The Stranger: Part One: Chapters 1–3

He’s the one who should have offered his condolences. But he probably will day after tomorrow, when he sees I’m in mourning. For now, it’s almost as if Maman weren’t dead.

It was probably because of all the rushing around, and on top of that the bumpy ride, the smell of gasoline, and the glare of the sky and the road, that I dozed off.

He thumbed through a file and said, “Madame Meursault came to us three years ago. You were her sole support.”

You weren’t able to provide for her properly. She needed someone to look after her. You earn only a modest salary.

On the way downstairs, he explained, “We’ve moved her to our little mortuary. So as not to upset the others. Whenever one of the residents dies, the others are a bit on edge for the next two or three days. And that makes it difficult to care for them.”

As we went by, the talking would stop. And then the conversation would start up again behind us. The sound was like the muffled jabber of parakeets.

While not an atheist, Maman had never in her life given a thought to religion.

At that point the caretaker said to me, “She’s got an abscess.” I didn’t understand, so I looked over at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage wrapped around her head just below the eyes.

In the little mortuary he told me that he’d come to the home because he was destitute.

What struck me most about their faces was that I couldn’t see their eyes, just a faint glimmer in a nest of wrinkles.

I even had the impression that the dead woman lying in front of them didn’t mean anything to them. But I think now that that was a false impression.

He kept hacking into a large checkered handkerchief, and every cough was like a convulsion.

The uncomfortable vigil had left their faces ashen looking.

“The undertaker’s men arrived a few minutes ago. I’m going to ask them to seal the casket. Before I do, would you like to see your mother one last time?”

The residents usually weren’t allowed to attend funerals. He only let them keep the vigil. “It’s more humane that way,” he remarked.

But in this case he’d given one of mother’s old friends—Thomas Pérez—permission to join the funeral procession.

It’s a rather childish sentiment. But he and your mother were almost inseparable.

The men moved toward the casket with a pall.

The priest, his acolytes, the director and I all went outside.

Without smiling she lowered her long, gaunt face.

Outside the gate stood the hearse. Varnished, glossy, and oblong, it reminded me of a pencil box.

Strange, floppy, thick-rimmed ears stuck out through his fine, white hair, and I was struck by their blood-red color next to the pallor of his face.

The funeral director assigned us our places. First came the priest, then the hearse. Flanking it, the four men.

But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive.

I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me—the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny black of the hearse.

All of it—the sun, the smell of leather and horse dung from the hearse, the smell of varnish and incense, and my fatigue after a night without sleep—was making it hard for me to see or think straight.

She had a remarkable voice which didn’t go with her face at all, a melodious, quavering voice.

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Pérez fainting (he crumpled like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman’s casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a café, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.

Behind them, an enormous mother, in a brown silk dress, and the father, a rather frail little man I know by sight. He had on a straw hat and a bow tie and was carrying a walking stick.

Seeing him with his wife, I understood why people in the neighborhood said he was distinguished.

A little later the local boys went by, hair greased back, red ties, tight-fitting jackets, with embroidered pocket handkerchiefs and square-toed shoes.

People were straggling back from their walks.

Soon afterwards, with the streetcars running less often and the sky already blue above the trees and the lamps, the neighborhood emptied out, almost imperceptibly, until the first cat slowly made its way across the now deserted street.

I couldn’t see anything, and all I was conscious of was the sensation of hurtling forward in a mad dash through cranes and winches, masts bobbing on the horizon and the hulls of ships alongside us as we ran.

We were out of breath; the truck was bumping around on the uneven cobblestones of the quay in a cloud of dust and sun.

The spaniel has a skin disease—mange, I think—which makes almost all its hair fall out and leaves it covered with brown sores and scabs.

Old Salamano has reddish scabs on his face and wispy yellow hair.

Then, without turning around, he answered with a kind of suppressed rage, “He’s always there."

First he lit his paraffin lamp, then he took a pretty dubious-looking bandage out of his pocket and wrapped it around his right hand.

I didn’t say anything, and yet right away he added that he knew what people around the neighborhood were saying, but that his conscience was clear and that he was a warehouse guard.