«It’s by no means certain that you have plague.» Tarrou smiled with an effort.
«Well, it’s the first time I’ve known you do the injection without ordering the patient off to the isolation ward.»
Rieux looked away.
«You’ll be better here. My mother and I will look after you.»
Tarrou said nothing and the doctor, who was putting away the ampoules in the box, waited for him to speak before looking round. But still Tarrou said nothing, and finally Rieux went up to the bed. The sick man was gazing at him steadily, and though his face was drawn, the gray eyes were calm. Rieux smiled down on him.
«Now try to sleep. I’ll be back soon.»
As he was going out he heard Tarrou calling, and turned back. Tarrou’s manner had an odd effect, as though he were at once trying to keep back what he had to say and forcing himself to say it.
«Rieux,» he said at last, «you must tell me the whole truth. I count on that.» «I promise it.»
Tarrou’s heavy face relaxed in a brief smile.
«Thanks. I don’t want to die, and I shall put up a fight. But if I lose the match, I want to make a good end of it.»
Bending forward, Rieux pressed his shoulder.
«No. To become a saint, you need to live. So fight away!»
In the course of that day the weather, which after being very cold had grown slightly milder, broke in a series of violent hailstorms followed by rain. At sunset the sky cleared a little, and it was bitterly cold again. Rieux came home in the evening. His overcoat still on, he entered his friend’s bedroom. Tarrou did not seem to have moved, but his set lips, drained white by fever, told of the effort he he was keeping up.
«Well?» Rieux asked.
Tarrou raised his broad shoulders a little out of the bedclothes. «Well,» he said, «I’m losing the match.»
The doctor bent over him. Ganglia had formed under the burning skin and there was a rumbling in his chest, like the sound of a hidden forge. The strange thing was that Tarrou showed symptoms of both varieties of plague at once.
Rieux straightened up and said the serum hadn’t yet had time to take effect. An uprush of fever in his throat drowned the few words that Tarrou tried to utter.
After dinner Rieux and his mother took up their posts at the sick man’s bedside. The night began with a struggle, and Rieux knew that this grim wrestling with the angel of plague was to last until dawn. In this struggle Tarrou’s robust shoulders and chest were not his greatest assets; rather, the blood that had spurted under Rieux’s needle and, in this blood, that something more vital than the soul, which no human skill can bring to light.
The doctor’s task could be only to watch his friend’s struggle. As to what he was about to do, the stimulants to inject, the abscesses to stimulate? many months’ repeated failures had taught him to appreciate such expedients at their true value. Indeed, the only way in which he might help was to provide opportunities for the beneficence of chance, which too often stays dormant unless roused to action. Luck was an ally he could not dispense with. For Rieux was confronted by an aspect of the plague that baffled him. Yet again it was doing all it could to confound the tactics used against it; it launched attacks in unexpected places and retreated from those where it seemed definitely lodged. Once more it was out to darken counsel.
Tarrou struggled without moving. Not once in the course of the night did he counter the enemy’s attacks by restless agitation; only with all his stolid bulk, with silence, did he carry on the fight. Nor did he even try to speak, thus intimating, after his fashion, that he could no longer let his attention stray. Rieux could follow the vicissitudes of the struggle only in his friend’s eyes, now open and now shut; in the eyelids, now more closely welded to the eyeball, now distended; and in his gaze fixed on some object in the room or brought back to the doctor and his mother. And each time it met the doctor’s gaze, with a great effort Tarrou smiled.
At one moment there came a sound of hurrying footsteps in the street. They were in flight before a distant throbbing which gradually approached until the street was loud with the clamor of the downpour; another rain-squall was sweeping the town, mingled presently with hailstones that clattered on the sidewalk. Window awnings were flapping wildly. Rieux, whose attention had been diverted momentarily by the noises of the squall, looked again across the shadows at Tarrou’s face, on which fell the light of a small bedside lamp. His mother was knitting, raising her eyes now and then from her work to gaze at the sick man.
