Plague (40 page)

‘Oh, God!’ she
sobbed. ‘It’s my fault! Oh God, it’s
all my
fault! He
was so good, you don’t even understand!’

‘We
understand,’ said Herbert Gaines, consolingly.

‘You don’t!’
shrieked Esmeralda, off-key and hysterical. ‘He was my lover!’

They locked and
bolted every fire exit up to the ninth floor, and when they were there they
took the added precaution of levering open the elevator doors and wedging them
with a long gilt settee. The elevators had been switched off by now, but they
just wanted to make sure that the furious mob downstairs didn’t get them
working again.

‘Listen to
that,’ said Kenneth Garunisch, leaning over the open elevator shaft.

Dr. Petrie
listened. From the first floor, there was a sound like strange trolls at the
bottom of an echoing drain – screams and hoots and cries.

‘Did you ever
see The Third Man?’ said Garunisch. ‘You remember the scene at the top of the
Ferris Wheel? When they looked down at the people below, like dots, and Harry
Lime says something like – ‘would you feel any pity if one of those dots
stopped moving for ever?’ Well, what would you say if one of those animals down
there stopped screaming? Maybe Gaines was right. When it comes down to it, just
show me one American who gives a fuck about any other American.’

Dr. Petrie
said, ‘I’m a doctor, Mr. Garunisch. I try to give at least half a fuck.’

Kenneth
Garunisch looked at Dr. Petrie narrowly. ‘You think I’m wrong, don’t you?

For the strike, and all that?’

‘Does it
matter?’

Garunisch
looked down into the depths of the elevator shaft. The distorted screams and
groans continued.

‘It matters to
me, Dr. Petrie. I stood up for a principle I believe in. If the whole of
America has to die for
that principle, then I still believe
it’s worth it.’

‘Even if the
principle kills the very people it’s supposed to protect?’

Kenneth
Garunisch turned away. ‘Principles are everything, Dr. Petrie. Without
principles, we cease to be living beings.’

Herbert Gaines
came up. His yellow safari suit was smudged with dust, and his leonine hair was
sticking up like fuse wire.

‘I’m sorry to
interrupt this debating society, but I think we ought to start barricading our
apartments. Maybe we ought to see what food we have available, too, and share
it out.’

Esmeralda, who
was calmer now, almost uncannily calm, was sitting at the opposite end of the
ninth-floor landing smoking a cigarette.

‘We have a
whole freezer full,’ she said.
‘Lamb, beef, hamburger,
chickens, turkeys, vegetables.
I guess we can hold out for months.’

‘So have we,’
nodded Garunisch.
‘How about you, Mr. Gaines?’

Nicholas spoke
for him. ‘Oh, we’re fine, too, aren’t we, Herbert? I think our supplies lean a
little heavily on ready-made goulasch, but I suppose my digestion can just
about stand it. Herbert had one of his cooking jags last month, and goulasch is
the only damned thing he can do.’

Herbert Gaines
turned around angrily: ‘What’s the matter with my sole veronique?
Or my cous-cous?’

Nicholas
sighed. ‘Oh, Herbert, they’re lovely. Can’t you ever take a goddamned joke?’

Dr. Petrie took
Adelaide by the hand. ‘I suggest we all stay in one apartment. You can lock all
your valuables up in your own apartments, but if we all stay in separate
places, we’ve lost any means of communication. Supposing the mob gets up here
and breaks open your door, Mr. Gaines, or yours, Mr. Garunisch, and you’ve got
no way of calling out for help from the rest of us?’

‘I think Dr.
Petrie has a point,’ said Kenneth Garunisch. ‘We can move beds and food into
one condo, and defend it together.’

Esmeralda stood
up. She was white-faced and her eyes were smudges of shadow.

She looked like
Ophelia, drowning in the weeds.

‘If we’re going
to do that’ she said, ‘we’d better use my place. We have a closed-circuit TV on
the door – and apart from that, the settee in the den turns into a double-bed.’

‘Is that agreed
then?’ said Garunisch.

‘What about Mr.
and Mrs. Blaufoot?’ asked Herbert Gaines. ‘Don’t you think we ought to have a
word with them?’

While the rest
of the survivors shifted beds into Esmeralda’s apartment, and carried in food
and belongings, Kenneth Garunisch went up to Mr. and Mrs. Blaufoot’s door and
rang the bell.

There was a
long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Mr.
Bloofer.
Mr. Garunisch from downstairs.
Can you open
the door?’

