The Plague by Albert Camus. Part 1 Chapter 5

The Doctor's Musings had reached this point when the visit of Joseph Grand was announced. Grand's duties as clerk in the municipal office were varied, and he was sometimes employed in the statistical department on compiling the figures of births, marriages and deaths. Thus it had fallen to him to add up the number of deaths during the last few days, and being of an obliging disposition he had volunteered to bring a copy of the latest figures to the Doctor. Grand, who was waving a sheet of paper, was accompanied by his neighbour, Cotard. The figures are going up, Doctor. Eleven deaths in forty-eight hours. Rieux shook hands with Cotard and asked him how he was feeling. Grand put in a word explaining that Cotard was bent on thanking the Doctor and apologising for the trouble he had given, but Rieux was gazing frowningly at the figures on the sheet of paper. Well, he said, perhaps we'd better make up our minds to call this disease by its name. So far we've been only shilly-shallying. Look here, I'm off to the laboratory, like to come with me? Quite so, quite so, Grand said as he went down the stairs at the Doctor's heels. I too believe in calling things by their name, but what's the name in this case? That I shan't say, and anyhow, you wouldn't gain anything by knowing. You see, Grand smiled, it's not so easy after all. They started off towards the Place d'Armes, Cotard still keeping silent. The streets were beginning to fill up. The brief dusk of our town was already giving place to night, and the first stars glimmered above the still, clearly marked horizon. A few moments later, all the street lamps went on, dimming the sky, and the voices in the street seemed to rise a tone. Excuse me, Grand said at the corner of the Place d'Armes, but I must catch my car now. My evening's as sacred as we say in my part of the world. Never put off to tomorrow. Rieux had already noticed Grand's trick of professing to quote some turn of speech from his part of the world. He hails from Montelimar. And following up with some hackneyed expression as lost in dreams, or pretty as a picture. That's so, Cotard put in. You could never budge him from his den after dinner. Rieux asked Grand if he was doing extra work for the municipality. Grand said no, he was working on his own account. Really? Rieux said, to keep the conversation going. And are you getting on well with it? Considering I've been at it for years, it would be surprising if I wasn't. Though in one sense there hasn't been much progress. May one know, the doctor halted, what it is that you're engaged on? Grand put a hand up to his hat and tugged it down upon his big, protruding ears. Then murmured some half inaudible remark, from which Rieux seemed to gather that Grand's work was connected with the growth of a personality. Then he turned rather hastily, and a moment later was hurrying with short, quick steps under the fig trees lining the Boulevard de la Marne. When they were at the laboratory gate, Cotard told the doctor that he would greatly like to see him and ask his advice about something. Rieux, who was fingering in his pocket the sheet of paper with the figures on it, said he'd better call during his consulting hours. Then, changing his mind, told him he would be in his part of town the next day and would drop in to see him at the end of the afternoon. On leaving Cotard, the doctor noticed that he was thinking of Grand, trying to picture him in the midst of an outbreak of plague. Not an outbreak like the present one, which would probably not prove serious, but like one of the great visitations of the past. He's the kind of man who always escapes in such cases. Rieux remembered having read somewhere that the plague spared weak constitutions and chose its victims chiefly among the robust. Still, thinking of Grand, he decided that he was something of a mystery man, in his small way. True, at first sight, Grand manifested both the outward signs and typical manner of a humble employee in the local administration. Tall and thin, he seemed lost in the garments that he always chose a size too large, under the illusion that they would wear longer. Though he still had most of his teeth in his lower jaw, all his upper ones were gone, with the result that when he smiled, raising his upper lip, the lower scarcely moved. His mouth looked like a small black hole let into his face. Also, he had the walk of a shy young priest, sidling along walls and slipping mouse-like into doorways, and exuded a faint odour of smoke and basement rooms. In short, he had all the attributes of insignificance. Indeed, it cost an effort to picture him otherwise than bent over a desk, studiously revising the tariff of the town baths, or gathering for a junior secretary the materials of a report on the new garbage collection tax. Even before you knew what his employment was, you had a feeling that he had been brought into the world for the sole purpose of performing the discreet but needful