The spreading plague

“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution” (opening lines of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe).

Something wicked this way comes, and its name this time is Zika, a pathogen virtually unheard of in the Americas a year ago. See it popping up in our fair cities, one victim here, one victim there. But the inveterately allegorical-minded may find a parallel here between the latest virus incarnation and another pestilence abroad in our land of a nonbiological variety.

Albert Camus, in his 1947 novel The Plague, ostensibly wrote of a cholera epidemic in a town in Algeria. But no one believes he was not really speaking of the penetration of Nazism in France during World War II and the fascinating disparate reactions of the populace to their imminent overtaking. And no one believes he was not making an even broader point about how men of all times react in the face of invasions of their fragile peace.

After a description of the Mediterranean town and its inhabitants’ hidebound habits, the story opens with the narrator of the book, Dr. Bernard Rieux, discovering underfoot the soft, bloated body of a dead rat in the apartment complex where he lives. The crotchety concierge defensively denies there is a problem. It is just one rat.

A virus is an interloper seeking an unwary cell, … and having penetrated … [it] perpetuates its evil plan of conquest until all that is of goodness and of wholesomeness is dead.

Soon more lifeless rodents are found but are explained away. The comment of Rieux’s mother is not uncommon: “It’s like that sometimes.” (Note to the modern reader: A little outbreak in a Boston marathon, a little outbreak in a cartoon office in Paris, a little workplace violence in San Bernardino, a lone ranger cop shooting in Philadelphia. Nothing to see here.)

Even when warnings are finally published in Oran, in obscure corners of the newspaper or buried among a collage of competing announcements on public posts, they are optimistic and downplay the menace: Be sure to exterminate rats; report mysterious fevers; observe commonsense rules of cleanliness. (Public service advisory to the modern reader: Report suspicious activity; refrain from racial profiling.)

Prince Prospero of Poe’s “Masque” invites “a thousand hale and lighthearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court” to the refuge of his masquerade ball in an abbey. (Note to the modern reader: Compare to Beltway insiders who fiddle while Rome burns, who dither and blather and feather their nests while terrorists may be hiding among the streams of immigrants to our shores. See Camus’ Monsieur Grand, who is more finicky with his oratorical skills than concerned about the condemned citizens of Oran, endlessly overworking the beginning of his manuscript and healing the sickness lightly, coining clichés like “his secret grief” and “his grim resolve.”)

The conscientious Dr. Rieux’s next obstacle is bureaucratic red tape. His earnest recommendations run into the refusal of others even to put a name on the problem (as if one can fight against an enemy one cannot even name). Colleagues insist there is no definite proof that the disease is infectious. (Note to the modern reader: There is no proof that “radicalization” of citizens is contagious, and to say so is to be a xenophobe.) In the lull between attacks, concern evaporates as fast as a jet’s white contrails. The Paris bombing we thought for half an hour to be a day we would never forget, we have forgotten. Apologies to Pharaoh.

What is the plague that struts our land? Who can name it? Who will dare? A virus is an interloper seeking an unwary cell, and by some subterfuge attaching to the host; and having penetrated, multiplying its vile code of death. It thus perpetuates its evil plan of conquest until all that is of goodness and of wholesomeness is dead. Which is the allegory, and which the real? Is it Zika, or foreign hotbeds of radicalism? Or is “the plague” a sickness in the soul, a rampage only our return to God can halt?

Email aseupeterson@wng.org