I’m going back to bed; forgive me. I fear I got worked up; yet I’m not weeping. At times one wanders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal. But when you don’t like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don’t have any choice, do you? What can one do to become another? Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget [145] oneself for someone else, at least once. But how? Don’t bear down too hard on me. I’m like that old beggar who wouldn’t let go of my hand one day on a café terrace: “Oh, sir,” he said, “it’s not just that I’m no good, but you lose track of the light.” Yes, we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves.
Look, it’s snowing! Oh, I must go out! Amsterdam asleep in the white night, the dark jade canals under the little snow-covered bridges, the empty streets, my muted steps—there will be purity, even if fleeting, before tomorrow’s mud. See the huge flakes drifting against the windowpanes. It must be the doves, surely. They finally make up their minds to come down, the little dears; they are covering the waters and the roofs with a thick layer of feathers; they are fluttering at every window. What an invasion! Let’s hope they are bringing good news. Everyone will be saved, eh?—and not only the elect. Possessions and hardships will be shared and you, for example, from today on you will sleep every night on the ground for me. The whole shooting match, eh? Come now, admit that you would be flabbergasted if a chariot came down [146] from heaven to carry me off, or if the snow suddenly caught fire. You don’t believe it? Nor do I. But still I must go out.
All right, all right, I’ll be quiet; don’t get upset! Don’t take my emotional outbursts or my ravings too seriously. They are controlled. Say, now that you are going to talk to me about yourself, I shall find out whether or not one of the objectives of my absorbing confession is achieved. I always hope, in fact, that my interlocutor will be a policeman and that he will arrest me for the theft of “The Just Judges.” For the rest—am I right?—no one can arrest me. But as for that theft, it falls within the provisions of the law and I have arranged everything so as to make myself an accomplice: I am harboring that painting and showing it to whoever wants to see it. You would arrest me then; that would be a good beginning. Perhaps the rest would be taken care of subsequently; I would be decapitated, for instance, and I’d have no more fear of death; I’d be saved. Above the gathered crowd, you would hold up my still warm head, so that they could recognize themselves in it and I could again dominate—an exemplar. All would be [147] consummated; I should have brought to a close, unseen and unknown, my career as a false prophet crying in the wilderness and refusing to come forth.
But of course you are not a policeman; that would be too easy. What? Ah, I suspected as much, you see. That strange affection I felt for you had sense to it then. In Paris you practice the noble profession of lawyer! I sensed that we were of the same species. Are we not all alike, constantly talking and to no one, forever up against the same questions although we know the answers in advance? Then please tell me what happened to you one night on the quays of the Seine and how you managed never to risk your life. You yourself utter the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights and that I shall at last say through your mouth: “O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving both of us!” A second time, eh, what a risky suggestion! Just suppose, cher maître, that we should be taken literally? We’d have to go through with it. Brr …! The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!
THE END.
ALBERT CAMUS was born in Mondovi, Algeria, in 1913. In occupied France in 1942 he published The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, a philosophical essay and a novel that first brought him to the attention of intellectual circles. Among his other major writings are the essay The Rebel and three widely praised works of fiction, The Plague, The Fall, and Exile and the Kingdom. He also published a volume of plays, Caligula and Three Other Plays, as well as various dramatic adaptations. (All the above titles are available in Modern Library or Vintage Books editions.) In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in an automobile accident.