oward the close of October Castel’s anti-plague serum was tried for the rst time. Practically speaking, it was Rieux’s lastT card. If it failed, the doctor was convinced the whole town would be at the mercy of the epidemic, which would either continue its ravages for an unpredictable period or perhaps die out abruptly of its own accord.
The day before Castel called on Rieux, M. Othon’s son had fallen ill and all the family had to go into quarantine. Thus the mother, who had only recently come out of it, found herself isolated once again. In deference to the ocial regulations the magistrate had promptly sent for Dr. Rieux the moment he saw symptoms of the disease in his little boy. Mother and father were standing at the bedside when Rieux entered the room. The boy was in the phase of extreme prostration and submitted without a whimper to the doctor’s examination. When Rieux raised his eyes he saw the magistrate’s gaze intent on him, and, behind, the mother’s pale face.
She was holding a handkerchief to her mouth, and her big, dilated eyes followed each of the doctor’s movements.
“He has it, I suppose?” the magistrate asked in a toneless voice.
“Yes.” Rieux gazed down at the child again.
The mother’s eyes widened yet more, but she still said nothing. M.
Othon, too, kept silent for a while before saying in an even lower tone: “Well, Doctor, we must do as we are told to do.”
Rieux avoided looking at Mme. Othon, who was still holding her handkerchief to her mouth.
“It needn’t take long,” he said rather awkwardly, “if you’ll let me use your phone.”
The magistrate said he would take him to the telephone. But before going, the doctor turned toward Mme. Othon.
“I regret very much indeed, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get your things ready. You know how it is.”
Mme. Othon seemed disconcerted. She was staring at the oor.
Then, “I understand,” she murmured, slowly nodding her head.
“I’ll set about it at once.”
Before leaving, Rieux on a sudden impulse asked the Othons if there wasn’t anything they’d like him to do for them. The mother gazed at him in silence. And now the magistrate averted his eyes.
“No,” he said, then swallowed hard. “But—save my son.”
In the early days a mere formality, quarantine had now been reorganized by Rieux and Rambert on very strict lines. In particular they insisted on having members of the family of a patient kept apart. If, unawares, one of them had been infected, the risks of an extension of the infection must not be multiplied. Rieux explained this to the magistrate, who signied his approval of the procedure.
Nevertheless, he and his wife exchanged a glance that made it clear to Rieux how keenly they both felt the separation thus imposed on them. Mme. Othon and her little girl could be given rooms in the quarantine hospital under Rambert’s charge. For the magistrate, however, no accommodation was available except in an isolation camp the authorities were now installing in the municipal stadium, using tents supplied by the highway department. When Rieux apologized for the poor accommodation, M. Othon replied that there was one rule for all alike, and it was only proper to abide by it.
The boy was taken to the auxiliary hospital and put in a ward of ten beds which had formerly been a classroom. After some twenty hours Rieux became convinced that the case was hopeless. The infection was steadily spreading, and the boy’s body was putting up no resistance. Tiny, half-formed, but acutely painful buboes were clogging the joints of the child’s puny limbs. Obviously it was a losing ght.
Under the circumstances Rieux had no qualms about testing Castel’s serum on the boy. That night, after dinner, they performed the inoculation, a lengthy process, without getting the slightest reaction. At daybreak on the following day they gathered round the bed to observe the eects of this test inoculation on which so much hung.
The child had come out of his extreme prostration and was tossing about convulsively on the bed. From four in the morning Dr.
Castel and Tarrou had been keeping watch and noting, stage by stage, the progress and remissions of the malady. Tarrou’s bulky form was slightly drooping at the head of the bed, while at its foot, with Rieux standing beside him, Castel was seated, reading, with every appearance of calm, an old leather-bound book. One by one, as the light increased in the former classroom, the others arrived.
Paneloux, the rst to come, leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the bed to Tarrou. His face was drawn with grief, and the accumulated weariness of many weeks, during which he had never spared himself, had deeply seamed his somewhat prominent forehead. Grand came next. It was seven o’clock, and he apologized for being out of breath; he could only stay a moment, but wanted to know if any denite results had been observed. Without speaking, Rieux pointed to the child. His eyes shut, his teeth clenched, his features frozen in an agonized grimace, he was rolling his head from side to side on the bolster. When there was just light enough to make out the half-obliterated gures of an equation chalked on a black-board that still hung on the wall at the far end of the room, Rambert entered. Posting himself at the foot of the next bed, he took a package of cigarettes from his pocket. But after his rst glance at the child’s face he put it back.
