The paper shook in his hand and Rieux noticed that his forehead was moist with sweat.
“Sit down,” he said, “and read it to me.”
“Yes.” There was a timid gratitude in Grand’s eyes and smile.
“I think I’d like you to hear it.”
He waited for a while, still gazing at the writing, then sat down.
Meanwhile Rieux was listening to the curious buzzing sound that was rising from the streets as if in answer to the soughings of the plague.
At that moment he had a preternaturally vivid awareness of the town stretched out below, a victim world secluded and apart, and of the groans of agony stifled in its darkness.
Then, pitched low but clear, Grand’s voice came to his ears.
“One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.” Silence returned, and with it the vague murmur of the prostrate town.
Grand had put down the sheet and was still staring at it.
After a while he looked up.
“What do you think of it?”
Rieux replied that this opening phrase had whetted his curiosity; he’d like to hear what followed.
Whereat Grand told him he’d got it all wrong.
He seemed excited and slapped the papers on the table with the flat of his hand.
“That’s only a rough draft.
Once I’ve succeeded in rendering perfectly the picture in my mind’s eye, once my words have the exact tempo of this ride—the horse is trotting, one-two-three, one-two-three, see what I mean?—the rest will come more easily and, what’s even more important, the illusion will be such that from the very first words it will be possible to say:
‘Hats off!’ ”
But before that, he admitted, there was lots of hard work to be done.
He’d never dream of handing that sentence to the printer in its present form.
For though it sometimes satisfied him, he was fully aware it didn’t quite hit the mark as yet, and also that to some extent it had a facility of tone approximating, remotely perhaps, but recognizably, to the commonplace.
That was more or less what he was saying when they heard the sound of people running in the street below the window.
Rieux stood up.
“Just wait and see what I make of it,” Grand said, and, glancing toward the window, added: “When all this is over.”
But then the sound of hurried footsteps came again.
Rieux was already halfway down the stairs, and when he stepped out into the street two men brushed past him.
They seemed to be on their way to one of the town gates.
In fact, what with the heat and the plague, some of our fellow citizens were losing their heads; there had already been some scenes of violence and nightly attempts were made to elude the sentries and escape to the outside world.
Others, too, Rambert for example, were trying to escape from this atmosphere of growing panic, but with more skill and persistence, if not with greater success.
For a while Rambert had gone on struggling with officialdom.
If he was to be believed, he had always thought that perseverance would win through, inevitably, and, as he pointed out, resourcefulness in emergency was up his street, in a manner of speaking.
So he plodded away, calling on all sorts of officials and others whose influence would have had weight in normal conditions.
But, as things were, such influence was unavailing.
For the most part they were men with well-defined and sound ideas on everything concerning exports, banking, the fruit or wine trade; men of proved ability in handling problems relating to insurance, the interpretation of ill-drawn contracts, and the like; of high qualifications and evident good intentions.
That, in fact, was what struck one most—the excellence of their intentions.
But as regards plague their competence was practically nil.
However, whenever opportunity arose, Rambert had tackled each of them and pleaded his cause.
The gist of his argument was always the same: that he was a stranger to our town and, that being so, his case deserved special consideration.
Mostly the men he talked to conceded this point readily enough.
But usually they added that a good number of other people were in a like case, and thus his position was not so exceptional as he seemed to suppose.
To this Rambert could reply that this did not affect the substance of his argument in any way. He was then told that it did affect the position, already difficult, of the authorities, who were against showing any favoritism and thus running the risk of creating what, with obvious repugnance, they called “a precedent.”
In conversation with Dr. Rieux, Rambert classified the people whom he had approached in various categories.
Those who used the arguments mentioned above he called the sticklers. Besides these there were the consolers, who assured him that the present state of things couldn’t possibly last and, when asked for definite suggestions, fobbed him off by telling him he was making too much fuss about a passing inconvenience.
Then there were the very important persons who asked the visitor to leave a brief note of his case and informed him they would decide on it in due course; the triflers, who offered him billeting warrants or gave the addresses of lodgings; the red-tape merchants, who made him fill up a form and promptly interred it in a file; overworked officials, who raised their arms to heaven, and much-harassed officials who simply looked away; and, finally, the traditionalists—these were by far the greatest number—who referred Rambert to another office or recommended some new method of approach.
These fruitless interviews had thoroughly worn out the journalist; on the credit side he had obtained much insight into the inner workings of a municipal office and a Prefect’s headquarters, by dint of sitting for hours on imitation-leather sofas, confronted by posters urging him to invest in savings bonds exempt from income-tax, or to enlist in the colonial army; and by dint of entering offices where human faces were as blank as the filing-cabinets and the dusty records on the shelves behind them.
The only thing gained by all this expenditure of energy, Rambert told Rieux with a hint of bitterness, was that it served to keep his mind off his predicament.
In fact, the rapid progress of the plague practically escaped his notice.
Also, it made the days pass more quickly and, given the situation in which the whole town was placed, it might be said that every day lived through brought everyone, provided he survived, twenty-four hours nearer the end of his ordeal.
Rieux could but admit the truth of this reasoning, but to his mind its truth was of rather too general an order.
At one moment Rambert had a gleam of hope.