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Authors: Anne Richardson Roiphe

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Roux went to the Bank of Egypt on rue Tewfik Pasha with their letters of introduction, and so the task of finding the space in a hospital was left to Louis.

Dr. Abraham Malina had his offices in the rear of his own home. The tiles in the courtyard were green and blue. In the center of each tile was a figure of a bird with a tuft on its yellow head. Its wings were open, flight eternally suspended and repeated. There, underfoot, was a bird, or rather the outline of a bird, gone was its quiver, its tremble, its appetite and its fear. There remained a form only, imprisoned by bands of geometric lines. At the center of the courtyard was a pedestal and a bowl in which rainwater had gathered. There was a crack running up the side of the pedestal. A string of black beetles crawled along the crack. As he crossed in front of the pedestal, Louis saw a tiny salamander lying on its side, its stomach gone, its head mostly consumed. Ah, said Louis to himself, that’s what the beetles have found. He had no sentimental feelings as a child might for the salamander, and none for the beetles.

Louis crossed the inner courtyard, brought the servant to his feet with a pantomime of knocking on the door. The servant opened the clinic’s outer door with its small window at the top. Louis found himself in a room filled with cushions and couches. A Frenchwoman holding a small dog on her lap was waiting for the doctor, as were a German lady and her companion, who had strained her back when the sea turned rough on the voyage from Crete. The two held hands and pressed their bodies one against another in a manner that shocked the young scientist. Louis waited. The doctor did not call him.

The morning hours passed slowly. A man with a bloody nose was shown into the doctor’s office immediately, but not before he had stained the stone floor, which was then mopped by another servant who appeared from behind a screen. Louis noticed that behind the screen lay the entranceway to the rest of the house, to the room where the daughter was sitting, reading perhaps, playing the piano. A small boy appeared at his elbow and offered to fan him with a big fan. Louis did not want someone to fan him. It seemed wrong. Wrong because the offer came from a child. Wrong because the comfort of one’s body should not come at the discomfort of others, especially a stranger, especially a child. The child looked unhappy. The German ladies accepted the child’s offer, and the overflow of the moving air cooled the room, which Louis couldn’t help but enjoy.

At last he was sitting opposite Dr. Malina, sinking down in a blue velvet chair that forced him to look up at the doctor, who stood behind his desk. As Louis was about to speak, Dr. Malina interrupted him. “I am honored,” he said, “to help you in any way I can.” There was a loud knock on the door. A small boy stood there with a telegram in his hands. Dr. Malina jumped from behind his desk and, patting the boy on the head, ripped open the telegram. “My son, Jacob,” Dr. Malina said. “He went to Palestine looking for commercial opportunity. I would have preferred him to go to medical school, in France.”

“Friar Jules from my lycée went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage and then decided to stay. He sent the entire form a letter from Bethlehem,” said Louis.

“Monsieur Thuillier,” said the doctor with a neutral tone, so neutral he could be reading the label of a prescription bottle or the timetable of the trains departing for Cairo. “Monsieur Thuillier, we are Jews, my family has been in Alexandria for three hundred years. We are Alexandrians and we are Jews.”

“Indeed,” said Louis. He felt himself pushing back in his chair and suppressed the impulse. The door to the office was off to the left behind him. He resisted turning his head to look at the door. He himself had not met any Jews, not in his village, not in his school in Paris. Though of course he had heard of them. He had read about them. Louis blushed and wished he hadn’t. “I’m not a religious man,” he said.

“Neither am I,” said Dr. Malina. “We have that in common, then. But of course we disbelieve different things.” With that, Dr. Malina smiled. It was a sad smile, a dignified smile, a smile that concealed as much as it revealed, but a smile nevertheless that intended to put the young man before him at ease but didn’t quite.

And the subject matter changed to science and where beakers could be found, and a place in a hospital, but which hospital?

“When you have your lab,” said Dr. Malina, “will you show me your invisible organisms?”

“I will. Dr. Malina,” said Louis, happiness flushing his cheeks, “may I invite you to lunch with us at our hotel?”

Dr. Malina said, “I cannot have lunch. My clinic,” and he waved toward the door. “But tomorrow night, come to dinner here, in the house. We would be honored by your company, and bring your colleagues.” Louis took the pieces of paper on which the doctor had written the name of the chief administrator of the Hôpital de Europe as well as a hastily scrawled letter of introduction.

