n the day after the committee meeting the fever notched another small advance. It even found its way into the papers,O but discreetly; only a few brief references to it were made. On the following day, however, Rieux observed that small ocial notices had been just put up about the town, though in places where they would not attract much attention. It was hard to nd in these notices any indication that the authorities were facing the situation squarely. The measures enjoined were far from Draconian and one had the feeling that many concessions had been made to a desire not to alarm the public. The instructions began with a bald statement that a few cases of a malignant fever had been reported in Oran; it was not possible as yet to say if this fever was contagious.
The symptoms were not so marked as to be really perturbing and the authorities felt sure they could rely on the townspeople to treat the situation with composure. None the less, guided by a spirit of prudence that all would appreciate, the Prefect was putting into force some precautionary measures. If these measures were carefully studied and properly applied, they would obviate any risk of an epidemic. This being so, the Prefect felt no doubt that everybody in his jurisdiction would wholeheartedly second his personal eorts.
The notice outlined the general program that the authorities had drawn up. It included a systematic extermination of the rat population by injecting poison gas into the sewers, and a strict supervision of the water-supply. The townspeople were advised to practice extreme cleanliness, and any who found eas on their person were directed to call at the municipal dispensaries. Also heads of households were ordered promptly to report any fever case
diagnosed by their doctors and to permit the isolation of sick members of their families in special wards at the hospital. These wards, it was explained, were equipped to provide patients with immediate treatment and ensure the maximum prospect of recovery.
Some supplementary regulations enjoined compulsory disinfection of the sickroom and of the vehicle in which the patient traveled. For the rest, the Prefect conned himself to advising all who had been in contact with the patient to consult the sanitary inspector and strictly to follow his advice.
Dr. Rieux swung round brusquely from the poster and started back to his surgery. Grand, who was awaiting him there, raised his arms dramatically when the doctor entered.
“Yes,” Rieux said, “I know. The gures are rising.”
On the previous day ten deaths had been reported. The doctor told Grand that he might be seeing him in the evening, as he had promised to visit Cottard.
“An excellent idea,” Grand said. “You’ll do him good. As a matter
of fact, I nd him greatly changed.”
“In what way?”
“He’s become amiable.”
“Wasn’t he amiable before?”
Grand seemed at a loss. He couldn’t say that Cottard used to be unamiable; the term wouldn’t have been correct. But Cottard was a silent, secretive man, with something about him that made Grand think of a wild boar. His bedroom, meals at a cheap restaurant, some rather mysterious comings and goings—these were the sum of Cottard’s days. He described himself as a traveling salesman in wines and spirits. Now and then he was visited by two or three men, presumably customers. Sometimes in the evening he would go to a movie across the way. In this connection Grand mentioned a detail he had noticed—that Cottard seemed to have a preference for gangster lms. But the thing that had struck him most about the man was his aloofness, not to say his mistrust of everyone he met.
And now, so Grand said, there had been a complete change.
“I don’t quite know how to put it, but I must say I’ve an impression that he is trying to make himself agreeable to all and
sundry, to be in everybody’s good books. Nowadays he often talks to me, he suggests we should go out together, and I can’t bring myself to refuse. What’s more, he interests me, and of course I saved his life.”
Since his attempt at suicide Cottard had had no more visitors. In the streets, in shops, he was always trying to strike up friendships.
To the grocer he was all aability; no one could take more pains than he to show his interest in the tobacconist’s gossip.
“This particular tobacconist—a woman, by the way,” Grand explained, “is a holy terror. I told Cottard so, but he replied that I was prejudiced and she had plenty of good points, only one had to nd them out.”
On two or three occasions Cottard had invited Grand to come with him to the luxury restaurants and cafés of the town, which he had recently taken to patronizing.
“There’s a pleasant atmosphere in them,” he explained, “and then one’s in good company.”
Grand noticed that the sta made much of Cottard and he soon discovered why, when he saw the lavish tips his companion gave.
The traveling salesman seemed greatly to appreciate the amiability shown him in return for his largesse. One day when the head waiter had escorted him to the door and helped him into his overcoat, Cottard said to Grand: “He’s a nice fellow, and he’d make a good witness.”
“A witness? I don’t follow.”
Cottard hesitated before answering.
“Well, he could say I’m not really a bad kind of man.”
But his humor had its ups and downs. One day when the grocer had shown less aability, he came home in a tearing rage.
