On the final night, the chaplain burst in. “Your heart is stone! You will face death. You must turn to God!”
He returned to Algiers. Went to the beach. Saw a film with Marie, a former typist who laughed at his silences. She asked if he loved her. He said the words had no meaning, but probably not. She asked if he would marry her. He said yes, if she wanted. It made no difference.
The funeral procession climbed a sun-scorched hill. Meursault felt the heat first as an assault, then as a fact. He thought: Maman is now ash-colored earth. Good. She hated the wind.
He was sentenced to death by guillotine. libro el extranjero de albert camus
He thought of Marie, who would soon find another yes. Of Salamano, who lost his dog. Of the Arab, whose name he never learned.
His neighbor, Salamano, beat his mangy dog. Another neighbor, Raymond, a pimp with a greased mustache, called Meursault “a pal.” Meursault didn’t feel friendship. He felt Raymond was there, and then not there. Still, he wrote a letter for Raymond to lure a woman to be beaten. Why? Because Raymond asked. Because the afternoon was hot. Because saying no would have required a reason.
At the wake, the caretaker offered coffee and offered to open the coffin. “No,” Meursault said. Not from fear. From a lack of need. The dead are dead. Looking at her face would not bring her back; it would only make the living uncomfortable. He smoked a cigarette, drank a café au lait, and watched the old people weep. Their tears felt like rain on a window he was sitting behind. On the final night, the chaplain burst in
The prosecutor rose. “Gentlemen of the jury, a man who buries his mother with a hollow heart—then kills a man in cold blood—is a monster not of passion, but of absence. He has no soul. He has no place among the living.”
He pushed the priest away. Fell back on the cot. The sky outside his cell window was black, then violet, then the thinnest line of orange.
When his mother died at the Marengo nursing home, he noted the date—today, or yesterday, perhaps—and took the two o’clock bus. The countryside was a green and gold blur. He liked that. No need to name the trees. They just were . You must turn to God
His lawyer begged him: “Say you were sad. Say you loved her. Cry. Please .”
“I have only this life. I am sure of my death, and surer of my indifference. Your certainties are worth less than a woman’s tear. I am a stranger to you, to this world, to your God. But at least I am not a stranger to myself.”
The Day the Sky Went Quiet
“Would you say you loved your mother?” asked the prosecutor, a man with a velvet voice and a steel soul.
The Arab was lying on the shore. A shimmer of water, a slash of shadow. Meursault took a step forward. The sun hit him like a long, silent scream. The trigger gave way like a sigh.