uring the rst part of September Rambert had worked conscientiously at Rieux’s side. He had merely asked for a fewD hours’ leave on the day he was due to meet Gonzales and the two youngsters again outside the boys’ school.
Gonzales kept the appointment, at noon, and while he and the journalist were talking, they saw the two boys coming toward them, laughing. They said they’d had no luck last time, but that was only to be expected. Anyhow, it wasn’t their turn for guard duty this week. Rambert must have patience till next week; then they’d have another shot at it. Rambert observed that “patience” certainly was needed in this business. Gonzales suggested they should all meet again on the following Monday, and this time Rambert had better move in to stay with Marcel and Louis. “We’ll make a date, you and I. If I don’t turn up, go straight to their place. I’ll give you the address.” But Marcel, or Louis, told him that the safest thing was to take his pal there right away, then he’d be sure of nding it. If he wasn’t too particular, there was enough grub for the four of them.
That way he’d get the hang of things. Gonzales agreed it was a good idea, and the four of them set o toward the harbor.
Marcel and Louis lived on the outskirts of the dockyard, near the gate leading to the cli road. It was a small Spanish house with gaily painted shutters and bare, dark rooms. The boys’ mother, a wrinkled old Spanish woman with a smiling face, produced a dish of which the chief ingredient was rice. Gonzales showed surprise, as rice had been unprocurable for some time in the town. “We x it up at the gate,” Marcel explained. Rambert ate and drank heartily, and Gonzales informed him he was “a damned good sort.” Actually the journalist was thinking solely of the coming week.
It turned out that he had a fortnight to wait, as the periods of guard duty were extended to two weeks, to reduce the number of shifts. During that fortnight Rambert worked indefatigably, giving every ounce of himself, with his eyes shut, as it were, from dawn till
night. He went to bed very late and always slept like a log. This abrupt transition from a life of idleness to one of constant work had left him almost void of thoughts or energy. He talked little about his impending escape. Only one incident is worth noting: after a week he confessed to the doctor that for the rst time he’d got really drunk. It was the evening before; on leaving the bar he had an impression that his groin was swollen and he had pains in his armpits when he moved his arms. I’m in for it! he thought. And his only reaction—an absurd one, as he frankly admitted to Rieux—had been to start running to the upper town and when he reached a small square, from which if not the sea, a fairly big patch of open sky could be seen, to call to his wife with a great cry, over the walls of the town. On returning home and failing to discover any symptoms of plague on his body, he had felt far from proud of having given way like that. Rieux, however, said he could well understand one’s being moved to act thus. “Or, anyhow, one may easily feel inclined that way.”
“Monsieur Othon was talking to me about you this morning,”
Rieux suddenly remarked, when Rambert was bidding him good night. “He asked me if I knew you, and I told him I did. Then he said: ‘If he’s a friend of yours advise him not to associate with smugglers. It’s bound to attract attention.”
“Meaning—what?”
“It means you’d better hurry up.”
“Thanks.” Rambert shook the doctor’s hand.
In the doorway he suddenly swung round. Rieux noticed that, for the rst time since the outbreak of plague, he was smiling.
“Then why don’t you stop my going? You could easily manage it.”
Rieux shook his head with his usual deliberateness. It was none of his business, he said. Rambert had elected for happiness, and he, Rieux, had no argument to put up against him. Personally he felt incapable of deciding which was the right course and which the wrong in such a case as Rambert’s.
“If that’s so, why tell me to hurry up?”
It was Rieux who now smiled.
“Perhaps because I, too, would like to do my bit for happiness.”
Next day, though they were working together most of the time, neither referred to the subject. On the following Sunday Rambert moved into the little Spanish house. He was given a bed in the living-room. As the brothers did not come home for meals and he’d been told to go out as little as possible, he was always alone but for occasional meetings with the boys’ mother. She was a dried-up little wisp of a woman, always dressed in black, busy as a bee, and she had a nut-brown, wrinkled face and immaculately white hair. No great talker, she merely smiled genially when her eyes fell on Rambert.
On one of the few occasions when she spoke, it was to ask him if he wasn’t afraid of infecting his wife with plague. He replied that there might be some risk of that, but only a very slight one; while if he stayed in the town, there was a fair chance of their never seeing
each other again.
The old woman smiled. “Is she nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Pretty?”
