Wallace Shawn - The Fever

I'm travelingand I wake up suddenly in the silence before dawn in a strange hotel room, in a poor country where my language isn't spoken, and I'm shaking and shivering. Why? There's somethingsomething is happeningfar away, in a different country. Yes, I remember. It's the execution. The newspaper article said this would be the hour, this was the date.

I catch my breath. And so now they comethey come for the man who lies in his cot, the cat-like man whose face is so large, so black, that the guards who open his cell are once again frightened, shaken. They shave his head, a section of his leg, so the electrodes will fit closely on the skin.

And now the guards lead him into the chamber, and he's tied into the chair with leather straps. His arms are strapped down to armrests so the witnesses won't see them move, his legs strapped to the legs of the chair Does panic mount in the man's heart? An attendant covers his head with a hood so none of us will see his pain, the horror, the distortion of his face. The breaking of the skin! All we see is the body shifting upwards, slightly in the chair.

Don't you thinkwhen you're traveling in a strange countrythat the smells are sharp and upsetting? And when you wake up in the middle of the nightunexpectedlywhen you wake up at an odd hourwhen you're traveling somewhere and you wake up in a strange placedon't you feel frightened?

I can't stop shivering.

The lamp by my bed doesn't work, the electric lights won't turn on. The rebels have blown up the electricity towers. There's a small war going on in this poor country where my language isn't spoken. The hotel rooms all have candles with little candle holders. I get up, light the candle, take the candle into the bathroom. Then I put the candle in its holder on the floor, and I kneel down in front of the toilet and vomit.Then I'm sitting, shivering, on the bathroom floor, this cold square of tile on a hot night in a hot country, and I can't stand up to go back to bedI can't stand upso I sit there quietly, shaking as if I were sitting in the snow. And in the corner of the bathroombrown against the tilethere's an insect, big, like a water bugit's flat, heavyvery tough legs, they look like metaland it's waiting, squatting, deciding which way to move.And in a second it's crossed behind the sink, and it's slipping itself into a hole too small for it to fit in, but it fitsinit fitsit's gone. And I see myself. I see myself. A moment of insight.

It's the birthday party in the fancy restaurant. Yesthere's the table with its sweet and pretty decorations, the fanciful centerpiece, pink and green, and there are all the women in bright red lipstick and the men in beautiful shirts, and all the giftsoutrageous, unexpected, and funny giftsand there are the waiters serving the salmon and pouring the wine, and there I am. I'm talking quietly with that small, pale woman in the red-and-blue dress about the love affair with the older man, that film that disturbed her, the actress, the psychiatrist, the criminals, the walks at night through the woods in the country, the insatiable appetite for violent sex, the suffering of the people who live in desperation in the crowded shelter across the street from the fancy restaurant. And as I talked with that woman in the red-and-blue dress, I thought I was a person who was thinking about a party, who had so many complicated feelings about it, who liked some aspects of the party, but not others, who liked some of the people but not all of them, who liked the pink-and-green centerpiece, but didn't really like that red-and-blue dress. But no. No. I see it so clearly. I see myself with my little forkI wasn't a person who was thinking about a party. I was a person who was at a party, who sat at the table, drank the wine, and ate the fish.

We didn't talk about the fish, we didn't talk about the restaurant, we talked about the lakes in the mountains in the north of Thailand and the crowded shelter across the street. But where were we? Where were we? Not by the lakes, not in the shelter We were there, just there, at that table, in that restaurant. Well, maybe for certain peoplemaybe for certain people who lived at the beginning of the twentieth centurywhat was hidden and unconscious was the inner life. Maybe the only thing those people could see was the outward circumstance, where they were, what they did, and they had no idea at all of what was inside them. But something's been hidden from me, too. Somethinga part of myselfhas been hidden from me, and I think it's the part that's there on the surface, what anyone in the world could see about me if they saw me out the window of a passing train.

Because I know quite a bit about what's inside me. I've been a student of my feelings since I was nine years old! My feelings! My thoughts! The incredible history of my feelings and my thoughts could fill up a dozen leather-bound books. But the story of my lifemy behaviour, my actionsthat's a slim volume, and I've never read it. Well, I've never wanted to. I've always thought it would be terribly boring. What would be in it? Chapter One: My Childhood. I was born, I cried. Chapter Two: The Rest: I maintained myself. I got up, I went to work, I went home, I went to bed. I went to a restaurant, and I ate fish. Who cares? For God's sakedid I have to travel to a poor country where no books are printed in my own languagedid I have to be cast down onto a bathroom floor in a strange hotelin order to finally be forced to open that dull volume, the story of my life?

And I vomit again. Dear god.

No, I'm not going to read it. I won't read it. My parents loved me. They raised me to think about the people, the world, humanity, beautynot to think about restaurants and fish. I was born into the mind. Lamplight. The warm living room. My father, in an armchair, reading about China. My mother with the newspaper on a long sofa. Orange juice on a table in a glass pitcher.

And they read me a book about all the people in so many different uniforms who came to our house to help our family: coming from every corner of our beautiful city, the delivery man from the grocery store, the mailman with the mail. All so kind. And down the street, the woman who worked in the bakery, who bent down and gave me sugar-covered buns. And, dear God, I never doubted that life was precious. I've always thought life should be celebrated.

Today, I went to an office, a quiet officea few cabinets and chairsand its job was to make a record of all the cases of political murder, and torture, and raperape used as a form of torture or in the course of torture. There were photographs on the wall of the bleeding corpses of friends. The blood was bright red. One was a schoolteacher, killed near her school. And there were black-and-white snapshots of shyly smiling women and men at some time before their deaths, and these were pinned u next to the pictures of their corpses. The faces, radiant with goodness.

And I thought of the delicacy with which my parents had taught me to urinate into the toilet, to be careful around toilet seats, to wash my hands, always with soap, to avoid people with the flu, with colds, to avoid drafts, to avoid rooms that were cold or wet.

And I thought of how they taught me to love travelingthe wonderful train trips. The magic of riding at night through the farmland in our little compartment, brushing our teeth on the moving train.

And here, from my spot on the bathroom floor, I can see through the window, gorgeous in the moonlight, the gorgeous mountains of the poor country, soaked with the blood of the innocent, soaked with the blood of those shy faces, battered shy faces.

Walking through the garden with my motherenormous roses. And through a dark pine forestmy father pointing to a yellow bird. Save me.