space beyond. A tent large enough for a circus lay ahead and the matron led them past other armed military policemen and through a flap left open for ventilation. The place seemed crowded by contrast with the other tents erected around Mena. There were perhaps seventy men sitting on their beds—some bored, some raising younger, softer faces of the kind a person could guess had come from the city, from work indoors. These were suburban cherubs still, untempered by military exercises and desert maneuvers. About ten orderlies moved around the tent on sundry duties. Each of the patients here wore a white armband to declare some purity they had violated. Many held their roll-your-own cigarettes as the nurses passed across their gaze. But they did not cheer as soldiers did if you met them in the bazaars—no normal hellos or queries were called out. In any case, between the nurses and them was located a barrier of five tables, as if the men were to be interviewed.
The matron led the nurses now into a spacious, screened-off area where two large pans boiled above Primus stoves. Orderlies plied their lifters to extract syringes and needles and laid them on trays beside bottles of solution and cotton wool and medicinal alcohol. The matron made the smallest deniable nod to the bottles of clear solution and the rest of the equipment marshalled on the counter. She said, I know you will show no levity in dealing with this grievous business. The colonel’s orderlies should ideally do this work but despite his high opinion of them neither will they do it well nor will they be as safe from themockery of the men—or the men from theirs. It is bad enough that orderlies should be the ones who treat the lesions and chancres!
The two orderlies in the canvassed-off space worked on, extracting syringes and wide-bore, punishing needles from the makeshift autoclaves. They did not seem to notice the slur uttered against them.
You are not deaconesses but military nurses. What you see here, you must see as a military crime. It is not your business to display distaste on the one hand or familiarity on the other.
She weighed them with her eyes to make sure they bore the right degree of somberness. The matron spoke as if she had bought up all the real estate of comment on the issue. She continued.
Either way it is a dosage of 8 drams solution per patient. Those men wearing a tag marked “G”—and I am sure I do not have to explain what that stands for—will attend the furthest table to the right. The patients will approach in columns of two and receive injections of novarsonobillon. As for the others, have you heard of solution 606?
Salvarsan? asked dutiful Leo.
All the nurses knew of 606. If they had not administered it, its myth had fallen over them. Syphilis was the wages of sin and 606 and a course of mercury pills might relieve the sinner of paying those wages fully. Thus some moralists said it was an immoral juice. But then they had never nursed congenitally poxed children.
Will you kindly and without hesitation divide into teams of two? Do put on those rubber gloves.
Sally paired with Freud. As they collected their trays with the syringes and needles and—in their case—the 606 solution, they could hear the matron addressing the men in the main part of the tent and telling them which tables to present themselves to. Sally and Freud and the others passed through the canvas into the main tented ward and took a place at one of the tables for the syphilitics.
It happened that Sally was the one to swab the arms and change needles, Freud to give the injections. It fell out that way barely withouttheir discussing it—perhaps because of Freud’s worldliness. By her presence you could sense that she really knew things that were still confusing to Sally—the difference between lust and, as they said in novels, desire. Desire was a cleaner thing by all accounts. But not clean enough to save you entirely—it seemed—unless desire was
The matron led the nurses now into a spacious, screened-off area where two large pans boiled above Primus stoves. Orderlies plied their lifters to extract syringes and needles and laid them on trays beside bottles of solution and cotton wool and medicinal alcohol. The matron made the smallest deniable nod to the bottles of clear solution and the rest of the equipment marshalled on the counter. She said, I know you will show no levity in dealing with this grievous business. The colonel’s orderlies should ideally do this work but despite his high opinion of them neither will they do it well nor will they be as safe from themockery of the men—or the men from theirs. It is bad enough that orderlies should be the ones who treat the lesions and chancres!
The two orderlies in the canvassed-off space worked on, extracting syringes and wide-bore, punishing needles from the makeshift autoclaves. They did not seem to notice the slur uttered against them.
You are not deaconesses but military nurses. What you see here, you must see as a military crime. It is not your business to display distaste on the one hand or familiarity on the other.
She weighed them with her eyes to make sure they bore the right degree of somberness. The matron spoke as if she had bought up all the real estate of comment on the issue. She continued.
Either way it is a dosage of 8 drams solution per patient. Those men wearing a tag marked “G”—and I am sure I do not have to explain what that stands for—will attend the furthest table to the right. The patients will approach in columns of two and receive injections of novarsonobillon. As for the others, have you heard of solution 606?
Salvarsan? asked dutiful Leo.
All the nurses knew of 606. If they had not administered it, its myth had fallen over them. Syphilis was the wages of sin and 606 and a course of mercury pills might relieve the sinner of paying those wages fully. Thus some moralists said it was an immoral juice. But then they had never nursed congenitally poxed children.
Will you kindly and without hesitation divide into teams of two? Do put on those rubber gloves.
Sally paired with Freud. As they collected their trays with the syringes and needles and—in their case—the 606 solution, they could hear the matron addressing the men in the main part of the tent and telling them which tables to present themselves to. Sally and Freud and the others passed through the canvas into the main tented ward and took a place at one of the tables for the syphilitics.
It happened that Sally was the one to swab the arms and change needles, Freud to give the injections. It fell out that way barely withouttheir discussing it—perhaps because of Freud’s worldliness. By her presence you could sense that she really knew things that were still confusing to Sally—the difference between lust and, as they said in novels, desire. Desire was a cleaner thing by all accounts. But not clean enough to save you entirely—it seemed—unless desire was
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