There was
another long pause. Then Mr. Blaufoot said, ‘Leave us alone. We’re all right.’

Kenneth
Garunisch sighed. ‘Mr. Bloofer,’ he said leaning against the door, ‘you have to
know that a mob of people have broken into the tower. They could be coming
upstairs to make trouble. Apart from that, they’ve probably got plague. Now,
can you open the door?’

He heard the
locks and bolts being drawn back, and the solid mahogany door was opened an
inch. Mr. Blaufoot’s glittering eyes looked out from the darkness.

‘Mr. Bloofer?
Please?’
said
Garunisch.

Mr. Blaufoot
opened the door all the way, and stepped back. Kenneth Garunisch walked into
the thick-carpeted condominium, and was surprised to find that it was in
darkness. Across the room, sitting in a tall carved chair, Mrs. Blaufoot sat in
a black dress, pale and red-eyed.

‘Are you folks
all right?’ said Garunisch. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

The Blaufoots
were silent. Mr. Blaufoot walked over and stood next to his wife.

Kenneth
Garunisch looked at them uneasily. Then he saw the framed photograph on the
small polished Regency table, just in front of Mrs. Blaufoot. He stepped over
and carefully picked it up. She looked very much like Mrs. Blaufoot.

Mrs. Blaufoot
said coldly, ‘Put it down, please.’

Garunisch
frowned, but he laid the photograph back on the table. He said huskily, ‘Is
this your daughter?’

Mr. Blaufoot
nodded. ‘Yes, Mr. Garunisch, it is. We heard about her on Sunday morning,
shortly before the telephone system went dead. A relative of ours had managed
to escape from Florida early in the plague, and he was able to get to St.

Louis. This
relative had seen her.’

‘And is she all
right?’ said Garunisch. Then he looked around at the closely-drawn drapes and
Mrs. Blaufoot’s black dress, and said, ‘Well no, I guess she’s not. I’m sorry.
That was clumsy of me.’

‘She’s dead,
Mr. Garunisch,’ said Mrs. Blaufoot. ‘She died of lack of medical attention,
with bronchial pneumonia. She didn’t even have plague. The medical workers were
out on strike, and my daughter died.’

Mr. Blaufoot
added, as if it made any difference, ‘She was going to be a concert pianist.’

Kenneth Garunisch
coughed. He hardly knew what to say. In the end, he muttered, ‘Listen, I’m
really very sorry.’

Mrs. Blaufoot
stared at the screwed-up handkerchief between her bony hands. ‘Sorry isn’t
really enough, is it?’

Garunisch
shrugged. ‘No, I guess it isn’t. But I am sorry, and there is nothing more I
can say. I acted, when I called that strike, according to my lights.’

Mrs. Blaufoot
looked up. ‘In that case, Mr. Garunisch, I hope that your lights soon go out,
like ours did.’

During the night,
most of the sixty or seventy people who were huddled together in the lobby of
Concorde Tower died of plague. The black floor and the polished mirrors on the
walls reflected their painful, grotesque faces as the bacilli swelled their
joints and clogged their lungs. Their groaning and whimpering echoed like a
terrible chorus of damned souls, but it wasn’t the worst noise. The worst noise
was the rustle and scamper of rats – big gray sewer rats – as they scuttled
over the sleeping and dying bodies, and gnawed at dead and living flesh alike.
Some of the rats sniffed at the locked fire door, which even the angriest
rioters hadn’t been able to break down, and some of them poured into the open
elevator doors and dropped, with the soft thud of furry bodies down to the
basement.

They scented
warmth and they scented food and they began to climb, twisting their way up the
elevator cables. The empty shaft echoed with their twittering and squeaking,
and the scratching of their claws on the steel wires. Eventually, they reached
the ninth floor, where the doors were wedged open by the gilt settee, and they
ran out of the elevator shaft and on to the landing. The upper fire doors had
been left open, and they wriggled and pattered up the stairs, sniffing at
locked apartment doors and over-running floor after floor.

In three hours,
the stairs and landings of Concorde Tower, right up to the roof level, were a
scampering mass of ravenous rats.

Dr. Petrie was
deeply asleep when someone touched his forehead. He stirred, and unconsciously
tried to brush the hand away. He had been dreaming about Miami, and he thought
he had been eating a picnic lunch on the beach with Prickles and Anton Selmer.
He opened his eyes, and found himself in the den of Ivor Glantz’s condominium,
lying on the settee now converted into a double bed.

