Thomas Keneally - A River Town

“Have you seen my cat, miss?” Winnie asked.

“I think the fellows are looking after it.”

Dr. Erson himself led the men upstairs, past the door lined with metal. Its flakes of paint and indentations made Tim’s soul creak with melancholy. He could taste despair brownly on his tongue. Into a comfortless yellow corridor of tongue-and-groove timber. Erson addressed Ernie and Tim. “That is your bathroom there. Are you aware of Sister Raymond? She is a brave young woman who has volunteered to attend to plague cases.”

“Oh, Jesus,” said Tim. “At least take my receipt and cash books from my top pocket. My wife will need them.” He thought too of his letters. Winnie’s un-posted one as well.

Ahead, Sister Raymond said through her mask, “Of course, of course. All that.”

Dr. Erson said, “Place them by the door, Tim. We shall fumigate them and get them to your wife.”

Tim doubled back and laid the books by the door. Love letters to Kitty in a sense. But not enough joy in them.

Past three other doors down the corridor, a large whitewashed ward waited for him and Ernie to share. Camp beds set out. Two barred windows and the camp beds strictly separate and adorned with a scaffolding for mosquito nets. No nets were in place however, since mosquitoes were rarely found on top of this hill. All boards scrubbed. A place designed for perishing.

Everyone who wore a mask very busy now. Erson and the nurse discussing near the kitchen: refining their minds on the whole regulation of these perhaps-sufferers of bubonic. From the door of the large ward, Tim heard the two masked men clattering about, sloshing tubs of water into baths somewhere closer to the door, toting other heavy things elsewhere.

Then, Tim saw, they exited through the iron-girt door and brought back commodes. Thunder-boxes, shafts and handles affixed either side for carrying night soil away. They put such a contraption in a pantry across from the kitchen, for use by Ernie and Tim. What a divine punishment for political opponents: to have to share a shouse seat and smell each other’s water.

A second thunder machine. Located far down the corridor for use by the women.

In the men’s bathroom two tubs of steaming water waited, reeking of carbolic. Tim could smell the fragrance. One of the men came to the door of the ward and told him and Ernie to undress and lay out by the door the contents of their pockets, and any books and newspapers they had with them. Imagine, the letter returned to Winnie.

If it were a plaguey letter, the damage had already been done. He had already held it in his hands. Instead of putting it out, as he did all his other effects, including a wallet and the black Rosary his mother Anne had given him for his emigration, he slipped Winnie’s letter under his mattress.

Going to the bathroom, he was instructed to dip himself into one of the carbolic baths. Watched by the ambulance men, Tim unclothed, looking down at the auburn hair of his chest and legs and wondering why the failed and masked dairy farmers didn’t laugh.

Taking off his shirt across the bathroom—more than ten feet, Tim was pleased to see—Ernie revealed himself a chunk of a man. Certainly an ale-y belly, but grafted onto a body built for labour. Four square like the Army at Waterloo, hurrah! Gingery hair marked his heart and his prick and connected the two. So this is the boy Winnie had taken into her garden.

He wondered was he already fevered? All this Tennyson he’d read for Winnie’s sake washing up casually in his brain now.

Scalding in the tub, and something in the water burning at his skin. As long as the plague was scoured out by these means!

Opposite him, Ernie plunged his body into the tub with a sigh. Across the hallway in the women’s bathroom, Sister Raymond could be heard advising Winnie towards the hot water and soap.

“Take the bath, darling,” Ernie called musically from his own tub of water. “It’s for your good.”

He turned a tormented face to Tim and whispered, “She’s been hugging that bloody, flea-bitten cat half the night. Thank Christ though she always kept her distance from Primrose.”

Seen through the partially opened bathroom door, the ambulance fellows had begun working in the corridor, piling clothing into a wicker tub, Primrose’s night dress, Mrs. Malcolm’s chemise, his own shirt and drawers all tumbled in there promiscuously with Ernie’s tie and butterfly collar. The collected wealth of those infested.

“He left her nothing but a failed business,” people would say wisely as they watched poor little Kitty.

From the women’s bathroom, they could hear Sister Raymond saying, “Let me inspect you there, dear, to look for broken skin.”

Tim rose too, covering his privates with a freckled hand. Then to one of the white wraps which hung on the wall. He folded himself into it. His long feet stared bluely up at him. Flippers fit for a slab, he thought.

“Ernie,” he asked, “will your friends still blacklist me if I get the plague?”

Ernie shook his head and rose up urgently from his bathwater, his stub of a prick showing. Slug and angel of mercy.

“Poor Winnie,” Ernie said, his arse to Tim now as he gathered himself into a wrap. “What you call my friends… various of the Patriotic Fund gentlemen… I can’t undo the sort of work they’ve done on people already. As soon as you were suspected, Tim, they started writing off letters to the Sydney suppliers. You know, warning them your credit isn’t good. Your social credit as much as anything.”

Tim was struck still in his white shroud. Come on, Ernie! Was that possible? Something relayed so offhandedly. The ordinary power to ruin a man. On his big feet, Tim could say nothing. His tongue an orb of leather. You couldn’t pick the poisoned world apart with such a silly instrument.

“Your little store has a pretty hard row to hoe now,” Ernie stated. “I don’t approve of that sort of thing, Tim. A little campaign, without warning a man. Easy to get going though, don’t you see? But more so if a fellow is a bit behind on his payments and a bit strained for the ready.”

This knowledge couldn’t be contained. He knew that in this garment you could not exercise a rage properly, but that itself fed the rage. He rushed white-robed Ernie and pushed him up against the grooves of the wall.

“In that case, Ernie, God damn you! You’ve as good as murdered me, your whole murdering bunch!”

Ernie however wouldn’t give Tim the joy Tim wanted from him, the rage he could have punished. Wouldn’t even try. Ernie’s eyes slid sideways. He seemed too melancholy to be hit.

“Come, Tim. You’re not a solid sort, you’ve got to admit. Though I suppose the flea bites us both with equal venom. I could have forgiven even the dunning of Winnie.”

Tim stopped pushing so hard. You couldn’t push against such a pale talker.

“But those Australis letters, Tim. Baylor picked them at once. Boils down to this. A man who renounces his own society… who lies there at its heart pretending to patriotism… what can that fellow bloody well expect, Tim? What could you bloody well expect?”

Anger revived and Tim pushed Ernie back in place after all. “But I am not the sodding man.”

“Whatever you say, Tim. Everyone knows. It would have gone better for you had you appended your bloody name in the first place. Had the courage to do that… By the way, Tim, we are meant to be wearing masks aren’t we? Up this close.”

Tim let Ernie go and walked across the room. Just as well too, he decided then. Before Erson took any further false notion of him. “I suppose that was part of the bloody plan also then? That bloody inspector.”