The Plague Tales

by Ann Benson

  He handed her a small booklet and advised her to read it. “These are the regulations for international visitors,” he said. “You will be held responsible for all of the material, so please read it carefully.”

  As the agent examined the contents of her suitcases, Janie wondered to herself if there would be a pop quiz on visitor regulations. She chuckled quietly, but her gaiety faded as she realized that her toothpaste, deodorant, and moisture cream were all being confiscated. Her hair spray, shampoo, and conditioner were also gathered into the yellow plastic biosafe bag for quarantine. She was given the option of paying for short-term storage and reclaiming the items on leaving the country, or allowing the items to be destroyed in a biosafe manner. Considering the cost of storage, she opted for destruction.

  “I think I might want to buy some stock in a British toiletries maker,” she said to the examiner.

  He smiled politely, but she could see the clear delight in his face as he disposed of her expensive personal-care items. As he continued his examination of her toiletries pack he took out a small bottle of acetaminophen and set it aside, completely apart from the other confiscated items.

  “What’s the problem with the acetaminophen?” Janie asked.

  “Available only with a prescription here,” he said. “Aspirin and ibuprofen too.”

  She looked at him in wide-eyed disbelief, her mouth open.

  “I don’t make the policy, miss. I just enforce it. You might ask the chap at the next station.”

  After her personal luggage was finally cleared, the agent opened the box containing Janie’s digging equipment. He poked around for a few minutes while Janie held her breath and watched. Then he looked up at Janie with a disgusted expression as if to say, I didn’t need this today, and spoke into a hand-held walkie-talkie.

  “Bring out the scanner, please.”

  As she let out the held breath, Janie muttered a soft flurry of unsavory invective, none of which was intended to convey her appreciation of this agent’s concern for the safety of his countrymen. Her empty stomach, long since finished with the liquid meal she’d received on the plane, gurgled out its objection to the additional delay.

  A tall portable laser scanning machine was wheeled from a nearby door by a green-suited cop and positioned at the foot of the table. The agent pushed a few buttons and the rollers started moving, carrying the scanner forward so that it passed directly over the table and the items laid out there.

  Janie watched and whispered to herself, Please don’t let the buzzer go off … please don’t find anything.… And blessedly, nothing showed up. No uncataloged bacteria, no parasites, no fungi or viruses. Janie thought she was home free, but the examiner decided to prolong her agony by asking some questions about the unusual assortment of tools.

  He pointed, and she answered. Surveying equipment. Micrometer. Biosafe storage bags. Protective eyewear. Biosafe gloves. Soil plugger.

  He stopped there and picked up the meter-long metal tube in his gloved hands and turned it over while he examined it. It was a huge version of the garden tool used to plant bulbs for tulips and daffodils, and it seemed to pique his interest. He commented, “My mum has one like this. A bit smaller, though.”

  She thought to herself, Your mum may have a Mickey Rooney. But I have a Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Different league altogether.

  But she smiled pleasantly and said aloud, “How lovely. It’s nice to know people have the same interests all over the world.”

  This seemed to please him; he smiled back and said, “Well, that’s all, I think. You can take your things through that door over there.” He pointed to his left. “You can join the queue for your medical clearance.”

  As Janie closed the boxes he waved and said, “I hope you have a lovely visit.” Janie waved back at him and turned to go.

  As she headed toward the next line with other members of her group she muttered under her breath, “I’d settle for uneventful,” knowing that it was not likely to be the case.

  Soon she was waiting again, but this time the line seemed to move more quickly. Janie looked at her watch as she shuffled forward in a state of semiconsciousness. Over twenty-four hours … she thought. All I want to do is get horizontal. She peered forward around the people in line, her eyes barely open, and watched wearily as traveler after traveler presented his papers to the examiner, then held out his right wrist. The gloved examiner passed the wrist quickly under a bright blue light to disinfect it, then placed the entire hand into an opening in the front of a small computer; it reminded Janie of an old-fashioned automatic teller machine. She thought nostalgically about the one that used to be in the lobby of her dorm at med school. She’d had many wonderful conversations around that machine. ATM-side chats.