IN
A History of Medicine in English,
Dr. Malina read:

Celsus, who wrote about A.D. 30, had considered Cholera the most
dangerous of all the diseases of the stomach and intestines. Lommius,
a celebrated physician of Brussels, who wrote in the 1600s, speaks of
Cholera as the most fearful atrocissium of stomach diseases. In September 1831 a physician of Birmingham, under the signature Alpha,
wrote as follows: “I have been long quite familiar and know several
others who are equally so, with Cholera in which a perfect similarity to
the symptoms of the Indian Cholera has existed: the collapse, the
deadly coldness with a clammy skin, the irritability and prodigious
discharges from the bowels of an opaque serous fluid with a corresponding shrinking of the flesh and integuments, the pulselessness and livid
extremities, the ghastly aspect of the countenance and sinking of the
eyes, the restlessness, so great that the patient has not been able to
remain for a moment in one position.”

Enough, Dr. Malina thought, and closed the book.

Dr. Malina had a sudden need to wash his hands. He scrubbed at them as if they were recalcitrant children with the almond soap he kept by his sink.

UPSTAIRS, IN THE spacious apartment that the Malinas called home, Este Malina was holding her best tortoise shell brush with bristles made of porcupine quills and brought to Alexandria by a merchant who had ventured as far into the northern continent as Denmark. She was looking with satisfaction at herself in her mirror. Her hair was black and thick, and if she didn’t tie it up with ribbons, it would turn wild in the slightest breeze and spring into a thicket of snarls, a large bush that suggested wilderness and wind and was hardly right for a woman who would live as other women lived with sheets and pillows, with dishes and goblets and table-cloths, with men who wanted to be near her and those who were afraid to be near her, so she brushed her hair, earnestly, energetically, and while she brushed she sang softly to herself, an Arabic song her nurse had taught her about a shepherd whose goat had wandered away. The song was sad, but it was the sort of sadness that brings pleasure, creates a mood of sorrow, affected sorrow, a very good sorrow actually. The curtains blew in the wind. The weather had changed and the fog was heavy in the streets and a storm, unusual for this time of year, was approaching.

4

THAT NIGHT, across the city, some miles still out of the Eastern Harbor, a steamer, the Grey Falcon, a British flag flying from its mast, was nearing land. There was heavy fog in the air, and the captain was staring ahead while holding his wheel with a tightness that revealed to his first mate that this approach to the harbor off the shore of Alexandria’s eastern port might be more difficult than expected. The first mate promised himself that this would be his last crossing, his last staring at the sky, his last looking at the seabirds floating on the tops of gray and swirling waters. Enough, he said to himself. He had said that before. Because of the heavy fog, the high waves, the endless spray, the captain could not see the light that beamed from the lamp lit at the point of the harbor. The waves slapped at the hull, the ship rocked and clamored, and chains shook and the hooks that held the barrels to the sides of the ship let out a shriek as metal scraped against wood. There was a groaning sound, and then a howl from the port side, as the ship was pushed into the barrier. The furnace failed. The hull reared like an angry horse, the smokestacks belched black clouds, the ship’s cat hissed at the wave that rose over its head, the sailors, kicking off shoes, dove into the ocean, praying each to his God for a deserved or undeserved rescue. Silver light from dead stars rained down on the sea, but was not seen by the men in the water because of the fog and the spray. The moon was at a lopsided lumpy stage. It, too, could not be seen because of the clouds, the wet air, the wind pulling darkness across the heavens.

So it was that the passenger Eric Fortman and the majority of the crew, grabbing barrels and planks and listening in the blindness for the sounds of land, saved themselves and appeared, wet and scraped, frightened and full of prayers, on the shore by the side of the old lighthouse. The men on the ship were saved except for two caught in the ropes and pulled out to sea, their shouts unheeded as the waves sucked them down and their souls did whatever souls do in the sea, most likely grow damp and sink into the green buds of algae looping together under the broken boards of the ship, or flake into the thousand unseen particles of scales that, like the dander of a cat, drift with no particular destination, no mind to steer them, just soul masquerading as protein and ammonia, just molecule and its mate, set in motion, until there is not enough matter left for any movement at all, and, like a held breath, the souls of drowned sailors are like the souls of dead men on shore: gone.