duties of a temporary assistant municipal clerk on a salary of 62 francs, 30 centimes a day. This was, in fact, the entry that he made each month in the staff register at the municipal office, in the column Post in Which Employed. When 22 years previously, after obtaining a matriculation certificate beyond which, for lack of money, he was unable to progress, he was given this temporary post, he had been led to expect, or so he said, speedy confirmation in it. It was only a matter of proving his ability to cope with the delicate problems raised by the administration of our city. Once confirmed, they had assured him he couldn't fail to be promoted to a grade that would enable him to live quite comfortably. Ambition, certainly, was not the spur that activated Joseph Grand. That he would swear to, wryly smiling, all he desired was the prospect of a life suitably ensured on the material side by honest work, enabling him to devote his leisure to his hobbies. If he'd accepted the post offered to him, it was for honourable motives. If he might say so, loyalty to an ideal. But this temporary state of things had gone on and on. The cost of living rose by leaps and bounds, and Grand's pay, in spite of some statutory rises, was still a mere pittance. He had confided this to Rioux, but nobody else seemed aware of his position. And here lies Grand's originality, or, anyhow, an indication of it. He could certainly have brought to official notice, if not his rights, of which he wasn't sure, at least the promises given him. But for one thing, the departmental head who had made them had been dead for some time. And furthermore, Grand no longer remembered their exact terms. And lastly, this was the real trouble. Joseph Grand couldn't find his words. This peculiarity, as Rioux had noticed, was really the key to the personality of our worthy fellow citizen. And this it was which always prevented him from writing the mildly protesting letter he had in mind, or taking the steps the situation called for. According to him, he felt a particular aversion from talking about his rights. The word was one that gave him pause, and likewise from mentioning a promise which would have implied that he was claiming his due, and thus bespoken an audacity incompatible with the humble post he filled. On the other hand, he refused to use expressions such as your kindness, gratitude or even solicit, which to his thinking were incompatible with his personal dignity. Thus, owing to his inability to find the right words, he had gone on performing his obscure, ill-paid duties until a somewhat advanced age. Also, this anyhow was what he told Dr Rioux, he had come after long experience to realise that he could always count on living within his means. All he had to do was to scale down his needs to his income. Thus, he confirmed the wisdom of an opinion often voiced by our mayor, a business magnate of this town, when he insisted vehemently that in the last analysis he emphasised this choice expression, which indeed clinched his argument. There was no reason to believe that anyone had ever died from hunger in our town. In any case, the austere, not to say ascetic, life of Joseph Grand was, in the last analysis, a guarantee against any anxiety in this respect. He went on looking for his words. In a certain sense, it might well be said that his was an exemplary life. He was one of those rare people, rare in our town as elsewhere, who have the courage of their good feelings. What little he told of his personal life vouched for the acts of kindness and a capacity for affection that no one in our times dares own to. Without a blush, he confessed to dearly loving his nephews and sister, his only surviving near relation, whom he went to France to visit every other year. He admitted that the thought of his parents, whom he lost when he was very young, often gave him a pang. He did not conceal the fact that he had a special affection for a church bell in his part of town, which started pealing very melodiously at about five every afternoon. Yet to express such emotions, simple as they were, the least word cost him a terrible effort, and this difficulty in finding his words had come to be the bane of his life. Oh, Doctor, he would explain, how I'd like to learn to express myself. He brought the subject up each time he met Rio. That evening, as he watched Grand's receding form, it flashed on the Doctor what it was that Grand was trying to convey. He was evidently writing a book or something of the sort, and quaintly enough, as he made his way to the laboratory, this thought reassured him. He realised how absurd it was, but he simply couldn't believe that a pestilence on the great scale could befall a town where people like Grand were to be found, obscure functionaries cultivating harmless eccentricities. To be precise, he couldn't picture such eccentricities existing in a plague-stricken community, and he concluded that the chances were all against the plagues making any headway among our fellow citizens.