An Imperfect Lens Read online

  CHOLERA WAS BORN in India. Pasteur himself knew the names of India’s gods, Krishna, Vishnu, the elephant god Ganesh. He knew it was hot in Bombay and there were beggars on the streets and the English stayed in their clubs and played croquet while native servants bowed before them and brought them tea on silver trays. Its major river was the Ganges. The Ganges merged with the Yamuna at the city of Allahabad, and naked Hindus at festival times bathed in the waters, large numbers of them pressing down to the shore. While Pasteur was extremely curious about the chemistry of chlorides and acids, he was less curious about the customs of India.

  The Ganges and the Yamuna, brown and muddy at the shallow shore, dark and swift at the center, flowed out of the snow-tipped Himalayas across the great plains of northern India and into the primal oceans. The gods lived in those mountains, reaching their long arms up to the sky and sliding into the crevices of the darkest, sharpest rocks. Long ago the gods and demons churned the waters, grabbing treasures from their depths, but there was a fight, a terrible booming clash between the demons, naked but for the red and green turbans that streamed after them through the air, a fight for the final bounty, the coveted kumbh, a pitcher holding the sweet-tasting liquid of a most-desired, ever-elusive immortality. In the chase toward the heights of the Himalayas, some of the elixer spilled into the Ganges, some onto nearby cities, marking them instantly as holy, holy places for pilgrimage, riverbanks from which ordinary men and women would plunge, following swamis, gurus, wise men and their disciples, all seeking renewal in a bath of sacred water, shocking the skin, leaving teeth chattering and heart uplifted. Dogs and cows and monkeys waded in the water. Also sewage of the towns and the villages seeped over the shores of the river bank—foul, lumpy, swirling down with the currents, turning blue water brown and brown water to the color of tar. So was Immortality forced to keep humble company.

  In the running waters of the Ganges a small vibrio microbe swam, pulsing forward by contracting and expanding its spongy form, thrashing its long, always unseen thread of a tail. Another treasure whirled into existence by the gods at the beginning of time or at a time when no man had memory, before man, when the dark and crawling things, swimming and eating undisturbed by floating net or knifing boat keel, or by five-fingered hand, multiplied and divided and consumed what they needed to consume. These were crescent-shaped creatures, millions of new moons invisible to the naked human eye. In their time they would become travelers, hitchhikers on merchant ships carrying satins and silks, wood and spices, clay vessels, beads, seeds, slaves. They were stowaways on water barrels, on cracks in hands and feet, thriving in the dark planks of wood damp with river smell, breeding everywhere in droplets of water, bubbles of organic proteins, tiny sacks of floating scythes, so small a foot couldn’t crush them, but carrying in their ooze neither eternal life nor holy peace, but quick death, bowels spilling, blood vessels leaking, cracking: Cholera.

  Louis Pasteur took down a heavy book from his shelves. It was Macnamara’s History of Asiatic Cholera, published some twelve years before in London and already a classic. He read:

  The people of Lower Bengal had for a long time past worshiped the goddess of cholera, it appearing that a female while wandering alone in the woods met with a large stone, the symbol of the goddess of cholera. The worship of the deity through this stone was according to the prevailing ideas of the Hindoos the only means of preservation from the influence of this terrible disease. The fame of the goddess spread and people flocked from all parts of the country to come and pray at her shrine in Calcutta. There was in a temple at Gujurat in Western India a monolith dating back to the time of Alexander the Great, the inscription of which said, “the lips blue, the face haggard, the eyes hollow, the stomach sunk in, the limbs contracted and crumpled as if by fire, those are the signs of the great illness which is invoked by a malediction of the priests, that comes down to slay the brave.” Hippocrates described the diarrhea death. He had seen it on the ships entering the Grecian ports. He had examined the liquid ooze that flowed from the bodies of the victims and seen flakes of mucus in their bowels. In the Sanskrit writings found on tablets in the buried city of Hemoltius by the upper branches of the Nile there was a description of the devastation caused by the same plague. In 1563 a Portuguese physician at Goa, Garcia del Huerto, wrote down his experiences throughout the epidemic which lasted half a year as it paralyzed the city, emptying the fruit stalls, closing the orphanages, leaving no one alive in the monastery on the hill until almost every household mourned and the dead were carted away and burned in large fires whose flames leapt up at the sky month after month and the smallest breeze brought in from the far edges of town the odor of the burning flesh.

