Sometime- the Plague World

by Meredith Mason Brown

  “I said I might have something imprecise to report. It is imprecise – but it ties in with what you’ve been saying about the risks of playing with H1N1, in the absence of effective immune defenses. And it’s very scary to me.”

  With that, Dan described to Nat the telephone conversation Dan had had with the undertaker Holmquist, on the second leg of Dan’s flight back from California, the leg from Cincinnati to Boston. Dan focused on telling Nat about the insinuation Dan had made to Holmquist that if there had been no viewings by the congregants of St. James of the bodies of Reverend Templeton and of his wife Rebecca, it was because the blue-black faces of people dead from flu – the way the dead had looked in the 1918-1919 flu – were too horrible to look at. “What was creepy,” Dan said, “was that the undertaker Holmquist made no comment whatever on that insinuation. So I thought I had gotten very warm in my efforts to find things out, though the dead people certainly weren’t in a position to do so.”

  Nat said nothing for a couple of minutes. “Holy shit,” he then said.

  “All things that are part of God’s world are holy,” Dan said. “Shit included. If I were a good father, I would be obliged to wash out your mouth with soap, for the way you’re talking today, Nat. But you’re protected by being nearly 3,000 miles away from me at the moment. Besides, Mr. Holmquist didn’t expressly say that the bodies of the Templetons were blue-black.

  “But Holmquist didn’t say they weren’t blue-black, either,” Nat said. “And his silence made it sound that the dead were blue-black.” More silence from Nat and Dan. After a pause, Nat spoke: “My recollection, Dad, is that the news in Rockinam flows through the town news store – run by Jimmy somebody.”

  “Madeiros.”

  “Right, Jimmy Madeiros. You’ve told me many times that he has become the town’s news center. Since Christmas Day, has he told you of any other deaths in Rockinam that look like flu deaths?”

  “There have been at least a couple.”

  “Have you asked Mr. Madeiros whether the dead people were blue-black in color?” Nat Floyd had turned on his Spanish Inquisition voice.

  “I have not.”

  “Have you asked him whether there were any viewings of the dead; any open-casket viewings? Have you seen in the obits any mentions of viewings of the dead?”

  “I did ask Madeiros. He hadn’t heard of any viewings of the dead. And I have read the obits. None of them mentioned any viewings.”

  “Have you spoken to whoever is running St. James Church, after Mr. Templeton’s death? Has that person talked about the deaths and the color of the dead?”

  “You’re getting good at the Q and A business, Nat. Probing and pushing to the point of rudeness. Maybe you should leave medicine and go into law. Might be a better fit for you.”

  “What are the answers to the question I just posed?” Nat asked.

  Pause. “I have gone to the church only once since I came back from California,” Dan said. Since the time the Rector, the Reverend Bill Templeton, died, a few weeks ago, the church is being run by a curate, a strict-looking young woman named Emily something. I don’t think that I have ever seen her smile. She’s new to being in charge of a church. That and the deaths of her boss the Rector, and of the Rector’s wife, and of quite a few congregants, have hit the curate hard, like dropping a large anvil on her head. Last Sunday, when she was waiting outside the front door for the beginning of the 10 o’clock service, I talked to her to express my regret about the two people who had died since Christmas. Then I asked her if there had been any viewings of the dead since Christmas, and whether there were likely to be any coming up. That shook her. “There can’t be,” she said; “There just can’t be.” She sounded all choked up. She rushed into the church, which has become only about one-third filled these Sundays. So I don’t have a definitive answer, Nat – but the way the curate acted is another fair bit of circumstantial evidence of blue-black deaths, of inability to breathe, of cyanosis. Any suggestions as to what I should do?”

  “As I told you before, you shouldn’t go to church, Dad. This is me the doctor speaking, not me the agnostic, the rarely churched man. To state the obvious, in Rockinam you may be in a pandemic community, and you don’t want to be breathed on or coughed on. And I doubt that the new curate lady wants to kill you or her other parishioners.”

