April 17, 2024 • 35 mins
In this hauntingly evocative episode, the ferryman, brought to life with the profound resonance of Dan Fogler's voice, guides a soul whose legacy is as complex as it is misunderstood. Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, voiced by Therese McLaughlin, steps aboard, her story a chilling reminder of the fine line between victim and villain, between innocence and culpability.
As the vessel navigates the murky waters of moral ambiguity, Mary recounts her life, marked by an invisible specter that cast a long shadow over her existence. This "shadow man," a personification of death and disease, becomes a constant companion, a dark figure lurking in the peripheries of her vision, a harbinger of the outbreaks that follow in her wake.
In this episode, we delve into the depths of Mary's psyche, exploring the experience of being branded a pariah, the first known asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the United States. Quarantined for nearly three decades, Mary's existence became a living testament to the fear and misunderstanding surrounding infectious diseases– a dread that is alive and well today.
But beneath the surface of this tragic tale lies a deeper question: Was her "shadow man" merely a monster, the embodiment of the death she unwittingly spread, or was he her ally, a warning of the unseen dangers she posed? As Mary reflects on her life, she reveals the anguish and defiance of a woman caught in the gears of the Industrial Revolution, witnessing first-hand the suffering of workers and the impoverished. Did she weaponize herself against the wealthy families she served, turning her condition into an instrument of vengeance or retribution for the injustices she observed?
Written by Nicholas Tecosky
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hm, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
What's heard to shut from the car, he's dead. Whether
he rebird to president.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Or four hours, people must get up and google identification.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road
is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between
their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear. All I
(01:20):
ask for in payment is a tale and accounting of
their lives and the great temporary that is the land
of the living. These are their stories. This is the
passage north brother Island. I visited this place often over
(02:22):
the years. This tiny little stone beside a hellgate, the
strait that's sunk a thousand ships. I've fished out many
a sailor from its depths, just as I have plucked
souls by the handful from this parcel of land. Just
up on the hill here sits Riverside Hospital, the place
(02:44):
of the very last resort for the plague ridden castaways
from the great Island of Manhattan, amidst the small pox
and consumption that spout a little bright, pinned prick, a
soul burning hotter than most eves. Picked up there at
(03:06):
the entrance to the hospital. She has risen from her
sick bed and has moved down the stairs and into
the pale November sunlight. Mary Mallin, But the world will
come to know her by a different name. Born so
far from here, in a land so much greener, she
(03:28):
made her first passage decades ago across the cold North
Atlantic into New York City, at a time when the
Irish were viewed as no better than the body lies
they picked up in steerage. She was fifteen and alone
in the hard, scrabble filth of New York City. Many
(03:49):
did not survive those first hard years, but she did.
She fought and scraped, and when she was told that
she carried Salmonella typhe which had killed so many before her,
she forged ahead anyway, taking the disease with her from
(04:11):
house to house, and finally earned the name Typhoid Mary.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Hello, Jesus Mary, and Joseph You Mary, Ah, I sensed
you before I even closed my eyes.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I knew You're a common far me, and somehow you
surprise me.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That is never my intention. And yet and yet it
is time walking me to the shore.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Ef I must.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's not cold.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I always expected the cold.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
None of that here.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Do you have a name?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
You can call me the Ferryman if you wish.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Nah, sure, Ferryman. Feels like the whole of my life
has been packed to the gills with fairy man of
one sort or another. Whether I wanted to go with
him or not, I went. I don't suppose I have
a choice in this matter either.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Everyone must go eventually.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Sure, just another wheel turning. Eh, the great wheel of
life carries it to the great wheel of death, and
still it turns. What's next on the other shore?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That will all depend.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
On what my accents in life, my morrows or your morals.
Who's fucking marls? Am I beholding to the churches? They
can all drain in now rever as far as I'm concerned. Nay,
I'll not be accepting their ATTARTI anymore. Jesus Christ himself
can get an air for from me on that account.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, the church has very little to do with the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Ah, God's a comforted least where I'll be. It's an
actual boat.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well you surprised. I'm a I'm a ferryman.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I thought it'd be more of a what's this metaphor?
But here I am getting an honest to God bite
to carry me on. Oh you know, I didn't want
to make that first voyage. I loved my home, I'd
(07:13):
loved my mother, even my father drunkard. He was was
a good man. He just couldn't ever quite get it right.
Every opportunity dead in his hands. But that was almost
everyone in the Old Country in those days, struggle and
toile and come up short. There wasn't enough work, and
(07:36):
the work when it came didn't pay enough. So men drank,
women drank. Everyone drank. A shadow over everything, a shadow
that I would come to recognize. I was sent away
(07:58):
because my mother taught i'd follow in his path if
I stayed, And who knows, Sometimes I think I'd have
made a spectacular drunkard. I've the temperament for it, to
be sure. So they sent me to my aunt and uncle,
who made a go of it in New York. I
(08:18):
remember saying goodbye to my mother. She wept. She said
that one day she'd join me. Last I saw of her,
she was standing on the docks as me ship pulled off.
