The Plague

by Kevin Chong

  “Are you not feeling well?”

  The sound of coughing filled Rieux’s ear. “Mrs Rieux looked very good today,” Mr Santos said once he’d cleared his throat. “Is she going on a vacation?”

  “She’s in Mexico until the New Year.”

  “An extended holiday. How nice! It’s too bad doctors have such busy schedules.”

  “Indeed.”

  “As you can tell, I’m feeling better as I speak. I won’t take too much of your time. Enjoy your evening.”

  As Rieux puzzled over this phone call, Mrs Rieux prepared macaroni in broth with shredded ham and peas—a Chinese diner specialty. Her preference would have been to make a proper Cantonese meal, but first she would have to shop. She asked her son for bus directions to the nearest Chinese grocer. He worried that she’d have too much to carry and said they could go together.

  She threw a hand against her forehead. “I forgot that I packed sausage in my luggage,” she told him in Cantonese.

  “We have that here,” he answered in English. “You’ll see when we get to the store. We can pick up some items—clothes, toiletries—tomorrow morning. It won’t be long before your luggage is retrieved.”

  “You’re already too busy. I’m here to help you.”

  “It’s no trouble,” he lied.

  This was the extent of their conversation. As it had been in his youth, the meal was so devoid of chatter that every slurp and clink of spoons against bowls seemed to form its own language. At least in his youth his mother could ask him and his sister about schoolwork. This was the first time she’d seen him in a year and she would be here at least until January. Unless he insisted, she would not go sightseeing—she had lived here for twenty-five years, anyhow—or visit with her remaining friends. She would watch her Chinese TV shows through an elaborate black box whose installation Rieux had arranged last week. They would eat together, silently, and this would be the extent of their time together.

  A firecracker went off nearby, causing Mrs Rieux to shudder. “Should we call the police?”

  “It’s Halloween,” Rieux told her.

  “Oh … I’d forgotten about these North American customs,” she said, recovering her composure.

  Rieux had begun to explain the peculiarity of firecrackers at Halloween when the land line rang again. This time it was Mr Santos’s wife. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said. “My husband is unwell, but he refuses to visit the hospital.”

  It took Rieux a moment to understand what had happened: Mr and Mrs Santos had argued about calling Rieux, and Mr Santos had called him preemptively, thinking Rieux had already spoken to his wife. Mrs Santos described symptoms that resembled the flu. Dr Rieux said he would be down immediately. Normally he would have advised Mrs Santos to take her husband to the hospital, but he knew how stubborn the man could be.

  “I have to speak to the superintendent,” Rieux told his mother. While her back was turned, he retrieved the bicycle saddlebags where he kept some medical equipment.

  The Santos’s suite was similar to Rieux’s, though their patio view offered more of the commuter traffic of Great Northern Way than the mountains. Mrs Santos led Rieux to the living room. Mr Santos was sitting on a worn brown leather couch, a wool blanket pulled up to his neck, his legs extended on a footrest. A water bottle sat on the armrest. The living room was dimly lit except for a floor lamp at the far end of the couch.

  Mr Santos was visibly clammy. When he first saw Rieux, something like fear passed his face, which he covered over with a defiant, impatient look. The doctor realized that he’d always seen Mr Santos smiling, standing completely erect. The superintendent’s features had never been more expressive, and he felt the superintendent’s shame reflected back onto him.

  “What did I already tell you, Dr Rieux?” he asked him.

  “Mrs Santos asked me to take a look,” Rieux told him. “I promise you, if this is not serious, we will leave you alone.”

  “There’s swelling, Doctor,” Mrs Santos said.

  Mr Santos nodded and looked away as Rieux moved the floor lamp closer and retrieved a pair of latex gloves, a stethoscope, and a flashlight from his bag. Mr Santos flung his head back like a silent-film damsel-in-distress as Rieux pulled off the wool blanket.

