“Tomorrow evening,” Gonzales continued, “we’ll look up the kids and try to get a real move on.”
When they called next day, however, the youngsters were out.
A note was left fixing a meeting for the following day at noon, outside the high school.
When Rambert came back to his hotel, Tarrou was struck by the look on his face.
“Not feeling well?” he asked.
“It’s having to start it all over again that’s got me down.”
Then he added:
“You’ll come tonight, won’t you?”
When the two friends entered Rambert’s room that night, they found him lying on the bed.
He got up at once and filled the glasses he had ready.
Before lifting his to his lips, Rieux asked him if he was making progress.
The journalist replied that he’d started the same round again and got to the same point as before; in a day or two he was to have his last appointment.
Then he took a sip of his drink and added gloomily:
“Needless to say, they won’t turn up.”
“Oh come! That doesn’t follow because they let you down last time.”
“So you haven’t understood yet?” Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost scornfully.
“Understood what?”
“The plague.”
“Ah!” Rieux exclaimed.
“No, you haven’t understood that it means exactly that—the same thing over and over and over again.”
He went to a corner of the room and started a small phonograph.
“What’s that record?” Tarrou asked. “I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s St. James Infirmary.”
While the phonograph was playing, two shots rang out in the distance.
“A dog or a get-away,” Tarrou remarked.
When, a moment later, the record ended, an ambulance bell could be heard clanging past under the window and receding into silence.
“Rather a boring record,” Rambert remarked. “And this must be the tenth time I’ve put it on today.”
“Are you really so fond of it?”
“No, but it’s the only one I have.”
And after a moment he added:
“That’s what I said ‘it’ was—the same thing over and over again.”
He asked Rieux how the sanitary groups were functioning.
Five teams were now at work, and it was hoped to form others.
Sitting on the bed, the journalist seemed to be studying his fingernails.
Rieux was gazing at his squat, powerfully built form, hunched up on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he realized that Rambert was returning his gaze.
“You know, Doctor, I’ve given a lot of thought to your campaign.
And if I’m not with you, I have my reasons.
No, I don’t think it’s that I’m afraid to risk my skin again. I took part in the Spanish Civil War.”
“On which side?” Tarrou asked.
“The losing side.
But since then I’ve done a bit of thinking.”
“About what?”
“Courage.
I know now that man is capable of great deeds.
But if he isn’t capable of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
“One has the idea that he is capable of everything,” Tarrou remarked.
“I can’t agree; he’s incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time.
Which means that he’s incapable of anything really worth while.”
He looked at the two men in turn, then asked:
“Tell me, Tarrou, are you capable of dying for love?”