The captain and his crew and their passenger, who was a representative of Glen MacAlan Scotch, a company that had booked the cargo onto the ship in Liverpool, found their way to the piers of Alexandria. Word of the wreck went through the taverns. Men rushed down to the beach, boats were launched. What plunder could be salvaged was salvaged as hands reached again and again into the cold water to pull bundles and floating boards and a sailor’s miniature portrait of his mother, and some perfectly intact bottles of Glen MacAlan Scotch, and as the survivors slept in boardinghouses while their clothes dried by the stove, others plundered and pulled, laughed and drank. The ship’s two goats had been ripped from their pen and lay dead, flies and maggots already crawling over their carcasses. The mice and the rats had floated in the water; some had survived and dashed for cover in the brush at the edge of the shore. The dawn came and the mist lifted and what was left of the broken ship bobbed against the sharp rocks as Eric Fortman woke in the cheap inn with a hunger in his belly and feared for his future. Would he end as a beggar in his hometown, a drunk in the port, who had stories to tell that no one would listen to? Would his brother feed him, his old friends find a spot for him in the customs office, or would he be forever lost? He had lost all the money he had brought for the purpose of clearing the way for the whiskey into a country where it was forbidden by the local religious authorities. The British servants of the crown, the French shopkeepers, the French schoolteachers, the British lawyers, the members of foreign delegations, all needed their whiskey. A little money in the right places made this possible. That was why he had been on this ship, accompanying barrels of whiskey that were quite capable of making the journey on their own.

Of course, thought the Englishman, when the serving maid who brought him the breakfast he had no means of paying for, informed him that there was cholera in town. I’m such a lucky man.

WHILE LOUIS WENT off to join Nocard and Roux at the European Hospital, Marcus explored the city. He had cashed in some francs he had won in the kitchen of the hotel in a bet, and took a carriage. Riding in the carriage suited him. He resolved to do it often. He went down rue Nebi Daniel, where it was said that under the Mosque Alexander himself had been buried in a gold robe inside a glass coffin once upon a time, up to Râs el Tin, the Cape of Figs, where the fort had once protected the city, over to the shallow Lake Mariout, formed out of the sea, sealed into the land, like a sigh, unable to escape the lovesick breast. After a few hours, Marcus dismissed the carriage and set off on foot. He purchased an orange and peeled it slowly while walking. He sucked in the juice, letting some of it trickle down his chin. As he looked out over the port where their ship had docked only a few days earlier, he saw a crowd gathered and he wandered over. He watched the salvage operation as small boats rowed out in the still-turbulent sea and brought back seaweed-covered boxes of loose tea leaves dried on the docks of Burma. Marcus made his way to the front of the crowd and watched as a box carried by a black Arabian boy fell to the ground, spilling the tea on the damp planks of the pier. Marcus, so quickly that only an owl sitting on a cart a few feet away noticed, bent down and scooped up a handful of the tea leaves and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. They were damp and did not smell appealing, but they would dry again in the sun and perhaps offer some special pleasure at a moment when some special pleasure would be needed. Marcus saw a young girl with a rope of blue beads around her neck, carrying a basket of fish toward the market. He couldn’t help the response of his body to the slow shifting of her thighs as she moved through the crowd. He followed her. Two British soldiers blocked his way. He moved into the street and made himself small, a child perhaps, an innocent child.

When they had passed, Marcus looked for the girl. He could see her back moving quickly down a narrow street. Marcus ran to catch up with her. A donkey cart appeared suddenly in his way. The man with the cart screamed at Marcus to move. The meaning was clear enough. Marcus pressed himself to the white stone wall. There was a cloth hanging over the open window. Marcus grabbed the cloth for balance. Cholera had gathered in the threads when the cloth was washed a few hours earlier in the stone basins in the back courtyard of the building where all the families brought their wash, including one that had lost a child the night before to the vomiting and bowel sickness. The cloth that hung across the doorposts was clean to the naked eye, but the microbes grouped about the red threads that served as a border for the fabric. They waited for someone’s fingers, fingers to go to mouth, once in the mouth they would swim to the gut and there it would begin. Marcus clutched at the cloth for a few seconds, but his hand didn’t go near the border, not near where the microbes waited. When the donkey cart passed, he could no longer see the girl and he returned to the main street and headed back to the hotel.

THE CHIEF OF the hospital was eager to be associated with the French mission. He read Dr. Malina’s letter and barked out orders to several sisters who were passing by. The sisters led the visitors to the back of the building, to an area that had been used for storage. The place was a jungle of discarded beds with their frames bent, and there were piles of sheets so ripped as to be worthless except for rags. There were basins that were dented, and rubber blankets with holes, and boxes of cotton squares that had turned green with mildew. There was, however, an oven that would serve for heating beakers, and there was a gas supply that could be used to bring water to a boil. It would be fine. Roux asked for some orderlies to clean the place. Nocard explained that animals would be kept in cages in the far back or outside in the dusty yard. There was a walled-off corner where Marcus could sleep.

