A Happy Death

by Albert Camus

  lighted to find a light switch that had not been attached, and set to work. Someone knocked: the boy from the cafe bringing his lunch, as he had arranged the day before. He sat down at his table just as he was, ate without appetite before the food had a chance to cool, and began to smoke, lying on the couch in the downstairs room. When he awakened, annoyed at having fallen asleep, it was four o'clock. He bathed then, shaved carefully, dressed and wrote two letters, one to Lucienne, the other to the three girls. It was already very late, and growing dark. Nonetheless he walked to the village to mail his letters and returned without having met anyone. He went upstairs and out onto the terrace: the sea and the night were conversing on the beach and above the ruins. Mersault reflected. The memory of this wasted day embittered him. Tonight, at least, he would work, do something, read or go out and walk through the night. The garden gate creaked: his dinner was coming. He was hungry, ate happily, then felt unable to leave the house. He decided to read late in bed. But after the first pages bis eyes closed, and the next morning he woke up late.

  In the days that followed, Mersault tried to struggle against this encroachment. As the days passed, filled by the creak of the gate and countless cigarettes, he was disconcerted by the variance between the gesture which had brought him to this life and this life itself. One evening he wrote Lucienne to come, deciding to break this solitude from which he had expected so much. After the letter was sent, he

  was filled with a secret shame, but once Lucienne arrived the shame dissolved in a kind of mindless eager joy to rediscover a familiar being and the easy life her presence signified. He made a fuss over her, and Lucienne seemed almost surprised by his solicitude, when she wasn't preoccupied with her carefully pressed white linen dresses.

  He took walks now, but with Lucienne. He recovered his complicity with the world, but by resting his hand on Lucienne's shoulder. Taking refuge in humanity, he escaped his secret dread. Within two days, however, Lucienne bored him. And this was the moment she chose to ask him to let her live there. They were at dinner, and Mersault had simply refused, not raising his eyes from his plate.

  After a pause, Lucienne had added in a neutral tone of voice: "You don't love me."

  Mersault looked up. Her eyes were full of tears. He relented: "But I never said I did, my child."

  "I know," Lucienne said, "and that's why."

  Mersault stood up and walked to the window. Between the pines, the stars throbbed in the night sky. And never had Patrice felt, along with his dread, so much disgust as at this moment for the days they had just passed together. "You're a lovely girl, Lucienne. I can't see any further than that. It's all I ask of you. It has to be enough for the two of us."

  "I know," Lucienne said. She was sitting with her back to Patrice, scoring the tablecloth with the tip of her knife. He walked over to her and rested a hand on the nape of her neck.

  "Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory . . . Everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion—it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from." After a pause, he added: "I don't know if you understand what I mean."

  "I think I understand." She suddenly turned her head toward Mersault. "You're not happy."

  "I will be," Mersault said violently. "I have to be. With this night, this sea, and this flesh under my fingers." He had turned back toward the window and tightened his hand over the nape of Lucienne's neck. She said nothing.

  Then, without looking at him, "At least you feel friendly toward me, don't you?"

  Patrice knelt beside her and gently bit her shoulder. "Friendly, yes, the way I feel friendly toward the night. You are the pleasure of my eyes, and you don't know what a place such joy can have in my heart."

  She left the next day. And the day after that Mersault was unable to stand himself, and drove to Algiers. He went first to the House above the World. His friends promised to come to see him at the end of the month. Then he decided to visit his old neighborhood.

  His apartment had been rented to a man who ran a cafe. He inquired after the barrelmaker, but no one knew anything—someone thought he had gone to Paris to look for work. Mersault walked through the streets. At the restaurant, Celeste had aged—but not much; Rene was still there, with his tuberculosis and his solemn expression. They were all glad to see Patrice again, and he felt moved by this encounter.

  "Hey, Mersault," Celeste told him, "you haven't changed. Still the same!"

