The Plague — Chapter 27

ut in those days when the plague seemed to be retreating, slinking back to the obscure lair from which it had stealthilyB emerged, at least one person in the town viewed this retreat with consternation, if Tarrou’s notes are to be trusted; and that man was Cottard.

To tell the truth, these diary notes take a rather curious turn from the date on which the death returns began to drop. The handwriting becomes much harder to read—this may have been due to fatigue— and the diarist jumps from one topic to another without transition.

What is more, these later notes lack the objectivity of the earlier ones; personal considerations creep in. Thus, sandwiched between long passages dealing with the case of Cottard, we nd a brief account of the old man and the cats. Tarrou conveys to us that the plague had in no wise lessened his appreciation of the old fellow, who continued equally to interest him after the epidemic had run its course; unfortunately, he could not go on interesting him, and this through no lack of good intentions on Tarrou’s part. He had done his best to see him again. Some days after that memorable 25th of January he stationed himself at the corner of the little street. The cats were back at their usual places, basking in the patches of sunlight. But at the ritual hour the shutters stayed closed. And never once did Tarrou see them open on the following days. He drew the rather odd conclusion that the old fellow was either dead or vexed —if vexed, the reason being that he had thought that he was right and the plague had put him in the wrong; if dead, the question was (as in the case of the old asthmatic) had he been a saint? Tarrou hardly thought so, but he found in the old man’s case “a pointer.”

“Perhaps,” he wrote, “we can only reach approximations of sainthood. In which case we must make shift with a mild, benevolent diabolism.”

Interspersed with observations relating to Cottard are remarks, scattered here and there, about Grand—he was now convalescent and had gone back to work as if nothing had happened—and about Rieux’s mother. The occasional conversations he had with her, when living under the same roof, the old lady’s attitudes, her opinions on the plague, are all recorded in detail in the diary. Tarrou lays stress above all on Mme. Rieux’s self-eacement, her way of explaining things in the simplest possible words, her predilection for a special window at which she always sat in the early evening, holding herself rather straight, her hands at rest, her eyes xed on the quiet street below, until twilight lled the room and she showed among the gathering shadows as a motionless black form which gradually merged into the invading darkness. He remarks on the “lightness” with which she moved from one room to the other; on her kindness —though no precise instances had come to his notice he discerned its gentle glow in all she said and did; on the gift she had of knowing everything without (apparently) taking thought; and lastly that, dim and silent though she was, she quailed before no light, even the garish light of the plague. At this point Tarrou’s handwriting began to fall o oddly; indeed, the following lines were almost illegible. And, as if in conrmation of this loss of grip upon himself, the last lines of the entry deal—for the rst time in the diary—with his personal life. “She reminds me of my mother; what I loved most in Mother was her self-eacement, her ‘dimness,’ as they say, and it’s she I’ve always wanted to get back to. It happened eight years ago; but I can’t say she died. She only eaced herself a trie more than usual, and when I looked round she was no longer there.”

But to return to Cottard. When the weekly totals began to show a decline, he visited Rieux several times on various pretexts. But obviously what he really wanted was to get from Rieux his opinion on the probable course of the epidemic. “Do you really think it can stop like that, all of a sudden?” He was skeptical about this, or anyhow professed to be. But the fact that he kept on asking the

question seemed to imply he was less sure than he professed to be.

From the middle of January Rieux gave him fairly optimistic answers. But these were not to Cottard’s liking, and his reactions varied on each occasion, from mere petulance to great despondency.

One day the doctor was moved to tell him that, though the statistics were highly promising, it was too soon to say denitely that we were out of the wood.

“In other words,” Cottard said promptly, “there’s no knowing. It may start again at any moment.”

“Quite so. Just as it’s equally possible the improvement may speed up.”

Distressing to everyone else, this state of uncertainty seemed to agree with Cottard. Tarrou observed that he would enter into conversations with shopkeepers in his part of the town, with the obvious desire of propagating the opinion expressed by Rieux.

Indeed, he had no trouble in doing this. After the rst exhilaration following the announcement of the plague’s decline had worn o, doubts had returned to many minds. And the sight of their anxiety reassured Cottard. Just as at other times he yielded to discouragement. “Yes,” he said gloomily to Tarrou, “one of these days the gates will be opened. And then, you’ll see, they’ll drop me like a live coal!”

