Deadly by Julie Chibbaro Page B

Soper asked if she fished the waters alone, or if she worked with anyone else along the bay who might have sold the family shellfish. The strange woman said she worked alone, she sold alone, and nobody got fevered from her fish. We checked the medical records in the neighborhood, and she was right. Families contracted consumption, apox, and polio, but no one else in Oyster Bay got typhoid this summer.
    We took the fish samples and visited two farms in the area. I’ve never had the opportunity to stand beside a group of cows before—the size and smell of them overwhelmed me. They seemed so odd, with their watery eyes, the flatness of their furred heads banging the stalls to draw my attention, their long tongues hanging out, mouths dripping with saliva. Chickens ran underfoot; low-bellied cats slinked after them. At the lamb stalls, looking at those pink-nosed innocents, a pang of guilt struck me. I thought of Anushka aiming her rifle at one of those animals, I thought of their skins being removed, their bodies being quartered and stewed. I wonder—are we spoiled, here in the city? I have eaten many a lamb stew, but I buy the stock at Mr. Barren’s. I never meet with the animal eye-to-eye.
    I think living so near the very creatures she consumes has changed Anushka’s life. It gave me a glimmer, being on those farms, of the vast difference between the life of a city girl and that of a country girl. How she’s had to adapt! What will my visit be like, I wonder.
    Will we have the same bond after so much time apart?

November 7, 1906
    I discovered the most incredible coincidence, one that blew through me like a tempest. In typing his old notes, I found that the first fever case Mr. Soper ever investigated took him to Cuba in 1898, the year of our war against Spain. I stared at the page when I read that.
    Mr. Soper and my father were in Cuba at the very same time.
    How shocking, that he might have crossed paths with Papa! I long to ask if Mr. Soper knows anything about him, but it’s not a question I feel I can voice—it’s too close, too private to discuss.
    I’m afraid it might seem like my father ran off and left us.
    I must calm this storm inside me. Mr. Soper could have some very important information about Papa—he could know where he is!
    I will wait—one day the time will come, the right time will come to ask him. Now is not that time.
    Mr. Soper has been working for years to keep epidemics at bay, even in the face of the impossibility of completely ridding humanity of disease. He wants me to learn from his previous examples by transcribing and ordering all of his past cases, which is quite a task, considering how poor the penmanship is of these records—small, tight lettering, words in every margin, drawn maps blotched with ink, all written by Mr. Soper himself. Such a perfect man in every other respect—looking at his handwriting, I feel as if I’ve discovered a large tear in a very expensive suit. No wonder he sought to hire a girl who knows how to use quill and typing machine.
    In Cuba my chief observed the men and realized that the yellow fever spread by contagion: The soldiers fought so closely together, sharing food and water, that they gave each other the sickness. That’s when Mr. Soper did something truly revolutionary: He set up a method of separation, keeping the sick apart from the healthy to check the growth of what is called bacteria. I am beginning to understand that it’s these bacteria, or germs, that cause disease. He called this method of germ-killing “anti-sepsis.”
    I do wonder what bacteria might look like, and how they might travel from person to person as in a contagion.
    There were other fever epidemics—thirteen hundred people ill in 1903, six hundred in 1904. I guess we are lucky to have only nine sick, none dead, in our typhoid case. Mr. Soper says he doesn’t think the household members of the Thompson family