Plague (30 page)

‘Ordinary
plague, Pasteurella pestis, is one thing,’ said a spokesman for the department.
‘But there is no scientific way in which ordinary plague could have mutated
under the ocean into this particularly virulent and fast-growing form of
super-plague.’

The department
also denied that the raw sewage on the beaches of Florida and Georgia was
anything to do with them. Yes – there had been eccentric winds and tides. But
it stretched the credulity to suggest that tides had borne the sewage as far
south as Miami.

A CBS reporter
asked if it were possible for a message in a bottle, dropped off Long Island at
the sewage-dumping spot, to float south as far as Miami. An oceanographer said
that, with climatic conditions as they had been, yes. The CBS reporter then
asked why, in that case, a lump of human faeces couldn’t do the same.

The spokesman
for the Department of Sanitation gave an answer that became the morbidly
popular catch-phrase of the day. ‘What you’re suggesting,’ he snapped, ‘is
crap.’

Herbert Gaines
walked into the conference room at the Summit Hotel with his hands raised like
a successful candidate for the New York presidential primary. Flashguns blinked
in the crowded entrance, and he had more pictures taken for the press in the
space of twenty seconds than he had in the last twenty years. He was wearing
orangey panstick make-up to make himself look healthier on color TV, and his
white hair was combed into a flowing mane.

‘Welcome back,
Herbert,’ said a fat reporter in a creased blue suit. ‘It’s nice to have a hero
around for a change.’

Beside Herbert
Gaines, sticking
close,
was Jack Gross – all glossy
suit and carnivorous teeth. He piloted his figurehead through the throng of
pressmen and television cameras, and up towards a red-white-and-blue platform.
More flashguns flickered, and Herbert tried hard to keep smiling.

Jack Gross
waved his hands for silence. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jack Gross and
I’m the agent for what we call the FTT. Now, does anyone here know what FTT
stands for?’

It was meant to
be a rhetorical question, but a New York Post reporter said, ‘Fart Tunefully
Tonight?’ There was a general guffaw of laughter.

Jack Gross, his
smile a little strained, waved his hands for silence again.

‘FTT,’ he said,
quickly, ‘stands for Face
The
Truth. And Face
The
Truth is what we call our particular group of dedicated
Republican senators and congressmen, all of whom are totally committed to the
revival of honest, no-nonsense, straight-down-the-middle politics.’

‘Isn’t that a
contradiction in terms?’ asked the lady from Time, sardonically.

‘It has been up
until now.’ said Jack Gross. ‘But let’s think why American politics has gotten
such a bad name. It’s gotten a bad name because it’s been the province of men
who won’t Face
The
Truth. That’s what our group is all
about. We’ve decided that no matter how unpalatable or unpleasant the true
facts are, we’re going to have to face up to them, and speak our minds no
matter how unpopular our voice might be.’ He lowered his voice, and spoke with
intense sincerity. ‘Maybe, in the past, refusing to Face
The
Truth didn’t matter so much. But today – right this very evening – America
faces a disaster of hideous and unprecedented proportions. The plague has
already
laid
waste our southern states, and the last
we heard it was infecting parts of Jersey. We are right up against the wall,
ladies and gentlemen, and we can’t keep our eyes blinkered any longer.

‘The crisis is
so serious that an American hero has returned to speak the truth about it. A
man whose voice once spoke out on the movie screen for honesty and purity and
the preservation of the American way, and who has now emerged from honorable
retirement to take up our cause. Ladies and gentlemen – Captain Dashfoot,
better known as Herbert Gaines.’

There was a
light smattering of, applause. Herbert’s movies were still doing the rounds of
art houses and late-night TV channels, and most of the pressmen there had seen
at least one of them.

Herbert Gaines
stood up. With the TV lights on him, he hardly seemed to have aged.

He could have
dismounted from his Civil War horse just a few moments ago, flushed with
success from his famous ride in Incident at Vicksburg. He raised his hand for
silence.

‘Ladies and
gentlemen.’ he said, in his rich, deep timbre. ‘I never thought the time would
come when I would feel it my bounden duty to ride once again in defense of the
American people.’

