A Happy Death Page 4

  "Yes," Zagreus said, "but you can't live that way and work . . ."

  "No, because I'm constantly in revolt. That's what's wrong."

  Zagreus said nothing. The rain had stopped, but in the sky night had replaced the clouds, and the darkness was now virtually complete in the room. Only the fire illuminated their gleaming faces. Zagreus, silent for a long time, stared at Patrice, and all he said was: "Anyone who loves you is in for a lot of pain ..." and stopped, surprised when Mer-sault suddenly stood up.

  "Other people's feelings have no hold over me," Patrice exclaimed, thrusting his head into the shadows.

  "True," Zagreus said, "I was just remarking on the fact. You'll be alone someday, that's all. Now sit

  down and listen to me. What you've told me is interesting. One thing especially, because it confirms everything my own experience of human beings has taught me. I like you very much, Mersault. Because of your body, moreover. It's your body that's taught you all that. Today I feel as if I can talk to you frankly."

  Mersault sat down again slowly, and his face turned back to the already dimmer firelight that was sinking closer to the coals. Suddenly a kind of opening in the darkness appeared in the square of the window between the silk curtains. Something relented behind the panes. A milky glow entered the room, and Mersault recognized on the Bodhisattva's ironic lips and on the cased brass of the trays the familiar and fugitive signs of the nights of moonlight and starlight he loved so much. It was as if the night had lost its lining of clouds and shone now in its tranquil luster. The cars went by more slowly. Deep in the valley, a sudden agitation readied the birds for sleep. Footsteps passed in front of the house, and in this night that covered the world like milk, every noise seemed large, more distinct. Between the reddening fire, the ticking of the clock, and the secret life of the familiar objects which surrounded him, a fugitive poetry was being woven which prepared Mersault to receive in a different mood, in confidence and love, what Zagreus would say. He leaned back in his chair, and it was in front of the milky sky that he listened to Zagreus' strange story.

  "What I'm sure of," he began, "is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticisim. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly. You see, Mersault, for a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me. Very specific. Very clear." Zagreus stopped talking and closed his eyes. Mersault kept on staring at the sky. For a moment the sounds of the road and the countryside became distinct, and then Zagreus went on, without hurrying: "Oh, I know perfectly well that most rich men have no sense of happiness. But that's not the question. To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it." He looked at Patrice. "At twenty-five, Mersault, I had already realized that any man with the sense, the will, and the craving for happiness was entitled to be rich. The craving for happiness seemed to me the noblest thing in

  man's heart. In my eyes, that justified everything. A pure heart was enough . . ." Still looking at Mer-sault, Zagreus suddenly began to speak more slowly, in a cold harsh tone, as if he wanted to rouse Mersault from his apparent distraction. "At twenty-five I began making my fortune. I didn't let the law get in my way. I wouldn't have let anything get in my way. In a few years, I had done it—you know what I mean, Mersault, nearly two million. The world was all before me. And with the world, the life I had dreamed of 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 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 sud
den 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."

  "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.

  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 barrelmaker. 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 cafe. In this neighborhood, the cafes were particularly lively. They gave off that herd warmth which is the last refuge against the terrors of solitude and its vague aspirations. The taciturn creature took up his residence in them. Mer-sault saw him in one or another every night. Thanks to the cafes, he postponed the moment of his return as long as possible. In them he regained his place among men. But tonight, no doubt, the cafes 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 that 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 respect 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 a tool box. In the corners of the ceiling, festoons of cobwebs. Mer-sault, who had never been in this room since his own mother's death, measured the distance this man had traveled 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 deck of china cards, cast its calm circle of light on the table, on Mersault's and Cardona's feet, and on a chair facing them. Meanwhile Cardona had picked up the photograph 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 understood, he said: "You-can't-stay-here-like-this."

  "No more work," Cardona gasped, and holding out the photograph, he stammered: "I loved her, I loved her," and Mersault translated: "She loved me." "She's dead," and Mersault understood: "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 spigot. 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, flatten-

  ing 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 ringers, he closed his eyes on the despair that 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 realized that his rebellion was the only authentic thing in him, and that everything else was misery and submission. The street that had been so animated under his windows the day before still swelled with life. From the gardens beyond the courtyard rose a smell of grass. Mersault offered Cardona a cigarette, and both men smoked without speaking. The last
streetcars passed and with them the still-vivid 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. Making a tremendous effort, he stood up, walked over to the rear window and stood there: out of the night's heart sounds and silences mounted toward him. At the

  limits of this sleeping world, a long blast from a ship summoned men to depart, to begin again.

  The next morning, Mersault killed Zagreus, came home, and slept all afternoon. He awakened in a fever. That evening, still in bed, he sent for the neighborhood doctor, who told him he had grippe. A man from his office who had come to find out what was the matter took Mersault's resignation to Monsieur Langlois. A few days later, everything was settled: an article in the newspaper, an investigation. There was every motive for Zagreus' action. Marthe came to see Mersault and said with a sigh: "Sometimes there are days when you'd like to change places with him. But sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself." A week later, Mersault boarded a ship for Marseilles. He told everyone he was going to France for a rest. From Lyons, Marthe received a letter of farewell from which only her pride suffered. In the same letter Mersault said he had been offered an exceptional job in central Europe. Marthe wrote him at a general-delivery address about how much she was suffering. Her letter never reached Mersault, who had a violent attack of fever the day after he reached Lyons, and took the first train for Prague. As it happened, Martha told him that, after several days in the morgue, Zagreus had been buried and that it had taken a lot of pillows to wedge his body into the coffin.