“I think so.”
“Ah,” she nodded, “that explains it.”
Rambert reected. No doubt that explained it, but it was impossible that that alone explained it.
The old woman went to Mass every morning. “Don’t you believe in God?” she asked him.
On Rambert’s admitting he did not, she said again that “that explained it.” “Yes,” she added, “you’re right. You must go back to her. Or else—what would be left you?”
Rambert spent most of the day prowling round the room, gazing vaguely at the distempered walls, idly ngering the fans that were their only decoration, or counting the woolen balls on the tablecloth fringe. In the evening the youngsters came home; they hadn’t much to say, except that the time hadn’t come yet. After dinner Marcel played the guitar, and they drank an anise-avored liqueur.
Rambert seemed lost in thought.
On Wednesday Marcel announced: “It’s for tomorrow night, at midnight. Be ready on time.” Of the two men sharing the sentry post
with them, he explained, one had got plague and the other, who had slept in the same room, was now under observation. Thus for two or three days Marcel and Louis would be alone at the post. They’d x up the nal details in the course of the night, and he could count on them to see it through. Rambert thanked them.
“Pleased?” the old woman asked.
He said yes, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
The next day was very hot and muggy and a heat-mist veiled the sun. The total of deaths had jumped up. But the old Spanish woman lost nothing of her serenity. “There’s so much wickedness in the world,” she said. “So what can you expect?”
Like Marcel and Louis, Rambert was stripped to the waist. But, even so, sweat was trickling down his chest and between his shoulder-blades. In the dim light of the shuttered room their torsos glowed like highly polished mahogany. Rambert kept prowling round like a caged animal, without speaking. Abruptly at four in the afternoon he announced that he was going out.
“Don’t forget,” Marcel said. “At midnight sharp. Everything’s set.”
Rambert went to the doctor’s apartment. Rieux’s mother told him he would nd the doctor at the hospital in the upper town. As before, a crowd was circling in front of the entrance gates. “Move on, there!” a police sergeant with bulging eyes bawled every few minutes. And the crowd kept moving, but always in a circle. “No use hanging round here.” The sergeant’s coat was soaked in sweat. They knew it was “no use,” but they stayed on, despite the devastating heat. Rambert showed his pass to the sergeant, who told him to go to Tarrou’s oce. Its door opened on the courtyard. He passed Father Paneloux, who was coming out of the oce.
Tarrou was sitting at a black wood desk, with his sleeves rolled up, mopping up with his handkerchief a trickle of sweat in the bend of his arm. The oce, a small, white-painted room, smelt of drugs
and damp cloth.
“Still here?” asked Tarrou.
“Yes. I’d like to have a word with Rieux.”
“He’s in the ward. Look here! Don’t you think you could x up whatever you’ve come for without seeing him?”
“Why?”
“He’s overdoing it. I spare him as much as I can.”
Rambert gazed thoughtfully at Tarrou. He’d grown thinner, his eyes and features were blurred with fatigue, his broad shoulders sagged. There was a knock at the door. A male attendant, wearing a white mask, entered. He laid a little sheaf of cards on Tarrou’s desk and, his voice coming thickly through the cloth, said: “Six,” then went out. Tarrou looked at the journalist and showed him the cards, spreading them fanwise.
“Neat little gadgets, aren’t they? Well, they’re deaths. Last night’s deaths.” Frowning, he slipped the cards together. “The only thing that’s left us is accountancy!”
Taking his purchase on the table, Tarrou rose to his feet.
“You’re o quite soon, I take it?”
“Tonight, at midnight.”
Tarrou said he was glad to hear it, and Rambert had better look
after himself for a bit.
“Did you say that—sincerely?”
Tarrou shrugged his shoulders.
“At my age one’s got to be sincere. Lying’s too much eort.”
“Excuse me, Tarrou,” the journalist said, “but I’d greatly like to see the doctor.”
“I know. He’s more human than I. All right, come along.”
“It’s not that.” Rambert stumbled over his words and broke o.
Tarrou stared at him; then, unexpectedly, his face broke into a smile.
They walked down a narrow passage; the walls were painted pale green, and the light was glaucous, like that in an aquarium. Before they reached the glazed double door at the end of the passage, behind which shadowy forms could be seen moving, Tarrou took Rambert into a small room, all the wall space of which was occupied by cupboards. Opening one of these, he took from a sterilizer two masks of cottonwool enclosed in muslin, handed one to Rambert, and told him to put it on.