There was clapping,
and someone said, ‘Dashfoot to the rescue!’

Herbert Gaines
smiled ruefully. ‘I wish Captain Dashfoot could come to the rescue, but we’re
shooting from a different script today. Our nation is being scythed to the
ground by a foul and terrible disease, and what we need is not lone heroes on
horses but quick and effective federal action.

‘What we need,
ladies and gentlemen, is someone who will speak the truth about this plague.
Someone who will tell us where it really originated.
They
say sewage.
All right – but whose sewage?
Are any of
you infected with plague and hepatitis? Is your sewage infected?’

Herbert grasped
the lectern in front of him, and lowered his leonine head.

‘What we are
saying here today, friends, is unpopular. It’s unpopular.’ he repeated, raising
a rigid finger, ‘but it’s true. I know it’s true, and you know it’s true, and I
dare any man in the continental United States to prove it aint so. That sewage
– that infected sewage – has come from the bowels of the black man, from the bowels
of the Puerto Rican, from the bowels of the shiftless vagrant and the unwashed
hippie.

Not only have
they poisoned our society with their subversive politics and their
revolutionary mania, they have actually physically poisoned our American sons
and daughters with their excremental filth!’

The sound that
went up from the press when Herbert said that was extraordinary. It was a kind
of surprised moan, like a dog crushed under a car. A black reporter from The
New York Times walked out and slammed both double doors of the conference room,
and a young girl from the Village Voice shrieked out, ‘You’re not a hero,
you’re
a fascist!’

Herbert Gaines,
his eyes hard, his hands white, turned in the direction of the girl’s voice.

‘A fascist?’ he
said softly. ‘Is it the mark of a fascist, to speak the truth? It’s true, isn’t
it, that diseases communicated from the bowels are rife among black and Spanish
peoples in America? It’s true, isn’t it, that the sewage dumped off Long Island
contains the infections of diseased
negroes
? Because
it’s no longer inside them, this sewage, does that mean negroes no longer bear
the responsibility for the disgusting plague it has caused?’ A television
reporter said in a quiet but penetrating voice, ‘Mr.

Gaines, if
you’re blaming the colored elements in our society for this plague, what do you
suggest we do about it?’

Herbert Gaines
turned on him fiercely. ‘I suggest this. I suggest we cast out our ineffectual
political leaders at the first opportunity, and re-elect men who will keep the
black man in his place, and the immigrants where they belong.
Out of America.’

Another
reporter said, ‘Mr. Gaines, this is kind of extreme, all this stuff.’

Herbert Gaines
turned his best profile to the cameras. ‘Of course it’s extreme. This is an
extreme situation. It requires quick, decisive and urgent treatment. Face The
Truth is the only political group that has faced up to that fact so far, and
the only political group who could possibly save this nation from ruination and
downfall at the hands of the black man.’

The same
reporter said, ‘What do you suggest we do?
Ship ‘em all back
to the Gold Coast?’

Herbert Gaines
smiled patiently and shook his head.
‘Of course not.
That would be ridiculous. But I have several suggestions that would finally
overcome America’s race problem once and for all. First – only black medics and
doctors should be assigned to plague hospitals. They started it – they can take
the risk of treating it. Second – when the plague has finally been contained,
arrangements should be made over a ten-year period for the gradual rehousing of
blacks in areas where their unsanitary personal habits do not threaten decent
Americans.

‘Every American
citizen, under the Constitution, has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. How can we truly say that we are upholding these rights if we
jeopardize the first of them from the word
go.
An
American is entitled to life, ladies and gentlemen, and if the diseased black
man is allowed to walk beside him, work beside him, eat from the same plates,
sit on the same seats and defecate in the same public toilets, then we have
failed to protect his Constitutional rights. We have abdicated our
responsibilities as leaders of this great nation.’

A reporter from
the Christian Science Monitor said, ‘Mr. Gaines, you’re not a leader of this
great nation. You’re an out-of-work actor.’

Herbert Gaines,
lit by a flurry of photographers’ flashguns, said, ‘I am a leader because I
speak the truth. You, because you question the truth, are less than a patriot.’

