Chapter 3 Chapter 02: The Plague Is Coming

On the morning of April 16, Dr. Bernard Rieux came out of his clinic kicking a dead rat in the middle of the stairs.At that time, he just kicked the little animal away and went downstairs without taking it seriously.But when he got out into the street, it occurred to him that the mouse had died out of place, and he came back and told the porter about it.The reaction of the old man Michel, the gatekeeper, made him feel that this discovery was unusual.The presence of the dead mouse, which seemed to him only a little strange, seemed to the porter absurd.He asserted that there were no rats in the building at all.The doctor told him that a mouse was indeed found on the stairs on the second floor, and it might be a dead mouse.But it was no use, and Michel was unwavering: there were no rats in the building, and this one must have been brought in from outside.Anyway, it was a prank.

That night, Bernard Rieux was standing in the aisle of the building, picking out his keys and planning to go upstairs to go home, when he suddenly saw a big, wet mouse staggering out of the dark corner of the aisle.It stopped for a moment, as if trying to stabilize its body, then ran towards the doctor, then stopped and circled in place, and at the same time gave a soft cry, and finally fell to the ground with its mouth half open, spitting blood.The doctor looked at it carefully for a while and then went upstairs. It wasn't the mouse that he was thinking of at the time, it was just that the mouthful of blood aroused his thoughts.His wife, who has been ill for a year, is going tomorrow to a mountain sanatorium.As soon as he came home, he found her lying down in the bedroom as he had ordered, which was a preparation for the fatigue of the journey."I feel fine," she said with a smile.

The doctor watched her face turned to him in the light of the bedside lamp.Despite her thirty years of age and her sickly appearance, to Rieux her face was always the same as when she was a girl.Presumably this smile makes all other inadequacies disappear. "Sleep if you can. The nurse will come at eleven o'clock, and I will accompany you to the twelve o'clock train." After speaking, he kissed her slightly moist forehead.With a smile, she watched him to the door of the room. The next day, the seventeenth of April, at eight o'clock, the porter stopped the doctor as he passed, and blamed the pranksters for releasing three more dead rats in the passage.The mice were presumably caught in large traps because they were covered in blood.The doorman had been standing for some time on the threshold, holding the foot of the dead mouse, waiting for someone to come by with some sarcasm, thus exposing the pranksters themselves.However, there is no text.

"Okay, these bad guys," Michelle said, "I'll catch 'em eventually!" Perplexed, Rieux decided to start his visits in the outskirts of the city, where his poorest patients lived.Garbage removal in those districts is much later than elsewhere, and cars drive along the dusty, straight roads there, skimming waste bins placed along sidewalks.On one street, the doctor counted about a dozen dead rats discarded in piles of vegetable skins and rags. The first patient lived in a house along the street, where he ate and slept.The sick man was lying on the bed.He was a hard-faced, wrinkled old Spanish man.There were two pots full of chickpeas on the quilt in front of him.The patient had been sitting on the bed, and when the doctor came in, he leaned back to catch his breath and let out the high-pitched whine of an old asthmatic.His wife brought a basin.

When the doctor gave him the injection, he said, "Well, doctor, they're coming out, have you seen them?" His wife said, "That's right, the neighbor next door picked up three." The old man rubbed his hands and said, "They've come out, they're in all the trash cans, they're starving!" Rieux then noticed that the whole district was talking about rats.After the visit, he went home. Michel told him: "There is a telegram for you upstairs." The doctor asked him if he had found any other mice. "Oh, no," replied the porter, "you know, I'm here, and I dare not come to measure these beasts."

Rieux learned from the telegram that his mother would arrive tomorrow.She came to take care of the housework for her son because her daughter-in-law was leaving home to recuperate from illness.The doctor came into the room, and the nurse had arrived.Rieux saw his wife standing in a one-color blouse and skirt, already adorned.He smiled and said to her, "This is good, very good." They arrived at the station not long after, and he put her in a sleeping car. She looked at the carriage and said: "It's too expensive for us, isn't it?" "It is necessary," said Rieux.

