A Happy Death (Penguin Modern Classics) by Albert Camus

Author:Albert Camus [Camus, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0141186585
Published: 1972-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

"Don't believe it," Mersault said, holding out his hand.

Bernard held his hand a long time. "To think the way you do," he said smiling, "you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope."

"Or both, perhaps."

"Oh, I wasn't asking!"

"I know," Mersault said seriously. But when Bernard was at the door, Mersault, impelled by a sudden need, called him back.

"Yes?" the doctor said turning around.

"Are you capable of feeling contempt for a man?"

"I think so."

"On what conditions?"

The doctor reflected. "It's quite simple, I think. In cases when he was motivated by expediency or a desire for money."

"That is simple," Mersault said. "Goodnight, Bernard."

"Goodnight."

Alone, Mersault reflected. At the point he had now reached, another man's contempt left him in-different. But he recognized in Bernard profound resonances that brought the two of them together. It seemed intolerable that a part of himself should condemn the rest. Had he acted out of expediency? He had become aware of the essential and immoral truth that money is one of the surest and swiftest means of acquiring one's dignity. He had managed to dispel the bitterness which besets any decent soul aware of the vile iniquities of the birth and growth

of a splendid fate. This sordid and revolting curse, whereby the poor end in poverty the life they have begun in poverty, he had rejected by using money as a weapon, opposing hatred with hatred. And out of this beast-to-beast combat, the angel sometimes emerged, intact, wings and halo and all, in the warm breath of the sea. It would be as it had been: he had said nothing to Bernard, and his creation would henceforth remain secret.

The girls left around five o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. As they got into the bus, Catherine turned back: "Goodbye, sea," she said.

A moment later, three laughing faces were staring at Mersault out of the rear window, and the yellow bus vanished like a huge golden insect into the sun. Though clear, the sky was a little heavy. Mersault, standing alone in the road, felt a deep sense of deliverance tinged with melancholy. Only today did his solitude become real, for only today did he feel bound to it. And to have accepted that solitude, to know that henceforth he was the master of all his days to come, filled him with the melancholy that is attached to all greatness.

Instead of taking the highway, he returned through the carob trees and the olives, following a little path that wound around the foothills and came out behind his house. He squashed several olives, and noticed that the path was speckled with these black ovals. At the summer's end, the carobs drench all Algeria with the smell of love, and in the evening or after the rain, it is as if the entire earth were rest-

ing, after giving itself to the sun, its womb drenched with a sperm smelling of bitter almonds. All day, their odor had poured down from the huge trees, heavy and oppressive.

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