Sick City

On the subway, and again in the lobby of a fancy building, I imagine viral particles swimming around my face, delivered via the recycled air of the HVAC system. A sinking feeling of inevitability takes hold, recalling the fatalism of Aschenbach, the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (1912), who lingers in Venice after learning of an outbreak of a contagious disease much more deadly than Covid-19. As Aschenbach steps inside the golden nave of St. Mark’s Basilica, “the splendor of the low, broad Oriental temple weighed luxuriantly on his senses … and with the stuffy, sweet odor of sacrifice a different odor seemed to mingle quietly: the smell of the sick city.” Architecture becomes a backdrop for the struggle, real or imagined, between survival and doom.