"What's the matter with these rats?" "I don't know either. It's a strange thing, but it will pass." He then said hastily to her, asking her to forgive him for being so indifferent to her when he should have taken good care of her.She shook her head, as if telling him to stop talking.But, he added: "Everything will be better when you come back. We will have a new beginning." With a twinkle in her eyes, she said, "Yes, we will have a new beginning c" After a while, she turned and looked out the window.The crowd on the platform is bustling, you push me to read.The sound of the exhaust of the train reached their ears.He called his wife's name, she turned, and he saw tears streaming down her face.

He said softly, "Don't do this." With tears in her eyes, she smiled again, but a little forcedly.She took a deep breath and said, "Go, everything will be fine." He hugged her tightly.Back on the platform, through the glass window, all he saw was her smile. "Take care of yourself!" he said. But she was out of hearing. As Rieux approached the exit of the platform, he met Monsieur Othon, the presiding judge, holding his young son by the hand.The doctor asked him if he was going out.Mr. Othon was a tall, dark-haired man with an aspect half of what used to be called high society, half of a sullen corpse-carrier.He answered briefly in a kind voice: "I'm waiting for my wife, she's on a special trip to visit my family."

The train whistled. The judge said: "The mouse..." Rieux looked in the direction of the train, but turned his head to the exit and said: "Rats? It's not a big deal." At this time, the only thing he could not forget was a railway porter passing there with a box full of dead rats under his arm. In the afternoon of the same day, at the beginning of the consultation, Rieux received a young man who, he was told, was a journalist who had been here this morning.His name was Raymond Rambert.He was a man of short stature, with broad shoulders, a resolute look, and bright, intelligent eyes.Rambert, in his sportswear-style attire, seemed to be well off.He explained his purpose straightforwardly: he was commissioned by a famous newspaper in Paris to investigate the living conditions of the Arabs, and wanted to find some information about their sanitary conditions.Rieux told him that their sanitary conditions were not good.But before going any further, he wondered if journalists were telling the truth.

"Of course," said the other. "I mean can you fully condemn the situation?" "Comprehensive? Honestly, no. But I think such accusations may be unfounded." Rieux said calmly that such accusations might actually be groundless.But he asked this question only to know whether Rambert's testimony could be frank and unreserved. "I can only accept unreserved testimony, so I cannot provide information to support your testimony." "Your words are exactly the same as those of Saint-Just," said the journalist, smiling. Rieux continued in a calm tone that he knew nothing about Saint-Just, who spoke the language of a man who was weary of the world, but who loved his fellow beings, and therefore, as far as he was concerned, decided Do not accept injustice, and never accommodate.Rambert shrugged and looked at the doctor.

