I had lived my life one way and I could
just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I
hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done
another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time
for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to
be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew
why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d
lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from
somewhere deep in my future, across years that were
still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever
was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than
the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths
or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the
lives people choose or the fate they think they elect
matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate,
me and billions of privileged people like him who also
called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t
he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only
privileged people. The others would all be condemned
one day. And he would be condemned, too. What would
it matter if he were accused of murder and then executed
because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral? Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as his wife. The
little robot woman was just as guilty as the Parisian
woman Masson married, or as Marie, who had wanted
me to marry her. What did it matter that Raymond was
as much my friend as Celeste, who was worth a lot more
than him? What did it matter that Marie now offered her lips to a new Meursault? Couldn’t he, couldn’t this
condemned man see . . . And that from somewhere deep
in my future . . . All the shouting had me gasping for
air. But they were already tearing the chaplain from my
grip and the guards were threatening me. He calmed
them, though, and looked at me for a moment without
saying anything. His eyes were full of tears. Then he
turned and disappeared.
With him gone, I was able to calm down again. I
was exhausted and threw myself on my bunk. I must
have fallen asleep, because I woke up with the stars in
my face. Sounds of the countryside were drifting in.
Smells of night, earth, and salt air were cooling my
temples. The wondrous peace of that sleeping summer
Rowed through me like a tide. Then, in the dark hour
before dawn, sirens blasted. They were announcing
departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me. For the first time in a long time I thought
about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end
of her life she had taken a “fiance,” why she had
played at beginning again. Even there, in that home
where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt
free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody
had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live i t
all again too. As if that blind rage had washed m e clean,
rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with
signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference
of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-! felt that I had been happy and that I
was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for
me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a
large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and
that they greet me with cries of hate.