(08:42):
She didn't wave, she just stood there. Han Coultie's held
hip over her mind, as if she were trying to
stafle a scream. Ah. That was the last time I
saw her. The voyage was long and difficult, the carter's
(09:02):
stank up, shetting, vomiting, the sour stench of fear that
grew all the more potent when the seeds were rough,
which they were often, every face grain, everybody carrying a
shadow above it. I would often spend days walking the decks,
flirting with the sailors, just to avoid the animal felt below,
(09:26):
which permeated everything. Despite the conditions, though in every eye
there was hope, even in the oldest, the most din trodden,
there's perfoos clearly marked for death. That hope it trumped
(09:48):
through the storms and stench, beat out even the heart
sickness that comes with leaving home forever. Even I fell
prey to what, young and terrified as I was, it
is the vilest thing. Hope it survives until the better
(10:09):
end and is passed on to strangle the next generation.
Hell I carry it with me, even I, although I
think I know what waits for me on the other shore.
It was in the belly of that ship, on the
Great Voyage, that I first saw hem and illness had
(10:36):
passed through steerage, a fever, people emptying their guts into
the latrine's buckets, whatever was at hand. I had secured
a bunk in the corner, and there I lay, young
and a line sucker than i'd ever been believe in
that you were coming far me, And I thought, ferry Man,
(10:58):
that it was you, yourself, elf, that I saw standing
amidst the sick and dying on the voyage one night,
with hollow eyes gazing at me across the wedd of
the room. My eyes too blurred with exhaustion to see clearly.
But it wasn't, was it. It was a different specter
(11:22):
with different purposes. I blent to clear my vision and
he was gone, And after a few days Daonus left me.
We made it across, I remember saying it for the
(11:46):
first time, The skyline so vast, oh, so great. I
was terrified, the star of the rest of my life.
My aunt and uncle were kind, dacent people, but they
(12:08):
couldn't afford to keep me on their meager wages, and
so I was sent to work immediately in the immense
filth of New York City. It was the laundry first,
so many park girls boiling the flesh on their arms,
so many growing tain and frail, with too much labor
(12:30):
and too little food. It was hot, wet, miserable. We
worked in the closest of quarters. When the last girl
was in each morning, they locked the doors from the
outside to make sure we didn't walk out before the
day's labor was done. At the time, I was concerned
(12:55):
mostly with the state in my hands, which were chopped
and sore, hot water and harsh soap, and the state
of my back, which protested even when I lay down
at night. I was concerned with the little rest I
got on the small cot in my aunt's catching. And
I was concerned with the shadow that I caught following
(13:18):
me all the way from the boat, who I caught
occasionally in the corner of my eyes, but you eluded
me when I turned to look him straight on. Somewhere
in my bones, I had a sense of what he was,
but I was young. I did not know its name,
(13:44):
but I saw him head on soon enough. It was
seven months and to my work at the laundry late
end of the afternoon. It was July, and we opened
the windows. There was no relief from the swelter and
hate that consumed us. In that sort of heat. It
(14:08):
wasn't unusual for a girl at you to drop to
need to be fanned and giving water and a sharp
rest before returning to the soup. I myself felt the
tail tale flutter behind my eyes, the tunnel vision that
came from the heat exhaustion. I was stepping back from
the hot water to catch a bread when Sally Mile
(14:29):
went headlong into her top. The girls working beside her
stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, trying to make sense
of sally face dying and the scalding water. I had
to push one of them either away and break into
the water to pull eye, shouted the others to make room,
(14:53):
tried to get her to cough up the water. Her
face looked a fright, be red from the hot water,
snot and tears mingled with his sons. I slapped her
cross the face to waker, but you wouldn't entirely come to.
(15:14):
By this time our farm and mister Moses had come
out of his office and seen the hole mess. He
shouted at us all to get back to work, and
grabbed Hi man off the street to help him cart
her Sally home. I watched him go, and it was
then that I finally saw the shadow head on, hanging
(15:40):
quietly in the vestibule by the door to the alley
where to carry the port drowned girl eyed hungry eyes
that watched Sally go and then turn back to the
rest of us, staring windows eyes. I blinked and he
(16:00):
was gone. Sally never came back. We heard through her
sister that she came down with pneumonia from the water
in her lungs, and days later she passed. I was lucky,
(16:21):
you know. Though I toiled as hard as the next girl,
I had prospects. My aunt was a cook for a
well off family, and she promised that after a little training,
she'd helped me find similar work. And so during the
days I returned to that horrible hot warehouse to was
hotel sheets under the watchful eye of mister Moses. And
(16:43):
at night my aunt took the time to teach me
how to cook, using ingredients pilfered from wealthier kitchens. Though
I tirled, I felt that dreadful hope. After a few
months more, I was introduced to a young man in
finance who had just married and bought a home, and
(17:04):
he was in aid of a cook. And so I
took leave of my aunt and uncle's home, of that
laundry with that tin horrible shadow, with the hungry eyes,
and I moved up tying into the servant quarters of
the home of mister Bryant. Gars were long still, but
(17:24):
I had a room in the cellar that I shared
with the housekeeper, Miss Evans. There was a fine job
that ended all too soon when the family fell ill.
