“Another skirmish at the gates, I suppose.”
“Well, it’s over now,” Rieux said.
Tarrou said in a low voice that it was never over, and there would be more victims, because that was in the order of things.
“Perhaps,” the doctor answered. “But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints.
Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine.
What interests me is being a man.”
“Yes, we’re both after the same thing, but I’m less ambitious.”
Rieux supposed Tarrou was jesting and turned to him with a smile.
But, faintly lit by the dim radiance falling from the sky, the face he saw was sad and earnest.
There was another gust of wind and Rieux felt it warm on his skin. Tarrou gave himself a little shake.
“Do you know,” he said, “what we now should do for friendship’s sake?”
“Anything you like, Tarrou.”
“Go for a swim.
It’s one of these harmless pleasures that even a saint-to-be can indulge in, don’t you agree?”
Rieux smiled again, and Tarrou continued:
“With our passes, we can get out on the pier.
Really, it’s too damn silly living only in and for the plague.
Of course, a man should fight for the victims, but if he ceases caring for anything outside that, what’s the use of his fighting?”
“Right,” Rieux said. “Let’s go.”
Some minutes later the car drew up at the harbor gates.
The moon had risen and a milk-white radiance, dappled with shadows, lay around them.
Behind them rose the town, tier on tier, and from it came warm, fetid breaths of air that urged them toward the sea.
After showing their passes to a guard, who inspected them minutely, they crossed some open ground littered with casks, and headed toward the pier.
The air here reeked of stale wine and fish.
Just before they reached the pier a smell of iodine and seaweed announced the nearness of the sea and they clearly heard the sound of waves breaking gently on the big stone blocks. Once they were on the pier they saw the sea spread out before them, a gently heaving expanse of deep-piled velvet, supple and sleek as a creature of the wild.
They sat down on a boulder facing the open.
Slowly the waters rose and sank, and with their tranquil breathing sudden oily glints formed and flickered over the surface in a haze of broken lights.
Before them the darkness stretched out into infinity.
Rieux could feel under his hand the gnarled, weather-worn visage of the rocks, and a strange happiness possessed him.
Turning to Tarrou, he caught a glimpse on his friend’s face of the same happiness, a happiness that forgot nothing, not even murder.
They undressed, and Rieux dived in first.
After the first shock of cold had passed and he came back to the surface the water seemed tepid.
When he had taken a few strokes he found that the sea was warm that night with the warmth of autumn seas that borrow from the shore the accumulated heat of the long days of summer.
The movement of his feet left a foaming wake as he swam steadily ahead, and the water slipped along his arms to close in tightly on his legs.
A loud splash told him that Tarrou had dived.
Rieux lay on his back and stayed motionless, gazing up at the dome of sky lit by the stars and moon.
He drew a deep breath.
Then he heard a sound of beaten water, louder and louder, amazingly clear in the hollow silence of the night.
Tarrou was coming up with him, he now could hear his breathing.
Rieux turned and swam level with his friend, timing his stroke to Tarrou’s.
But Tarrou was the stronger swimmer and Rieux had to put on speed to keep up with him.
For some minutes they swam side by side, with the same zest, in the same rhythm, isolated from the world, at last free of the town and of the plague.
Rieux was the first to stop and they swam back slowly, except at one point, where unexpectedly they found themselves caught in an ice-cold current.
Their energy whipped up by this trap the sea had sprung on them, both struck out more vigorously.
They dressed and started back.
Neither had said a word, but they were conscious of being perfectly at one, and the memory of this night would be cherished by them both.
When they caught sight of the plague watchman, Rieux guessed that Tarrou, like himself, was thinking that the disease had given them a respite, and this was good, but now they must set their shoulders to the wheel again.
Yes, the plague gave short shrift indeed, and they must set their shoulders to the wheel again.
Throughout December it smoldered in the chests of our townspeople, fed the fires in the crematorium, and peopled the camps with human jetsam. In short, it never ceased progressing with its characteristically jerky but unfaltering stride.
The authorities had optimistically reckoned on the coming of winter to halt its progress, but it lasted through the first cold spells without the least remission.