very thin, and he has reddish blotches on his face. And the dog has developed
something of its master’s queer hunched-up gait; it always has its muzzle stretched
far forward and its nose to the ground. But, oddly enough, though so much alike,
they detest each other.
Twice a day, at eleven and six, the old fellow takes his dog for a walk, and for
eight years that walk has never varied. You can see them in the rue de Lyon, the dog
pulling his master along as hard as he can, till finally the old chap misses a step and
nearly falls. Then he beats his dog and calls it names. The dog cowers and lags
behind, and it’s his master’s turn to drag him along. Presently the dog forgets, starts
tugging at the leash again, gets another hiding and more abuse. Then they halt on the
pavement, the pair of them, and glare at each other; the dog with terror and the man
with hatred in his eyes. Every time they’re out, this happens. When the dog wants to
stop at a lamppost, the old boy won’t let him, and drags him on, and the wretched
spaniel leaves behind him a trail of little drops. But, if he does it in the room, it
means another hiding.
It’s been going on like this for eight years, and Céleste always says it’s a “crying
shame,” and something should be done about it; but really one can’t be sure. When I
met him in the hall, Salamano was bawling at his dog, calling him a bastard, a lousy
mongrel, and so forth, and the dog was whining. I said, “Good evening,” but the old
fellow took no notice and went on cursing. So I thought I’d ask him what the dog had
done. Again, he didn’t answer, but went on shouting, “You bloody cur!” and the rest
of it. I couldn’t see very clearly, but he seemed to be fixing something on the dog’s
collar. I raised my voice a little. Without looking round, he mumbled in a sort of
suppressed fury: “He’s always in the way, blast him!” Then he started up the stairs,
but the dog tried to resist and flattened itself out on the floor, so he had to haul it up
on the leash, step by step.
Just then another man who lives on my floor came in from the street. The general
idea hereabouts is that he’s a pimp. But if you ask him what his job is, he says he’s a
warehouseman. One thing’s sure: he isn’t popular in our street. Still, he often has a
word for me, and drops in sometimes for a short talk in my room, because I listen to
him. As a matter of fact, I find what he says quite interesting. So, really I’ve no
reason for freezing him off. His name is Sintès; Raymond Sintès. He’s short and
thick-set, has a nose like a boxer’s, and always dresses very sprucely. He, too, once
said to me, referring to Salamano, that it was “a damned shame,” and asked me if I
wasn’t disgusted by the way the old man served his dog. I answered: “No.”
We went up the stairs together, Sintès and I, and when I was turning in at my door,
he said:
Albert Camus v THE STRANGER
20
“Look here! How about having some grub with me? I’ve a black pudding and
some wine.”
It struck me that this would save my having to cook my dinner, so I said, “Thanks
very much.”
He, too, has only one room, and a little kitchen without a window. I saw a pinkand-
white plaster angel above his bed, and some photos of sporting champions and
naked girls pinned to the opposite wall. The bed hadn’t been made and the room was
dirty. He began by lighting a paraffin lamp; then fumbled in his pocket and produced
a rather grimy bandage, which he wrapped round his right hand. I asked him what the
trouble was. He told me he’d been having a roughhouse with a fellow who’d
annoyed him.
“I’m not one who looks for trouble,” he explained, “only I’m a bit short-tempered.
That fellow said to me, challenging-like, ‘Come down off that streetcar, if you’re a
man.’ I says, ‘You keep quiet, I ain’t done nothing to you.’ Then he said I hadn’t any
guts. Well, that settled it. I got down off the streetcar and I said to him, ‘You better
keep your mouth shut, or I’ll shut it for you.’‘I’d like to see you try!’ says he. Then I
gave him one across the face, and laid him out good and proper. After a bit I started
to help him get up, but all he did was to kick at me from where he lay. So I gave him
one with my knee and a couple more swipes. He was bleeding like a pig when I’d
done with him. I asked him if he’d had enough, and he said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Sintès was busy fixing his bandage while he talked, and I was sitting on the bed.
“So you see,” he said, “it wasn’t my fault; he was asking for it, wasn’t he?”
I nodded, and he added:
“As a matter of fact, I rather want to ask your advice about something; it’s
connected with this business. You’ve knocked about the world a bit, and I daresay
you can help me. And then I’ll be your pal for life; I never forget anyone who does
me a good turn.”