Miss Nevans started influenza. But I knew different, you see,
I saw him and the kitchen one morning, the tin shadow,
(17:49):
just a flecker on a too early morning, when my
bones ched from the wingswork as I ate stale head
with my morning tea while the oven fire caught he
was just looking at me with those hungry eyes. My
(18:10):
blood run cold as I stood to confront him, but
he was gone as quickly as he'd appeared. The next morning,
the family was ill, a terrible waste and sort of illness,
each of them with a terrible rash on their necks.
(18:31):
None of them able to keep dying, even the water
day scept drop by drop. I saw missus Bryant one morning.
The maid was ill herself, so it was up to
me to bring the mistress her hot beef brought and
so the crackers that was to be her sore nourishment.
She was a sturdy woman by all accounts, but she
(18:53):
lay there on the bed, skeletal, as if her guts
had been pulled from her body. She didn't thank me
when I dropped the tray, just looked at me with
uncomprehending eyes. I'd seen it before in the boat. I'd
(19:15):
felt it the none inside. It was horrible. I couldn't
bear to look at it from the outside. I was
so shaken that I walked out of the house that
day and did not return. And so it was back
to my aunt's hee. Far better or worse, there's no
(19:39):
lack of jobs in New York City. Miss Nevin's a
coin soul, referred me to another family. I made the
move again, and again, almost as quickly as it had begun,
I saw the shadow man in the corner of the kitchen,
and another family fell ill.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
I was cursed.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
This shadow had followed me from my father's home, and
across the ocean into the guts of New York City.
But what was I did you? I found a family
in Long Island looking for a cook. I moved in.
They fell ill. I left, and another family on the
north shore the same Again and again. I prayed, I
(20:28):
plead in winter shadow, whenever I caught a glimpse conjole
and bargained leave me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I peg.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
And this way did the years pass. I'd gone through
a dozen wealthy families, all of them fell ill, few
of whom ever spoke to me except to give instructions anyway,
or sometimes for a husband or the butler to make
advances to carnerie in the kitchen, while the rest of
the high staff was about their business, was at any
(21:00):
different than the laundry where mister Moses got handsy with
the girls, or from the factories, the farms, anywhere a
girl could find gainful employment. And what choice was I
given but to bear it, such as the state of
the wire. It was in a Park Avenue mansion that
(21:24):
Master Soper Or find me. He had been hired by
a family in Oyster Bay to discover why he'd fallen ill,
and his trail led him from heis to heis until
he find me. He was not unkind, He explained the situation.
It's typhoid fever. We don't know why it hasn't made
you ill, but it's getting past to the families you
(21:47):
cook for. He asked me to go with him as
he tired to argue, and so he brought me to
knart Brother Island for the first time, never been to
a sanitarium. There was no work to do, nothing to
fill all the empty hours except talk to the sick,
(22:07):
which was nearly everyone there. At first, that was refreshing.
I had worked my entire life, and here was a
sort of endless holiday. In the spring, I would go
and sit by the water and feel the wind cut
through me. In the summer, I would even swim a little.
(22:28):
But at night I'd see my shadow watching, and I'd
wait to see if his hungry eyes would mean do
you oh? Sure the sick would die. But it was
whatever they brought in with him that did him in.
It had nothing to do with me. He watched over
all of us par and infirm. He seemed to me
(22:52):
no harm, So I grew accustomed to my shody man.
He became start of a companion with his sad, hungry eyes.
I was there on the island for three years the
first time. For all their prodden the doctors couldn't figure
out what to make of me, and so they decided
(23:16):
to set me loose with one terrible condition. I was
never to cook again. And so there I was, a
middle aged woman with no prospects. Now family left. My
aunt and uncle had long since passed. I went back
to the laundry. It was the samest when I had
(23:40):
left it. For the most part. Master Moses had given
way to another overseer, mister Roberts, who was younger, crueler.
The girls struggled terribly under hess yoke, and hey took advantage.
It's see it when a girl was cowled up to
(24:02):
his office and didn't return for a while, to look
in her eyes when she came back to the soup.