Everyone was struck by his abrupt changes of mood during the rst three weeks of January. Though normally he spared no pains to make himself liked by neighbors and acquaintances, now, for whole days, he deliberately cold-shouldered them. On these occasions, so Tarrou gathered, he abruptly cut o outside contacts and retired morosely into his shell. He was no more to be seen in restaurants or at the theater or in his favorite cafés. However, he seemed unable to resume the obscure, humdrum life he had led before the epidemic.

He stayed in his room and had his meals sent up from a near-by restaurant. Only at nightfall did he venture forth to make some small purchases, and on leaving the shop he would furtively roam the darker, less-frequented streets. Once or twice Tarrou ran into him on these occasions, but failed to elicit more than a few gru monosyllables. Then, from one day to another, he became sociable

again, talked volubly about the plague, asking everyone for his views on it, and mingled in the crowd with evident pleasure.

On January 25, the day of the ocial announcement, Cottard went to cover again. Two days later Tarrou came across him loitering in a side-street. When Cottard suggested he should accompany him home, Tarrou demurred; he’d had a particularly tiring day. But Cottard wouldn’t hear of a refusal. He seemed much agitated, gesticulated freely, spoke very rapidly and in a very loud tone. He began by asking Tarrou if he really thought the ocial communiqué meant an end of the plague. Tarrou replied that obviously a mere ocial announcement couldn’t stop an epidemic, but it certainly looked as if, barring accidents, it would shortly cease.

“Yes,” Cottard said. “Barring accidents. And accidents will happen, won’t they?”

Tarrou pointed out that the authorities had allowed for that possibility by refusing to open the gates for another fortnight.

“And very wise they were!” Cottard exclaimed in the same excited tone. “By the way things are going, I should say they’ll have to eat their words.”

Tarrou agreed this might be so; still, he thought it wiser to count on the opening of the gates and a return to normal life in the near future.

“Granted!” Cottard rejoined. “But what do you mean by ‘a return to normal life’?”

Tarrou smiled. “New lms at the picture-houses.”

But Cottard didn’t smile. Was it supposed, he asked, that the plague wouldn’t have changed anything and the life of the town would go on as before, exactly as if nothing had happened? Tarrou thought that the plague would have changed things and not changed them; naturally our fellow citizens’ strongest desire was, and would be, to behave as if nothing had changed and for that reason nothing would be changed, in a sense. But—to look at it from another angle—one can’t forget everything, however great one’s wish to do so; the plague was bound to leave traces, anyhow, in people’s hearts.

To this Cottard rejoined curtly that he wasn’t interested in hearts; indeed, they were the last thing he bothered about. What interested him was knowing whether the whole administration wouldn’t be changed, lock, stock, and barrel; whether, for instance, the public services would function as before. Tarrou had to admit he had no inside knowledge on the matter; his personal theory was that after the upheaval caused by the epidemic, there would be some delay in getting these services under way again. Also, it seemed likely that all sorts of new problems would arise and necessitate at least some reorganization of the administrative system.

Cottard nodded. “Yes, that’s quite on the cards; in fact everyone will have to make a fresh start.”

They were nearing Cottard’s house. He now seemed more cheerful, determined to take a rosier view of the future. Obviously he was picturing the town entering on a new lease of life, blotting out its past and starting again with a clean sheet.

“So that’s that,” Tarrou smiled. “Quite likely things will pan out all right for you, too—who can say? It’ll be a new life for all of us, in a manner of speaking.”

They were shaking hands at the door of the apartment house where Cottard lived.

“Quite right!” Cottard was growing more and more excited. “That would be a great idea, starting again with a clean sheet.”

Suddenly from the lightless hall two men emerged. Tarrou had hardly time to hear his companion mutter: “Now, what do those birds want?” when the men in question, who looked like subordinate government employees in their best clothes, cut in with an inquiry if his name was Cottard. With a stied exclamation Cottard swung round and dashed o into the darkness. Taken by surprise, Tarrou and the two men gazed blankly at each other for some moments. Then Tarrou asked them what they wanted. In noncommittal tones they informed him that they wanted “some information,” and walked away, unhurrying, in the direction Cottard had taken.

On his return home Tarrou wrote out an account of this peculiar incident, following it up with a “Feeling very tired tonight”—which

is conrmed by his handwriting in this entry. He added that he had still much to do, but that was no reason for not “holding himself in readiness,” and he questioned if he were ready. As a sort of postscript—and, in fact, it is here that Tarrou’s diary ends—he noted that there is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.