When I made no comment, he asked me if I’d like us to be pals. I replied that I had
no objection, and that appeared to satisfy him. He got out the black pudding, cooked
it in a frying pan, then laid the table, putting out two bottles of wine. While he was
doing this he didn’t speak.
We started dinner, and then he began telling me the whole story, hesitating a bit at
first.
“There’s a girl behind it— as usual. We slept together pretty regular. I was keeping
her, as a matter of fact, and she cost me a tidy sum. That fellow I knocked down is
her brother.”
Noticing that I said nothing, he added that he knew what the neighbors said about
him, but it was a filthy lie. He had his principles like everybody else, and a job in a
warehouse.
Albert Camus v THE STRANGER
21
“Well,” he said, “to go on with my story ... I found out one day that she was letting
me down.” He gave her enough money to keep her going, without extravagance,
though; he paid the rent of her room and twenty francs a day for food. “Three
hundred francs for rent, and six hundred for her grub, with a little present thrown in
now and then, a pair of stockings or whatnot. Say, a thousand francs a month. But
that wasn’t enough for my fine lady; she was always grumbling that she couldn’t
make both ends meet with what I gave her. So one day I says to her, ‘Look here, why
not get a job for a few hours a day? That’d make things easier for me, too. I bought
you a new dress this month, I pay your rent and give you twenty francs a day. But
you go and waste your money at the café with a pack of girls. You give them coffee
and sugar. And, of course, the money comes out of my pocket. I treat you on the
square, and that’s how you pay me back.’ But she wouldn’t hear of working, though
she kept on saying she couldn’t make do with what I gave her. And then one day I
found out she was doing me dirt.”
He went on to explain that he’d found a lottery ticket in her bag, and, when he
asked where the money’d come from to buy it, she wouldn’t tell him. Then, another
time, he’d found a pawn ticket for two bracelets that he’d never set eyes on.
“So I knew there was dirty work going on, and I told her I’d have nothing more to
do with her. But, first, I gave her a good hiding, and I told her some home truths. I
said that there was only one thing interested her and that was getting into bed with
men whenever she’d the chance. And I warned her straight, ‘You’ll be sorry one day,
my girl, and wish you’d got me back. All the girls in the street, they’re jealous of
your luck in having me to keep you.’ ”
He’d beaten her till the blood came. Before that he’d never beaten her. “Well, not
hard, anyhow; only affectionately-like. She’d howl a bit, and I had to shut the
window. Then, of course, it ended as per usual. But this time I’m done with her. Only,
to my mind, I ain’t punished her enough. See what I mean?”
He explained that it was about this he wanted my advice. The lamp was smoking,
and he stopped pacing up and down the room, to lower the wick. I just listened,
without speaking. I’d had a whole bottle of wine to myself and my head was buzzing.
As I’d used up my cigarettes I was smoking Raymond’s. Some late streetcars passed,
and the last noises of the street died off with them. Raymond went on talking. What
bored him was that he had “a sort of lech on her” as he called it. But he was quite
determined to teach her a lesson.
His first idea, he said, had been to take her to a hotel, and then call in the special
police. He’d persuade them to put her on the register as a “common prostitute,” and
that would make her wild. Then he’d looked up some friends of his in the
underworld, fellows who kept tarts for what they could make out of them, but they
had practically nothing to suggest. Still, as he pointed out, that sort of thing should
have been right up their street; what’s the good of being in that line if you don’t
Albert Camus v THE STRANGER
22
know how to treat a girl who’s let you down? When he told them that, they suggested
he should “brand” her. But that wasn’t what he wanted, either. It would need a lot of
thinking out. ... But, first, he’d like to ask me something. Before he asked it, though,
he’d like to have my opinion of the story he’d been telling, in a general way.
I said I hadn’t any, but I’d found it interesting.
Did I think she really had done him dirt?
I had to admit it looked like that. Then he asked me if I didn’t think she should be
punished and what I’d do if I were in his shoes. I told him one could never be quite
sure how to act in such cases, but I quite understood his wanting her to suffer for it.
I drank some more wine, while Raymond lit another cigarette and began
explaining what he proposed to do. He wanted to write her a letter, “a real stinker,
that’ll get her on the raw,” and at the same time make her repent of what she’d done.
