Then there is the voice of the man who was born in order to die.
Is voice was certainly triumphant when, with eyebrows knit, he waggled a sententious forefinger, saying: 'As for me, my father used give me five francs a week from my wages as pocket money to last me till the following Saturday. Well, I still managed to save a bit on the side. - First of all,when I went to see my fiancee, I would walk four miles through the open country to get there and four miles to get back. Just you listen to me, now, young men just don't know how to amuse themselves any more these days.' They were sated about a round table, three young men and the old man. He was telling them about his petty adventures, and his tales were the measure of what he had been: foolish pranks blown out of proportion, incidents of lassitude he celebrated as victories. He left no silences he told a story, always in a hurry to get it all out before h was left alone, and he would recall from his past not so much what had really struck him as what he thought would entertain his audience. Making people listen was his only vice, and he refused to notice the ironic looks and sudden mockery that greeted him. To others he was just the typical old man who had grown up, of course, in a time when everything was marvellous. Yet he thought himself he respected elder whose experience carried weight. The young don't know that experience is a defeat and that one must lose everything in order to know a little. He had suffered. He said nothing about that, believing he gained in stature by seeming happy. And even if he was wrong about that, he would have been still more misguided if he had wanted to move people by his unhappiness. How important are an old man's sufferings when life occupies the whole of your being?
He talked, talked, deliciously losing his way in the greyness of his muffled voice. But it could not last. His pleasure for ending and attention of his listeners was waning. He is not even funny any more; he was old. And the young like billiards and cards, a change from the imbecilic work they do everyday.
He was soon alone, despite all his efforts and the embroideries to make his story more attractive. Without consideration, the young had left. Alone once more. No longer to be listened to: that's what's terrible when one is old. They condemned him to silence and to solitude. Which meant he was going to die soon. And an old man who is going to die is useless, even annoying, and insidious. He should go away. Unless he holds his tongue: that's the least he could do. And he suffers because he cannot be silent without thinking that he is old.
He got up, however, and left, smiling at everyone about his. Bust he met only indifferent-looking faces of faces stirred with a gaiety in which he has no right to participate. And with his slow step, the small step of a laboring donkey he trotted along the sidewalk full of people.
He felt ill and did not want to go home. Usually he was quite happy to get home to his table and the oil lamp, the plates about which his fingers automatically found their places.He still liked to eat his supper in silence, the old woman on the other side of the table, chewing over each mouthful, with an empty head, eyes fixed and dead. This evening he would arrive home later. Supper would have been served and gone cold, his wife would be in bed worrying about him, since she knew that he often came horne unexcpectedly late. She would say, 'He's in the moon again,' and that would be that.
Now he was walking along with his gently insistent step. He was alone and old.At the end of a life, old age wells up in waves of nausea. It's not much fun on this treadmill one cannot turn back from. Is it that the treadmill keeps moving or is it that everything comes down to not being listened to any longer? Why don't people want to hear him? It would be so easy to deceive him A smile would be enough, a kindness.
Night is there, descending without hesitation, inevitably. And everything is inevitable for this poor and old man. He walks along silently, turns at the corner of a street, stumbles, and nearly falls. I saw him, It's ridiculous but what can you do about it? After all, he prefers being in the street, being out rather than at home, where for hours on end fever masks the old woman from him and isolates him in his room. Then, sometimes, the door slowly opens and gapes ajar for an instant. A man comes in, tall, dressed in a light-colored suit. He sits down facing the old man and the minutes pass while he says nothing. He is motionless, just like the door that stood ajar a moment ago. From time to time he strokes his hair and Sighs gently. When he has watched the old man for a long time with the same heavy sadness in his eyes, he leaves, silently. The latch clicks behind him and the old man is left, horrified, With an acid, painful fear in his stomach.
Out in the street, however few people he may meet, he is never alone. No doubt he is sick. Perhaps he will fall soon. I'm sure of It. That will be the end.
His fever sings. His short step hurries: tomorrow everything will be different, tomorrow. Suddenly he realizes that tomorrow Will be the same, and the day after tomorrow, and all the other days: And this irremediable discovery overwhelms him. It is ideas like this that kill you. Men kill themselves because they cannot bear such thoughts. Or if they are young, they turn them into epigrams.
Old, mad, drunk, nobody knows. His will be a worthy end, tearstained admirable. He will die in beauty, I mean in suffenng. That will be a consolation for him. And besides, where can he go? He is old forever.
Now the streets were darker and less populated. Voices were still passing by. In the strange peacefulness of the evening they were becoming more solemn. Behind the hills that encircled the city, they were still some glimmers of daylight. From somewhere out of sight, smoke rose, imposingly, behind the wooded hilltops. It rose slowly in the sky, in tiers, like the branches of a pine tree. The old man closed his eyes. All this belonged to him. . .and to others. As life carried away the rumblings of the town, beneath the foolish, indifferent smile of the sky, he was alone, forsaken, naked, dead already.
Need I describe the other side of this fine coin? Doubtless in a dark and dirty room. the old woman was laying the table. When dinner was ready, she sat down, looked at the clock, waited a little longer, and then began to eat a hearty meal. She thought to herself 'He's in the moon: 'That would be that.' - Albert Camuse