«Not feeling well?» he asked.
«It’s having to start it all over again that’s got me down.» Then he added: «You’ll come tonight, won’t you?»
When the two friends entered Rambert’s room that night, they found him lying on the bed. He got up at once and filled the glasses he had ready. Before lifting his to his lips, Rieux asked him if he was making progress. The journalist replied that he’d started the same round again and got to the same point as before; in a day or two he was to have his last appointment. Then he took a sip of his drink and added gloomily: «Needless to say, they won’t turn up.»
«Oh come! That doesn’t follow because they let you down last time.»
«So you haven’t understood yet?» Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost scornfully.
«Understood what?» «The plague.»
«Ah!» Rieux exclaimed.
«No, you haven’t understood that it means exactly that, the same thing over and over and over again.»
He went to a corner of the room and started a small phonograph. «What’s that record?» Tarrou asked. «I’ve heard it before.»
«It’s St. James Infirmary.»
While the phonograph was playing, two shots rang out in the distance. «A dog or a get-away,» Tarrou remarked.
When, a moment later, the record ended, an ambulance bell could be heard clanging past under the window and receding into silence.
«Rather a boring record,» Rambert remarked. «And this must be the tenth time I’ve put it on today.»
«Are you really so fond of it?»
«No, but it’s the only one I have.» And after a moment he added: «That’s what I said ‘it’ was, the same thing over and over again.»
He asked Rieux how the sanitary groups were functioning. Five teams were now at work, and it was hoped to form others. Sitting on the bed, the journalist seemed to be studying his fingernails. Rieux was gazing at his squat, powerfully built form, hunched up on the edge of the bed.
Suddenly he realized that Rambert was returning his gaze.
«You know, doctor, I’ve given a lot of thought to your campaign. And if I’m not with you, I have my reasons. No, I don’t think it’s that I’m afraid to risk my skin again. I took part in the Spanish Civil War.»
«On which side?» Tarrou asked.
«The losing side. But since then I’ve done a bit of thinking.» «About what?»
«Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.»
«One has the idea that he is capable of everything,» Tarrou remarked.
«I can’t agree; he’s incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he’s incapable of anything really worth while.» He looked at the two men in turn, then asked: «Tell me, Tarrou, are you capable of dying for love?»
«I couldn’t say, but I hardly think so, as I am now.»
«You see. But you’re capable of dying for an idea; one can see that right away. Well, personally, I’ve seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don’t believe in
heroism; I know it’s easy and I’ve learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.»
Rieux had been watching the journalist attentively. With his eyes still on him he said quietly:
«Man isn’t an idea, Rambert.»
Rambert sprang off the bed, his face ablaze with passion.
«Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love. And that’s my point; we, mankind, have lost the capacity for love. We must face that fact, doctor. Let’s wait to acquire that capacity or, if really it’s beyond us, wait for the deliverance that will come to each of us anyway, without his playing the hero. Personally, I look no farther.»
Rieux rose. He suddenly appeared very tired.
«You’re right, Rambert, quite right, and for nothing in the world would I try to dissuade you from what you’re going to do; it seems to me absolutely right and proper. However, there’s one thing I must tell you: there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of righting a plague is, common decency.»
«What do you mean by ‘common decency’?» Rambert’s tone was grave.
«I don’t know what it means for other people. But in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.»
«Your job! I only wish I were sure what my job is!» There was a mordant edge to Rambert’s voice. «Maybe I’m all wrong in putting love first.»
Rieux looked him in the eyes.
«No,» he said vehemently, «you are not wrong.» Rambert gazed thoughtfully at them.
«You two,» he said, «I suppose you’ve nothing to lose in all this. It’s easier, that way, to be on the side of the angels.»
Rieux drained his glass.
«Come along,» he said to Tarrou. «We’ve work to do.» He went out.
Tarrou followed, but seemed to change his mind when he reached the door. He stopped and looked at the journalist.
«I suppose you don’t know that Rieux’s wife is in a sanatorium, a hundred miles or so away.»
Rambert showed surprise and began to say something; but Tarrou had already left the room.
At a very early hour next day Rambert rang up the doctor.
«Would you agree to my working with you until I find some way of getting out of the town?»
There was a moment’s silence before the reply came. «Certainly, Rambert. Thanks.»
PART III
Thus week by week the prisoners of plague put up what fight they could. Some, like Rambert, even contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power of choice. But actually it would have been truer to say that by this time, mid-August, the plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. Strongest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation, with all the crosscurrents of revolt and fear set up by these. That is why the narrator thinks this moment, registering the climax of the summer heat and the disease, the best for describing, on general lines and by way of illustration, the excesses of the living, burials of the dead, and the plight of parted lovers.
It was at this time that a high wind rose and blew for several days through the plague-stricken city. Wind is particularly dreaded by the inhabitants of Oran, since the plateau on which the town is built presents no natural obstacle, and it can sweep our streets with unimpeded violence. During the months when not a drop of rain had refreshed the town, a gray crust had formed on everything, and this flaked off under the wind, disintegrating into dust-clouds. What with the dust and scraps of paper whirled against peoples’ legs, the streets grew emptier. Those few who went out could be seen hurrying along, bent forward, with handkerchiefs or their hands pressed to their mouths.
At nightfall, instead of the usual throng of people, each trying to prolong a day that might well be his last, you met only small groups hastening home or to a favorite cafe. With the result that for several days when twilight came, it fell much quicker at this time of the year, the streets were almost empty, and silent but for the long-drawn stridence of the wind. A smell of brine and seaweed came from the unseen, storm-tossed sea. And in the growing darkness the almost empty town, palled in dust, swept by bitter sea-spray, and loud with the shrilling of the wind, seemed a lost island of the damned.
Hitherto the plague had found far more victims in the more thickly populated and less well-appointed outer districts than in the heart of the town. Quite suddenly, however, it launched a new attack and established itself in the business center. Residents accused the wind of carrying infection, «broadcasting germs,» as the hotel manager put it. Whatever the reason might be, people living in the central districts realized that their turn had come when each night they heard oftener and oftener the ambulances clanging past, sounding the plague’s dismal, passionless tocsin under their windows.
The authorities had the idea of segregating certain particularly affected central areas and permitting only those whose services were indispensable to cross the cordon. Dwellers in these districts could not help regarding these regulations as a sort of taboo specially directed at themselves, and thus they came, by contrast, to envy residents in other areas their freedom. And the latter, to cheer themselves up in despondent moments,
fell to picturing the lot of those others less free than themselves. «Anyhow, there are some worse off than I,» was a remark that voiced the only solace to be had in those days.
About the same time we had a recrudescence of outbreaks of fire, especially in the residential area near the west gate. It was found, after inquiry, that people who had returned from quarantine were responsible for these fires. Thrown off their balance by bereavement and anxiety, they were burning their houses under the odd delusion that they were killing off the plague in the holocaust.
Great difficulty was experienced in fighting these fires, whose numbers and frequency exposed whole
