chest. One wing had broken off from the rest of the body, and its bone had been eaten bare. An eye was torn from its head, and its feathers were flattened, as if a cart wheel had rolled over them. The droppings might hold the cholera, if the bird had died of cholera, but perhaps the bird had died of old age, or had eaten a poisonous plant. He intended to examine the droppings. He might be able to grow the microbe from the droppings in a pure culture. He could warm up his glass, he could sprinkle lye on the concoction. He could try.
Este was holding a pail and standing in the narrow alley. The plan was for Louis to throw down anything he wanted to keep and she would place it in the pail. On the roof, the birds rose on their wings and flew off to look for food in the alleys where the garbage lay, sometimes in sacks but most often just jumbled together and tossed, waiting for time and the rays of sun that managed to seep into the narrow lanes, and the flush of rain that would come now and then, especially in the rainy season, to carry off the bones, the leaves, the roots, the shells, the meats of nuts, the lumps of gruel, the ends of bread, the unwanted food. The starlings returned to the roof and shared their pickings with their young, and sometimes they fought over a fragment of rice, a grain of wheat, a fish head, a bony tail. They squawked and fluffed out their chests in efforts to intimidate one another. If they were ill with cholera they did not seem to stop, lie down, change their tune. All they did was pause in their activities and release their droppings onto the roof or the side of the building or the dirt below. There would be ample intestinal syrup to study with the microscope, and they did have the dead starling that had fallen so providentially right outside the laboratory.
Roux prepared the slides with ooze from the small bird. He mashed its brains. He picked up tissue from under its wings, carefully marking left and right. He examined the tiny beak and looked at the multiple small bones. Nocard prepared the dishes in which they would put the retrieved substances. Would anything grow? Was there cholera in the smashed bird? They injected some bird flesh into the dog. He growled as they approached. Some days went by. Nothing grew in the dishes. The dog was not affected. He had begun to yelp in pleasure now as Marcus, half awake after a night in which for the first time he smoked a soothing brew in a water pipe, brought him his lunch.
All three Frenchmen had grown used to Este’s questions. When had the cholera first appeared in Alexandria? They told her what they had been told by Pasteur. Cholera had appeared in Egypt in April. It appeared first at a fair in Damietta, which was situated at one of the mouths of the Nile not far from Port Said, or perhaps it came on the ships that stopped at Amsterdam. Or
were the pilgrims returning from Mecca once again responsible?
How did it travel? Louis could not give Este a firm answer. Cholera had been carried to Alexandria by some means. It was not on these shores a year ago, or five years ago. He needed to consider its means of transportation. It could have come by ship, of course. Could it have come from the desert on the sand on a man’s sandals? It could also have been carried in the clouds and spilled on the city by rain. Was that possible? Had anyone considered that possibility? He doubted it. He would check the rainwater. “Emile,” he asked, “could it be in the rain?”
Emile did not have an immediate response. He was silent for a few minutes. The idea did not seem right to him, but he had learned that a careful demonstration was better than his instincts, which had their limitations. “Why not?” he said.
Louis went into the alley outside the hospital’s surgical ward and followed the line of gutter pipe. He climbed on the windowsill and from there pulled himself up on the slanting rooftop. In the pipe he saw some leaves, with bird droppings and rainwater clinging to them. He scooped up the debris and attempted to climb down. It was slippery on the roof. He had only one hand to grasp the red tiles. He moved very carefully and slowly. A seagull circled above, perhaps curious or perhaps sighting something edible below.
Back in their laboratory, his coattails soaked with dirt and his hands covered with slime, he put his prize down on the lab table and proceeded to take drops of the water and place them on glass and peer at them through the microscope. He saw a small mite with wings. He recognized the mite. It was not cholera. He saw nothing move, nothing swim, but it was hard to make out the forms on his glass because the water was dark and viscous from the disintegrating membranes of the leaves. It might be in there, his prize. He took drop after drop and examined it. He used Pasteur’s filter, removing the larger forms like twig and leaf and worm remains. Hours went by. Este went out and returned with some cheese and a pastry. Emile was placing a culture of rabbit feces and boiled water in a jar. What might grow? Louis didn’t want to stop to eat. He saw nothing. How was he to get the water clear of the leaves? He must find the microbe alive. He put the water through the filter, which served as a sieve, and pressed out the thickest part of the leafy substance, but the water was still not clear. He threw his gutter water into a barrel and rushed out into the street, calling to Marcus to search the garden of the hotel or to look in the park over by Lake Mariout. He had to find clear rainwater. It had to have gathered somewhere where it was protected from leaves. He walked through the alley. He saw an abandoned chamber pot filled with fluid. Some rainwater had mixed in there, but it was not clear. He walked to the café. He looked out back; perhaps they had discarded a bottle that had filled with rainwater. They had not. He walked toward the wharf, where a fisherman’s bucket that he used for storing fish bones or heads might have been out in the boat and picked up the rain and kept it clear. It would have been easy to find clear rainwater if he hadn’t been looking, wanting it in the way that he did.
On her way home Este came upon a boot, a single boot that was sitting behind a bench. How had the boot been left by its mate? Had a one-legged man decided to go barefoot? Had the leather chafed or pinched the single foot of its owner? This she couldn’t determine, but she took the boot and carefully carried it into her house and into the kitchen, where the maid gave her a glass jar. She took her prize to her room and poured the water in the boot into the jar.
Hours later, as darkness set in and the gas lamps of the cafés at the edge of Lake Mariout flickered and the dancing girls were painting their faces and the women of the city were stirring things on a stove, and smells came from windows of almonds and dates and lamb soaked in thyme, while the feathers of plucked chickens drifted down the gutters of alleyways along with the unwanted parts, necks and feet, livers and spleens, Louis and Roux and Nocard went to the French Café. Louis said to Nocard, “There are no women in this café.”
