A Happy Death Read online

  watched the arrangements. He walked in the procession, listened to the service, tossed his handful of earth, and folded his hands. Only once did he look surprised, expressing his regret that there were so few cars for those who had attended the service. That was all. The next day, a sign appeared in one of the apartment windows: "For rent." Now he lived in his mother's room. In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it: when the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment. The neighborhood was a quiet one. Mersault would stare at his mother's slack mouth and smile. She would smile back. He would start eating again. The lamp would smoke a little. His mother tended it with the same exhausted gesture, extending only her right arm, her body slumped down in her chair. "You're not hungry any more?" she would ask, a moment later. "No." He would smoke, or read. If he smoked, she always said: "Again!" If he read: "Sit closer to the lamp you'll ruin your eyes." But now the poverty in solitude was misery. And when Mersault thought sadly of the dead woman, his pity was actually for himself. He could have found a more comfortable room, but he clung to this apartment and its smell of poverty. Here, at least, he maintained contact with what he had been, and in a life where he deliberately tried to expunge himself, this patient, sordid confrontation helped him to survive his hours of melancholy and

  regret. He had left on the door the frayed gray card on which his mother had written her name in blue pencil. He had kept the old brass bed with its sateen spread, and the portrait of his grandfather with his tiny beard and pale, motionless eyes. On the mantelpiece, shepherds and shepherdesses framed an old clock that had stopped and an oil lamp he almost never lit. The dreary furnishings—some ricketry rattan chairs, the wardrobe with its yellowed mirror, a dressing table missing one corner—did not exist for him: habit had blurred everything. He moved through the ghost of an apartment that required no effort of him. In another room, he would have had to grow accustomed to novelty, to struggle once again. He wanted to diminish the surface he offered the world, to sleep until everything was consumed. For this purpose, the old room served him well. One window overlooked the street, the other a yard always full of laundry, and, beyond it, a few clumps of orange trees squeezed between high walls. Sometimes, on summer nights, he left the room dark and opened the window overlooking the yard and the dim trees. Out of the darkness the fragrance of orange blossoms rose into the darkness, strong and sweet, surrounding him with its delicate shawls. All night during the summer, he and his room were enclosed in that dense yet subtle perfume and it was as if, dead for days at a time, he had opened his window on life for the first time.

  He wakened, his mouth full of sleep, his body

  covered with sweat. It was very late. He combed his hair, ran downstairs, and jumped onto a streetcar. By five past two he was in his office. He worked in a big room where the walls were covered with 414 pigeonholes into which folders were piled. The room was neither dirty nor sordid, but it suggested, at any hour of the day, a catacomb in which dead hours had putrefied. Mersault checked shipping bills, translated provision lists from English ships, and between three and four dealt with clients who wanted crates or luggage shipped. He had asked for this work, which really wasn't a part of his job. But at the start, he had found it a way of escaping into life. There were living faces, familiar encounters, and a passing breath of life in which at least he felt his own heart beating. And it allowed him to avoid the faces of the three secretaries and the supervisor, Monsieur Langlois. One of the secretaries was quite pretty and had been recently married. Another lived with her mother, and the third was a dignified and energetic old lady whom Mersault liked for her florid way of talking and her reticence about what Langlois called her "misfortunes." The supervisor would engage in peremptory arguments with old Madame Herbillon, who always emerged victorious. She despised Langlois for the sweat that pasted his trousers to his buttocks when he stood up and for the panic which seized him in the presence of the head of the firm and occasionally on the phone when he heard the name of some lawyer or even

  some idiot with a de in front of his name. The poor man was quite unable to soften the old lady's heart or to win his way into her good graces. This afternoon he was strutting around the middle of the office. "We really get along very well together, don't we, Madame Herbillon?" Mersault was translating "vegetables," staring over his head at the lightbulb in its corrugated green cardboard shade. Across from him was a bright-colored calendar showing a religious procession in Newfoundland. Sponge, blotter, inkwell, and ruler were lined up on his desk. The windows near him looked out over huge piles of wood brought from Norway by yellow and white freighters. Mersault listened. On the other side of the wall, life had its own deep, muffled rhythm, a respiration that filled the harbor and the sea. So remote, and yet so close to him . . . The six o'clock bell released him. It was a Saturday.