In normal
times, Herbert Gaines would have won fifteen seconds’ attention on the early
evening news. But these were not normal times, and the fact that press and
television crews even stayed to listen showed that. As the conference
continued, a strange disturbed buzzing filled the room, as if the newspapermen
had just discovered some unsettling secret that had been deliberately hidden
away from them.

By half-past
five, the New York Post was on the street with a headline that ran: BLACKS TO
BLAME FOR PLAGUE, claims ‘Captain Dashfoot’, and that was only the beginning.
Herbert Gaines was interviewed seven times that evening on New York and network
television, and an almost tangible wave of resentment against the black
population made itself felt across the breadth of the American continent. What
Jack Gross had calculated exactly right, of course, was that everyone in
America, including the President, was looking for someone to blame. Just as
Adolf Hitler had successfully blamed the Jews for the financial depression of
the 1930s, Herbert Gaines had laid the blame for the plague on the shoulders of
the American blacks.

As night fell
on New York City, fires broke out in Harlem, and the windows of black stores
and restaurants were smashed by marauding gangs of white youths. Friday ended
in Manhattan to the wow-wow-wow of fire trucks and the bitter smell of smoke.
By midnight, thirty-six cases of arson had been reported, fifty-two cases of
wilful damage, and more than a hundred injuries, varying from fractured skulls
to knife wounds. Other crimes noticeably decreased, as black whores and muggers
played it safe and made a point of staying home. In the early hours of
Saturday, Herbert Gaines was driven back to Concorde Tower in the back of Jack
Gross’

Cadillac. He
was exhausted, and he was looking forward to a large brandy and a long sleep.
‘You did beautiful,’ said Jack Gross. ‘In one day, you made more of a hit than
Gerry Ford made in three years.’

Herbert rubbed
his eyes. ‘It seems to me that I’ve caused nothing but distress and confusion.
Even if this whole thing about the blacks were found to be true, there are
times when it’s kinder not to tell the truth at all.’

Jack Gross
grinned. ‘Herbert, you’re a man of conscience and no mistake. Can I pick you up
at three?’

‘You mean
there’s more?’

‘Of course
there’s more. This is just the beginning.’

‘Mr. Gross, I
tell you quite plainly, I don’t want to any more.’

Jack Gross
waved his hand deprecatingly. ‘Don’t even think that, Herbert. You’re just
tired. Have a nice rest, freshen yourself up, and then we’re off to make a
speech to the New York Republicans.’

Herbert Gaines
stared at him gloomily. ‘And if I refuse?’

Jack Gross
smirked. ‘You know very well. If you refuse, young Nicky starts singing in the
girls’ choir.’

Herbert looked
out of the car window at the deserted wastes of 43rd Street. He felt desolated
and old.

‘Very well,’ he
said, after a while. ‘If I have to do it, I suppose I might as well enjoy it.

I’ll see you at
three.’

Kenneth
Garunisch, as Friday dwindled into Saturday, was still talking with the
officials of Bellevue Hospital. He had chosen Bellevue as his last discussion
of the day, because he could walk home up First Avenue afterwards, and he
usually felt like a short stroll at the end of a day’s work to clear his head.

The
cream-painted conference room was thick with cigarette smoke, and the table was
strewn with overflowing ashtrays, newspapers, files, gnawed pencils and unbent
paperclips. Talks had started at six o’clock on Friday evening, and they were
still chasing the same points of principle around and around at midnight, like
dogs chasing their own tails.

Garunisch, his
tie loosened and his nylon shirt stained with sweat, was lighting one cigarette
from the butt of the last, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Dick
Bortolotti sat beside him looking waxy and strained. They had both been under
tremendous pressure since, they had called the strike, and every available hour
of every day had been spent in talks and negotiations and organization. But the
Medical Workers were still out, and intended to stay out until they were given
a substantial package of pay guarantees and fringe benefits. Ernest
Seidelberger, the thin bespectacled Bellevue spokesman, was sitting mournfully
at the other end of the table, struggling to light his pipe. He looked more
suited for lectures on medieval manuscripts to bored housewives than union
negotiations with hard nuts like Kenneth Garunisch, but he had a tedious
pedantic way of refusing to give in, ever.