"The Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Camus Albert)

PART I

T

he unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran. Everyone
agreed that, considering their somewhat extraordinary character, they were out
of place there. For its ordinariness is what strikes one first about the town of
Oran, which is merely a large French port on the Algerian coast, headquarters of
the Prefect of a French Department.

The town itself, let us admit, is ugly. It has a smug, placid air and you need
time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business
centers in other parts of the world. How to conjure up a picture, for instance,
of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear
the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves?a thoroughly negative place, in short?
The seasons are discriminated only in the sky. All that tells you of spring's
coming is the feel of the air, or the baskets of flowers brought in from the
suburbs by peddlers; it's a spring cried in the marketplaces. During the summer
the sun bakes the houses bone-dry, sprinkles our walls with grayish dust, and
you have no option but to survive those days of fire indoors, behind closed
shutters. In autumn, on the other hand, we have deluges of mud. Only winter
brings really pleasant weather.

Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the
people in it work, how they love, and how they die. In our little town (is this,
one wonders, an effect of the climate?) all three are done on much the same
lines, with the same feverish yet casual air. The truth is that everyone is
bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but
solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and
their chief aim in life is, as they call it, "doing business." Naturally they
don't eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the
pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday
afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much
as possible. In the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour
that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on
their balconies. The passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the
vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and
"socials," or clubs where large sums change hands on the fall of a card.

It will be said, no doubt, that these habits are not peculiar to our town;
really all our contemporaries are much the same. Certainly nothing is commoner
nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to
fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for
living. Nevertheless there still exist towns and countries where people have now
and then an inkling of something different. In general it doesn't change their
lives. Still, they have had an intimation, and that's so much to the good. Oran,
however, seems to be a town without intimations; in other words, completely
modern. Hence I see no need to dwell on the manner of loving in our town. The