by Larry Kramer
Nobody much ever read The New York Prick. The New York pricks especially didn’t read The New York Prick. Fettner might as well have been writing for the man in the moon. She didn’t know this yet. “I was still scallywagging around Washington scratching for scraps of information and thrilled with how much I was uncovering. I think people were actually happy to talk to me. I was what was called a Free Ride. Decent People wanted to tell Someone when they had dirt they knew was really dirty. It was their way, without anyone troublesome noticing, of going On the Record in case someday they got hauled up for not speaking out. Then they could say, But I did! See The New York Prick of such and such a date. They knew no one ever read or would read Orvid’s rag. So all my superb, if I may say so, investigative reporting was damned if I did it and I was damned (in my own head and heart) if I didn’t. It was to take me a few years to figure all this out. That would be the end of it for me. Oh, Fred helped me get his friend Will Schwalbe to publish a volume of my stuff called The Science of Viruses. But by then it was old stuff. People in Washington care about old stuff about as much as they care about the truth.
This plague and its history was the greatest story ever waiting to be told. It still is.
* * *
Okay, Fred, here’s some stuff to start you off.
Regurgia. The ancient word for hepatitis. Yellow skin is the sign of the body’s unhealthiness, and yellow eyeballs a top clue. Hepatitis is wildly unappreciated as a bedmate of The Underlying Condition. Like when you say George Washington was gay and everybody laughs, this is another big ha-ha to the boys and girls at NITS and FADS and COD. Oh, yes, and HAD, although they’re too ivory-towery to care much about lowly hepatitis. My buddy Laurie Garrett wrote the best stuff on this stuff (I cribbed some of it from her Pulitzer tome, The Coming Plague, with her permission), the disease, its implications, its ancient history. I love Laurie. She deserved her Pulitzer. She’s the one who first raised this interconnectedness with UC and then she wouldn’t write another syllable about it. Even good old Grace won’t sign on to what Laurie, Fred, and I figured out. Laurie, gutsy lady that she is, must know something she can’t tell anyone.
Yes, hepatitises were known to the ancient world. Several dozen of them have been identified so far. It’s a very deadly virus, and for centuries a bitch to trace accurately in the body, yellow body or urine-tinted eyeballs notwithstanding. As my friend Douglas Starr writes in Blood, What “struck tens of thousands of soldiers during the American Civil War, and broke out among millions of soldiers and civilians during the Franco-Prussian War and World Wars I and II” carries on mercilessly to this day, which should be to those few who can read between the veins very bad news. I don’t know why it’s excited the interest of so few. No doubt it’s because for the most part it’s struck the poorest of the world, or the dirtiest, or those lacking physical stamina or with compromised immune systems (I know you told me you haven’t got to immune systems yet, but you will). The immune system per se will not be given more than what Dame Lady Hermia calls “a tinker’s damn” until those who have eaten too adventurously, or loved the same, and Geiseric and Pewkin and of course Omicidio come up against its brick wall and are forced to try to understand it, try being the operative and very limited word, but just not being good enough, fellas.
Regurgia means, literally, “throw-up,” as in regurgitate. (I didn’t make this up. See Methane’s Dictionary of Medical Root Equivalents.) An unhealthy liver provides a lot of stuff to vomit out. That this vomit is top-drawer contagion will not be discovered until World War II, which, Fred says in his chronology, is right about now. But there are going to be a whole lot of mysterious killers saying hello during these war and postwar years. It’s a messier war because it’s being fought all over the globe and the number of dead is huge and dispersed. It’s also the messiest because of concentration camps and gas ovens, an entirely new way to kill people. It gives too many overly imaginative folks everywhere new ideas about pushing the envelope. Gases inhaled can destroy livers (we should have learned this in World War I but didn’t) and the masses of dead bodies lying around unburied that have been gassed to death allow regurgia’s poisonous stench to be released into the atmosphere, indeed the air of the entire European continent. (I didn’t make this up. See Heinrich Holzer’s Encyclopedia of Mass Extermination and Its Consequences. See, indeed, what happened in early Philadelphia.) Ignorance about regurgia should top the list of what will kiss more boys goodbye. Why, even to still call it regurgia after all these centuries is an indication of what a dumb backwater hick place COD remains. COD is still the gatekeeper of “official terminology.”