"I think I understand what you're saying," he said at last, standing up. The doctor walked him to the door and said: "Thank you for looking at things this way." Rambert said impatiently: "Okay, I understand, please forgive me for disturbing you." The doctor shook his hand and told him that there might be unusual reports to be written about the large number of dead rats that had been found in the city at this moment. "Oh," exclaimed Rambert, "I'm interested in this matter." " At five o'clock in the afternoon, the doctor was about to see some other patients when he passed a relatively young man on the stairs. Eyebrow.He had seen this man several times in the house of the Spanish dancers who lived on the top floor of the building.The man's name was Jean Tarrou, and he was standing on the steps, smoking a cigarette solemnly, watching a dying rat at his feet making its final convulsions.He raised his head, fixed his gray eyes calmly on the doctor, greeted him, and went on to say that the presence of these rats was a strange thing. Rieux said: "Yes, but it will turn out to be disgusting." "Not quite so, Doctor, but in a way. We've just never seen anything like it. But I'm interested in it, yes, I'm interested." Tarrou brushed his hair back with his hand and rewatched the mouse, which was now motionless.He smiled at Rieux: "Anyway, doctor, it's mainly the concierge's business." The doctor happened to see the porter at the front of the building, his back against the wall near the door, a look of weariness on his usually bloodshot face. Rieux told the porter that dead mice had been found again, and old Michel said: "Yes, I know, they appear in twos and threes now. But it's the same in other houses." He looked dejected, preoccupied, and rubbed his hands absently on his neck.Rieux asked him how he was.Of course, the janitor couldn't say that he was in poor health, he said he just felt a little unwell.According to him, this is caused by psychological effects.The rats made him uneasy.Everything would be much better if there were no more rats to be seen. But the next morning—it was the eighteenth of April, when the doctor came back from the station to pick up his mother—Michelle's cheeks had sunken even more.There were a dozen or so dead rats on the stairs from the cellar to the roof.Neighbors' trash cans were also full.The doctor's mother was not surprised when she found out about this."There are things like that," she said. She was short in stature, with silver hair and kindly black eyes. She said: "Bernard, I'm glad to see you. These rats don't affect my mood at all." The doctor agreed with his mother; indeed, with her, everything always seemed so easy. However, Rieux still made a call to the town rodent control office.He knew the superintendent there, and asked him if he had heard of a large number of rats dying in the open air.Director Messier said that he had heard about it, and that in his office not far from the pier, around 50 individuals had been found.However, he was not sure if the situation was serious.Rieux couldn't decide either, but he thought the rodent control department should take care of it. Messier said: "Yes, as long as there are orders. If you think it is really worthwhile, I can ask the superiors to issue orders." "It's worth doing," said Rieux. Just now his maid told him that hundreds of dead rats had been picked up in the big factory where her husband worked. Around this time, people in the city began to worry.Because, since the 18th, hundreds of dead rats have been removed from factories and warehouses.In some cases, people had to kill rats that twitched for too long.Moreover, wherever Dr. Rieux passed, from the outskirts of the city to the center of the city, wherever there were crowds of people, there were piles of rats packed in trash cans, or floating in chains in the sewers to be removed.The evening papers have picked up on the incident since that day, asking whether the municipality is preparing for action and what urgent measures are being considered to deal with this disgusting phenomenon and to safeguard the health of its citizens.However, the city government had no plans at all, nor did it consider any measures at all. It just held a meeting to discuss it first.The rodent control station was ordered to collect the dead rats early in the morning every day. After the collection, the station sent two vehicles to transport them to the garbage incineration plant for burning. However, in the next few days, the situation became serious, and the number of dead mice picked up continued to increase, and more and more were collected every morning.From the fourth day, the mice began to come out in batches to die outside.They crawled out in groups from hidden corners, basements, cellars, gutters, etc., staggered to the bright place, hesitated, turned around in place several times, and finally died at people's feet.At night, the soft screams of their dying struggles can be clearly heard in the aisles or alleys.On suburban mornings, they were seen lying in the sewers with a small speck of blood on their beaks.Some were bloated and rotting, others stretched out with limbs and beards still bristling.In urban areas, small piles of dead mice can be seen on the stairs or in the yard.Others died alone in town halls, on school playgrounds, and sometimes among the open-air seats in cafes.Much to the astonishment of city dwellers, they can be found in the busiest parts of the city.The Plaza de Armas, the boulevard, the