  “I’ve already been pretty much staying in my house all the time,” Dan said. “I order in. Food, CDs, wine – the whole bit. I get the impression that much of Rockinam does likewise these days. Tin cans filled with Campbell tomato soup are a hot item in our town, although the truckers who have thrown to Rockinam tin cans and other food containers sure don’t want to pick that stuff up after people in the houses have opened the containers and handled the food. Well, you and I have depressed each other enough for the day, Nat. Thanks for your leads on Dr. Konrad. I’m old and slow, and I’m getting older and slower – but I’ll keep trying to think about the Starkherzes – especially Konrad Starkherz.”

  “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.” G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, July 16, 1910.

  12

  Spuyten Duyvil

  Dan had exaggerated when he told Nat that he never left home any more. Dan did not want to contract, and to die of, a lethal flu – but he also realized that, given his age and increasing frailty, he could become sick or at least crippled if he sat in a chair and read all day. The next Sunday, Dan didn’t go into St. James Church. Too many flu-bearers were likely to be there, in his estimation. He biked near the church, however. As he had done when he first saw Kurt Starkherz late in October, Dan went past the town firehouse and stopped on his bike near a burnt stone chimney, the sole remnant of the colonial house which had been set on fire by a young novice fireman who had been about the same age as Kurt Starkherz had been when he died.

  Dan looked at the carbon-blacked stone chimney, and started to talk out loud to himself – a trait that had grown as Dan grew older and more forgetful. “The young fireman who burned that house – should I call him the fireboy, because of his youth and because of his burning himself? – wanted to prove himself, to become known as a hero. Maybe Kurt Starkherz had been trying to do that, too, but maybe he was working with his father Dr. Konrad. If that’s what Kurt was doing, he was playing, not with fire, but with toxic viruses that were dealt with recklessly by his father. Things that Kurt should not have been playing with. And maybe Dr. Konrad infected his son Kurt carelessly, because Konrad, like the novice fireman in Rockinam, was so anxious to get into the big time. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to talk to Kurt – to have been breathed on by Kurt – after he had worked with Dr. Konrad. And I wouldn’t want to so much as shake hands with Dr. Konrad, having heard how dangerously casual that man was, playing with World War I H1N1 virus, without keeping himself in an impermeable CDC spacesuit.”

  Dan eventually realized that several adults, dressed in their Sunday best, were looking askance at him, a man in his middle 70s who was sitting on an aged bicycle and talking out loud to himself about viruses and spacesuits. Recognizing some men and women from his church, Dan waved at the puzzled-looking onlookers, and biked his way to his house.

  After Dan made it back home, he looked up the telephone number of Kurt Starkherz and his wife Georgia, and called the number. Georgia picked up the phone. Her voice was as southern as her given name.

  “Mrs. Starkherz, I just called to express my condolences to you. My name is Dan Floyd. I live not far from you in Rockinam. I was out of town in California, visiting my family, before and after Christmas, so I didn’t know until recently about Kurt’s passing. I had met Kurt in Rockinam, and I had been introduced by Kurt to your son Hans. It was a joy to see the father and the son together, with Kurt carrying Hans on his shoulders. I can begin to appreciate the greatness of the
loss you have suffered in Kurt’s demise. I’m sure that Kurt, with his medical background, was on the way to great things.”

  Apart from an inhaling snort, there was silence on the other end of the phone. Dan heard in the background sniffles and yowling from a young boy. Presumably that was Hans, the son of Kurt and Georgia. Dan decided to take a shot at Kurt’s father, Dr. Konrad. “I would guess,” Dan said, “that Kurt’s father, Dr. Konrad, whom I’ve heard is a great doctor in New York City, was a help to Kurt.”

  “Please shut up, Hans,” Georgia called out in exasperation to her son. She then said to Dan: “I was speaking to my son Hans, Mr. Floyd, but in substance I was also speaking to you when I said please shut up. Dr. Konrad Starkherz is a vain, murderous, and thoroughly untrustworthy son of a bitch. I do not know you, Mr. Floyd, and I do not want to know you.”

