The Binding Chair (22 page)

S
PANISH
I
NFLUENZA

A
LICE OPENED THE WINDOW
. F
ROM THE STREET
came two sounds: the knock of a hammer and the clang of a bell. The hammer belonged to an itinerant casket maker, employed in the neighborhood for a week now. The bell was that in the Old City’s joss house.

“God, what a racket,” she said. She sat down at the breakfast table just as a hammer blow and bell strike converged into a single, sharp assault. The mirror over the sideboard hummed in its frame; the teacups whined over their saucers.

“You’re in for it if Mother catches you with the window open,” Cecily said.

“Pour me a cup, will you?” Alice answered. She indicated the teapot at her sister’s elbow, but Cecily didn’t look up from the paper, so Alice stood again and reached for the tea herself. “Isn’t she up?” she asked. “It’s nearly eleven.”

“No,” Cecily said, still not raising her eyes.

Alice sighed loudly, sat heavily, sprawled dramatically, and clattered the lid of the sugar bowl. “So, is she going to get up, do you think?”

Cecily raised her eyebrows, a gesture that echoed rather than answered the question.

“Well, I don’t care what she does.”

“Don’t you?” Cecily asked.

“I’m going out.”

At that, Cecily did look up. “Where?”

“Dulcie’s having a party tonight.”

Cecily smiled, and of all that a smile might convey—humor, joy, satisfaction—only the last of these was evident, and in its most bitter form. “Is Tsung going to be there?” she asked.

Alice didn’t answer.

“I asked if—”

“I heard you.”

“May will kill you if she finds out. When.”

“How would she? How, unless you told?”

“I’m not going to say a thing. I want nothing to do with it. You. Just the idea makes me ill.”

Now it was Alice’s turn to smile nastily. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad it makes you ill.” She reached over and dug her spoon into the butter dish and then the jam pot, eating butter and marmalade together, without bread. “Making you ill is a measure of my—” She paused.

“Your what?”

“Pleasure.”

“It’s not safe.”

Alice leaned back in her chair. “I don’t care.”

Cecily crossed her arms. “There
is
the curfew to consider. When Daddy gets back, he’ll have a stroke.”

“He won’t be home any time soon. They’ve closed the Hong Kong port, and I …” Alice spoke slowly, stretched her arms over her head with conscious languor. “I … am … going … out.”

In response, Cecily pushed the
North China Daily News
toward Alice, who turned it right side up to read the headlines.

6 March 1919. The city was suffering a shortage of coffin nails. The Shanghai death toll had reached 3,017, and with so many workers ill, the forge had closed until further notice. Amoy, Tsingtao, and Canton were now infected. The municipal council had voted to require all tram drivers, rickshaw men, constables, and wharf coolies to wear protective linen masks saturated with formalin. Hospital tents had been pitched on the race club lawn; and, as a means of controlling panic in the Old City, ratepayers were insisting that the armed forces bury unclaimed native dead at night, in mass graves.

Despite the fact that native workers in the silk filatures and cotton mills were succumbing faster than any other subset of the population, rumors of revolutionary conspiracy multiplied. It was suggested that Sun Yat-sen had poisoned the water supply. On this matter the British consul could not be reached for comment.

“You’ll never get a car or even a rickshaw,” Cecily said. “Boy is sick and so is Brother Boy and all the nephews.”

“I’ll take Uncle’s electric,” Alice said. “He won’t miss it.”

“The electric! You might as well walk. You won’t get as far as Shang-tung. And how will you keep Mother from finding out?” Cecily looked at her sister with narrowed eyes. “Why hasn’t Daddy cabled, if they’ve closed the port?”

“The wires are tied up. The line from the cable office goes on down the Bund for blocks. I sent Number Three first thing this morning and he’s still not back. He’ll be there all day.” Alice stood and walked around the breakfast table, around and around, rapping her knuckles on its white cloth. “One more night in this prison and I’ll slit my wrists.”

“They’ll shut Dulcie down,” Cecily said. “With no one to chaperone, someone will call. The police will come.”

“Let them call.” Alice picked up the paper. “Didn’t you read this? The police are all stationed at the race club.”

“Push Mother too far,” Cecily warned, “and she’ll go right round the bend.”

