The City of Mirrors Read online

  Power outages throughout Europe continue to hamper relief efforts and add to the chaos. As of Tuesday night, darkness extended from as far north as Denmark to southern France and northern Italy. Similar failures have been reported throughout the Asian subcontinent, Japan, and Western Australia.

  Landline and cellular communications networks have also been adversely affected, cutting many cities and towns off from the outside world. In Moscow, water shortages and high winds are being blamed for the unchecked fires that have left much of the city in ashes and killed thousands.

  “The whole thing is gone,” said one eyewitness. “Moscow is no more.”

  Also on the rise are reports of mass suicides and so-called “death cults.” Early Monday in Zurich, police officers, responding to reports of a suspicious smell, discovered a warehouse containing more than 2,500 bodies, including children and infants. According to police, the group had used secobarbital, a powerful barbituate, mixing it with a powdered fruit drink to make a lethal cocktail. Though the majority of victims appeared to have taken the drug voluntarily, some of the bodies had been bound at the ankles and wrists.

  Speaking to the press, Zurich Chief of Police Franz Schatz described the scene as one of “unspeakable horror.”

  “I cannot imagine the despair that led these people to end not only their own lives but those of their children,” Schatz said.

  Around the globe, huge crowds have flocked to houses of worship and important religious sites to seek spiritual comfort during the unprecedented crisis. In Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, millions continue to gather despite food and water shortages that have added to the suffering. In Rome, Pope Cornelius II, whom many eyewitnesses claimed appeared ill, addressed the faithful Tuesday evening from the balcony of the papal residence, exhorting them to “place your lives in the hands of an almighty and merciful God.”

  As bells tolled throughout the city, the pontiff said, “If it is God’s will that these should be the last days of humanity, let us meet our heavenly father with peace and acceptance in our hearts. Do not abandon yourselves to despair, for ours is a living and loving God, in whose hands of mercy his children have rested since time’s beginning and will rest until its end.”

  As the death toll rises, health officials worry that the unburied remains of the deceased may be accelerating the spread of infection. Struggling to keep pace, officials in many European locales have employed open pit graves. Others have resorted to mass burials at sea, moving the bodies of the deceased by freight cars to coastal sites.

  Yet despite the risks, many of the bereaved are taking matters into their own hands, using any available patch of ground to bury their loved ones. In a scene typical of cities around the world, Paris’s famed Bois de Boulogne, one of Europe’s most storied urban parks, is now the site of thousands of graves.

  “It is the last thing I could do for my family,” said Gerard Bonnaire, 36, standing by the freshly dug grave of his wife and young son, who had succumbed within six hours of each other. After fruitless attempts to notify officials, Bonnaire, who identified himself as an executive with the World Bank, asked neighbors to help him move the bodies and dig a grave, which he had marked with family photographs and his son’s stuffed parrot, a beloved toy.

  “All I can hope is to join them as soon as possible,” Bonnaire said. “What is left for any of us now? What can we do but die?”

  It took Michael a moment to realize he had come to the end. His body felt numb, almost weightless. He raised his eyes from the paper and looked around the compartment, as if searching for someone to tell him that he was mistaken, that it was all a lie. But there was no one, only bodies, and the great, creaking weight of the Bergensfjord.

  Good God, he thought.

  We’re alone.

  5

  The woman in bed 16 was making a ruckus. With each contraction, she released a volley of curses at her husband that would make an oiler blush. Worse, her cervix was barely dilated, just two centimeters.

  “Try to keep calm, Marie,” Sara told her. “Yelling and screaming won’t make it any better.”

  “Goddamnit,” Marie screeched at her husband, “you did this to me, you son of a bitch!”

  “Is there anything you can do?” her husband asked.

  Sara wasn’t sure if he meant to ease his wife’s pain or to shut her up. From the cowed look on his face, she guessed that her verbal abuse was nothing new. He worked in the fields; Sara could tell by the crescents of dirt under his fingernails.

  “Just tell her to breathe.”

  “What do you call this?” The woman puffed up her cheeks and blew out two sarcastic breaths.

