Alexandra remembered something. She called Abbie.
‘Abbie,’ said Alexandra, without preamble, ‘what do you know about herpes?’
Abbie said she was in the middle of serving apple pie to her students. She couldn’t talk now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, anyway. Perhaps Alexandra should call Vilna. Abbie’s voice was cold.
Alexandra called Vilna, who said she was insulted to be asked such a question. Why did Alexandra think she should know anything at all about the subject? Because she was a filthy foreigner? Vilna was in a bad mood.
Alexandra went to see Dr Moebius, who by some miracle had a free appointment, and reminded him of a time five years back when she was tested for the herpes virus. Ned had developed a herpes pustule on his penis. He had become angry and bitter: in fact, as she could now see, Hamish-like. Ned had avoided sexual relations with her, Alexandra, for a week. He had blamed his infection on her. He claimed she had spoiled his life. She had been with another man; no matter how she denied it, Ned would not accept it. He was, he said, bitterly hurt, upset, betrayed. What other reason could there be? Since it was not him, it must be her. Alexandra said the virus could be dormant for years; neither of them had exactly been virginson marriage. Ned said the chances of that were small. No, Alexandra had betrayed him. Alexandra wept and smarted. Went without Ned’s knowledge to Dr Moebius for a test: lo, she had no such virus! Ned would not accept the verdict. Dr Moebius was a famous mis-diagnostician. Now the whole village would know their disgrace. Alexandra, too guilty, as she could now see, because of her secret scuffle with Eric Stenstrom to hold to her own opinion, was wholly wretched, but admitted to nothing. For five days the uproar lasted. Ned’s single pustule went: with it, his alter ego departed. Thereafter he was Ned again; friendly, rational and kind. Life went on as usual. The incident had been forgotten, drifted off into the past. Now she replayed it to Dr Moebius, looking for explanation.
Dr Moebius looked at his watch. Could he perhaps refer Alexandra to a counsellor? Death should put all things in proportion. A herpes virus could not survive in a dead body. It needed warmth, and a way of getting out. Which it now didn’t have. But he did have patients waiting, with current rather than past problems to discuss.
Alexandra asked if it wasn’t more likely that Ned had been in close contact with someone who had just been in close and frequent contact with someone with a flagrant herpes infection, than that, having been dormant for years, the virus had reactivated itself. Of course, said Dr Moebius. And could she please ask Mrs Lint to be in touch.
‘That bitch can rot in hell for all I care,’ said Alexandra. Dr Moebius looked startled. Alexandra left.
She could ‘forgive’ Ned for fucking Lucy Lint over the course of a year – a year in which she had been away a lot. Just. Lucy Lint the seductress; Ned lonely and jealous. But she could not forgive a sexual relationship which had been going on for some years; in which she, Alexandra, had been laughed at, manipulated, and insulted behind her back. No, she could not.
She went home.