‘On both, perhaps.’ ‘Oh, I wasn’t asking!’
‘I know,’ Mersault said seriously. But when Bernard was at the door, Mersault, impelled by a sudden need, called him back. ‘Yes?’ the doctor said, turning around.
‘Are you capable of feeling contempt for a man?’ ‘I think so.’
‘On what conditions?’
The doctor reflected. ‘It’s quite simple, I think. In cases when he was motivated by expedience or a desire for money.’
‘That is simple,’ Mersault said. ‘Good night, Bernard.’ ‘Good night.’
Alone, Mersault reflected. At the point he had now reached, another man’s contempt left him indifferent. But he recog-nized in Bernard profound resonances which brought the two of them together. It seemed intolerable that a part of himself should condemn the rest. Had he acted out of expediency?
He had become aware of the essential and immoral truth that money is one of the surest and swiftest means of acquiring one’s dignity. He had managed to dispel the bitterness which besets any decent soul aware of the vile iniquities of the birth and growth of a splendid fate. This sordid and revolting curse, whereby the poor end in poverty the life they have begun in poverty, he had rejected by using money as a weapon, opposing hatred with hatred.
And out of this beast-to-beast combat, the angel sometimes emerged, intact, wings and halo and all, in the warm breath of the sea. It would be as it had been: he had said nothing to Bernard, and his creation would henceforth remain secret.
The girls left around five o’clock in the afternoon of the next day. As they got into the bus, Catherine turned back: ‘Goodbye, sea,’ she said.
A moment later, three laughing faces were staring at Mersault out of the rear window, and the yellow bus vanished like a huge golden insect into the sun. Though clear, the sky was a little heavy. Mersault, standing alone in the road, felt a deep sense of deliverance tinged with melancholy.
Only today did his solitude become real, for only today did he feel bound to it. And to have accepted that solitude, to know that henceforth he was the master of all his days to come, filled him with the melancholy that is attached to all greatness. Instead of taking the road, he returned through the carob-trees and the olives, following a little path which wound around the foothills and came out behind his house. He squashed several olives, and noticed that the path was speck-led with these black ovals.
At the summer’s end, the carobs drench all Algeria with the smell of love, and in the evening or after the rain, it is as if the entire earth were resting, after giving itself to the sun, its womb drenched with a sperm smelling of bitter almonds. All day, their odour had poured down from the huge trees, heavy and oppressive. On this little path at twilight, scarcely apparent to Patrice’s nostrils — like a mistress you walk with in the street after a long stifling afternoon, and who looks at you, shoulder to shoulder, among the lights and the crowd.
Amid that smell of love and squashed, fragrant fruit,.Mersault realized then that the season was ending. A long winter would begin. But he was ready for it, he would wait. From this path he could not see the sea, but he could glimpse on the mountain-top certain reddish mists which heralded the dark.
On the ground, patches of sunshine paled among the shadows of the foliage. Mersault sniffed the bitter fragrance which con-secrated his wedding to the earth this afternoon. The evening falling on the world, on the path between the olives and the gumtrees, on the vines and the red soil, near the sea which whispered softly, this evening flowed into him like a tide.
So many evenings had promised him happiness that to experience this one as happiness itself made him realize how far he had come, from hope to conquest. In the innocence of his heart Mersault accepted this green sky and this love-soaked earth with the same thrill of passion and desire as when he had killed Zagreus in the innocence of his heart.
Chapter Five
IN January, the almond trees bloomed. In March, the pears, peaches and apple-trees were covered with blossoms. The next month, the streams gradually swelled, then returned to a nor-mal flow. Early in May, the hay was cut, and the oats and barley at the month’s end. Already the apricots were ripen-ing. In June, the early pears appeared with the major crops. The streams began to dry up, and the heat grew more intense. But the earth’s blood, shrinking here on the coast, made the cotton bloom farther inland and sweetened the first grapes.
A great hot wind arose, parching the land and spreading brush fires everywhere. And then, suddenly, the year changed di-rection: hurriedly, the grape-harvests were brought to an end. The downpours of September and October drenched the land.
No sooner was the summer’s work done than the first sowing began, while the streams and springs suddenly swelled to tor-rents with the rain. At the year’s end, the wheat was already sprouting in some fields, while in others ploughing had only just been finished. A little later, the almond trees were once again while against the ice blue sky.
The new year had begun in the earth, in the sky. Tobacco was planted, vines cultivated and fertilized, trees grafted. In the same month, the medlars ripened. Again, the haymaking, the harvesting, the summer ploughing. Halfway through the year, the ripe fruits, juicy and sticky, were served on every table: between one threshing and the next grape harvest, the sky grew overcast.
Out of the north, silent flocks of black starlings and thrushes passed over — for them the olives were already ripe. Soon after they had flown away, the olives were gathered. The wheat sprouted a second time from the viscous soil. Huge clouds, also from the north, passed over the sea, then the land, brushing the water with foam and leaving it smooth and icy under a crystal sky.
For several days there were distant, silent flashes in the sky. The first cold spells set in. During this period, Mersault took to his bed for the first time. Bouts of pleurisy confined him to his room for a month. When he got up, the foothills of the Chenoua were covered with flowering trees, all the way to the sea’s edge. Never had spring touched him so deeply.
The first night of his conva-lescence, he walked across the fields for a long time as far as the hill where the ruins of Tipasa slept. In a silence vio-lated only by the silky sounds of the sky, the night lay like milk upon the world. Mersault walked along the cliff, sharing the night’s deep concentration. Below him the sea whispered gently. It was covered with velvety moonlight, smooth and un-dulating, like the pelt of some animal.
At this hour, Mersault’s life seemed so remote to him, he felt so solitary and indifferent to everything and to himself as well, that it seemed to him he had at last attained what he was seeking, that the peace which filled him now was born of that patient self abandonment he had pursued and achieved with the help of this warm world so willing to deny him without anger.
He walked lightly, and the sound of his own footsteps seemed alien to him, familiar too, no doubt, but familiar in the way the rustling of animals in the mastic-bushes was familiar, or the breaking waves, or the rhythm of the night itself in the sky overhead.
And he could feel his own body too, but with the same external conscious-ness as the warm breath of this spring night and the smell of salt and decay that rose from the beach. His actions in the world, his thirst for happiness, Zagreus’ terrible wound baring brain and bone, the sweet, uncommitted hours in the House above the World, his wife, his hopes and his gods all this lay before him, but no more than one story chosen among so many others without any valid reason, at once alien and secretly familiar, a favourite book which flatters and justifies the heart at its core, but a book someone else has written.
For the first time, Mersault was aware of no other reality in himself than that of a passion for adventure, a desire for power, a warm and intelligent instinct for a relationship with the world with-out anger, without hatred, without regret. Sitting on a rock he let his fingers explore its crannies as he watched the sea swell in silence under the moon. He thought of Lucienne’s face he had caressed, and of the warmth of her lips.
The moon poured its long, straying smiles like oil on the water’s smooth surface — the sea would be warm as a mouth, and as soft, ready to yield beneath a man’s weight. Motionless now, Mersault felt how close happiness is to tears, caught up in that silent exalta-tion which weaves together the hopes and despairs of human life.
Conscious yet alien, devoured by passion yet disinterested, Mersault realized that his life and his fate were completed here and that henceforth all his efforts would be to submit to this happiness and to confront the terrible truth.
Now he must sink into the warm sea, lose himself in order to find himself again, swim in that warm moonlight in order to silence what remained of the past, to bring to birth the deep song
