pray for him to win the lottery, Rose becomes quite realistic: “We might as well pray for ourselves.”
33
The sun is hot and heavy now, which makes the iced wine all the more precious, and the fruit welcome.
With the coffee, Eliane bravely changes the subject to love. If she were in love, she would get married.
Catherine tells her that it’s more urgent when in love to make love, and that materialistic point of view
convulses Eliane. Rose, the pragma-tist, would approve “if unfortunately experience did not show that
marriage dissolves love.”
But Eliane and Catherine force their opinions into opposition and become unfair, as anyone with spirit
feels obliged to do. Noel, who thinks in shapes and in clay, believes in Women, in children, and in the
patriarchal truth of a concrete and sensuous life. Then Rose, exasperated beyond endurance by the outcry
raised by Eliane and Catherine, pretends to understand, suddenly, the reasons for Noel’s frequent visits.
“I want to thank you now,” she said, “though I find it difficult to tell you how much this discovery overwhelms me. I’ll speak to my father tomorrow about ‘our’ project, and you yourself may apply to him in a few days.”
“But . . .” Noel says, for Noel doesn’t quite follow.
“Oh,” Rose says, with tremendous energy, “I know. I understand without your having to speak a word: you’re the kind of man who can hold his tongue and let other people guess what he’s thinking. But I’m
glad you’ve declared yourself at last, for the persistence of your attentions was beginning to sully the
purity of my reputation.”
Noel, vaguely amused, and also vaguely alarmed, declares himself delighted to find his aspirations
crowned with success.
“Not to mention,” Patrice says, before lighting a cigarette, “that you’ll have to act fast. Rose’s condition obliges you to take certain steps promptly.”
“What?”
“Oh heavens,” Claire says, “it’s only her second month.”
“Besides,” Rose adds tenderly and persuasively, “you’ve reached the age when you enjoy finding your own face in another man’s child.”
Noel frowns, and Claire says good-naturedly: “It’s only a joke. Just play along with it, Noel, and let’s go inside.”
At which point the discussion of principles comes to an end. Nonetheless, Rose, who does her good deeds
in secret, speaks affectionately to Eliane. In the big room, Patrice sits at the window, Claire leans against the table, and Catherine is lying on the” floor. The others are on the couch. There is a heavy
mist over the city and the harbor, but the tugboats go about their work, and their deep hoots rise to the
house on gusts of tar and fish, the world of black and red hulls, of rusty anchors and chains sticky with
seaweed wakening down below. As always, the strong, fraternal summons of a life of manly effort tempts
everyone. Eliane says to Rose sadly: “Then you’re just like me.”
“No,” Rose answers, “I’m merely trying to be happy—as happy as possible.”
“And love isn’t the only way,” Patrice says, without turning around. He is very fond of Eliane, and afraid he has hurt her feelings just now. But he understands Rose and her thirst for happiness.
“A mediocre ideal,” Eliane declares.
34
“I don’t know if it’s mediocre, but it’s a healthy one. And that . . .” Patrice breaks off. Rose closes her eyes. Gula has jumped into her lap, and by slowly caressing the cat’s skull and back, Rose anticipates that
secret marriage in which the squinting cat and the motionless woman will see the same universe out of the
same half-closed eyes. Everyone muses, between the long calls of the tugboats. Rose lets Gula’s purring
rise within her, starting from the coiled beast in the hollow of her body. The heat presses on her eyes and
immerses her in a silence inhabited by the throbbing of her own blood. The cats sleep for days at a time
and make love from the first star until dawn. Their pleasures are fierce, and their sleep impenetrable. And
they know that the
body has a soul in which the soul has no part. “Yes,” Rose says, opening her eyes, “to be as happy as possible.”
Mersault was thinking about Lucienne Raynal. When he had said that the women in the streets were
pretty, he meant that one woman in particular was pretty. He had met her at a friend’s house. A week
before they had gone out together, and having nothing to do, had strolled along the harbor boulevards, all
one fine hot morning. Lucienne had not opened her mouth, and as he walked her home Mersault was
startled to find himself squeezing her hand a long time and smiling at her. She was quite tall and was
wearing no hat—only a white linen dress and sandals. On the boulevards they had walked into a slight
breeze, and Lucienne set her feet flat on the warm cobbles, bracing herself with each step against the
wind. As she did so, her dress became pasted against her body, outlining her smooth, curving belly. With
her blond hair pulled back, her small straight nose, and the splendid thrust of her breasts, she represented
and even sanctioned a kind of secret agreement which linked her to the earth and organized the world
around her movements. As her bag swayed from her right wrist and a silver bracelet tinkled against its
clasp, she raised her left hand over her head to protect herself from the sun; the tip of her right foot was
still on the earth but was about to take off—and at that moment she seemed to Patrice to wed her gestures
to the world.
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
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.
35
. . . 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
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