‘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 off now, it’s time for peepee.’
Chapter Five
AS he walked 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 barrel-maker Cardona’s flat. He knocked. No-one answered, but the groans continued, and Mersault walked straight 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 he 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 ea-gerly, and the best proof of his affection was the 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 episodes 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 one another, they went for days with-out a word. But now she had left. He was too proud to com-plain, to ask her to come back: he lived alone. In the morn-ings he ate in the restaurant downstairs, in the evenings up in his room, bringing the food from a charcuterie.
He washed his own sheets, his overalls. But he left his room utterly filth. 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 casserole on the man-telpiece that had once been decorated with vases and figurines showed 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 café, 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 round his neck: she made his handkerchiefs very white, and that was one of his pleasures. But her brother wouldn’t let him come to the house.
She had to see him on the sly. Once she had let him come, and her brother had caught them, and there had been a terrible brawl. The handkerchief folded in a triangle had been left behind, in a filthy corner of the room, and she had taken refuge with her son. Mersault thought of that handkerchief as he stared around the sordid room.
At the time, people had felt sorry for the lonely barrel-maker. He had mentioned a possible marriage to Mersault. An older woman, who had doubtless been tempted by the prospect of young, vigorous caresses … She had them before the wedding. After a while her suitor abandoned the plan, declaring she was too old for him. And he was alone in this little room. Gradually the filth encircled him, besieged him, took over his bed, then submerged everything irretrievably.
The place was too ugly, and for a man who doesn’t like his own room, there is a more accessible one, comfortable, bright and always welcoming: the café. In this neighbourhood the cafés were particu-larly lively. They gave off that heard warmth which is the last refuge against the terror of solitude and its vague aspirations. The taciturn creature took up his residence in them.
Mersault saw him in one or another every night. Thanks to the cafés, he postponed the moment of his return as long as possible. In them he regained his place among men. But tonight, no doubt, the cafés had not been enough. And on his way home he must have taken out that photograph which wakened the echoes of a dead past. He rediscovered the woman he had loved and teased so long.
In the hideous room, alone with the futility of his life, mustering his last forces, he had become conscious of the past which had once been his happiness. Or so he must have thought, at least, since at the contact of that past and his wretched present, a spark of the divine had touched him and he had begun to weep.
Now, as whenever he found himself confronting a brutal manifestation of life, Mersault was powerless, filled with re-spect for that animal pain. He sat down on the dirty, rumpled blankets and laid one hand on Cardona’s shoulder. In front of him, on the oilcloth covering the table, was an oil-lamp, a bottle of wine, crusts of bread, a piece of cheese and toolbox. In the corners of the ceiling, festoons of cobwebs.
Mersault, who had never been in this room since his own mother’s death, measured the distance this man had travelled by the desolation around him. The window overlooking the courtyard was closed. The other window was open only a crack.
The oil-lamp, in a fixture surrounded by a tiny pack of china cards, cast its calm circle of light on the table, on Mersault’s and Car-dona’s feet, and on a chair facing them. Meanwhile Cardona had picked up the photographs and was staring at it, kissing it, mumbling: ‘Poor Maman.’ But it was himself he was pitying.
She was buried in the hideous cemetery Mersault knew well, on the other side of town.
He wanted to leave. Speaking slowly to make himself under-stood, he said: ‘You-can’t-stay-here-like-this.’
‘No more work,’ Cardona gasped, and holding out the pho-tograph, he stammered: ‘I loved her, I loved her,’ and Mersault translated: ‘She loved me.’ ‘She’s dead,’ and Mersault under-stood: ‘I’m alone.’ ‘I made her that for her last birthday.’
On the mantelpiece was a tiny wooden barrel with brass hoops and a shiny tap. Mersault let go of Cardona’s shoulder, and he collapsed on the dirty pillows. From under the bed came a deep sigh and a sickening smell. The dog dragged itself out, flat-tening its rump, and rested its head on Mersault’s lap, its long ears pricked up, its golden eyes staring into his own.
Mersault looked at the little barrel. In the miserable room where there was scarcely enough air to breathe, with the dog’s warmth under his fingers, he closed his eyes on the despair which rose within him like a tide for the first time in a long while.
Today, in the face of abjection and solitude, his heart said: ‘No.’ And in the great distress that washed over him, Mersault real-ized that his rebellion was the only authentic thing in him, and that everything elsewhere was misery and submission. The street that had been so animated under his windows the day before was still lively.
From the gardens beyond the courtyard rose a smell of grass. Mersault offered Cardona a cigarette, and both men smoked without speaking. The last trams passed and with them the still-livid memories of men and lights. Cardona fell asleep and soon began snoring, his nose stuffed with tears. The dog, curling up at Mersault’s feet, stirred occasionally and moaned in its dreams. Each time it moved, its smell reached Mersault, who was leaning against the wall, trying to choke down the rebellion in his heart.
The lamp smoked, charred, and finally went out with a stink of oil. Mersault dozed off and awakened with his eyes fixed on the bottle of wine. Mak-ing a tremendous effort, he stood up, walked over to the rear