  After every examination of an international traveler this Heathrow Compudoc machine would automatically debit the user’s home country account for the cost of the procedure. Their American accounts would show the debit within a day of their arrival in England, and Janie was grateful that the mercurial credit exchange rate was favorable at the moment. She noticed as she waited that there were several machines but only one examiner. The line was very long; all the travelers who’d been passed through the large number of customs desks in operation were now funneled into this one line. It reminded her of the Sumner Tunnel in Boston. Or a blood clot, with platelets piling up all around an obstruction.

  “They seem to be shorthanded today,” she commented to the woman behind her, who yawned and nodded her agreement.

  Finally it was Janie’s turn. The examiner said, “Passport or card, please.”

  And as she was still uncarded, she handed him her passport. He flipped through the pages and said, “And what is the purpose of your visit, Ms. Crowe?”

  Janie’s shoulders slumped in fatigue; she thought, Haven’t we been here before? But rather than irritate this man with protestations about repetition, Janie simply gave him the information again.

  He entered some of the information from her passport into a computer, and a screen with her health and travel history appeared almost instantly. “And how long will you be with us?”

  Between her hunger, exhaustion, and growing impatience, Janie was about to explode, but forced herself to remain calm. Just play the game, Crowe, she reminded herself. You’re almost at the goal line. She managed to maintain self-control, and once again politely gave the examiner the information he wanted.

  “Thank you, miss,” the man said. “May I please have your wrist?”

  She unbuttoned her shirtsleeve and held out her right wrist. The disinfecting light was surprisingly cool; for some reason Janie had expected it to feel warm. It was almost a pleasant sensation, at least until he took her arm and placed it in the machine’s opening. Then she felt the surgeon’s natural fear of hand injury, and had to breathe very deeply to avoid panicking and pulling away. A flexible metallic clamp closed in on her wrist, adjusting itself automatically to fit her specific size and shape. Once she was secured, the examiner pressed a few buttons.

  “All set, now,” he said, and Janie tensed up as she felt the vibration of the current passing through her flesh. It was over in a second, and the man said, “Should be just a moment for the readout.”

  She began to relax again. The machine still had her wrist, but it was no longer being subjected to the tests and readings of a few moments ago.

  A piece of paper emerged silently from a slot at the base of the machine’s front panel. The examiner tore it off and scanned it quickly. He smiled and said, “Healthy as a horse. All your proper immunizations, no infectious diseases.” Then he grinned wickedly and said, “And you’re not pregnant.”

  She glared back at him as the clamp on her wrist automatically loosened. Asshole, she thought. You know perfectly goddamned well I’ve been sterilized. It’s right there on that screen.

  “Next,” he said, and the woman behind her moved forward for her turn.

  As she rebuttoned her shirtsleeve, Janie watched the man do h
is little shtick with the woman, and as he pronounced her immunized, noninfectious, and un-pregnant, Janie saw the “MD” after his name on his ID badge. Please God, she prayed silently, don’t ever let it come to this. I’ll die before I let them do that to me. As he was finishing up with the woman, Janie remembered to ask him about aspirin as the previous examiner had suggested.

  He laughed sarcastically and said, “Well, the pharmaceutical manufacturers have to make their money somewhere, now, don’t they? They can’t make it on antibiotics anymore, so they convinced the powers that those over-the-counter painkillers aren’t as safe as they were once touted to be. Got a whole new bunch of regulations put in place. And of course, they’re all more expensive now, since the manufacturers have to recoup the cost of dealing with the regulators. That’s bureaucracy for you. You’ll have to get a prescription if you need aspirin.”

  He stamped the woman’s entry papers and handed them back. “You’re all set here,” he said. “Follow the yellow stripe to exit.”