The doctor had done everything that could be done. When the squall had passed, the silence in the room grew denser, filled only by the silent turmoil of the unseen battle. His nerves overwrought by sleeplessness, the doctor fancied he could hear, on the edge of the silence, that faint eerie sibilance which had haunted his ears ever since the beginning of the epidemic. He made a sign to his mother, indicating she should go to bed. She shook her head, and her eyes grew brighter; then she examined carefully, at her needle-tips, a stitch of which she was unsure. Rieux got up, gave the sick man a drink, and sat down again.
Footsteps rang on the pavement, nearing, then receding; people were taking advantage of the lull to hurry home. For the first time the doctor realized that this night, without the clang of ambulances and full of belated wayfarers, was just like a night of the past, a plague-free night. It was as if the pestilence, hounded away by cold, the street-lamps, and the crowd, had fled from the depths of the town and taken shelter in this warm room and was launching its last offensive at Tarrou’s inert body. No longer did it thresh the air above the houses with its flail. But it was whistling softly in the stagnant air of the sickroom, and this it was that Rieux had been hearing since the long vigil began. And now it was for him to wait and watch until that strange sound ceased here too, and here as well the plague confessed defeat.
A little before dawn Rieux leaned toward his mother and whispered:
«You’d better have some rest now, as you’ll have to relieve rne at eight. Mind you take your drops before going to bed.»
Mme Rieux rose, folded her knitting, and went to the bedside. Tarrou had had his eyes shut for some time. Sweat had plastered his hair on his stubborn forehead.
Mme Rieux sighed, and he opened his eyes. He saw the gentle face bent over him and, athwart the surge of fever, that steadfast smile took form again. But at once the eyes closed. Left to himself, Rieux moved into the chair his mother had just left. The street was silent and no sound came from the sleeping town. The chill of daybreak was beginning to make itself felt.
The doctor dozed off, but very soon an early cart rattling down the street awaked him. Shivering a little, he looked at Tarrou and saw that a lull had come; he, too, was sleeping. The iron-shod wheels rumbled away into the distance. Darkness still was pressing on the windowpanes. When the doctor came beside the bed, Tarrou gazed at him with expressionless eyes, like a man still on the frontier of sleep.
«You slept, didn’t you?» Rieux asked. «Yes.»
«Breathing better?»
«A bit. Does that mean anything?»
Rieux kept silent for some moments; then he said:
«No, Tarrou, it doesn’t mean anything. You know as well as I that there’s often a remission in the morning.»
«Thanks.» Tarrou nodded his approval. «Always tell me the exact truth.»
Rieux was sitting on the side of the bed. Beside him he could feel the sick man’s legs, stiff and hard as the limbs of an effigy on a tomb. Tarrou was breathing with more difficulty.
«The fever’ll come back, won’t it, Rieux?» he gasped. «Yes. But at noon we shall know where we stand.»
Tarrou shut his eyes; he seemed to be mustering up his strength. There was a look of utter weariness on his face. He was waiting for the fever to rise and already it was stirring somewhat in the depths of his being. When he opened his eyes, his gaze was misted. It brightened only when he saw Rieux bending over him, a tumbler in his hand.
‘Drink ‘
Tarrou drank, then slowly lowered his head on to the pillow. «It’s a long business,» he murmured.
Rieux clasped his arm, but Tarrou, whose head was averted, showed no reaction. Then suddenly, as if some inner dike had given way without warning, the fever
surged back, dyeing his cheeks and forehead. Tarrou’s eyes came back to the doctor, who, bending again, gave him a look of affectionate encouragement.
Tarrou tried to shape a smile, but it could not force its way through the set jaws and lips welded by dry saliva. In the rigid face only the eyes lived still, glowing with courage.
At seven Mme Rieux returned to the bedroom. The doctor went to the surgery to ring up the hospital and arrange for a substitute. He also decided