“He’s siding with the others, the swine!”
“With what others?”
“The whole damned lot of them.”
Grand had personally witnessed an odd scene that took place at the tobacconist’s. An animated conversation was in progress and the woman behind the counter started airing her views about a murder
case that had created some stir in Algiers. A young commercial employee had killed an Algerian on a beach.
“I always say,” the woman began, “if they clapped all that scum in jail, decent folks could breathe more freely.”
She was too much startled by Cottard’s reaction—he dashed out of the shop without a word of excuse—to continue. Grand and the woman gazed after him, dumbfounded.
Subsequently Grand reported to the doctor other changes in Cottard’s character. Cottard had always professed very liberal ideas, as his pet dictum on economic questions, “Big sh eat little sh,” implied. But now the only Oran newspaper he bought was the conservative organ, and one could hardly help suspecting that he made a point of reading it in public places. Somewhat of the same order was a request he made to Grand shortly before he left his sick- bed; Grand mentioned he was going to the post oce and Cottard asked him to be kind enough to dispatch a money order for a hundred francs to a sister living at a distance, mentioning that he sent her this sum every month. Then, just when Grand was leaving the room, he called him back.
“No, send her two hundred francs. That’ll be a nice surprise for her. She believes I never give her a thought. But actually I’m devoted to her.”
Not long after this he made some curious remarks to Grand in the course of conversation. He had badgered Grand into telling him about the somewhat mysterious “private work” to which Grand gave his evenings.
“I know!” Cottard exclaimed. “You’re writing a book, aren’t you?”
“Something of the kind. But it’s not so simple as that.”
“Ah!” Cottard sighed. “I only wish I had a knack for writing.”
When Grand showed his surprise, Cottard explained with some embarrassment that being a literary man must make things easier in
lots of ways.
“Why?” Grand asked.
“Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him.”
“It looks,” said Rieux to Grand on the morning when the ocial notices were posted, “as if this business of the rats had addled his brain, as it has done for so many other people. That’s all it is. Or perhaps he’s scared of the ‘fever.’ ”
“I doubt it, Doctor. If you want to know my opinion, he—”
He paused; with a machine-gun rattle from its exhaust the “deratization” van was clattering by. Rieux kept silent until it was possible to make himself audible, then asked, without much interest, what Grand’s opinion was.
“He’s a man with something pretty serious on his conscience,”
Grand said gravely.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. As the inspector had said, he’d other sh to fry.
That afternoon Rieux had another talk with Castel. The serum had not yet come.
“In any case,” Rieux said, “I wonder if it will be much use. This bacillus is such a queer one.”
“There,” Castel said, “I don’t agree with you. These little brutes always have an air of originality. But, at bottom, it’s always the same thing.”
“That’s your theory, anyhow. Actually, of course, we know next to nothing on the subject.”
“I grant you, it’s only my theory. Still, in a sense, that goes for everybody.”
Throughout the day the doctor was conscious that the slightly dazed feeling that came over him whenever he thought about the plague was growing more pronounced. Finally he realized that he was afraid! On two occasions he entered crowded cafés. Like Cottard he felt a need for friendly contacts, human warmth. A stupid instinct, Rieux told himself; still, it served to remind him that he’d promised to visit the traveling salesman.
Cottard was standing beside the dining-table when the doctor entered his room that evening. A detective story lay open on the tablecloth. But the night was closing in and it would have been dicult to read in the growing darkness. Most likely Cottard had been sitting musing in the twilight until he heard the ring at his
door. Rieux asked how he was feeling. Cottard sat down and replied rather grumpily that he was feeling tolerably well, adding that he’d feel still better if only he could be sure of being left in peace. Rieux remarked that one couldn’t always be alone.
“That’s not what I meant. I was thinking of people who take an interest in you only to make trouble for you.” When Rieux said nothing, he went on: “Mind you, that’s not my case. Only I’ve been reading that detective story. It’s about a poor devil who’s arrested one ne morning, all of a sudden. People had been taking an interest in him and he knew nothing about it. They were talking about him in oces, entering his name on card indexes. Now, do you think that’s fair? Do you think people have a right to treat a man like that?”
“Well,” Rieux said, “that depends. In one sense I agree, nobody has the right. But all that’s beside the mark. What’s important is for you to go out a bit. It’s a mistake staying indoors too much.”
