I n 1349, the Black Death, which...

I n 1349, the Black Death, which had broken out in Italy the year before and spread rapidly over Europe, wiped out the entire population of an island monastery off the Irish coast. The monks maintained a journal of the plague. Here, translated and updated from the Latin, is what the last survivor wrote:

How cold and empty are these halls, where all my brothers lie silent! Yet it is a silence filled with voices. The cries of those stricken by the pestilence seem to echo in my head--but they are only my own feverish thoughts. Thoughts which, in these latter days, God forgive me, incline to heresy.

The leaders of the Church--indeed, most of society--consider the plague a judgment upon humankind. But I have come to question this. On the mainland, young and old, male and female, the debauched and the plainly innocent, all have died without discrimination, as if it were the result not of a cosmic plan but of blind chance. We prayed for mercy from a God who, if he did inflict such suffering upon us, is incapable of mercy.

The worst of it was that the plague came so quickly. It overwhelmed our defenses, as a battering ram breaches a castle gate. It robbed us of our dignity. In panic, some wallowed in dissolute orgies, others in the penitential frenzy of the flagellants; many abandoned friends and family when they showed the first signs of the disease. The order of society crumbled, and the individual died without the consolations of philosophy.

A pestilence that proceeded more slowly. . . .

Like AIDS.

. . .would also have its terrors--as I, who await the fatal symptoms in myself, know only too well. Yet it might allow us precious time. Time for society to buttress itself. . . .

With information tables and videos at the AIDS Awareness Fair on Saturday at the Ken Edwards Center, 1527 4th St., Santa Monica (part of World AIDS Week observances). Speakers and panel discussions include Damian Goldvarg on “HIV and Our Families” (in Spanish) at 10 a.m. and Anna Vargas on “Impact of HIV on Communities of Color” at 11 a.m.

. . .time for the doctors to refine their nostrums against the vapors that, they say, carry the disease. . . .

Dr. Michael J. Roth on “Questions and Answers on Medical Issues” at noon.

. . .and, finally, time for the individual to grapple with his fate.

A panel on “Living With AIDS and HIV,” with Steve Lowe and Audrey Castaneda, at 1 p.m. For more information, call the HIV/AIDS Project of Santa Monica at (310) 917-6699.

The storm wind whistles between these stones. Outside, the clouds scud; the sea hisses. Is this the end of the world, as many divines and scholars predict? Perhaps. It is the end of my world; that is certain. But so long as any uncertainty about the outer world persists, may I not hope for a better one to come?