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“Do you want this to be an hour of friendship?”
The words seemed so absurd to doctor Rieux that for a moment, he failed entirely to comprehend the question. An hour where they concern themselves with something else than the plague? Friendship, here? Or rather, for him? Certainly, he knew and felt it himself that in these times, our compatriots would have done anything just to forget about the plague, and with it about the fact that they’ve all become prisoners of the city and of the sky. He knew full well this was the reason why all the cinemas and night clubs were packed full every night, knew the feverish seeking of sensual pleasures was nothing but a means to alleviate the weight of their isolation. But where could he run from the plague? It never left him these days: not even when he wasn’t in the hospital treating plague victims or doing his rounds in the afternoon. After a time he couldn’t leave the patients behind, almost as if they were clinging to his thoughts like the dying clung to the arms of the living in the streets of plague-stricken medieval cities. Whenever he closed his eyes, patients looked back at him, their gazes filled with pleading, animalistic fear. A young, bright-eyed mother, for example, kept repeating ‘I don’t know who I am’ at the height of her delirium, and then a few minutes later she would be calling out to her children, screaming and sobbing, trying to convince Rieux that this can’t be happening to her, she can’t be dying. And Rieux agreed, and still he could do nothing. And every day and every hour brought newer and newer human tragedies and helplessness and exhaustion, and no light on the horizon, and nothing to signal an end to the plague. His exhaustion took on such proportions that he became callous. He slept little, had chaotic nightmares, and when he woke, the nightmare simply continued. No, this won’t ever end, only when the time comes for him to also bow his head before the plague and join the countless victims of the epidemic.
Meanwhile Tarrou was still fixing him with an attentive, calm and serious regard. The realisation finally reached Rieux’s consciousness: apparently, he was serious about the friendship question. He had stopped trying to understand the phenomenon that was Jean Tarrou and was content with accepting and being grateful for his presence in the life of the plague-stricken city. And his life. He, Tarrou, did not have to be here. All evidence pointed to the fact that he chose to stay in the city of his own free will, guided by some sort of conviction. They’d never really had time to discuss the matter. But whenever he thought of Tarrou, the image that came to his mind was when he first visited him in his flat, and without any introduction or explanation, offered his help. But you are aware you may die from this, the doctor had said to him, and Tarrou had not responded, only looked at him with those piercing grey eyes of his, calm, unwavering, and smiled. To be completely honest, Rieux didn’t exactly know what sort of response or reaction he had expected from him: yes, doctor, I know, I want to commit suicide? Yes, I know, but I didn’t want to leave you alone? His smile was enough of an answer.
Rieux inhaled the night air smelling of herbs and of stone. He was far too tired to think anything through. He let go of control and simply smiled at the man sitting next to him.
“Where do I begin...”
The noises of the city reached the terrace only faintly. The sound of a car passing in the distance, screams, and then heavy silence enveloping the two men like a body bag.
Tarrou rose and leaned against the railing, facing doctor Rieux. His dark silhouette stood out against the backdrop of the sky.
“Let me begin, Rieux, with the fact that I’d had the plague long before I chanced to come to this city,” he began his story, and Rieux listened, all the remains of his attention fixed on him. While he was talking, however unrealistic it seemed to Rieux, he still forgot for a little while that they were in a plague-infested city. He accompanied the teenage Tarrou to that life-altering court hearing, and listened to the verdict with him, his blood running cold. And he was by his side as he severed all ties with his father, as he calmly threatened to kill himself if he tried to make him stay. Rieux suddenly caught himself wondering what it would have been like to know Tarrou in his youth. In this silent and heavy night, some formless desire awoke in his soul, he couldn’t have said exactly what for. If he had wanted to use Tarrou’s words, he would have said for friendship. Or time. To not only have the chance to meet this extraordinary, complicated, intense man in the very midst of a plague epidemic, for them to have time to actually experience and cherish the bond that had been wrought between them, for them to have time to talk. At the same time, he knew that without the plague, they would have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In no other way could they have become friends but in the midst of the plague, the absurd, never-ending fight and the inhuman exhaustion.
