| I am Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a hardy bacillus that | | | | the family closed their doors to the outside world |
| has been on this planet so long now, that I'm actually | | | | and just delicately coughed over each other. Then as |
| older than the human species itself. I mean I could | | | | Maria, Elizabeth and Patrick died in turn, they decided |
| bore you and tell you I've seen it all, about way back | | | | they might as well keep their silence. When Anne |
| in history when the green lands of Africa were still | | | | finally died her parting sentence was meant to |
| joined to Antarctica and was called Gondwanaland, | | | | strengthen her one surviving sibling 'Take courage, |
| but I'll not! Just suffice to say that the first recorded | | | | Charlotte, take courage!' |
| European consumer lived in the beautiful Altstadt of | | | | Charlotte, the most prolific writer of the family, got |
| Heidelberg about seven thousand years ago. That | | | | married before she died and her death certificate |
| was back in 5,000 BC, long before Bertie and the | | | | was recorded as 'phthisis' the Greek word for the |
| Nice Treaty and his recently retrieved skeletal | | | | consumption. In fact Hippocrates used the term, but |
| remains shows he was a true believer in the | | | | as he is in the doghouse for giving the Swedes a bad |
| consumer cause. Around the same time I was visiting | | | | name, I will not extrapolate. Then in 1882, Robert |
| ancient Egypt, fiddling with the dear old mummy's | | | | Koch, a country doctor from the Rhineland, tried to |
| remains, twisting a spine here and there, sitting out | | | | convince everybody that the wriggling red microbes |
| on the warm hotel terrace above the Nile, hanging | | | | that he observed under his microscope were the |
| around waiting on the pyramid of Cheops to be built. | | | | cause of consumption and that I was readily |
| And as the saffron sun set over the city of Cairo for | | | | identifiable with a crimson stain. His giggling colleagues |
| the thousandth time, I legged it to India and | | | | put his theories of socialist bugs to rest and one year |
| destroyed the intricate caste system for a few | | | | later, Sir Walter Scott fell for my charms. Four years |
| thousand years. Then came the Greeks and Romans, | | | | later, Doc Holliday went to Glenwood Springs to see |
| good coughers one and all, except may I say that | | | | if the sulphur vapours would improve his cough, but |
| quack Hippocrates was a bit suspect, a sort of | | | | he was too far gone and on November 8, 1887, he |
| Wagnerian alter ego. I mean he actually blamed the | | | | asked for a glass of whiskey. Then he said, "This is |
| Scandinavians for spreading the good cough about. | | | | funny", and died. He always believed that his end |
| Well yes, I am well known to turn even my best | | | | would come from lead poisoning, at the end of a |
| friends alabaster white but to extrapolate that into | | | | rope, but lost his biggest bet when he died of |
| some sort of hereditary tendency, well it's just a | | | | tuberculosis. |
| liberty, why St. Bernadette herself would turn in her | | | | As the decade passed, I befriended Robert Louis |
| grave. And I know, because I was there as she | | | | Stevenson, but we eventually went our separate |
| gasped her dying words 'Open my chest and let me | | | | ways near Apia, in the Solomon Isles in early |
| breathe!' | | | | December 1894. At least you can say I got |
| But seasons came and went and in 1784, I parted | | | | everybody to go overseas on holiday no matter how |
| company with Samuel Johnson who was somewhat | | | | bad the felt |
| more profound as he coughed his last words, 'It | | | | Well the new century came and I watched the burial |
| matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The | | | | of Cecil John Rhodes. By 1902, he had coughed his |
| act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a | | | | last and his final train journey through Africa to the |
| time'. And then in October 1820, short of some | | | | Matopo Hills was a triumphal affair. Meanwhile, Anton |
| intellectual conversation, I went to Rome with John | | | | Chekov started coughing up blood and died a few |
| Keats for a holiday. Despite the rumours back in | | | | years later. As the Great War broke out, D. H. |
| England that he wanted to leave me at home, we | | | | Lawrence escaped conscription because of his chest. |
| shared a house at the foot of the Spanish steps until | | | | In 1924, Prague born writer, Franz Kafka, lay |
| we parted company on February 23rd 1821 as he | | | | haemorrhaging from his lungs in a downtown Vienna |
| died in the arms of his friend Joseph Severn. But at | | | | hospital. He begged for the doctors to give him a |
| this stage, I had got a taste for the Mediterranean | | | | lethal dose of morphine, and in true Wildean fashion |
| vitae in the company of artisans, so in 1838, I left | | | | screamed to them, 'Kill me, or else you are a |
| again for my winter holidays to Majorca. This time it | | | | murderer'. In that same year, over 200, 000 |
| was with Frederic Chopin, who was anything but | | | | Americans died of the disease, which was more than |
| discrete and he went around the island coughing so | | | | the total for heart disease and cancer combined. In |
| much that the locals got suspicious and followed him | | | | 1930, an impoverished D.H. Lawrence coughed his last |
| to the old Carthusain monastery of Valdemosa. Few | | | | in Vence, France and as the years passed, the |
| know, it was here that Chopin produced some of his | | | | Second World War was fought under a different |
| best nocturnes, including the poetically colourful, '24 | | | | sunset. |
| Preludes op. 28'. But not happy with doing that, he | | | | During these years I found many friends in Europe |
| bribed his way out of the monastery and left on a | | | | and in1943 it was estimated that I had befriended |
| passenger ship to Spain, where he haemoptysised | | | | 100.000 people in the Warsaw ghettos. A similar |
| upon his fellow passengers. This young Romanticist | | | | number were infected in Americans and by the |
| who had wrote Polish mazurkas about chasing | | | | Christmas of that year about half that number had |
| peasant girls and hunting partridges, was immediately | | | | paid the ultimate price. But the tide of life, brought |
| put ashore and had to take a pig transporter | | | | new advances and things were slowly beginning to |
| onwards. The gentile composer of youthful rondos, | | | | turn against me. November 1944, saw the |
| polonaises and concertos, the man who had heralded | | | | introduction of streptomycin and an eventual |
| the coming harmonies of Wagner, reduced to travel | | | | decrease in the number of people that I bestowed |
| with pigs, just because he kept my company. And | | | | friendship on. In 1990, I was with my old friend |
| when the poor man eventually reached Paris, fresh | | | | Nelson Mandela as he was released from Robben |
| with the latest Paco Porcine, it's little wonder his final | | | | Island. I still have a lot of other friends around the |
| words were, 'The earth is suffocating, swear to | | | | world, but I am more selective these days and tend |
| make them cut me open, so I won't be buried alive'. | | | | to only befriend the poor or immigrants. Presently |
| Anyway, I'll tell you a story about the windswept | | | | about eight million people cough themselves daily into |
| Yorkshire moors, for it was there lived the Bronte | | | | another sunset, of which about three million will not |
| sisters. And as the winds blew and the gales howled, | | | | see the coming fall. |