Kamel Daoud - The Meursault Investigation

I didn’t sleep that night, as you may imagine. I watched the sky beside the lemon tree.

I didn’t show the book to Mama. She would have made me read it over and over, endlessly, right up until Judgment Day, I swear to you. At sunrise I tore the cover off and hid the book in a corner of the shed. Naturally, I didn’t talk to Mama about my date with Meriem the day before, but she detected in my eyes the presence of another woman in my blood. Meriem never came back to our house. I saw her fairly regularly during the following weeks — it lasted all summer, in fact. We agreed that I’d go to the station every day for the arrival of the bus from Algiers. When she could get away, we’d spend a few hours together, walking, idling, sometimes lying under a tree, never for very long. If she didn’t come, I’d turn on my heels and go back to work. I started to hope the book would prove to be inexhaustible, would become infinite, so that she’d keep leaning her shoulder against my chest in delight. I told her about almost everything: my childhood, the day of Musa’s death, our illiterate and idiotic investigation, the empty grave in El-Kettar cemetery, and the strict rules of our family mourning. The only secret I hesitated to share with her was Joseph’s murder. She taught me to read the book in a certain way, tilting it sideways as though to make invisible details fall out. She gave me other books written by that man, and others besides, which allowed me to understand, little by little, how your hero saw the world. Meriem slowly explained to me his beliefs and his fabulous, solitary images. I gathered that he was a sort of orphan who had recognized a sort of fatherless twin in the world and who had suddenly acquired the gift of brotherhood, precisely because of his solitude. I didn’t grasp everything, sometimes Meriem seemed to be speaking to me from another planet, she had a voice I loved to hear. And I loved her, deeply. Love. What a strange feeling, right? It’s like being drunk. You’ve lost your balance, your senses are dulled, but you’ve got this oddly precise and totally useless insight.

From the very beginning, because I was a wretch, I knew our romance would come to an end, knew I could never hope to keep her in my life. But for the time being, I wanted only one thing: to hear her breathing beside me. Meriem had guessed my state and found it amusing for a while before she realized the depth of my despair. Was that what scared her off? I believe so. Or else she just gradually got tired, I didn’t amuse her anymore, she’d exhausted the possibilities of the rather new and exotic path I represented, my “case” stopped being entertaining. I’m bitter, that’s wrong. She didn’t reject me, I swear to you. On the contrary, I even think she felt a kind of love for me. But she contented herself with loving my disappointment in love, so to speak, and with giving my sorrow the nobility of a precious object, and then, just as a kingdom was beginning to fall into place for me, she went away. Ever since, I’ve betrayed women methodically and saved the best of myself for the partings. That’s the first law inscribed on my tablet of life. Do you want to note down my definition of love? It’s pompous but sincere, I concocted it all by myself. Love is kissing someone, sharing their saliva, and going back all the way to the obscure memory of your own birth. I therefore operated as a widower, which adds to one’s appeal and attracts the tender feelings of the unwary female. I’ve been approached by unhappy women and by others too young to understand.

After Meriem left me, I read the book again, and then again. Over and over. Looking to find traces of her in it, her way of reading, her conscientious intonation. Strange, isn’t it? To go on a quest for life through the glittering proof of a death! But I’m rambling again, these digressions must be annoying. And yet …

One day we were relaxing under a tree at the edge of the village. Mama pretended ignorance, but she knew I was seeing the girl who’d come from the city to dig around in our cemeteries. Our relationship had changed, Mama’s and mine, and I felt a dull temptation to commit some definitively brutal act that would free me from her, monster that she was. My hand brushed against Meriem’s breasts, almost by accident. I was drowsing in the broiling shade of the tree, and she had laid her head on my thighs. She arched her back a little to look up at me. Her hair was in her eyes, and she burst into a warbling laugh filled with the lights of another life. I leaned over her face. It was nice, and, sort of joking around, I kissed her on the mouth, canceling the smile on her parted lips. She didn’t say anything and I stayed in that bent-over position. I had the whole sky in my eyes when I straightened up, and it was blue and gold. I felt the weight of Meriem’s head on my thigh. We stayed like that, half asleep, for a long time. When it got too hot, she stood up, and I followed her. I caught up with her, put my arm around her waist, and we walked together, like a single body. She smiled the whole time, dreamily, her eyes nearly closed. We reached the train station, still embracing. You could do that in those days. Not like today. While we were looking at each other with a new curiosity aroused by physical desire, she said, “I’m darker than you.” I asked her if she could come back one evening. She laughed again and shook her head to say no. I dared to ask, “Do you want to marry me?” Her gulp of surprise was like a dagger in my heart. She hadn’t been expecting that. I think she would have preferred to let our relationship continue as a source of natural amusement rather than become the prelude to a more serious engagement. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered that I didn’t know what that meant when I used words, but when I was silent, it became obvious in my head. You’re smiling? Hmm, that means you understand … Yes, it’s a big fib. From beginning to end. The scene’s too perfect, I made it all up. Of course I never dared to say any such thing to Meriem. Her extravagant beauty, her disposition, and her assurance of a better life than mine always struck me dumb. Her type of woman has disappeared in this country today: free, brash, disobedient, aware of their body as a gift, not as a sin or a shame. The only time I saw a cold shadow come over her was when she told me about her domineering, polygamous father, whose lecherous eyes stirred up doubt and panic in her. Books delivered her from her family and offered her a pretext for getting away from Constantine; as soon as she could, she’d enrolled in the University of Algiers.

Meriem left around the end of summer, our romance had lasted only several weeks, and the day I realized she was gone forever I broke every dish in the house, insulting Mama and Musa and all the world’s victims. Anger blurred my sight, but I remember Mama sitting calmly and watching me empty myself of my passion, serene and almost amused by her victory over all the women in the world. What followed was nothing but a long wrench of separation. Meriem wrote me letters that came to my office. I’d answer her with fury and anger. She’d describe her studies, the progress of her thesis, her tribulations as a rebellious student, but then everything gradually dwindled. Her letters became shorter and less frequent. Until one day they simply stopped altogether. All the same, I kept waiting for the Algiers bus at the train station, just to make myself suffer, for months and months.

Listen, I think this is the last get-together for you and me, go over there and insist that he join us. He’ll come this time …

Bonjour, monsieur . You look as though you have Latin ancestry, nothing surprising about that in this town, which has given herself to sailors from all over the globe since the dawn of time. You’re a teacher? No. Hey, Musa! Another bottle and some olives, please! What’s this? The gentleman is deaf and dumb? Our guest doesn’t speak any language? Is that true? He reads lips … Well, at least you know how to read. My young friend here has a book in which no one listens to anyone else. You should like it. It should be more interesting than your newspaper clippings, in any case.