in solitude and anticipation . . .” After a pause Zagreus continued in a lower voice: “The life I would have had, Mersault, without the accident that took off my legs almost immediately afterwards. I haven’t been
able to stop riving . . . And now, here I am. You understand—you have to understand that I didn’t want to
live a lesser life, a diminished life. For twenty years my money has been here, beside me. I’ve lived
modestly. I’ve scarcely touched the capital.” He passed his hard palms over his eyelids and said, even
more softly: “Life should never be tainted with a cripple’s kisses.”
At this moment Zagreus had opened the chest next to the fireplace and showed Mersault a tarnished steel
safe inside, the key in the lock. On top of the safe lay a white envelope and a large black revolver.
Zagreus had answered Mersault’s involuntarily curious stare with a smile. It was very simple. On days
when the tragedy which had robbed him of
his life was too much for him, he took out this letter, which he had not dated and which explained his
desire to die. Then he laid the gun on the table, bent down to it and pressed his forehead against it, rolling 17
his temples over it, calming the fever of his cheeks against the cold steel. For a time he stayed like that, letting his fingers caress the trigger, lifting the safety catch, until the world fell silent around him and his whole being, already half-asleep, united with the sensation of the cold, salty metal from which death
could emerge. Realizing then that it would be enough for him to date his letter and pull the trigger,
discovering the absurd feasibility of death, he knew his imagination was vivid enough to show him the
full horror of what life’s negation meant for him, and he drowned in his somnolence all his craving to live,
to go on burning in dignity and silence. Then, waking completely, his mouth full of already bitter saliva,
he would lick the gun barrel, sticking his tongue into it and sucking out an impossible happiness.
“Of course my life is ruined. But I was right in those days: everything for happiness, against the world which surrounds us with its violence and its stupidity.” Zagreus laughed then and added: “You see,
Mersault, all the misery and cruelty of our civilization can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy
nations have no history.”
It was very late now. Mersault could not tell what time it was—his head throbbed with feverish excite-
ment. The heat and the harshness of the cigarettes he had smoked filled his mouth. Even the light around
him was an accomplice still. For the first time since Zagreus had begun his story, he glanced toward him:
“I think I understand.”
Exhausted by his long effort, the cripple was breathing hoarsely. After a silence he nonetheless said,
laboriously: “I’d like to be sure. Don’t think I’m saying that money makes happiness. I only mean that for a certain class of beings happiness is possible, provided they have time, and that having money is a way
of being free of money.”
He had slumped down in his chair, under his blankets. The night had closed in again, and Mer-sault could
scarcely see Zagreus now. A long silence followed, and Mersault, wanting to reestablish contact, to assure
himself of the other man’s presence in the darkness, stood up and said, as though groping: “It’s a beautiful risk to take.”
“Yes,” Zagreus said, almost in a whisper. “And it’s better to bet on this life than on the next. For me, of course, it’s another matter.”
“A wreck,” Mersault thought. “A zero in the world.”
“For twenty years I’ve been unable to have the experience of a certain happiness. This fife which devours me—I won’t have known it to the full, and what frightens me about death is the certainty it will bring me
that my life has been consummated without me. I will have lived . . . marginally—do you
understand?” With no transition, a young man’s laugh emerged from the darkness: “Which means,
Mersault, that underneath, and in my condition, I still have hope.”
Mersault took a few steps toward the table.
“Think about it,” Zagreus said, “think about it.”
Mersault merely asked: “Can I turn on the light?”
“Please.”
Zagreus’ nostrils and his round eyes looked paler in the sudden glare. He was still breathing hard. When
Mersault held out his hand he replied by shaking his head and laughing too loud. “Don’t take me too
seriously. It always annoys me—the tragic look that comes into people’s faces when they see my stumps.”
18
“He’s playing games with me,” Mersault thought.
“Don’t take anything seriously except happiness. Think about it, Mersault, you have a pure heart. Think
about it.” Then he looked him straight in the eyes and after a pause said: “Besides, you have two legs, which doesn’t do any harm.” He smiled then and rang a bell. “Clear out now, it’s time for pee-pee.”
5
Walking home that Sunday evening, Mersault couldn’t stop thinking about Zagreus. But as he walked up
the stairs to his room, he heard groans coming from the barrelmaker Cardona’s apartment. He knocked.
No one answered, but the groans continued, and Mersault walked right in. The barrel-maker was huddled
on his bed, sobbing like a child. At his feet was the photograph of an old woman. “She’s dead,” Cardona gasped. It was true, but it had happened a long time ago.
Cardona was deaf, half-dumb, a mean and violent man. Until recently he had lived with his sister, but his
tyranny had at last exhausted the woman, and she had taken refuge with her children. And he had
remained alone, as helpless as a man can be who must cook and clean for himself for the first time in his
life. His sister had described their quarrels to Mersault one day when she had met him in the street.
Cardona was thirty, short, rather handsome. Since childhood he had lived with his mother, the only
human being ever to inspire him with fear—superstitious rather than justified, moreover. He had loved
her with all his uncouth heart, which is to say both harshly and eagerly, and the best proof of his affection was his way of teasing the old woman by mouthing, with difficulty, the worst abuse of priests and the
Church. If he had lived so
long with his mother, it was also because he had never induced any other woman to care for him.
Infrequent pickups in a brothel authorized him, however, to call himself a man.
The mother died. From then on, he had lived with his sister. Mersault rented them the room they
occupied. Each quite solitary, they struggled through a long, dark, dirty life. They found it hard to speak
to each other, they went for days without a word. But now she had left. He was too proud to complain, to
ask her to come back: he lived alone. Mornings, he ate in the restaurant downstairs, evenings up in his
room, bringing food from a char-cuterie. He washed his own sheets, his overalls. But he left his room utterly filthy. Sometimes, though— soon after the sister had left him—he would start his Sundays by
taking a rag and trying to clean up the place. But his man’s clumsiness—a saucepan on the mantelpiece
that had once been decorated with vases and figurines—showed up in the neglect in which everything
was left. What he called “putting things in order” consisted of hiding the disorder, pushing dirty clothes behind cushions or arranging the most disparate objects on the sideboard. Finally he tired of making the
effort, no longer bothered to make his bed, and slept with his dog on the fetid blankets. His sister had said to Mersault: “He carries on in the cafe, but the woman in the laundry told me she saw him crying when he had to wash his own sheets.” And it was a fact that, hardened as he
was, a terror seized this man at certain times and forced him to acknowledge the extent of his desolation.
Of course the sister had lived with him out of pity, she had told Mersault. But Cardona kept her from
seeing the man she loved. At their age, though, it didn’t matter much any more. Her boyfriend was a
married man. He brought her flowers he had picked in the suburban hedgerows, oranges, and tiny bottles
of liqueur he had won at shooting galleries. Not that he was handsome or anything—but you can’t eat
good looks for dinner, and he was so decent. She valued him, and he valued her—wasn’t that love? She
did his laundry for him and tried to keep things nice. He used to wear a handkerchief folded in a triangle
and knotted around his neck: she made his handkerchiefs very white, and that was one of his pleasures.