The six days between Christmas and New Year's Eve went by in the blink of an eye. I went outside only a few more times, just to get some minor shopping done. The second day after Christmas, my daughter left with her boyfriend to the mountainside and I was left inside the house with only the presence of my mother-in-law to loom over me. At least I had a company of my two pe(s)ts to compensate. Seemingly animated by the spirit of Christmas, the two critters had stopped trying to murder each other, at least for the time being. In all honesty, they did not have much to fight about, since everything they could ever want was being delivered right in front of their noses. They had plenty of food to accommodate both of them, and the couch and the chairs inside the living room had plenty of real estate for both of their asses. My little pal Othello had given up his attempts at climbing up inside the Christmas tree, because he was so stuffed with food that he looked almost like a bloated up balloon, making him barely able to walk. Caught by the whole New year's season happenings, I had forgotten to check my email inbox on my laptop. The existence of the virus and the probability of an epidemic had been parked somewhere inside the dark recesses of my brain and had been temporarily ignored. China was too far away from Eastern Europe for me to begin to worry about what may happen. What I had not accounted for was the general globalisation and most of its "benefits".
I was very surprised, as you might imagine, when I opened my laptop and I saw the large series of messages that had come from Wu and from Alfie. I poured myself a glass of Cinzano with ice, then I installed myself in my armchair and began to read the newly received messages. Wu was terrified. In the last 3 days in Wuhan more than 500 people had already died. It seems that the Chinese government had failed to comprehend the true scope of the new pandemic. Wu told me that the Chinese press had barely mentioned at the beginning of December the possibility that there might be an unknown virus, and after the first victims had begun to crop up, there had been total silence from the press. Wu has sent me a mathematical model that had been developed by two of his mathematician fellows, which showed that the mortality was going to increase at an exponential rate, and that if things were going to propagate at the same rate they had been going so far, about half a million Chinese were scheduled to die within the next month. I was stunned about what I had found out, because Wu was not the kind of guy to get alarmed for no reason. He was a man of science, perfectly aware of the reality that was showcasing before his eyes. This got the thoughts inside my head boiling even further, because the press inside of my country had barely spoken about the outbreak in China as well. Everybody was sweeping a seemingly big problem under the rug like it was nothing.
I began to search on my laptop for news articles that might have shown up in the occidental press about the pandemic. I found a few of them, but none of them had the imperative or grave attitude that was required for such an outbreak. They were considered to be just another general set of news, dumped in the corner of a newspaper and then forgotten. After that, I began to read the messages from Alfie. Ever the conspiracy theorist, the jewish yank was even more panicked about the outbreak than Wu was, saying that the Illuminati had conjured up a new plague to wipe us all out from the face of the Earth. Of course, he said that about every major global fuckup, everytime something went wrong, that it sort of became a joke among us friends. Toast fell butter side down on the floor? The Illuminati did it, of course! Still, his finely tuned business senses had warned him that something was wrong, but I ignored his cynicism as one of his usual rants at the time. Little did I know how prophetic his words would be in the future. The Yank had found out from God-knows-where a lot of details about the new Chinese virus and about the imminent spread of said virus across the entire planet. I could understand Wu for being in a panic, because he was right inside the eye of the storm, but Alfie had nothing to do with the entire hubbub. Still, my general inertia as well as the onset of laziness that had been brought upon the household by the holiday break had made me ignore the warning signs, which were coming from both of my friends. I thought that Alfie was being his usual self and was transforming a mosquito into a dragon for no reason. Still, somewhere inside the back of my mind there was a little midget that was screaming his heart out "hey something is wrong around here". So I began to write a message on my laptop to my daughter, detailing what I had spoken with both of my friends, and telling her to take precautions and avoid close contact with other people if she could do so. I was aware that she was going to laugh into my face about the whole thing, yet I still felt that I had to do my duty as a father.