  Mr Santos was outfitted in a white undershirt and pyjama bottoms. The swelling on his lymph nodes startled Rieux. They looked like large blisters, each one the size of a robin’s egg. Rieux could only recall seeing such swelling in photos.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this,” Rieux told the superintendent. “I can’t say for sure what it is. But you need to go to the hospital.”

  Mrs Santos was already putting on her coat. Rieux helped them into their Toyota Camry in the garage. When he saw another dead rat, he again removed latex gloves from his bag, slipped them on, and placed the rodent into the trash can. He stood impatiently in the elevator on his way back to his apartment. After thoroughly washing his hands and throwing his clothes in the wash, he joined his mother in front of the television. Thankfully, no explanations were required by Mrs Rieux.

  The doctor slept poorly that night. In the morning, he took the elevator downstairs and knocked on the Santos’s door. He was about to return to the elevator when the door opened. Mrs Santos had gotten back from the hospital an hour ago. Mr Santos was still under observation and she would visit later this morning, she told him. Without explanation, Rieux asked for Mr Santos’s keys. She pointed to a loop of keys by the door and handed them over. Rieux found his way to the supply closet where Mr Santos kept his cleaning equipment. Rieux took the broom and dustpan and went down to the garage where he was able to collect four dead rats. There were also two dead squirrels and a dead raccoon—the urban wildlife Vancouverites were accustomed to seeing. He wrapped them up in two garbage bags, threw them in the trunk of his wife’s Subaru Forester (they owned the car together but he did not generally like to drive), and delivered them to the incinerator in the suburbs.

  The next morning, before work, he found six rats, including one lying belly up, feet pawing listlessly, that he killed; then twelve rats (and squirrels) the day after; and more in the days following that. News reports confirmed that Rieux’s experience was shared in other parts of the city. Between the blasts and whistles of fireworks, Rieux could hear the moans of these pests as they died in the alleyway. And then, five or six days after Mr Santos discovered the first rat, after Rieux had filled three garbage bags with lifeless rodents, the doctor searched the garage for more corpses and didn’t find a single one. The immediate relief he felt was quickly chased away by an uneasy feeling.

  By the end of the next week, the city’s hospitals saw about a hundred cases similar to Mr Santos’s. For the first few days, the results were kept under cover to stave off hysteria as treatments were applied. The name of the disease had ugly historical connotations, and the antibiotics used to treat modern cases were highly effective. It was only after the first death that a press conference was called to announce the outbreak. Even then, the Minister of Health appeared to talk down the situation.

  Mr Santos was not the first one to die; his death was part of a wave that occurred twenty-four hours after the first fatality. Because that initial death struck in one of the areas surrounding the Annex, many people ascribed the fatality to a resurgence in the drug problems that had previously afflicted the city. Roadblocks were set up within a two-block radius of the first casualty. Calls were made to protect taxpayers. Rieux learned of Mr Santos’s death when a notice was posted in November by the strata management company. The company apologized for a delay in repairs and any decline in maintenance as a replacement was sought.

  Part Two

  6.

  Now comes an intermediate period in our story, which covers the week when the quarantine was imposed. Each section of this narrative spans a different stage in the city, each signalling a refraction in the collective mood. As our story continues, the sections will extend to longer intervals when the days began
to blur together. Our recollections are most imprecise in these later periods.

  The first deaths set off, along with reports of the “inconclusive” nature of the illness, what could only be a rehearsal of panic. It was the reaction of people who had been drilled to deal with emergencies, who had watched them on their screens and been on airplanes with flight attendants wearing inflatable rings around their necks. Children were pulled from schools where they might become infected and taken instead to playgrounds and ice rinks. Some adults took a few days off from work, content to ride out the “flu.” Very few of them left town. It was imperative for anxiety to be cloaked as an adventure. A local repertory cinema scheduled an impromptu selection of apocalyptic films, which ranged from Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, from camp to comedy. The audience included Romeo Parsons, who made a point of looking confident and appearing in public every night that week. No one would characterize this period as “fun,” but there was a heightened feeling in every Vancouverite’s actions. A trip to the store to buy milk felt eventful. People said goodbye with tongue-in-cheek final gestures: “This may be the last time we see each other.” And then they smooched like movie stars.

