They walked a little way together. Cottard told the story of a grocer in his street who had laid by masses of canned provisions with the idea of selling them later on at a big profit. When the ambulance men came to fetch him he had several dozen cans of meat under his bed.
«He died in the hospital. There’s no money in plague, that’s sure.» Cottard was a mine of stories of this kind, true or false, about the epidemic. One of them was about a man with all the symptoms and running a high fever who dashed out into the street, flung himself on the first woman he met, and embraced her, yelling that he’d «got it.»
«Good for him!» was Cottard’s comment. But his next remark seemed to belie his gleeful exclamation. «Anyhow, we’ll all be nuts before long, unless I’m much mistaken.»
It was on the afternoon of the same day that Grand at last unburdened himself to Rieux. Noticing Mme Rieux’s photograph on the desk, he looked at the doctor inquiringly. Rieux told him that his wife was under treatment in a sanatorium some distance from the town. «In one way,» Grand said, «that’s lucky.» The doctor agreed that it was lucky in a sense; but, he added, the great thing was that his wife should recover.
«Yes,» Grand said, «I understand.»
And then, for the first time since Rieux had made his acquaintance, he became quite voluble. Though he still had trouble over his words he succeeded nearly always in finding them; indeed, it was as if for years he’d been thinking over what he now said.
When in his teens, he had married a very young girl, one of a poor family living near by. It was, in fact, in order to marry that he’d abandoned his studies and taken up his present job. Neither he nor Jeanne ever stirred from their part of the town. In his courting days he used to go to see her at her home, and the family were inclined to make fun of her bashful, silent admirer. Her father was a railroadman.
When off duty, he spent most of the time seated in a corner beside the window gazing meditatively at the passers-by, his enormous hands splayed out on his thighs. His wife was always busy with domestic duties, in which Jeanne gave her a hand. Jeanne was so tiny that it always made Grand nervous to see her crossing a street, the vehicles bearing down on her looked so gigantic. Then one day shortly before Christmas they went out for a short walk together and stopped to admire a gaily decorated shop-window. After gazing ecstatically at it for some moments, Jeanne turned to him. «Oh, isn’t it lovely!» He squeezed her wrist. It was thus that the marriage had come about.
The rest of the story, to Grand’s thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love. As the head of the office where Grand was employed hadn’t kept his promise, Jeanne, too, had to work outside.
At this point a little imagination was needed to grasp what Grand was trying to convey. Owing largely to fatigue, he gradually lost grip of himself, had less and less to say, and failed to keep alive the feeling in his wife that she was loved. An overworked husband, poverty, the gradual loss of hope in a better future, silent evenings at home, what chance had any passion of surviving such conditions? Probably Jeanne had suffered. And yet she’d stayed; of course one may often suffer a long time without knowing it.
Thus years went by. Then, one day, she left him. Naturally she hadn’t gone alone. «I was very fond of you, but now I’m so tired. I’m not happy to go, but one needn’t be happy to make another start.» That, more or less, was what she’d said in her letter.
Grand, too, had suffered. And he, too, might, as Rieux pointed out, have made a fresh start. But no, he had lost faith. Only, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. What he’d have liked to do was to write her a letter justifying himself.
«But it’s not easy,» he told Rieux. «I’ve been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn’t need words to make ourselves understood. But people don’t love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn’t.» Grand produced from his pocket something that looked like a check duster and blew his nose noisily. Then he wiped his mustache. Rieux gazed at him in silence. «Forgive me, doctor,» Grand added hastily, «but how shall I put it? I feel you’re to be trusted. That’s why I can talk to you about these things. And then, you see, I get all worked up.»
Obviously Grand’s thoughts were leagues away from the plague.
That evening Rieux sent a telegram to his wife telling her that the town was closed, that she must go on taking great care of herself, and that she was in his thoughts.
One evening when he was leaving the hospital, it was about three weeks after the closing of the gates, Rieux found a young man waiting for him in the street.
«You remember me, don’t you?»
Rieux believed he did, but couldn’t quite place him.
«I called on you just before this trouble started,» the young man said, «for information about the living-conditions in the Arab quarter. My name is Raymond Rambert.»
«Ah yes, of course. Well, you’ve now the makings of a good story for your paper.» Rambert, who gave the impression of being much less self-assured than he had
seemed on the first occasion when they met, said it wasn’t that he’d come about. He wanted to know if the doctor would kindly give him some help.
«I must apologize,» he continued, «but really I don’t know a soul here, and the local representative of my paper is a complete dud.»
Rieux said he had to go to a dispensary in the center of the town and suggested they should walk there together. Their way lay through the narrow streets of the Negro district. Evening was coming on, but the town, once so noisy at this hour, was strangely still. The only sounds were some bugle-calls echoing through the air, still golden with the end of daylight; the army, anyhow, was making a show of carrying on as usual. Meanwhile, as they walked down the steep little streets flanked by blue, mauve, and saffron-yellow walls, Rambert talked incessantly, as if his nerves were out of hand.
He had left his wife in Paris, he said. Well, she wasn’t actually his wife, but it came to the same thing. The moment the town was put into quarantine he had sent her a wire. His impression then was that this state of things was quite temporary, and all he’d tried to do was to get a letter through to her.
But the post-office officials had vetoed this, his colleagues of the local press said they could do nothing for him, and a clerk in the Prefect’s office had laughed in his face. It was only after waiting in line for a couple of hours that he had managed to get a telegram accepted: All goes well. Hope to see you soon.
But next morning, when he woke up, it had dawned on him that, after all, there was absolutely no knowing how long this business was going to last. So he’d decided to leave the town at once. Being able, thanks to his professional status, to pull some strings, he had secured an interview with a high official in the Prefect’s office. He had explained that his presence in Oran was purely accidental, he had no connection with the town and no reasons for staying in it; that being so, he surely was entitled to leave, even if, once outside the town, he had to undergo a spell of quarantine. The official told him he quite appreciated his position, but no exceptions could be made. He would, however, see if anything could be done, though he could hold out little hope of a quick decision, as the authorities were taking a very serious view of the situation.
«But, confound it,» Rambert exclaimed, «I don’t belong here!»
«Quite so. Anyhow, let’s hope the epidemic will soon be over.» Finally, he had tried to console Rambert by pointing out that, as a journalist, he had an excellent subject to his hand in Oran; indeed, when one came to think of it, no event, however disagreeable in some ways, but had its bright side. Whereat Rambert had shrugged his shoulders petulantly and walked out.
They had come to the center of the town.
«It’s so damn silly, doctor, isn’t it? The truth is I wasn’t brought into the world to write newspaper articles. But it’s quite likely I was brought into the world to live with a woman. That’s reasonable enough, isn’t it?»
Rieux replied cautiously that there might be something in what he said.
The central boulevards were not so crowded as usual. The few people about were hurrying to distant homes. Not a smile was to be seen on any face. Rieux guessed that this was a result of the latest Ransdoc announcement. After twenty-four hours our townspeople would begin to hope again. But on the days when
