«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 cafes.
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 difficult 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 fine 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 offices, 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 filled up with noisy young people released from shops and offices. Nightfall, with its deep, remote baying of unseen ships, the rumor rising from the sea, and the happy tumult of the crowd, that first 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 confidence 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 first 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 effort 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 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 official communique 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 fleas, 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 flooded 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
