The Outsider , Albert Camus

Part I

"Mom died today. Maybe it was yesterday, I don't know. A telegram came from the nursing home: "The mother died. Buried tomorrow. Sincerely. "It's like not saying anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

The nursing home is located in Marango, eighty kilometers from Algiers. I plan to take the bus at two o'clock and be there in the afternoon. This will make it time for the vigil and then return tomorrow night. I took two days off with my boss, and he had no reason not to approve it. But he was really not very happy. I even said "it's not my fault" and he didn't squeak. I shouldn't have mentioned that at all. But overall, I don't think there's anything to be sorry about. He should have come to comfort me. However, when he saw me wearing filial piety the day after tomorrow, he would do so. At this moment, my mother didn't seem to be dead. On the contrary, when the funeral ceremony is completed and all the dust settles, it will show the sense of seriousness it deserves.

I took the bus at two o'clock. It was hot. As usual, I went to Celeste's restaurant for dinner. They all grieve for me, and Celeste told me, "Everyone has only one mom." "They kept dropping me off at the door when I left. I was negligent and forgot to go upstairs to borrow a black tie and armband from Emmanuel. Just a few months ago, he had just lost his uncle.

I ran forward, afraid of delaying the trip. In a hurry, another trot, with bumpy bumps in the road, mixed with the smell of gasoline, and the reverberation of the road and the sky, I was dizzy. I slept almost the whole way, and when I woke up, I found myself leaning against a soldier, and he yelled at me, "I smiled and asked if I had come from afar." I didn't bother to say much and replied "yes."

The nursing home is two kilometers away from the village. I went on foot. I wanted to see my mother quickly. But the janitor said he had to meet with the dean first. He was busy, so I waited a little while. During this time, the gatekeeper accompanied me to talk, and then I met the dean: he received me in the office. He was a small old man with legions of honor on his chest and glowing eyes staring straight at me. He held my hand for a long time, and I didn't know how to pull my hand back. He looked up a document and said to me, "Madame Meursault was sent here three years ago. You used to be her only source of income. I guessed he was trying to blame me, and he began to argue. But he interrupted me: "You don't have to rush to explain, my dear child. I read your mother's file". You can't meet her needs. She needed a paramedic. Your salary income is not high. In short, she wants to be happier here. I said, "Yes, Mr. Dean." He went on to say, "You know, she has her own friends and is accompanied by people her age. She could share with them topics that belonged to another era. You're too young to be bored with you. ”

Indeed it is. When my mother is at home, she likes to stare at me quietly so that I can spend the whole day. When she first moved into a nursing home, she often cried. Just because I'm not used to it. In a few months, if she were to be taken out of the nursing home, she would be howling. It's still a habit. I barely visited her in my last year, in part because of that. Of course, because a visit takes up the entire Sunday, it does not include the hard work of "delivering the bus, buying tickets, and delaying the road for two hours."

The dean was still chattering, but I didn't listen. Then he said, "You definitely want to see your mother." I got up without a word, and he rushed ahead to the door. In the stairs, he explained to me, "In order not to disturb others, she was transferred to the small morgue." Whenever someone passed away, others had to be nervous for two or three days, which caused inconvenience to our management. "We walked through the yard, and the old people were chatting in groups of three or five. When we passed, they shut up and silenced. When we were far away, we picked up the conversation again, like a female parrot chirping in a low voice. The dean said goodbye to me at the door of a small building: "Please help yourself, Mr. Meursault, I am waiting for you at any time in the office." Theoretically, the funeral is scheduled for ten o'clock in the morning. I think you should "be the one who will guard the spirits of the dead." By the way, your mother seems to have mentioned to her friends that she wanted to be buried according to religious rituals. I have arranged it. But I'd like to let you know in advance. I thanked him. Although my mother was not an atheist, she never thought of religion when she was alive.

I walked in. The room was spacious, with walls painted white with lime and stained glass windows. Plus a few chairs and X-mounts. Two shelves were placed in the center, supporting a lidded coffin. Only the polished, nearly damaged screws could be seen, loosely riveted on the coffin painted with brown dye. Next to the coffin, an Arab nurse in a white blouse, with a scarves draped over her head in bright colours.

