It was then that he experienced the mysterious harmony which matched his gestures with Lu-cienne's . . . They walked well together, and it was no effort for him to keep in step with her. Doubtless this harmony was facilitated by Lu-cienne's flat shoes. But all the same, there was something in their respective strides, which were similar in both length and flexibility. Mersault noticed Lucienne's silence and the closed expression of her face; he decided that she was probably not very intelligent, and that pleased him. There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it. All of this made him linger over Lucienne's hand when he said goodbye, and made him see her again, inviting her to take long walks at the same silent pace, offering their tanned faces to the sun or the stars, swimming together and matching their gestures and their strides without exchanging anything but the presence of their bodies. And then last night, Mersault had discovered again a familiar and overwhelming miracle on Lucienne's lips. Until then what moved him had been her way of clinging to his clothes, of following him, of taking his arm—her abandonment and her trust that touched him as a man. Her silence, too, by which she put all of herself into each momentary gesture and emphasized her resemblance to the cats, a resemblance to which she already owed the gravity characterizing all her actions. Yesterday, after dinner, they had strolled together on the docks. They
the hills, for the sky showed only the one road, passing from the sea to the hills. The world says only one thing, it wakens, then it wearies. But there always comes a time when it vanquishes by mere repetition and gains the reward of its own perseverance. Thus the days of the House above the World, woven of that luxuriant fabric of laughter and simple acts, ended on the terrace under the star-studded night. Rose and Claire and Patrice stretched out on the deckchairs, Catherine sat on the parapet.
In the sky, night showed them its shining face, radiant and secret. Lights passed far below in the harbor, and the screech of trains occasionally reached them. The stars swelled, then shrank, vanished and were reborn, drawing evanescent figures, creating new ones moment by moment. In the silence, the night recovered its density, its flesh. Filled with twinkling stars, it left in their eyes the play of lights that tears can bring. And each of them, plunging into the depths of the sky, found that extreme point where everything coincides, the secret and tender meditation which makes up the solitude of one's life.
Catherine, suddenly choked with love, could only sigh. Patrice, who felt that his voice would crack, nonetheless asked: "Don't you feel cold?"
"No," Rose said. "Besides, it's so beautiful."
Claire stood up, put her hands on the parapet and held her face up to the sky. Facing everything noble and elementary in the world, she united her life with her longing for life, identified her hopes with the
had stopped against the ramp leading up to the boulevard, and Lucienne had pressed against Mersault. In the darkness, he felt under his ringers the cool prominent cheekbones and the warm lips which opened under his pressure. Then there was something like a great cry within him, gratuitous yet ardent. From the starry night and the city that was like a spilled sky, swollen with human lights under the warm, deep breeze that rose from the harbor, he drew the thirst of this warm spring, the limitless longing to seize from these vibrant lips all the mean-ing of that inhuman and dormant world, like a si-lence enclosed in her mouth. He bent over her, and it was as if he had rested his lips on a bird. Lucienne moaned. He nibbled her lips, and sucked in that warmth which transported him as if he had embraced the world in his arms. And she clung to him like a drowning girl, rising again and again from the depth into which she had sunk, drew back and then offered him her lips again, falling once more into the cold abyss that enfolded her like a divine oblivion.
. . . But Eliane was leaving now. A long after-noon of silence and reflection lay ahead of Mersault in his room. At dinner, no one spoke. But by mutual consent they went out onto the terrace. The days always ended by melting into the days: from the morning above the harbor, glistening with sun and mist, to the mildness of the evening above the harbor. Day broke over the sea and the sun set behind
high, round forehead a white patch in the darkness. Young creatures capable of happiness, who exchange their youth and keep their secrets. He stands beside Catherine and stares over her glistening shoulder into the bowl of the sky. Rose comes over to the parapet, and all four are facing the World now. It is as if the suddenly cooler dew of the night were rinsing the signs of solitude from them, delivering them from themselves, and by that tremulous and fugitive baptism restoring them to the world. At this moment, when the night overflows with stars, their gestures are fixed against the great mute face of the sky. Patrice raises an arm toward the night, sweeping sheaves of stars in his gesture, the sea of the heavens stirred by his arm and all Algiers at his feet, around them like a dark, glittering cape of jewels and shells.
movement of the stars. Suddenly turning around, she said to Patrice: "On good days, if you trust life, life has to answer you."
"Yes," Patrice said, without looking at her. A star fell. Behind it a distant beacon broadened in the night that was deeper now. Some men were climbing up the path in silence. He could hear the sound of their footsteps, their heavy breathing. Then the smell of flowers reached him.
The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient truth which proceeds from death to death. Patrice, Catherine, Rose, and Claire then grew aware of the happiness born of their abandonment to the world. If this night was in some sense the figure of their fate, they marveled that it should be at once so carnal and so secret, that upon its countenance mingled both tears and the sun. And with pain and joy, their hearts learned to hear that double lesson which leads to a happy death.