  Unnamed, unseen, this tiny life, a curved shape with a waving tail, floated in the rivers where the great gods had splashed, drifted by rocks on which the women were beating the sheets, cleaning them of the stains of love and reproduction, blood and saliva, mucus, pus, fecal trace, bronchial clots. The beings had no poetry of their own, no myths sustained them on their way, but still they thrived on the bellies of fish and hid in the crevices of crabs where legs bent and claws opened and there they multiplied in the algae bunched together swiftly drifting in the currents, down to the sea. What was the purpose of this vibrio, what was its place in the master plan, if there was a master plan? Did it serve Satan in its meanderings, or was it simply a thing in itself, striving to continue, containing no memory, but blessed with a ferocity greater than the great tiger’s, greater than the force of a waterfall, greater than the thunder in the sky, a ferocity focused on its own journey? Was this vibrio simply another one of nature’s temper tantrums against humanity?

  In Bengal as well as in the poor farm villages, all unknowing, sometimes people would sicken and quickly die from the comma-shaped form that floated in their waters, traveled in afflicted intestines, stayed in their streets waiting for a cleansing rain, hid in the folds of cloth, survived in the excrement of children. From time to time, at their own pleasure—uninvited, unwelcome—the not-yet-seen, not-yet-imagined, not-yet-named, crescent-shaped, mindless but hardly helpless organisms traveled long distances and arrived at the door of Europe, the port of Venice, or cruised up the Nile on ships bringing bolts of cloth or pots of clay or baskets of cardamom, curry, cumin, and entered the stone patios of merchants, hiding in palm-tree-planted gardens as well as in shacks and drainage ditches and irrigation canals, surviving in the warm armpits of slaves chained to the beams of rocking ships, out of Africa and into Arabia, where pilgrims to Mecca took it back to their wives and children. They, multitudes, more than the stars, more than the grains of sand on the beach, crossed long heaving oceans to the docks of New Amsterdam, the streets of Moscow, the alleys of London, serving up carcasses for the cemeteries of Paris, while en route to the ports of Japan and China.

  Everywhere the organism pushed, floated, drifted, gathered, it erased, eradicated, ignored a mother’s love for her child or a man’s desire for his wife, devoured memories fond and unfond, left church bells ringing, bodies piled on carts. Like lava rolling down from the erupting mountain, it made its own path, without regard for gardens, schools, houses of worship. It passed along on the padded feet of gophers, beavers, cats. It rested in the lumps of feces, solid or soft, that were found behind the houses, in the fields. It pushed on in the rivulets left by the rain, or remained in the ditches. The invisible invaders moved swiftly, riding into the belly of a child drinking water from a well, or of an adult putting his fingers in his mouth to remove a bit of tobacco stuck between the teeth, settling in the lower intestine, feeding and feeding without thought or regret, without memory of other places, without destiny or hope of redemption.

  In his book Pasteur read: There are records of its presence in ancient Sanskrit. In 1817 in Calcutta and Jessore it killed 5,000 British soldiers within two weeks. The troops of the Empire carried the disease to Nepal and Afghanistan, to Japan and Brazil. Time and again cholera had its way, its dreaded way, and then, havin
g run out its path, having fewer mouths to enter, reproducing less, dying itself for want of another warm watery place, it would stop. Until it would return.

  LOUIS THUILLIER TOOK a few days to visit his mother and father, who were disturbed that their son was traveling they did not know where. The papers in Amiens were full of news of the cholera in Alexandria. Louis did not want to alarm his parents, so he kept his destination a secret. Louis’s younger sister made him promise that he was not going to far-off Egypt. His mother understood that her son was an educated man, while she knew only what the nuns had taught her. She made no objections to his travel, but she stroked his sleeve, patted his hair, brought him clear water in a basin, cooked his favorite stew, brought him beer from the tavern, went into his room when he was sleeping and watched his chest move under the blanket. His older brother embraced him. His father embraced him. It was an awkward embrace, but Louis caught its meaning and felt an unmanly stirring in his chest. It was harder to leave than he had thought. But he did.