After that, I closed my laptop and went inside the living room. Here, big mama was listening undisturbed to the "Imperial" by Beethoven. The two fur balls were sleeping on top of each other on the couch. I set down in one of the odd chairs and I began to tell the old lady about what I had found out from my foreign friends. The old hag listened to me carefully and then only smiled. She told me that she had read something similar in one of the papers, but that she had not paid much attention to those news. She told me that she is much too old to give a rat's ass about anything like that, and that all of us have to die from something sooner or later. Her fatalist outlook amused me. Partially I was agreeing with her because it is true, us bipeds have to die for one reason or another. The “optimistic” attitude of my mother-in-law made me pay less attention to what I had found out from Wu and Alfie.
New year's Eve went by without a hitch. I spent the day inside my house alongside my two furballs and big mama. On the TV there was not much to be seen, the same absurd programs of variety being showcased on all channels. The TV channels were competing in mediocrity. Most True actors and entertainers had vanished from the entertainment landscape a long time ago, and the ones that still remained respected themselves well enough to not lower themselves to such pathetic standards that were being catered by the TV channels. Why can't there be someone to match Charlie Chaplin, Benny Hill, Mack Sennett, The Keystone Cops or Monty Python anymore? In fact, Benny Hill has been showcased during the holidays so many times that I already knew by heart most of the gags, yet the show still managed to elicit laughter from my family. I just could not find myself to be able to appreciate the dry humor of the millennial generation that had been created after the old giants of comedy had perished. I'm not one to judge harshly, but today's theater and cinema are so radically different to what used to pass as entertainment during my childhood, that they might as well be two different things altogether. True heavyweights of the industry have become fewer and fewer, replaced by teen showoffs or stone faced beauties that can't act to save their own lives. The intrinsic artistic value of the works has dropped, leaving only the flashy bits to bedazzle the culturally uninformed audience. The deadly moment of silence or the icy stare between two actors has been replaced by gloriously-costly visual effects and gratuitous amounts of explosions. But that's because the customer base has changed as well, and if there is one thing that entertainment nowadays knows how to do properly, is cater to the masses.
January rolled over and I began to resume my usual schedule, so I totally forgot to check the messages from Alfie and Wu. I only got around to look over the message list after 3 weeks. I had not been in a hurry to reply to them either, since I had already sent them the usual “season's greetings” emails, emojis included.
My daughter returned on the 8'th of January from the mountainside. She was scheduled to resume her work the next day. Even myself, a person who usually works from home, since I’m a writer who does not have a “fixed” schedule, was working hard on my new novel. My latest book had been published a few weeks before Christmas, so feeling less pressured by deadlines I decided to go out and visit some of my favourite bookshops. You may say “why bother, buy the book online”, but I feel that classic “paper” books still have a large charm of their own that just cannot be replaced by the digital media. That, or I’m “an old fossil stuck to hardcovers” that cannot keep up with the times, like my daughter says. In one of my favourite haunts which is a mix of library and vinyl music shop, I found a rare and unspoiled edition of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club” album from the Beatles. This thing had come out in 1967 and was one of the masterpieces from the Beatles. Back at home I had more than three hundred vinyl records of differently assorted quality music, as well some rare findings of leftover communist propaganda records, which played back nowadays were hilarious to listen to. My daughter always teased me, calling my pickup unit a “gramophone”, because it was quite an old, albeit functional model. After five hours of “hitting the town”, I arrived back home. I took a shower, and I noticed that my hair was growing a little bit too long for my liking. I could still remember the sergeant from my army days yelling at us new recruits back then: “if your hair can be grabbed by someone else, you left it too long, go shave it all off”. Of course, that meant all of us youngsters were shiny-bald most of the time, but we did not mind. I went out the door, and decided to see my barber Elias, my neighbor one floor below me, the guy which I had employed to do my “makeovers” for the last thirty years or so ever since I had married my wife and had moved into our current home. Elias was a special guy, who had lived life to the full. He has been a sailor in his youth, and has seen most of the world. His barber “side job” from his sailing days had turned into a full-time job, once he had retired his sea-legs and had married the lass living in the apartment under mine. He was a smart guy and you could talk about anything with the dude, because he had “seen it all” during his travel days. What bonded us even more was our love for all things furry, especially cats. He was the owner of the three ferocious persan brigands that had ganged up on Othello, and were decimating the local bird fauna. We had spent many evenings with a glass of Martell in hand, just talking about the misadventures of our furries. Due to his “turkish barbershop” hot towel shaving and hair cutting methods, I had never had to go to any public barbershop to get myself mutilated over there.