Alice snorted. “Too late,” she said. “She has already.” Alice withdrew a piece of stationery from under the lid of a lacquer box on the sideboard. “See?” At the top of the page were their mother’s embossed initials; the rest was covered with black hatch marks.

“What’s that?” Cecily asked.

“Calculations,” Alice said. “Opportunities for infection that Daddy might conceivably encounter each day he spends in Hong Kong. Doorknobs. Coins. Sneezes at meetings. Cutlery.”

Cecily took the paper from her sister. At the bottom, the number 119 was circled. She looked at it without speaking, handed it back. “What was that burning smell last night, around ten?” she asked. “I thought Aunt May must have caught the drapes again with her pipe.”

“Galsworthy, the whole set.
Swann in Love. The Scarlet Pimpernel—
first edition. And Hugo, those nice ones with the gold leaf.”

“But those were mine! She gave me those herself!”

“Well,” Alice said, “they’re gone now. She had Amah pour sulfur on the embers. Hence the smell.”

As if summoned, the small, blue-coated woman came silently into the breakfast room, followed by Number Six carrying a toast rack filled with browned slices. “Piecee?” she said.

“My no wanchee.” Alice licked marmalade from the spoon. “No likee.”

“Yes, likee! Likee fine!” Amah snatched the spoon from Alice’s hand. “That no belong good.” She pulled the butter dish out of her reach.

“Come upstairs,” Alice said to Cecily. “Help me with my costume. It has to be something Spanish.”

“What, for Spanish influenza! Isn’t that’s just like Dulcie.”

As the girls left the breakfast room they heard the amah close the window with a bang.

Smoke darkened the sky over the city, the smoke of thousands of fires: coal fires in furnaces, wood fires on hearths, the fires of hospital incinerators. And temple fires, too—the burning of spirit money to pay the way of the dead through the next world. New Year celebrations had given way to funeral parades, to black lacquer coffins carried swinging on bamboo poles.

In the joss house, under the clanging bell, priests bludgeoned the infected in an attempt to drive out fever demons. The line of supplicants awaiting their attention was hundreds long. At the Old City gate, a celestial in red robes charged a dollar to consult a mystical text. His book was upside down and dusty if not, as he claimed, ancient. The recent employer of the red-robed man, had he passed, could have identified the volume as V.K.W. Koo’s 1912 work,
The Status of Aliens in China
, not significantly out of date by 1919, and missing for the past week from his library shelf. But Dick Benjamin was far away, in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong port was closed.

T
HE HOUSE ON
Bubbling Well Road, enclosed by a low wall behind which was a high boxwood hedge, was laid out in the shape of an E, two separate wings embracing small courtyards. When the epidemic began, it had been a simple matter to quarantine the east-side bedrooms in which the infected lay, exhaling germs. Dolly had divided the entire household—not only the sleeping quarters, but the kitchen, the laundry, the staff. Half for herself and her daughters, half to serve the afflicted: to boil the dishes, burn the linens, to make broth and run to the apothecary to leave messages in Dr. Bellamy’s pigeonhole.

Since Dick had left for Hong Kong, May had been the only member of the family to travel between firm and infirm, sullenly wearing a mask soaked in disinfectant.

“Really, Dolly,” she said. “I feel foolish in this getup.”

“Better foolish than dead.”

“Well, you don’t think I wear this with poor Arthur! Only for you.” May pulled the mask down in irritation. Dolly turned on her.

“Put it on,” she said.

“I won’t.”

Dolly looked at her sister-in-law, the defiance in her black eyes. “In my house,” she said, “you’ll abide by my wishes.” But May stood silently, not moving to replace the mask on her face.

“You infected us!” Dolly said. “You brought it here, into this house.”

“I?” May said. “What about Eleanor? Or that Mr. Whoever-he-was who touched the books?”

“Not influenza! I’m not talking about that.”

May raised her eyebrows. “Of what
are
you speaking?”

“Death. Misfortune. Poor little David. Rose. Now this.”

May, expressionless, looked at Dolly. She betrayed no surprise at so irrational an attack; she said nothing in response.

