![]() ![]() As the character Tarrou says, they are trapped “between the sky and the walls of their city.” Walking in my own streets, I’ve noticed that people’s moods do change based on the weather-for the first time, neighbors are standing on street corners, looking up at the clouds. ![]() ![]() “Fat clouds ran from one horizon to the other,” Camus wrote, “covering the houses with shadows that passed and gave way to the cold, golden light.” In The Plague, the sky is a protagonist, as are the walls, and the people are caught in a tug of war between them, a sinister alternation of endlessness and barriers. April brings life and fiction into lockstep-in upstate New York, and in the plague novel on my desk, spring is just the start of the story, rising with a certain panic. I’m on a deadline to finish my translation of Albert Camus’s The Plague, a project that was commissioned well before the pandemic. It’s the start of our first quarantine spring, and every week the words pile up. Time is sluggish in Buffalo, but the daffodil buds have begun to fatten, compelled by the passing days. Except for walks with the dog, I haven’t left the house in weeks. The city I live in is still sometimes called the city of no illusions. ![]()
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