The Age of Reason Read Online Free Page A

shelter, it was gradually recovering its native warmth and innocence, and began to expand beneath its covering fabrics; — the oilcan, how on earth was he going to remember to bring the oilcan the day after tomorrow? He was alone.
    He stopped, transfixed: it wasn’t true, he wasn’t alone. Marcelle had not let him go: she was thinking of him, and this was what she thought: ‘The dirty dog, he’s let me down.’ It was no use striding along the dark, deserted street, anonymous, enveloped in his garments — he could not escape her. Marcelle’s consciousness remained, full of woe and lamentation, and Mathieu had not left her: he was there, in the pink room, naked and defenceless against that crass transparency, so much more baffling than a look. ‘Only once,’ he said savagely to himself, and he repeated in an undertone, to convince Marcelle: ‘once in seven years. ’ Marcelle refused to be convinced; she remained in the room, and was thinking of Mathieu. It was intolerable to be judged, and hated, away back in that room, and in silence. Without power to defend himself, or even to hide his belly with his hands. If only, in the same second, he had been able to exist for others with the same intensity... But Jacques and Odette were asleep. Daniel was drunk or in a stupor. Ivich never remembered people when they were not there. Boris perhaps... But Boris’s consciousness was no more than a dim flicker, it could not contend against that savage, stark lucidity that fascinated Mathieu from a distance. Night had engulfed most human consciousnesses: Mathieu was alone with Marcelle in the night, just the two of them.
    There was a light at Camus’s place. The landlord was stacking the chairs: the waitress was fixing a wooden shutter against one side of the double door. Mathieu pushed open the other side and went in. He felt the need of being seen. Just to be seen. He planted his elbows on the counter.
    ‘Good evening, everybody.’
    The landlord saw him. There was also a bus-conductor, drinking an absinthe, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Two kindly, casual consciousnesses. The conductor jerked his cap back, and looked at Mathieu. Marcelle’s consciousness released him, and dissolved into the night.
    ‘Give me a beer.’
    ‘You’re quite a stranger,’ said the landlord.
    ‘It isn’t for want of being thirsty.’
    ‘Yes, it’s thirsty weather,’ said the bus-conductor. ‘It might be mid-summer.’
    They fell silent. The landlord went on rinsing glasses, the conductor whistled to himself. Mathieu felt at ease because they looked at him from time to time. He saw his head in the glass, a ghastly globe emerging from a sea of silver: at Camus’s, one always had the feeling that it was four in the morning, which was an effect of the light, a silvered haze that strained the eyes, and bleached the drinkers’ faces, hands, and thoughts. He drank: and he thought: ‘She’s pregnant. It’s fantastic. I can’t feel it’s true.’ It seemed to him shocking and grotesque, like the sight of an old man kissing an old woman on the lips: after seven years that sort of thing shouldn’t happen; ‘She’s pregnant’ — there was a little, vitreous tide within her, slowly swelling into the semblance of an eye. ‘It’s opening out among all the muck inside her belly, it’s alive.’ He saw a long pin moving hesitantly forward in the half-darkness: there was a muffled sound, the eye cracked and burst: nothing was left but an opaque, dry membrane. ‘She’ll go to that old woman: she’ll get herself messed up.’ He felt venomous. ‘All right, let her go.’ He shook himself: these were bleak thoughts, the thoughts of four o’clock in the morning.
    ‘Good night.’
    He paid and went.
    ‘What did I do?’ He walked slowly, trying to remember. ‘Two months ago...’ He couldn’t remember anything. ‘Yes, it must have been the day after the Easter holidays. He had taken Marcelle in his arms, as usual, in affection no