No one has put two and two together to realize that blood transfusions are a particular culprit. Little enough is known about hepatitis yet, how long it is infectious or contagious. We know now that many would pass it from their systems; we know now that many would not. We knew, then and of course now, that this virus was in the blood supply and we had no way to get it out of the blood supply. And we needed blood very badly. We didn’t quite know there were different types of hepatitis (and indeed of blood itself) as well as other foreign strains, for want of a better word, which had different effects on the body.
And then there’s hemophilia.
In the second century A.D. rabbis wrote in Jewish texts about what must have been hemophilia, indeed exempting male boys from circumcision if two previous brothers had died from nonstop bleeding from this procedure. Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), the great Jewish physician, extends this ruling to the sons of a woman who had married twice, thus, it would seem, alluding to the hereditary nature of the condition. In the Arab world, their great early physician Albucasis (1013–1106) made note of a family where only males died after minor injuries.
In the United States the transmission of hemophilia from mothers to sons was first described in the early 1800s. In 1803 a Philadelphia physician named Dr. John Conrad Otto wrote an account of “a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families.” He recognized that a particular bleeding condition was hereditary and affected males. He traced the disease back through three generations to a woman who had settled near Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1720. The word haemophilia first appeared in a description of a bleeding disorder condition at the University of Zurich in 1828.
Recent history has found NITS full of doctors trying to evade the draft and the few left afraid of being caught for doing so. COD was even worse, because it was a young place trying with difficulty to recruit staff to such an inconvenient city, Chattanooga. No one wants to work there, the place said to be so hot with racism that black people can still be shot to death on Main Street in broad daylight. And Paulus Pewkin, who runs COD, is known to be a pain. All of the doctors, whether those gone and returned or those who hadn’t left, were, quite frankly, dumb. NITS was the only job they could find. The result of all this, obviously, is that not much gets done at its various divisions.
Hepatitis is bearable in a society when just a few people have it. More and it can be disaster. This country is about to enter a long string of physiological disasters. Hepatitis will be only one of them. A nasty one. With syphilis, that makes two. Two very nasty ones. And then there’s hemophilia.
I’ll be back in the late ’60s/early ’70s with the real McCoy.
PEOPLE QUITE OFTEN APPEAR FROM OUT OF NOWHERE
They sneak into places like offices when no one is in them. They look through drawers in desks and file cabinets. It’s really quite easy to gain entrance to an awful lot of places. Fern Hetheringay dresses up as a man and does it lots of times. When she writes an article about it for the Monument they won’t publish it, and Fern is one of their star reporters. There aren’t enough men to be guards. Lots of stuff is stolen and lots of stuff isn’t stolen so much as looked at, as if to see what’s going on, what’s being done. Five thousand mostly young new government workers arrive in Washington every month. Not all of them are on official payrolls.
IANTHE’S DAY
I write
in this diary because a record of the way we live now is lacking. Like all those antebellum ladies from whom we know more about the Civil War than the ten thousand male historians who’ve churned their drivel into an enormous waste of trees, so will I, Ianthe Adams Strode, write about life on the home front during this current strife. I shall be the insider with a mouth. Histories, particularly ones by male historians, never have anyone quite like Ianthe.
How do you make men understand? I know this quandary has challenged women since the first gasps of time. I shall not be the one to answer it any more satisfactorily. I am not a big fan of men. Women break my heart enough.
I predict that Frank will not let one Jew into America if he can help it. And every Jew in this country thinks Franklin Delano Roosevelt is God. And Jew is not a word to be uttered out loud. We are truly awful.
