Pathological

by Jinkang Wang

  After teasing her a bit more, Xue Yu put his head on her belly to listen to the fetus’s heartbeat, that intoxicating rhythm. Later, when its little hands and legs started moving, he was even more enchanted, calling out at each little kick, “It moved, it moved again, the little thing’s saying hello to me.”

  At the start of summer, the pomegranate tree in the courtyard was aflame with blossoms. Five visitors arrived that day, each from a different country, to see Mother Mei. They were Mr. Joon Cheol Choi from Korea, Mr. Rajaratnam from India, Mr. Clausen from Norway, Mr. Schmitt from Germany, and Madame Izmailova from Russia. Mother Mei was delighted, talking animatedly with all of them. Xue Yu took the day off work to keep them company. Mother Mei introduced the now heavily pregnant Xiaoxue to the guests. “This is my daughter, I’m going to be a grandmother soon!” The visitors all said, “The child will surely be as beautiful as her mother.”

  The conversation in the living room took place in English, and Xiaoxue couldn’t keep up. After a little small talk, she went off to her bedroom alone, thinking that five foreigners were unlikely to have all shown up for social visits at the same time by coincidence. After a while, Xue Yu came in and said, “The visitors said the pine forest is so lovely they want to take a walk in it. Mother Mei and I will go along.”

  Xue Yu pushed Mommy’s chair, and the seven of them set off, chatting and laughing. After an hour, they still weren’t back. Xiaoxue thought she ought to start preparing lunch for the guests. There wasn’t much in the fridge, so she’d have to go get some takeout from the shop at the facility gate. Hands supporting the small of her back, she walked slowly down the path through the pine woods. In the distance, she saw her husband and the rest among the trees, huddled around Mother Mei’s wheelchair, their backs to her. They seemed to have been joined by someone. Xiaoxue walked toward them, and saw that the additional person was Xue Yu’s new chief engineer, Mr. Lin. Something seemed odd about them. They were standing in a straight line in front of Mother Mei, gazing respectfully at her, while she sat in her wheelchair like the pope on his throne, charitably bestowing blessings upon true believers. It was gloomy beneath the trees, and they spoke in whispers.

  Now Mother Mei pointed at Xue Yu, who stepped forward. Mother Mei said, “Speak the motto of the crucifix.”

  “Be in awe of nature.”

  Mother Mei held out a cross, and said clearly, “This is the cross once worn by Mr. Dickerson, inscribed with his initials. I’ve asked Scott to add yours. I trust you will live up to it.”

  Xue Yu said gravely, “Godfather, I will not be unworthy.”

  He lowered his head and allowed Mother Mei to hang the cross around his neck, then stepped back. Hiding behind a tree, Xiaoxue was in shock. Had Xue Yu called Mother Mei Godfather? How could she be a godfather? Xiaoxue was some distance from them, and maybe had heard wrongly. Now Mother Mei pointed at Chief Engineer Lin, and he too stepped forward.

  “Speak the motto of the crucifix.”

  “Be in awe of nature.”

  “This is the cross once worn by my former husband, Sun Jingshuan. He made an enormous contribution to the cultivation of the attenuated smallpox virus, but unfortunately he left us in the end. I’ve asked Scott to carve your name on this cross. I trust you will live up to it.”

  “Godfather, I will not be unworthy.”

  He lowered his head, and Mother Mei put the cross on him. Xiaoxue had heard clearly this time. They were definitely calling her “Godfather.” Now the five foreigners went through the same ceremony, accepting their crucifixes and swearing to the Godfather. The only difference was these five crosses were newly made.

  Afterward, Mother Mei said, “After twenty years of research, our lab has reached our goal, a stable version of the mild smallpox virus. We have reduced the virulence of this strain so it only produces slight symptoms in humans, but has cross immunity with regular smallpox. This mild strain is strong enough that, if placed with regular smallpox in a natural environment, it would quickly become the dominant strain. We have decided to set this strain of smallpox loose in the wild. The work will begin in China, and later, when we’ve completed the higher levels of work, we’ll send the pathogens to you all via the WHO.”

  Everyone nodded. Xue Yu smiled. “Let’s go back, it’s almost lunchtime.”

