#5 | April 10 - 23, 1997  

by Mark Ames

When I first heard the news that Chris had died, I didn't think it concerned me. Just another freak occurrence in Russia; more proof that we expats aren't immune... the usual banal/cynical conclusions. Then I briefly recalled meeting Chris out in Kirov, the one or two snapshots that hadn't yet faded from my damaged memory. When I first arrived there, a writer-friend had described Chris to me as "some American guy with a soccer haircut." I snickered collusively at the time. As it turned out, Chris was gentle and unpretentious, a sin among the people I keep company with. I felt bad after that lunch, and I reiterated my usual, hollow promise never to sneer at anyone before I've met them.

When I found out last week that Chris had died of a particularly lethal form of bacterial meningitis, I panicked. Suddenly Chris' death became EXTREMELY relevant to my life, and not just material for a few clever observations.

"You may have all been exposed to meningitis," I was told by a nurse handling the case. "It could be very serious. We'll need to see you."

This was bad. Not so much the death part, but the potential pain part-and worse, the humiliation. I could see exactly how I'd be treated if I were to die. My bloated, yellow face on the Death Porn page of a new, expanded eXile, with the whacky caption: "Damn, that Clearasil's strong stuff!" High fives at Rosie's and shots fired into the air at Marika. The subject of endless jokes: "Dying Here Author Now 'Dead Here'"; "Deathie Factor: Three Stars for Ames"; "Cheers: Ames screamed in pain for two days straight while his blood boiled and the membrane surrounding his brain ballooned... Jeers: It should have lasted for two months".

The worst part is that I may have been responsible for Chris' death. On the evening that I met him, I fell horribly ill. I went to a local disco with a pair of friends-one of them a journalist who later wrote a highly fictionalized account in which he portrayed himself as the Henry Miller of Kirov-when aches in my head and stomach, as well as intense fever chills, overwhelmed me. I returned to my hotel room and spent hours violently puking, dragging myself from bed to toilet and back. My neck, joints and head hurt so badly that I popped several aspirins, knowing that I'd boot the pills right out. Which I did. Miraculously, I recovered the following afternoon.

Exactly four days later, Chris checked into a hospital, and another four days later, he died.

I've been doing my research into meningitis. The meningitis organism, although it kills very few people, is actually extremely common. One in ten persons (or one million Muscovites) at any given time in any population carries the bacteria in their nasal passages or the backs of their throats. Only rarely does the organism pass into the bloodstream, but once it does, it can have a fatality rate of over 40%. The blood becomes so toxic that the heart and capillaries collapse; while the membrane surrounding the brain swells, compressing the brain and causing coma and death.

One big reason why I chose Russia as my place of eXile was that I thought I'd be avoiding all the tropical diseases and parasites that flourish in warm, humid climates. Like nematodes, for example. One type of nematode feeds on the outer layer of your eyeball until you go blind (it takes a month or so for it to finish its meal); another nests up in your lymph nodes, causing elephantiasis... Or what about more common diseases, like fungal infections, malaria, dengue fever-courtesy of one of God's most perfect transporters, the mosquito-the preferred metro system of viruses.

What I'm trying to get at here is that it's not my fault. That's what I've been telling myself. It wasn't my fault that Chris died. I was merely a foil in a game plan so much larger, so beyond me or my family or my race that to blame me for coughing out a bacteria cell in the wrong direction is like blaming a holster for killing a person.

There was a book I once heard about, "The Indestructable Gene" or something like that, in which the author argued that we humans are much lower down the food chain than we've imagined; that if you viewed this planet from a purely Darwinian perspective, you'd see that the genes and their perfect crystaline creations, the viruses and bacteria, are at the top, while we humans are nothing but clunky, gas-guzzling Chryslers hauling them around. True, we've learned to fight back, but it's a losing battle: like Hal from 2001 turning on his masters, we can inspire a little fear in the gene population, cause a few problems, disrupt the rail network at a few points... but the real joke is on us. It makes the very notion of human development seem bizarre, like calling the evolution of the Model T Ford into the Ford Taurus beneficial for cars themselves. The truth is, every advancement in human civilization has been an advancement in the communications network for the viruses. Almost makes you support the Duma's resolution to force foreigners to take AIDS tests.

Just in the past year, a student at Amherst U., and another at Tulane, died of meningitis, while in Nigeria, an outbreak claimed the lives of over 2,000 people. The meningitis bacteria that got in my bloodstream didn't mean to kill me. It meant to use me. But something went wrong-it must have passed through the membranes, thus damaging me, its clunky car; on the transfer from me to Chris, things went from bad to worse, wiping him out along with all the bacteria, viruses and fungi that have been using his body for god knows how long. Now he's dead, and he's taken all the organisms down with him. It's been said that when someone you know dies, the first feeling you have is not grief, but relief-relief that it wasn't you. Perhaps I shouldn't feel any shame, but I do. So I'm doing my best to rationalize it-see column above...