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 definitely 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 first exhilaration following the announcement of the plague’s decline had worn off, 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 first 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 off 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 cafes.
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 gruff 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 official 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 official communique meant an end of the plague.
Tarrou replied that obviously a mere official 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 films 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 sytem.
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.”