  He pushed the wheelchair, and the other six followed, heading in Xiaoxue’s direction. With some resentment, she thought that all that stuff about going for a walk in the woods had been just to avoid her. Mother Mei didn’t seem surprised to see Xiaoxue, she merely looked back and gestured at Xue Yu. He put someone else in charge of the wheelchair, and hurried over. Afraid her husband would think she’d been spying on him, she said defensively, “I was going to get some food, now we have an extra five, no six, guests for lunch.”

  He smacked his head. “Right, I forgot to tell you, I’ve already gotten take-out lunch for all of us. You needn’t have bothered. Let’s go back in.”

  Back in the house, Xue Yu didn’t let Xiaoxue lift a finger, as usual, but put on his apron and began bustling around the kitchen. The visitors sat around Mother Mei, chatting vigorously, not at all like the solemn mysticism of the pine wood. Madame Izmailova hugged Xiaoxue, and asked how the child was doing. Between Xiaoxue’s rusty English and some hand gestures, they managed to get quite a good conversation going. A while later, Xue Yu appeared with a dozen or so dishes, and everyone sat down for lunch. They kept talking animatedly all through the meal, but using medical jargon that Xiaoxue couldn’t follow.

  The visitors left after lunch, and when the house was quiet again, Mei Yin resumed her lessons with Xiaoxue, though Xiaoxue found it hard to focus. Afterward, she immediately went in search of information about smallpox. The information online didn’t go very deep, and when she searched her husband’s bookshelves, only the older textbooks contained what she wanted. Mei Yin could tell something was bothering her, but only watched her, saying nothing.

  That night, the couple lay in bed, and as always took great pleasure in talking about the child. Xue Yu loved pressing his ear to his wife’s naked belly, listening to the fetal heartbeat, or carefully feeling for its legs and hands with his fingers. Xue Yu said, “What an active little baby, I bet it’s a boy.” Then a while later he said, “Or maybe a girl would be better, a girl would be like her mother, the prettiest creature in the world; a boy would take after his dad, and with my looks that’d be a tragedy.” They’d decided to keep the baby’s gender a surprise.

  Today, though, Xiaoxue wasn’t her normal self. Xue Yu spoke to the baby for a while, then lay down next to his wife, asking cheerfully, “I can tell you’ve got something on your mind. Tell me. Are you worried about my uncle and his bad-luck prediction again? Don’t believe a word of that.”

  Xiaoxue didn’t believe it, though it was true that something about that prediction—if the disaster doesn’t land on your head, it’ll land on your child’s—had lodged in her heart, leaving her constantly on edge. She explained, “I heard you calling Mommy ‘Godfather.’”

  “That’s just the name we use. The Crucifix Society is a loose collective of scientists, not a religion, and definitely not a cult. But old Dickerson looked like Pope John Paul II, so his colleagues joked that he was their godfather, and the name got passed on.”

  “So Mommy is the current godfather?”

  “Yes. While she was in jail, the Society took a vote and elected her to the office. Everyone acknowledges her strength of character.”

  “Yu, today I happened to overhear your conversation. You’re planning to spread the mild smallpox virus. And of course, I’m afraid you’re going to start here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Today, I looked up the impact of smallpox on a fetus.”

  “Mother Mei told me you’d been looking through my books. Did you find an answer? You could just have asked me.”

  “More or less. The books say after coming into contact with the virus, a healthy immune mother will temporarily become a
carrier. The possibility of passing the disease on to her baby isn’t high, but can’t be eliminated altogether. It also might infect the mother’s amniotic sac, then the baby through the amniotic fluid.”

  “Yes, women infected in the late stages of pregnancy might indeed pass it on through the blood or amniotic fluid. But if the woman isn’t infected herself, just in an environment that contains a mild strain of the virus, the possibility is even lower. And if infected with this weaker variety, the chances of developing serious symptoms is lower yet. A small probability times a small probability is practically zero.”

  “Practically zero isn’t the same as zero. No matter how much research you do, how many precautions you take, you’ll never be able to guarantee a death rate of zero. Correct?”

  “Yes. You’re right, and actually that’s the fundamental standpoint of the organization.”