  HE TOOK THE train to Marseille and a carriage to the nearby port, where he boarded the Marie-Claire, which was carrying bottles of wine from Alsace, bundles of embroidered linen from the north, olives from the Pyrenees, and cheeses from the farms of Provence. It also carried Louis Thuillier, Emile Roux, Edmond Nocard, and their trunks, as well as their assistant, Marcus, who was sick to his stomach for the entire journey and was unable to provide the scientists with even a half hour’s companionship. Louis spent the journey at the ship’s rail staring at the rolling sea, watching the silver pathways of the sun’s rays slip across the ocean. He considered the matter of sunlight and the prism of color that he had studied in school. He watched for signs of fish beneath the surface. He saw the clouds’ shadow darken the sea as if it were held in the claws of a giant bird. He smoked a pipe. Roux’s wife had given him one with a deep bowl as a parting gift. It burned his lips, but he did not put it aside. He smelled the tobacco, and the scent reassured him that land waited. He liked biting down on the stem of the pipe hard with his teeth. He liked the sucking of smoke and the sense of himself, a man with a pipe, a man who was worldly, not to be dismissed easily, a man with things on his mind. He liked the feel of the smooth stem in his hands. He would get used to the burning and he would learn to master the thing, which now seemed to be either too hot or too quickly turned cold in his hand as the embers in the small bowl faded and died. Hour after hour on the deck he smoked his pipe, filling and emptying it, pushing it and pulling at it, waiting for it to cool, heating it up with a match, as he watched one lone gull loop in and out among the sails. He felt the chill in the air, the wind coming up the Seine. He thought of his mother and father, his sister and his older brother, in their small house in Amiens, the cat on the empty chair, the lamp lit for the evening, its small flame beating like a moth against the glass. He thought of the roses now appearing like a lifeless bramble in the small garden, dormant, waiting for the earth’s regular path to bring back the heat of day. A grown man did not long for the taste of his mother’s soup or think of her arms pouring a pail of water into a bathtub so she could scrub her child. It was time—past time, he told himself—that he let all the pictures of his mother float down to the corner of his mind that stored such things.

  Louis knew that failure of this mission was a real possibility. The microbe that caused cholera might be different from those he had already seen on his slides. It might not respond to any kind of coaxing. It might not appear in the waters or the fluids found in the city of Alexandria. It might not multiply when warm or cease to multiply when cold. It might, in fact, not be life at all, but rather dust or mucus or a chemical or a mineral whose name was unknown. He had no illusions. Intuitions, suggestions, belief itself could prove useless. All previous assumptions could be invalid. What was true of anthrax, what had caused the disease of beets, what kept the yeast alive or killed it, what plagued the sickly silkworm, may have nothing to do with what caused cholera. A scientist must be his own heretic.

  “We’re mad,” said Edmond one evening as the three men finished their evening meal in the captain’s quarters.

  “What do you mean?” asked Louis. “I, for one, am very sane.”

  “Why, then,” said Edmond, putting his spoon into the remains of Emile’s bread pudding, “are you traveling on this ship toward a city in which cholera waits? Most normal men would travel in the other direction.”

  Roux laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “We should immediately go back to France.”

  “If I die,” said Nocard, “my dogs will be inconsolable. Also my greedy brother will inherit my house and my land.”

  “In that case,” said Roux, “take care not to die.”

  Nocard raised his glass. “To all of us, a long life, and to my brother, nothing, let him make his own way.”

  Roux said, “Don’t worry, we’ll live to be old men, wishing we still had our teeth.”

  In the silence that followed, Louis considered the possibility of death, his own. He could not imagine it. He could not believe in it. What he did feel was fear, a vague, nasty dryness in his mouth.

  The expanse of water that lay between Marseille and Alexandria made him melancholy as he watched it for the five full days of the journey. He saw himself disappearing, leaving no trace, as the keel of the ship separated the waves, which instantly reunited behind the hull, leaving no sign in the sea that it had passed. It was hard for a man, perhaps especially a young man, to catch himself on the cusp of disappearance.

