The Stranger

I felt as I hadn’t felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. For the first time I’d realized how all these people loathed me.

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.

I drank the coffee, and then I wanted a cigarette. But I wasn’t sure if I should smoke, under the circumstances—in Mother’s presence. I thought it over; really, it didn’t seem to matter, so I offered the keeper a cigarette, and we both smoked.

Still, I had an idea he looked annoyed, and I said, without thinking: “Sorry, sir, but it’s not my fault, you know.”

I agreed it wasn’t a bad plan; it would punish her, all right.

Every time there’s a death here, they’re in a nervous state for two or three days

It was such a new experience, being a focus of interest; in the ordinary way no one ever paid much attention to me.

But suddenly he raised his head and looked straight at me. “Why have you refused to see me?” he asked. I said that I didn’t believe in God. He wanted to know if I was sure and I said that I didn’t see any reason to ask myself that question: it seemed unimportant. He then leaned back against the wall, hands flat on his thighs. Almost as if it wasn’t me he was talking to, he remarked that sometimes we think we’re sure when in fact we’re not. I didn’t say anything. He looked at me and asked, “What do you think?” I said it was possible. In any case, I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t. And it just so happened that what he was talking about didn’t interest me.

So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that’s wrong. And in a way I was right. But in another way I was forced to admit that that was the whole secret of good organization. In other words, the condemned man was forced into a kind of moral collaboration. It was in his interest that everything go off without a hitch.

And also according to him, a man who is morally guilty of killing his mother severs himself from society in the same way as the man who raises a murderous hand against the father who begat him. In any case, the one man paved the way for the deeds of the other, in a sense foreshadowed and even legitimized them.