And one day it was me getting called to the office. Oh,
the young overseer had nigh interest in may. Of course,
I was just another gray worker to him. But I
sat dining in his office with its steamy windows and
(24:26):
pearl light, and he began to ask questions of me
about the girls. If the westper dings to each other
to me. He wished to cut out any roamors, to
rip them out by the roots, to let go into
the wild world. Any girl dead would spake against them.
(24:52):
It was day finally that I saw a truthful At first,
he felt a trick of the light. I thought I'd
seen my poor impoverished shot him on there, looking into
the dark corner, there was something different. The darkness felt
(25:18):
more slippery in that room. In it I saw a
sort of rising slathering. The cool shot of cast by
mister Robert's body revailed to me for the first time,
(25:40):
the great behamuth of greed, his massive roots drain in
the land, his great hungry mouth, yawn and open his eyes,
sharp and feral. It was he who wanted mated, mister Roberts,
(26:02):
He who had animated the Sterlings, and the Joneses, and
mister Moses before the them that serpenty, none of the
rich and powerful. It was not my own lesser shido poverty,
with his dull sad eyes and broken grimace, He who
(26:25):
had forced me and be strong, who made my tendencetnd
I shut my neck and sculpted the ropy muscles in
my arms and back. He had been an unwelcome companion,
to be sure, but he was not my enemy. None
(26:47):
are the messeries I endured that any of the girls endured,
the misery that stopped my parents, and the peasants that
crossed the Atlantic with me. None of it was necess
sorry for the world to continue on like there was
enough food in the setty to feed us all, and
have heizened to shelter all of us. Why we produced
(27:10):
enough to make all the world comfortable, but to keep
the likes of the mister Moses and the brilliance and
Roberts of this world to feed them by hay in
the shadows, creedy on fire Day needed us, They needed
(27:30):
our bats broken to suck tomorrow from them.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I would not.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I would not anymore. I stood from my chair, never
taken my eyes off the hideous shadows, sucking at the
edges of the light. My true enemy, and march oight
(28:00):
of mister Robert's office marched into the street. And that
very day I find myself answering an ad for a cook.
I would no longer be tormented by my lot. If
I couldn't improve it, I would become an avenging angel.
(28:28):
And so I returned to the kitchen. There I find
myself over dinner preparations.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
Far they're wealthy again, And with every meal I would
cough empty my hand, and with that hat I would cook.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I'd caress every roast, dag my fingers into the touch,
every care and potato on the plate. If anyone in
the kitchens had any objection, they did not speak it,
instead watching my every move. They knew. They all knew
(29:19):
what I was, even though they may not have the
language to speak my name. And it was not their
duty to stop the great work, to pull the roots
of the great greedy demon that ran all of our lives,
one by one, to sicken its mouth till they waste
to its agents, one by one, family by family. As
(29:40):
long as I lived with the sickness in my body,
if not by lead by bread, do I wish it
were otherwise? Of course? I wish I'd been able to
stay back home with my ma, and if we were comfortable,
and that I could live a comfortable life. I wish
i'd come to a marror gun could be swept up
(30:01):
my feet by a handsome young lad. I wish I'd
been paid fairly enough to forge my own way into
filthy land. Of opportunity. But this land isn't built for
one such as I to succeed in. Those who have
will continue to have, and their children will have more.
(30:23):
And after they've had all, they can eat simply hard
the rest of the food and dole it out in
little bites to the rest of us. Make us fight
over it, then use us to grind at the wheels
of their industry until we are dust. I've seen their
true face. I've watched its leather in the darkness, and
(30:49):
with my hands I did what I could to destroy it.
I don't regret doing what I did. What here already
I could see beyond the dock to the land the
Fogusto tek, Are we.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
At our destination?
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Oh? Is it having our hell?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That is for you to find out alone?
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Beautiful? And what if I don't go.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Well, you can stay on the dock if you wish,
But uh, nothing'll happen. You just wait and wait until
you make the decision to continue.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Sorry, I've got at least not much control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Maybe half an hour in heaven before the devil knows
you're late.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Ah. Oh, I don't know who will be there to
hear me when I walk right, so I'll say it
to you. If it's hell I'm walking into, I'll walk
into it with my head held high, with my shadow
(32:20):
Man proudly on my elbow. And woe unto them who
believe that Mary Mallin will ever be under their control.