  Silence and a telephone hang-up. “Mrs. Starkherz?” There was no reply. Dan hung up his phone, as well.

  Dan had ordered into his house, in addition to food, two cases of wine. After he opened a case, he took notes to himself on how and when best to discuss matters with Dr. Konrad Starkherz and perhaps with Konrad’s venerable father, Kurt’s grandfather Dr. Klaus Starkherz. Dan’s puzzling-through and his note-taking were slow and complicated, and led to Dan’s consumption of two bottles of red wine before he fell asleep in his sofa.

  In the morning, at 9:30 A.M. Rockinam time, Dan telephoned Nat. It was 6:30 A.M. in Santa Barbara. “Nat, I’m sorry to call you at this hour. Is this your wake-up call for the day?”

  Nat did not sound pleased. “Does a wild bear shit in the woods? Is the Pope a Catholic? Wait, I’ll stick with the bear. The views of a new Pope can be more changeable these days than the goals of a wild bear.”

  “I’ll be quick,” Dan said. He told Nat about the comments of Georgia Starkherz, and the vehemence of her dislike of Dr. Konrad Starkherz. “What do you think caused that hatred?”

  “You tell me.”

  “It’s only a guess. She called Dr. Konrad ‘vain,’ ‘murderous,’ ‘untrustworthy,’ and “a son of a bitch.” That’s more than mild dislike. It sounds to me as if Georgia Starkherz thought Dr. Konrad was involved in causing Kurt’s death.”

  “That’s pure guesswork, Dad. But I don’t think it’s dumb guesswork.”

  “You’ve heard the excerpt from Konrad’s journal article, to the effect that the world needed to develop a new immunity to H1N1 – an immunity like the one that evolved in 1918-19. Can your friend at the CDC find out in which New York hospital Konrad works at as a doctor, an epidemiologist? Can your CDC friend, directly or indirectly, talk to some other doctor at that hospital, and catch up on the work Dr. Konrad has been doing on H1N1? And maybe the CDC can find out what’s behind the deaths we’re seeing in the little town of Rockinam? Isn’t that kind of research exactly the kind of thing that CDC is named and paid to do? That organization isn’t called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for nothing.”

  “I can try,” Nat said. “I have to wake up first. At this hour, that will take me a while. What else you got, to drive me nuts?”

  “Is it possible,” Dan said, “that Dr. Konrad Starkherz might also have talked to his father, Dr. Klaus Starkherz? What I’m thinking is that Dr. Klaus was a big shot virologist in Germany before he and Konrad came over to the United States. Dr. Klaus might have come up with some good ideas on developing immune defenses against H1N1. I’m thinking that I might see if I can talk to Dr. Klaus.”

  “Are you a doctor, Dad? If so, that would be a brand new one to me.”

  “I’m not a doctor of medicine. I’m a doctor of law – a J.D., a juris doctor. And I’m almost as old as Dr. Klaus. Maybe he’s lonely and he’d like to talk. There’s no harm in trying. As a lawyer, I’ve found, as the decades went by, that often the best way to get people to talk about themselves is to sit there and listen, and to praise what that someone was saying. ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanities.’ Ecclesiastes, 1:2.”

  “Spare me the scriptures,” Nat said. “I’ll ask my unnamed CDC professor if he has any information on the whereabouts, a while back or now, of Dr. Klaus Starkherz. And that’s all I have time for now, Dad. I have to gallop – to eat breakfast, crap, shower, shave, and get to the hospital in time to do my own doctoring.”

  “Thanks, Nat. I’ll troll for Dr. Klaus, too,” Dan said. “I like snooping for a good cause. And at my age, I like having something to do. I don’t expect I’ll be able to do much else for much longer.”