  The Coastal Health Authority released information about hand-washing and warnings to stay away from rodents and urban wildlife, but only a few people knew of someone affected by the illness. The calamity became snagged in their consciousness as a catastrophe they were fortunate to avoid. The disease, with its absurd-sounding name, remained outside their spheres of concern. Until the quarantine, this threat only made people more outgoing. The shopping malls saw more business than usual. The bars were filled with people who spoke about how they wished they could still smoke inside. Singles eyed each other with deeper lust, knowing that yet another avenue existed for causing one another harm. On their profile photos they posted pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks. Others, hoping to look medieval, wore black cowls, but resembled nerdy sorcerers.

  It’s something that’s happening downtown Vancouverites had said during a recent string of drug deaths that already felt like a bygone era. They did it to themselves. Okay, they didn’t start from the best places, but … Or when homicides reached new highs in the city, and people murdered each other in drive-by shootings at noodle houses, they said, It’s just gang members defending their turf. They’re so professional that hardly anyone innocent ever gets killed. Don’t deal drugs and you’re safe. And now, they ascribed blame to those who fell ill and drew walls around the casualties in order to protect their sense of safety.

  During her first week in Vancouver, Megan Tso still considered herself a short-term visitor. Her second engagement, the mysterious but lucrative consulting contract mentioned in the first section of this chronicle, had been delayed. An intermediary for the wealthy man who’d engaged her services apologized for the need to reschedule. In addition to compensating her for her extra days, this executive assistant offered to upgrade her accommodations. With this offer, Tso moved into a room with a kitchenette.

  Her extended stopover in Vancouver during a public health crisis was an opportunity for reflection. This break happened for a reason, she told herself. She would shake off her jet lag here. She would breathe clean air and enjoy the relatively underpopulated Canadian city.

  In the week that ensued, she did the following: She returned the suitcase to a nice old woman; her son accepted the bag, a man with the face and stature of an Egyptian pharaoh who closed the door before she could offer the amusing explanation and apology that she’d planned in the taxi. (The airline delivered her luggage the same day.) She walked the entire length of the Seawall twice. More and more people were wearing face masks in public. She visited the library and read Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War for hour-long stretches before returning it to its spot on the shelf. She couldn’t help but notice how many people were coughing in the library, coughing into their hands and then typing their queries at the library internet terminals. Afterward, she went to the drug store and bought hand sanitizer. She checked in on Janice Grossman.

  Grossman invited her over for a cup of tea. What Tso really wanted to know was the condition of Farhad Khan. Grossman had discovered him prone on the floor of his kitchenette next to an upturned chair. Tso had inched behind her into Khan’s apartment, which smelled like sour laundry and empty liquor bottles. Khan lay slumped on the floor, cheek-and-jowl flush against the same checkerboard tiles she’d seen in Grossman’s kitchen. Around Khan’s neck was a tie knotted around a light fixture that had dislodged from the ceiling. Tso had called 9-1-1, anxious because she would have to pay roaming fees. Khan sat up. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, but seemed to have stepped out of a film noir. He had dark, slightly protuberant eyes, a stubbly muzzle, and wavy hair, slicked and shiny. There was a gash on his head from the fall, and he was mumbling to himself in Persian. Grossman crouched beside him, her concern alternating between her tenant and the hole in the ceiling that she had to fix. When Tso left, around the same time the police and ambulance arrived, Grossman’s father stood outside his door, muttering under his breath. Occasionally, he shrugged his shoulders as though he were commiserating with himself.

  “Farhad’s in my spare room right now, napping,” Grossman now told Tso. “He has no family, you see, and someone needed to be responsible for him. Otherwise he’d rot in the hospital. My father thinks I’m a sucker.”

  “I can see his point.”

