banks of the canal. During the day he strolled along the Ring, in the luxury of the shopwindows and the
elegant women. He enjoyed this frivolous and expensive de-cor which divides man from himself in the
least nat-ural city in the world. But the women were pretty, the flowers bright and sturdy in the gardens,
and over the Ring at twilight, in the brilliant carefree crowd, Mersault stared at the futile caracole of stone horses against the red sky. It was then that he remembered his friends Rose and Claire. For the first time
since Lyons, he wrote a letter. It was the overflow of his silence that he put down on paper:
Dear Children,
I’m writing from Vienna. I don’t know what you’re doing, but speaking for myself I’m traveling for a
living. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things with a heavy heart. Here in Vienna beauty has been replaced by civilization. It’s a relief. I’m not looking at churches or ruins. I take walks in the Ring. And in the evening, over the theaters and the sumptuous palaces, the blind steeplechase of stone horses in the sunset fills me with a strange mixture of bitterness and delight. Mornings I eat soft-boiled eggs and thick cream. I get up late, the hotel people shower attention on me. I’m very impressed with the style of the maitres d’hotel and stuffed with good food (oh, the cream here). There are lots of shows and the women are good-looking.
The only thing missing is the sun.
What are you up to? Tell me about yourselves and describe the sun to a miserable wretch who has no
roots anywhere and who remains your faithful
Patrice Mersault
27
That evening, having written his letter, he went back to the dancehall. He had arranged to spend the evening with Helen, one of the hostesses who knew a little French and understood his poor German.
Leaving the dancehall at two in the morning he walked her home, made love efficiently, and wakened the
next morning against Helen’s back, disinterestedly admiring her long hips and broad shoul-
ders. He got up without waking her, slipped the money into her shoe. As he was about to open the door,
she called to him: “But darling, you’ve made a mistake.” He returned to the bed. And he had made a
mistake. Unfamiliar with Austrian currency, he had left a five-hundred shilling note instead of a hundred
shillings. “No,” he said smiling, “its for you—you were wonderful.” Helen’s freckled face broke into a grin under her rumpled blond hair; she jumped up on the bed and kissed him on both cheeks. That kiss,
doubtless the first she had given him spontaneously, kindled a spark of emotion in Mersault. He made her
lie down, tucked her in, walked to the door again and looked back with a smile. “Goodbye,” he said. She opened her eyes wide above the sheet that was pulled up to her nose and let him vanish without a word.
A few days later, Mersault received an answer postmarked Algiers:
Dear Patrice,
We’re in Algiers. Your children would be very glad to see you again. If you have nothing to do in the
world, why don’t you come to Algiers— we have room for you in the House. We’re all happy here. We’re ashamed of it, of course, but only for appearance’s sake. And because of popular prejudice. If happiness
appeals to you, come and try it here. It’s better than re-enlisting. We bend our brows to your paternal
kisses,
Rose, Claire, Catherine
P.S. Catherine protests against the word paternal. Catherine is living with us. If you approve, she can be your third daughter.
He decided to return to Algiers by way of Genoa. As other men need to be alone before making their
crucial decisions, Mersault, poisoned by solitude and alienation, needed to withdraw into friendship and
confidence, to enjoy an apparent security before choosing his life.
In the train heading across northern Italy toward Genoa, he listened to the thousand voices that lured him
on, the siren songs of happiness. By the time he reached the first cypresses, springing straight up from the
naked soil, he had yielded. He still felt weak, feverish. But something in him had relented. Soon, as the
sun advanced through the day and the sea drew closer, under a broad sky pouring light and air over the
shivering olive trees, the exultation which stirred the world joined the enthusiasms of his own heart. The
noise of the train, the chatter in the crowded compartment, everything that laughed and sang around him
kept time to a kind of inner dance which projected him, sitting motionless hour after hour, to the ends of
the earth and at last released him, jubilant and speechless, into the deafening bustle of Genoa, the brilliant harbor echoing the brilliant sky, where desire and indolence struggled against each other until dark. He
was thirsty, hungry for love, eager for pleasure. The gods who burned within him cast him into the sea, on
a tiny
beach at one end of the harbor, where the water tasted of salt and tar and he swam until he forgot his own
body. Then he wandered through the narrow, redolent streets of the old part of the city, letting the colors
claw at his eyes and the sky devour itself above the houses, the cats sleeping among the summer’s filth
flattened by the burden of the sun. He walked along a road overlooking the entire city, and the flickering
fragrant sea rose toward him in one long, irresistible swell. Closing his eyes, Mersault gripped the warm
stone he sat on, opening them again to stare at this city where sheer excess of life flaunted its exultant bad taste. At noon he would sit on the ramp leading down to the harbor and watch the women walking up
from the offices on the docks. In sandals and bright summer dresses, breasts bobbing, they left Mersault’s
tongue dry and his heart pounding with desire, a desire in which he recognized both a release and a
28
justification. Evenings, he would see the same women in the streets and follow them, the ardent animal coiled in his loins stirring with a fierce delight. For two days he smoldered in this inhuman exultation. On
the third day he left Genoa for Algiers.
All during the crossing, staring at the water and the light on the water, first in the morning, then in the
middle of the day, and then in the evening, he matched his heart against the slow pulse of the sky, and
returned to himself. He scorned the vulgarity of certain cures. Stretched out on the deck, he real-
ized that there could be no question of sleeping but that he must stay awake, must remain conscious
despite friends, despite the comfort of body and soul. He had to create his happiness and his justification.
And doubtless the task would be easier for him now. At the strange peace that filled him as he watched
the evening suddenly freshening upon the sea, the first star slowly hardening in the sky where the light
died out green to be reborn yellow, he realized that after this great tumult and this fury, what was dark
and wrong within him was gone now, yielding to the clear water, transparent now, of a soul restored to
kindness, to resolution. He understood. How long he had craved a woman’s love! And he was not made
for love. All his life—the office on the docks, his room and his nights of sleep there, the restaurant he
went to, his mistress—he had pursued single-mindedly a happiness which in his heart he believed was
impossible. In this he was no different from everyone else. He had played at wanting to be happy. Never
had he sought happiness with a conscious and deliberate desire. Never until the day . . . And from that
moment on, because of a single act calculated in utter lucidity, his life had changed and happiness seemed
possible. Doubtless he had given birth to this new being in suffering—but what was that suffering
compared to the degrading farce he had performed till now? He saw, for instance, (hat what had attached
him to Marthe was vanity, not love. Even that miracle of the lips she offered
him was nothing more than the delighted astonishment of a power acknowledged and awakened by the
conquest. The meaning of his affair with Marthe consisted of the replacement of that initial astonishment
by a certainty, the triumph of vanity over modesty. What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings
when they would walk into the movie theater and men’s eyes turned toward her, that moment when he
offered her to the world. What he loved in her was his power and his ambition to live. Even his desire, the
deepest craving of his flesh, probably derived from this initial astonishment at possessing a lovely body,