“Considering I’ve been at it for years, it would be surprising if I wasn’t. Though in one sense there hasn’t been much progress.”
“May one know”—the doctor halted—“what it is that you’re engaged on?”
Grand put a hand up to his hat and tugged it down upon his big, protruding ears, then murmured some half-inaudible remark from which Rieux seemed to gather that Grand’s work was connected with “the growth of a personality.”
Then he turned rather hastily and a moment later was hurrying, with short, quick steps, under the fig trees lining the boulevard de la Marne.
When they were at the laboratory gate, Cottard told the doctor that he would greatly like to see him and ask his advice about something.
Rieux, who was fingering in his pocket the sheet of paper with the figures on it, said he’d better call during his consulting-hours; then, changing his mind, told him he would be in his part of the town next day and would drop in to see him at the end of the afternoon.
On leaving Cottard the doctor noticed that he was thinking of Grand, trying to picture him in the midst of an outbreak of plague—not an outbreak like the present one, which would probably not prove serious, but like one of the great visitations of the past.
“He’s the kind of man who always escapes in such cases.”
Rieux remembered having read somewhere that the plague spared weak constitutions and chose its victims chiefly among the robust.
Still thinking of Grand, he decided that he was something of a “mystery man” in his small way.
True, at first sight, Grand manifested both the outward signs and typical manner of a humble employee in the local administration.
Tall and thin, he seemed lost in the garments that he always chose a size too large, under the illusion that they would wear longer.
Though he still had most of the teeth in his lower jaw, all the upper ones were gone, with the result that when he smiled, raising his upper lip—the lower scarcely moved—his mouth looked like a small black hole let into his face.
Also he had the walk of a shy young priest, sidling along walls and slipping mouselike into doorways, and he exuded a faint odor of smoke and basement rooms; in short, he had all the attributes of insignificance. Indeed, it cost an effort to picture him otherwise than bent over a desk, studiously revising the tariff of the town baths or gathering for a junior secretary the materials of a report on the new garbage-collection tax.
Even before you knew what his employment was, you had a feeling that he’d been brought into the world for the sole purpose of performing the discreet but needful duties of a temporary assistant municipal clerk on a salary of sixty-two francs, thirty centimes a day.
This was, in fact, the entry that he made each month in the staff register at the Municipal Office, in the column Post in Which Employed.
When twenty-two years previously—after obtaining a matriculation certificate beyond which, for lack of money, he was unable to progress—he was given this temporary post, he had been led to expect, or so he said, speedy “confirmation” in it.
It was only a matter of proving his ability to cope with the delicate problems raised by the administration of our city.
Once confirmed, they had assured him, he couldn’t fail to be promoted to a grade that would enable him to live quite comfortably.
Ambition, certainly, was not the spur that activated Joseph Grand; that he would swear to, wryly smiling.
All he desired was the prospect of a life suitably insured on the material side by honest work, enabling him to devote his leisure to his hobbies.
If he’d accepted the post offered him, it was from honorable motives and, if he might say so, loyalty to an ideal.
But this “temporary” state of things had gone on and on, the cost of living rose by leaps and bounds, and Grand’s pay, in spite of some statutory rises, was still a mere pittance.
He had confided this to Rieux, but nobody else seemed aware of his position.
And here lies Grand’s originality, or anyhow an indication of it.
He could certainly have brought to official notice, if not his rights—of which he wasn’t sure—at least the promises given him.
But, for one thing, the departmental head who had made them had been dead for some time and, furthermore, Grand no longer remembered their exact terms.
And lastly—this was the real trouble—Joseph Grand couldn’t find his words.
This peculiarity, as Rieux had noticed, was really the key to the personality of our worthy fellow citizen.
And this it was which always prevented him from writing the mildly protesting letter he had in mind, or taking the steps the situation called for.
According to him, he felt a particular aversion from talking about his “rights”—the word was one that gave him pause—and likewise from mentioning a “promise”—which would have implied that he was claiming his due and thus bespoken an audacity incompatible with the humble post he filled.
On the other hand, he refused to use expressions such as “your kindness,” “gratitude,” or even “solicit,” which, to his thinking, were incompatible with his personal dignity.
Thus, owing to his inability to find the right words, he had gone on performing his obscure, ill-paid duties until a somewhat advanced age.
Also—this, anyhow, was what he told Dr. Rieux—he had come, after long experience, to realize that he could always count on living within his means; all he had to do was to scale down his needs to his income.
Thus he confirmed the wisdom of an opinion often voiced by our mayor, a business magnate of the town, when he insisted vehemently that in the last analysis (he emphasized this choice expression, which indeed clinched his argument) there was no reason to believe that anyone had ever died of hunger in the town.
In any case, the austere, not to say ascetic life of Joseph Grand was, in the last analysis, a guarantee against any anxiety in this respect.
He went on looking for his words.
In a certain sense it might well be said that his was an exemplary life.
He was one of those rare people, rare in our town as elsewhere, who have the courage of their good feelings.
What little he told of his personal life vouched for acts of kindness and a capacity for affection that no one in our times dares own to.
Without a blush he confessed to dearly loving his nephews and sister, his only surviving near relation, whom he went to France to visit every other year.
He admitted that the thought of his parents, whom he lost when he was very young, often gave him a pang.
He did not conceal the fact that he had a special affection for a church bell in his part of the town which started pealing very melodiously at about five every afternoon.
Yet to express such emotions, simple as they were, the least word cost him a terrible effort.
And this difficulty in finding his words had come to be the bane of his life.
“Oh, Doctor,” he would exclaim, “how I’d like to learn to express myself!”
He brought the subject up each time he met Rieux.
That evening, as he watched Grand’s receding form, it flashed on the doctor what it was that Grand was trying to convey; he was evidently writing a book or something of the sort.
And quaintly enough, as he made his way to the laboratory, this thought reassured him.
He realized how absurd it was, but he simply couldn’t believe that a pestilence on the great scale could befall a town where people like Grand were to be found, obscure functionaries cultivating harmless eccentricities.