At this moment, the janitor walked in and stood behind me. He probably ran over and stammered, "She's covered." But I'm supposed to screw it down and show you. "He approached the coffin, but I stopped him. He said, "Don't you want to see it?" I said, "No. "He stopped moving, and I was a little nervous, thinking I shouldn't have said that. After a moment of silence, he stared at me and asked, "Why?" But there was no reproach, as if he were asking himself. I said, "I don't know. He twisted his little white mustache, and his eyes moved away from me, indicating "I understand." He had beautiful pale blue eyes and a little reddened face. He handed me a chair and sat slightly behind me. The nurse stood up and walked toward the door. The gatekeeper suddenly said to me, "She has canker disease." I didn't understand much, so I stared at the female nurse and found a bandage tied under her eyes, all the way around the back of her head. At that point in the nose, the bandage was flat. Only the white of the bandages on her face was clearly recognizable. After she went out, the gatekeeper said, "You're still alone." I don't know exactly what kind of gesture I made, and as a result he stood straight behind me. It makes me uncomfortable for him to stay here. The evening light filled the room. The two big hu peaks buzzed against the glass window. I felt like I was being beaten by the sun. I turned my back on the gatekeeper and said, "Have you been working here for a long time?" He immediately replied, "Five years"—as if he had been waiting for me to ask this question.

After that, he opened the conversation box. If someone had told him that he would be the gatekeeper of the Marango Nursing Home for the rest of his life, he would have been astonished. He was sixty-five years old, a Parisian. I remembered that he had talked about his mother before he led me to see the dean. He said it was better to bury as early as possible, it was very hot on the plains, especially in this area. "That is, he made me know that he had lived in Paris, and that it was something he would never forget." Parisians sometimes spend three or four days with the dead. And here, people can't afford to spend so much time, and they don't have the idea of running behind the coffin. His wife had already reminded him, "Shut up, there's no need to talk to that gentleman about these things." The old man blushed and asked me for forgiveness. I persuaded him, "Nothing, nothing." "I think everything he said was both reasonable and interesting.

In that little morgue, he told me he had come to the nursing home as a poor man. He felt that he was physically fit, so he volunteered to take on the role of gatekeeper. I interjected that he was a boarder anyway. He said no. I noticed earlier that when talking about boarders, including some older than him, "he likes to use "them" and "other people" to refer to them, and rarely says "those old people". However, there are some differences in nature. As a janitor, he was somehow more powerful than them.

The nurse walked in at this moment. In the blink of an eye, it was late afternoon. The night color is thicker and thicker on the window glass. The gatekeeper spun the light switch, and the sudden burst of light almost blinded my eyes. He invited me to the public canteen for dinner. But I'm not hungry. He said pour me a cup of milky coffee. I had always liked the milk coffee, accepted the kindness, and after a while, he came back to me with a plate. I drank. Then want to smoke. But I hesitated, not knowing whether I should do it in front of my mother. I thought about it a little and felt irrelevant. I also handed one to the gatekeeper and smoked it with him. Suddenly, he said to me, "You know, your mother's friends will also attend the vigil." This is the norm. You'll have to move some chairs, and black coffee. I asked him if he could turn off a light. The glare on the white walls made me tired. He said no. At first, the decoration was designed like this, either all off or all open. I didn't pay much attention to him afterwards. He went out for a trip and came back to set up the chairs. He placed the cup around a chair, and the coffee pot in the center. Then he sat across from me, and Mom was separated between us. The nurse was also at the end of the room, with her back to me. I couldn't see clearly what she was doing. But based on the way her arms swung, I guess she was knitting a sweater. The weather was mild, the coffee warmed me, and the night and floral fragrance drifted into the open door. I seemed to be dozing off for a while. "A rattling noise woke me up. Opening his eyes, the room burst out a brighter white light. There is no trace of darkness, every object in front of you, every angle, all the arcs emerge from the purity that can harm people. Just at this moment, Mom's friends all came in. There were a dozen or so people in total, moving quietly in the dazzling light. They all sat down, but the chairs didn't make the slightest creaking sound. It was as if I had carefully observed people for the first time in my life, and no details on their faces or clothes had slipped out of my eyes. Yet I couldn't hear them, and it was almost impossible to believe that they were real. Almost all women wear blouses, and the corset rope used to maintain their body shape makes their bulging abdomen more conspicuous. Before, I had never noticed where the old woman's belly was growing. The men were almost all emaciated and all carrying canes. The most impressive "feature of their faces" is that they cannot see their eyes, only a faint glimmer of light looms in the center of the nest formed by wrinkles. When they were seated, most of them looked at me, nodding at me awkwardly, or just twitching. I prefer to believe they are greeting. At this point, I noticed that they were all gathered around the gatekeeper, sitting facing me, with their heads slightly shaken. For a while I even had the funny idea that they were judging me.