Very well, fairy Man, I pray you carry a million
mile like me in your time. The boar need their vengeance.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
She made the great voyage, like so many before her,
like so many who came after, all of whom were
sold the bill of fare, America, the Bountiful, the land
of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, and
where anyone can succeed. She was met with the same
(33:15):
hard reality as anyone else, toil hunger. Though she suffered,
she did not suffer alone. Instead, Yeah, she made herself
the legend. And so she marches on to whatever lies
I had, secure in her knowledge that she did not
(33:37):
sacrifice herself entirely to the benemoth. I wish her well
on her passage.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Faeryman. This episode
features Teresa McLaughlin as Typhoid Mary. Written by Nicholas Tuakowski,
our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
(34:14):
by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
designed by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Juan Campos.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Additional sound editing.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
By Racket Sound. Our supervising producer is Josh Thane. Created
by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakoski. Produced by Dan Bush.
The Passage is a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Ebitor Uh, dunk my hands in the river, sticks here
and scrub him down. I'll I'll kill any kind of
bacteria
Speaker 3 (35:00):
S
Hm, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
What's heard to shut from the car, he's dead. Whether
he rebird to president.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Or four hours, people must get up and google identification.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road
is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between
their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear. All I
(01:20):
ask for in payment is a tale and accounting of
their lives and the great temporary that is the land
of the living. These are their stories. This is the
passage north brother Island. I visited this place often over
(02:22):
the years. This tiny little stone beside a hellgate, the
strait that's sunk a thousand ships. I've fished out many
a sailor from its depths, just as I have plucked
souls by the handful from this parcel of land. Just
up on the hill here sits Riverside Hospital, the place
(02:44):
of the very last resort for the plague ridden castaways
from the great Island of Manhattan, amidst the small pox
and consumption that spout a little bright, pinned prick, a
soul burning hotter than most eves. Picked up there at
(03:06):
the entrance to the hospital. She has risen from her
sick bed and has moved down the stairs and into
the pale November sunlight. Mary Mallin, But the world will
come to know her by a different name. Born so
far from here, in a land so much greener, she
(03:28):
made her first passage decades ago across the cold North
Atlantic into New York City, at a time when the
Irish were viewed as no better than the body lies
they picked up in steerage. She was fifteen and alone
in the hard, scrabble filth of New York City. Many
(03:49):
did not survive those first hard years, but she did.
She fought and scraped, and when she was told that
she carried Salmonella typhe which had killed so many before her,
she forged ahead anyway, taking the disease with her from
(04:11):
house to house, and finally earned the name Typhoid Mary.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Hello, Jesus Mary, and Joseph You Mary, Ah, I sensed
you before I even closed my eyes.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I knew You're a common far me, and somehow you
surprise me.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
That is never my intention. And yet and yet it
is time walking me to the shore.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Ef I must.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's not cold.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I always expected the cold.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
None of that here.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Do you have a name?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
You can call me the Ferryman if you wish.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Nah, sure, Ferryman. Feels like the whole of my life
has been packed to the gills with fairy man of
one sort or another. Whether I wanted to go with
him or not, I went. I don't suppose I have
a choice in this matter either.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Everyone must go eventually.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Sure, just another wheel turning. Eh, the great wheel of
life carries it to the great wheel of death, and
still it turns. What's next on the other shore?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
That will all depend.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
On what my accents in life, my morrows or your morals.
Who's fucking marls? Am I beholding to the churches? They
can all drain in now rever as far as I'm concerned. Nay,
I'll not be accepting their ATTARTI anymore. Jesus Christ himself
can get an air for from me on that account.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, the church has very little to do with the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Ah, God's a comforted least where I'll be. It's an
actual boat.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well you surprised. I'm a I'm a ferryman.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I thought it'd be more of a what's this metaphor?
But here I am getting an honest to God bite
to carry me on. Oh you know, I didn't want
to make that first voyage. I loved my home, I'd
(07:13):
loved my mother, even my father drunkard. He was was
a good man. He just couldn't ever quite get it right.
Every opportunity dead in his hands. But that was almost
everyone in the Old Country in those days, struggle and
toile and come up short. There wasn't enough work, and
(07:36):
the work when it came didn't pay enough. So men drank,
women drank. Everyone drank. A shadow over everything, a shadow
that I would come to recognize. I was sent away
(07:58):
because my mother taught i'd follow in his path if
I stayed, And who knows, Sometimes I think I'd have
made a spectacular drunkard. I've the temperament for it, to
be sure. So they sent me to my aunt and uncle,
who made a go of it in New York. I
(08:18):
remember saying goodbye to my mother. She wept. She said
that one day she'd join me. Last I saw of her,
she was standing on the docks as me ship pulled off.
