The Stranger

Meursault buries his mother without grief anyone can see

A telegram arrives: Meursault's mother has died at the old-age home in Marengo, fifty miles from Algiers.

Meursault buries his mother without grief anyone can see

A telegram arrives: Meursault's mother has died at the old-age home in Marengo, fifty miles from Algiers. He catches the afternoon bus, half-asleep in the glare. At the mortuary he declines to have the coffin opened. The doorkeeper brings café au lait; Meursault smokes a cigarette beside the body. Old residents file in for the vigil—one woman sobs without pause—but he registers only physical discomfort: aching legs, blinding lights. By dawn the mourners shake his hand in exhausted silence. The funeral unfolds under brutal sun. Old Pérez, his mother's closest companion, limps behind the hearse, takes shortcuts through fields, and faints near the church. Meursault notes the heat, the tar sticking to his shoes, the red earth pattering on the coffin—but sheds no tears.

Still in mourning black, Meursault takes Marie to a comedy film

The morning after—a Saturday, granting him a long weekend—Meursault heads to the harbor pool. There he reconnects with Marie Cardona, a former typist from his office. They swim together, her head warm against his lap on a raft under open sky. When she notices his mourning band and asks, he tells her his mother died the day before. She flinches briefly, but by evening they're at a Fernandel comedy, her leg pressed against his in the dark. She spends the night. On Sunday, Meursault sits alone at his balcony watching families and streetcars pass, the day dissolving from afternoon heat into violet dusk. He reflects that nothing in his life has changed: his mother is buried, and tomorrow he returns to work as usual.

Meursault ghostwrites a trap for a woman he's never met

On the stairs, Meursault encounters Raymond Sintès, a stocky, sharp-dressing neighbor widely suspected of being a pimp. Over black pudding and wine in Raymond's dingy room, a grievance unfolds: Raymond had been keeping a Moorish woman, discovered she was cheating, and beat her bloody. Now he wants to lure her back for one final humiliation—a letter tender enough to make her come crawling, after which he'd spit in her face and throw her out. The trouble is, he can't write it himself. Meursault composes the letter without hesitation, simply because he was asked and saw no reason to refuse. Raymond declares them friends. On the same landing, old Salamano curses and drags his mangy spaniel up the stairs—eight years of mutual loathing compressed into nightly ritual.