promenade, one after the other was polluted.Although people cleaned up the dead rats early in the morning, they appeared more and more in the city during the day.When walking on the sidewalk, many night walkers will step on a limp, recently dead mouse.It is as if the earth, which bears our houses, is purging its fluids, and letting the boils and pus which have slain within it hitherto rise to the surface to burst.Look at the amazement of our little city!It had been quiet until then, and within a few days it was in chaos, like a strong man whose thick blood suddenly boils and revolts. The situation became more and more serious, and the Ronsdock Information Bureau (the organization that collects and provides intelligence materials on various subjects) reported in the free broadcast news that the number of rats collected and burned in just one day on the 25th reached Six thousand two hundred and thirty-one.This figure gave a clear idea of ​​what was going on in the city every day in full view, and it added to the confusion.Hitherto the mood of men was nothing but a complaint about a loathsome accident.Now I find something threatening about this phenomenon whose extent is not yet certain and whose origin cannot be found.Only the old asthmatic Spaniard still rubbed his hands and said repeatedly, "They're coming out, they're coming out." He spoke with the air of old age. Anxiety reached its peak on April 28, when the Intelligence Agency announced that it had collected some 8,000 dead rats.There were demands for a definitive solution, some denounced the authorities, and some who owned houses on the waterfront were already talking about where to hide.But the next day, when the Intelligence Bureau announced that the strange phenomenon had stopped suddenly and the number of dead rats picked up by the extermination was insignificant, the whole city was relieved. But at noon that day, when Dr. Rieux was pulling his car in front of the house, he noticed the porter coming from the other side of the road, with his head on one side and his arms and legs crossed like a marionette.The old man was on the arm of a priest.The doctor knew the priest, and had met him a few times.He was Father Paneloux, a learned and active Jesuit, and had a great reputation in the city, even among those who were indifferent to religion.The doctor waited for them to come.Old Michelle's eyes glowed and he was breathing heavily.He was not feeling well and needed a change of air.But the pain in his neck, armpits and groin was so severe that he walked back and asked Father Paneloux to help him. "A few lumps," he told the doctor, "probably because I've pushed too hard." The doctor stretched his arms out of the car door and ran his fingers around the base of Michelle's outstretched neck, where there was a kind of wooden nodule growing there. "Go lie down and rest, take your temperature, and I'll come see you in the afternoon." After the porter had left, Rieux asked Father Paneloux what he thought of the rat incident. "Oh! it must be a plague," said the priest, with a smile in his eyes behind his round spectacles. After lunch, Rieux was reviewing the telegram from the sanatorium announcing his wife's arrival when the telephone rang.It was a call from one of his old patients asking him to make an appointment.He was a city employee and had long suffered from aortic stenosis.Because he was poor, Rieux did not charge his consultation fees. He said on the phone: "Yes, it's me, you remember me. But this time it's someone else. Please come quickly, something happened to my neighbor's house." His voice was jerky when he spoke.Rieux first thought of the porter, but decided to wait to see him.A few minutes later the doctor was in front of a low house on the rue Faiderbe in the outskirts.Entering the door, on the stinking staircase he met Joseph Grand—the clerk who came down to meet him.He was a man in his fifties, with a short yellow mustache, tall, slightly hunchbacked, with narrow shoulders and long, thin limbs. As he came down, he said to Rieux: "He's better now. I thought he was finished." As he spoke, he blew his nose.On the left door on the third floor, which is also the highest floor, Rieux saw some words written in red chalk: "Come in, please, I have hanged myself." When they entered, they saw a rope hanging straight from a chandelier. Below it was an overturned chair, and the table had been pushed into a corner.The rope hung alone. "I untied him just in time," said Grand, speaking in the most common language, but he seemed to be weighing his words. "Just as I was going out, I heard a noise. When I saw the writing on the door--how can I tell you?--I thought it was a joke. But he uttered a strange, even terrible moan. " He scratched his head and said: "I'm afraid the process was painful, in my opinion. Of course, I went in." They opened a door and stood on the threshold into a bright but poorly furnished room.On a brass bed lay a squat man.Breathing heavily, he watched them with bloodshot eyes.The doctor paused.In between the man's breathing, he thought he heard the squeak of a mouse.But nothing happened in the corner.Rieux went to the bed.The man didn't fall from too high a place, the fall was not too sudden, the spine was not broken, and of course, he was a little suffocated.An X-ray is required.The doctor gave him an injection of camphor oil and said he would be fine in a few days. The man said in a breathless voice, "Thank you, Doctor." Rieux asked Grand if he had