He was silent. He gave no thought to how this hour that they had stolen from the plague would end. Nor about how fragile this moment was, how it would be gone forever, how it would probably be the only chance for them to break free of the miasma enveloping the city and from their constant vigilance and just be together. While he was listening to Tarrou, he gave no consideration to the fact that even tomorrow, either of them could contract the disease and die in terrible pain and without the hope of any assistance. He only listened, cherished the tranquillity, and as Tarrou’s story unfolded, it became increasingly clear to him how much similarity their souls shared.
“And so this is why this epidemic taught me nothing new,” said Tarrou finally, rounding up his story. From the very first moment, Rieux was struck by the simple and straightforward manner in which Tarrou spoke about the greatest of questions. Now he understood better why that was: Tarrou made his whole life an answer to the questions he had come up against in that long-ago court hearing. He had witnessed the systematic, premeditated, coordinated murder of a human being, and since then his only aspiration was to do no harm. Every action, every word he uttered was subordinate to this. According to him, the only worthwhile option was a radical refusal, a revolt against the plague raging in all of society, be it however exhausting. And it was very exhausting, about as much so as directing a plague hospital and then doing home visits in the afternoon. Rieux understood this exhaustion, felt it in his bones, felt it binding them to each other.
“If not for the fact that I must fight against it by your side,” Tarrou added with the hint of a smile on his lips.
The doctor didn’t respond, didn’t know how he could possibly respond to that. Didn’t know how to put into words how it felt to know there was anyone by his side at all, that he didn’t have to face the affliction on his own. The nature of the affliction remains unchanged, of course, but to him it had meant the difference between carrying on and giving up countless times. Of course, he dismissed the thought consciously, but all the while he could easily understand the Abessynian Christians Father Paneloux had talked about in his sermon. There existed a degree of exhaustion and pointless struggle where it did actually seem simpler to follow their example and get it over with quickly, give himself over to the plague, wrap himself in the bedsheets of the sick so that the disease wouldn’t by chance spare him. But this was also when he most strongly felt Tarrou’s presence, with his mysterious, unfailing vitality and serenity he carried everywhere he went. To the patients and to their family members, who clung to Rieux’s arm and pleaded with him to make an exception or work a miracle, to save someone beyond saving, when he’d stopped saving people long ago. He only diagnosed, declared, quarantined. Did the paperwork. And he had no strength for anything but to declare a case suspicious and to arrange for transport. He had no strength left for encouraging words, reassurance or humanity. Tarrou did. On more than one occasion, he’d had to restrain desperate family members, even from physically harming Rieux. But he never once raised his voice. He remained calm in the midst of human drama, and when Rieux could utter not one word beyond the required sentences, there he was, taking this burden off his shoulders as well, soothing the horror of the situation with calm, compassionate words until the ambulance arrived. He didn’t know where he would be without Tarrou. But that didn’t matter now. In the present moment, it only mattered where he was with Tarrou. Above the plague-stricken city, in the night, in the silence. There was something unusual in this spacious, mild, starry, moonlit silence, and Rieux realised only a little later what it was. But when he did, his heart was flooded with a serenity he hadn’t felt for months, not since packs of dying rats had begun flooding the streets of Oran. Because there was only silence here, and he only now realised he couldn’t hear the muffled whirling of Father Paneloux’s implacable flail above the houses. Only the sea murmured, measured, peaceful.
“Basically,” Tarrou said simply, “what interests me is how one becomes a saint”.
Of course, why would he settle for less, doctor Rieux thought lovingly.
“But you don’t believe in God,” he said quietly instead.
“Exactly. Can one become a saint without God, that is the only real question nowadays.”
Tarrou was speaking earnestly, straightforwardly and simply, as always. Rieux was thinking about saints usually having a gruesome journey, with torture and death at the end. And he had to acknowledge that regarding a painful death, Tarrou had in a way come to the right place. They both knew well, because they had to witness, how much suffering the plague victims endured before death, how protracted their agony could be. Especially in the newly spreading form of the disease where the plague attacked the lungs, and the patients suffocated slowly and agonizingly before the disease completely claimed its victory over their bodies. Rieux wasn’t quite sure whether any otherworldly happiness could ever compensate for this suffering, this horrifying suffocation in the case of the saints who were believers. Let alone without God in the picture?