(08:42):
She didn't wave, she just stood there. Han Coultie's held
hip over her mind, as if she were trying to
stafle a scream. Ah. That was the last time I
saw her. The voyage was long and difficult, the carter's
(09:02):
stank up, shetting, vomiting, the sour stench of fear that
grew all the more potent when the seeds were rough,
which they were often, every face grain, everybody carrying a
shadow above it. I would often spend days walking the decks,
flirting with the sailors, just to avoid the animal felt below,
(09:26):
which permeated everything. Despite the conditions, though in every eye
there was hope, even in the oldest, the most din trodden,
there's perfoos clearly marked for death. That hope it trumped
(09:48):
through the storms and stench, beat out even the heart
sickness that comes with leaving home forever. Even I fell
prey to what, young and terrified as I was, it
is the vilest thing. Hope it survives until the better
(10:09):
end and is passed on to strangle the next generation.
Hell I carry it with me, even I, although I
think I know what waits for me on the other shore.
It was in the belly of that ship, on the
Great Voyage, that I first saw hem and illness had
(10:36):
passed through steerage, a fever, people emptying their guts into
the latrine's buckets, whatever was at hand. I had secured
a bunk in the corner, and there I lay, young
and a line sucker than i'd ever been believe in
that you were coming far me, And I thought, ferry Man,
(10:58):
that it was you, yourself, elf, that I saw standing
amidst the sick and dying on the voyage one night,
with hollow eyes gazing at me across the wedd of
the room. My eyes too blurred with exhaustion to see clearly.
But it wasn't, was it. It was a different specter
(11:22):
with different purposes. I blent to clear my vision and
he was gone, And after a few days Daonus left me.
We made it across, I remember saying it for the
(11:46):
first time, The skyline so vast, oh, so great. I
was terrified, the star of the rest of my life.
My aunt and uncle were kind, dacent people, but they
(12:08):
couldn't afford to keep me on their meager wages, and
so I was sent to work immediately in the immense
filth of New York City. It was the laundry first,
so many park girls boiling the flesh on their arms,
so many growing tain and frail, with too much labor
(12:30):
and too little food. It was hot, wet, miserable. We
worked in the closest of quarters. When the last girl
was in each morning, they locked the doors from the
outside to make sure we didn't walk out before the
day's labor was done. At the time, I was concerned
(12:55):
mostly with the state in my hands, which were chopped
and sore, hot water and harsh soap, and the state
of my back, which protested even when I lay down
at night. I was concerned with the little rest I
got on the small cot in my aunt's catching. And
I was concerned with the shadow that I caught following
(13:18):
me all the way from the boat, who I caught
occasionally in the corner of my eyes, but you eluded
me when I turned to look him straight on. Somewhere
in my bones, I had a sense of what he was,
but I was young. I did not know its name,
(13:44):
but I saw him head on soon enough. It was
seven months and to my work at the laundry late
end of the afternoon. It was July, and we opened
the windows. There was no relief from the swelter and
hate that consumed us. In that sort of heat. It
(14:08):
wasn't unusual for a girl at you to drop to
need to be fanned and giving water and a sharp
rest before returning to the soup. I myself felt the
tail tale flutter behind my eyes, the tunnel vision that
came from the heat exhaustion. I was stepping back from
the hot water to catch a bread when Sally Mile
(14:29):
went headlong into her top. The girls working beside her
stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, trying to make sense
of sally face dying and the scalding water. I had
to push one of them either away and break into
the water to pull eye, shouted the others to make room,
(14:53):
tried to get her to cough up the water. Her
face looked a fright, be red from the hot water,
snot and tears mingled with his sons. I slapped her
cross the face to waker, but you wouldn't entirely come to.
(15:14):
By this time our farm and mister Moses had come
out of his office and seen the hole mess. He
shouted at us all to get back to work, and
grabbed Hi man off the street to help him cart
her Sally home. I watched him go, and it was
then that I finally saw the shadow head on, hanging
(15:40):
quietly in the vestibule by the door to the alley
where to carry the port drowned girl eyed hungry eyes
that watched Sally go and then turn back to the
rest of us, staring windows eyes. I blinked and he
(16:00):
was gone. Sally never came back. We heard through her
sister that she came down with pneumonia from the water
in her lungs, and days later she passed. I was lucky,
(16:21):
you know. Though I toiled as hard as the next girl,
I had prospects. My aunt was a cook for a
well off family, and she promised that after a little training,
she'd helped me find similar work. And so during the
days I returned to that horrible hot warehouse to was
hotel sheets under the watchful eye of mister Moses. And
(16:43):
at night my aunt took the time to teach me
how to cook, using ingredients pilfered from wealthier kitchens. Though
I tirled, I felt that dreadful hope. After a few
months more, I was introduced to a young man in
finance who had just married and bought a home, and
(17:04):
he was in aid of a cook. And so I
took leave of my aunt and uncle's home, of that
laundry with that tin horrible shadow, with the hungry eyes,
and I moved up tying into the servant quarters of
the home of mister Bryant. Gars were long still, but
(17:24):
I had a room in the cellar that I shared
with the housekeeper, Miss Evans. There was a fine job
that ended all too soon when the family fell ill.