  Once home, he lay down on his bed and slept till dinnertime. He made himself some eggs and ate them out of the pan (with no bread; he had forgotten to buy any), then stretched out again and fell asleep at once. He awoke the next morning just before lunchtime, washed and went downstairs to eat. Back in his room he did two crossword puzzles, carefully cut out an advertisement for Kruschen Salts which he pasted into a booklet already filled with jovial grandfathers sliding down banisters. Then he washed his hands and went out onto his balcony. It was a beautiful afternoon. Yet the side-

  walks were damp, the occasional passer-by in a hurry. Mersault stared after each one until he was out of sight, then attached his gaze to a new arrival within his field of vision. First came families walking together—two little boys in sailor suits, uncomfortable in their starched blouses, and a girl with a huge pink bow and black patent-leather shoes. Behind them a mother in a brown silk dress, a monstrous creature swathed in a boa, the father, more elegant, carrying a cane. In a little while it was the turn of the young men of the neighborhood, hair slicked back and red neckties, close-fitting jackets with embroidered pocket handkerchiefs, and square-toed shoes. They were on their way to the movies in the center of town, and hurried toward the streetcar, laughing very loud. Then the street grew still again. The afternoon diversions had begun. The neighborhood belonged to cats and shopkeepers. The sky, though clear, was lusterless over the ficus trees lining the road. Across from Mersault, the tobacconist brought a chair out in front of his door and straddled it, leaning his arms on the back. The streetcars that had been crowded a little while ago were almost empty. In the little cafe Chez Pierrot, the waiter was sweeping sawdust in the empty front room. Mersault turned his chair around, placed it like the tobacconist's, and smoked two cigarettes one after the other. He went back into his room, broke off a piece of chocolate, and returned to his balcony to eat it. Soon the sky dark-

  ened, then paled again. But the passing clouds had left a promise of rain over the street they dimmed. At five, streetcars groaned past, jammed with soccer fans from the outlying stadiums perched on the run-ningboards and hanging from the handrails. On the next streetcar, he could identify the players themselves by their canvas bags. They shouted and sang at the top of their lungs that their teams would never die. Several waved to Mersault. One shouted: "We did it this time!" "Yes," was all Mersault answered, nodding. Then there were more cars. Some had flowers wreathed in their bumpers and looped around their fins. Then the light faded a little more. Over the roofs the sky reddened, and with evening the streets grew lively again. The strollers returned, the tired children whining as they let themselves be dragged home. The neighborhood movie houses disgorged a crowd into the street. Mersault could tell from the violent gestures of the young men that they had seen some sort of adventure film. Those who had been to movies in the center of town appeared a little later. They were more serious: for all their laughter and teasing gestures, their eyes and their movements betrayed a kind of nostalgia for the magical lives they had just shared. They lingered in the street, coming
and going. And on the sidewalk across from Mersault, two streams finally formed. One consisted of neighborhood girls, walking arm in arm, bareheaded. The young men in the other cracked jokes which made the girls laugh and look

  away. Older people went into the cafes or formed groups on the sidewalk which the human river flowed around as if they were islands. The street-lamps were on now, and the electric light made the first stars look faint in the night sky. An audience of one, Mersault watched the procession of people under the lights. The streetlamps made the damp sidewalks gleam, and at regular intervals the streetcars would throw reflections on shiny hair, wet lips, a smile, or a silver bracelet. Gradually the streetcars became more infrequent, and the night was already black above the trees and the lamps as the neighborhood gradually emptied and the first car crept across the street as soon as it was deserted again. Mersault thought about dinner. His neck ached a little from leaning so long on the back of his chair. He went downstairs to buy bread and macaroni, made his dinner and ate it. Then he returned to his balcony. People were coming out again, the air had cooled. He shivered, closed his windows, and walked over to the mirror above the fireplace. Except for certain evenings when Marthe came or when he went out with her, and except for his correspondence with the girls in Tunis, his entire life lay in the yellowed image the mirror offered of a room where the filthy oil lamp stood among the bread crusts.

  "Another Sunday shot," Mersault said.

  3

  When Mersault walked through the streets in the evening, proud as he watched the lights and shadows flicker across Marthe's face, everything seemed wonderfully simple, even his own strength and his courage. He was grateful to her for displaying in public, at his side, the beauty she offered him day after day like some delicate intoxication. An unno-ticeable Marthe would have made him suffer as much as a Marthe happy in the desire of other men. He was glad to walk into the theater with her tonight, a little before the film began, when the hall was nearly full. She went in ahead of him, drawing glances of admiration, her flower-like face smiling, her beauty violent. Mersault, holding his hat in his hand, was overcome by a wonderful sense of ease, a kind of inner awareness of his own elegance. His expression grew remote and serious. He exaggerated his ceremonious manner, stepped back to let the usher pass, lowered Marthe's seat for her. And he did all this less from conceit, from ostentation, than because of the gratitude that made his heart suddenly swell, filling with love for all these people around him. If he gave the usher too big a tip, it was because he did not know how else to pay for his joy, and because he worshipped, by making this everyday gesture, a divinity whose brilliant smile glistened like oil in his gaze. During the break between

  films, strolling in the lobby lined with mirrors, he saw the face of his own happiness reflected there, populating the place with elegant and vibrant images—his own tall, dark figure and Marthe smiling in her bright dress. Yes, he liked his face as he saw it there, his mouth quivering around the cigarette between his lips and the apparent ardor of his deep-set eyes. But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent useless-ness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons.