When I rang the bell on his door, I heard rushed footsteps, and then his wife opened the door for me in a hurry. She looked dizzy, and her eyes were red. Seeing me, she burst into tears again, and then delivered a brick-of-a-news to my soul. Apparently, Elias had died about two weeks ago. I was stunned at the new information, and was having a hard time processing it all. I mean, just a month ago, we had been joking together, talking about taking the cats to the vet next year. His wife invited me inside, and I sat down in an armchair and listened to what had happened.
Elias’ wife told me that they had spent Christmas over at some relatives at the countryside, among friends and family. After Christmas, Elias had come down with a fever and was having trouble breathing. After three days, seeing that he was getting worse, they had rushed him to a hospital, and he had been placed in the intensive therapy ward, under an artificial respirator. He had stayed like that until a couple of weeks after new years, when he had expired under the watch of the doctors, which had been helpless to aid him in any way. Aggressive viral pneumonia, with fluid buildup in the lungs, they had called it. He had been buried on top of his parents, and I had not even known about the funeral.
I was absolutely overwhelmed by the news. Elias had been the type of guy that could be run over by a tank and he would just come out from under the tracks, dust himself off and say that it was nothing. As far as I could remember, he had never been sick with anything. I tried to console the grieving widow as much as I could, but words had very little meaning at that point. I climbed back the stairs to my own apartment, then filled myself with the largest glass of Martell that I could find. I was still having a hard time running the new information through my processor, and it was not compiling right. I went into my room, then put on Schubert’s Serenade. Every time I felt sad, music would soothe my wounded heart, and pull me out of my melancholy. At that particular point in time I had not associated the two events with eachother, the death of Elias and the new Wuhan virus. It was only ten days later that the whole thing clicked into place inside my mind, when I had analysed Elias’ symptoms and had found them matching the symptom descriptions that had been sent to me by my pal Wu.
For the rest of the world, life was continuing linearly. After the whole winter holidays shop-then-get-fat spree, nothing major would happen in the life of the bipeds until Easter came around, when the malls and supermarkets would be taken over by the ravenous crowds of mindless shoppers, to fill their bellies with garbage products once again. I was stepping out of the house almost daily, and I had forgotten to check on my pals Wu and Alfie. Silence had fallen on our “communication spree”. Well, since I was alternating my time spent between going out and writing, I had spared little time to check my Inbox.
The turning point came on the 31’st of January, when something strange happened. I remember the day well, because it was the starting point of the entire ordeal my family would go through over the course of the next year. Climbing down from my apartment, I passed by the barber’s door. The door had been propped open, and there was a crowd of people inside. Wondering what could have happened again, I stuck my head inside, and was welcomed by the site of a coffin, then by Elias’s daughter-in-law along with his son, both garbed in funeral attire. The son told me that his mother, Elias’ wife, had also recently passed away, and that they were on their way to deliver the coffin to the chapel. I knew that it was impolite to ask, but I had this nagging feeling gnawing at my brain in the back of my mind, so I inquired the two about what had happened to Elias’ wife. They told me that it hadn't been any heart attack or stroke or anything the like, but that she had died in the same way that Elias had died, due to pneumonia. She had come down with a fever, bad coughing and shortness of breath, and the guys at the hospital had been similarly helpless to aid her in any way. I sent the junior my condolences on the behalf of my family and I promised him that I would come at the wake, later in the evening, at the chapel.
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What I had found out from Elias’ son had sent the cogs and wheels inside my head spinning. Comparing the symptoms of the two recently-deceased, which had been strikingly similar with the descriptions of the plague in Wuhan that I had received from Wu, it was very likely that it might have been the same disease. I decided to delay going into town and headed back home. All of the horrid descriptions of the sickness that I had received from Wu were parsing through my mind. The coincidence of a sickness having the exact same symptoms in more than one individual and ending in the same way was minimal. Plus, I was usually quite a cynical guy who never believed in “coincidence”.
