The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

  I am to be chief attendant and my duties are to serve them both as trusted confidant. More staff will shortly come; the finding and the hiring is to be the son’s task; indeed he has commenced already and in a matter of weeks he promises completion of “our new family in this new chapter of our lives.” More doctors, certainly, will come, though once again the son makes the same promise as his father: I am to become a doctor trained “just like me,” he says with his own smile of pride.

  More patients come, lining up outdoors almost before we settle. Day after day and night after night come more; indeed, many are the nights when knockings are heard, and soft moans of “Let me in, oh God, please let me in!” Within three months our first one hundred are increased twofold. Where are we to put two hundred people, young and old and male and female, able and lame and near to death? This house with many rooms was once a grand hotel when Sagg was sought for fun, when healthy sailors stopped here only for their ships to unload all their oil from whales. But fifty, even a hundred rooms cannot our multitudes bear, so perforce additional rooms are quietly found and rented around town. Before long it is a secret little held that we are Sagg’s biggest tenant, and this is not a part of that town’s history it wishes known. Many have found room and board for themselves and come only daily to the clinic but those who require shelter continue to mount up. By the first year’s end our patient load of two hundred has increased to five hundred, Dr. Punic Sr. claims. I am not certain I believe him, although it does seem as if every sick sailor and whore from the entire world has found our door and clamors for help.

  In addition, from whales and their oil Sagg is overwhelmed with loose money and sailors constantly drunk, with unspent energies waiting to be discharged. The town never sleeps. The streets of this small village around the bay teem with fevered activity from dawn till dawn. The tiny rooms in the tiny shacks and the small rooms in the small cottages and the large rooms in the grand villas on Main Street are busy places indeed. We see many of them go into one house and then weeks later come into ours.

  But there are simply too many here. Mumblings turn into churnings of loud complaint. Often patients come in with bruises they say are struck upon them by their fellows, shoving for a better place in line or a bed. “Is there no God in Sagg?” is more than once the plaint.

  When Dr. Punic Sr. chooses the certain ones he wants, he bathes them with Special oils and tinctures that color them pink as babies from a bath. I often see them walk out most healthy, though a few of them come back most awful shriveled. The ones he chooses to bathe are always young and strong, “and better for my cure,” he says. I am forbidden to help him and I am especially forbidden near the Special bathing liquids. How will I ever learn, then, I wonder, though I fear to ask him. What he does he does behind locked doors, with only his son providing the aid he once said he needed me for.

  Dr. Punic Jr. asks that I copy some of his father’s notes for him. In leaning over my shoulder as I write, he bends close. I hear his breathing almost stop in this scant space between us. He smells of I know not what—of distant lands, of cloves and oranges and perfumes that are not feminine, but that I never knew of for men. His hair is hard and shiny, waxed down so that it never is in a mess like mine. When I raise my pen to show him how I write, he takes it, and my hand with it. He smiles at me and I smile back. To other men this feeling might seem goodly, and Christian, as of a brotherhood in Christ. To me it is not from God but from some strange unfed hunger in my gut. I cannot say it is good or bad. Just strange. And when he goes away, my new friend, and lets my hand fall back to earth, no appetite is slaked. I only feel sad, and as before, unworthy. I hardly understand what I have written down.

  Help from several nurses and a few male attendants, newly arrived, is strangely circumscribed. They, too, are not allowed inside that inner room. They are wanted only before and after the treatments. But we are busy enough, from ushering in each day’s new choices and trying to maintain order.

  Those picked to join our staff are a motley lot. The women are bleak and dour and barely speak. I think a few of them are unable to talk, that they possess no vocal cords or are otherwise impaired. I have no proof of this beyond their constant silence, but I never hear so much as a gurgle come from some of their throats, even when words are needed or expected. In charge of all the staff is a stern, unsmiling, tall, and obviously physically strong woman, Mrs. Horvath. I do not exist for her. Keys always dangle from a locked belt around her waist; evidently she has been entrusted with something I have not.