Cottard seemed vexed and said that on the contrary he was always going out, and, if need arose, all the people in the street could vouch for him. What’s more, he knew lots of people in other parts of the town.
“Do you know Monsieur Rigaud, the architect? He’s a friend of mine.”
The room was in almost complete darkness. Outside, the street was growing noisier and a sort of murmur of relief greeted the moment when all the street-lamps lit up, all together. Rieux went out on the balcony, and Cottard followed him. From the outlying districts—as happens every evening in our town—a gentle breeze wafted a murmur of voices, smells of roasting meat, a gay, perfumed tide of freedom sounding on its way, as the streets lled up with noisy young people released from shops and oces. Nightfall, with its deep, remote baying of unseen ships, the rumor rising from the sea, and the happy tumult of the crowd—that rst hour of darkness which in the past had always had a special charm for Rieux— seemed today charged with menace, because of all he knew.
“How about turning on the lights?” he suggested when they went back into the room.
After this had been done, the little man gazed at him, blinking his eyes.
“Tell me, Doctor. Suppose I fell ill, would you put me in your
ward at the hospital?”
“Why not?”
Cottard then inquired if it ever happened that a person in a hospital or a nursing home was arrested. Rieux said it had been known to happen, but all depended on the invalid’s condition.
“You know, Doctor,” Cottard said, “I’ve condence in you.” Then he asked the doctor if he’d be kind enough to give him a lift, as he was going into town.
In the center of the town the streets were already growing less crowded and the lights fewer. Children were playing in front of the doorways. At Cottard’s request the doctor stopped his car beside one of the groups of children. They were playing hopscotch and making a great deal of noise. One of them, a boy with sleek, neatly parted hair and a grubby face, stared hard at Rieux with bright, bold eyes.
The doctor looked away. Standing on the sidewalk Cottard shook his head. He then said in a hoarse, rather labored voice, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder: “Everybody’s talking about an epidemic.
Is there anything in it, Doctor?”
“People always talk,” Rieux replied. “That’s only to be expected.”
“You’re right. And if we have ten deaths they’ll think it’s the end of the world. But it’s not that we need here.”
The engine was ticking over. Rieux had his hand on the clutch.
But he was looking again at the boy who was still watching him with an oddly grave intentness. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the child smiled, showing all his teeth.
“Yes? And what do we need here?” Rieux asked, returning the child’s smile.
Abruptly Cottard gripped the door of the car and, as he turned to go, almost shouted in a rageful, passionate voice: “An earthquake! A big one!”
There was no earthquake, and the whole of the following day was spent, so far as Rieux was concerned, in long drives to every corner of the town, in parleyings with the families of the sick and
arguments with the invalids themselves. Never had Rieux known his profession to weigh on him so heavily. Hitherto his patients had helped to lighten his task; they gladly put themselves into his hands.
For the rst time the doctor felt they were keeping aloof, wrapping themselves up in their malady with a sort of bemused hostility. It was a struggle to which he wasn’t yet accustomed. And when, at ten that evening, he parked his car outside the home of his old asthma patient—his last visit of the day—it was an eort for Rieux to drag himself from his seat. For some moments he lingered, gazing up the dark street, watching the stars appear and disappear in the blackness of the sky.
When Rieux entered the room, the old man was sitting up in bed, at his usual occupation, counting out dried peas from one pan to another. On seeing his visitor, he looked up, beaming with delight.
“Well, Doctor? It’s cholera, isn’t it?”
“Where on earth did you get that idea from?”
“It’s in the paper, and the radio said it, too.”
“No, it’s not cholera.”
“Anyhow,” the old man chuckled excitedly, “the big bugs are laying it on thick. Got the jitters, haven’t they?”
“Don’t you believe a word of it,” the doctor said.
He had examined the old man and now was sitting in the middle of the dingy little dining-room. Yes, despite what he had said, he was afraid. He knew that in this suburb alone eight or ten unhappy people, cowering over their buboes, would be awaiting his visit next morning. In only two or three cases had incision of the buboes caused any improvement. For most of them it would mean going to the hospital, and he knew how poor people feel about hospitals. “I don’t want them trying their experiments on him,” had said the wife of one of his patients. But he wouldn’t be experimented on; he would die, that was all. That the regulations now in force were inadequate was lamentably clear. As for the “specially equipped” wards, he knew what they amounted to: two outbuildings from which the other patients had been hastily evacuated, whose windows had been hermetically sealed, and round which a sanitary cordon had been set. The only hope was that the outbreak would die
a natural death; it certainly wouldn’t be arrested by the measures the authorities had so far devised.