It is late now. Already midnight. On the brow of this night which is like the repose and the reflection of the world, a dim surge and murmur of stars her-alds the coming dawn. A tremulous light descends from the sky. Patrice looks at his friends: Catherine sitting on the parapet, her head tipped back; Rose huddled on the deckchair, her hands resting on Gula; Claire standing stiff against the parapet, her
cerned him. The day lay open, now, at the end of the road. The sun rose over the sea, awakening the fields on either side of the road, still deserted a moment before, filling them with the red fluttering of birds and insects. Sometimes a farmer would cross one of these fields, and Mersault, rushing past, retained no more than the image of a figure with a sack bending over the moist, clinging soil. Again and again the car brought him to the edge of slopes overlooking the sea; they grew steeper and their outline, barely suggested in the light of dawn, grew more distinct now, suddenly revealing prospects of olive trees, pines, and whitewashed cottages. Then another turn hurled the car toward the sea, which tipped up toward Mersault like an offering glowing with salt and sleep. Then the car hissed on the pavement and turned back toward other hillsides and the unchanging sea.
A month before, Mersault had announced his departure to the House above the World. He would travel again, then settle down somewhere around Algiers. Several weeks later he was back, convinced that travel now meant an alien way of life to him: wandering seemed no more than the happiness of an anxious man. And deep inside himself he felt a dim exhaustion. He was eager to carry out his plan of buying a little house somewhere in the Chenoua, between the sea and the mountains, a few kilometers from the ruins of Tipasa. When he arrived in Algiers, he had envisioned the setting of his life. He
4
Early in the morning, the fog lights of Mersault's car were gleaming along the coast road. Leaving Algiers, he passed milk carts, and the warm smell of the horses made him even more aware of the morning's freshness. It was still dark. A last star dissolved slowly in the sky, and on the pale road he could hear only the motor's contented purr and occasionally, in the distance, the sound of hooves, the clatter of milk cans
, until, out of the dark, his lights flashed on the shining iron of the horseshoes. Then everything vanished in the sound of speed. He was driving faster now, and the night swiftly veered to day.
Out of the darkness still retained between the hills, the car climbed an empty road overlooking the sea, where the morning declared itself. Mersault stepped on the gas. The tiny sucking sound of the wheels grew louder on the dewy pavement. At each of the many turns, Mersault's brakes made the tires squeal, and as the road straightened, the sound of the motor gaining speed momentarily drowned out the soft voices of the sea rising from the beaches below. Only an airplane permits man a more apparent solitude than the kind he discovers in an automobile. Utterly confident of his own presence, satisfied with the precision of his gestures, Mersault could at the same time return to himself and to what con-
Mersault twisted the wheel to avoid a venturesome hen. He was thinking of the conversation he had had with Catherine, the day he had left the House above the World—he had spent the night alone in a hotel.
It was early in the afternoon, and because it had rained that morning, the whole bay was like a wet pane of glass, the sky utterly blank above it. The cape at the opposite end of the bay stood out wonderfully clear, and lay, gilded by a sunbeam, like a huge summer snake upon the sea. Patrice had finished packing and now, his arms leaning on the sill, he stared greedily at this new birth of the world.
"But if you're happy here, why are you leaving?" Catherine had asked.
"There's the risk of being loved, little Catherine, and that would keep me from being happy." Coiled on the couch, her head down, Catherine stared at Patrice. Without turning around he said: "A lot of men complicate their lives and invent problems for themselves. In my case, it's quite simple. Look . . ." He spoke facing the world, and Catherine felt forgotten. She looked at Patrice's long fingers on the sill, studied his way of resting his weight on one hip, and without even seeing his eyes she knew how absorbed his gaze would be.
"What I . . ." but she broke off, still staring at Patrice.
Small sails began riding out to sea, taking advantage of the calm. They approached the channel, filled it with fluttering wings, and suddenly sped
had made a large investment in German pharmaceuticals, paid a broker to manage his holdings for him, and thereby justified his absences from Algiers and the independent life he was leading. The investment, moreover, was more or less profitable, and he made up for his occasional losses, offering without remorse this tribute to his profound freedom. The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with a countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence. Mersault then concerned himself with Lucienne's fate.
She had no family, lived alone, worked as a secretary for a coal company, ate little but fruit, and did Swedish exercises. Mersault lent her books which she returned without a word. To his questions, she replied: "Yes, I liked it," or else: "It was a little sad." The day he decided to leave Algiers, he suggested that she live with him but continue to keep her apartment in Algiers without working, joining him when he sent for her. He proposed this with enough conviction for Lucienne to find nothing humiliating in the offer, and in fact there was nothing humiliating in it. Lucienne often realized through her body what her mind could not understand; she agreed. Mersault added: "If you want, I can marry you. But I don't see the point."
