The Stranger

Highlights

Every time there’s a death here, they’re in a nervous state for two or three days. Which means, of course, extra work and worry for our staff.”

As I was coming back, after shutting the window, I glanced at the mirror and saw reflected in it a corner of my table with my spirit lamp and some bits of bread beside it. It occurred to me that somehow I’d got through another Sunday, that Mother now was buried, and tomorrow I’d be going back to work as usual. Really, nothing in my life had changed.

Before leaving for lunch I washed my hands. I always enjoyed doing this at midday. In the evening it was less pleasant, as the roller towel, after being used by so many people, was sopping wet. I once brought this to my employer’s notice. It was regrettable, he agreed-but, to his mind, a mere detail.

I noticed, a habit of saying “and what’s more” between his phrases—even when the second added nothing really to the first. Talking of Marie, he said: “She’s an awfully pretty girl, and what’s more, charming.”

And just then it crossed my mind that one might fire, or not fire— and it would come to absolutely the same thing.

Once or twice I had a mind to assure him that I was just like everybody else; quite an ordinary person. But really that would have served no great purpose, and I let it go —out of laziness as much as anything else.

As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree. At which, rather to my surprise, his face lit up.

He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mother’s place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in the course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next morning his wife came and, without thinking, betrayed the guest’s identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well.

The two policemen led me into a small room that smelled of darkness.

Still, to my mind he overdid it, and I’d have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able really to regret anything in all my life. I’ve always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back.

I fairly bawled out at him: “A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That’s all I want of it.” And in the same breath I told him I’d had enough of his company.