  There soon is a staff of several dozen. The available supply appears to be plentiful enough. If one departs a-sudden after breakfast, there is another in place by midday meal. From bits of talk I do pick up ’tis clear that staff is found most often in distressing places, prisons and hospitals for the mad and such. The male attendants are big enough and strong enough to control the troublesome and to carry out the writhing or the dead. No one wants to be friends with anyone else. I do not know where they take the dead.

  Yes, there are often dead to be removed. It is a token of the regularity of this that it almost slipped my mind. I hardly have time to learn a name or face. I am told it is to be expected. “The poxed die with predictable frequency,” the elder Punic tells us. “It is the wishes of the Lord Our God Who takes His children home to rest.” The aspect of those who die is such that death indeed seems best. The vision of these deaths builds within me its own dismissal. After a while it is not noticed much. “That is the way good doctors operate,” Dr. Punic Sr. tells me, congratulating me on my “fine composure. It is best you do not become too close to those we care for.”

  From behind the doors where the Punics take the younger poxed, I often hear noises such as groanings, screams, occasionally cries that sound like moans of pleasure, which I take to be a sign of hope. How strange a word to enter here. Dr. Punic Jr., whom I call at his urging Maurice, tells me, “Those sounds you hear and will come to hear more often are sounds of improvement, of progress, of well-being come upon our charges.” One day he says, “They are sounds of ecstasy.” He pronounces the word in a drawn-out fashion, mouthing its syllables as if savoring its shadows. It is plain he likes the word. He smiles when he says it and so I smile too, though I cannot say I understand what meaning this word has beyond his liking of it. In leaving Ontuit my studies at Boston Latin were cut short. Once again he gives me that smile of brotherhood. “One day you will know,” he says, as if comprehending my unvoiced ignorance of its meaning.

  One night when we are drinking in a local tavern, Dr. Punic Sr. tells me he will be leaving soon. “It is time now to trust you and to trust your trust in me.” Then he says, “My son is not so strong as I wish him to be. He will need your help. I wish I had taught you more. I wish you were my son.” To hear such words from him likely has more to do with drink than with the truth. I have heard his disappointments before and try not to put much stock in them.

  * * *

  It is now almost two years into my stay in Sagg. During this time there have been established, so I am told, ten more Hooker Homes up and down Long Island, one even in New York City, as well as the main Sailors’ Institute on a place called Staten Island convenient to the ships. Ten Hooker Homes! I wonder if each one has so many hundred poxed? I wonder if each one has more patients than they can care for. I wonder if each one has rented rooms all over town to house the overflow. I wonder. I wonder. Five or ten thousand poxed! What is transpiring? What have Uncle Hogarth’s riches bought?

  I have little more knowledge than when I left Ontuit, for which wretched place I begin to pine. No medical skills have been imparted to me. I sometimes think my food and drink are drugged to make me as docile as the patients. That is the word of what is done to them. No, I do not want to go back to Massachusetts! It is easier to deal with people than only with their shit. I can put a name to many now, and often they smile and talk with me though I am little more than a servant.

  When they talk it is most always of some l
ong-ago lost love. A man or woman who has left them. A person made out to be too perfect for belief. Worth is the word I hear most often. “She was worth it.” “He was worth it.” “It was worth it.”

  Sometimes when I am special blue, I go down to the bay, beyond the harbor, up and around the bend, and watch the gentle waves come rolling up the sand. No one ever comes to see this lovely view. I pretend to build my own house upon this point. I pretend the view is mine and ever will be mine.

  I have money to spend and more sums hidden away. I hold in my name many shares of stock in Massachusetts Waste. I court a local girl or two but none will have me for fear of where I work. This game of trying with them amuses me. But my father who disappeared never loved me, so why should they? Never did I see love within a Hooker household. Oh, I heard words about love spoken all the time, but never did I sense any passion such as brought all these sailors to Sagg. It is as if people live in different worlds.

  ’Tis passing strange but I no longer fear Contagion. Despite all my touching of the sick, I do not have It. Several servants and nurses and guards do die. We are told it was not from It, but I will wager it was.

  That is what all call it now. It.

