The Stranger
By Albert Camus
Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert
The sky was already a blaze of light, and the air stoking up rapidly. I felt the first waves of heat lapping my back, and my dark suit made things worse. I couldn’t imagine why we waited so long for getting under way. Old Pérez, who had put on his hat, took it off again. I had turned slightly in his direction and was looking at him when the warden started telling me more about him. I remember his saying that old Pérez and my mother used often to have a longish stroll together in the cool of the evening; sometimes they went as far as the village, accompanied by a nurse, of course.
天已经亮了，空气迅速变得燥热。我的背已经感受到热浪的袭击，而身上的黑色西装让情况变得更糟糕。我想不出为什么我们等了这么久还没开始出发。老佩雷斯又摘掉了帽子。看门人跟我说起老佩雷斯的事，而我稍稍转过身子，在一边打量老佩雷斯。看门人说，晚上凉快，老佩雷斯和我母亲常常一起散步，走很久；有时候他们会走到村子那边。当然，有一个护士会陪着他们。
I looked at the countryside, at the long lines of cypresses sloping up toward the skyline and the hills, the hot red soil dappled with vivid green, and here and there a lonely house sharply outlined against the light-and I could understand Mother’s feelings. Evenings in these parts must be a sort of mournful solace. Now, in the full glare of the morning sun, with everything shimmering in the heat haze, there was something inhuman, discouraging, about this landscape.
我看着四周的田野，一排排的柏树从天边延伸到小山，温热的红色土壤之间点缀着点点绿意，随处可见一座座房子，在阳光下孤独地矗立着——我能体会母亲的心情。晚上的时候，这样的光景披上哀伤的外衣，能给人安慰。现在太阳高照，在热浪中的万物闪烁着光芒，眼前的田野看起来太惨白，让人悲伤。
Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I’d loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man’s journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart.
这之后，法院休庭了。我被押回囚车。有一会，我感受到了外面夏天夜晚才有的心情，这对我来说并不陌生。坐在移动囚房的黑暗中，尽管我的脑袋已经很疲劳，我还是听到了那些我喜爱的镇上独有的声音，尤其是这个时刻才有的声音。卖报童疲倦的喊声，公园里小鸟归家的歌声，三明治小贩的叫卖，汽车在拐向城市的陡峭下坡路发出的尖锐摩擦声，还有海港上空传来的细微的铁器打击声——囚车开往监狱的路上，就算看不见，有了这些声音，我对沿途的一切了然于胸。
Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.
就是这样的时刻—那是多久以前了啊—我总是感到满足和幸福。在那样的夜晚，等待我的是无忧无虑，一觉无梦。现在又到了那样的时刻，但是生活变了。我将回到牢房，这一夜我得担忧即将到来的命运。现在我明白了，相同的路途，相同的夏天黄昏，盼来的可能是监狱，也有可能是一个好觉。
I had been shouting so much that I'd lost my breath, and just then the jailers rushed in and started trying to release the chaplain from my grip. One of them made as if to strike me. The chaplain quietened them down, then gazed at me for a moment without speaking. I could see tears in his eyes. Then he turned and left the cell.
我一直大喊大叫，差点喘不上气。那时候狱卒都冲了进来，试图把牧师从我的拳头下解救出来。有一个狱卒似乎想攻击我。牧师让他们都冷静下来，然后他沉默地盯着我看了一会，眼里满含泪水。他转身走了，离开了牢房。
Once he'd gone, I felt calm again. But all this excitement had exhausted me and I dropped heavily on my sleeping plank. I must have had a longish sleep, for, when I woke, the stars were shining down on my face. Sound of the country side came faintly in, and the cool night air, veined with smells’ of earth and salt,fanned my cheeks. The marvelous peace of the sleepbound summer night flooded through me like a tide. Then, just on the edge of daybreak, I heard a steamer’s siren.People were starting on a voyage to a world which had ceased to concern me forever. Almost for the first time in many months I thought of my mother. And now, it seemed to me, I understood why at her life’s end she had taken on a “fiancé”; why she’d played at making a fresh start. There, too, in that Home where lives were flickering out, the dusk came as a mournful solace. With death so near, Mother must have left like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.
牧师走了之后，我平静了下来。但是激动劲一过，整个人疲惫不堪，一头载到床铺上了。我想我应该睡了很长时间。我醒来的时候，星星已经爬上了天空。耳边隐约能听到从乡村传来的声音，凉爽的风，夹着泥土和盐巴的气味，拂过我的脸颊。夏天的夜，格外宁静，我的心也是宁静的。黎明降至之际，外面响起了轮船的汽笛声。人们开始了征程，去往一个与我无关的世界。就在当下，几个月以来，我第一次想到了我的母亲。现在我理解了她为什么在晚年还找一个“未婚夫”，为什么她想要一个新的开始。在养老院，那里的人已经在生命的尽头了，黄昏对他们来说是一种安慰。那时候，母亲已然觉得没有了包袱，准备好了开始新的生活。在这个世界上，没有任何人，谁也没有权利为我母亲哭泣。我呢，我也准备好迎接全新的生活了。之前强烈的愤怒似乎把我掏空了，把希望也带走了。我看着黑夜中的星星和轨迹，第一次，有生以来的第一次，我敞开我的心，拥抱这仁慈又冷漠的宇宙。我的世界完完全全属于我，很亲切，我相信我会幸福的，就像过去那样。这一切过后，我唯一的希望就是，那天的行刑会有很多人能来观看，他们会憎恶我，咒骂我。这样想想，也就不那么寂寞了。