The Stranger Read Online Free PDF

true and I agreed. Then he told me that as a matter of fact he wanted to ask my advice about the whole business, because I was a man, I knew about things, I could help him out, and then we’d be pals. I didn’t say anything, and he asked me again if I wanted to be pals. I said it was fine with me: he seemed pleased. He got out the blood sausage, fried it up, and set out glasses, plates, knives and forks, and two bottles of wine. All this in silence. Then we sat down. As we ate, he started telling me his story. He was a little hesitant at first. “I knew this lady … as a matter of fact, well, she was my mistress.” The man he’d had the fight with was this woman’s brother. He told me he’d been keeping her. I didn’t say anything, and yet right away he added that he knew what people around the neighborhoodwere saying, but that his conscience was clear and that he was a warehouse guard.
    “To get back to what I was saying,” he continued, “I realized that she was cheating on me.” He’d been giving her just enough to live on. He paid the rent on her room and gave her twenty francs a day for food. “Three hundred francs for the room, six hundred for food, a pair of stockings every now and then—that made it a thousand francs. And Her Highness refused to work. But she was always telling me that things were too tight, that she couldn’t get by on what I was giving her. And I’d say to her, ‘Why not work half-days? You’d be helping me out on all the little extras. I bought you a new outfit just this month, I give you twenty francs a day, I pay your rent, and what do you do?… You have coffee in the afternoons with your friends. You even provide the coffee and sugar. And me, I provide the money. I’ve been good to you, and this is how you repay me.’ But she wouldn’t work; she just kept on telling me she couldn’t make ends meet—and that’s what made me realize she was cheating on me.”
    Then he told me that he’d found a lottery ticket in her purse and she hadn’t been able to explain how she paid for it. A short time later he’d found a ticket from the shop in Mont-de-Piété in her room which proved that she’d pawned two bracelets. Until then he hadn’t even known the bracelets existed. “It was clear that she was cheating on me. So I left her. But first I smacked her around. And then I told her exactly what I thought ofher. I told her that all she was interested in was getting into the sack. You see, Monsieur Meursault, it’s like I told her: ‘You don’t realize that everybody’s jealous of how good you have it with me. Someday you’ll know just how good it was.’ ”
    He’d beaten her till she bled. He’d never beaten her before. “I’d smack her around a little, but nice-like, you might say. She’d scream a little. I’d close the shutters and it always ended the same way. But this time it’s for real. And if you ask me, she still hasn’t gotten what she has coming.”
    Then he explained that that was what he needed advice about. He stopped to adjust the lamp’s wick, which was smoking. I just listened. I’d drunk close to a liter of wine and my temples were burning. I was smoking Raymond’s cigarettes because I’d run out. The last streetcars were going by, taking the now distant sounds of the neighborhood with them. Raymond went on. What bothered him was that he “still had sexual feelings for her.” But he wanted to punish her. First he’d thought of taking her to a hotel and calling the vice squad to cause a scandal and have her listed as a common prostitute. After that he’d looked up some of his underworld friends. But they didn’t come up with anything. As Raymond pointed out to me, a lot of good it does being in the underworld. He’d said the same thing to them, and then they’d suggested “marking” her. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He was going to think about it. But first he wanted to ask me something. Beforehe did, though, he wanted to