  I could hit her with a hammer, Sara thought. That would do the trick.

  “For God’s sake, tell that woman to zip it!” The voice came from the next bed, occupied by an old man with pneumonia. He finished his plea with a spasm of wet coughing.

  “Marie, I really need you to work with me here,” Sara said. “You’re upsetting the other patients. And there’s really nothing I can do at this point. We just have to let nature take its course.”

  “Sara?” Jenny had come up behind her. Her brown hair was askew, lacquered to her forehead with sweat. “A woman’s come in. She’s pretty far along.”

  “Just a second.” Sara gave Marie a firm look: No more nonsense. “Are we clear on this?”

  “Fine,” the woman huffed. “Have it your way.”

  Sara and followed Jenny to admissions, where the new woman lay on a gurney, her husband standing beside her, holding her hand. She was older than the patients Sara was used to seeing, maybe forty, with a drawn, hard face and crowded teeth. Shocks of gray ran through her long, damp hair. Sara quickly read her chart.

  “Mrs. Jiménez, I’m Dr. Wilson. You’re thirty-six weeks along, is that correct?”

  “I’m not sure. About that.”

  “How long have you been bleeding?”

  “A few days. Just spotting, but then this morning it got worse and I started to hurt.”

  “I told her she should have come sooner,” her husband explained. He was a large man in dark blue coveralls; his hands were big as bear paws. “I was at work.”

  Sara checked the woman’s heart rate and blood pressure, then drew up the gown and placed her hands on her belly, gently pressing. The woman winced in pain. Sara moved her hands lower, touching here and there, searching for the site of the abruption. That was when she noticed the two boys, young teenagers, sitting off to the side. She exchanged a look with the man but said nothing.

  “We have a birthright certificate,” the man said nervously.

  “Let’s not worry about that now.” From the pocket of her coat, Sara withdrew the fetoscope and pressed the silver disc against the woman’s abdomen, holding up a hand for silence. A strong, swishing click filled her ears. She recorded the baby’s heart rate on the chart, 118 bpm—a little low, but nothing too concerning yet.

  “Okay, Jenny, let’s get her into the OR.” She turned to the woman’s husband. “Mr. Jiménez —”

  “Carlos. That’s my first name.”

  “Carlos, everything’s going to be fine. But you’ll want your children to wait here.”

  The placenta had separated from the uterine wall; that’s where the blood was coming from. The tear might clot on its own, but the fact that the baby was in a breech position complicated matters for a vaginal delivery, and at thirty-six weeks, Sara saw no reason to wait. In the hall outside the OR, she explained what she intended to do.

  “We could hold off,” she told the woman’s husband, “but I don’t think that’s wise. The baby might not be getting enough oxygen.”

  “Can I stay with her?”

  “Not for this.” She took the man by the arm and looked him in the eye. “I’ll take care of her. Trust me, there’ll be lots for you to do later.”

  Sara called for the anesthetic and a warmer while she and Jenny washed up and put on their gowns. Jenny cleaned the woman’s belly and pubic
area with iodine and bound her to the table. Sara rolled lights into place, snapped on her gloves, and poured the anesthetic into a small dish. Using forceps, she dipped a sponge into the brown liquid, then placed this into the compartment of the breathing mask.

  “Okay, Mrs. Jiménez,” she said, “I’m going put this on your face now. It will smell a little strange.”

  The woman looked at her with helpless terror. “Is this going to hurt?”

  Sara smiled to reassure her. “Believe me, you won’t care. And when you wake up, your baby will be here.” She positioned the breather on the woman’s face. “Just take slow, even breaths.”

  The woman was out like a light. Sara rolled the tray of instruments, still warm from the boiler, into place and drew up her mask. With a scalpel she cut a transverse incision at the top of the woman’s pubic bone, then a second to open the uterus. The baby appeared, coiled head-down in the amniotic sac, its fluid tinged pink with blood. Sara carefully punctured the sac and reached inside with forceps.

  “Okay, get ready.”

