He wasn’t thinking about the rat. That glimpse of spurting blood had switched his thoughts back to something that had been on his mind all day. His wife, who had been ill for a year now, was due to leave next day for a sanatorium in the mountains. He found her lying down in the bedroom, resting, as he had asked her to do, in view of the exhausting journey before her. She gave him a smile.
«Do you know, I’m feeling ever so much better!» she said.
The doctor gazed down at the face that turned toward him in the glow of the bedside lamp. His wife was thirty, and the long illness had left its mark on her face. Yet the thought that came to Rieux’s mind as he gazed at her was: «How young she looks, almost like a little girl!» But perhaps that was because of the smile, which effaced all else.
«Now try to sleep,» he counseled. «The nurse is coming at eleven, you know, and you have to catch the midday train.»
He kissed the slightly moist forehead. The smile escorted him to the door. Next day, April 17, at eight o’clock the concierge buttonholed the doctor as he was going out. Some young scallywags, he said, had dumped three dead rats in the hall. They’d obviously been caught in traps with very strong springs, as they were bleeding profusely. The concierge had lingered in the doorway for quite a while, holding the rats by their legs and keeping a sharp eye on the passers-by, on the off chance that the miscreants would give themselves away by grinning or by some facetious remark. His watch had been in vain.
«But I’ll nab ’em all right,» said M. Michel hopefully.
Much puzzled, Rieux decided to begin his round in the outskirts of the town, where his poorer patients lived. The scavenging in these districts was done late in the morning and, as he drove his car along the straight, dusty streets, he cast glances at the garbage cans aligned along the edge of the sidewalk. In one street alone the doctor counted as many as a dozen rats deposited on the vegetable and other refuse in the cans.
He found his first patient, an asthma case of long standing, in bed, in a room that served as both dining-room and bedroom and overlooked the street. The invalid was an old Spaniard with a hard, rugged face. Placed on the coverlet in front of him were two pots containing dried peas. When the doctor entered, the old man was sitting up, bending his neck back, gasping and wheezing in his efforts to recover his breath. His wife brought a bowl of water.
«Well, doctor,» he said, while the injection was being made, «they’re coming out, have you noticed?»
«The rats, he means,» his wife explained. «The man next door found three.» «They’re coming out, you can see them in all the trash cans. It’s hunger!» Rieux soon discovered that the rats were the great topic of conversation in that part of the town. After his round of visits he drove home.
«There’s a telegram for you, sir, upstairs,» M. Michel informed him. The doctor asked him if he’d seen any more rats.
«No,» the concierge replied, «there ain’t been any more. I’m keeping a sharp lookout, you know. Those youngsters wouldn’t dare when I’m around.»
The telegram informed Rieux that his mother would be arriving next day. She was going to keep house for her son during his wife’s absence. When the doctor entered his apartment he found the nurse already there. He looked at his wife.
She was in a tailor-made suit, and he noticed that she had used rouge. He smiled to her.
«That’s splendid,» he said. «You’re looking very nice.»
A few minutes later he was seeing her into the sleeping-car. She glanced round the compartment.
«It’s too expensive for us really, isn’t it?» «It had to be done,» Rieux replied.
«What’s this story about rats that’s going round?»
«I can’t explain it. It certainly is queer, but it’ll pass.»
Then hurriedly he begged her to forgive him; he felt he should have looked after her better, he’d been most remiss. When she shook her head, as if to make him stop, he added: «Anyhow, once you’re back everything will be better. We’ll make a fresh start.»
«That’s it!» Her eyes were sparkling. «Let’s make a fresh start.»
But then she turned her head and seemed to be gazing through the car window at the people on the platform, jostling one another in their haste. The hissing of the locomotive reached their ears. Gently he called his wife’s first name; when she looked round he saw her face wet with tears.
«Don’t,» he murmured.
Behind the tears the smile returned, a little tense. She drew a deep breath. «Now off you go! Everything will be all right.»
He took her in his arms, then stepped back on the platform. Now he could only see her smile through the window.
«Please, dear,» he said, «take great care of yourself.» But she could not hear him.
As he was leaving the platform, near the exit he met M. Othon, the police magistrate, holding his small boy by the hand. The doctor asked him if he was going away.
Tall and dark, M. Othon had something of the air of what used to be called a man of the world, and something of an undertaker’s assistant.
«No,» the magistrate replied, «I’ve come to meet Madame Othon, who’s been to present her respects to my family.»
The engine whistled.
«These rats, now?» the magistrate began.
Rieux made a brief movement in the direction of the train, then turned back toward the exit.
«The rats?» he said. «It’s nothing.»
The only impression of that moment which, afterwards, he could recall was the passing of a railroadman with a box full of dead rats under his arm.
Early in the afternoon of that day, when his consultations were beginning, a young man called on Rieux. The doctor gathered that he had called before, in the morning, and was a journalist by profession. His name was Raymond Rambert.
Short, square-shouldered, with a determined-looking face and keen, intelligent eyes, he gave the impression of someone who could keep his end up in any circumstances. He wore a sports type of clothes. He came straight to the point.
His newspaper, one of the leading Paris dailies, had commissioned him to make a report on the living-conditions prevailing among the Arab population, and especially on the sanitary conditions.
Rieux replied that these conditions were not good. But, before he said any more, he wanted to know if the journalist would be allowed to tell the truth.
«Certainly,» Rambert replied.
«I mean,» Rieux explained, «would you be allowed to publish an unqualified condemnation of the present state of things?»
«Unqualified? Well, no, I couldn’t go that far. But surely things aren’t quite so bad as that?»
«No,» Rieux said quietly, they weren’t so bad as that. He had put the question solely to find out if Rambert could or couldn’t state the facts without paltering with the truth. «I’ve no use for statements in which something is kept back,» he added. «That is why I shall not furnish information in support of yours.»
The journalist smiled. «You talk the language of Saint-Just.»
Without raising his voice Rieux said he knew nothing about that. The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in, though he had much liking for his fellow men and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with injustice and compromises with the truth.
His shoulders hunched, Rambert gazed at the doctor for some moments without speaking. Then, «I think I understand you,» he said, getting up from his chair.
The doctor accompanied him to the door. «It’s good of you to take it like that,» he said.
«Yes, yes, I understand,» Rambert repeated, with what seemed a hint of impatience in his voice. «Sorry to have troubled you.»
When shaking hands with him, Rieux suggested that if he was out for curious stories for his paper, he might say something about the extraordinary number of dead rats that were being found in the town just now.
«Ah!» Rambert exclaimed. «That certainly interests me.»
On his way out at five for another round of visits, the doctor passed on the stairway a stocky, youngish man, with a big, deeply furrowed face and bushy eyebrows. He had met him once or twice in the top-floor apartment, which was occupied by some male Spanish dancers. Puffing a cigarette, Jean Tarrou was gazing down at the convulsions of a rat dying on the step in front of him. He looked up, and his gray eyes remained fixed on the doctor for some moments; then, after wishing him good day, he remarked that it was rather odd, the way all these rats were coming out of their holes to die.
«Very odd,» Rieux agreed, «and it ends by getting on one’s nerves.»
«In a way, doctor, only in a way. We’ve not seen anything of the sort before, that’s all. Personally I find it interesting, yes, definitely interesting.»
Tarrou ran his fingers through his hair to brush it off his forehead, looked again at the rat, which had now stopped moving, then smiled toward Rieux.
«But really, doctor, it’s the concierge’s headache, isn’t it?»
As it so happened, the concierge was the next person Rieux encountered. He was