informed the police station.Grand looked a little embarrassed. "No," he said, "well, no, I thought the main thing was..." Rieux interrupted him: 'Of course, then I will report. " But at this moment, the patient became agitated, and while standing up from the bed, he protested that he was already well and there was no need to report. Rieux said: "Be quiet, it's nothing serious, please believe me, I have to report it. The patient yelled, "Oh!" Then he threw back his body and began to sob.Grand, who had been twiddling his mustache for some time, came up to him and said: "Mr. Cottard, you must understand that the doctor will be blamed. For example, if you try to do it again..." Cottard said with tears in his eyes that he would not do it again, and that this time it was just a moment of confusion, and that he only asked to be left alone.Rieux prescribed a prescription and said: "Understood, let's not talk about this, I will come back in two or three days, but don't do anything stupid." Rieux told Grand on the landing that he would have to report, but that he would ask the prefect of the police station to investigate in two or three days. Rieux told Grand again: "I'll watch it tonight. Does he have any relatives?" "I don't know if there are any relatives, but I will take care of him myself." Grand shook his head and went on: "Tell you, I don't even know him personally. No matter what, it is always necessary to help each other." Rieux glanced subconsciously into the dark corner of the room in the passage, and asked Grand if the rats had disappeared from his quarter.The civil servant knew nothing about it.He had heard of such a thing, but did not pay much attention to the rumors of the region."I had other things on my mind," he said. Rieux had bade farewell to Grand while he spoke, being anxious to visit the porter before writing to his wife. The hawkers of the evening papers were shouting, telling the people that the rat infestation had stopped.But Rieux found that his patient was half turned out of the bed, with one hand on his stomach and the other around his neck, vomiting pale red bile into the dirt bucket.The janitor struggled out of breath for a long time before lying down again.His body temperature reached 39.5°C, the lymph nodes on his neck and limbs were swollen, and two light black spots were found on the flanks, which were expanding.He says he now feels viscerally sad. The patient said, "It's burning, the goddam thing is burning me." His soot-stained mouth made him stutter when he spoke, and he turned his gaze to the doctor, his round eyes watering from a severe headache.His wife looked worriedly at the silent Rieux. "Doctor," she asked, "what is it?" "Any kind of disease is possible, and I'm not sure at all right now. Until tonight, give food and take blood-purifying medicine as prescribed. Drink plenty of water." The gatekeeper is dying of thirst. As soon as he got home, Rieux called his colleague Richard, one of the most respected doctors in the city. Richard said: "No, I don't see anything special." "Has no one ever had a fever from local inflammation?" "Ah, yes, there were two cases of abnormally swollen lymph nodes." "Is it abnormally swollen?" Richard said: "Well, what is called normal, you know..." At night, the janitor kept talking nonsense, complaining about the rats, and his body temperature was as high as 40°C.Rieux tried the treatment of a fixed abscess.Burned by turpentine, the gatekeeper hissed and howled: "Ah! These beasts!" The lymph nodes had swelled even more and felt as hard as a block of wood.The janitor's wife was frantic. "You have to watch him at night," the doctor told her, "call me if you need anything." The next day, April 30th, the sky was blue and the already slightly warm breeze brought moist air.Along with the wind is a scent of flowers blowing from the outer suburbs.The voices of the streets in the morning seemed more alive and joyous than usual.In our small town, the entire population was liberated from a week of secret anxiety, and this day was rejuvenating. Rieux himself was relieved by his wife's reply, and felt relieved. Mood went downstairs to the gatekeeper's house.The patient's body temperature dropped to 38°C in the morning.Feeling weak and weak, he lay on the bed smiling. His wife said to the doctor, "Doctor, he's better, isn't he?" "Wait and see." But at noon, the body temperature suddenly rose to 40 ℃.The patient babbled and vomited again.The lymph nodes in his neck were so painful that he couldn't touch it, and the janitor seemed to be trying to stick his head out of his body.His wife was sitting at the foot of the bed, her hands resting on the quilt, lightly holding the patient's feet, and looking at Rieux. Rieux said: "Well, put him in isolation for special treatment. I'll call the hospital for an ambulance to take him away." Two hours later, in the ambulance, the doctor and the janitor's wife leaned over the patient.A few words spit out intermittently from his mouth covered with chapter-shaped growths: "rat!" His face was livid, his lips were sallow, his eyelids were also lead blue, he was short of breath, and his body was tormented by swollen lymph nodes as if they were being torn apart. , He curled up in the small bed, as if he wanted the bed to wrap him up, and it seemed that there was some voice from the ground calling him urgently.The janitor stopped breathing under some invisible pressure.His wife began to cry. "Doctor, is there no hope?" "He's dead," said Rieux.