Monday
What is going through the minds of health care workers as they watch the utterly predictable surge of Covid cases in the American south and southwest? Here they are, putting their mental and physical health on the line because Republican governors refused to listen to health science. It reminds me of an extended episode in M. M. Kayes’s 1977 bestseller Far Pavilions about a doomed British expedition in 1879 Afghanistan.
I’ve already applied Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” to the GOP’s response to the coronavirus. Afghanistan, the place where empires go to die, apparently provides ready analogies for our handling of the pandemic.
Far Pavilions is inspired in part by Kipling’s Kim, with Ash being raised Indian but later discovering he is English. He joins the fabled British Guides and, because he can move seamlessly between the two worlds, becomes a scout and a spy for the British. He sees clearly that they have embarked on a suicidal mission and tries to get word to them. “The four Sahibs in the Mission will not learn this, for no one will tell it to them – unless I do,” he tells his beloved Anjuli.
It turns out, however, that his warnings and those of his friends fall on deaf ears. A Hindu ally is driven away from the British offices with stones and called a liar—“fake news,” as Trump would label his warnings today—and the officials blunder on.
Although he has done all he can to alert the British, Ash feels a responsibility to leave Anjuli and join the Guides in their final battle. This is where I see our health workers: they witness figures like Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Texas’s Greg Abbott, and Arizona’s Doug Ducey botching the coronavirus response but, because they are loyal to the health profession, enter the fray nonetheless. I believe around 600 healthcare workers have died from Covid-19 so it’s no small decision.
To honor them and all those others taking risks, here’s Kaye writing about the Guides going into their final battle. In normal times, such prose seems over the top and most of our own brave men and women are going to be just fine, but the heightened pressures call for something elevated. The commander is reflecting on the impossible odds his troops are facing:
If they must die, then at least let them die in a manner that would redound to the credit of the Guides and the traditions they upheld. Let them go down fighting, and by doing so add luster to their Corps and become a legend and an inspiration to future generations of Guides. That was the only thing they could do….
[Medical officer] Ambrose Kelly came stiffly to his feet and stretched tiredly. He was the oldest of the group by a number of years and, like Gobind, his talents and training had been devoted to saving life and not taking it. But now he loaded and checked his revolver, and buckling on the sword that he had never learned to use, said: “Ah well now, I’m not saying it won’t be a relief to get it over with, for it’s been a long day and it’s dog-tired I am – and as some poet fellow has said, ‘how can man die better than facing fearful odds?’”
The Guides laughed again; and their laughter made Wally’s heart lift with pride and brought a lump to his throat as he grinned back at them with an admiration and affection that was too deep for words. Yes, life would have been worth living if only to have served and fought with men like these. It had been a privilege to command them – an enormous privilege: and it would be an even greater one to die with them. They were the salt of the earth. They were the Guides. His throat tightened as he looked at them, and he was aware again of a hard lump in it, but his eyes were very bright as he reached for his saber, and swallowing painfully to clear that constriction, he said almost gaily: ‘”Are we ready? Good. Then open the doors.”
Day after day, from early in the morning until late at night, medical personnel are walking through hospital doors.
Because Far Pavilions is a romance, Ash gets to fulfill his duty as a soldier and ride away with Anjuli both. He is knocked out in the battle, but his local clothes save him from recognition. By the time he comes to, the killing is over so he can escape with honor. He and Anjuli take off for the distant mountains, where perhaps they will escape the political and religious factionalism.
I imagine our healthcare workers riding off to a well-earned vacation after having done their duty. If the GOP were listening to the science, however, they would not have to be heroes in the first place. As Brecht’s Galileo puts it, “Unhappy is the land that needs heroes.”