From his chair Castel looked at Rieux over his spectacles.
“Any news of his father?”
“No,” said Rieux. “He’s in the isolation camp.”
The doctor’s hands were gripping the rail of the bed, his eyes xed on the small tortured body. Suddenly it stiened, and seemed to give a little at the waist, as slowly the arms and legs spread out X-wise. From the body, naked under an army blanket, rose a smell
of damp wool and stale sweat. The boy had gritted his teeth again.
Then very gradually he relaxed, bringing his arms and legs back toward the center of the bed, still without speaking or opening his eyes, and his breathing seemed to quicken. Rieux looked at Tarrou, who hastily lowered his eyes.
They had already seen children die—for many months now death had shown no favoritism—but they had never yet watched a child’s agony minute by minute, as they had now been doing since daybreak. Needless to say, the pain inicted on these innocent victims had always seemed to them to be what in fact it was: an abominable thing. But hitherto they had felt its abomination in, so to speak, an abstract way; they had never had to witness over so long a period the deaththroes of an innocent child.
And just then the boy had a sudden spasm, as if something had bitten him in the stomach, and uttered a long, shrill wail. For moments that seemed endless he stayed in a queer, contorted position, his body racked by convulsive tremors; it was as if his frail frame were bending before the erce breath of the plague, breaking under the reiterated gusts of fever. Then the storm-wind passed, there came a lull, and he relaxed a little; the fever seemed to recede, leaving him gasping for breath on a dank, pestilential shore, lost in a languor that already looked like death. When for the third time the ery wave broke on him, lifting him a little, the child curled himself up and shrank away to the edge of the bed, as if in terror of the ames advancing on him, licking his limbs. A moment later, after tossing his head wildly to and fro, he ung o the blanket.
From between the inamed eyelids big tears welled up and trickled down the sunken, leaden-hued cheeks. When the spasm had passed, utterly exhausted, tensing his thin legs and arms, on which, within forty-eight hours, the esh had wasted to the bone, the child lay at, racked on the tumbled bed, in a grotesque parody of crucixion.
Bending, Tarrou gently stroked with his big paw the small face stained with tears and sweat. Castel had closed his book a few moments before, and his eyes were now xed on the child. He
began to speak, but had to give a cough before continuing, because his voice rang out so harshly.
“There wasn’t any remission this morning, was there, Rieux?”
Rieux shook his head, adding, however, that the child was putting up more resistance than one would have expected. Paneloux, who was slumped against the wall, said in a low voice: “So if he is to die, he will have suered longer.”
Light was increasing in the ward. The occupants of the other nine beds were tossing about and groaning, but in tones that seemed deliberately subdued. Only one, at the far end of the ward, was screaming, or rather uttering little exclamations at regular intervals, which seemed to convey surprise more than pain. Indeed, one had the impression that even for the suerers the frantic terror of the early phase had passed, and there was a sort of mournful resignation in their present attitude toward the disease. Only the child went on ghting with all his little might. Now and then Rieux took his pulse —less because this served any purpose than as an escape from his utter helplessness—and when he closed his eyes, he seemed to feel its tumult mingling with the fever of his own blood. And then, at one with the tortured child, he struggled to sustain him with all the remaining strength of his own body. But, linked for a few moments, the rhythms of their heartbeats soon fell apart, the child escaped him, and again he knew his impotence. Then he released the small, thin wrist and moved back to his place.
The light on the whitewashed walls was changing from pink to yellow. The rst waves of another day of heat were beating on the windows. They hardly heard Grand saying he would come back as he turned to go. All were waiting. The child, his eyes still closed, seemed to grow a little calmer. His clawlike ngers were feebly plucking at the sides of the bed. Then they rose, scratched at the blanket over his knees, and suddenly he doubled up his limbs, bringing his thighs above his stomach, and remained quite still. For the rst time he opened his eyes and gazed at Rieux, who was standing immediately in front of him. In the small face, rigid as a mask of grayish clay, slowly the lips parted and from them rose a long, incessant scream, hardly varying with his respiration, and
lling the ward with a erce, indignant protest, so little childish that it seemed like a collective voice issuing from all the suerers there. Rieux clenched his jaws, Tarrou looked away. Rambert went and stood beside Castel, who closed the book lying on his knees.