  Her group of passengers moved away from the Compudoc area and each of them spent a few moments reorganizing his or her separate belongings. Suddenly loud angry voices came from the area they’d just cleared, and everyone looked back to see a young man struggling with the machine, trying to get his wrist free. The examiner advised the people in line to move away from that Compudoc and led them to one of the empty ones Janie had noticed earlier. When the area was safely cleared, the examiner spoke into a walkie-talkie and stepped back himself. Soon four walls slid up through the floor of the examination area, enclosing the Compudoc and its protesting captive, who would remain there until Biocops came to take him away for “more detailed examination.” The doctor ignored the young man’s pleas, said, “Next!” and a nervous-looking woman stepped forward to the adjacent machine.

  Janie looked at the woman next to her and grinned with great satisfaction. “Maybe he was pregnant,” she said, and went outside to look for the person who would be awaiting her arrival.

  One

  Cervere, Aragon, 1348

  Alejandro Canches wiped the beads of sweat off his brow with a muddy arm, leaving a dark smear of dirt across his forehead. The iron shovel standing upright in the pile of dirt beside him was a superb tool, one a poorer man could not have afforded, but it was much too heavy for use on such a sultry night in Aragon. He rested one arm on the shovel’s handle and then leaned over it, resting for a moment, wishing with all his heart that the work before him could have waited for cooler weather. But alas, he thought, it cannot.

  As his apprentice looked down from the edge of the hole, nervously vigilant against unwanted discoverers, the physician Canches took up the shovel and began once again to thrust it rhythmically through the soil. The hole deepened, and the pile grew higher, until finally, the tip of the shovel struck something solid, sending a jarring reverberation up through his aching shoulders into his bent spine. He quickly tossed the shovel aside and called to the boy to jump into the pit with him. Using only their hands, they shoved the dirt away frantically, hoping that they’d finally reached the wooden box, the ultimate goal in their clandestine effort.

  Suddenly the apprentice gave a loud yelp and clutched one hand with the other. Alejandro stopped clawing and took the boy’s hand in his own; he could feel a large splinter in the palm, but he could not see it through the steamy darkness.

  He hissed at him to keep his voice down. “If we are discovered at this task, neither of us will have any need of hands! Forget your pain for now, and get back to work! I’ll tend to it when we’re back in the surgery.”

  Alejandro could not see the look of fury on the injured boy’s face. Steeling himself against the throbbing agony of the wound, the boy returned to the work, reluctantly pawing at the clods of dirt, and fuming with resentment at his master’s insistence that he continue without regard to his considerable discomfort.

  “Here!” said the physician with great urgency. He was separated from his prize by only a few inches of dirt. “Help me clear this away!”

  Together they exposed a small section of the box’s surface, where the top met one side. Alejandro probed with his fingers along the edge until he located a crack; smiling triumphantly into the darkness, he picked up the shovel and forced it into the narrow space, hoping that the nails would slip free; to his great disappointment, the wood had not yet rotted enough to loosen its grip on the iron spikes. Soon, he knew, they would be rusted and it would be an easy task. Unfortunately, he did not have the luxury of waiting for nature to do its work.

  Together they gave a mighty push downward on the handle of the shovel, and the top came loose with a loud crack. They grabbed the box top and heaved upward with all their strength while balancing tenuously on the exposed edge of the box, heaving and straining as they did. Alejandro’s shoulders and arms were nearly useless with fatigue, but he would not stop now, with success so near and time passing too swiftly.

  With one final mighty effort they yanked the top free and set it up on the firm ground beside the opened grave. Perched on the sides of the box, with dirt sliding down around his feet, Alejandro leaned over as far as he could and grabbed the body under the shoulders, inching it upward while the boy slipped a long strip of coarsely woven cloth underneath its back and then out on the other side. They did the same under the knees, then climbed back to the edge of the hole. Alejandro grabbed the ends of one cloth and the boy grabbed the other; they pulled upward, grunting and swearing, until the body finally rose. Once it cleared the top of the pit, they slid it sideways and laid it down on undisturbed ground.