Nevertheless, that night the ocial communiqué was still optimistic. On the following day Ransdoc announced that the rules laid down by the local administration had won general approval and already thirty sick persons had reported. Castel rang up Rieux.
“How many beds are there in the special wards?”
“Eighty.”
“Surely there are far more than thirty cases in the town?”
“Don’t forget there are two sorts of cases: those who take fright, and those—they’re the majority—who don’t have time to do so.”
“I see. Are they checking up on the burials?”
“No. I told Richard over the phone that energetic measures were needed, not just words; we’d got to set up a real barrier against the disease, otherwise we might just as well do nothing.”
“Yes? And what did he say?”
“Nothing doing. He hadn’t the powers. In my opinion, it’s going to get worse.”
That was so. Within three days both wards were full. According to Richard, there was talk of requisitioning a school and opening an auxiliary hospital. Meanwhile Rieux continued incising buboes and waiting for the anti-plague serum. Castel went back to his old books and spent long hours in the public library.
“Those rats died of plague,” was his conclusion, “or of something extremely like it. And they’ve loosed on the town tens of thousands of eas, which will spread the infection in geometrical progression
unless it’s checked in time.”
Rieux said nothing.
About this time the weather appeared set fair, and the sun had drawn up the last puddles left by the recent rain. There was a serene blue sky ooded with golden light each morning, with sometimes a drone of planes in the rising heat—all seemed well with the world.
And yet within four days the fever had made four startling strides: sixteen deaths, twenty-four, twenty-eight, and thirty-two. On the fourth day the opening of the auxiliary hospital in the premises of a primary school was ocially announced. The local population, who
so far had made a point of masking their anxiety by facetious comments, now seemed tongue-tied and went their ways with
gloomy faces.
Rieux decided to ring up the Prefect.
“The regulations don’t go anywhere near far enough.”
“Yes,” the Prefect replied. “I’ve seen the statistics and, as you say, they’re most perturbing.”
“They’re more than perturbing; they’re conclusive.”
“I’ll ask government for orders.”
When Rieux next met Castel, the Prefect’s remark was still rankling.
“Orders!” he said scornfully. “When what’s needed is
imagination.”
“Any news of the serum?”
“It’ll come this week.”
The Prefect sent instructions to Rieux, through Richard, asking him to draw up a minute to be transmitted for orders to the central administration of the colony. Rieux included in it a clinical diagnosis and statistics of the epidemic. On that day forty deaths were reported. The Prefect took the responsibility, as he put it, of tightening up the new regulations. Compulsory declaration of all cases of fever and their isolation were to be strictly enforced. The residences of sick people were to be shut up and disinfected; persons living in the same house were to go into quarantine; burials were to be supervised by the local authorities—in a manner which will be described later on. Next day the serum arrived by plane. There was enough for immediate requirements, but not enough if the epidemic were to spread. In reply to his telegram Rieux was informed that the emergency reserve stock was exhausted, but that a new supply was in preparation.
Meanwhile, from all the outlying districts, spring was making its progress into the town. Thousands of roses wilted in the ower- venders’ baskets in the marketplaces and along the streets, and the air was heavy with their cloying perfume. Outwardly, indeed, this spring was like any other. The streetcars were always packed at the rush hours, empty and untidy during the rest of the day. Tarrou
watched the little man, and the little old man spat on the cats.
Grand hurried home every evening to his mysterious literary activities. Cottard went his usual desultory ways, and M. Othon, the magistrate, continued to parade his menagerie. The old Spaniard decanted his dried peas from pan to pan, and sometimes you encountered Rambert, the journalist, looking interested as ever in all he saw. In the evening the usual crowd thronged the streets and the lines lengthened outside the picture-houses. Moreover, the epidemic seemed to be on the wane; on some days only ten or so deaths were notied. Then, all of a sudden, the gure shot up again, vertically. On the day when the death-roll touched thirty, Dr. Rieux read an ocial telegram that the Prefect had just handed him, remarking: “So they’ve got alarmed at last.” The telegram ran: Proclaim a state of plague stop close the town.
