A Journal of the Plague Year (2020)
Covid was not my first virus. I was deep in the track of HIV, and then I worked at a hospital during SARS. I am very familiar with watching whole societies act like morons because the real enemy is invisible.
I revere Daniel Defoe. When Covid came, I reached for him, and found him much more useful than I might have hoped. His Journal of the Plague Year, my master text, was full of details which required embarrassingly little change to describe the summer of 2020.
1. My Diary
My Diary, I open you again.
When I was just a young man, I would fill
your pages with my million tales of love
that never really happened. Now I read
that prologue from my infancy, and feel
both pain and pleasure at those vanished days.
Pain, because they were embarrassing,
but pleasure, because then, there was no Plague.
The church-bells ring a special song these days.
They used to ring the bells for all the dead,
but now there are too many. So they ring
the biggest bell nine times, and stop at that.
The parish notices of births and deaths,
ignorable and dull in normal times,
are now most urgent gossip. People line
the streets, to read how many people died.
For all that we are living in a time
of death and sorrow, so far we remain
as little changed by the experience
as we can manage. It’s a kind of work
not every generation learns to do.
We have become the puppets of a time
in which we do not live, attempting to
resume the lies that used to get us through.
2. The Indies
When I set off for Amsterdam this spring,
in March, I was not worried about Plague.
Although, as I think back, I realize I
did know about it even then. I knew
that it had come from Jaffa, and was said
to be a bitter scourge among the Turks.
But Turkey is extremely far away,
or seemed so. It did seem to be that way.
But it was not. I didn’t catch the Plague
in Amsterdam, but it was almost there.
By April, when I sailed for home, the Plague
had shut down all the French ports near Calais.
In Amsterdam, unless you asked around,
you wouldn’t know. The Dutch were glad to think
the Plague would stop in France, among the thick-
skulled Papists, and leave Holland out of it.
Yet many, speaking now in retrospect,
believe the Plague came from the Indies: from
the Dutch-ish Indies, most specifically.
So Amsterdam, when I was there, was not
the ho-ho smug fat-boy metropolis
they showed to me. It was a hidden fire,
but hidden not in embers but in flesh,
already building armies for the dead.
3. Spital Square
My family were once from Worcestershire,
but we have ended up in Spitalfields
because my father used to work in mills
and then took up with looms. Our house is small
but solid, by the standards of the street.
We own it, so we are not much disturbed
to find ourselves without a few weeks’ work,
but we may have to sell some things for food.
The problem is, that people do not want
the same things, in the Plague Year, as they do
in other years. A pretty silver plate
becomes mere silver, because prettiness
means nothing in the Plague Year. Only jewels
retain their former value. When I walked
on Cheapside yesterday, the crowds were deep,
converting properties to gold, to flee.
My cousins, who still live in Worcestershire,
have told us not to come. Their letter came
by yesterday’s late post, and found me at
the Butcher and the Lamb on Spital Square,
where I was holding forth with several men
about the many joys of Amsterdam.
So yet again we put our faith in God,
one said. I said, My cousin is a twat.
4. Saint Paul’s
On Sunday, tiring of the private dread
that seemed to stalk me in my room, I fled
and sought more public forms of doom instead.
The City was deserted, so I walked
beyond where I intended, and so came
to dear Saint Paul’s, our giant pile of stones,
small cattle market, catcher of great bones,
and general emporium of God.
The Deacon, who was preaching, said the Plague
was caused by sin, and had to go away
if people were less sinful. He made claims
in which I have no confidence. He claimed
that Jesuits from Rome had brought the Plague
from Calicut, specifically to blame
the Protestants for it, and thus return
all Europe to their sad improper faith.
My friend Paul Fletcher, not a stupid man,
believes the rich don’t get the Plague so much
because of something structural, not linked
to any Godly purpose. He suspects
they may have better water. He says bricks
repel the Plague, which seems improbable,
but is a fair match for the evidence.
The churches seem to offer no defense.
5. Saint Andrew Undershaft
My Diary, tonight the Plague is said
to have reached Smithfield Market. I have climbed
the tower of Saint Magnus, to imbibe
a breath of air that may not yet be stained
with the miasma. Greatly have we sinned,
I think, for this to be the way that God
sees fit to deal with us. Forgive us, Lord.
We’re evil, but some part of this is yours.
My brother means to shift to Wimbledon
if he can find a carter. He believes
that London cannot live now, now the beef
is all contaminated. But it’s air,
I said to him. You catch it from the air.
But he does not agree. Know what you like,
he said. You’re always liking to be right,
but if you’re really smart, you’ll leave tonight.
My Diary, I went to hear the Mass
as Andrew Undershaft, but found it closed.
I sat down in the churchyard and composed
a eulogy to London as it was
before the Plague. I tried to think of things
that history should know about, but all
that came to mind was that we used to sit
together, and not die for doing it.
6. Fenchurch Street
My Diary, the King has ridden off
to Richmond, to escape the Plague. This means
that even Whitehall isn’t safe. What hope
remains for those of us who do not have
spare palaces to flee to? I have seen
a Bible burned this day in Fenchurch Street,
not out of any strain of disbelief,
but so the smoke might counter the disease.
The churchyards have been formally declared
to be too full. The Mayor has bought a field
to bury the next twenty days of dead.
The Mayor is nowhere near the Mansion House.
He legislates from Lewisham. The bells
of London cannot reach as far as that.
The terror of us can. So we plug on,
pretending that our leaders are not gone.