  "Yes," Mersault said. He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs for one another. And precisely to the degree that Celeste, Rene, and the others had known him, he had become as alien and remote to them as an uninhabited planet. Yet he left them with affectionate farewells. And just outside the restaurant he ran into Marthe. As soon as he saw her he realized that he had almost forgotten her and that at the same time he had wanted to meet her. She still had her painted goddess's face. He desired her vaguely but without conviction. They walked together.

  "Oh, Patrice," she said, "I'm so glad! What's become of you?"

  "Nothing, as you can see. I'm living in the country."

  "Wonderful. I've always dreamed of living in the

  country." And after a silence: "You know, I'm not angry at you or anything."

  "Yes," Mersault said, laughing, "you've managed to console yourself."

  Then Marthe spoke in a tone of voice he did not recognize. "Don't be nasty, Patrice. I knew it would end like this some day. You were a funny guy. And I was nothing but a little girl. That's what you al-ways used to say ... Of course when it happened I was furious. But finally I told myself, 'He's un-happy.' And you know, it's funny, I don't know how to say it, but that was the first time that what we . . . that what happened between us made me feel sad and happy at the same time."

  Surprised, Mersault stared at her. He suddenly re-alized that Marthe had always been very decent with him. She had accepted him as he was and had spared him a great deal of loneliness. He had been unfair: while his imagination and vanity had given her too much importance, his pride had given her too little. He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love—first to their advantage, then to their dis-advantage. Today he understood that Marthe had been genuine with him—that she had been what she was, and that he owed her a good deal. It was begin-ning to rain—just enough to reflect the lights of the street; through the shining drops he saw Marthe's suddenly serious face and felt overcome by a burst of gratitude he could not express—in the old days

  he might have taken it for a kind of love. But he could find only stiff words: "You know, Marthe, I'm very fond of you. Even now, if there's anything I could do . . ."

  She smiled: "No. I'm young still. And I don't do without . . ."

  He nodded. What a distance there was between them, and yet what complicity! He left her in front of her own house. She had opened her umbrella, saying, "I hope we'll see each other again."

  "Yes," Mersault said. She gave him a sad little smile. "Oh, that's your little girl's face." She had stepped into the doorway and closed her umbrella. Patrice held out his hand and smiled in his turn. "Till next time, image." She hugged him quickly, kissed him on both cheeks, and ran upstairs. Mersault, standing in the rain, still felt Marthe's cold nose and warm lips on his cheeks. And that sudden, disinterested kiss had all the purity of the one given him by the freckled little whore in Vienna.

  Then he went to find Lucienne, slept at her apartment, and asked her to walk with him on the boulevards. It was almost noon when they came downstairs. Orange boats were drying in th
e sun like fruit cut in quarters. The double flock of pigeons and their shadows swooped down to the docks and up again in a long, slow curve. The sun was brilliant and the air grew stifling. Mersault watched the red-and-black steamer slowly gain the channel, put on speed, and gradually veer toward

  the streak of light glistening where the sky met the sea. For the onlookers, there is a bitter sweetness in every departure. "They're lucky," Lucienne said.

  "Yes." He was thinking "No"—or at least that he didn't envy them their luck. For him, too, starting over, departures, a new life had a certain luster, but he knew that only the impotent and the lazy attach happiness to such things. Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. He could hear Zagreus: "Not the will to renounce, but the will to happiness." He had his arm around Lucienne, and her warm breast rested in his hand.

  That same evening, as he drove back to the Chenoua, Mersault felt an enormous silence in himself as he faced the swelling waves and the steep hillsides. By making the gesture of a fresh start, by becoming aware of his past, he had defined what he wanted and what he did not want to be. Those wasted days he had been ashamed of seemed dangerous but necessary now. He might have foundered then and missed his one chance, his one justification. But after all, he had to adapt himself to everything.

  Rounding one curve after the next, Mersault steeped himself in this humiliating yet priceless truth: the conditions of the singular happiness he sought were getting up early every morning, taking a regular swim—a conscious hygiene. He drove very fast, resolved to take advantage of his discovery in

  order to establish himself in a routine which would henceforth require no further effort, to harmonize his own breathing with the deepest rhythm of time, of life itself.