  These were Pasteur’s instructions to his team, in a letter dated August 5, 1883:

  i. Stay in the best hotel until you are settled. Use wine and other canned foods from France upon arrival. Have an alcohol lamp on a table at all time to heat glasses, silverware, and plates.

  ii. Find immediately a very adequate apartment with the help of the Consul. Get Marcus to cook for you, and follow all caution regarding food.

  iii. Try to establish a workspace in a hospital where both gas and water are in profusion.

  iv. Examine blood samples and their culture.

  v. Try to transmit the disease to animals by mixing suspicious matter with food.

  vi. Try microbe purification through inoculation of various animals until one species becomes sick without dying.

  Emile Roux read the instructions aloud to Louis and Edmond. Edmond said, “You would think we hadn’t worked with him. You would think we were schoolboys.”

  Emile said, “It’s his way of worrying about us. Don’t be insulted.”

  “I am not insulted,” said Edmond. “But I would rather leave his voice in Paris. Here we have our own responsibilities. Don’t read any more of his letters.”

  Emile smiled. He put away the letter. “You are sure you don’t want to hear the other fourteen points?”

  Edmond lay back on his bunk and closed his eyes. “I need a nap,” he said, and that was the end of that.

  3

  AT LAST, SHORE, the carts piled with goods rattling along the narrow planks of the docks, the strange sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, the gold sandy color of the buildings, the customhouse with its soldiers in uniform, braids and buttons glistening in the heat, and the donkeys with their long ears flattened back against their heads and the children with their hands out, crouching in the doorways, flies stuck to their encrusted eyelids. The smell was strange: dung, saffron, ginger, banana, human sweat, fish packed in barrels, waiting to be carried to the market. They saw turbans and loincloths, and sandals made of paper and wood. Bells were ringing, men were calling out numbers in Arabic and French and English, and sailors were tying up sails. A barrel of nails had spilled on the ground before him. Louis felt dizzy. Marcus placed the large carton they had brought on a wagon, and Louis hopped up on the front seat, with Roux and Nocard behind. Marcus rode standing on a rail in the back. They headed for the Hotel Khedivial at the corner of rue Cherif Pasha and rue Rosette, where they had taken a week’s lodgings.

  The wi
nd was blowing from the east, and with it came sand from the desert, whole grains of sand that stuck in Louis’s hair and nestled in the sleeve of his jacket and blocked his nostrils and made him cough. He put his handkerchief to his face. “Is it always like this?” he asked the driver, who unfortunately did not speak French. The hotel clerk explained as he took the papers Roux offered. “The east wind brings the sand. The west wind will make the air clear and cool. You will get used to it, messieurs,” he said, “if you stay among us awhile.” When Louis closed his mouth, he felt the granules of sand that had come to rest on his molars. “I need water,” he said to the clerk, who directed him across the lobby to a door with a beaded curtain, an arched opening. The three of them walked into the café. Marcus followed them, his eyes glazed. If he were a dog, someone would have patted him on the head; as it was, he sat at a table in the darkened room, repeating his uncle’s words as he departed Paris: “Travel is broadening for a young man. Shakes you up, it does.” He did feel shaken, but was he broadened? His stomach still heaved and he barely sipped at the absinthe drink that Louis had ordered for him. It sat on the table in a long thin glass, pale green, cloudy; the taste of licorice pleased him, but the burning in his esophagus did not. A boy who is not quite a man is not eager to know the outlines of his esophagus, the details of the act of eating, the route the food takes to his stomach. He prefers to think of himself as not so much a body with parts as a blossoming landscape, springtime in the pastures. He stared at his drink and grew sleepy. The men ignored him when he put his head on the cushion behind him and closed his eyes. The boy was with them to perform necessary labors, not to amuse them at the table. There were no other customers in the café. The lobby of the hotel had lacked the usual merchants with their bags of wares; also missing were the English ladies who traveled to exotic places when all else had failed them. The boy who sat on his heels behind a potted palm, waiting to bring a guest some cigarettes, a cigar, a towel to wipe the sweat off his forehead, was simply playing a game with a pebble he threw into a circle he had drawn with his fingers in the dust on the floor. A girl with an ostrich-feather fan was standing by the upholstered chair near the stairs, ready to make any guest of the hotel more comfortable. No one needed her attention.