Pouring myself another glass of Martell to “lube the mind gears”, I retreated to my room, sat on my armchair then began to abuse the laptop. Othello, being his entitled-kind-of-bastard usual self, lept into my arms and demanded that he be scratched. Obelix, not wanting to be outdone by the tomcat, was squirming between my legs. I was in no mood for the both of them, so I swiftly banished them to the living room, where I told my mother-in-law that I was going to write for the next few hours, so she should keep an eye on the pe(s)ts. I then told big mama about the death of the barber’s wife, and asked her to come along with me during the evening to the chapel. She told me that she would most undoubtedly attend the wake, since the dead woman had been her hairdresser for more than forty years, and they had been quite close. The two furries remained “exiled” to the living room, and I returned to my room. I began browsing the net about all of the recent pandemics like S.A.R.S. and EBOLA. The symptoms were matching S.A.R.S. by a lot, but I was wondering how the hell could S.A.R.S. have shown up inside of my country, especially inside Elias’s family. I mean, they hadn’t been eating bats or other critters that might have hosted the virus like the Chinese do. Something did not match up. After 3 hours, I had upgraded my virology knowledge by a lot. I had laid down the information I had known inside a table on a paper sheet, similar to a schematic. Yet, I could still not draw any pertinent conclusions. What I was missing was the source of the infection that had contaminated Elias and his wife. I had seen that EBOLA had spread as far as Texas when it had been rampant, but this was back in 2014, a long time ago. But neither Elias nor his wife had even left the country. Everything was a puzzle with missing pieces. It had already grown dark outside. The two furries were making a racket inside of the living room, since they had been left there alone-and-ignored for quite a while. I closed my laptop then I unleashed the beasts from their confinement. Both of them hungrily ran to the kitchen to their bowls and demanded tribute. After stuffing his face, the pooch demanded his “out” time. I put on my raincoat and my shoes, then I dragged the pooch out to the nearby park, which was only a few hundred meters away from my home. Othello had been enchanted by his dinner, and Obelix swiftly dragged me out of the apartment, knowing that there was no snow outside to impede our stroll. We wandered about in the park for almost an hour, a lot more than the usual quarter of an hour trip that he needed for deploying his strategic fertilizer package. In truth, I was just gathering my thoughts and time had just flown by without me noticing. Stuff wasn’t sticking well together inside my mindscape. I returned back home to my family. Obelix, being relieved of his internal pressure, began to harass poor Othello once again, and was trying to snag a dried meat piece from the tomcat’s mouth. Funny thing is that the meat piece was proving to be quite resilient, and both were tugging at the thing from opposite sides while spinning all over the place and trashing the landscape with their tug of war. My daughter and big mama were getting ready for the funeral wake, and were already adorned in black. I swiftly changed my clothes to a more sombre color as well, then we all departed towards the chapel. On the way, I bought some flowers and then we boarded a cab to get to the cemetery.
In under a quarter of an hour, we were in front of the chapel. Around the coffin there was a mass of persons, mostly relatives of the two recently-departed, sharing tales about the old couple. After a half an hour of listening in, I went outside to light myself a smoke at the designated smoking area. Four more men were already there, one of which looked identical to Elias. I found out from them that both the barber and his brother had spent Christmass together and that there had been several friends invited to the gathering as well. I asked the brother if any of the guests had been foreigners, or people that had come from the outside countries back home for the holidays. He told me that one friend of the family, a sailor, had attended the party alongside Elias. The sailor was a resident in the Capital City, and had come back only a few days before Christmas from a trip to China. Well, that got my bells ringing out loud again.