“It’s true. I know it.” Dolly stepped forward aggressively, and then backed up, as if abruptly reminding herself of the contagion she’d blamed on the silent woman before her. “You … You tracked it in with your feet. With your poisonous, unnatural feet. You might fool Arthur. Arthur is a fool, he always has been! But I’m not. I have dreams about you—nightmares—I can’t stand any more. I won’t. As soon as Arthur can be moved, you’ll have to go. Both of you.” May moved toward the window. Dolly followed her. “In the dreams your legs are covered in scales. Like a … a serpent. Fangs and … and … We’ll all die if you stay!”

“Would you like to see what they are like, really?” May bent down as if to unfasten a shoe.

“No!” Alice’s mother recoiled.

“Dolly,” May said, her voice smooth, soothing. “Your nerves have got the best of you. Don’t say things for which you’ll be sorry.” She tried to guide her toward the door. “Why don’t we have tea. Something to eat.”

But Dolly pulled her elbow from May’s hand, she ran back into the sitting room. “Don’t touch me!”

“Why, Dolly,” May said, and her mouth curled with what looked like genuine amusement. “You’re more primitive than a Chinese. Everything that happens in this family, everything that goes wrong—it’s my fault? Is that it?”

Dolly didn’t answer. She pushed past May, left her standing alone in the parlor, the mask hanging loose around her neck.

T
HE INABILITY TO
sleep or to rest, this made its contribution to Dolly’s agitation, her irrationality. Each night she stayed up later. After the others had retired, she stood in her dry bathtub, its taps sealed against what might be carried by the suspect Shanghai pipes, and poured Aquarius carbonated table water over her body. She scrubbed every part of herself with carbolic soap, using a washcloth to reach between her shoulder blades, and then rinsed again with Aquarius. Carbonation foamed up like her husband’s shaving soap; it stung her elbows and knees and mortified the red cracks between her long, white toes.

At night, after her daughters were asleep, while amahs and houseboys in the servants’ quarters shoved garlic paste into their ears and noses, peppers into their mouths, Dolly paced in the library and frowned at the books. Which one was it that Mr. Connolly had touched? He’d come to retrieve a file of bank papers. Number Three had shown him into the library and given him a glass of sherry. And as Dolly came in with the papers, she’d seen Mr. Connolly lick his index finger and use that wet finger to turn a page. The book was bound in blue leather. She had been sure it was blue, but now that all the blue books were gone, it seemed as if it might have been a red one, or a brown.

She’d never feel safe until all of them were burned, even those on the high shelf. Although he probably hadn’t climbed the ladder to retrieve the one he held in his hands—the blue one, the red one, whatever it was. But then, she hadn’t seen him take it from the shelf, or replace it, for that matter. All she had was the distinct picture, framed by the door to the library, of Mr. Connolly standing with a book in his hands and licking his finger to turn the pages. And now he was dead.

It was past midnight. On top of logs that had fallen into embers Dolly laid
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton, and next to it Dr. Fanshaw’s
Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature
, an edition that included color plates, which burned with colored flames. She watched this, momentarily distracted, before she piled on Plutarch’s
Lives, Clarissa
, a set of Kelly and Walsh monographs on Daumier, Corot, Constable, Turner, and Millet.
An Englishman’s Introduction to Eastern Religion and Philosophy. Essays of Elia
and
More Essays of Elia
.

She’d expected them to be damp—how could books be anything other than damp in this wretched climate?—and they were, but with added fuel they burned. Flames reached up into the chimney, she couldn’t see how high, so bright they overpowered the ceiling lamp. Dolly sat in her husband’s green leather chair to watch. Already it was nearly eleven o’clock. She wanted to finish them all off tonight. She’d have to use more kerosene to hurry them along.

Dolly unscrewed the lid from the bottle, slippery from previous unscrewings, from where its contents had spilled down the neck and discolored the paper label. Too dangerous to splash kerosene onto live flames—she’d have to pour it over the remaining books and, when the volatile liquid had soaked into their pages, throw them carefully onto the fire. She filled the empty coal scuttle with as many volumes as it would hold and poured the clear fuel over them, not bothering to hold her breath. Kerosene fumes were a smell she liked. As she worked, a few drops fell on the hot stones of the hearth and began to smoke. Dolly watched one and then another spontaneously catch fire. Little circles of flame, they burned brightly for a few seconds and then went out. They gave no warning of what would happen next, when drops landed on the shining, waxed parquet, on cabinets and bookshelves burnished with lemon oil, on the hem of her Kobe-laundered dress.