"Whatever you prefer," Lucienne said. A week later he married her and made ready to leave the city. Meanwhile Lucienne bought an orange canoe to skim over the blue sea.
outward, leaving a wake of air and water that widened in long foamy trails. From where she sat, Catherine watched them make their way out to sea, rising around Patrice like a flight of white birds. He seemed to feel the weight of her silence and her stare, turned around, took her hands and brought them close to his own body. "Never give up, Catherine. You have so much inside you, and the noblest sense of happiness of all. Don't just wait for a man to come along. That's the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself."
"I'm not complaining, Mersault," Catherine said softly, putting one hand on Patrice's shoulder. "The only thing that matters now is that you take good care of yourself." He realized then how easily his certainty could be shaken. His heart was strangely hard.
"You shouldn't have said that just now." He picked up his suitcase and went down the steep stairs, then down the path from the olive trees to the olive trees. There was nothing ahead of him now except the Chenoua, a forest of ruins and wormwood, a love without hope or despair, and the memory of a life of vinegar and flowers. He turned around. Up above, Catherine was watching him leave, motionless.
In a little less than two hours, Mersault was in sight of the Chenoua. The night's last violet shadows still lingered on the slopes that plunged into the sea, while the peak glowed in the red and yellow sun-
light. There was a kind of vigorous and massive assertion of the earth here, thrusting up from the Sahel and silhouetted on the horizon, ending in this enormous bestial back that plummeted straight down into the sea. The house Mersault had bought stood on the last slopes, a hundred yards from the water already turning golden in the heat. There was only one story above the ground floor, and only one room in it, but this room was enormous and overlooked the front garden and the sea through a splendid bay window opening onto a terrace as well. Mersault hurried up to it: the sea was already forming scarves of mist, and its blue darkened while the warm red of the terrace tiles glistened in the morning dew. The whitewashed parapet had already been conquered by the first tendrils of a triumphant rambler rose. The firm white flesh of the open petals, sharp against the sea, was both voluptuous and satiating. Downstairs, one room faced the foothills of the Chenoua, covered with fruit trees, the other two opened onto the garden and the sea beyond. In the garden, two pines thrust their bare trunks high into the sky, the tips alone covered with a green and yellow pelt. From the house he could see only the space bracketed between these two trees, the curve of beach between the trunks. A little steamboat was moving out to sea now, and Mersault watched its entire trajectory from one pine to the other.
Here was where he would live. Doubtless because the beauty of the place touched his heart—why else
had he bought this house? But the release he hoped to find here dismayed him, this solitude he had sought so deliberately seemed even more disturbing, now that he knew its setting. The village was not far away, a few hundred yards. He walked out of the house. A little path sloped down from the road toward the sea. Following it, he noticed for the first time that he could glimpse, across the bay, the slender peninsula of Tipasa. At its very end were silhouetted the golden columns of the temple and around them the fallen ruins among the wormwood bushes forming, at this distance, a blue-gray plumage. On June evenings, Mersault reflected, the wind would bring the fragrance of those sun-gorged shrubs across the water toward the Chenoua.
He had to set up his house, organize his life. The first days passed quickly. He whitewashed the walls, bought hangings in Algiers, began to install electricity, and as he went about his work, interrupted by the meals he took at the village cafe and by his dips in the sea, he forgot why he had come here and lost himself in his body's fatigue, loins aching and legs stiff, fretting over the shortage of paint or the defective installation of a light fixture in the hallway. He slept at the hotel and gradually became acquainted with the village: the boys who came to play pool and ping-pong on Sunday afternoons (they would use the table all afternoon, taking only one drink, to the owner's great annoyance); the girls who strolled in the evening along the road overlooking the sea
(they walked arm in arm, and there was a caressing, singsong note in their voices); Perez, the fisherman who supplied the hotel with fish and had only one arm. Here, too, he met the village doctor, Bernard. But the day the house was entirely ready, Mersault moved all his things into it and gradually recovered himself. It was evening. He was in the big room upstairs, and
behind the window two worlds fought for the space between the two pines. In one, almost transparent, the stars multiplied. In the other, denser and darker, a secret palpitation of the water betrayed the sea.
So far, he had lived sociably enough, chatting with the workmen who helped him in the house or with the owner of the cafe. But now he realized that he had no one to meet tonight, nor tomorrow, nor ever, and that he was facing his longed-for solitude at last. From the next moment he no longer had to see anyone, the next day seemed terribly imminent. Yet he convinced himself that this was what he had wanted: nothing before him but himself for a long time—until the end. He decided to stay where he was, smoking and thinking late into the night, but by ten he was sleepy and went to bed. The next day he awakened very late, around ten, made his breakfast and ate it before washing or shaving. He felt a little tired. He had not shaved and his hair was uncombed. But after he had eaten, instead of going into the bathroom he wandered from room to room, leafed through a magazine, and finally was de-