This is the most hypocritical city in this strange country of naïve bumpkins. It is a joke to think this city is the capital of an important country. It is a joke to think this is an important country. God help us all that this country is now required to save everyone else.
And what about this secretary Franklin is “seeing” and this woman Eleanor is drawn to? It’s the first interesting thing about either of them I’ve ever heard. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Each of them, Frank and Eleanor, has at one time or another held my hand too long. They are hungry carnivores unable to understand their lust. There are few things more touching and distasteful than witnessing the faltering, tentative acts of people who want your body but have no notion how to get it. Just for the kick of it, I think I would have gone to bed with Eleanor the first time she didn’t let go of my hand if she hadn’t dissolved into a stuttering nervous Nelly. Franklin, well, I had to bite his little finger to get my rejection across, although I suppose it’s best that presidents are persistent.
To walk down any street in Northwest is uncomfortable because this town is filled with visiting everythings. There are Germans walking around simply everywhere. Why are they here? Who could know they were never to be trusted? Anyone who knew them, that’s who. I lived in Berlin before the war and I knew then. How could one not?
One desperately needs amusement. Washington, always a social sewer, has become a deeper one. People actually go to bed at nine. Where else is there to go? Dear Nancy swears there’s no fun in Paris now that Hitler’s come. “The streets are so filled with his soldiers that often you cannot find your own front door!” And no one has a penny in London. “It’s in a kitty for a rainy tomorrow,” Lady Austa writes. “It is always raining tomorrow,” I write back. “It is not amusing to make jokes about the weather, just at present,” she replies. “I am not talking about the weather,” from me. “You Americans must always have the last word.” Much of that sort of thing. Hardship brings out a certain additional petulance in the Brits. Stiff upper lips? Poo. Also from London, Sir Eric writes inquiring why Franklin installed a nice college professor as our ambassador to Germany as the storms were gathering. William Dodd. A history professor from Chicago. Sir E. wonders now, as did I when Strode was his assistant ambassador there, if this was quite “the demeanor required at that juncture.” Sir E. inquires, “Since you know that city,” whether I in fact know that American companies continue to sell massive amounts of stuff like airplanes and heavy machinery to Germany while our banks lend the huns money as if they all know something about that country that Sir E. does not. “Your biggest banks and industrial manufacturers!” Yes, I do and did not know that. One wonders what kind of cagey gimpy game Frank is up to still. When I confront him he says that they are all private companies and he is unable to stop them because they can do whatever they want. The second time he told me this, I said right to his face: “You do not sound like a major wartime world leader to me.” Do none of his advisers, whoever they might be—henchmen I call them, also to his face, and theirs—have the balls to speak up to him? I am the only person who speaks out loud. “This war is going to last a long time,” I said to him. “Even after it’s over it won’t be over. Do you really think Germany is going to disappear now that we are saying boo back?” I was asked to leave. As always when such unfathomable silence reigns, one can only think: This is the way they want it. Or better: This is the way the world ends.
I know all this because I was there. Strode was assigned to Berlin to work with Ambassador Dodd, who was too nice and resorted to his Bible too often. His daughter Martha was a true hellion, screwed young Nazis and Russians and anyone who caught her fancy. She was very busy. Mrs. Dodd couldn’t take it all, Hitler and her daughter who actually flirted with the Führer, so she had a nervous breakdown and FDR brought them all home. (Whereupon Martha has become a spy for the Communists against America.) Dodd was the last official American ambassador to Berlin, but Strode, and I too of course, stayed on until ’41 when FDR closed our place there down. While it lasted Berlin was the strangest amalgam of fun, fury, champagne, and hate I’ve ever seen. What one saw couldn’t help but change you forever. Strode was never the same. Hitler scared the bejesus out of him.
