Living with Corona, a New Yorker’s Perspective
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Manhattan as seen across the East River from Roosevelt Island.
On arrival, my first weeks in New York City had been punctuated by the lighthearted outings of a veteran exploring old haunts, meeting up with friends and relatives, revisiting favorite museums, art galleries and cinemas, savoring new restaurants and generally reveling in all the delights of the Big Apple. Among the latter were the new exhibit in a “Met After Hours Show” on the edgy German artist Gerhard Richter at the Metropolitan Museum’s Met Breuer Annex; film retrospectives on Lucchino Visconti and Alfred Hitchcock at the Film Forum and the Metropolitan Opera’s film version of Handel’s opera “Agrippina” at another local cinema.
“Met After Hours” at the Met Breuer annex, featuring German artist Gerhard Richter, shortly before it closed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
A Saturday jaunt to Stamford, Connecticut became an occasion to visit “Chez Vous Bistro,” the trendy French restaurant whose chef was the husband of a newly-discovered cousin; if asked, we would have loyally ranked his menu as meriting four stars on the Michelin Guide.
Chef Eric Ehrlichson, center, at “Chez Vous Bistro” in Stamford, Connecticut
We linked up with our son and daughter-in-law as well as our nephews at “Mama Fina” restaurant in lower Manhattan, which offered refined and spiced-up versions of Filipino dishes such as tapsilog and sisig. A morning brunch at a child-friendly restaurant called “Sarabeth” was another occasion for us to meet with the toddlers in tow on a Sunday morning. After our Met Museum visit, we decided to splurge on an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side for its Lombardian cuisine. It strains the mind to think now that these would be our last restaurant visits for a long time coming.
No social distancing yet at a family gathering in Filipino restaurant “Mama Fina.”
Had we read the cards better, we might have known that our last visit to a restaurant specializing in Northern Italian cuisine and our book club’s topic for our regular monthly Thursday meeting would be portents of a fraught destiny. We were to discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” the allegory of how a prince and his coterie, determined to party away a plague in his palace, were ultimately annihilated by the specter of red death in their midst. Soon, we were to realize that life can imitate art after all—and on a global scale.
The familiar landmarks would be gone—streets busy with the masses enjoying pleasant walks and surveying inviting shop windows; buses and subways crowded with commuters and out-of-towners; Central Park teeming with leisure crowds. Instead, as shown on television, there were eerie views of an empty Times Square and a Fifth Avenue bereft of its usual bustle. Life seemed to have stopped on a dime and instantly transformed.
Four Freedoms Park in New York
Day-to-day activities were suddenly curtailed on the island where we lived —the swimming pool and gym closed, the public parks marked off with yellow tape, the exercise lessons terminated, the library shuttered, even Sunday church service absent. Instead, we would soon be used to leisure time and lots of empty hours that we could fill according to whim and wish. This was true retirement, as it had once been conducted by our elders, not the hectic pursuit of activities that sixty-somethings imposed on themselves once they ended their professions.
No Sunday services at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd
However, this is 2020 and media, most especially social media, have stepped up to the plate. Now, we understand why CNN’s innovation of 24/7 news would make perfect sense one day and why virtual reality and artificial intelligence were not just novelties and distractions, but also items that would become necessary for everyday survival and communication. Beyond email and Twitter, such media as WhatsApp, Viber and Messenger keep people socially in touch with one another even as Skype and Zoom enable business meetings to flourish. Alexa keeps us both informed and entertained. Busy New Yorkers are now taking the time to call each other and renewing friendships even across the globe. Some have found meaning in such activities as delivering food where it is possible or helping the old and the infirm while maintaining distance.
New phrases have indeed crept into our vocabulary—“social distancing,” “ flattening the curve ” and “PUI (person under investigation).” We have heard that in Manila, masks worn in public are no longer confined to respectful Japanese tourists but are de rigueur for all, and the black burka attire of Muslim ladies suddenly makes sense. Riding in on motorcycles is verboten not just because of its criminal potential, but also because it would spread the disease. While New York has not suspended public transportation as in Manila, certain subway and bus lines in the city have been radically cut down due to lack of traveler demand. Lyft, Grab and Uber have acquired fresh wind during this crisis.
Plagued by a shortage of protective equipment, such as masks, gowns and gloves, hospital workers are obliged to innovate or to recycle their wear beyond their usual validity. State and city officials all over the United States are pleading for more ventilators and respirators. The Jacob Javits Convention Center is now a temporary hospital for coronavirus patients just as tents have been opened in Central Park for the same purpose.
Before the coronavirus struck, the disaster of 9/11 had been New York’s greatest challenge, although that had affected mainly Lower Manhattan. While its effects were earth-shaking, it does not compare with today. New York’s empty streets and vacant iconic structures give the impression of a war’s aftermath, albeit without the physical destruction. Red and white lights drip down at night from the summit of the Empire State building to remind us of this new phenomenon. There is a new spirit of solidarity as people exchange news, both good and bad.
Before my mother passed way in 1998, I had taken her on her first and only trip to Europe. The two sites that had impressed her most was the Secret Annexe of Anne Frank in Amstersdam and the Conciergerie in Paris, where Marie Antoinette spent her last days before her execution.
In retrospect, we now seem to be captives of the Covid-19 just as much as those two women had been restrained by external forces in occupied Holland and Revolutionary France. For them then as for us now, time must have slowed down and imposed new constraints on people who had been used to unrestricted movement and freedom. Though coming from opposite poles of class and conviction, Anne Frank and Marie Antoinette were held captive in smaller worlds than what they had been used to.
Today, in the silence and enforced hermitage of our own respective “shelters-in-place,” we are given the free time to reflect on what future we wish to adopt in a new type of society and world. Nullpunkt or Zero Hour has come again, just as when the Second World War ended.
On Roosevelt Island, that sliver of earth between Manhattan and Queens where I live, the cherry blossoms have appeared as they do each year in April. Last year, hundreds of people had come to celebrate this event. Today, the esplanade is empty and people seem to ignore these heralds of spring. Yet, they are like the fresh green shoots of postwar Hiroshima, come to renew our hope.
The cherry blossoms on Roosevelt Island
-New York, April 15, 2020
Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr.
A career diplomat of 35 years, Ambassador Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr. served as Philippine Ambassador to South Africa (2003-2009) and Italy (2011-2014), his last posting before he retired. He is now engaged in writing, traveling and is dedicated to cultural heritage projects.
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