  Dr. Punic Sr. always sternly instructed all, “You will not catch this pox unless you couple your body in some way with theirs! Unless you kiss them, and I know you will not. Unless you fuck them and I know you will not. Will you?”

  One day, just as he warned, Dr. Maurice Punic, Sr., is gone. His son tells me his father has departed for another Hooker Home, started by another son never earlier mentioned. He tells me that from this moment forth he himself is a doctor. “I am Dr. Punic now. My father’s wisdom now resides in me. He gave me all he knew in all his books and all his notes. I ask for your blessings and your aid.” At first this angers me. Was he not a doctor before? If a doctorship passes from man to man so easily, why am I not a doctor too? Then he takes my hand, and holds it hard, and begs me with his eyes, saying, “I cannot run this place alone.” I am a fool for pleas and supplications. I nod my head and squeeze his hand in return. His nice smell comes back to my nose. His father did not smell nice. Only now as I write this do I dare allow myself to consider that they were not father and son at all.

  From the day of his departure, “father” is never mentioned by “son.” Within a few more months we have another hundred or so. How Dr. Maurice Punic, Sr., had managed is a secret not left with us. Whatever goes on behind closed doors, there are fewer and fewer called to enter. Dissatisfied mumblings increase in volume. At last the town sends official letters of complaint that we are a disturbance. Outside our doors churchwomen march back and forth, holding signs demanding that we leave. It becomes an embarrassment to walk out into the streets and be accosted by a chorus of hissing cats. They are afraid of us and if we come too close they scurry back in terror, their looks of hate and fear so mixed they are as one. That others think me toxic is a feeling now too often upon me. My sleep is troubled. I dream most often of fires and conflagrations, huge gusts of orange and red and yellow and black, and then all black. My dreams burn me up and wake me in a sweat. Some mornings I try to confide my fears to Maurice, but he is less friendly to me now. “Call me Dr. Punic,” he says. I even try to talk to Mrs. Horvath, who seems unchanged by anything in her unsmiling sternness. She never talked to me before, and she is not starting to talk to me now. How she manages to keep her rough brutes as assistants, I have no idea.

  One night, when everyone has been put to bed, Dr. Punic tells me we are moving. The Sailors’ Institute and the government of our country are giving us a bigger hospital for our very own. It is more remote but it is very big indeed, he says, with rooms enough for many thousands. He has arranged a fleet of boats to take us there. Comes the night of our departure, we make our way, small group by small group, from every street in all of Sagg it seems, into rowboats out to the big-masted boats that are berthed in a cove removed from the harbor’s edge. It is a lovely night, with enough breeze to get us off. The harbor itself is more crowded than I remember it ever to be. It seems as if of late vessels from every nation in the world assemble here to unload their cargo, as if all the whales of every ocean have been siphoned of their valued oil at this one same moment and brought to Sagg. Great prosperity has returned here. No wonder they want us to leave. They jeer at us as we row to our ships. They cry out awful things about us, hateful Godless things, taunts and filth and curses. Not one cries out Godspeed, God bless. I see so much hate in so many eyes that I believe I am leaving hell.

  I do not know why but I know it is I who did it and did it purposely. I know I have not been happy here, and now it seems so clear that I have not been happy anywhere or anytime on earth. It is that clear to me, this knowledge that I will never be happy anywhere or anytime on earth. In earlier years I was told that the Devil was inside me. I want Sagg to burn. I want it to burn to ashes. I had heard of earlier burnings of this place and how quickly they repaired it. Well, they will have to do it again. I light a match as we pass the last of the many ships of oil. They combust one by one as we sail away. The harbor is soon no more, and much of the town. High on the hill I can see our grand hotel is particularly blazing bright, as if an omen to me of good riddance and farewell.

  So much destroyed, so fast described. This deed is to be as naught compared to what does lie ahead.

  We journey by our fleet of boats to an island far off in the sound, between Long Island and the Connecticut coast. A most lonely place it is, this island, with little of interest to lure outsiders. Its few inhabitants have lived here from birth and are stunted in mind and body from intermarriage and untended diseases. They meander around like misshapen dwarves, looking at us through crazed eyes and mumbling grunts and groans. When they see us they run and disappear. I am never to see them again.