People look at me like I’m a shark. It’s a lonely fish, the shark. Eleanor asked me softly the other afternoon at tea, “Do you ever expect to find another husband?” “A husband!” I screamed, suddenly overcome by a fit of guffaws. “Who would ever want another one of those? Hasn’t yours made you miserable enough?” She doesn’t like it when I talk about Franklin that way. She gets very prissy, starts to type or make notes or knit, a little tear falling from an eye, her needles quivering. No wonder Franklin is always busy elsewhere. Everyone wonders how he gets away with it until they look at Eleanor. And his gimpy legs. Strode only had a gimpy member. I don’t think they’re called “members” anymore. I must ask my Jewish kids what a member is called today. I do think of them as my children. I want to protect them from the intense pain that is ahead. I am among the few I know who can remain aghast indefinitely.
I spend most of my days at this sad, sad little enterprise of Heidi Osteroff’s. It moves me enormously. I sit in this pool of sweet young Jewish women who “must do something.” I enjoy them. They rush to me every time they run up against a brick wall, which is with almost every telephone call. I usually know a few higher-ups we can pester. But what’s the point? Franklin is not interested in Jewish refugees. In Jewish anything. No one says this out loud but it’s so and that’s why I’m here. To say such things out loud. No, I am not certain why I’m with these children. Franklin is my people and these girls are not. I should be trying to help my people, but they are beyond help.
Jews, Jews, everybody hates Jews. It is truly remarkable that all the anti-Semitism of centuries not only has not disappeared one bit but is actually worse now that this—what are Jews? a race? a religion? a people?—now that Jews are being decimated by that monster. Do I think that Christians are hideous enough to be glad? Yes. I do. I think there are many people who are grateful to Hitler for accomplishing what too many in this country, down deep, desire. Why are we even bothering, then, to fight this war? I’ll tell you why. So we can continue to be the most hypocritical people the world has ever bred. On this, Hermia and I agree. For a Brit, she becomes more outspoken by the moment. She pleases me. Her husband is as unavailable as mine was.
So I continue to wear large shoulder pads, the symbol, and the burden, of my sisters, and come here each day as I try to be useful. There are few other places around that welcome an aging gal like me. Mariamne’s father was an old flame a hundred years ago. I was only interested in Jewish men all my young girlhood. Why in all the world did I settle for a Strode? An Adams should know better.
So I continue to go into these wretched barracks, dreadfully hot, with nary a breeze from the north (the White House), and try to help several dozen sweet Hebrew children who have never before in their lives so much as picked up a telephone for anything more than ordering food, or calling their chums, or chatting up a potentially rich husband. Not one of them has more than a vague idea of who I am or was. I may be a cou
sin of Franklin’s, but I am still a Republican, and Republicans are still unwanteds. I wonder how long it will be before this man, whom everyone worships, dies and the truth is told about how inhumane he is. I actually believe that Eleanor could do his job better. And we all know how I feel about her!
The other morning Fifi Nordlinger rushed in filled with excitement. She announced that she desired to open a catering business. She is a quite handsome thing, about twenty-four, with short blond hair and a rather square but full-figured body. I suspect she likes to be tossed around a bit. I believe she married unhappily—her father is a successful Northwest builder; he put up a good deal of Chevy Chase—but her new husband, who I think was a used-car salesman, is off at war, so perhaps he won’t come home.
“What in the world would a catering business accomplish when absolutely nobody is giving parties?” Mariamne quite reasonably asked Fifi. Mariamne is also blond, but June Haver to Fifi’s Betty Hutton. I am helplessly in love with American movies. They are so repellently innocent! We shall pay a big price one day for believing in the dreams they indiscriminately dream for everyone.
Speaking of movies, I ran into Amos Standing at a cocktail party at the British Embassy. He is finally back from Germany, looking most strikingly debonair. Though a bit worse from … something I cannot quite put my finger on. Perhaps it is no more than being witness to these present horrors so close up. When I blithely inquired how he could stay there so long, he wouldn’t talk about it. It was almost as if he’s a spy. Amos, as I recall, was somewhat possessed of a soul; but then we were just neighbors and Chevy Chase wasn’t yet a suburb of Berlin. He’s aged and I should not be surprised if he is homosexual. War brings out so much in men.