City Desk: Sick in the City

National Review, March 10, 2003 by Richard Brookhiser

Being sick in New York is, in most ways, like being sick anywhere else. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed 12,000 New Yorkers, and 15 to 20 million victims worldwide; according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (12th edition) only St. Helena, Mauritius, and Australia were spared. Death played as well on the road as it did here.

Milder forms of flu, and the colds that mimic them, have taken the place of the scourge. The flu season begins in the late fall with the arrival of that year's vaccine, not long before the first bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau. We present our delts to our doctors for a friendly jab, and hope for the best. The annoying ailments of winter are caused by germs and viruses, yet, still hearing the voices of our cautious long-gone mothers, we attribute malign power to extraneous circumstances: the step in the puddle, the snow on the neck, staying up an hour too late. When we feel the premonitory signs -- the tickle at the back of the soft palate, the sneeze that repeats itself -- we reach for the arsenal of palliatives, that shades from science to folk wisdom: zinc; echinacea; tea with honey and lemon juice. Sometimes, like U.N. peacekeepers, we temporarily hold the threat at bay.

But, once a season, the defenses fail, and all the familiar symptoms take possession. Lazy tourists, they move slowly and at random from one body part to the next. They are afflicting in themselves, and taunting by reminding us of what they are not. Muscles ache, without the endorphin rush of a workout or the borrowed virility of sweating beside real hunks. Nose and eyes water without the burn of shrimp vindaloo. Throats tingle without the joy of singing or gossip; lungs heave without the release of sobs. We lie awake and have no inspiration; we take naps and have no rest.

We are out of ourselves. We become figures in a diorama, computer- generated orcs. The parts are in place; we emit sound; but the effect is wooden, lifeless. Our senses desert us, or go on slow-down strike. Taste and smell -- missing, unaccounted for. Hearing and sight -- still there, but hard to manage. We read the same page of the New York Times over and over before we feel done with it, and we read every page, including the weather map and reports on European corporations. Only touch is reliable, and it mostly serves to tell us that our ankles feel a cold draft or that we drooled on the pillow. Our thoughts desert us as well. The daydreams of triumph and eros that comfort idleness lose their allure -- unless we are unlucky enough to have a fever, when they become lurid caricatures of themselves. She turned up her face toward me and . . . So what? (Or:) She was a ferret.

These are the universal qualities of dis-ease. What New York brings to the table is the proximity of fellow New Yorkers. When you live 13 stories above an avenue that is a truck route, and above, between, and below other New Yorkers, you are aware of the presence of others. Mostly, this is a blessing. The quiet of the countryside would be too much like a hospital. The long roar of traffic is neither melancholy nor withdrawing; it is the sea of faith of daily life; it is good to be near it. The same is true of the occasional barking dog, or child. Only, please, no music: When Chet Baker's satin-casket-liner voice, singing "My Funny Valentine," welled up through the wall by my head, that attempt to doze was over.

The economics of proximity restricts our own living spaces. Living so close to one another, no one can live large, and cabin fever becomes more feverish in the shrunken cabins of Manhattan. Here the restless sick person cannot wander to the TV room, the sun porch, or the basement. There is, in fact, a basement in my apartment building, but all I would find there is coin-operated washing machines and the janitor. I look out one window, then the next. From the first I see snowflakes, wet and rapid, about to become rain drops, or fat and hesitant, too light to make their way through a mild updraft, as if saying to each other, "Call the cloud -- what do we do next?" From the second window, I see the same flakes. I could take the plunge into television or the Internet, but that would be like zoo animals playing with a wretched toy, or prisoners papering their cells with Penthouse Pets.

But New York offers an escape. You can go out -- and even if you can only manage to go a little way, there is still someplace to go. The density that imprisons you also supplies you with easy destinations. Consider the sufferers who live in gated communities. If they step outside their front doors, what do they find? The lawn? The driveway? An ornamental planting of pampas grass? It's pretty in the summer, and may even be worth the mortgage, but it doesn't talk.

Here the walking wounded can find the solace of fellow beings. You can accomplish simple errands, taking the shirt that needs mending to the Korean tailor who has a reproduction of Millet's Angelus on his wall. You can watch the timeless courtship of snowball fights; the girls never get away, even if they have a good start; could they want to be caught? You can sit in neighborhood coffeehouses and restaurants and eat and drink things that you could make more cheaply and better at home, except that at home you would not overhear the conversation of your own kind: the solemn and idiotic-sounding business plan; or the discussion, between a sweet-faced girl and an overweight, ear-ringed boy, of The Two Towers: "So, are elves immortal?" If what they say interests you, then you must be like them. Maybe you are alive after all. The city supplies its own remedy.