  * * *

  Within two days Dan had contact information for Dr. Klaus Starkherz. Googling led Dan to the address and telephone number of the hospital in New York City, where Dr. Klaus had practiced before he retired. Dr. Klaus in New York had been an epidemiologist, as Dr. Konrad was now. The unnamed professor furnished Nat with a more recent address of where Dr. Klaus had lived in New York. Nat passed that address along to Dan, who looked on the map and discovered that Dr. Klaus now lived in a retirement home in Westchester County, north of New York City. Dan called the place and identified himself as someone who had known Dr. Klaus’s son and grandson, and who admired the achievements of the family of doctors. He asked if he could stop by to pay his respects to Dr. Klaus. The man at the retirement home who had picked up Dan’s call encouraged the visit and told Dan what the visiting hours were. “Dr. Klaus doesn’t get to see many people here. That’s a let-down for someone who had been a well-known doctor in New York City. Dr. Klaus could use some conversation and some admiration, although I should let you know that these days he has trouble calling words up, or remembering what he was talking about. He’s well over 80 – wait, he’s even over 90 now – and it shows.”

  “I’ve turned 74, and that shows, too,” Dan said. “My memory is not what it once was. So a short visit should do some good to me, as well as to Dr. Klaus.”

  A day later, after a long drive from Rockinam, Dan arrived at the Contentment Valley Retirement Home in Westchester County. It was 2 PM. The place looked like an old age home – which was appropriate, because that was what it was. Dan introduced himself to the man at the front desk, who turned out to be the man Dan had spoken to on the phone about a visit to Dr. Klaus. After the front desk man gave Dan Dr. Klaus’s room number and directions, Dan set off for the room. The hallway, Dan thought, resembled a rehab hospital that was not for the young and middle-aged recuperating from sickness or broken bones and punctured lungs, but instead was for the aged and infirm in their final years or months. The residents lived in small single rooms. The doors to the rooms were open. Each room had a bed, a chest of drawers crowned by a mirror, and an armchair by a window.

  On reaching Dr. Klaus’s room, Dan reached into his inside jacket pocket to start a tape recorder, before he knocked on the open door to the room and stuck his head in. Dr. Klaus was in an armchair, reading a book that rested on a wooden desktop that hooked over the seat of the armchair – a throwback, looking like a desktop from the middle school Dan had attended some sixty years earlier.

  “May I come in, Doctor Klaus?” Dan asked politely. Dr. Klaus did not stir. Dan saw hearing aids protruding from both of the doctor’s ears. Dan coughed loudly into his closed fist and raised his voice. “May I come in, Doctor Klaus?” Dan repeated. “Forgive me if I use your first name, referring to you as Dr. Klaus, but I have trouble keeping straight the names of all the distinguished Starkherz doctors, whom I admire a great deal.” The doctor, without any sign of recognition, turned his head towards Dan. “My name is Daniel Floyd,” Dan said. “I wanted to introduce myself, because I’m from Rockinam, so I knew your grandson Kurt.” That statement by Dan surprised Dan, because it caused no reaction from Dr. Klaus. “I also had met your great-grandson Hans, Kurt’s son, and I was in this neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by and say hello to you.”

  “Hello to you, also, Sir,” Dr. Kl
aus said; “Welcome to you.” The doctor pronounced W as a V – “Velcome.” Though many decades had passed since his arrival in the United States, Dr. Klaus retained a German accent that matched or exceeded the one that had belonged to President Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Dr. Klaus’s voice, however Germanic, was well projected and plainly audible.

  “Thank you for that welcome, Doctor Klaus,” Dan said. “You have many fine doctors in your family.”

  “Are you also a doctor?”

  “Only a doctor of law – but I greatly admire, indeed I envy, doctors of medicine. Before I came here today, I had also read about your achievements, and those of your son Konrad. The family achievements are remarkable.”

  “You are too kind.”

  “I am an admirer. I admire this house and this room.”

  “It is restful, and at my age it is good that the establishment gets the food and does the cooking and arranges programs for us old ones. We alte kockers specialize in sitting in these what-do-you-call-thems.”

  “Armchairs.” Dan was pleased to be able to dredge up the word. In recent years, as his recall diminished, he referred to many familiar things as ‘what-do-you-call-thems.’ It was comforting to find that other people, too, struggled to recall things.

  “Armed chairs, it is,” Dr. Klaus said. He was getting closer in his word-dredging.