  Xiaoxue was silent for a very long time, before saying, “These few months, I’ve come to understand the Crucifix Society’s point of view—medicine shouldn’t focus only on the individual, but also on the group. And when the interests of the group and the interests of the individual clash, the group should prevail. Logically, it makes perfect sense. But put into practice, it would be so cruel! You’re disseminating the smallpox virus for the good of humanity as a whole, in order to fill the smallpox vacuum, which could lead to a dangerous disequilibrium. That’s a noble goal. But, if, just if, the one-in-a-million chance happens, and our baby gets smallpox, and I have a miscarriage, or it’s crippled, or it dies, then that’d be everything to us! If that happened, and if I’d done nothing to stop the possibility, then my conscience would never let me rest, not in this lifetime.”

  Xiaoxue had stayed calm and reasonable throughout this speech, but Xue Yu knew his wife, and knew that she was actually taking a stand: she had to stop the spread of this virus, at least until the child was born, and she wouldn’t hesitate to pit herself against her mother and husband to do it. Even a young girl, on the verge of motherhood, can tap into a mother’s strength, the most powerful force on earth. Xue Yu thought about it, and said, “Let’s play a game. If you haven’t changed your mind by the end of it, I’ll do as you say. Okay?”

  Xiaoxue eyed him suspiciously. “What kind of game?”

  “It’s very simple, but there’s a sort of cruelty in it. Prepare yourself, because once we start, we’ll have to finish. There’s no stopping halfway.”

  She hesitated. “All right.”

  Xue Yu found a sheet of stiff card, and cut it into ten coin-size pieces. With his back to Xiaoxue, he scribbled something on each one, all the while saying, “This is how it works. Imagine there’s an evil demon in the sky, and the mortals have offended him. This demon decides to kill a million people, and not one less. He begins the killing. Every day, people drop dead out of the blue. Thousands die. This is hell on earth. Entire families are wiped out. There are too many corpses to deal with. The workers sent out to collect the bodies fall dead next to them. The later bodies aren’t even buried. Rich folk get in their carriages and leave the infection zone, but that only seems to draw the demon’s claws after them.”

  Xiaoxue knew what he was hinting at. The history books of Europe, China, and India recorded many such plagues that occurred during the Middle Ages.

  “Then a holy person decides to save the people from this tragedy. It doesn’t matter who this person is, but let’s give him a Nanyang name, let’s call him Zhang Zhongjing. The doctor-saint Zhang Zhongjing passes through all kinds of hardship and danger to get to the demon, and pleads for him to spare the innocent. The demon laughs. ‘I’ve heard of you, and for your sake, I’ll spare a million people. But God hates perfection, so out of the million, I’ll have to pick ten at random to kill. These ten people’s deaths will redeem the rest.’ The saint keeps pleading, and the demon roars. ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll kill a million people like I planned, and not spare a single one!’ So Zhang Zhongjing can only agree. The demon says, ‘And let me warn you, the ten sacrifices might include you.’ The doctor-saint says, ‘If it spares innocent lives, why would I be scared to die?’ And so, the demon picks ten people to kill, including the saint himself. And after that, there’s peace on earth.”

  Xue Yu paused, and looked at Xiaoxue. She thought this story was a little simplistic, and there wasn’t a game at all, so she waited curiously for him to continue.

  “If that were all, this game wouldn’t be so cruel. Exchanging ten lives for a million is quite a bargain. But there’s actually a different version of the ending, and it goes like this—the demon laughs coldly. ‘If you want me to save a million people, that’s easy enough. Here’s a list of ten names. For each name you pick, I’ll kill that person, and spare a hundred thousand lives. If you choose all ten names, I’ll kill them all, and save the full million lives. And let me warn you, the list of names includes your own. Will you do it?’ And the doctor-saint says, ‘I’m not afraid to die; it will be as you say.’ And so the demon hands him a list of ten names.”

  Xue Yu passed her a charcoal pencil and the stack of cards. “Here, you’re the saint, and these are the ten names. Pick one, draw a cross on it, and that person’s dead. You’ll save a hundred thousand lives with each one. Go ahead. And remember what we agreed: once we start, you have to play till the end, no stopping halfway! Begin.”

  Xiaoxue unfolded the pieces of paper, and her face turned pale as snow. The ten names were Granny Sun, Dr. Ma, Xiaokai, Yuanyuan, Mother Liu, Mother Chen, Xue Yu, Mei Yin, Mei Xiaoxue, Xiaoxue’s baby.

  Xue Yu said quietly, “This is just a game. Even if you cross out a name, that person won’t really die. But it’s important that you do this. Quick, go ahead, a million people are waiting for you to save them.”

