Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

It had taken Franklin Lopez half the afternoon to equip himself from the pickings of Margaret’s compound for their journey, and only half a moment, once he was certain that there was nothing else of irresistible benefit, to set a flame to Margaret’s family home, as she had requested, and do her folks the honor of cremation. He was more than fifty paces away, still negotiating the rutted lane with his long barrow, before he heard the roof straw whoosh and the timbers crack. And he was a hundred paces away before the smell of fire replaced the stench of bodies and he began to feel the heat himself. The wind pressed smoke on him, but he was glad of that, glad to have his lungs filled up with something other than the heavy odor of death, glad, too, to have the corpses of those two early risers who had fallen on the steps of their oven house far from their beds hidden from him by the smoke. The wind also helped to spread the fire, carrying the burning chaff from Margaret’s roof across the alleyways first to the family outhouses and then into the yards and compounds of other houses, the timbers screeching and the flames leaping from thatch to thatch like nightmare cats.

Franklin hastened forward with his load to reach the outskirts of the village before the fire caught up with him. His size and strength mattered now. He could not afford to rest or be distracted by his problems. Living flesh burns just as well as dead. But when he reached the large guesthouse with its adjacent dormitories in a wide lane that he had not walked down before, he knew at once where his brother must have spent his night in Ferrytown. The first dormitory that he entered was where the women migrants slept. It took him only moments to recognize what kind of clothes were hanging over the bed ends — too voluminous and colorful for men — and to retreat outside into the deafening air.

Franklin found the men inside the second rest-house hall. The first room had the boys in it. The larger dormitory was still dark inside. The odor of decay mixed a little with smoke was striking and immediate. But it took a while for Franklin’s sight to adjust. He moved forward slowly between the three lines of beds, all pushed close together, head to toe, checking on the bodies there through squinting eyes: two dead men in every bed, their clothes and best possessions scattered on the floor. He did not expect to recognize a face. The light was too gloomy. Too many heads were turned and buried in the pillows. Too many men had curled up underneath the bedclothes and were only shapes. No, Franklin was looking for a very bulky corpse, one that would deserve the nickname Mighty. But there wasn’t a single body nearly large enough. Nobody’s feet protruded from the bed end.

Oddly, at the very tip of the dormitory, one bed, set sideways to the others, was empty, the clothes pushed back tidily. A pair of huge shoes was turned upside down and fitted over the wooden bed knobs. They looked a lot like Jackson’s. And certainly that had been Jackson’s habit, too, to leave his shoes upturned on his bed head. “Ready for the fray,” he used to say, whenever Ma asked him to remove them and leave them “where they belonged,” under his bed “like anybody else’s.”

Franklin moved toward the bed, his heart tight in his chest, his throat suddenly so dry and papery that it felt as if it might tear if he dared to swallow. But he had only a moment to wonder if the shoes he seemed to recognize were really Jackson’s. The far end of the dormitory, around the door, ruptured into flames and then began to produce spurts of smoke from both the rafters and the floorboards. The heat was brutal, ruthless, and swift. It gobbled up dry wood. Franklin left the shoes to burn. He found the nearest shutter, pulled it open, dropped into the smoky lane, and — none the wiser, and even a little less certain than before that Jackson was already dead — ran along the outside of the flame-licked dormitory to save his barrow from the fire.

Most of the little group of emigrants were at the ferry point, still debating what to do about their crossing, when the first smoke reached them, burned wood and roasted meat. The stink put them into a fresh swivet. Now what? What else could go wrong? How on earth would they escape a choking without a ferry and a ferryman? The river was too wide and swollen. What could they do? Wait for the winter to ice the water over? A few families who had circled up their carts on the drier meadows at Ferrytown’s eastern edge began to pull their pitches again and move away from the fire. The wind was favorable, but if it came round to the west a little more and they stayed where they were, there was a danger that they might either be driven into the river by smoke or, if the vegetation caught, be burned alive, trapped between the water and the fire. They would have to move out farther with their panicking horses and their vulnerable wooden carts and join their comrades on the fireproof shingle beach.

But despite the disturbing stench, none of them truly feared the fire that Franklin had started. It seemed right, in fact — respectful, even — that the town should become a crematorium. The fever would be wiped out by the fire. The flames would allow the passage of the dead. Why should that bother them? The past was burning at their backs. The fire was in the west and not ahead. Hadn’t that always been the prophecy — that mother would abandon daughter to the ashes, that father and son would depart from one another in flames, that before the doors of paradise could open there would have to be a blackened, hot, and utter silence in America, which could be quenched only by the sea and would be survived only by the people of the boats?

When Franklin staggered by with his loaded barrow, coughing on the smoke, his shoulders ashy, his ear still bleeding, nobody offered any help. He was the young man in the unforgettable coat, a companion to the fever victim, and should stay away, no matter if that meant remaining on the edges of the town, where it was becoming difficult just to breathe, let alone lift and push heavy goods. It didn’t matter that the shaven-headed woman was no longer in his company. The migrants kept their distance, waved him on, warned him to keep away, showed their staves and bows, and picked up the stones and shingle that they would use again if he came too close. They did their best to avoid even catching his eye, for that also might be enough to catch the flux.

But in a sense they all already had a fever just as murderous and treacherous: emigration fever. It was burning them up and driving them on. This was one of those clarifying points in their migrations (during which the push of here and the pull of there had been equally persuasive) when any remaining instinct to return to their homes went up in smoke. Here was where disease was in command. But there’d be no fever where they were going, would there? They wanted to believe it. There’d be no ague or calenture, no tick disease or cholera, no canker or malaria. Why, they had persuaded themselves, illness would be so rare on that side of the ocean that people would travel for a day just to watch a man sniff.

Margaret was almost insensible when Franklin finally reached her late in the afternoon. Her fever had returned, taking advantage of her tiredness. She’d done too much already that day. She had just about enough energy for growing hair, but little else. Franklin simply lifted her — she had no weight — and put her on the boat barrow next to the pot of mint, together with the few possessions they had brought down from the Pesthouse earlier that day.

“We have to get away,” he said, although he suspected she might already be too feverish to hear him. “It isn’t safe. It’s…” He raised his hand to signify that there were too many unsafe things to list — the fearful, living emigrants with stones; the fire and smoke that, once they had the height and confidence, would stop only at water; the spores and pollens of disease; the ghosts of all their families which, riding on the stallions of grief, might at any moment come to lasso any stragglers; the fast-approaching dusk; the haunting possibility that Jackson might discover them.