The old sailor had not shown up at Elias’ funeral, nor at his wife’s. He had vanished without a trace, and nobody had heard anything from him ever since Christmas. I asked Elias’ brother if he remembered the sailor’s name, or the ship he worked on. The guy looked strangely at me, but answered anyway. The sailor had shown them pictures of the ship and of the places he had visited, when they had been together. All four smoking men looked strangely at me when I took out my smartphone and I began noting down the details I had just received. I thanked them for the info, then I went back into the chapel. Now things were starting to make sense a little bit. The sailor had most likely been the infection vector, and had transmitted it to Elias and his wife. After a few more minutes, I excused myself after giving the relatives one more round of condolences, then left the chapel. As I was leaving, my daughter and my mother-in-law were giving me the stink eye, but I did not feel like explaining to them what I had on my mind.
As soon as I got to my apartment, I sat myself down in my armchair and began to frantically abuse the laptop. I searched for information pertaining to the ship that had been mentioned by Elias’ brother, and its itinerary. I did not find anything, since there was no real reason the search engine would give a shit about some random commercial ship. I thought of going about the whole thing from another perspective, so I decided to call one of my old friends, which was a well known surgeon and former head of the Ministry of Health, so he had some pull in the system. I had known the guy for decades, so he had not questioned my intent when I begged him to look for the sailor. I asked him to check with most known hospitals and see if any of them had received the sailor as a patient, and what had happened to him, telling him that the sailor was a friend that I had not seen if a few years, that we had gotten in touch again during this Christmas, but that he had vanished off the face of the Earth only a few days later and I was getting worried. I told him that he had most likely admitted himself to a hospital, but I had no idea which. My surgeon friend agreed to ask around, albeit a little troubled by my unusual request since it was bordering a gray area of the law to do so. I gave him the name of my sailor “friend”, and he promised that he’ll have his secretary make a few phone calls tomorrow morning. I also left him a general description of the sailor and his age, just in case he had been brought to the hospital unconscious and they had not been able to tell who he was. Something was telling me that the sailor wasn’t around in this world anymore. It was obvious now that the sailor had brought the killer virus with himself from somewhere abroad, and had spread it into Elias’ family at the gathering. I’m not some Hercule Poirot, but I still have a decent intuition when it comes to things like these.
I was sitting on pins and needles for the whole morning until I received news from my surgeon friend. All throughout the morning I had vacuumed the net for all of the info about S.A.R.S. and EBOLA, browsing over many wiki articles and youtube videos, to figure out how this new virus might be working its magic. In the occidental press more and more articles were popping up related to the virus. At least the guys outside had the decency to not tuck their heads in the sand like an ostrich and pretend nothing was wrong, which was the general attitude prevalent in my country. The horrible mathematical model “prophecies” I had received from Wu had turned out to be quite accurate, yet would pale in comparison to the disaster which would come only a few months later.
I did not manage to get much sleep that night. Too many bad thoughts were churning inside of my head. I would not usually panic over a virus outbreak half a world away, but the problem was that it was NOT halfway across the world anymore, it was right in my backyard. I had been in touch with both Elias and his wife during the time when they had been infected, not to mention their relatives. There was a possibility that I was now a carrier, and the worst thing I could think of was that I had given the virus to my family members, pets included. Speaking of the two furries, they were giving me a wide look as I was making my coffee. They had been strangely tempered with their antics, like they almost understood the importance of the event. As morning came, I took out little Obelix for his morning stroll in the park. The winter air was helping to clear my mind, as the dog was “marking” every stump he could find in his path. Again, we spent more than an hour walking around the park, much to the satisfaction of the barker, who seemed undaunted by the presence of any other larger dogs than himself. In the end, we got back home, and I decided on a whim to whip off a chain of smoked sausages I had lying around, as a makeshift breakfast. After the sausages had been thoroughly fried and their aroma had filled the whole house, I shared one of them with Obelix. He was giving me an incredulous look, almost asking me “For me? Are you sure? Are you OK man? You are usually a cheapskate, so how come you want to sausage me? Should I call a lawyer and have you write your will?”. Considering the events that would follow, he had almost been right. After breakfast, I went and took a shower to wash off the sweat from the night before, then I resumed my abuse of the laptop for the next few hours.