Miss Nevans started influenza. But I knew different, you see,
I saw him and the kitchen one morning, the tin shadow,
(17:49):
just a flecker on a too early morning, when my
bones ched from the wingswork as I ate stale head
with my morning tea while the oven fire caught he
was just looking at me with those hungry eyes. My
(18:10):
blood run cold as I stood to confront him, but
he was gone as quickly as he'd appeared. The next morning,
the family was ill, a terrible waste and sort of illness,
each of them with a terrible rash on their necks.
(18:31):
None of them able to keep dying, even the water
day scept drop by drop. I saw missus Bryant one morning.
The maid was ill herself, so it was up to
me to bring the mistress her hot beef brought and
so the crackers that was to be her sore nourishment.
She was a sturdy woman by all accounts, but she
(18:53):
lay there on the bed, skeletal, as if her guts
had been pulled from her body. She didn't thank me
when I dropped the tray, just looked at me with
uncomprehending eyes. I'd seen it before in the boat. I'd
(19:15):
felt it the none inside. It was horrible. I couldn't
bear to look at it from the outside. I was
so shaken that I walked out of the house that
day and did not return. And so it was back
to my aunt's hee. Far better or worse, there's no
(19:39):
lack of jobs in New York City. Miss Nevin's a
coin soul, referred me to another family. I made the
move again, and again, almost as quickly as it had begun,
I saw the shadow man in the corner of the kitchen,
and another family fell ill.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
I was cursed.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
This shadow had followed me from my father's home, and
across the ocean into the guts of New York City.
But what was I did you? I found a family
in Long Island looking for a cook. I moved in.
They fell ill. I left, and another family on the
north shore the same Again and again. I prayed, I
(20:28):
plead in winter shadow, whenever I caught a glimpse conjole
and bargained leave me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I peg.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
And this way did the years pass. I'd gone through
a dozen wealthy families, all of them fell ill, few
of whom ever spoke to me except to give instructions anyway,
or sometimes for a husband or the butler to make
advances to carnerie in the kitchen, while the rest of
the high staff was about their business, was at any
(21:00):
different than the laundry where mister Moses got handsy with
the girls, or from the factories, the farms, anywhere a
girl could find gainful employment. And what choice was I
given but to bear it, such as the state of
the wire. It was in a Park Avenue mansion that
(21:24):
Master Soper Or find me. He had been hired by
a family in Oyster Bay to discover why he'd fallen ill,
and his trail led him from heis to heis until
he find me. He was not unkind, He explained the situation.
It's typhoid fever. We don't know why it hasn't made
you ill, but it's getting past to the families you
(21:47):
cook for. He asked me to go with him as
he tired to argue, and so he brought me to
knart Brother Island for the first time, never been to
a sanitarium. There was no work to do, nothing to
fill all the empty hours except talk to the sick,
(22:07):
which was nearly everyone there. At first, that was refreshing.
I had worked my entire life, and here was a
sort of endless holiday. In the spring, I would go
and sit by the water and feel the wind cut
through me. In the summer, I would even swim a little.
(22:28):
But at night I'd see my shadow watching, and I'd
wait to see if his hungry eyes would mean do
you oh? Sure the sick would die. But it was
whatever they brought in with him that did him in.
It had nothing to do with me. He watched over
all of us par and infirm. He seemed to me
(22:52):
no harm, So I grew accustomed to my shody man.
He became start of a companion with his sad, hungry eyes.
I was there on the island for three years the
first time. For all their prodden the doctors couldn't figure
out what to make of me, and so they decided
(23:16):
to set me loose with one terrible condition. I was
never to cook again. And so there I was, a
middle aged woman with no prospects. Now family left. My
aunt and uncle had long since passed. I went back
to the laundry. It was the samest when I had
(23:40):
left it. For the most part. Master Moses had given
way to another overseer, mister Roberts, who was younger, crueler.
The girls struggled terribly under hess yoke, and hey took advantage.
It's see it when a girl was cowled up to
(24:02):
his office and didn't return for a while, to look
in her eyes when she came back to the soup.
And one day it was me getting called to the office. Oh,
the young overseer had nigh interest in may. Of course,
I was just another gray worker to him. But I
sat dining in his office with its steamy windows and
(24:26):
pearl light, and he began to ask questions of me
about the girls. If the westper dings to each other
to me. He wished to cut out any roamors, to
rip them out by the roots, to let go into
the wild world. Any girl dead would spake against them.