  The next morning he got up early and walked down to the sea. The sky was already brilliant, and the morning full of rustling wings and crying birds. But the sun was only touching the horizon's curve, and when Mersault stepped into the still-lusterless water, he seemed to be swimming in an indeterminate darkness until, as the sun climbed higher, he thrust his arms into streaks of icy red and gold. Then he swam back to land and walked up to his house. His body felt alert and ready for whatever the day might bring. Every morning, now, he came downstairs just before sunrise, and this first action controlled the rest of his day. Moreover, these swims exhausted him, but at the same time, because of the fatigue and the energy they afforded, they gave his entire day a flavor of abandonment and joyful lassitude. Yet the hours still seemed long to him—he had not yet detached time from a carcass of habits which still littered the past. He had nothing to do, and his time stretched out, measureless, before him. Each minute recovered its miraculous value, but he did not yet recognize it for what it was. Just as the days of a journey seem interminable whereas in an office the trajectory from Monday occurs in a flash, so Mersault, stripped of all his props, still tried to locate them in a life which had

  nothing but itself to consider. Sometimes he picked up his watch and stared as the minute hand shifted from one number to the next, marveling that five minutes should seem so interminable. Doubtless that watch opened the way—a painful and tormenting way—which leads to the supreme art of doing nothing. He learned to walk; sometimes in the afternoon he would walk along the beach as far as the ruins of Tipasa; then he would lie down among the wormwood bushes, and with his hands on the warm stone would open his eyes and his heart to the intolerable grandeur of that seething sky. He matched the pounding of his blood with the violent pulsation of the sun at two o'clock, and deep in the fierce fragrance, deafened by the invisible insects, he watched the sky turn from white to deep-blue, then pale to green, pouring down its sweetness upon the still-warm ruins. He would walk home early then, and go to bed. In this passage from sun to sun, his days were organized according to a rhythm whose deliberation and strangeness became as necessary to him as had been his office, his restaurant, and his sleep in his mother's room. In both cases, he was virtually unconscious of it. But now, in his hours of lucidity, he felt that time was his own, that in the brief interval which finds the sea red and leaves it green, something eternal was represented for him in each second. Beyond the curve of the days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity—hap-piness was human, eternity ordinary. What mat-]

  tered was to humble himself, to organize his heart to match the rhythm of the days instead of submitting their rhythm to the curve of human hopes.

  Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched—just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance—so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned.

  On Sundays, Mersault played pool with Perez. The old fisherman, one arm a stump cut off above the elbow, played pool in a peculiar fashion, puffing out his chest and leaning his stump on the cue. When they went out fishing in the morning, Perez rowed with the same skill, and Mersault admired the way he would stand in the boat pushing one oar with his chest, the other with his good hand. The two men got along well. After the morning's fishing, Perez cooked cuttlefish in a hot sauce, stewing them in their own ink, and soaking up the black juice left in the pan with pieces of bread. As they sat in the fisherman's kitchen over the sooty stove, Perez never spoke, and Mersault was grateful to him for this gift of silence. Sometimes, after his morning swim, he would see the old man putting his boat in the sea, and he would join him. "Shall I come with you, Perez?"

  "Get in."

  They put the oars in the locks and rowed to gether, Mersault being careful not to catch his feet in the trawling hooks. Then they would fish, and Mersault would watch the lines, gleaming to the water's surface, black and wavering underneath. The sun broke into a thousand fragments on the sea, and Mersault breathed the heavy stifling smell that rose from it like fumes. Sometimes Perez pulled in a little fish he would throw back, saying: "Go home to your mother." At eleven they rowed home and Mersault, his hands glistening with scales and his face swollen with sun, waited in his cool, dark house while Perez prepared a pan of fish they would eat together in the evening. Day after day, Mersault let himself sink into his life as if he were sliding into water. And just as the swimmer advances by the complicity of his arms and the water which bears him up, helps him on, it was enough to make a few essential gestures—to rest one hand on a tree-trunk, to take a run on the beach—in order to keep himself intact and conscious. Thus he became one with a life in its pure state, he rediscovered a paradise given only to the most private or the most intelligent animals. At the point where the mind denies the mind, he touched his truth and with it his extreme glory, his extreme love.

