Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
The old people's home is at Marengo, about eighty kilometers from Algiers, I'll take the two o'clock bus and get there in the afternoon. That way I can be there for the
vigil and come back tomorrow night. I asked my boss for
two days off and there was no way he was going to refuse me with an excuse like that. But he wasn't too happy about it. I even said, "It's not my fault." He didn't say anything. Then I thought I shouldn't have said that. After all, I didn't have anything to apologize for. He's the one who should have offered his condolences. But he probably will day after tomorrow, when he sees I'm in mourning. For now, it's almost as if Maman weren't dead. After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it.

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found
himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on
his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could
see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff
sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready
to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared
with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he
looked.
"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room,
a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully
between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples
lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and
above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an
illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed
a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright,

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing sur