“Would you say you loved your mother?” asked the prosecutor, a man with a velvet voice and a steel soul.
When his mother died at the Marengo nursing home, he noted the date—today, or yesterday, perhaps—and took the two o’clock bus. The countryside was a green and gold blur. He liked that. No need to name the trees. They just were .
For the first time—perhaps too late—he felt ready to live it all again.
The chaplain came three times. Each time, Meursault refused. He did not believe in God. Not with rebellion. Not with anguish. Simply: the idea never touched him. Like believing in a fifth season. libro el extranjero de albert camus
He did not run. He stood in the heat and thought: It’s finished.
The director of the home testified: Meursault drank coffee, smoked, did not weep. The caretaker confirmed: He did not want to see the body. Marie testified: “He was kind. But when I asked if he loved me, he said it didn’t matter.”
The funeral procession climbed a sun-scorched hill. Meursault felt the heat first as an assault, then as a fact. He thought: Maman is now ash-colored earth. Good. She hated the wind. “Would you say you loved your mother
His neighbor, Salamano, beat his mangy dog. Another neighbor, Raymond, a pimp with a greased mustache, called Meursault “a pal.” Meursault didn’t feel friendship. He felt Raymond was there, and then not there. Still, he wrote a letter for Raymond to lure a woman to be beaten. Why? Because Raymond asked. Because the afternoon was hot. Because saying no would have required a reason.
He thought of Marie, who would soon find another yes. Of Salamano, who lost his dog. Of the Arab, whose name he never learned.
Meursault was not a cruel man. He was simply a man who forgot to perform grief. He liked that
On the final night, the chaplain burst in. “Your heart is stone! You will face death. You must turn to God!”
The prosecutor rose. “Gentlemen of the jury, a man who buries his mother with a hollow heart—then kills a man in cold blood—is a monster not of passion, but of absence. He has no soul. He has no place among the living.”
They did not try him for killing the Arab. They tried him for not crying at his mother’s funeral.
He was sentenced to death by guillotine.