Out the small side window, covered now in dust, Louis could see the café across the street, could hear the clicking of the backgammon pieces on the boards, could smell the tobacco, heavy, as if a woolen blanket had been pulled across his mouth. This would be a lucky place. It would be a fateful place, perhaps one worthy of a plaque on the building one day, but that was as far as he was willing to let his imagination go. The men went to Café Fort to celebrate their new laboratory. Louis pulled at the stem of his pipe. They ordered Turkish coffee, which came in a large enameled pot with a long, skinny spout. Louis tasted it and made a face. Nocard slapped him on the back. “Adjust,” he said.

“Are you ever going to get married?” Roux asked Nocard, who shrugged.

“My mother is always asking me that same question. But I have no need for a woman to tell me what to do, to take my money, to bring her many garments into my closet. A woman is not as good a companion as a dog.”

Roux picked up his beer and said, “You’re a fool. A man gets many more pleasures from a woman than he does from a spacious closet or a dumb beast.”

Nocard said, “It simply has never interested me, all this fuss about women. I don’t like their perfumes. I don’t want to talk about the weather. What would I do with a woman?” he asked.

“Have a child,” Emile answered.

“I’d rather take care of a litter of piglets than a child,” Nocard said.

There was silence at the table.

“I’m an odd fellow,” said Nocard.

“I know,” Louis said. “We don’t all have to live the same life.”

“You’ll be a lonely old man,” said Emile.

“No, he won’t,” said Louis. “He’ll have me as a friend.”

Nocard smiled and, putting down his spoon, reached out to pat Louis on the back, enthusiastically.

“We should start to move our things,” said Louis.

“Relax,” said Roux. “Herr Koch has to eat also, and sleep, and pay attention to his bowels.”

THE CHIEF OF the hospital, who had not been invited onto the Committee of Public Safety because he had been rather outspoken in favor of the nationalist leader General Arabi in the recent difficulties, was nevertheless determined to stand with his colleagues on the front line of defense of Alexandria. He found in the hospital library a copy of an old journal of medicine in which he read this account, supposedly translated from the Sanskrit, believed to have been written in Tibet during the reign of Ti-Song De-tsen, somewhere between A.D. 802 and 845.

When the strength of virtues and merits decreases on earth, there
appear amongst the people, first among those living on the shores of the
big rivers, various ailments which give no time for treatment, but prove
fatal immediately after they appear. It suddenly destroys the vigor of
life and changes the warmth of the body into cold, but sometimes this
changes back into heat. The various vessels secrete water so that the
body becomes empty. The disease kills invariably. Its first signs are
dizziness, a numb feeling in the head, then most violent purging and
vomiting.

The chief of the hospital, who had trained for some four years in Toulouse, did not pay much attention to the decrease in the world’s virtues or merits. After all, he had never known an increase in virtue, and cholera seemed to come and go regardless of a man’s merit on individual or national grounds. There had already been four major outbreaks of cholera in his own century. Here it was again, the fifth pandemic. How small it made a man of medicine feel to see the thing sweeping toward him, a tidal wave no human hand could stay.

ESTE MALINA WAS eighteen years old, and it was time she became engaged. She had studied piano with her aunt’s cousin on Memphis Street. She had gone to the Jewish school, in the Jewish quarter, with a girl named Phoebe, whose father, an architect and designer whose family came from Constantinople, had done the restoration on the synagogue. Phoebe had an older brother, Albert, who had just begun to work at the Bank Loewenwald, known to all in Alexandria as the Bank of the Jews and highly valued for its clear understanding of markets and its astute managing of funds. Over the years Albert had often watched his sister’s friend playing under the orange tree that stood in the center of their courtyard, her voice rising and falling with the intensity of whatever game the girls were playing. One Sunday afternoon Albert was recovering from a late night and drinking lemonade on a balcony above the garden. This was after a summer rain that had dampened the yellow tiles on the courtyard patio. The sun came through the leaves of a potted orange tree and rested on Este’s black hair, and her hands fluttered as they brushed away a cloud of approaching flies, and then she leaned back in her chair and clapped her hands as if ordering the insects to alter their route, and frowned at them as if they were naughty children. In that instant, Phoebe’s brother Albert chose his wife.

BOOK: An Imperfect Lens
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