Back to Wando Passo by David Payne (books to improve english txt) 📕

and despair, she finishes the mate. Now only three hundred ninety-nine more pairs.

And it’s on this thirteenth day, toward suppertime, that Addie feels a chill—particularly noticeable in her hands and feet—which she at first writes off to overwork. When Tenah comes to summon her to table, the maid finds Addie wrapped in coverlets and blankets, prostrate on the chaise, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. Paloma comes and lays a warm, dry hand on Addie’s brow, checks the inner lining of her lower eyelid.

“El paludismo,” she tells her son, and Addie sees the gravity of it in Jarry’s face.

Sending everybody from the room, Paloma lifts Addie’s nightclothes and loops a string around her waist. This has been dipped in some astringent liquid that smells like turpentine. In it, Paloma ties a knot.

“What is this for?” asks Addie.

“It will help,” is all she says.

The old woman prescribes a tea of branch elder twigs and dogwood berries. Addie finds this soothing, but despite the remedy, within an hour and a half, her chill has passed into a fever that rages through the night. Every inch of Addie’s flesh feels scalded; she writhes and twists, comfortable in no position. She throws the covers off and calls to have the windows raised, though they’re already up. Nor can she quench her thirst, however much she drinks. Finally, toward dawn, the fever breaks. She sweats so heavily, Tenah and Paloma have to change the linen twice. As the crews, still sullen-faced with sleep, board flats to cross the Pee Dee to the fields, Addie finally falls into a torpid sleep.

When she awakes, it’s late the following afternoon and Dr. Sims is holding her left wrist and staring at his watch. “I understand you spent an evening wandering the swamps two weeks ago, Mrs. DeLay,” he says in a mock-stern tone that instantly braces her. “I strongly disapprove. Most strongly. Your peregrinations have bought you a case of the remittent fever.”

“Do you mean…?”

“I mean the ague, madam,” he says, snapping shut the lid and slipping his watch into his waistcoat. “I mean, the country fever. That is what the Negroes and the old folks call it, or used to in the days when people still believed that it was caused by miasmal exudations from the swamp. The most advanced opinion nowadays—here and on the Continent—holds paludal fever to be caused by the spores of noxious plants, which breed from putrefying matter in the swamps. When the vapors rise at dusk, these deadly influences are carried to us and inhaled into the lungs. Our systems can tolerate a certain amount—a man’s more than a woman’s, a Negro’s more than a white’s, a native’s more than a visitor’s. You, regrettably, are susceptible on all three counts. The only known palliative—and, note, I do not say a cure—is sulfate of quinia. Unfortunately, Jarry informs me that Wando Passo’s quinine stores were lost at sea during your outbound trip. I myself, due to the damned blockade—and please excuse my French—have been unable, for a month and more, to procure it for my patients or myself at any price. There may still be some stores in Charleston, but, assuming you can find them, they are sure to cost their weight in gold, and are, in fact, more likely to cost their weight in precious stones. Your aunt, however, given her position, might be able to prevail on her connections….”

“I’m sorry,” Addie says, alarmed, “are you suggesting I repair to Charleston?”

“I’m suggesting nothing of the kind, madam. I’m suggesting—I am strictly ordering you, in fact—to remain exactly where you are, in bed. If it comes to that, you’ll have to send someone, though I must tell you, the idea of Jarry here, or any Negro, on the roads—which are presently filled with brigands—with a large sum of cash, is a recipe for misadventure.”

“I’m prepared to go,” he volunteers.

“It may not come to that,” says Sims. “The disease has several manifestations, not all of which are equally concerning.”

“Actually, I feel much better now,” she says, gamely sitting up.

“That, my dear,” says Sims, “is wholly immaterial. The illness follows an invariable pattern—from chills, to fever, to diaphoresis, sometimes called the hot-wet phase, followed, lastly, by a period of remission before the cycle starts again. The key question is the interval. If you go until this time tomorrow without relapse, then you have the less virulent form of the disease, and we can confidently hope to expel the materia morbi from your system with the means at hand, namely emetics, purgatives, and phlebotomy.”

“And if it recurs before that time?”

“We shall cross that bridge, my dear, when, and if, we arrive at it. The subtertian or malignant form of the remittent fever is far less common in these parts.”

“But if it is…what you said.”

Sims holds her stare. “Then Jarry will set out for Charleston on your fastest horse.”

“You’re suggesting I might die?”

“In my experience,” Sims says, “the subtertian or malignant fever, if untreated with quinine, is fatal in four cases out of five.”

It’s a moment before she fully takes this in. “Thank you,” she says, in a clear tone, with dignity.

For the first time in the interview, there is a flash of emotion in the physician’s eyes. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“You should rest now,” Jarry tells her, after Sims departs.

“Yes, I know I should. But Jarry…?”

At the door already, he looks back. “I’ll sit with you,” he says, with the ready intuition she remembers from the swamp. “Shall I read to you?”

“Would you?”

He reaches for her Byron on the stand.

“Not that, though. Not him. You choose for me. I’m so weary of my preferences.”

He briefly mulls, then leaves the room. As she waits, the male cardinal alights on a stout limb of the oak outside, and Addie watches as he sings.

“‘There was a roaring in the wind all night,’” Jarry begins,

“‘The rain came heavily and fell in floods;

But now the sun is rising calm and bright;

The birds are singing in the distant woods.’”

“This is familiar,”