(24:52):
It was day finally that I saw a truthful At first,
he felt a trick of the light. I thought I'd
seen my poor impoverished shot him on there, looking into
the dark corner, there was something different. The darkness felt
(25:18):
more slippery in that room. In it I saw a
sort of rising slathering. The cool shot of cast by
mister Robert's body revailed to me for the first time,
(25:40):
the great behamuth of greed, his massive roots drain in
the land, his great hungry mouth, yawn and open his eyes,
sharp and feral. It was he who wanted mated, mister Roberts,
(26:02):
He who had animated the Sterlings, and the Joneses, and
mister Moses before the them that serpenty, none of the
rich and powerful. It was not my own lesser shido poverty,
with his dull sad eyes and broken grimace, He who
(26:25):
had forced me and be strong, who made my tendencetnd
I shut my neck and sculpted the ropy muscles in
my arms and back. He had been an unwelcome companion,
to be sure, but he was not my enemy. None
(26:47):
are the messeries I endured that any of the girls endured,
the misery that stopped my parents, and the peasants that
crossed the Atlantic with me. None of it was necess
sorry for the world to continue on like there was
enough food in the setty to feed us all, and
have heizened to shelter all of us. Why we produced
(27:10):
enough to make all the world comfortable, but to keep
the likes of the mister Moses and the brilliance and
Roberts of this world to feed them by hay in
the shadows, creedy on fire Day needed us, They needed
(27:30):
our bats broken to suck tomorrow from them.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I would not.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I would not anymore. I stood from my chair, never
taken my eyes off the hideous shadows, sucking at the
edges of the light. My true enemy, and march oight
(28:00):
of mister Robert's office marched into the street. And that
very day I find myself answering an ad for a cook.
I would no longer be tormented by my lot. If
I couldn't improve it, I would become an avenging angel.
(28:28):
And so I returned to the kitchen. There I find
myself over dinner preparations.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
Far they're wealthy again, And with every meal I would
cough empty my hand, and with that hat I would cook.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I'd caress every roast, dag my fingers into the touch,
every care and potato on the plate. If anyone in
the kitchens had any objection, they did not speak it,
instead watching my every move. They knew. They all knew
(29:19):
what I was, even though they may not have the
language to speak my name. And it was not their
duty to stop the great work, to pull the roots
of the great greedy demon that ran all of our lives,
one by one, to sicken its mouth till they waste
to its agents, one by one, family by family. As
(29:40):
long as I lived with the sickness in my body,
if not by lead by bread, do I wish it
were otherwise? Of course? I wish I'd been able to
stay back home with my ma, and if we were comfortable,
and that I could live a comfortable life. I wish
i'd come to a marror gun could be swept up
(30:01):
my feet by a handsome young lad. I wish I'd
been paid fairly enough to forge my own way into
filthy land. Of opportunity. But this land isn't built for
one such as I to succeed in. Those who have
will continue to have, and their children will have more.
(30:23):
And after they've had all, they can eat simply hard
the rest of the food and dole it out in
little bites to the rest of us. Make us fight
over it, then use us to grind at the wheels
of their industry until we are dust. I've seen their
true face. I've watched its leather in the darkness, and
(30:49):
with my hands I did what I could to destroy it.
I don't regret doing what I did. What here already
I could see beyond the dock to the land the
Fogusto tek, Are we.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
At our destination?
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Oh? Is it having our hell?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
That is for you to find out alone?
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Beautiful? And what if I don't go.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Well, you can stay on the dock if you wish,
But uh, nothing'll happen. You just wait and wait until
you make the decision to continue.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Sorry, I've got at least not much control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Maybe half an hour in heaven before the devil knows
you're late.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Ah. Oh, I don't know who will be there to
hear me when I walk right, so I'll say it
to you. If it's hell I'm walking into, I'll walk
into it with my head held high, with my shadow
(32:20):
Man proudly on my elbow. And woe unto them who
believe that Mary Mallin will ever be under their control.
Very well, fairy Man, I pray you carry a million
mile like me in your time. The boar need their vengeance.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
She made the great voyage, like so many before her,
like so many who came after, all of whom were
sold the bill of fare, America, the Bountiful, the land
of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, and
where anyone can succeed. She was met with the same
(33:15):
hard reality as anyone else, toil hunger. Though she suffered,
she did not suffer alone. Instead, Yeah, she made herself
the legend. And so she marches on to whatever lies
I had, secure in her knowledge that she did not
(33:37):
sacrifice herself entirely to the benemoth. I wish her well
on her passage.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Faeryman. This episode
features Teresa McLaughlin as Typhoid Mary. Written by Nicholas Tuakowski,
our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
(34:14):
by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
designed by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Juan Campos.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Additional sound editing.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
By Racket Sound. Our supervising producer is Josh Thane. Created
by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakoski. Produced by Dan Bush.
The Passage is a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Ebitor Uh, dunk my hands in the river, sticks here
and scrub him down. I'll I'll kill any kind of
bacteria
Speaker 3 (35:00):
S
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