  Jenny moved beside her with a towel and a basin. Sara drew the baby through the incision, sliding her hand beneath its head as it emerged and hooking her thumb and pinkie beneath its shoulders. Her arms; the baby was a girl. One more slow pull and she came free. Holding her in the towel, Jenny suctioned her mouth and nose, rolled her onto her stomach, and rubbed her back; with a wet hiccup, the child began to breathe. Sara clamped the umbilicus, snipped it with a pair of shears, drew out the placenta, and dropped it into the basin. While Jenny put the baby in the warmer and checked her vitals, Sara sutured the woman’s incisions. Minimal blood, no complications, a healthy baby: not bad for ten minutes’ work.

  Sara drew the mask off the woman’s face. “She’s here,” she whispered into her ear. “Everything’s fine. She’s a healthy baby girl.”

  Her husband and sons were waiting outside. Sara gave everyone a moment together. Carlos kissed his wife, who had begun to come around, then lifted the baby from the warmer to hold her. Each of the sons took a turn.

  “Do you have a name for her?” Sara asked.

  The man nodded, his eyes shining with tears. Sara liked him for this; not all the fathers were so sentimental. Some seemed barely to care.

  “Grace,” he said.

  Mother and daughter were wheeled down the hall. The man sent his boys away, then reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and nervously handed Sara the piece of paper she was expecting. Couples who were going to have a third baby were allowed to purchase the right to do so from a couple who had had fewer than their legal allotment. Sara disliked the practice; it seemed wrong to her, buying and selling the rights to making a person, and half the certificates she saw were forgeries, purchased on the trade.

  She examined Carlos’s document. The paper was government-issue stock, but the ink wasn’t even close to the correct color, and the seal had been embossed on the wrong side.

  “Whoever sold you this, you should get your money back.”

  Carlos’s face collapsed. “Please, I’m just a hydro. I don’t have enough to pay the tax. It was totally my fault. She said it wasn’t the right day.”

  “Good of you to admit, but I’m afraid that’s not the issue.”

  “I’m begging you, Dr. Wilson. Don’t make us give her to the sisters. My sons are good boys, you can see that.”

  Sara had no intention of sending baby Grace to the orphanage. On the other hand, the man’s certificate was so palpably false that somebody in the census office was bound to flag it.

  “Do us both a favor and get rid of this. I’ll record the birth, and if the paperwork bounces back, I’ll make something up—tell them I lost it or something. With any luck, it’ll get misplaced in the shuffle.”

  Carl made no move to accept the certificate; he seemed not to comprehend what Sara was telling him. She had no doubt that he had mentally rehearsed this moment a thousand times. Not once, in all that time, had he imagined that somebody would simply make his problem go away.

  “Go on, take it.”

  “You’d really do that? Won’t you get in trouble?”

  She pushed the paper toward him. “Tear it up, burn it, shove it in a trash can somewhere. Just forget we had this conversation.”

  The man returned the certificate to his pocket. For a second, he seemed about to hug her but stopped himself. “You’ll be in our prayers, Dr. Wilson. We’ll give her a good life, I swear.”

  “I’m counting on it. Just do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “When your wife tells you it’s not the right day, believe her, okay?”

  At the checkpoint, Sara showed her pass and made her way home through darkened streets. Except for the hospital and other essential buildings, the electricity was shut off at 2200. Which was not to say that the city went to bed the minute the power was cut; in darkness, it acquired a different kind of life. Saloons, brothels, gaming halls—Hollis had told her plenty of stories, and after two years in the refugee camp, there wasn’t much that Sara hadn’t seen herself.

  She let herself into the apartment. Kate had long since been put to bed, but Hollis was waiting up, reading a book by candlelight at the kitchen table.

  “Anything good?” she asked.

  With Sara working so many late hours at the hospital, Hollis had become quite a reader, checking out armfuls of books from the library and reading them from a stack he kept by his side of the bed.

  “It’s a little heavy on the mumbo jumbo. Michael recommended it a while ago. It’s about a submarine.”

  She hung her coat on the hook by the door. “What’s a submarine?”