“Heroism and sanctity aren’t really to my taste, I believe,” he said carefully. Obviously, he respected, even admired Tarrou’s radical sentiments. But right now, looking at him, he felt that even one minute of his suffering would be too great of a price, even for sainthood. No, it might have been a selfish thought, but right at this moment, the doctor didn’t want Tarrou to be a saint. Much rather...
“What interests me is being a human,” he said, and hoped the other man would understand.
“Yes,” Tarrou answered immediately. “We’re both after the same thing, but I’m less ambitious.”
Rieux supposed Tarrou was jesting and turned to him. But, faintly lit by the dim radiance falling from the sky, the face he saw was sad and serious. The wind rose again and Rieux felt its warmth on his skin. Suddenly, he stood and walked to Tarrou, as if obeying some power greater than him. The other man regarded him calmly and attentively, the beginning of a smirk playing on his lips, in no way compatible with executions and the plague. Or rather, in anyone else it wouldn’t have been.
The doctor hesitated. He was no good with words, and he knew that love was often unable to express itself. And what sort of sentences would these be? Please stay human, stay alive, stay with me? I need you, in your human form? Don’t go where I cannot follow? These words were there all around them in the mild, clean air. Rieux was silent. Tarrou seemed to acknowledge something silently.
“Do you know what we should do for friendship’s sake?” he asked softly, still examining Rieux’s face.
“Whatever you want,” the doctor responded without thinking.
Tarrou’s smile widened, as if satisfied with the answer. For a moment stretching on for a very long time, they stood facing each other, close, in the middle of the epidemic, in the silence, and Rieux was trying to figure out how it was possible that not even a natural disaster could banish the tenderness and curiosity from Tarrou’s gaze, the gaze that was fixed on him now. Because all of these he read from the other man’s eyes, and perhaps something else as well, something very human and very sacred, something as ancient as the plague and as self-explanatory as healing. But his heart had become exhausted and calloused in the inhumane trials and tribulations of the last few months. He didn’t think there was place left in it for anything other than the bare minimum. His heart was concerned with being able to get up in the morning. That was all it could handle.
Rieux remained silent and motionless. Tarrou seemed to have read his thoughts, that he was still hesitant, that he still didn’t believe there is anything else apart from the plague.
“Let’s go for a swim,” he said. “That would be a pleasure worthy even of future saints.”
Oh, Tarrou. Dearest, absurd Jean Tarrou, wanting to go for a swim in the middle of a raging plague epidemic. At night, after an exhausting workday. Rieux smiled. This is simply how Tarrou is, he thought. Always coming up with the most unexpected, most absurd and most wonderful ideas.
“With our passes, we can get out on the pier.” Tarrou continued, unbothered. “In the end, it’s too foolish living only in and for the plague. We should obviously fight for the victims. But if we stop loving anything else outside of that, what’s the use of fighting?”
“Yes,” Rieux nodded simply. “Let’s go.”
Swimming was a good idea. After the smoldering walls of the plague-stricken city and the captivity imposed upon them, the thick, dark, unending mass of the sea seemed to help the doctor find his perspective again. Just like Tarrou, he did not believe in God – he would have been unable to accept a deity who permits the painful death of children – but his impression was that prayer might have a similar effect. Indeed, there is a small plague-infested Algerian town, and there are dying mothers screaming out their children’s names in their delirium, and there are the convicts who are, in the moment of the verdict, terribly, animalistically afraid. And there is, entirely unrelated to and at the same time as these things, the dark, unfathomable mass of the sea, with its hidden, cool depths and its silence and serenity, and within it millions of slow-moving and peaceful creatures that know nothing of the plague. And there’s Tarrou, who does know about the plague, and still wants to swim, and wants a talk between friends, and... Rieux’s thoughts calmed, his exhaustion drawn out by the seawater embracing his body. He paid attention only to the regular rhythm of swimming, enjoying the warm caress of the water on his skin, the saline taste on his lips. And then he just floated on his back, halfway between the sea and the limitless starry sky, breathing deeply and enjoying how his lungs inflate, how the air flows into his airways, filling his alveoli completely and then flowing back out again, easily and languidly, without strain. So simple, automatic, so easily taken for granted, and so quickly taken away from those who fall victim to the disease...