  Thanks to Bernard, he also mingled with the life of the village. He had been obliged to send for Bernard to treat some minor indisposition, and since then they had seen each other repeatedly, with plea-

  sure. Bernard was a silent man, but he had a kind of bitter wit that cast a gleam in his horn-rimmed glasses. He had practiced medicine a long time in Indochina, and at forty had retired to his corner of Algeria, where for several years he had led a tranquil life with his wife, an almost mute Indochinese who wore Western clothes and arranged her hair in a bun. Bernard's capacity for indulgence enabled him to adapt himself to any milieu. He liked the whole village, and was liked in return. He took Mer-sault on his rounds. Mersault already knew the owner of the cafe, a former tenor who would sing behind his bar and between two beats of Tosca threaten his wife with a beating. Patrice was asked to serve with Bernard on the holiday committee, and on July 14 they walked through the streets in tricolor armbands or argued with the other committee members sitting around a zinc table sticky with aperitifs as to whether the bandstand should be decorated with ferns or palms. There was even an attempt to lure him into an electoral contest, but Mersault had had time to know the mayor, who had "presided
over the destiny of his commune" (as he said) for the last decade, and this semi-permanent position inclined him to regard himself as Napoleon Bonaparte. A wealthy grapegrower, he had had a Greek-style house built for himself, and proudly showed it to Mersault. It consisted of a ground floor and a second floor around a courtyard, but the mayor had spared no expense and installed an ele-

  vator, which he insisted that Mersault and Bernard ride in. And Bernard commented placidly: "Very smooth." The visit had inspired Mersault with a profound admiration for the mayor, and he and Bernard wielded all their influence to keep him in the office he deserved on so many counts.

  In springtime, the little village with its close-set red roofs between the mountain and the sea overflowed with flowers—roses, hyacinths, bougainvilleas—and hummed with insects. Afternoons, Mersault would walk out onto his terrace and watch the village dozing under the torrent of light. Local history consisted of a rivalry between Morales and Bingues, two rich Spanish landowners whom a series of speculations had transformed into millionaires, in the grip of a terrible rivalry. When one bought a car, he chose the most expensive make; but the other, who would buy the same make, would add silver door handles. Morales was a genius at such tactics. He was known in the village as the King of Spain, for on each occasion he triumphed over Bingues, who lacked imagination. During the war, when Bingues pledged several hundred thousand francs for a national bond drive, Morales had declared: "I'll do better than that, I'll give my son." And he had made his son, who was too young to be mobilized, volunteer. In 1925, Bingues had driven out from Algiers in a magnificent racing Bugatti; two weeks later, Morales had built himself a hangar and bought a plane. The plane was still sleeping in

  its hangar, and was shown to visitors on Sundays. Bingues called Morales "that barefoot beggar," and Morales referred to Bingues as "that lime kiln."

  Bernard took Mersault to visit Morales, who welcomed them warmly to his huge farm, humming with wasps and fragrant with grapes. Wearing es-padrilles and shirtsleeves because he could not endure a jacket and shoes, Morales showed them the airplane, the son's medal framed in the living room, and explained the necessity of keeping foreigners out of Algeria (he was naturalized, "but that Bingues, for instance . . ."), then led them to inspect his latest acquisition. They walked through an enormous vineyard in the middle of which was a cleared space where a kind of Louis XV salon had been set up, each piece made of the most precious woods and fabrics. Thus Morales could receive visitors on his grounds. When Mersault courteously asked what happened when it rained, Morales shifted his cigar and without even blinking answered: "I replace it." On his way home, Mersault spent the time arguing with Bernard over the difference between the nouveau riche and the poet. Morales, according to Bernard, was a poet. Mersault declared he would have made a splendid Roman emperor during the decline.