The Stranger: Part Two: Chapters 1–3

The first time, at the police station, nobody seemed very interested in my case. A week later, however, the examining magistrate looked me over with curiosity.

“You understand,” my lawyer said, “it’s a little embarrassing for me to have to ask you this. But it’s very important. And it will be a strong argument for the prosecution if I can’t come up with some answers.”

He told me in an almost snide way that in any case the director and the staff of the home would be called as witnesses and that “things could get very nasty” for me.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and this time his office was filled with sunlight barely softened by a flimsy curtain.

He started out by saying that people were describing me as a taciturn and withdrawn person and he wanted to know what I thought. I answered, “It’s just that I don’t have much to say. So I keep quiet.”

He took out a silver crucifix which he brandished as he came toward me.

Speaking very quickly and passionately, he told me that he believed in God, that it was his conviction that no man was so guilty that God would not forgive him, but in order for that to happen a man must repent and in so doing become like a child whose heart is open and ready to embrace all.

But he cut me off and urged me one last time, drawing himself up to his full height and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly.

But from across the table he had already thrust the crucifix in my face and was screaming irrationally, “I am a Christian. I ask Him to forgive you your sins. How can you not believe that He suffered for you?”

He simply asked, in the same weary tone, if I was sorry for what I had done.

But it was just a matter of clarifying certain things in my previous statements.

He didn’t talk to me about God anymore, and I never saw him as worked up as he was that first day. The result was that our discussions became more cordial.

Despite the commotion, they were managing to make themselves heard by talking in very low voices. Their subdued murmuring, coming from lower down, formed a kind of bass accompaniment to the conversations crossing above their heads.

I noticed that he was across from the little old lady and that they were staring intently at each other.

Then very quickly and still in a very loud voice she said yes, that I would be acquitted and that we would go swimming again.

At the same time I would try not to lose the thread of my inventory, to make a complete list, so that after a few weeks I could spend hours just enumerating the things that were in my room.

It was near the end of the day, the time of day I don’t like talking about, that nameless hour when the sounds of evening would rise up from every floor of the prison in a cortege of silence.

He told me that the man was a special correspondent for a Paris paper.

But since they assigned him to cover the parricide trial, they asked him to send a dispatch about your case at the same time.

To my left I heard the sound of a chair being pulled out and I saw a tall, thin man dressed in red and wearing a pince-nez who was carefully folding his robe as he sat down.

A bailiff said, “All rise.”

Three judges, two in black, the third in red, entered with files in hand and walked briskly to the rostrum which dominated the room.

Maybe it was for that reason, and also because I wasn’t familiar with all the procedures, that I didn’t quite understand everything that happened next: the drawing of lots for the jury; the questions put by the presiding judge to my lawyer, the prosecutor, and the jury (each time, the jurors’ heads would all turn toward the bench at the same time); the quick reading of the indictment, in which I recognized names of people and places; and some more questions to my lawyer.

According to him, he was there to conduct in an impartial manner the proceedings of a case which he would consider objectively.

According to him, he was there to conduct in an impartial manner the proceedings of a case which he would consider objectively.

He told me that he now had to turn to some questions that might seem irrelevant to my case but might in fact have a significant bearing on it.

But after some conferring, the judge announced that the hearing was adjourned until the afternoon, at which time the witnesses would be heard.

The judge had him clarify whether she used to reproach me for having put her in the home, and the director again said yes.

He then asked the prosecutor if he had any questions to put to the witness, and the prosecutor exclaimed, “Oh no, that is quite sufficient!” with such glee and with such a triumphant look in my direction that for the first time in years I had this stupid urge to cry, because I could feel how much all these people hated me.

But the prosecutor objected vehemently to this question.

My lawyer was exultant and stated loudly that the jury would take note of the fact.

Flipping through a file, the prosecutor asked her bluntly when our “liaison” had begun.

Then in a slightly ironic tone he said that he didn’t mean to dwell on such a delicate matter, and that he fully appreciated Marie's misgivings, but (and here his tone grew firmer) that he was duty bound to go beyond propriety.

Then in a slightly ironic tone he said that he didn’t mean to dwell on such a delicate matter, and that he fully appreciated Marie's misgivings, but (and here his tone grew firmer) that he was duty bound to go beyond propriety.

I was his friend and accomplice.

They had before them the basest of crimes, a crime made worse than sordid by the fact that they were dealing with a monster, a man without morals.

The prosecutor then turned to the jury and declared, “The same man who the day after his mother died was indulging in the most shameful debauchery killed a man for the most trivial of reasons and did so in order to settle an affair of unspeakable vice.”

But the prosecutor rose to his feet again, adjusted his robe, and declared that only someone with the naiveté of his esteemed colleague could fail to appreciate that between these two sets of facts there existed a profound, fundamental, and tragic relationship.

But the prosecutor rose to his feet again, adjusted his robe, and declared that only someone with the naiveté of his esteemed colleague could fail to appreciate that between these two sets of facts there existed a profound, fundamental, and tragic relationship.

The cries of the newspaper vendors in the already languid air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the screech of the streetcars turning sharply through the upper town, and that hum in the sky before night engulfs the port: all this mapped out for me a route I knew so well before going to prison and which now I traveled blind.