  He was pressing her mercilessly. Xiaoxue couldn’t go back on her word, so she hardened her heart and drew a cross through Granny Sun’s name. Those black lines seemed to slice her heart open. Xue Yu took the piece of paper, saying, “We’re saying for the sake of the game that Granny Sun hadn’t already died; now you’ve just killed her. But, after all, she was an old stroke victim, her death isn’t the greatest tragedy. Right, that’s a hundred thousand lives saved. Next.”

  Xiaoxue steeled herself again, and struck out Dr. Ma’s name. Xue Yu said, “Dr. Ma was the hero who first reported Nanyang’s smallpox outbreak, and because he treated you, he was infected and died. Now you’ve killed him once again. But he was old, so let him die. Xiaoxue, you’ve saved another hundred thousand people. Continue.”

  Next, she picked Mother Liu and Mother Chen. They’d been good to her back when she was at the orphanage, but now she was condemning them to death. Even though this was just a game, it still felt like a knife through the heart. They were two of the oldest on the list, though, so she had no choice.

  “Another two hundred thousand saved. Continue.”

  Xiaokai and Yuanyuan. “Two hundred thousand lives. Continue.”

  She couldn’t bear it any more. Tears covered her face, but Xue Yu said coldly, “We agreed, no stopping this game. You have to go on till you’re finished. Continue. Why not pick me next? A child needs its mother more. Go on.”

  Her eyes blurred with tears, filled with sorrow and anger—hating her husband for tricking her into this cruel game, she violently crossed out Xue Yu’s name.

  “A hundred thousand people saved. Xiaoxue, you’ll have to pick Mother Mei next. She’s older, and in bad health. If you kill yourself instead of her, she’d find it hard to bring the child up alone.”

  Xiaoxue was sobbing so hard she could barely catch her breath, and tried to refuse. Xue Yu had no mercy, but grabbed her hand and forced her to scrawl a cross over Mei Yin’s name, and toss the piece of paper aside. Now even his voice had started to tremble, but he clenched his teeth and went on. “Another hundred thousand people. Continue. There’s still the last two hundred thousand waiting for you to rescue them. Xiaoxue, you can only choose the baby next, he or she is still so young, even if you spare
d it, it wouldn’t survive without its mother. Animals will abandon their young when death threatens—it may be heartless, but it is entirely correct. Not according to human morality, but to natural morality.”

  Xiaoxue howled, flinging aside the last two scraps of paper and pummeling her husband’s chest. “I hate you! Cold-blooded animal!”

  Mother Mei heard the commotion, and quickly wheeled herself over. Xue Yu hugged Xiaoxue and shot a glance at his mother-in-law—so she silently retreated. When Xiaoxue was calm again, Xue Yu continued. “I don’t feel good about this either. It’s just a simple game, but it still feels like being stabbed ten times in the heart. And actually, it’s not a game, it’s the reality of existence, it’s a fable for the history of life on earth. Caring for the herd rather than the individual is the guiding principle of God. We might rationally be able to accept this rule, acknowledging its truth and necessity. But if it leads to the death of your loved ones, especially if you’re personally responsible for those deaths, then that would be more than most could bear. Now do you understand why Kolya Stebushkin killed himself, why Mother Mei was so filled with guilt, and why Uncle Sun decided to abandon the journey halfway?”

  After that game, Xiaoxue stopped asking about the plan to release mild viruses. In all likelihood, her husband had already done it, and the smallpox virus was now swirling round their home. She didn’t want to know. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that it had been the right thing to do, rationally speaking, and that the chances of their child contracting smallpox were “virtually zero.” She once again appeared happy, but Mei Yin’s sharp eyes could see the lingering fear in her heart, and it caused her pain. Xiaoxue was nearly a mother, but she was still only a girl of twenty-two.

  When her time came, Xue Yu drove Xiaoxue to the maternity ward of Nanyang Central Hospital, and Mei Yin hired a helper to look after her. Since she’d been released from jail, Mei Yin’s legs had gotten much better, and she could walk short distances without the wheelchair. Xue Yu was very busy with work, but as soon as he had a bit of spare time, he would drive to Nanyang to be with his wife. Xiaoxue’s labor pains were much worse than most people’s, and they tormented her for three whole days and nights.