Esmeralda
whispered, ‘Sssh.’

He could see
her in the gloom, her face pale and sculptured. She was wearing her black curly
hair tied back with a ribbon, and she smelled warmly of Arpege.

‘What is it?’
he whispered back.

‘Sssh,’ she
repeated.

He looked
quickly to one side, and saw that he was now alone in the bed. He had been
sleeping with Kenneth Garunisch, while Adelaide and Prickles and Mrs.

Garunisch
shared the master bed in the main bedroom.

Esmeralda said,
‘Garunisch couldn’t sleep. He’s in the kitchen, having a smoke and reading a
book.’

‘He reads
books?’
joked
Dr. Petrie. ‘You amaze me.’

‘Don’t talk,’
said Esmeralda, laying a finger across his lips. ‘Even walls have ears.’

Without another
word, she lifted the bedsheets and climbed in beside him. The bed creaked, and
she suppressed a giggle. Then she curled her arms around him, and she was all
soft and warm and slithery in her pure silk nightdress.

‘We can’t do
this,’ hissed Dr. Petrie, in spite of the fact that his body was all too
obviously saying he could.

‘Don’t talk,’
said Esmeralda. ‘Just remember what I’ve been through and give me a chance.’

He sat up, and
held her wrists. He could see her moist lips gleaming in the dim light of the
den. ‘Esmeralda, we can’t do this.’

‘You’re a
doctor, aren’t you?’

‘Sure, but...’

‘But nothing!
If you’re a doctor, you know the importance of
therapy after a psychological shock. I don’t want love,
Leonard,
I just need a few moments’ oblivion!’

He didn’t
release her wrists. ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ he whispered. ‘Now I’m only
good for a few moments’ oblivion!’

‘You know I
didn’t mean that.’

‘Well, what did
you mean?’

‘I mean that
this is an emergency.
A medical and psychological and
romantic emergency.
For Christ’s sake, Leonard, we could all be dead
tomorrow. Don’t you believe in final grand gestures?’

‘If I believed
in final grand gestures, I’d be lying dead as a door-nail in Miami, Florida.’

‘What’s that
got to do with us making love?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, kiss me,’
she said, ‘and I’ll show you.’ He could have resisted. He could have said no.
But her long warm thigh moved against his bare leg, and her hand reached down
and cupped his tightened balls, and her sexuality washed over him like a wave
of drunkenness. He leaned forward and kissed her, and their tongues touched,
and their teeth bit.

They didn’t say
a word. She pushed him back against the bed, and sat astride him, lifting her
glossy silk nightdress around her hips. He reached up and felt her hardened
nipples through the slippery material, and she sighed, and kissed his forehead,
and raised herself up so that he could socket himself between her thighs.

Then she slowly
sat down on him, squirming her hips as she did so, so that he felt
a massaging
warmth rising up him. The door of the den was
still ajar. They knew that anyone could walk in at any moment. But they made
love slowly and relished every sensation it brought, until they couldn’t
suppress their urgency any more, and they were panting at each other with
bright eyes and expressions of something like pain.

Esmeralda
twitched and shook violently. Leonard Petrie felt something grip him between
the legs, and they both achieved the few moments of oblivion they were looking
for. Then they were lying side by side, quiet and wet, and even if it wasn’t a
final grand gesture it was at least a kind of temporary therapy for traumatized
minds that had been through more emotions and horrors than it was possible to
take.

Dr. Petrie
kissed her. ‘You’d better go now,’ he said gently. ‘Mr. Garunisch is a fast
smoker.’

Esmeralda
cuddled him close, and pressed her lips against his side.

Kenneth
Garunisch, in blue-striped pyjamas, put his head around the door and said,
‘Hey, you two. Don’t hurry on my account. I’m just going to finish this
chapter.’

He was wakened
by the sound of a helicopter. He sat up, listening. Esmeralda had long since
gone, and Kenneth Garunisch was lying next to him with his face buried in the
pillow, snoring. The helicopter noise came and went, as if it was circling
around somewhere in the vicinity. He climbed out of bed, tugged on his pants,
and went to the window.

At first, he
couldn’t see where it was. The noise of the rotors was bounced off buildings in
all directions, and the sky was gray with cloud. But then he saw it turning
around the 38-storey United Nations Plaza building, and circling towards
Concorde Tower with its blades flickering and its navigation lights shining
through the murk.