Paneloux gazed down at the small mouth, fouled with the sordes of the plague and pouring out the angry death-cry that has sounded through the ages of mankind. He sank on his knees, and all present found it natural to hear him say in a voice hoarse but clearly audible across that nameless, never ending wail: “My God, spare this child!”
But the wail continued without cease and the other suerers began to grow restless. The patient at the far end of the ward, whose little broken cries had gone on without a break, now quickened their tempo so that they owed together in one unbroken cry, while the others’ groans grew louder. A gust of sobs swept through the room, drowning Paneloux’s prayer, and Rieux, who was still tightly gripping the rail of the bed, shut his eyes, dazed with exhaustion and disgust.
When he opened them again, Tarrou was at his side.
“I must go,” Rieux said. “I can’t bear to hear them any longer.”
But then, suddenly, the other suerers fell silent. And now the doctor grew aware that the child’s wail, after weakening more and more, had uttered out into silence. Around him the groans began again, but more faintly, like a far echo of the ght that now was over. For it was over. Castel had moved round to the other side of the bed and said the end had come. His mouth still gaping, but silent now, the child was lying among the tumbled blankets, a small, shrunken form, with the tears still wet on his cheeks.
Paneloux went up to the bed and made the sign of benediction.
Then gathering up his cassock, he walked out by the passage between the beds.
“Will you have to start it all over again?” Tarrou asked Castel.
The old doctor nodded slowly, with a twisted smile.
“Perhaps. After all, he put up a surprisingly long resistance.”
Rieux was already on his way out, walking so quickly and with such a strange look on his face that Paneloux put out an arm to
check him when he was about to pass him in the doorway.
“Come, Doctor,” he began.
Rieux swung round on him ercely.
“Ah! That child, anyhow, was innocent, and you know it as well as I do!”
He strode on, brushing past Paneloux, and walked across the school playground. Sitting on a wooden bench under the dingy, stunted trees, he wiped o the sweat that was beginning to run into his eyes. He felt like shouting imprecations—anything to loosen the stranglehold lashing his heart with steel. Heat was ooding down between the branches of the g trees. A white haze, spreading rapidly over the blue of the morning sky, made the air yet more stiing. Rieux lay back wearily on the bench. Gazing up at the ragged branches, the shimmering sky, he slowly got back his breath and fought down his fatigue.
He heard a voice behind him. “Why was there that anger in your voice just now? What we’d been seeing was as unbearable to me as
it was to you.”
Rieux turned toward Paneloux.
“I know. I’m sorry. But weariness is a kind of madness. And there are times when the only feeling I have is one of mad revolt.”
“I understand,” Paneloux said in a low voice. “That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.”
Rieux straightened up slowly. He gazed at Paneloux, summoning to his gaze all the strength and fervor he could muster against his weariness. Then he shook his head.
“No, Father. I’ve a very dierent idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”
A shade of disquietude crossed the priest’s face. “Ah, Doctor,” he said sadly, “I’ve just realized what is meant by ‘grace.’ ”
Rieux had sunk back again on the bench. His lassitude had returned and from its depths he spoke, more gently: “It’s something I haven’t got; that I know. But I’d rather not discuss that with you. We’re working side by side for something that
unites us—beyond blasphemy and prayers. And it’s the only thing that matters.”
Paneloux sat down beside Rieux. It was obvious that he was deeply moved.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “you, too, are working for man’s salvation.”
Rieux tried to smile.
“Salvation’s much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health; and for me his health comes rst.”
Paneloux seemed to hesitate. “Doctor—” he began, then fell silent.
Down his face, too, sweat was trickling. Murmuring: “Good-by for the present,” he rose. His eyes were moist. When he turned to go, Rieux, who had seemed lost in thought, suddenly rose and took a step toward him.
“Again, please forgive me. I can promise there won’t be another outburst of that kind.”
Paneloux held out his hand, saying regretfully: “And yet—I haven’t convinced you!”
“What does it matter? What I hate is death and disease, as you well know. And whether you wish it or not, we’re allies, facing them and ghting them together.” Rieux was still holding Paneloux’s hand. “So you see”—but he refrained from meeting the priest’s eyes —“God Himself can’t part us now.”