After a while, an old lady began to cry. She sat in the second row, her companion blocking her face. She sobbed quietly, rhythmically strong, and it seemed difficult to bring herself to a halt. The others acted as if they hadn't heard anything, depressed, melancholy, quiet. They stared at the coffin or their own crutches, or whatever, but they only stared at that thing. The old lady was still crying. I was surprised because I didn't recognize her. I'd rather not hear her crying. But I didn't have the guts to say it. The janitor bent down and said something to her, but she shook her head and muttered as she continued to cry at the same rhythm. The gatekeeper came over and sat down beside me. After a moment of silence, he opened his mouth to clarify to me, although his eyes were not on me: "She is very close to your mother." She said it was her only friend here, and now she had nothing. ”

And so we sat for a long time. The old lady's sighs and sobs grew weaker. She began to inhale heavily through her nose. She was finally exhausted. I don't feel sleepy, but I'm tired and my back hurts. Now, the silence of everyone is unbearable for me. Occasionally I could hear only a rare noise, but I couldn't figure out what was ringing. After a long time, I finally guessed that someone among the old people must be sucking on the inside of his cheek, so that "some strange smacking sound accidentally escaped." They are unaware of this because they have long been deeply attracted to their own meditations. I had even had the impression that the deceased, the dead man lying among them, had no meaning in their eyes. But I'm now convinced that it was the wrong impression.

We drank all the coffee that the gatekeeper had served. Then, I don't know anything. The night is passing. I remember opening my eyes again, the old decays leaning on each other to sleep, only one of them with his chin resting on the back of his hand, clutching his crutches in his hand, staring at me as if he had been waiting for me to wake up. Then I slept again. When I woke up again, my waist was getting more and more painful. Dawn swept by the window. A few moments later, one of the old men woke up and coughed badly. He spit phlegm into a checkered handkerchief, and with each spit, it was "like coughing up his lungs." He woke up the others, and the gatekeeper said they should go. They got up. The uncomfortable night kept them to death. To my surprise, each of them shook my hand as they left—as if this night, on which we had never exchanged a single word, had invisibly enhanced our intimacy.

I was so tired. The gatekeeper led me back to his house, where I could finally freshen up a little. I had another cup of coffee with milk and it tasted good. When I left, it was completely bright. The sky was glowing red, hanging high on a hill that separated Marango from the sea. The wind blows these crimsons from above, bringing the smell of salt. Sunny days are still brewing. I haven't been to the countryside for a long time, and if I don't have my mother's file, how pleasant it is to be able to take a walk alone. "But I chose to stay in the yard and wait, under a plane tree. I breathed in the aroma of fresh land and was not sleepy now. I think of my colleagues in the office. At this point, they're getting up and going to work, and it's always been a tough time for me. I also associated with some things like that, but the bells ringing in the building caught my attention. Behind the window was a clamor of furniture moving, and then everything was calm. The sun was rising a little more into the air, and my feet were starting to get hot. The gatekeeper walked through the yard and told me that the dean had told me to go. I went to his office. He asked me to sign several documents. I saw him dressed in black and his pants were striped. He picked up the phone and asked me, "The funeral director has been here for a while." I told them to close the coffin. Would you like to see your mother again? "I said no. So he lowered his voice and commanded on the phone, "Fiac, let them pass." ”

Then he said he would assist in the funeral, and I thanked him. He sat behind his desk and folded a pair of short legs on top of each other. He reminded me that he and I would be the only ones who would go to the scene later, plus a nurse as a helper. Theoretically, boarders don't help with the burial. He only let them guard the spirits, "It's about humanity. He commented. But in today's situation, he agreed to the request of one of his mother's elderly friends, "Toma Perey", who wanted to follow the coffin to help the spirit. Speaking of this, the dean smiled slightly. He said, "You know, there's a kind of childish feeling in there. He is almost inseparable from your mother. The people at the nursing home joked with them and said to Pere, 'This is your fiancée.' He just laughed. They're still happy. "Seriously, Madame Meursault's death has really shaken him emotionally, and I have no reason to refuse his request. However, according to the opinion of the visiting doctor, I did not let him participate in yesterday's vigil. ”

We were silent for a long time. The dean got up and looked out through the window of his office. He suddenly saw something: "The priest of Marango has arrived. He came a little early. He said it would take at least three quarters of an hour's walk to church in town. We went downstairs. In front of the building stood the priest and two children of the choir. One of the children was carrying a incense burner, and the priest squatted down to help him adjust the length of the silver chain. As soon as we arrived, the priest stood up. He called me "my son" and said a few words to me before going in, followed by me.

