But since he, personally, has learned what it is to live in a state of constant fear, he finds it normal that others should come to know this state. Or perhaps it should be put like this: fear seems to him more bearable under these conditions than it was when he had to bear its burden alone. In this respect he’s wrong, and this makes him harder to understand than other people. Still, after all, that’s why he is worth a greater effort to understand.”
Tarrou’s notes end with a story illustrating the curious state of mind arrived at no less by Cottard than by other dwellers in the plague-stricken town. The story re-creates as nearly as may be the curiously feverish atmosphere of this period, and that is why the narrator attaches importance to it.
One evening Cottard and Tarrou went to the Municipal Opera House, where Gluck’s Orpheus was being given. Cottard had invited Tarrou. A touring operatic company had come to Oran in the spring for a series of performances. Marooned there by the outbreak of plague and finding themselves in difficulties, the company and the management of the opera house had come to an agreement under which they were to give one performance a week until further notice. Thus for several months our theater had been resounding every Friday evening with the melodious laments of Orpheus and Eurydice’s vain appeals. None the less, the opera continued in high favor and played regularly to full houses.
From their seats, the most expensive, Cottard and Tarrou could look down at the orchestra seats filled to capacity with the cream of Oran society. It was interesting to see how careful they were, as they went to their places, to make an elegant entrance. While the musicians were discreetly tuning up, men in evening dress could be seen moving from one row to another, bowing gracefully to friends under the flood of light bathing the proscenium. In the soft hum of well-mannered conversation they regained the confidence denied them when they walked the dark streets of the town; evening dress was a sure charm against plague.
Throughout the first act Orpheus lamented suavely his lost Eurydice, with women in Grecian tunics singing melodious comments on his plight, and love was hymned in alternating strophes. The audience showed their appreciation in discreet applause. Only a few people noticed that in his song of the second act Orpheus introduced some tremolos not in the score and voiced an almost exaggerated emotion when begging the lord of the Underworld to be moved by his tears. Some rather jerky movements he indulged in gave our connoisseurs of stagecraft an impression of clever, if slightly overdone, effects, intended to bring out the emotion of the words he sang.
Not until the big duet between Orpheus and Eurydice in the third act, at the precise moment when Eurydice was slipping from her lover, did a flutter of surprise run through the house. And as though the singer had been waiting for this cue or, more likely, because the faint sounds that came to him from the orchestra seats confirmed what he was feeling, he chose this moment to stagger grotesquely to the footlights, his arms and legs splayed out under his antique robe, and fall down in the middle of the property sheepfold, always out of place, but now, in the eyes of the spectators, significantly, appallingly so.
For at the same moment the orchestra stopped playing, the audience rose and began to leave the auditorium, slowly and silently at first, like worshippers leaving church when the service ends, or a death-chamber after a farewell visit to the dead, women lifting their skirts and moving with bowed heads, men steering the ladies by the elbow to prevent their brushing against the tip-up seats at the ends of the rows. But gradually their movements quickened, whispers rose to exclamations, and finally the crowd stampeded toward the exits, wedged together in the bottlenecks, and pouring out into the street in a confused mass, with shrill cries of dismay.
Cottard and Tarrou, who had merely risen from their seats, gazed down at what was a dramatic picture of their life in those days: plague on the stage in the guise of a disarticulated mummer, and in the auditorium the toys of luxury, so futile now, forgotten fans and lace shawls derelict on the red plush seats.
DURING the first part of September Rambert had worked conscientiously at Rieux’s side. He had merely asked for a few hours’ leave on the day he was due to meet Gonzales and the two youngsters again outside the boys’ school. Gonzales kept the appointment, at noon, and while he and the journalist were talking, they saw the two boys coming toward them, laughing. They said they’d had no luck last time, but that was only to be expected. Anyhow, it wasn’t their turn for guard duty this week. Rambert must have patience till next week; then they’d have another shot at it. Rambert observed that “patience” certainly was needed in this business. Gonzales suggested they should all meet again on the following Monday, and this time Rambert had better move in to stay with Marcel and Louis.
“We’ll make a date, you and I. If I don’t turn up, go straight to their place.
I’ll give you the address.” But Marcel, or Louis, told him that the safest thing was to take his pal there right away, then he’d be sure of finding it. If he wasn’t too particular, there was enough grub for the four of them. That way he’d get the hang of things. Gonzales agreed it was a good idea, and the four of them set off toward the harbor.
Marcel and Louis lived on the outskirts of the dockyard, near the gate leading to the cliff road. It was a small Spanish house with gaily painted shutters and bare, dark rooms. The boys’ mother, a wrinkled old Spanish woman with a smiling face, produced a dish of which the chief ingredient was rice. Gonzales showed surprise, as rice had been unprocurable for some time in the town. “We fix it up at the gate,” Marcel explained. Rambert ate and drank heartily, and Gonzales informed him he was “a damned good sort.” Actually the journalist was thinking solely of the coming week.
It turned out that he had a fortnight to wait, as the periods of guard duty were extended to two weeks, to reduce the number of shifts. During that fortnight Rambert worked indefatigably, giving every ounce of himself, with his eyes shut, as it were, from dawn till night. He went to bed very late and always slept like a log. This abrupt transition from a life of idleness to one of constant work had left him almost void of thoughts or energy. He talked little about his impending escape. Only one incident is worth noting: after a week he confessed to the doctor that for the first time he’d got really drunk. It was the evening before; on leaving the bar he had an impression that his groin was swollen and he had pains in his armpits when he moved his arms. “I’m in for it!” he thought.
And his only reaction, an absurd one, as he frankly admitted to Rieux, had been to start running to the upper town and when he reached a small square, from which if not the sea, a fairly big patch of open sky could be seen, to call to his wife with a great cry, over the walls of the town. On returning home and failing to discover any symptoms of plague on his body, he had felt far from proud of having given way like that. Rieux, however, said he could well understand one’s being moved to act thus. “Or, anyhow, one may easily feel inclined that way.”
“Monsieur Othon was talking to me about you this morning,” Rieux suddenly remarked, when Rambert was bidding him good night. “He asked me if I knew you, and I told him I did. Then he said: ‘If he’s a friend of yours advise him not to associate with smugglers. It’s bound to attract attention.’ “
“Meaning what?”
“It means you’d better hurry up.”
“Thanks.” Rambert shook the doctor’s hand.
In the doorway he suddenly swung round. Rieux noticed that, for the first time since the outbreak of plague, he was smiling.
“Then why don’t you stop my going? You could easily manage it.”
Rieux shook his head with his usual deliberateness. It was none of his business, he said. Rambert had elected for happiness, and he, Rieux, had no argument to put up against him. Personally he felt incapable of deciding which was the right course and which the wrong in such a case as Rambert’s.
“If that’s so, why tell me to hurry up?” It was Rieux who now smiled.
“Perhaps because I, too, would like to do my bit for happiness.”
Next day, though they were working together most of the time, neither referred to the subject. On the following Sunday Rambert moved into the little Spanish house. He was given a bed in the living-room. As the brothers did not come home for meals and he’d been told to go out as little as possible, he was always