  “I know how it seems—it’s like Janet all over again. But it’s easy to judge Farhad. We come from stable countries. He’s from Iran, you might recall. Who knows how he’s suffered?” Grossman admitted that she had not asked Khan about his background or suffering. In their period of temporary cohabitation, Khan had not volunteered much about his life except for an interest in dance remixes of Adele songs. In the two days that he had stayed with Grossman, he spent most of his waking hours on the phone. Earlier that morning, he’d left the building for the first time.

  They were on their second pot of Lemon Zinger when Khan returned. They could hear him singing, in Persian—syllables parked against a silent drum machine beat—as he bounded up the stairs. Tso had only seen Khan once, spread out on his kitchen floor, and didn’t notice how tall he was. Once he removed his jacket, Khan entered Grossman’s kitchen. He presented his landlady with a bouquet of flowers purchased from a corner store. Although he was still gaunt and pale, he was clean-shaven, and the circles under his eyes had begun to fade. He introduced himself to Tso as though they hadn’t met.

  Khan said that he’d spent the day visiting friends about a business opportunity. “It was good to go outside,” he told them. “It wasn’t too cold.”

  “You’re not worried about getting sick?” Tso asked.

  “Sister,” he addressed her, as he looked in Grossman’s refrigerator for a bottle of beer, “I have been sick my whole life. Now I’m better. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “You might be the happiest person in Vancouver,” Grossman suggested. She admired the flowers in their coloured cellophane.

  Khan chuckled mirthlessly. He stood by the refrigerator wearing only a white T-shirt and jeans. His arms were lean and wiry. His phone began to buzz and he took the call in his own room.

  Grossman invited Tso to ride on her city tour the next day. She initially declined, preferring instead to read at the library, but when she discovered Thucydides missing from his regular place, she changed her mind and headed toward the tour’s starting point at Canada Place. Grossman pulled up, driving a converted school bus and wearing a microphone around her neck.

  There were about a dozen people waiting with Tso. A couple of men wore chambray shirts and khaki shorts and seemed obviously American. There were Chinese tourists and German visitors too. Grossman took their fares. Most of them spread out on the bus.

  “Good afternoon, brave visitors to Vancouver,” Grossman told the sparsely filled bus as it left the curb. Her elocution became b
righter, gathering intensity mid-sentence, her words delivered as though she recited them from sheet music. “Thank you for making sure I still have gainful employment. It’s been a little quiet the past week.” She stopped at a light and peered back. “Was it because you couldn’t get a refund? Or are any of you in town for the epidemic?”

  There was an anxious pause. The European and Chinese tourists reacted with befuddlement. “We’re here for an Alaska cruise,” one of the ever-smiling silver-haired Americans said. She liked him better than the others. “We’re more afraid of guns than the flu.” Probably from California.

  “Welcome to my hometown, the only city I’ve lived in, and I can tell you it’s changed a lot. A mystique has developed around the city—one that might be visible to locals who like to think we live in the best or worst city in the world. Has anyone heard any of these myths?” She did not wait for a reply. “Let me dispel some of them. The first is that everyone here is rich. It’s true that anyone who owns land here, for instance, is a millionaire on paper. And there are truly rich people, of course. But we also have millionaires who line up at the food bank. We have heiresses to million-dollar fortunes driving, for example, tour buses. The second myth is that Vancouverites are notoriously unfriendly. It’s not true, but the city is clique-y. I think of it as a video game where you need to level up by acquiring high-user ratings. When it comes to social equity, inequality is high.”

  Her rambling digressions exhausted the tourists, whose attention returned to their copies of Lonely Planet. “Please note the stops on the itinerary. We will visit every one of those at the appointed times, but I may park a while at a couple of other personal favourites.”

  They stopped for thirty minutes at that shopping street, the Vancouver version of Rodeo Drive. New tourists boarded there, including a young woman who sat next to Tso at the front of the bus and wouldn’t stop coughing into her phone, in which she was texting in Japanese. The bus started down another busy street toward the city’s famous park.