The readers meet the narrator in the Amsterdam bar called "Mexico City". The narrator, a former lawyer, had an extensive practice in Paris, but after a period of radical change in his life he moved to a place where no one knew him, and he is trying to turn away from his heavy memories. He is a very sociable and uses the bar in some way as a temple, where he meets people telling them about his life, his sins, and almost always his interlocutors meet his frankness with the same frankness and confess so as one would confess to his confessor.
Jean-Baptiste Clamence is the name of the former lawyer, and he reveals himself to the reader, as to one of his daily companions. Working in Paris, he specialized in the "noble deeds" - on the protection of widows and orphans, as they say. He despised the judges and felt a sense of satisfaction when took up the case. He earned his living through disputations with people he despised. Clamence was in the camp of justice, and that was enough for his peace of mind. In his professional career he was perfect, never took bribes, did not stoop to some fraud, did not flatter those on whom his well-being depended. Finally, he never took a fee from the poor, was a man of generosity and really was such. He called it "the pinnacle of nobility", even in everyday things he always wanted to be superior to others, because, just raising over the other, it is possible to achieve enthusiastic views and cheers of the crowd.
One evening, Clamence, very pleased with the gone day, was walking on the Pont des Arts, quite deserted at that hour. He stopped to look at the river, there was growing sense of his own strength and completeness inside. Suddenly he heard behind a chuckle, but looking back, could not see anyone nearby. Laughter was going from nowhere, his heart was pounding. When he got home, he saw in the mirror his face, it was smiling, but the smile seemed to be false. Since then, it seemed to him that at times he could hear the laughter inside himself. That's when it all started.
Clamence began to feel that some kind of a string inside him went wrong, that he had forgotten how to live. He began to understand every day that only one thing worried him: his "ego". Women were trying to grasp him, but they could not. He quickly forgot them and always remembered only about himself. In his relations with them, he was guided only by sensibility. Their affection frightened him, but at the same time he did not let go any of the women, maintaining several relationships at the same time and making many unhappy. How Clamence realized later at that period of his life, he demanded from people everything and gave nothing in return: he made many people serve him, as though hiding them in the fridge, so they were always at hand, and he could use them when required. In memory of the past, shame burns his soul.
One November night Clamence returned from his mistress and passed on to the Royal bridge. On the bridge was a young woman. He walked past her. Going down the bridge, he heard a noise of a human body collapsing into water. Then there was a shout. He wanted to run for help, but could not move, but then he thought, it was too late, and slowly moved on. And said nothing to anybody.
His relationship with friends and acquaintances apparently remained the same, but frustrated little by little. Those still praised his sense of harmony, but he felt only confusion, a vulnerable, surrendered to the power of public opinion person. People seemed to him no longer respectful audience, to which he was accustomed, and his judges. Clamence discovered that he had enemies, but especially among people unfamiliar, because they hated his behavior os happy and satisfied person. The day he received his sight, he felt all the wounds inflicted and immediately had lost power. It seemed that the entire world began to laugh at him.
From that moment he was trying to find an answer to the taunts, which actually sounded within him. He began to shock his listeners of public lectures on law and behaved the way he would never allow himself to behave before. He scared all his clientele. With women he was bored because he was not longer playing with them. Then, tired of love, and of a sound mind, he decided to indulge into debauchery - it is great substitute for love, stop ridicule and, most importantly, does not impose any obligations. Alcohol and women of easy virtue gave him worthy of him relief. Then he was attacked by immense fatigue that still does not leave him. So few years passed. He had thought that the crisis had passed, but soon realized that this was not so, the cry which sounded on the Seine at the night behind him, had not stopped and at every opportunity reminded about itself even after moving to Amsterdam.
Once in the "Mexico City" bar he saw on the wall a picture of "Incorruptible Judges" by Van Eyck, stolen from the Cathedral of St. Bavo. Boss exchanged it for a bottle of gin in one of the regulars of his institution. This picture is wanted by the police of three countries. Clamence persuaded frightened host to give it to him for safekeeping. Since then, the picture is in his apartment, he tells his interlocutors about it, and each of them can report on him. Subconsciously this he seeks, feeling his inexpiable guilt before the girl, whom he had not saved, knowing that now an opportunity to get her out of the water would never occur. And the severity on the heart will remain with him forever.
