It was Sunday. That day The Amundsen was in the harbor. Ravic could hear the passengers taking their exercise following the notes of Ravel�s bolero, unnerving, like a majestic erection with a poor ending. He heard the bell and crawled under the sheets. The hours in which he received his patients were posted by the door. In Sicily they were merely good numbers to play at the local lottery
"It's the commander of the ship," blared his maid.
"I'll be down in a minute."
"They wait for you on the terrace."
They....more than one again.
The terrace served as a living room, the sweet climate consented it all year round.
"Captain Andersen...." An attractive man: a shock of white hair softly falling on harmonious features clearly made him a product of the great North.
"Doctor Moon, sorry to bother you on a Sunday.."
"It's ok. What can I do for you?" His usual line he had learned to say with more mouth than meaning.
"Doctor Moon this is Jim, a sailor on The Amundsen." The captain motioned to a young boy, thin and pale in spite of his dark complexion.
"Please, sit down. "
"I came to have your opinion on certain reddish spots recently appeared on this young boy's skin," said the captain.
"Such as the one on his forehead?"
"Yes. There are more on his back. They first appeared two weeks ago."
Ravic examined the purplish blotch on the boy's forehead. His glands too were swollen.
"The doctor on board calls them 'strawberry wishes'."
"In that case you just have to eat some strawberries... Jim, you can put on your shirt again. "
Ravic vaguely remembered studying a form of skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, a benign form of cancer which usually appeared at the extremities, like on the ankles, and afflicted mainly old people. But this was affecting a young boy, and had spread to the upper part of the body. He felt completely at a loss to give advice.
"Captain, please." He took him by the arm towards the edge of the terrace
"What a view. I love Siracuse, " said the captain. The great love affair between Sicily and Greece was all in that harbor, like the embrace of a lover waiting to be reunited to Hellades.
"It�s breathtaking. As for your boy, I suggest you have him go to a good oncologist. Being a surgeon it�s not my field. "
"Is it infectious ?"
"We still haven't proved that cancer is infectious Nevertheless, for the sake of the boy and that of your passengers he should be seen by a specialist."
"I see."
Those purple spots...
Unexpectedly a month later Ravic Moon was working in a clinic in Marina del Rey. California.
"How many caverns I unearthed with this," Dr. Toronada said grabbing his stethoscope. The old clinician was a frail man with many doubts and unanswered questions who continued his existence in the name of humanity. "I saw all sorts of diseases, Ravic, but never as the ones I see here at this time. A young man died here a week ago. I still can't figure out what he died of, for he had everything." He paused and said: "Now I have another one."
"I've read of a fresh outbreak of sarcomas."
"If it were only that." He looked at his watch. "I have to visit him before it gets dark. Come, let me show you this guy."
Ravic accompanied him to his ward.
"Doctor Moon, nice to see you again," said the nurse in a low voice.
"Serena," Ravic said. She looked pleased to have been recognized. When he had met her she was just another white mask.
A young man was lying on the bed. His eyes were open, but still, unseeing. He made a gesture. A salute perhaps. It was unexpected.
"They sometimes do have these short remissions before the end, " Toronada said.
"I just gave him an injection. He's been coughing a lot," said the nurse. "He's getting worse."
The man, no more than a skeleton, was drenched in sweat, breathing in short heaves. A cough finishing off the sequence of breaths which still chained him to life.
Ravic was impressed by those the eyes almost poached inside their sockets.
"...I've asked the CDC of Atlanta for Pentamedine. They refuse to give it because I cannot explain the cause of the disease. All opportunistic infections which involve a failure of the immune system must be explained; it's their requirement. Insane."
"Nothing would have done much good in this case," Ravic said. "But you mentioned something about a sarcoma."
Toronada took out his flashlight and leaned over the young man. Bluish pustules appeared on the body...
Suddenly, Ravic flashed on an image not far off in time but certainly in space, which thing in medical terms had quite the same importance. The Amundsen, Captain Andersen, the young sailor whose name was Jim: a small barnacle in his memory..
"He's gone into a coma," announced the nurse. The man had suddenly dropped his head, his jaw slackened, his breath was just a gurgle.
"We live in a time loaned to us by death, but the interest we pay for living is often too high. Isn�t it so Ravic?" the old clinician said passing his hands over the purple pustules. "Look at these lymph nodes, swollen to the very limit. Although chemotherapy halted the lymphocytes' growth, nothing was effective." Toronada continued to shake his head. Suddenly rigor stiffened the boy's lips into a cryptic smile, a silent travesty of his last defence. Time had finished to inflict its last horror, the split second when something vital is blown away.
While covering the body
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