“There are many woman in this café,” said Nocard.
“I mean no one special.”
The two older men looked at their younger colleague in surprise. Defiantly he looked back. “I mean,” he said, “no one as special as Este Malina.”
There was silence at the table.
LOUIS TOOK DROPS of water from Este’s boot. Would he find the cholera? The water was almost clear; under the glass he saw a few flat shapes that did not move. He looked again and again. He tried different drops. He mixed a blue acid with the water in the hope that the tiny cholera would absorb the dye and stand out clearly. Nothing. He was discouraged. He could not test every drop of rainwater that fell from the sky. The fact that it was not in this shoe did not mean it was not in the rain somewhere, in some part of the city.
How else might it have come to Alexandria? Birds did not fly across oceans. It would not be in birds. But then he considered. Birds drank rainwater. Perhaps cholera did not make them sick but remained in their tissue nevertheless. If the cholera were in the rainwater, perhaps it was also in a bird. “Marcus,” he called, “we are going to look for more dead birds. Perhaps we will shoot some.”
Marcus sighed. He was not happy. “You don’t have a gun,” he said. “You don’t know how to shoot.” Louis’s father had not admired men with guns. He was a man of the town, not the woods.
Louis said, “I don’t think you can just shoot birds in the park. I will get Dr. Malina to go with us. He will know how we can capture a bird.”
“You want to buy a chicken in the market?” Marcus asked.
“No,” said Louis, “I want a wild bird, one that has been drinking from hollows in tree trunks or puddles formed by stones or swallowing water in the lake with his fish.” Suddenly Louis felt certain that he would find cholera in the wild birds. He would see the tiny microbe move across his slide. How would it move? Would it float? Would it have legs? Would it divide itself in two? He would send a telegram to Pasteur announcing his victory.
“Find out,” he said to Marcus, “where we send a telegram. Is there a telegraph office near?”
“You want me to do that now?” asked Marcus.
“Don’t bother me,” said Louis, “I’m thinking.” He was thinking about Este. When she arrived at the laboratory he would tell her about his new hope.
SO IT WAS that Dr. Malina, leaving his house before dawn, accompanied Louis and Marcus along the road to Aboukir. Nocard did not shoot. He had rejected the invitation to join them. Emile wanted to work with his bowl of feces. They crossed the Mahmoudian Canal and took the road alongside the railway tracks, past the grand villas and castle of a former pasha, into the sand and swamps that marked the route to Cairo. They had with them two guns that had belonged to Dr. Malina’s father. These were kept at the shooting club of which Dr. Malina was a member in good standing, even though he had not had time to visit the club for more than half a dozen occasions a year. These not very modern weapons had been handed to two servants to defend the women of the house at the time of the rioting a year before, when the British ships had sent thundering canon balls into the town, blasting the walls of the dike and smashing down the castle that stood on the ground of the great lighthouse, the Pharos that had once been the pride of all Alexandrians.
“The British,” said Dr. Malina, “have no respect for other people’s homes.” Louis easily agreed. “The stones are still crumbling from their clumsy diplomacy,” said Dr. Malina.
Never sorry to hear the British scorned, Louis asked what had happened. Dr. Malina told him, “It was the fault of the followers of General Arabi. They thought they could yell the foreigners out of the land. Arabi inspired them, a false prophet. In the days following the British assault they turned into savages, wild animals. The shopkeepers, the carriage drivers, the cobblers and tobacco salesmen, the porters on the docks, the makers of rope and the spinners of cloth, the servants in the houses, the clerks in the businesses that lined the wharves, all went berserk. Not just the Arabs, but the Italians, and Greeks, and Germans, too,
went wild. They took what they wanted in the fires that followed the shelling. Look at the Grand Square, it is hardly itself. The great consulates were reduced to bare walls, and the shops were emptied of goods. They screamed and howled at the sky and they ran through the streets smashing windows. No one was in charge, no one could stop the screaming and the stealing. It was as if the city were trying to eat itself up, to devour its own avenues. There were fires everywhere. I went to the hospital to keep the looters away from our patients and our supplies, but they pushed me over and raided our pantries and carried off blankets and sheets and jars of jelly and pounds of eggs. I looked one of those thieves in the eye and I called him a coward and he hit me in the jaw. Nothing serious, of course.”
“How many were there?” asked Louis.
“Enough,” said Dr. Malina, whose lips were drawn tight in memory. “They tried to burn down our house of worship, but they were stopped.”
The British didn’t come on shore. For many hours they stayed in their boats and watched through their spyglasses. Dr. Malina was not fond of the British. Neither was Louis. This they had in common.
They found a marsh that seemed to stretch out miles in the distance. Long grasses grew by its shore. No sign of human life. A string of birds flew low over the muddy water. “Shoot,” called Marcus. Louis lifted his rifle. He missed. He hesitated. The line of birds went past. They drove a little way farther and the road grew narrow and almost impassable. Dr. Malina got out of the carriage and the three of them sat down on a rock. Two large geese alighted in front of them, unaware of danger, trusting to the breeze in the air, the smell of small fish gathering in pools underneath their feet. Dr. Malina picked up one of the guns and aimed at the birds. The largest one fell first. The second opened its wings in panic and rose on its spindly legs, but it, too, was shot and tipped over into the water, sinking down into the mud.
Marcus was dispatched to get the birds and put them in a pouch. “How did you learn to shoot?” said Louis, who did not think most doctors hunted.