Our leaders are quite right to run away
from us. We are not fond of them today.
We are contagious. They are negligent.
We will deserve each other in the end
but not before. Before we get that far,
we have to hurt them every bit as much
as they, the negligent, have damaged us.
Will every day of life be long enough?
7. Mincing Lane
The bakery is gone from Mincing Lane.
The bakers have not fled. Instead, they say
they cannot get the grain to make their bread,
because the carters will not cross the Bridge,
because, they say, they do not want to die.
Instead, the bakers made some sausages,
which I did buy, because if bread can fail,
then beef and pork cannot be far behind.
I walked down to Saint Dunstan’s, not because
I felt the need for company or faith,
but just to get my shoe fixed. My shoe guy
was normally set up against the porch
at Dunstan’s, but he wasn’t there. The Plague
has many fingers. Some it keeps away,
some it kills, some it dislocates,
and others it diverts in other ways.
I walked home by the Tower, which is blocked
away from London by a palisade
in case we dirty it. How can we not?
We are the dirty ones, the ones left out
to fend for their pathetic selves in rain,
and war, and snow, and dead of night, and Plague.
Who knows what tale of horror might begin
if they forgot themselves and let us in?
8. The Italians
The City is in uproar, so I hear
(I don’t go far from Smithfield anymore)
because of the Italians, who now wear
elaborate masks with giant noses. These,
they say, are cutting-edge Venetian things,
completely sovereign against the Plague.
The City, feeling stupid, looking bad,
may ban these things, because they make us sad.
John Farthingman came by and stood outside.
We spoke of normal things, except, all forms
or normalcy would have involved close speech
and kind embraces, which we did not do
for fear of one another. So we searched
each other’s eyes, like fortune tellers or
the King’s inquisitors, and tried to warm
each other with our eyes and not our arms.
I asked him if he ever thought to buy
a mask. He said that he would rather die
than put on such a girly piece of crap.
Alas for him, he meant that. Strapping lads,
O Future, were a feature of our time
and people. They were very, very hard
to speak to. They thought youth would see them through.
Clearly, they had never dealt with you.
9. Saint Agapit’s Day
The Plague is fond of August. We are sworn,
as people of this country, to enjoy
our few brief months of summer. So we run
from our confinements, to enjoy the Sun
while it has not abandoned us. Which means,
alas, that we do come together, and
(although we do not know the method yet)
the Plague comes after us, and joy is death.
Today is August the Eighteenth, the Day
devoted to Saint Agapit. Who cares?
I mean this honestly, O God. Who cares?
So what if someone killed a Christian boy
a thousand years ago? I need you now,
you showy piece of shit. We need you now.
And now I burn this paper, because this
is truth, and I don’t want to die for it.
If miracles exist, then they are rare
but possible. How vicious would that be?
That would be very vicious. That would mean
that God was like a ruined boy whose days
are spent in harming insects. Better, then,
to give it up completely, and assume
that God himself is powerless or gone.
As he deserves to be. Amen. Page, burn.
10. America
Some people say the Plague will go away
because it has burned through us. Those of us
who never got it have been spared by God
and cannot get it now. The rest were doomed
for predetermined reasons, with the Plague
(by this analysis) a kind of rake
that God used to re-sort humanity,
because we weren’t what we were meant to be.
This seems to me, when I pray, like the sound
of children who pretend to play the flute.
The logic of this version makes no room
for God’s own logic, which is different.
How could it not be? God will never die.
Some people say that He can never change.
If this is so, he seems a shabby judge
for what real people do in years of Plague.
Nobody dares to say what most believe,
which is, that nothing now means anything
and maybe never did. The Hand of God
is suddenly too close and yet too far.
It strikes within our homes, within ourselves,
and yet the consolation we might seek
seems very far away: almost as far
as Purgatory, or America.
11. Mile End
I rode out to the east today, to try
to buy some paper. Everyone, it seems,
is writing up their memoirs nowadays,
so there’s a paper shortage. But I heard
from Talbot Turnerson that there was still
a fair stock of good paper in the hands
of an eccentric Frenchman at Mile End,
and I was sick of brooding, so I went.
The place was little better than a shack.
It looked like no-one ever went there, which
was reassuring. Or, he might be dead,
which would present the same appearance. But
his garden, which was small but opulent,
suggested that he wasn’t, in fact, dead,
so I hoped he was just unpopular
and thus (by certain forms of logic) safe.
I bought some nice French paper, but the man
would not approach me. He told me he had
retreated to a tiny private France
without the Plague, and could not welcome me
as he would otherwise have liked to do.
I told him I completely understood.
I thought he had it solved, but when I left
he asked if I could send him any food.
2. A Masque
My Diary, should history require
at witness to the Plague Year, will it choose
these little pages, or will it select
something less lucid, but more elegant?
It’s going to be embarrassing. The ones
who get through this will not like to admit
that they were here. They’re going to make it nice.
They’re going to clean it up. They’re going to lie.
So phantasistic sprites of health and life
will suddenly erupt in painted masques
to save the scene, and Juno will descend
on automated ropes, to bless away
the sorry troubles of the audience.
Then naiads with crepe-satin tails will praise
the wisdom of our leaders in those days,
and nobody will ever get the Plague.
But in the meantime, Washerwoman Smith
is boarded up inside her house, and all
the herbs are salty from when they were washed
before they could be legal. Normal times
escape from us like beaten dogs at night.
They run away so fast as to reveal
how little they have liked us. They run off,
but it is us, not they, who end up lost.