The sight of a good body helps me breathe.'”
“Sounds pretty crazy.”
Marthe wanted to please him, and made up her mind this was the moment to stage the little scene of
jealousy she had been planning, having decided she owed it to him somehow. “Oh, not so crazy as some
of your friends.”
“What friends?” Mersault asked, genuinely startled.
“Those little grinds . . .”
The little grinds were Rose and Claire, students in Tunis whom Mersault used to know and with whom he
maintained the only correspondence in his life. He smiled and laid his hand on the nape of Marine’s neck.
They walked a long time. Marthe lived near the parade grounds. Lights shone in all the upper windows of
the long street, although the dark, shuttered shopwindows had a forbidding look.
“Listen, darling, you don’t happen to be in love with those little grinds by any chance, do you?”
“No.”
They walked on, Mersault’s hand on Marthe’s neck covered by the warmth of her hair.
“Do you love me?” Marthe asked suddenly.
Mersault burst out laughing. “Now that’s a serious question.”
“Answer me!”
“People don’t love each other at our age, Marthe— they please each other, that’s all. Later on, when you’re old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That’s all it is.”
Marthe seemed sad, but he kissed her. “Goodnight, darling,” she said. Mersault walked home through the dark streets. He walked quickly, aware of how the muscles in his thighs played against the smooth
material of his trousers, and he thought of Zagreus and his amputated legs. He wanted to meet him, and
decided to ask Marthe to introduce them.
The first time Mersault saw Zagreus, he was annoyed. Yet Zagreus had tried to avoid anything that might
be embarrassing about two lovers of the same woman meeting in her presence. To do so, he had
attempted to make Mersault his accomplice by calling Marthe a “good girl” and laughing very loud.
Mersault had remained impassive. He told Marthe, as soon as they were alone, how much he had disliked
the encounter.
“I don’t like half-portions. It bothers me. It keeps me from thinking. And especially half-portions who
brag.”
13
“Oh you and your thinking,” Marthe answered, not understanding. “If I paid any attention to you . . .”
But later, that boyish laugh of Zagreus’, which had at first annoyed him caught Mersault’s attention and
interest. Moreover, the obvious jealousy which had provoked Mersault’s first judgment had disappeared
as soon as he saw Zagreus. Once when Marthe quite innocently referred to the time she had known
Zagreus, he advised her: “Don’t bother. I can’t be jealous of a man who doesn’t have his legs any more. If I ever do think about the two of you, I see him like some kind of big worm on top of you. And it just
makes me laugh. So don’t bother, angel.”
And after that he went back to visit Zagreus by himself. Zagreus talked a great deal and very fast,
laughed, then fell silent. Mersault felt comfortable in the big room where Zagreus lived surrounded by
books and Moroccan brass trays, the fire casting reflections on the withdrawn face of the Khmer Buddha
on the desk. He listened to Zagreus. What he noticed about the cripple was that he thought before he
spoke. Besides, the pent-up passion, the intense life animating this absurd stump of a man, was enough to
attract Mersault, to produce in him something which, if he had been a little less guarded, he might have
taken for friendship.
4
That Sunday afternoon, after talking and laughing a great deal, Roland Zagreus sat silent near the fire in
his big wheelchair, wrapped in white blankets. Mersault was leaning against a bookshelf, staring at the
sky and the landscape through the white silk curtains. He had come during a light rain and, not wanting to
arrive too early, had spent an hour wandering around the countryside. The day was dark, and even
without hearing the wind, Mersault could see the trees and branches writhing silently in the little valley.
The silence was broken by a milk wagon, which trundled down the street past the villa in a tremendous
racket of metal cans. Almost immediately the rain turned into a downpour, flooding the windowpanes. All
the water like some thick oil on the panes, the faint hollow noise of the horse’s hoofs—more audible now
than the cart’s uproar— the persistent hiss of the rain, this basket case beside the fire, and the silence of the room—everything seemed to have happened before, a dim melancholy past that flooded Mersault’s
heart the way the rain had soaked his shoes and the wind had pierced the thin material of his trousers. A
few moments before, the falling vapor—neither a mist nor a rain—had washed his face like a light hand
and laid bare his dark-circled eyes. Now he stared at the black clouds that kept pouring out of the sky, no
sooner blurred
than replaced. The creases in his trousers had vanished, and with them the warmth and confidence of a
world made for ordinary men. He moved closer to the fire and to Zagreus and sat facing him, in the
shadow of the high mantelpiece and yet within sight of the sky. Zagreus glanced at Mersault, then looked
away and tossed into the fire a ball of paper he had crumpled in his left hand. The gesture, as always
ridiculous, disconcerted Mersault: the sight of this mutilated body made him uneasy. Zagreus smiled but
said nothing, then suddenly thrust his face toward Mersault. The flames gleamed on his left cheek only,
but something in his voice and eyes was filled with warmth. “You look tired,” he said.
Abashed, Mersault merely answered: “Yes, I don’t know v/hat to do,” and after a pause straightened up, walked to the window, and added as he stared outside: “I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L’Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”
Zagreus smiled. “You’re a poor man, Mersault. That explains half of your disgust. And the other half you owe to your own submission to poverty.”
Mersault kept his back turned, staring at the trees in the wind. Zagreus smoothed the blanket over his
legs.
“You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and
the demands of his mind. You’re judging yourself now, Merasult, and you don’t like the sentence.
14
You live badly. Like a barbarian.” He turned his head toward Patrice: “You like driving a car, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You like women?”
“When they’re beautiful.”
“That’s what I meant.” Zagreus turned back to the fire. After a moment, he began: “All those things . . .”
Mersault turned around, leaning against the window, which yielded slightly to his weight, and waited for
the rest of the sentence. Zagreus remained silent. A fly buzzed against the glass. Mersault turned, caught
it under his hand, then let it go. Zagreus watched him and said, hesitantly: “I don’t like talking seriously.
Because then there’s only one thing to talk about—the justification you can give for your life. And I don’t
see how I can justify my amputated legs.”
“Neither do I,” Mersault said without turning around.
Zagreus’ young laugh suddenly burst out. “Thanks. You don’t leave me any illusions.” He changed his tone: “But you’re right to be hard. Still, there’s something I’d like to say to you.” And he broke off again.
Mersault came over and sat down, facing him. “Listen,” Zagreus resumed, “and look at me. I have someone to help me, to set me on the toilet, and afterwards to wash me and dry me. Worse, I pay
someone for it. Yet I’ll never make a move to cut short a life I believe in that much
. . . I’d accept even worse—blind, dumb, anything, as long as I feel in my belly that dark fire that is me,
me alive. The only thing that would occur to me would be to thank life for letting me burn on.” Za-greus flung his body back in the chair, out of breath. There was less of him to see now, only the whitish
reflection the blankets left on his chin. Then he went on: “And you, Mersault, with a body like yours,
your one duty is to live and be happy.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Mersault said. “With eight hours a day at the office. Oh, it would be different if I was free!” He grew excited as he spoke, and as occasionally happened, hope flooded him once more, even
more powerfully today because of Zagreus’ reassurance. He believed that at last he could confide in
someone. He resisted the impulse for a moment, began to stub out a cigarette, then continued more
calmly: “A few years ago I had everything before me—people talked to me about my life, about my