Given these hints, some might have already suspected the true identities of our authors. With this story coming to an end, it is time to tear away our masks.
Megan Tso and Raymond Siddhu, the two of us, collaborated on the completion of the project based largely upon the notebooks of Bernard Rieux.
We discussed many different approaches to this chronicle. That we settled on telling our respective stories, along with Rieux’s, in one braided narrative by no means suggests that it has been a seamless process. As the reader can tell from our authorial interjections, disputes arose as we stitched together this book in separate cities between other obligations.
We also felt inclined to openly disagree with or contextualize some of the statements that Rieux made, as his views—though he shied away as much from the term “libertarian” as he did from any other label—could offend readers who might otherwise find him sympathetic. Rieux’s beliefs never hardened into dogma, and he was always receptive to our thoughts on social justice even if he never fully accepted them.
Rieux’s writing style was clinical and based only on his firsthand experience. We chose to honour (for the most part) his formal constructions and his arm’s-length treatment of his characters. His notebook effectively formed the skeleton of this book.
The late doctor wrote about his reflections during the outbreak and quarantine but refused to speculate on what the other figures in his story felt or thought. We decided that we could deepen the impact of this chronicle if we each brought to the story our own personal moments and excavated inner lives. As Rieux wrote between exhausting double shifts, we also suspect that—given the time—he might have infused more of his own interior life to the story upon revision.
Since some of Rieux’s accounts are only fragmentary, we each tried to fill in the gaps in his narrative using our own specific skills. Siddhu brought to the story his reporting background as he interviewed the minor figures in this piece and checked details. Tso pored over the literary works that Rieux was reading and quoting from in his notebooks. She overlaid scenes that were originally written in an objective voice with some of Rieux’s more philosophical ruminations. The omission of most medical details was Rieux’s choice, as he found his own work the least interesting (and possibly, the most dispiriting) aspect of this period.
Any history contains contradictions. This one had relatively few of them. And this was entirely the result of Dr Bernard Rieux and his steadfast eye. We attempted to honour him in our efforts.
We only resist calling him a hero because Rieux loathed the term. He would say that he could have acted in no other way.
We are bound to the objective truth: he was a doctor, a son, a husband, and our friend.
Many histories benefit from distance. Our collaboration to complete this book, while written in spurts, began shortly after the quarantine was lifted.
The end occurred on the third Sunday that March. When the gates opened at midnight, fireworks were lit across the city—above Coal Harbour, from its highest point in Queen Elizabeth Park, and in backyards, alleys, and unlit parks. Tso was reminded of how loud it was when she’d first arrived in Vancouver that past October.
Siddhu rode in on the SkyTrain on the following Monday. He kept his gaze fixed on the list of stops, even though he could recite them from memory, eyes closed, backwards and forwards. He walked to the coffee bar by the Art Gallery. In only a couple of days, the city had already returned to normal. There were neither too many nor too few people.
Tso was waiting for him with a latte. She put down our coffees and we embraced with the gusto of people who no longer worried that physical contact could kill us.
“How much time do you have?” Tso asked.
Siddhu’s interview with the mayor wasn’t until the afternoon. Tso would fly out that night. She walked with her coffee in one hand, dragging her suitcase with the other. She suggested an ambitious jaunt, and Siddhu agreed to it after some hesitation. He looked forward to stretching his legs but admitted to being in terrible physical condition.
She had seen the news alert on her phone as she waited for our coffees. We strolled up Robson Street. Storefronts remained papered over. In some shop windows mannequins were still arrayed in winter clothes from last year.
We finished our coffees as we entered the Park and walked along the Seawall like proper tourists. There was already a group of people assembled by the Brockton Point Lighthouse.
“I’ve been waiting an hour,” one bearded onlooker in a jean jacket told us.
The transient pod, eight whales in total, was spotted early in the morning from Deep Cove and had made it as far as the Second Narrows Bridge. They were hunting seals. They needed to double back to return to the open ocean.
The air became brisk as we stood by the water—neither Siddhu nor Tso had dressed properly. We spoke about Rieux’s notebook, in part because everything that lay ahead for each of us was so provisional. Like many in the city, we also felt the events of the last few months haunting our consciousness. We needed to talk about it, to inscribe it, to externalize it. Otherwise these events lingered dormant in our bodies, like the bacterium, waiting for an opportunity to re-emerge.
“Did you really have that conversation in the car with Bernard?” Tso asked.
“Which one?” he said, pursing his mouth.
“You know. I can tell you know.”
His eyes misted over. “It did happen,” he said at last. “Were you surprised?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
We were caught up in this particular speculation about missed opportunities when we heard gasps from the onlookers who had brought their telescopes and binoculars. We took our places along the stone lip of the wall. The whales came porpoising along the surface of the water as if performing for the whale-watching boats that followed them. A drone drifted up above them, looking silly as they always did. When it crashed into the water, we cheered.
Siddhu had lived all his life in the city and had never seen orcas this close. As a teenager, on a ferry to Vancouver Island, he chose to remain in his seat reading The Stand when the ferry captain announced that orcas had been spotted. Tso had only seen orcas bouncing beach balls on their snouts at Sea World.
“Aren’t you glad we did this?” she asked Siddhu.
Tso chose to believe that the orcas were a sign. They arrived to celebrate her last day in Vancouver. She was reminded of one of the final entries in Rieux’s notebooks. It was a definition of a cetacean-specific term used casually by Dr Orla Castello as a metaphor for the final throes of the outbreak.
A lobtail: when a whale slaps its flukes (the lobes of its tail) against the surface of the ocean, Rieux wrote in his diary. The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
Megan Tso waited for the whales to swim past them. She waited. She waited. The whales became specks in her vision, only their dorsal fins clearly visible.
Right before she lost hope, one of those orcas raised its tail in the air and splashed the surface of the water. It was far away, but she could hear the clap in her heart. Goodbye, for now.