  The island is named Fruit Island, both because it is owned by a Dr. Frucht and because it is not one island but three: Peach Island, Cherry Island, and Plum Island, the latter being the largest, some thirty acres. Each island is connected to the others by small wooden bridges or often just by proximity, as they are so close that all that is required is a jump from here to there. I do not know who Dr. Frucht is or was. Dr. Punic thinks he was a war hero of some sort.

  The doctor leads us from the boats in a large group, across the flat land of Cherry Island, across a small stream and a grassy plain and up the hill to the large building on the highest point of Plum Island. As we near it, he stops us and welcomes us “to our new and permanent home, where we can deliver unto you the latest in treatment and care so that you may have hope the Good Lord will repair you and heal you and send you back into the world should you wish to return.” There is much happy cheering and clapping, even from the guards, for no one of us has heard our doctor speak in such exciting words of a new future no one ever dares to think about. I am overwhelmed to see us all together in one group for the first time. We cover half the hill. How is one doctor alone to care for all of these? Dr. Punic tells me more medical staff is coming and my new education is finally to begin.

  The building that is waiting, empty, immense in size, was once called the Great Hospital for Foreign Heroes, for we find a sign torn down that says so. I will discover that it was built after the War of Revolution, to imprison British soldiers and deserters, a great number, in a place where they could not be found and where they could be starved to death in tiny cells. There is a new sign and a new name, presumably for us—the Great Hospital for the Wretched and the Destitute. This seems unkind, and hopeless. Dr. Punic disclaims knowledge of its maker. Something else, too, is new, and that is the presence of a number of uniformed guards carrying muskets.

  Then he says that because there are so many of us and because our new home is so large and because we are now under a contract with the United States Government itself, he is unfortunately required by law to have on the premises guards carrying arms to be used only in the event of emergency or danger from the outside world, which is unlikely
, so remote are we. There are noddings of acceptance among the patients; I sense that far from being distressed by the presence of armed guards, as I find myself to be, the patients take comfort from it.

  I realize there are not enough guards and muskets to protect all of us. I realize that this is a fearful place. There is no mainland here. We are in the middle of nowhere.

  I have never seen a building so big. Not even in Boston was there such a place! Whence came so many with the skills to build and hammer and nail and roof an edifice of such great size? No church in America, no cathedral in the lands our families left, could be so huge, so high, so long, and so far away from life. I will learn it was built by the labor of indentured slaves.

  No description can do justice to the horror of its innards. Endless walls of peeling paint and corridors with windowless dank stinking cells poking off them like the rotted teeth Indians string into necklaces to ward off evil spells. Into these tiny cells, with no water or food, are locked our many hundreds and hundreds of poxed, several to a cell. I note for the first time that there seem many more here than the number I thought we left with, and many faces of strangers. Were other shiploads dropped here first? Are these new ones from those other Hooker Homes? I ask a few of the unfamiliar faces where they hail from, but as always among this lot no information concerning former lives comes forth. Everyone is too afraid, perhaps. Or too sick and tired. Or most likely all.

  It is peculiar that locks on the doors are all in working order, as if our government sent men on ahead to attend to this repair alone. Why did they not clean the cells? Or give them mattresses or straw at least to rest on? Or sweep the halls? Or tidy up the kitchen, which looks beyond any use? At night I tour the halls for hours and try to count the rooms. I count some eight hundred doors. None of the rooms are numbered. The halls are a great maze. Have I walked in circles? I wonder. When they are let out, how will the patients find their way back to their rooms? Quickly I find that they are not to be let out. No air. No exercise. No interchange with any but their cell mates. “For their own good,” Maurice tells me. I have decided that I cannot return to calling him Dr. Punic, which makes him frown. “We are trying new ways here.” He calls it “quaranteen.” The idea is to keep them clean from the others lest contagions ruin all. It sounds sensible, and yet I have worked with many poxed and remain in good health.