A Happy Death

On a hot summer afternoon some time before the events of Chapter 1, a dock worker is injured. Mersault exits his office on the docks and inspects the “ugly wound from which blood [is] dripping” (9). Together with a fellow clerk named Emmanuel, he hitches a lift on a passing truck and visits a restaurant. Mersault, Emmanuel, and the restaurant owner Celeste discuss what they would do if they were rich. They study Celeste’s son René, who has recently been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Mersault tries to reassure the depressed young man that “with time and patience, TB can be cured” (10). Mersault leaves the restaurant, crosses the street, and enters his apartment. His apartment is located above a butcher shop and once belonged to his now-dead mother. He falls asleep.

Mersault’s mother died after a long and ravaging illness. Despite his profound love for her, he felt only the slightest surprise on the day of her funeral. The next day, he rented out two rooms in their house and “kept the best room for himself” (11). Mersault wakes up “very late” that afternoon and returns to the shipping company where he works as a clerk. He thinks about his colleagues, none of whom he particularly likes. After the day is finished, he returns once again to his apartment. The next day, he sits on his balcony, smoking a cigarette and watching the “occasional passer-by.” Various groups pass by at different times. Mersault knows them well. He is an “audience of one” (14).

One evening, Mersault walks through the streets with his girlfriend Marthe. He feels “wonderfully stupid” and is happy to be seen at the cinema with his attractive girlfriend. His reveries are interrupted by the sight of a man staring at Marthe. Knowing that this man is one of Marthe’s former lovers, he obsesses over his jealous “panic.”

He reflects on the beginnings of his relationship with Marthe. She does not love him but regards him with “curiosity.” Noticing Mersault’s jealousy toward her former lover, Marthe realizes that she finally has a way to affect the man who seems so emotionally distant and unavailable. When she begins to tease him the next day, he bluntly insists that she must tell him the names of all her previous lovers, or he will “imagine too much” and assume that every passing man in the street may be one of them (18).

She describes relationships with René and Zagreus. As they walk, she asks Mersault about the “little grinds,” which is the name given to two young girls in Tunis with whom Mersault corresponds. Marthe asks Mersault whether he loves her. He avoids the question. Later, he meets Zagreus and takes an immediate dislike to him. However, he begins to pay regular visits to Zagreus and is fascinated by the man to the extent that “if he had been a little less guarded” he may mistake their relationship for friendship (20).

The following Sunday, Mersault visits Zagreus’s home. The two men sit around and discuss philosophical ideas. They speculate about man’s need to strike a balance between “the needs of his body and the demands of his mind” (21).

Mersault is blunt in his dismissal of Zagreus, referring disparagingly to his missing legs as a hindrance to happiness. Zagreus has a practical, nihilistic acceptance of the limitations of his injury and seeks to “reduce the burden of humiliations each day [brings] him” (23). After they agree that people “can’t be happy without money” (24), Zagreus describes how he accumulated a great fortune in his youth through perhaps illegal means. Before he could spend it, he had the accident which took away his legs.

He shows Mersault a safe containing the money, the revolver, and the suicide note seen in the opening chapter. He hints that he has suffered from suicidal ideations in the past, but that he cannot bring himself to follow through and feels compelled to “go on burning in dignity and silence” (25). Mersault suspects that Zagreus wants to be killed and promises to “think about it” (26). He leaves, suspecting that Zagreus is playing games.

Mersault walks home from Zagreus’s house. As he enters his house, he hears groans from the room rented by one of his lodgers. The groans are coming from a barrel maker named Cardona. Mersault enters the room to find Cardona weeping while staring at a photograph of his dead mother.

Mersault knows that Cardona is an unsociable man who lives alone because his sister could no longer tolerate him and that he is “too proud” to apologize to her. Cardona spends most of his time at the local café and occasionally visits sex workers. On nights like this, Mersault knows that the “cafes had not been enough” (28). He pities the man weeping in the unclean room. He inspects a small wooden barrel that Cardona had made for his mother as a gift. Cardona’s dog sits beside Mersault. Eventually, Mersault leaves Cardona’s room.

The next day, he kills Zagreus. He wakes with a fever and immediately leaves Algiers. The police believe Zagreus died by suicide because he had “every motive” to do so. Mersault writes a letter to Marthe, explaining that he has taken a job in Prague, but he never reads her reply.