I noticed at a glance that the rivets had been wedged into the coffin, and there were four men in black in the room. "At the same time, I heard the dean tell me that the coffin was parked on the side of the road and the priest began to pray. From this moment on, everything was moving fast. The men walked toward the coffin with a coffin. The priest, his retinue, the dean, and me, went out together. In front of the gate, I met a wife I didn't know. "This is Mr. Meursault." Dean said. But I didn't hear her name, I just knew it was the nurse's representative. She nodded, her slender face without a single smile. Then we lined up to bid off the remains. We followed the porter out of the morgue. There was a carriage at the gate. Polished, narrow, and shining, reminiscent of a stationery box. Standing next to the car was the master of the funeral, a short man dressed comically, and an old man looking confused. I knew this was Mr. Perret. He wore a soft collapsed domed felt hat with wide flanks (he "took off his hat" as the coffin passed by), and a suit with pants twisted over the upper and a black cloth bow tie that looked too slender against the white collar of his shirt. A pair of lips fluttered under the nose covered with black spots. The slender white hair could not cover the ears that swung out of curiosity, and the edges of the ears were also a little rough, and the bright red color was matched on the pale face, which was unforgettable. The principal assigned us a place. The priest walked in front, followed by a coffin. Surrounding the coffin were the four men. In the back were the dean and me, and at the back were the nurses' representative and Mr. Perret.

The sun has sprinkled the sky. It began to apply pressure to the ground, and the temperature was rising rapidly. I don't understand why I waited so long to leave. Dark clothes make me extremely hot. The short old man who was blocked by the crowd took off his hat again. As I listened to the dean talk about him, I leaned slightly sideways in his "direction" and looked at him. The Dean said that at night, my mother and Mr. Perret often went for walks in the town accompanied by nurses. I observed the surrounding countryside. Through the forest, you can see that the brown-red soil is also stained with mottled green, and the house is sparse, but the picture sense is very good, and I can understand my mother's feelings. Stepping on this land in the evening should be a sentimental rest. Today, the overflowing sun shakes the scenery, giving it an impersonal and depressing appearance.

We started moving forward. At this moment, I noticed that Mr. Perret was a little limp and walked very slowly. The coffin gradually accelerated, and the old man was thrown behind. One of the people around the coffin could not keep up with the speed and simply stood side by side with me. I was amazed at how quickly the sun had climbed above. I found that the whole village was "immersed in song: insects mingling with crackling in the grass." I was sweating profusely. I didn't wear a hat, so I had to take a handkerchief to fan the wind. The funeral company employee told me something unheard of. At the same time, he wiped his head with a handkerchief in his left hand, and lifted the brim of his duck-tongue hat upwards with his right hand. I asked him "what's wrong", and he pointed to the sky and said "ghost weather". I said "yeah". After a while, he asked me, "Is that your mother in there?" I said, "Yeah." "Is she old?" I replied, "It's okay." "In fact, I can't remember a specific age. Then he was silent. I turned my head and saw old Pere about fifty meters away behind us. To quicken his pace, he took his entire arm to hold his felt hat steady. I also observed the dean. He walked with dignity and no small movements. Sweat "formed fine droplets of water on his forehead, but he didn't take it away."

The queue seemed to move a little faster. Surrounded by villages that are also soaked in sunlight. The sun was so bright that it was too strong to hold. At that moment, we passed a section of newly renovated road. The sunlight cracked the tar. My feet felt like they were stuck in asphalt and turned the shiny oil residue out again. The driver's hard leather hat, which had been thrown over the canopy of the carriage, seemed to have been tanned in this dark sludge. The sometimes blue, sometimes white sky and the monotony of these colors made me a little dizzy: the sticky black of the bare mud, the dull black of the clothes, the black of the coffin paint. All this, the sun, the smell of leather and feces emanating from the carriage, the smell of varnish, the frankincense, the drowsiness of a night of insomnia, made me dizzy. I turned my head again, and Perret seemed to disappear far away in a "ball of heat," and then I couldn't see him at all. I searched for him with my eyes and found that he had long since strayed from the main road and was crossing the fields. The road seemed to turn a corner in front of me. I understood, that Perret was familiar with the piece, and he tried to cut a short path in order to catch up with us. He had already followed up when he turned, but was left behind again. He had to continue to cross the farmland, tossing and turning several times. I felt the blood churning in my temples.

It all happened so hastily, so precisely and naturally, that I can't recall it at all. I remember only one thing: when I entered the village, the nurse's representative spoke to me. Her distinctive voice didn't match her face, a little trembling, but musical. "If we walk slowly, we risk heat stroke; if we walk too fast, we can get to church," she said. "That's right. It's a dilemma. I can also recall several other images of the day, such as the face of Perret when he finally joined us near the village: uneasy emotions that elicited huge tears that were about to flow across his cheeks. However, the tears were blocked by the wrinkles on the face and did not flow down, but spread and converged on the battered face, forming a layer of water enamel. I still remember the villagers on the side of the road on both sides of the bridge, the red geraniums on the graveyard stone tablets, Perret's fainting (we say he was like a dislocated puppeteer), the color of the land like the blood flowing through my mother's coffin, the white muscles of the intertwined roots, and the crowds, the voices, the waiting in front of the villages, the cafés, the snoring engines, and finally the bus pulled into a residence sprinkled with Algerian sunshine, and I thought I should jump into bed and sleep for twelve hours.