Nicholas turned around. He stared at this pathetic, blood-smattered figure, and he shook his head once again. 'I can't kill you, Herbert. You're indestructible. You're in movies, aren't you? Two magnificent movies. It doesn't matter if your body is dead, does it? Every time those movies play, you'll come back to life again.'
'Nicky,' said Herbert wretchedly, 'I need to be punished.'
'You are being punished,' said Nicholas, quietly. 'Every day of your miserable life, you're being punished. You don't need me to do it. Only one thing will ever let you off the hook, Herbert, and that's the end of civilization. When there are no more people to go to the movies, and the last picture-house closes down, that's when you get your freedom.'
Herbert lowered his head. In a scarcely audible voice he said, 'If that's true, Nicky, then I pray God that civilization comes to an end before I do.'
Nicholas walked back and rested his hand on Herbert's shoulder.
'The way things are going these days, God might even grant your wish. Now, let's go and get you cleaned up, hey?'
Across the hallway, in apartment 109, Kenneth Garunisch was the only person in Concorde Tower who was concerned about the plague. He was sitting at his cluttered desk, trying to fix his necktie, watch television, and talk to his union attorneys on the telephone, all at the same time. He spoke with the steady relentlessness that had earned him the nickname of 'Bulldozer', and he was angry.
'This thing broke out last night, Matty. How come they only told me this morning? Because I have a right to know, that's why! What do you mean, emergency? I don't care what they call it.'
Through the open hatch in the sitting-room wall, he could see his wife, Gay, in the kitchen, fixing cocktail snacks with their black maid, Beth. She was warbling Strangers in the Night as she popped little curled-up anchovy fillets on to crackers and cream cheese. Beth, silent and fat, was peeling prawns.
'You'd better believe it, Garunisch said, in his hectoring voice. 'I got a call from two of my guys at the hospital. Plague, that's what they got. The Black Death.'
He put his hand over the receiver and sighed. He was a short, stocky, bullet-headed man with an iron-gray crew-cut. His eyes were pale and uncompromising, and there was a prickly roll of fat at the back of his neck. He spoke with a monotonous harshness, like the retreating sea dragging pebbles down the beach. He was Germanic and hard-bitten, and he was president of the Medical Workers' Union — a union he had started himself in 1934, with four other hospital porters from Bellevue — and which was now a powerful, nut-cracking international with a billion-dollar fund and a two and a half million membership.
'You hear that? Plague. They don't know what kind, and they've got people dying like flies. So how come I only found out this morning?'
Gay stuck her heavily-lacquered blue-rinsed curls through the serving hatch.
'What did you say, Ken? Did you say something?'
Kenneth waved her away. 'I was talking to Matty. They got some kind of plague in Miami. Can you believe that?'
Gay, with her head still stuck through the hatch, blinked her eyes as if she was trying to work out whether she could believe it or not. Finally, she said, 'What's plague?'
Kenneth ignored her. His attorney was asking him what he intended doing about Miami.
'What do you think I'm going to do? I want to protect my members. If my members have to handle people with plague, they're gonna catch it themselves, right?'
His attorney guessed that was right.
'In which case,' went on Garunisch, 'I suggest you call the health department down at Miami and tell them it's double time or nothing, and all hospital workers got the right to refuse to handle plague cases, without penalization, recrimination, or loss of benefits.'
His attorney was silent for a while. Then the lawyer suggested that under the circumstances, union action might be construed as taking immoral and unfair advantage of a medical emergency.
'Listen,' grated Garunisch, 'you just get on to that telephone to Florida, and you tell those health folk that if they want my members to risk their lives, they're gonna have to pay for it. I don't want no arguments, and I don't want no fuss. Now do it.'
He clamped the receiver back on the phone, and shook his head. 'Immoral and unfair advantage,' he repeated, sarcastically. 'You get some underpaid Cuban hospital porter to risk his life, and you don't expect to pay him no more? Immoral and unfair advantage, my ass.'
Gay popped her head through the hatch again. 'Did you say something, Ken?'
Garunisch stood up and walked over to the kitchen, tying up his necktie as he went. It was a very lurid necktie, with purple flowers and greenish spots. It had been an expensive gift from Gay.
'Was that something serious, dear?' said Gay, rinsing her hands. 'You look awful sore.'
Garunisch reached over to pilfer a smoked-salmon canape. 'It's just the usual,' he said, with his mouth full. 'They got some kind of epidemic down in Florida, just like the Spanish influenza, and they're expecting the porters and the drivers to handle the patients without any compensation for extra health risk.'
'That's awful,' said Gay. She was a small, busty woman with wide-apart eyes. 'Supposing they caught it? Supposing their children caught it?'
Garunisch looked around the expensive, glossy, Colonial kitchen, with its antique-style tables and chairs. It still gave him a sense of justice and satisfaction, this condominium. For the first time in his life, he owned a luxurious home, decorated just the way that he and Gay had wanted, and he could turn around to all those capitalist palookas who had tried to crush him, and grind him and his union out of existence, and he could raise two rigid fingers.
'That's right,' he said absent-mindedly. 'Supposing their children caught it.'
Gay said, 'Beth, haven't you finished those prawns yet? We still have the fondant frosting to make.'
Beth peeled as quickly as her fat fingers would allow. 'I don't have too many more now, Mrs. Garunisch. Just as soon as I'm through, I'll make that frosting.'
'Well!' said Gay Garunisch, turning back to her husband. There was a pleased little smile on her face. 'Our first social event at Concorde Tower! Isn't it exciting?'
Kenneth looked up. He was miles away. 'It's terrific, Gay. I just wish we didn't have this plague business hanging over our heads. It really kind of worries me.'
'It's not hanging over my, head,' said Gay. 'I don't even know what it is.'
Garunisch took another canape and pushed it into his mouth whole. 'Plague is a deadly epidemic disease,' he mumbled, spitting out crumbs. 'They used to have it back in the Middle Ages. These days, it's pretty much under control. But, you know, people can die when they get it, and that's serious. The news said that thirty or forty people were already dead.'
Gay Garunisch was taking off her apron. 'Thirty or forty's not many,' she said, looking for the pepper. 'Why, more people die in a single plane crash.'
Garunisch looked at her patiently for a moment. He loved her, but he sometimes wondered how she could be so totally impervious to everything that went on around her. She lived in her own self-contained world of cocktail parties and celebrity luncheons, and the real events of America escaped her attention.
'Plane crashes,' he said, very gently, so that he didn't sound sarcastic, 'are not catching.'
The doorbell rang. The chimes were a copy of the bells of Amory Baptist Church, which used to ring outside Mrs. Garunisch's home when she was a little girl. Beth looked up from her prawn-peeling, but Kenneth moved to get it.
He opened the door with a fixed grin on his face, and welcomed his first visitors. It was Mr. and Mrs. Victor Blaufoot, from the apartment above theirs. They had met in the elevator just the other day, and Kenneth, in an expansive mood after successful overtime talks, had invited the Blaufoots along to their condo-warming.
'Mr. Bloofer, isn't it?' said Garunisch, showing them in. 'Would you like something to drink?'
'Blaufoot,' corrected the guest. He was neat and small, in a shiny blue mohair suit, with gold-rim spectacles, and a large nose. Mrs. Blaufoot was even smaller, in a dark green dress and a fur stole.
Kenneth Garunisch laughed. 'I'm sorry. I'm usually terrific with names. This is my wife, Gay.'
There was a lot of hand-shaking and uncomfortable laughter. Then they all stood there and looked at each other.
'I hope we're not early,' said Mrs. Blaufoot. 'The truth is, we don't have very far to come.'
