A purse of kisses (#69 Albert Camus)
If tonight was my last on earth and I was granted one final book to take to bed, my choice would be The Stranger, sometimes called The Outsider, occasionally translated as The Foreigner.
I am perturbed about my bed; it is reluctant to inspire me. Perhaps it has too many blankets weighing down its soul—there are three to be exact: a cheap fleece from Woolworths, an Italian throw woven with roses, and from the mountains in Morocco, a saddle-cloth fringed in silver sequins which jangle during sleep. A certain publisher has called for short-stories around the theme of ‘Bed’. This mule bed of mine will not rouse me to a single word, but over coffee last Friday, I mentioned the call for bed-stories to a friend, a writer from another country, but resident in South Africa. She has been here for a few years. Ah, she says, intrigued, she may very well have a story for the anthology. What I discover is that she is often faced with exclusionary rules in competitions and anthologies—stories are allowed from South African citizens only, not from foreigners. This bed-anthology could be an interesting opportunity though, please email me the information, she asks. When I return home, without reading the submission guidelines, I send off the brief. Soon she responds, disappointed; the anthology is for citizens only. How could I have missed that, I wondered? It’s because I take it so for granted. Surely a woman who contributes to our community, who lives here, surely her story should not be excluded? What of a migrant worker or a refugee who has made this country home? There is some arbitrariness in this judgment of what is fit to be included. I have no grudge against the bed-anthology (other than my lack of a cooperative bed), but exclusion concerns me and I don’t understand it. I struggle, but find no real meaning in borders, or passports, or identity books, or birth certificates or death certificates or even marriage certificates (now you belong to this side of the line, now you are permitted to pay tax in this land, now you are numbered, now you are born, now you are dead, now you are sworn to love one person without respite). It’s all made up. In two empires time those numbers, those certificates, those bloody borders will all be dust. Only stories will remain—not the rulers or the rules only the attempts to make sense of them.
It is unclear to me why The Outsider is the book I’d read last before all others. It is not only that it is slim (and I am inordinately fond of authors who can say many things with few pages), but something about this man, this character, this book, makes me want to take it to bed. There mule! I have contrived you into blog, but now for the kiss. Actually, in this case Camus doesn’t kiss:
I was staring at the ground. He took a step towards me and stopped, as if he didn’t dare come any closer. He was looking up at the sky through the bars. ‘You’re mistaken, my son,’ he said, ‘there is more that could be asked of you. And it may well be asked of you.’ ‘And what is that?’ ‘You could be asked to see.’ ‘To see what?’
The priest looked all around him and replied in a voice which suddenly sounded extremely weary, ‘I know how the suffering oozes from these stones. I’ve never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that even the most wretched among you have looked at them and seen a divine face emerging from the darkness. It is the face which you are being asked to see.’
I woke up a bit. I told him that I’d been looking at these walls for months. There wasn’t anything or anyone in the world I knew better. Maybe, a long time ago, I had looked for a face in them. But that face was the colour of the sun and burning with desire: it was Marie’s face. I’d looked for it in vain. Now it was all over. And in any case, I’d never seen anything emerging from any oozing stones.
The chaplain looked at me almost sadly. By now I had my back right up against the wall and my forehead was bathed in light. He said a few words which I didn’t hear and then asked me very quickly if I’d let him kiss me. ‘No,’ I said. He turned and walked over to the wall and ran his hand slowly across it. ‘Do you really love this earth as much as that?’ he murmured. I didn’t answer.
