The White Plague Read Online Free PDF

anxious. There had been a matchmaker’s look in Mrs. Neri’s plump face.
    John leaned close to the mirror and looked at himself carefully. The changes… not quite a stranger, but strange. They won’t have any photographs of this face , he thought. But they would make drawings and spread them far and wide . At that moment, the thought still in his mind, he knew he was going to do this thing, knew he was capable of it and would certainly do it. That scream at St. Stephen’s Green had set something in motion, like the slow beginning of an avalanche. Let it come then , he thought.
    That morning, he put his house on the market and, because properties near the college were much in demand, he had it sold two weeks later to a “nice young assistant professor,” as the Real Estate Woman called him. All of these people were like dream faces to John. His thoughts had gone questing ahead to the thing that needed doing. The Nice Young Assistant Professor had wanted to know when Doctor O’Neill would be returning to his post at the school.
    “We heard about your tragedy of course, and we understand why you’re selling – all of the memories.”
    He doesn’t understand at all , John thought.
    But the transaction put a clear $188,000 in John’s pocket. The Real Estate Woman had tried to talk to John about his “tax obligations” and had worked to sell him “a much better investment a bit farther out but on land sure to increase in value dramatically over the next ten years.”
    He had lied to her, saying his accountants already had the problem in hand.
    The contents of the house had brought an astonishing $62,000, but then Mary’s father had left her some valuable old books and two fine paintings. Her family’s furniture had included several antiques, a thing John had never even thought about before. Furniture had always been only something to fill the spaces in a house.
    The college fund they had set aside for the twins yielded another $33,000. There was the McCarthy annuity from John’s mother, against which the bank loaned him $56,000. Their small portfolio of stocks brought $28,900. The bank accounts over which Mary had worked so hard brought $31,452. Almost $30,000 remained in the grant for the Ireland project, money he had not transferred to the Allied Irish Bank, keeping it in a high-interest brokerage fund that the foundation had approved. His salary, reduced by the sabbatical’s requirements, produced close to $16,000 more.
    Friends and associates had seen only the surface of this activity, taking it as “a good sign John’s finally getting back to normal.”
    The most delicate parts of the transition involved dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and the sale of the pharmacy that had been in his mother’s family now for two generations. Max Dunn said he understood that John might not want to publicize the sale, “and besides I’d want to keep the McCarthy name over the door.” From family sources, Dunn produced a $78,000 down payment and agreed to a one-year deferral on starting payments on the balance – none of which John ever intended to collect. The $78,000 was what he wanted. Cash!
    The IRS he put off with a token payment of $5,000 and a letter from his accountants explaining that due to the tragedy and attendant problems, time was required to settle the taxpayer’s affairs. The IRS, mindful of the sympathy for John and wary of adverse publicity, granted a six-month deferral.
    On the day he left Highland Park in his station wagon, John had almost $500,000 tucked away in the back in the fireproof box that once had held his will and property deeds. The rest of the wagon was crammed full of the carefully packed elements of his personal laboratory, including his computer. Two suitcases of clothing had to be secured under the safety belt beside him on the front seat.
    Friends accepted the story that he was going to look for “someplace farther out, a place without these memories.”
    Late that