He has also a good deal to say about Rieux’s asthma patient. He went with the doctor to see him, immediately after their conversation. The old man greeted Tarrou with a chuckle and rubbed his hands cheerfully. He was sitting up in bed with the usual two pans of dried peas in front of him. «Ah, here’s another of ’em!» he exclaimed when he saw Tarrou. «It’s a topsy-turvy world all right, more doctors than patients. Because it’s mowing them down, ain’t it, more and more.
That priest’s right; we were asking for it.» Next day Tarrou came to see him without warning.
From Tarrou’s notes we gather that the old man, a dry-goods dealer by occupation, decided at the age of fifty that he’d done enough work for a lifetime. He took to his bed and never left it again, but not because of his asthma, which would not have prevented his getting about. A small fixed income had seen him through to his present age, seventyfive, and the years had not damped his cheerfulness. He couldn’t bear the sight of a watch, and indeed there wasn’t one in the whole house. «Watches,» he said, «are silly gadgets, and dear at that.» He worked out the time, that is to say, the time for meals, with his two saucepans, one of which was always full of peas when he woke in the morning. He filled the other, pea by pea, at a constant, carefully regulated speed. Thus time for him was reckoned by these pans and he could take his bearings in it at any moment of the day. «Every fifteen pans,» he said, «it’s feeding-time. What could be simpler?»
If his wife was to be trusted, he had given signs of his vocation at a very early age. Nothing, in fact, had ever interested him; his work, friendship, cafes, music, women,
outings, to all he was indifferent. He had never left his home town except once when he had been called to Algiers for family affairs, and even then he had alighted from the train at the first station after Oran, incapable of continuing the adventure. He took the first train back.
To Tarrou, who had shown surprise at the secluded life he led, he had given the following explanation, more or less. According to religion, the first half of a man’s life is an upgrade; the second goes downhill. On the descending days he has no claim, they may be snatched from him at any moment; thus he can do nothing with them and the best thing, precisely, is to do nothing with them. He obviously had no compunction about contradicting himself, for a few minutes later he told Tarrou that God did not exist, since otherwise there would be no need for priests. But, from some observations which followed, Tarrou realized that the old fellow’s philosophy was closely involved with the irritation caused by the house-to-house collections in aid of charities, which took place almost incessantly in that part of the town. What completed the picture of the old man was a desire he expressed several times, and which seemed deeply rooted: the desire to die at a very advanced age.
«Is he a saint?» Tarrou asked himself, and answered: «Yes, if saintliness is an aggregate of habits.»
Meanwhile Tarrou was compiling a longish description of a day in the plague-stricken town; it was to give a full and accurate picture of the life of our fellow citizens during that summer. «Nobody laughs,» Tarrou observes, «except the drunks, and they laugh too much.» After which he embarks on his description.
«At daybreak light breaths of air fan the still empty streets. At this hour, between the night’s victims and the death-agonies of the coming day, it is as if for a while plague stays its hand and takes breath. All shops are shut. But on some a notice: Closed owing to plague, shows that when the others open presently, these will not. Still half-asleep, the newsboys do not yet cry the news but, lounging at street corners, offer their wares to the lamp-posts, with the vague gestures of sleepwalkers. Soon, awakened by the early streetcars, they will fan out through the town, holding at arm’s length sheets on which the word PLAGUE looms large.
Will there be a plague autumn? Professor B. says: ‘No.’ Toll of the 94th day of plague: 124 deaths.
«In spite of the growing shortage of paper, which has compelled some dailies to reduce their pages, a new paper has been launched: the Plague Chronicle, which sets out ‘to inform our townspeople, with scrupulous veracity, of the daily progress or recession of the disease; to supply them with the most authoritative opinions available as to its future course; to offer the hospitality of its columns to all, in whatever walk of life, who wish to join in combating the epidemic; to keep up the morale of the populace; to publish the latest orders issued by the authorities; and to centralize the efforts of all who desire to give active and wholehearted help in the present emergency.’ Actually this newspaper very soon came to devote its columns to advertisements of new, ‘infallible’ antidotes against plague.
«Toward six in the morning all these papers are being sold to the lines that begin to form outside the shops over an hour before they open; then to the passengers alighting from the streetcars coming in, packed to capacity, from the suburbs. The cars are now the only means of transport, and they have much difficulty in progressing, what with people standing on the running-boards and hanging in clusters from the handrails. A queer thing
is how the passengers all try to keep their backs turned to their neighbors, twisting themselves into grotesque attitudes in the attempt, the idea being, of course, to avoid contagion. At every stop a cataract of men and women is disgorged, each in haste to put a safe distance between himself or herself and the rest.
«When the first cars have gone by, the town gradually wakes up, early cafes open their doors, and you see an array of cards on the counter: No Coffee, Bring Your Own Sugar, and the like. Next the shops open and the streets grow livelier. And meanwhile the light is swelling and the sky, even at this early hour, beginning to grow leaden-hued with heat. This is the time when those who have nothing to do venture out on the boulevards. Most of them seem determined to counteract the plague by a lavish display of luxury. Daily, about eleven, you see a sort of dress parade of youths and girls, who make you realize the frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every great calamity. If the epidemic spreads, morals too will broaden, and we may see again the saturnalia of Milan, men and women dancing round the graves.
«At noon, in a flash, all the restaurants fill up. Very quickly small groups of people unable to find a seat form at the doors. Because of the intense heat the sky is losing its brightness. Under big awnings the aspirants to food wait their turn, aligned along the curbs of streets gaping and sizzling in the fires of noon. The reason for the restaurants’ being so crowded is that they solve for many the feeding problem. But they do nothing to allay the fear of contagion.
Many of the customers spend several minutes methodically wiping their plates. Not long ago some restaurants put up notices: Our plates, knives, and forks guaranteed sterilized. But gradually they discontinued publicity of this order, since their customers came in any case. People, moreover, spend very freely. Choice wines, or wines alleged to be such, the costliest extras, a mood of reckless extravagance is setting in. It seems that there was something like a panic in a restaurant because a customer suddenly felt ill, went very white, and staggered precipitately to the door.
«Toward two o’clock the town slowly empties, it is the time when silence, sunlight, dust, and plague have the streets to themselves. Wave after wave of heat flows over the frontage of the tall gray houses during these long, languid hours. Thus the afternoon wears on, slowly merging into an evening that settles down like a red winding-sheet on the serried tumult of the town. At the start of the great heat, for some unascertained reason, the evenings found the streets almost empty.
But now the least ripple of cooler air brings an easing of the strain, if not a flutter of hope. Then all stream out into the open, drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making, and in the last glow of sunset the town, freighted with lovers two by two and loud with voices, drifts like a helmless ship into the throbbing darkness. In vain a zealous evangelist with a felt hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: ‘God is great and good. Come unto Him.’ On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God.
«In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. And
