The Immoralist — Chapter 5

Chapter 6 of 14 · Review of The Immoralist

Our stay at Biskra was not to last much longer. Once the February rains were over, the heat broke out too fiercely. After several trying days, which we had lived through under the downpour, one morning, abruptly, I woke into blue sky. As soon as I was up I ran to the highest terrace. The sky, from one horizon to the other, was clear. Under the sun, already burning, mists were rising; the whole oasis was steaming; far off one could hear the swollen Oued roaring. The air was so pure and so lovely that at once I felt myself getting better. Marceline came; we meant to go out, but the mud that day kept us in.

A few days later we were going back to Lassif's orchard; the stems seemed heavy, soft, and swollen with water. That African earth, whose season of waiting I had not known, submerged through long days, was now waking out of winter, drunk with water, bursting with new sap; it laughed with a frenzied spring whose reverberation I felt, and as it were its double, within myself. Ashour and Moktir went with us at first; I still relished their light friendship, which cost no more than half a franc a day; but soon, wearying of them, being no longer so weak myself that I still needed the example of their health, and no longer finding in their games the nourishment my joy required, I turned back toward Marceline the exaltation of my mind and of my senses. From the joy she took in it, I perceived that until then she had remained sad. I apologized like a child for having so often left her to herself, laid my elusive and peculiar moods to the account of my weakness, declared that until now I had been too weary to love, but that henceforth I should feel my love grow along with my health. I was speaking the truth; but no doubt I was still very weak, for it was not until more than a month afterward that I desired Marceline.

Every day, however, the heat increased. Nothing held us at Biskra — nothing but that charm which was afterward to call me back there. Our decision to leave was sudden. In three hours our bags were packed. The train left the next day at dawn…

I remember the last night. The moon was very nearly full; through my wide-open window it came full into my room. Marceline was asleep, I think. I was in bed, but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of happy fever, which was nothing other than life… I got up, dipped my hands and my face in the water, then, pushing open the glass door, I went out.

It was late already; not a sound; not a breath; the very air seemed asleep. Barely, far off, one could hear the Arab dogs, which, like jackals, yelp all the night long. Before me, the little courtyard; the wall, facing me, cast into it a slanting panel of shadow; the evenly spaced palms, with no more color or life, seemed made motionless forever… But in sleep one still finds a throb of life — here nothing seemed to be sleeping; everything seemed dead. That stillness appalled me; and suddenly there swept over me once more, as though to protest, to assert itself, to grieve aloud in the silence, the tragic feeling of my life, so violent, almost painful, and so impetuous that I should have cried out with it, had I been able to cry out as the animals do. I took my hand, I remember, my left hand in my right; I wanted to raise it to my head, and did so. Why? to assure myself that I was living, and to find that admirable. I touched my forehead, my eyelids. A shiver took hold of me. A day will come — I thought — a day will come when, even to carry to my lips the very water I shall thirst for most, I shall no longer have strength enough… I went back in, but did not lie down again yet; I wanted to fix that night, to impose the memory of it upon my mind, to hold it back; undecided as to what I should do, I took up a book from my table — the Bible — and let it fall open at random; leaning into the moonlight, I could read; I read those words of Christ to Peter, those words, alas! that I was never again to forget: Now thou girdest thyself and goest where thou wilt; but when thou art old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands… thou shalt stretch forth thy hands…

The next day, at dawn, we left.