The Stranger: The Original Unabridged and Complete Edition (Albert Camus Classics)

by Albert Camus

I have fixed up with my employer for two days' leave; obviously, under the circumstances, he couldn't refuse. Still, I had an idea he looked annoyed, and I said, without thinking: "Sorry, sir, but it's not my fault, you know." Afterwards it struck me I needn't have said that. I had no reason to excuse myself; it was up to him to express his sympathy and so forth. Probably he will do so the day after tomorrow, when he sees me in black.

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.

He got up, saying it was high time for him to be in bed, and added that life was going to be a bit of a problem for him, under the new conditions.

Suddenly Marie exclaimed: "I say! Do you know the time? It's only half-past eleven!" We were all surprised at that, and Masson remarked that we'd had a very early lunch, but really lunch was a movable feast, you had it when you felt like it.

All normal people, I added as an afterthought, had more or less desired the death of those they loved, at some time or another.

I couldn’t even say that this was hard to stomach; really, there’s no idea to which one doesn’t get acclimatized in time.

And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.