It was pleasant; the coffee had warmed me up, and the smell of flowers on the night air was coming through the open door. I think I dozed off for a while. (9)
All around me there was still the same glowing countryside flooded with sunlight. The glare from the sky was unbearable. At one point, we went over a section of the road that had just been repaved. The tar had burst open in the sun. […] I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me – the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny black of the hearse. All of it – the sun, the smell of leather and horse dung from the hearse, the smell of varnish and incense, and my fatigue after a night without sleep – was making it hard for me to see or think straight. […] I could feel the blood pounding in my temples. (17)
I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold. On the back of my neck I could feel Marie’s heart beating softly. We lay on the float for a long time, half asleep. When the sun got too hot, she dove off and I followed. I caught up with her, put my arm around her waist, and we swam together. She laughed the whole time. (20)
Then the street lamps came on all of a sudden and made the first stars appearing in the night sky grow dim. I felt my eyes getting tired. (24)
I told him yes they were and said I was hungry. I ate fast and had some coffee. Then I went home and slept for a while because I’d drunk too much wine, and when I woke up I felt like having a smoke. […] it got very hot in the office, and that evening, when I left, I was glad to walk back slowly along the docks. The sky was green; I felt good. But I went straight home because I wanted to boil myself some potatoes. (26)
I wanted her so bad when I saw her in that pretty red-and-white striped dress and leather sandals. You could make out the shape of her firm breasts, and her tan made her face look like a flower. (34)
The four o’clock sun wasn’t too hot, but the water was warm, with slow, gently lapping waves. Marie taught me a game. […] This made a delicate froth which disappeared into the air or fell back in a warm spray over my face. But after a while my mouth was stinging with the salty bitterness. Then Marie swam over to me and pressed herself against me in the water. She put her lips on mine. Her tongue cooled my lips and we tumbled in the waves for a moment. […] I’d left my window open, and the summer night air flowing over our brown bodies felt good. (34-35)
Once out in the street, because I was so tired and also because we hadn’t opened the blinds, the day, already bright with sun, hit me like a slap in the face. […] I felt a little better and I noticed that I was hungry. (47)
The sun was shining almost directly overhead onto the sand, and the glare on the water was unbearable. […] It was hard to breathe in the rocky heat rising from the ground. […] I wasn’t thinking about anything, because I was half asleep from the sun beating down on my bare head. (52-53)
We walked on the beach for a long time. By now the sun was overpowering. It shattered into little pieces on the sand and water. (55)
The heat was so intense that it was just as bad standing still in the blinding stream falling from the sky. […] There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled little wave that broke on the sand. I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All that heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me. With every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a piece of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time. (57)
[…] a blinding halo of light and sea spray. I was thinking of the cool spring behind the rock. I wanted to hear the murmur of its water again, to escape the sun and the strain […] and to find shade and rest again at last. (57)
[…] my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward. […] the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, thick film. […] all I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me. The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. […] I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick time on the door of unhappiness. (58-59)
I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings. (65)
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and this time his office was filled with sunlight barely softened by a flimsy curtain. It was very hot. (66)
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