The sound of even strokes could be heard in the distance, signalling Tarrou’s arrival, breaking the solitude and the silence of the sky and the sea, the depths and the heights. Not long after, his breathing could be heard. Rieux turned and waited for him, then 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. They swam side by side, with the same zest, in the same rhythm, isolated from the world, farther and farther away, finally free from the town and the plague.
Later, they were sitting on the rocks facing the sea, and watched the water slowly, evenly rise and fall before them, with the moonlight playing on its surface, drawing intricate, ever-changing patterns of oily silver. Rieux’s soul was filled with a strange happiness, and when he turned to Tarrou, he saw on the calm and serious face of his friend the same happiness that forgets nothing, not even murder. This was a timeless moment, a moment of grace given to them. But Rieux felt the city, the plague, the affliction already beginning to seep in again at the edges of his consciousness, all the things they had hid away from for an hour returning, claiming them again. As if in response to the doctor’s thoughts, the wind brought to them some strident yells and the discharge of a gun, the sound of a body falling to the ground, the roar of a crowd. Rieux felt the warm, sickly air of the city seep into his clothes and his thoughts, sullying and infecting his happiness. Because tonight he had felt happy, for the first time in long weeks, in months. But he only understood this now, when he also realised they must continue, they must willingly return back into the plague’s midst, reeking of death and decay. Suddenly all his exhaustion, of which the sea and the beneficial presence of Tarrou had freed him, returned and lodged itself in his bones. But this time it brought with it pain, terrible, desperate pain.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he said to the sky, to the sea, to Tarrou. “I can’t. I can’t go back.”
His words sounded alien in the indifferent, silent night. He fixed his gaze in front of him, to the steady rise and fall of the sea, the intricate silver patterns of reflected moonlight.
“Well, actually, we don’t have to go back,” Tarrou said nonchalantly. This caught Rieux off-guard and jolted him a little from his despair. He turned to look at the man sitting next to him. Tarrou was looking at him with that well-known cheerful half-smile, like when they met for the first time, and he refused to answer the question whether he had thought it through.
Rieux was somewhat confused. They had few alternatives, save for if they wanted to swim across the sea to the Spanish shores. Or die trying. It didn’t escape Rieux’s attention how nonchalantly, and at the same time with a certain respect his friend spoke of suicide, as if it could be the solution to an otherwise hopeless situation in some cases. Rieux did have some suicidal patients, and in their case, he saw more of a passive, inert drifting towards suicide rather than a real, substantial decision between alternatives of the same gravity. Shaking his head, he turned back towards the sea.
“But if we do choose to go back,” Tarrou began again, now in a more serious tone, “that... is worthy of a saint. Or, to use a word more to your taste, of a human.”
Doctor Rieux didn’t reply. His hopelessness and an unshakeable feeling of loss weighed so heavily on his soul now that he was unable to speak. He couldn’t have said what he expected from Tarrou, how he could possibly ease this pain. He might be able to understand, but still, he wasn’t a doctor, he didn’t have to issue death sentences. At most he could do the paperwork. And there was an awful lot of paperwork. Rieux hated that even this sacred moment had been infected by the plague, but then, where would he flee from it? Silence was all around them, but this was no longer the silence of tranquillity and peace, but that of dead cities and mass graves, the silence that Rieux heard through his stethoscope so often above the chests of the dead.
“Rieux...”
The doctor could almost feel the concern and love radiating towards him from Tarrou, as if he was saying he would carry this burden for him if he could. But the numbness paralysing his limbs and his tongue didn’t loosen, and it seemed to him completely unreal for them to get up and return to the city, for them to continue, for it to ever be over.