  Hollis closed the book and removed his reading glasses—another new development. With little half-moon lenses, cloudy and scratched, set in a black plastic frame, Sara thought they made him look distinguished, though Hollis said they made him feel old.

  “Apparently, it’s a boat that goes underwater. Sounds like bullshit to me, but the story’s not bad. Are you hungry? I can fix you something if you want.”

  She was, but eating felt like too much effort. “All I want to do is go to bed.”

  She checked on Kate, who was sound asleep, and washed up at the sink. She paused to examine herself in the mirror. No doubt about it, the years were starting to show. Fans of wrinkles had formed around her eyes; her blond hair, which she now wore shorter and pulled back, had thinned somewhat; her skin was beginning to lose its tightness. She’d always thought of herself as pretty and, in a certain light, still was. But sometime in the midst of life she had passed the apex. In the past, when she’d looked at her reflection, she had still seen the little girl she’d once been; the woman in the mirror had still been an extension of her girlhood self. Now it was the future she saw. The wrinkles would deepen; her skin would sag; the lights of her eyes would dim. Her youth was fading, easing into the past.

  And yet this thought did not disturb her, or not very much. With age came authority, and with authority came the power to be useful—to heal and comfort and bring new people into the world. You’ll be in our prayers, Dr. Wilson. Sara heard words like these nearly every day, but she had never become inured to them. Just that name, Dr. Wilson. It still amazed her to hear someone say it and know they were speaking to her. When Sara had arrived in Kerrville, three years ago, she’d reported to the hospital to see if her nurse’s training could be of any use. In a little windowless room, a doctor by the name of Elacqua quizzed her at length—bodily systems, diagnostics, treatments for illness and injury. His face showed no emotion as he responded to her answers with marks on a clipboard. The grilling lasted over two hours; by its conclusion, Sara felt like she was stumbling blind in a windstorm. What use could her meager training be to a medical establishment that was so far ahead of the homespun remedies of the Colony? How could she have been so naïve? “Well, I guess that about covers it,” Dr. Elacqua said. “Congratulations.” Sara was knocked flat; was he being ironic? “Does this mean I can be a nurse?�
� she asked. “A nurse? No. We have plenty of nurses. Report back here tomorrow, Ms. Wilson. Your training starts at oh-seven-hundred sharp. My guess is twelve months should do it.” “Training for what?” she asked, and Elacqua, whose lengthy inquisition was a mere shadow of things to come, said, with unconcealed impatience, “Perhaps I’m not being clear. I don’t know where you learned it, but you know twice as much as you have any right to. You’re going to be a doctor.”

  And then, of course, there was Kate. Their beautiful, amazing, miraculous Kate. Sara and Hollis would have liked to have had a second child, but the violence of Kate’s birth had inflicted too much damage. A disappointment, and not without irony, as day by day new babies traveled into the world beneath her hands, but Sara was hardly entitled to complain. That she should have found her daughter at all, and that the two of them should have been reunited with Hollis and escaped the Homeland to travel back to Kerrville to be a family together—miracle was hardly the word. Sara was not religious in the churchgoing sense—the sisters all struck her as good people, if a bit extreme in their beliefs—but only an idiot would fail to feel the actions of providence. You couldn’t wake up each day in a world like that and not spend a solid hour just thinking of ways to be grateful.

  She thought rarely of the Homeland, or as rarely as she could. She still had dreams about it—though, strangely, these dreams did not focus on the worst things that had happened to her there. Mostly they were dreams of feeling hungry and cold and helpless, or the endlessly turning wheels of the grinder in the biodiesel plant. Sometimes she was simply looking at her hands with a feeling of perplexity, as if trying to remember something she was supposed to be holding; from time to time she dreamed about Jackie, the old woman who had befriended her, or else Lila, for whom Sara’s complex feelings had distilled over time to a kind of sorrowful sympathy. Once in a while, her dreams were flat-out nightmares—she was carrying Kate in blinding snow, the two of them being chased by something terrible—but these had abated. So that was one more thing to be thankful for: eventually, perhaps not soon but someday, the Homeland would become just one more memory in a life of memories, an unpleasant recollection that made the others all the sweeter.