Then, when she came back, he’d go to bed with her and, just when she was “properly
primed up,” he’d spit in her face and throw her out of the room. I agreed it wasn’t a
bad plan; it would punish her, all right.
But, Raymond told me, he didn’t feel up to writing the kind of letter that was
needed, and that was where I could help. When I didn’t say anything, he asked me if
I’d mind doing it right away, and I said, “No,” I’d have a shot at it.
He drank off a glass of wine and stood up. Then he pushed aside the plates and the
bit of cold pudding that was left, to make room on the table. After carefully wiping
the oilcloth, he got a sheet of squared paper from the drawer of his bedside table;
after that, an envelope, a small red wooden penholder, and a square inkpot with
purple ink in it. The moment he mentioned the girl’s name I knew she was a Moor.
I wrote the letter. I didn’t take much trouble over it, but I wanted to satisfy
Raymond, as I’d no reason not to satisfy hi m. Then I read out what I’d written.
Puffing at his cigarette, he listened, nodding now and then. “Read it again, please,”
he said. He seemed delighted. “That’s the stuff,” he chuckled. “I could tell you was a
brainy sort, old boy, and you know what’s what.”
At first I hardly noticed that “old boy.” It came back to me when he slapped me on
the shoulder and said, “So now we’re pals, ain’t we?” I kept silence and he said it
again. I didn’t care one way or the other, but as he seemed so set on it, I nodded and
said, “Yes.”
He put the letter into the envelope and we finished off the wine. Then both of us
smoked for some minutes, without speaking. The street was quite quiet, except when
now and again a car passed. Finally, I remarked that it was getting late, and
Raymond agreed. “Time’s gone mighty fast this evening,” he added, and in a way
that was true. I wanted to be in bed, only it was such an effort making a move. I must
have looked tired, for Raymond said to me, “You mustn’t let things get you down.”
At first I didn’t catch his meaning. Then he explained that he had heard of my
Albert Camus v THE STRANGER
23
mother’s death; anyhow, he said, that was something bound to happen one day or
another. I appreciated that, and told him so.
When I rose, Raymond shook hands very warmly, remarking that men always
understood each other. After closing the door behind me I lingered for some
moments on the landing. The whole building was as quiet as the grave, a dank, dark
smell rising from the well hole of the stairs. I could hear nothing but the blood
throbbing in my ears, and for a while I stood still, listening to it. Then the dog began
to moan in old Salamano’s room, and through the sleep-bound house the little
plaintive sound rose slowly, like a flower growing out of the silence and the darkness.
Albert Camus v THE STRANGER
24
IV
I HAD a busy time in the office throughout the week. Raymond dropped in once to
tell me he’d sent off the letter. I went to the pictures twice with Emmanuel, who
doesn’t always understand what’s happening on the screen and asks me to explain it.
Yesterday was Saturday, and Marie came as we’d arranged. She had a very pretty
dress, with red and white stripes, and leather sandals, and I couldn’t take my eyes off
her. One could see the outline of her firm little breasts, and her sun-tanned face was
like a velvety brown flower. We took the bus and went to a beach I know, some
miles out of Algiers. It’s just a strip of sand between two rocky spurs, with a line of
rushes at the back, along the tide line. At four o’clock the sun wasn’t too hot, but the
water was pleasantly tepid, and small, languid ripples were creeping up the sand.
Marie taught me a new game. The idea was, while one swam, to suck in the spray
off the waves and, when one’s mouth was full of foam, to lie on one’s back and spout
it out against the sky. It made a sort of frothy haze that melted into the air or fell back
in a warm shower on one’s cheeks. But very soon my mouth was smarting with all
the salt I’d drawn in; then Marie came up and hugged me in the water, and pressed
her mouth to mine. Her tongue cooled my lips, and we let the waves roll us about for
a minute or two before swimming back to the beach.
When we had finished dressing, Marie looked hard at me. Her eyes were sparkling.
I kissed her; after that neither of us spoke for quite a while. I pressed her to my side
as we scrambled up the foreshore. Both of us were in a hurry to catch the bus, get
back to my place, and tumble on to the bed. I’d left my window open, and it was