“Bernard,” Tarrou said, very gently. At last, something moved in Rieux’s heart. His friend had never used his first name before, and there was something so intimate, so loving in his voice that Rieux suddenly came alive and turned to him hesitantly. He realised too late that his tears were flowing uncontrollably. Naturally, the phenomenon was not unknown to the doctor: he had observed before how during the epidemic, burnt-out, calloused hearts were sometimes prone to entirely unexpected emotional outbursts, not unlike how upon incision of the swollen, pus-filled buboes, patients felt temporary relief. Tarrou raised his hand and very carefully wiped a tear from the doctor’s face. His touch was gentle and efficient, like when he would adjust the pillow under the head of a plague patient thrashing in a bout of fever, and Rieux felt only now how much he had foregone actual care and tenderness in the past hellish months. Actual touches, save for desperate family members clinging to his arm. He didn’t exactly know why, but he very much wanted Tarrou not to take his hand away. But it seemed he wasn’t planning on doing anything of the sort. His regard was calm, but in it there shone the compassion civilians can give to doctors when they can give nothing else.
“Bernard,” he said tenderly, and raised his other hand to cup doctor Rieux’s tear-stained face. His gaze was like the braces they used to tie raving, agitated plague victims to the bed, and the doctor couldn’t have turned away even if he wanted to. But he didn’t.
“This will be over,” he said in a very soft but firmly authoritative voice. “One way or another, the epidemic will end.”
The doctor made a noise halfway between a sob and an incredulous snort, and his tears continued to flow, he could feel their wet heat on his skin.
“But you yourself said we all have the plague,” he said at last, his voice bitter and muffled by the tears choking him. “That this would never end, because that is the order of things.”
Tarrou sighed.
“Yes,” he said at last, conceding. “But it is also in the order of things that wherever there is suffering, there is also help and peace to be found, and that those who cry shall be consoled. If all I do in this city is share in your pain, then it was not in vain that I ended up here. If only for a moment you would believe that you’re not alone in your despair, then... then it’s all good.”
Rieux felt the weight of what the other man had just told him. It had merely been an hour ago that he followed Tarrou into his adolescence, into all the hardships and betrayals of his youth – and now he’s saying that it was all worth it, because he is where he’s supposed to be? And where that is is by his side, in the middle of a natural affliction, in a moment of grace?
The doctor didn’t know what to say, and he feared that his words would be no more meaningful than the mushy, purulent discharge flowing from the buboes upon incision. Still, he felt Tarrou’s words nestle below his sternum and flood his exhausted and humiliated bones with a warmth that contended even with the coldness and alienation the plague had brought. But apparently, he didn’t need to think of the appropriate words anymore, because Tarrou, making everything else unnecessary, closed the minimal distance still remaining between them and kissed him, with the tenderness of a future saint. It occurred to Rieux only later how natural this kiss was, and how self-explanatory he found it to kiss him back, to part his lips and wrap his arms around Tarrou’s robust frame, and to lose himself again in some other type of sea and discover a rather similar type of peace in Tarrou’s embrace.
Tarrou actually also commemorates this night in his notes, in his usual eccentric manner. He only describes their kiss as ‘rather salty’, immediately followed by a lengthy discussion about the fact that substances with antibacterial properties are in fact present in human tears, therefore it is only to be expected that a hearty cry would be roughly similarly efficacious against the plague as the newly developed serum, or possibly the mint candy held in such high esteem by the citizens of Oran. He also mentions how great a loss it is that no reliable data is available about the personality or appearance of the plague doctors of the Middle and Early Modern ages, as the fear of the people and the uncanny, grotesque bird costume hid any human emotions they might have had. He makes a quick note here saying that at least now he knows what his plague doctor is like without the costume, and regarding historical accuracy this might still prove very valuable indeed, and then immediately goes off on a lengthy tangent about probably only now being able to feel genuine empathy for Grand, never able to express himself, either concerning his promotion, his book still to be written or his love letter still to be written. He expresses his hope here that as far as the circumstances allowed, he managed to get his point clearly across to doctor Rieux, and then immediately returns to a description of a discussion he had had with Grand. Apparently, during the course of this talk he tried to convince the civil servant, still recovering from the plague, to at least temporarily abandon the amazon and chronicle the plague epidemic instead, since he has personal experience anyway.