Mid-day had come, so I called my surgeon buddy once again. Helpful as ever, he had indeed asked around about the sailor, and had found out that the dude had been admitted to a section of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Sadly, the sailor had died around January the third, right after New Year’s. Nobody had come to check on him, and he had died due to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, so the doctors had decided to send the body off for cremation, to minimise the risk of infecting other people with whatever had killed him, since they had no idea what the actual disease had been. The surgeon gave me the number of the Chief of Staff at the Tropical Disease Hospital, in case I wanted more details, letting the doctor know that I was an old acquaintance. I thanked the surgeon profoundly, telling him that I owe him a bottle of Cinzano. Laughing, he told me to bring along my latest novel signed with a dedicated autograph as well.
After ten minutes, I called the Chief of Staff from the Tropical Disease Hospital. I introduced myself, and then asked him to spare me a few minutes for a meeting, so I might discuss the issues pertaining to the sailor. He told me that he could see me tomorrow at about the same hour, when the clinic was less crowded and we could take our time to talk. I thanked him for giving me his time, and agreed to meet up. After that, I took some time to message Wu, and tell him about what had happened, detailing the three recently deceased persons. I was confirming my doubts, and filling the gaps in my knowledge. He told me that the symptoms of the deceased had been spot on with the Wuhan virus, and that I should maybe think about alerting the authorities, to prevent a further spread of the virus. After the conversation ended, I laid down in my bed and slept like a baby.
Next day, big mama woke me up right before the hour of the scheduled meeting. I shaved, showered and then I grabbed a bottle of Martell from my “secret stash” to offer as tribute. While I was looking inside the box containing my stash of booze, the two critters were frolicking all over the carpet in the living room, leaving hair everywhere. After picking a copy of my latest novel and writing a dedication for the Chief of Staff, I left the apartment and headed for the Tropical Hospital under the questioning gaze of my mother-in-law, who had to know everything. I had often told her that she should have joined the CIA or the KGB.
As soon as I got to the streetside, I climbed into a cab and I headed for the Tropical Disease Hospital, all the way on the other side of the city. I reached the Hospital right at the appointed time which fit me just fine, since I was not the kind of guy that liked waiting in front of closed doors for no reason. I climbed the main stairs, then a guard asked me for my I.D. and the reason for my visit. Since the whole place was a Hospital for weird and usually highly-contagious diseases, they had more strict rules about who came in and out of the place. The guard told me that the Chief of Staff was waiting for me, and pointed me to the direction of his office which was on the second floor. I was forced to wear a sterilised overcoat and shoe mufflers, then I was led to the Chief by a nurse. The guy welcomed me warmly, and told me to sit down wherever I liked. In turn, I offered him my latest novel, and the bottle of Martell, which he gladly took and even opened on the spot, so he could pour the both of us some shots. It seems he was also a fan of the brand, so we began to discuss my sailor trouble over a glass of Martell cognac. I told him about the whole barber-sailor conundrum, and about my fears that came attached with the whole thing. I also told him about my friend Wu and his predictions. He was seriously pondering the implications of what I was telling and did not dismiss me as some worrywart. He asked me to keep a calm mind about the whole situation, even though he did agree with what Wu had described. In under five minutes, he had asked for a nurse to search for the sailor’s admittance files, so we were staring at the contents. Everything was getting confirmed, and we were both amazed at the findings. I asked the Chief if there was any sort of test available at hand that might confirm or deny the presence of the virus, especially since I had been in contact with several “suspicious” persons. He told me that it was impossible to get at that particular time in the country, since it had barely been made available even in China, and that it would take quite some time before testing would become “a thing” in my country. He understood very well what the whole problem was about, and the risks involved, but had no way of helping me. He did ask me to give him Wu’s mail address though, so that they might exchange professional advice. Of course, I got them in contact immediately. Upon my departure, the Chief told me to call him back immediately if any symptoms show up, and promised me that as soon as the first batch of tests arrived, I would have top priority, since I was one of the first persons to report the problem. After one hour of discussions and one empty bottle of Martell, I took another taxi and headed home.