The journalist asked if it was really any use. Tarrou said no, but it inspired condence in others.
They opened the glazed door. It led into a very large room, all the windows of which were shut, in spite of the great heat. Electric fans buzzed near the ceiling, churning up the stagnant, overheated air above two long rows of gray beds. Groans shrill or stied rose on all sides, blending in a monotonous dirgelike refrain. Men in white moved slowly from bed to bed under the garish light ooding in from high, barred windows. The appalling heat in the ward made Rambert ill at ease, and he had diculty in recognizing Rieux, who was bending over a groaning form. The doctor was lancing the patient’s groin, while two nurses, one on each side, held his legs apart. Presently Rieux straightened up, dropped his instruments into a tray that an attendant held out to him, and remained without moving for some moments, gazing down at the man, whose wound was now being dressed.
“Any news?” he asked Tarrou, who had come beside him.
“Paneloux is prepared to replace Rambert at the quarantine station. He has put in a lot of useful work already. All that remains is to reorganize group number three, now that Rambert’s going.”
Rieux nodded.
“Castel has his rst lot of serum ready now,” Tarrou continued.
“He’s in favor of its being tried at once.”
“Good,” Rieux said. “That’s good news.”
“And Rambert’s come.”
Rieux looked around. His eyes narrowed above the mask when he saw the journalist.
“Why have you come?” he asked. “Surely you should be elsewhere?”
Tarrou explained that it was xed for midnight, to which Rambert added: “That’s the idea, anyhow.”
Whenever any of them spoke through the mask, the muslin bulged and grew moist over the lips. This gave a sort of unreality to the conversation; it was like a colloquy of statues.
“I’d like to have a word with you,” Rambert said.
“Right. I’m just going. Wait for me in Tarrou’s oce.”
A minute or so later Rambert and Rieux were sitting at the back of the doctor’s car. Tarrou, who was at the wheel, looked round as
he let in the gear.
“Gas is running out,” he said. “We’ll have to foot-slog it tomorrow.”
“Doctor,” Rambert said, “I’m not going. I want to stay with you.”
Tarrou made no movement; he went on driving. Rieux seemed unable to shake o his fatigue.
“And what about her?” His voice was hardly audible.
Rambert said he’d thought it over very carefully, and his views hadn’t changed, but if he went away, he would feel ashamed of himself, and that would embarrass his relations with the woman he loved.
Showing more animation, Rieux told him that was sheer nonsense; there was nothing shameful in preferring happiness.
“Certainly,” Rambert replied. “But it may be shameful to be happy by oneself.”
Tarrou, who had not spoken so far, now remarked, without turning his head, that if Rambert wished to take a share in other people’s unhappiness, he’d have no time left for happiness. So the choice had to be made.
“That’s not it,” Rambert rejoined. “Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I’d no concern with you people. But now that I’ve seen what I have seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody’s business.”
When there was no reply from either of the others, Rambert seemed to grow annoyed. “But you know that as well as I do, damn it! Or else what are you up to in that hospital of yours? Have you made a denite choice and turned down happiness?”
Rieux and Tarrou still said nothing, and the silence lasted until they were at the doctor’s home. Then Rambert repeated his last question in a yet more emphatic tone.
Only then Rieux turned toward him, raising himself with an eort from the cushion.
“Forgive me, Rambert, only—well, I simply don’t know. But stay with us if you want to.” A swerve of the car made him break o.
Then, looking straight in front of him, he said: “For nothing in the world is it worth turning one’s back on what one loves. Yet that is
what I’m doing, though why I do not know.” He sank back on the cushion. “That’s how it is,” he added wearily, “and there’s nothing to be done about it. So let’s recognize the fact and draw the
conclusions.”
“What conclusions?”
“Ah,” Rieux said, “a man can’t cure and know at the same time.
So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job.”
At midnight Tarrou and Rieux were giving Rambert the map of the district he was to keep under surveillance. Tarrou glanced at his watch. Looking up, he met Rambert’s gaze.
“Have you let them know?” he asked.
The journalist looked away.
“I’d sent them a note”—he spoke with an eort—“before coming to see you.”
