24 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020
a more widespread commitment—to
support more extensive international
coöperation—than has ever been seen.
Our solidarity also requires that we
get away from passively wishing “they”
would do something. Of course, there are
many things that only the government
can provide and do, but we have a part
to play, mainly by not doing things—at
the very least, not going out, not buying
stuff we don’t need, not going to the hos-
pital unless we have to. In Britain, the re-
sponse to the National Health Service’s
request for volunteers shows how des-
perate and ready people are to convert
energetic passivity into agency. I pro-
pose—subject to scientific and govern-
mental approval—that, for those who
get the virus, recover, and are given the
all-clear, T-shirts be made available, say-
ing something like “I’ve had it, I’m over
it—and I’m ready to help.” The appe-
tite to help is matched by a longing for
a renewed and properly inclusive sense
of community to move beyond the vari-
ously circled wagons of identity politics.
Many times in the past week, I’ve thought
of something said by Larry Harvey, the
co-founder of Burning Man, about the
experience of building a temporary city
in the inhospitable desert: “Commu-
nities are not produced by sentiment
or mere good will. They grow out of a
shared struggle.”
Part of this struggle, for us now, is to
carry on with a reduced version of nor-
mal life at a time when everything non-
Covid-related seems so pointless. Last
week, I wrote to a student about an over-
due essay, conscious, even as I did so,
that, in the larger scheme of things—at
a time when, for example, Liverpool
seemed destined to be denied an En-
glish Premier League title it had all but
won—this counted almost for nothing.
As, in a still larger context, does the idea
of Liverpool winning the Premiership,
or even the existence of the Premiership,
or of sports generally. But in some con-
texts everything counts almost for noth-
ing. We routinely say of a setback, “It’s
not the end of the world.” Well, of course
it’s not. Even the end of the world as we
know it turns out not to be the end of
the world. So, to downgrade Fitzgerald’s
rhapsodic claim at the end of “The Great
Gatsby,” we plod on—or don’t stop plod-
ding on—for the simple reason that,
with few exceptions, we are programmed
to keep putting one foot in front of the
other. That’s what feet are for.
On the home front, a ploddable rhythmhad been established whereby my wife
panicked and I calmed her down and
then we switched roles at various times
throughout the day, until, just before
sleeping, as a kind of surrogate for sex,
we got in a panic together. In the bath-
room one night, she unleashed a brief
scare-surge by wondering whether floss-
ing our teeth, with all the hand-in-mouth
action it involves, was just about the
most stupid thing to be doing right now.
But if we stop flossing doesn’t that mean
the virus has won? The lesson of the
Alamo, surely, was that they flossed to
the last man. I’m going out on my mint-
waxed shield, I decided, and went right
back at it. Each of us felt constantly on
the verge of coming down with some-
thing that could only be one thing: bow
waves of impending malaise, pre-head-
aches within the larger angst-induced
perma-headache, dry throats tingling on
the brink of becoming sore. Then, a cou-
ple of weeks ago, my wife started feel-
ing strange, or “quivery,” as she put it.
Quivery turned briefly into feverish be-
fore subsiding into complete exhaustion
and an increasing tightness in the chest.
Over the next several days, the feeling
of being completely exhausted changed,
though this hardly seemed possible, into
even more complete—even deeper—
exhaustion. There was hardly any cough-
ing and no shortness of breath: both good
signs, according to the doctor she spoke
with, but her symptoms certainly fell
within the broad spectrum of COVID-19.
Here in Los Angeles, there was only
a dim hope of getting that suspicion
verified by a test. The criteria to be met
were so stringent that a test seemed all
but indistinguishable from a postmor-
tem. Since we’ve been keeping entirely
to ourselves, the most reliable way of
finding out if she has it is to see if I get
it. So I am the test. I am the canary and
our home is the coal mine.
The “alienation” that residents of L.A.
naturally suffer from—as a result of the
immense sprawl—means that social dis-
tancing is built into the fabric of the city.
But that’s of little help once the idea of
distancing gets internalized, moves in
and takes up residence like an uninvited
house guest whose stay is of unspecified
duration—and, in a worst-case scenario,
could be for the rest of our lives. Repli-
cating the global strategy, we are trying
to flatten the curve in our apartment,“How can you say I don’t give back? I’m on the co-op board.”
••