  Back in the theater, he remembered that when he was alone he never left his seat between films, preferring to smoke and to listen to the records played while the lights were still on. But tonight the excitement continued, and he felt that every chance of extending and renewing it was worth taking. Just as she was sitting down, however, Marthe returned the greeting of a man a few rows behind them. And Mersault, nodding in his turn, thought he noticed a faint smile on the man's lips. He sat down without noticing the hand Marthe laid on his shoulder to catch his attention; a moment earlier he would have responded to it with delight, as another proof of that power she acknowledged in him.

  "Who's that?" he asked, waiting for the perfectly natural "who?" which in fact followed at once.

  "You know. That man . . ."

  "Oh," Marthe said. And that was all.

  "Well?"

  "Do you have to know?"

  "No," Mersault said.

  He glanced behind him: the man was staring at the back of Marthe's neck without moving a muscle of his face. He was rather good-looking, his lips were very red and well shaped, but his eyes, which were set shallowly in his face, had no expression in them. Mersault felt the blood pounding in his temples. In his suddenly darkened vision, the brilliant hues of that ideal world where he had been living the last few hours were suddenly soiled. He didn't need to hear what she would say. He knew: the man had slept with Marthe. And what racked Mersault like panic was the thought of what this man might be thinking. He knew what it was, he had often thought the same thing: "Show off all you want . . ." The idea that this man was now imagining Marthe's every gesture, even her way of putting her arm over her eyes at the moment of pleasure, that he too had once tried to pull her arm away in order to watch the tumultuous surge of the dark gods in her eyes, made everything inside Mersault collapse, and tears of rage welled up under his closed eyelids while the theater bell announced that the film was about to begin. He forgot Marthe, who had been merely the pretext of his joy and was now the living body of his rage. Mersault kept his eyes closed a long time, and when he opened them again, a car

  was turning over on the screen, one of its wheels still spinning in complete silence, slower and slower, dragging into its persistent circle all the shame and humiliation that had been awakened in Mersault's angry heart. But a craving for certainty made him forget his dignity: "Marthe, was he ever your lover?"

  "Yes," she said. "But I want to watch the picture."

  That was the day Mersault began to be attached to Marthe. He had met her several months before, and he had been astonished by her beauty, her elegance. Her golden eyes and carefully made-up lips in that rather broad, regular face made her look like some painted goddess. The natural stupidity that glowed in her eyes emphasized her remote, impassive expression. In the past, whenever Mersault had spent any time with one woman, he made the first gestures of commitment, he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way, and he would think about the end of the affair before even taking her in his arms. But Marthe had appeared at a moment when Mersault was ridding himself of everything, of himself as well. A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope. For Mersault, nothing mattered in those days. And the first time Marthe went limp in his arms and her features blurred as they came closer—the lips that had been as motionless as painted flowers now quiv-

  ering and extended—Mersault saw in her not the future but all the force of his desire focused upon her and satisfied by this appearance, this image. The lips she offered him seemed a message from a world without passion and swollen with desire, where his heart would find satisfaction. And this seemed a miracle to him. His heart pounded with an emotion he almost took for love. And when he felt the ripe and resilient flesh under his teeth, it was as though he bit into a kind of fierce liberty, after caressing her a long time with his own lips. She became his mistress that same day. After some time, their harmony in lovemaking became perfect. But as he knew her better, she gradually lost the sense of strangeness, which he would try to revive as he pressed upon her mouth. So that Marthe, accustomed to Mersault's reserve and even coldness, had never understood why, in a crowded streetcar, he had one day asked for her lips. Bewildered, she had held up her face. And he had kissed her the way he liked to, first caressing her lips with his own and then slowly biting them. "What's come over you?" she asked him later. He had given her the smile she loved, the brief smile which answers, and he had said: "I feel like misbehaving," and had lapsed back into silence. She did not understand Patrice's vocabulary, either. After making love, at that moment when the heart drowses in the released body, filled only with the tender affection he might have felt for a winsome puppy
, Mersault would smile at her and say, "Hello, image."

  Marthe was a secretary. She did not love Mer-sault, but she was attached to him insofar as he intrigued her and flattered her. Since the day when Emmanuel, whom Mersault had introduced to her, had told her: "Mersault's a good guy, you know. He's got guts. But he doesn't talk—so people don't always realize what he's like," she regarded him with curiosity. And since his lovemaking satisfied her, she asked nothing more, adapting herself as best she could to a silent lover who made no demands and took her when she wanted to come. She was only a little uneasy about this man whose weak points she could not discover.

  But that night, as they left the movie theater, she realized that something could hurt Mersault. She said nothing about it the rest of the evening, and slept in Mersault's bed. He did not touch her during the night. But from now on she used her advantage. She had already told him she had had other lovers; now she managed to find the necessary proofs.