  Panting from exertion, Alejandro lay back for a moment to catch his breath. When he could speak again, he patted the dirty corpse with something not unlike affection and said, “So, Señor Alderón, my departed friend, we meet again. I have looked forward to this meeting.” He leaned forward so his face was near the corpse’s head and whispered, “And before I put you back in the earth, I swear to you on the bones of my own ancestors that I will know what killed you.”

  He had known this man and had treated him, with a lack of success that he regretted bitterly, for his final torturous malady. Carlos Alderón had been a blacksmith in Alejandro’s hometown of Cervere in the Spanish province of Aragon, a good man who had forged the very shovel with which his coffin was reopened; he had in all likelihood also forged the hammer and nails with which it had been sealed shut.

  Alejandro recalled the once huge man, who before his illness had been strong and healthy, a blessing that the physician believed to be God’s reward for a decent life of honest labor. Though they’d had only rare contact with each other prior to Carlos’ illness, Alejandro had admired from afar the way Carlos had lovingly guided his hardworking peasant family to a position of comfort and prosperity in Cervere, enabling them to rise far above their humble beginnings. There had been a good marriage for the daughter, and plenty of work at the forge for the sons; the wife had grown respectably plump and had taken on the choleric temperament appropriate to her elevated social position.

  So when the devoted patriarch first began to cough up bits of blood, he was not overly concerned for himself. After all, he had once told Alejandro, God had been good to him, and he had no reason to think his good fortune would not hold. But his coughing had not diminished after the usual fortnight of affliction, and the spittle grew more bloody each day. His wife treated him with herbal potions and eucalyptus teas with only temporary success. Reluctantly, Carlos went to see the local barber, who after a brief examination of the spittle wisely told Carlos that his problem was beyond his limited experience.

  Still panting beside the shrunken corpse, Alejandro remembered the day when the big man had appeared at his door, cap in hand, seeking treatment for his frightening symptoms. Carlos had been visibly nervous, not knowing the proper behavior for such a situation. It was forbidden for Jewish physicians to give medical treatment to any Christian, and though the Jews were not treated especially well in the town of Cervere, the
y were tolerated without undue malice. Alejandro’s wealthy and successful family was well regarded within the Jewish community, which had resulted in advantageous marriages for his younger sisters (although he himself had managed to slip out of the matchmaker’s grasp), and he was hesitant to jeopardize their position by engaging in a forbidden association.

  So Alejandro was understandably wary of this new patient’s presence when he showed up at the door. He had never treated or even touched a Christian, except in medical school in Montpellier, and even then he had never touched a decent Christian, only convicts and whores, who had no choice but to stand still. It would mean terrible trouble for his family if the local clergy got wind of it. Notwithstanding all of this, and highly competent physician though he was, he was far too compassionate and youthfully ignorant of the consequences of his behavior; he lacked the hard wisdom that would have made him turn Carlos Alderón away. He foolishly welcomed him, and resolved to give the big man his best effort.

  He tried every known treatment for lung maladies, including bleeding, purging, enemas, and exposing the patient to moist vapors, but nothing worked. He had rolled a parchment and placed one end of the tube on the man’s chest as he had been taught to do, then listened at the other end. What he heard was terribly puzzling to him, for one of Alderón’s lungs sounded clear, while the air wheezed and whined in and out of the other one. Alejandro began to suspect that one of the lungs held something that the other did not, but could not confirm his suspicion except by looking into the man’s chest. If only I could see inside him, he had thought at the time, in terrible frustration. He watched helplessly as Carlos’ body grew frail and his spirit weakened. The former giant finally died looking like a shrunken leather sack full of bent and broken twigs.

  As he and his apprentice now lifted the body onto their cart, it still seemed heavy, and Alejandro wondered if they would have succeeded had the man died of some injury that had not withered his flesh. They tossed fresh hay over the body and arranged the shovel and a few other tools around the pile. Then they pulled their rough hoods up so their faces were partially hidden, hoping to look like farmers passing through town to an early market.