«The truth,» Rambert remarked abruptly, «is that she and I have been together only a short time, and we suit each other perfectly.» When Rieux said nothing, he continued: «I can see I’m boring you. Sorry. All I wanted to know was whether you couldn’t possibly give me a certificate stating that I haven’t got this damned disease. It might make things easier, I think.»
Rieux nodded. A small boy had just run against his legs and fallen; he set him on his feet again.
Walking on, they came to the Place d’Armes. Gray with dust, the palms and fig trees drooped despondently around a statue of the Republic, which too was coated with grime and dust. They stopped beside the statue. Rieux stamped his feet on the flagstones to shake off the coat of white dust that had gathered on them. His hat pushed slightly back, his shirt-collar gaping under a loosely knotted tie, his cheeks ill-shaven, the journalist had the sulky, stubborn look of a young man who feels himself deeply injured.
«Please don’t doubt I understand you,» Rieux said, «but you must see your argument doesn’t hold water. I can’t give you that certificate because I don’t know whether you have the disease or not, and even if I did, how could I certify that between the moment of leaving my consulting-room and your arrival at the Prefect’s office you wouldn’t be infected? And even if I did?»
«And even if you did?»
«Even if I gave you a certificate, it wouldn’t help.» «Why not?»
«Because there are thousands of people placed as you are in this town, and there can’t be any question of allowing them to leave it.»
«Even supposing they haven’t got plague?»
«That’s not a sufficient reason. Oh, I know it’s an absurd situation, but we’re all involved in it, and we’ve got to accept it as it is.»
«But I don’t belong here.»
«Unfortunately, from now on you’ll belong here, like everybody else.» Rambert raised his voice a little.
«But, damn it, doctor, can’t you see it’s a matter of common human feeling? Or don’t you realize what this sort of separation means to people who are fond of each other?»
Rieux was silent for a moment, then said he understood it perfectly. He wished nothing better than that Rambert should be allowed to return to his wife and that all who loved one another and were parted should come together again. Only the law was the law, plague had broken out, and he could only do what had to be done.
«No,» Rambert said bitterly, «you can’t understand. You’re using the language of reason, not of the heart; you live in a world of abstractions.»
The doctor glanced up at the statue of the Republic, then said he did not know if he was using the language of reason, but he knew he was using the language of the facts as everybody could see them, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing.
The journalist tugged at his tie to straighten it.
«So, I take it, I can’t count on help from you. Very good. But» his tone was challenging «leave this town I shall.»
The doctor repeated that he quite understood, but all that was none of his business.
«Excuse me, but it is your business.» Rambert raised his voice again. «I approached you because I’d been told you played a large part in drawing up the orders that have been issued. So I thought that in one case anyhow you could unmake what you’d helped to make. But you don’t care; you never gave a thought to anybody, you didn’t take the case of people who are separated into account.»
Rieux admitted this was true up to a point; he’d preferred not to take such cases into account.
«Ah, I see now!» Rambert exclaimed. «You’ll soon be talking about the interests of the general public. But public welfare is merely the sum total of the private welfares of each of us.»
The doctor seemed abruptly to come out of a dream.
«Oh, come!» he said. «There’s that, but there’s much more to it than that. It doesn’t do to rush to conclusions, you know. But you’ve no reason to feel angered. I assure you that if you find a way out of your quandary, I shall be extremely pleased. Only, there are things that my official position debars me from doing.»
Rambert tossed his head petulantly.
«Yes, yes, I was wrong to show annoyance. And I’ve taken up too much of your time already.»
Rieux asked him to let him know how he got on with his project, and not to bear him a grudge for not having been more amenable. He was sure, he added, that there was some common ground on which they could meet. Rambert looked perplexed.
Then, «Yes,» he said after a short silence, «I rather think so, too, in spite of myself, and of all you’ve just been saying.» He paused. «Still, I can’t agree with you.»
Pulling down his hat over his eyes, he walked quickly away. Rieux saw him enter the hotel where Tarrou was staying.
After a moment the doctor gave a slight nod, as if approving of some thought that had crossed his mind. Yes, the journalist was right in refusing to be balked of happiness. But was he right in reproaching him, Rieux, with living in a world of abstractions? Could that term «abstraction» really apply to these days he spent in his hospital while the plague was battening on the town, raising its death-toll to five hundred victims a week? Yes, an element of abstraction, of a divorce from reality, entered into such calamities. Still when abstraction sets to killing you, you’ve got to get busy with it. And so much Rieux knew: that this wasn’t the easiest course. Running this auxiliary hospital, for instance, of which he was in charge’ there were now three such hospitals, was no light task.
He had had an anteroom, leading into his surgery, installed, equipped for dealing with patients on arrival. The floor had been excavated and replaced by a shallow lake of water and cresylic acid, in the center of which was a sort of island made of bricks. The patient was carried to the island, rapidly undressed, and his clothes dropped into the disinfectant water. After being washed, dried, and dressed in one of the coarse hospital nightshirts, he was taken to Rieux for examination, then carried to one of the wards. This hospital, a requisitioned schoolhouse, now contained five hundred beds, almost all of which were occupied.
After the reception of the patients, which he personally supervised, Rieux injected serum, lanced buboes, checked the statistics again, and returned for his afternoon consultations. Only when night was setting in did he start on his round of visits, and he never got home till a very late hour. On the previous night his mother, when handing him a telegram from his wife, had remarked that his hands were shaking.
«Yes,» he said. «But it’s only a matter of sticking to it, and my nerves will steady down, you’ll see.»
He had a robust constitution and, as yet, wasn’t really tired. Still his visits, for one thing, were beginning to put a great strain on his endurance. Once the epidemic was diagnosed, the patient had to be evacuated forthwith.
Then indeed began «abstraction» and a tussle with the family, who knew they would not see the sick man again until he was dead or cured. «Have some pity, doctor!» It was Mme Loret, mother of the chambermaid at Tarrou’s hotel, who made the appeal. An unnecessary appeal; of course he had pity. But what purpose could it serve? He had to telephone, and soon the ambulance could be heard clanging down the street. (At first the neighbors used to open windows and watch. Later they promptly shut them.) Then came a second phase of conflict, tears and pleadings, abstraction, in a word. In those fever-hot, nerve-ridden sickrooms crazy scenes took place.
But the issue was always the same. The patient was removed. Then Rieux, too, could leave.
In the early days he had merely telephoned, then rushed off to see other patients, without waiting for the ambulance. But no sooner was he gone than the family locked and barred their doors, preferring contact with the plague to a parting whose issue they now knew only too well.
There followed objurgations, screams, batterings on the door, action by the police, and later armed force; the patient was taken by storm. Thus during the first few weeks Rieux was compelled to stay with the patient till the ambulance came. Later, when each doctor was accompanied by a volunteer police officer, Rieux could hurry away to the next patient. But, to begin with, every evening was like that evening when he was called in for Mme Loret’s daughter. He was shown into a small apartment decorated with fans and artificial flowers. The mother greeted him with a faltering smile.
«Oh, I do hope it’s not the fever everyone’s talking about.»
Lifting the coverlet and chemise, he gazed in silence at the red blotches on the girl’s thighs and stomach, the swollen ganglia. After one glance the mother broke into shrill, uncontrollable cries of grief.
And every evening mothers wailed thus, with a distraught abstraction, as their eyes fell on those fatal stigmata on limbs and bellies; every evening hands gripped Rieux’s arms, there was a rush of useless words, promises, and tears; every evening the nearing tocsin of the ambulance provoked scenes as vain as every form
