Exile and the Kingdom

by Albert Camus; Justin O'Brien (Translator)

  According to Rateau, it must be added, Louise did not deserve to be looked at. Short and strapping himself, he liked nothing but tall women. “I don’t [115] know what you find in that insect,” he would say. Louise was in fact small and dark in skin, hair, and eye, but well built and pretty in the face. Jonas, tall and rugged, was touched at the sight of the in­sect, especially as she was industrious. Louise’s vo­cation was activity. Such a vocation fitted well with Jonas’s preference for inertia and its advan­tages. Louise dedicated herself first to literature, so long at least as she thought that publishing inter­ested Jonas. She read everything, without order, and in a few weeks became capable of talking about everything. Jonas admired her and considered him­self definitely dispensed from reading, since Louise informed him sufficiently and made it possible for him to know the essence of contemporary discov­eries. “You mustn’t say,” Louise asserted, “that so­-and-so is wicked or ugly, but that he poses as wicked or ugly.” The distinction was important and might even lead, as Rateau pointed out, to the condemnation of the human race. But Louise set­tled the question once and for all by showing that since this truth was supported simultaneously by the sentimental press and the philosophical reviews, it was universal and not open to discussion. “Just as you say,” said Jonas, who immediately forgot that cruel discovery to dream of his star.

  [116] Louise deserted literature as soon as she realized that Jonas was interested only in painting. She dedi­cated herself at once to the visual arts, visited mu­seums and exhibitions, dragged Jonas to them though he didn’t quite understand what his contemporaries were painting and felt bothered in his artistic simplicity. Yet he rejoiced to be so well in­formed about everything that concerned his art. To be sure, the next day he forgot even the name of the painter whose works he had just seen. But Louise was right when she peremptorily reminded him of one of the certainties she had kept from her literary period, namely that in reality one never forgets anything. His star decidedly protected Jo­nas, who could thus, without suffering in his con­science, combine the certainties of remembering and the comforts of forgetting.

  But the treasures of self-sacrifice that Louise showered upon him shone most brilliantly in Jonas’s daily life. That angel spared him the purchases of shoes, suits, and shirts that, for the normal man, shorten the days of an already too short life. She resolutely took upon herself the thousand inventions of the machine for killing time, from the her­metic brochures of social security to the constantly changing moods of the internal-revenue office. [117] “O.K.,” said Rateau, “but she can’t go to the den­tist in your place.” She may not have gone, but she telephoned and made the appointments, at the most convenient hours; she took care of changing the oil in the tiny car, of booking rooms in vacation hotels, of the coal for his stove; she herself bought the gifts Jonas wanted to give, chose and sent his flowers, and even found time, certain evenings, to go by his house in his absence and open his bed to spare him the trouble when he came home.

  With the same enthusiasm, of course, she entered that bed, then took care of the appointment with the mayor, led Jonas to the town hall two years be­fore his talent was at last recognized, and arranged the wedding trip so that they didn’t miss a museum. Not without having first found, in the midst of the housing shortage, a three-room apartment into which they settled on their return. Then she pro­duced, in rapid succession, two children, a boy and a girl. Her intention of going up to three was real­ized soon after Jonas had left the publishing-house to devote himself to painting.

  As soon as she had become a mother, it must be added, Louise devoted herself solely to her child, and later to her children. She still tried to help her husband, but didn’t have the time. To be sure, she [118] regretted her neglect of Jonas, but her resolute character kept her from wasting time in such re­grets. “It can’t be helped,” she would say, “each of us has his workbench.” Jonas was, in any case, de­lighted with this expression, for, like all the artists of his epoch, he wanted to be looked upon as an artisan. Hence the artisan was somewhat neglected and had to buy his shoes himself. However, besides the fact that this was in the nature of things, Jonas was again tempted to rejoice. Of course, he had to make an effort to visit the shops, but that effort was rewarded by one of those hours of solitude that give such value to marital bliss.

  The problem of living-space was, however, by far the greatest of their problems, for time and space shrank simultaneously around them. The birth of the children, Jonas’s new occupation, their restricted quarters, the modesty of the monthly remittance which prevented them from getting a larger apartment did not leave much room for the double activity of Louise and Jonas. The apartment was on the second floor of what had been a private house in the eighteenth century, in the old section of the capital. Many artists lived in that quarter, faithful to the principle that in art the pursuit of the new can take place only in an old [119] setting. Jonas, who shared that conviction, was delighted to live in that quarter.

  There could be no question as to the apartment’s being old. But a few very modern arrangements had given it an original appearance resulting chiefly from the fact that it provided a great volume of air while occupying but a limited surface. The rooms, particularly high and graced with magnificent tall windows, had certainly been intended, to judge from their majestic proportions, for receptions and ceremonies. But the necessities of urban con­gestion and of income from real estate had forced the successive owners to cut up those over-large rooms with partitions and thus to multiply the stalls they rented at exorbitant prices to their flock of tenants. They nonetheless talked up what they called “the considerable cubic space.” No one could deny the advantage. It simply had to be attributed to the impossibility of partitioning the rooms hori­zontally as well. Otherwise the landlords would certainly not have hesitated to make the neces­sary sacrifices in order to provide a few more shelters for the rising generation, particularly in­clined at that moment to marry and reproduce. Besides, the cubic air-space was not all to the good. It had the inconvenience of making the rooms hard [119] to heat in winter, and this unfortunately forced the landlords to increase the rent supplement for heat. In summer, because of the great window surface, the apartment was literally flooded with light, for there were no blinds. The landlords had neglected to put them in, doubtless discouraged by the height of the windows and the cost of carpentry. After all, thick draperies could perform the same service and presented no problem as to the cost, since they were the tenants’ responsibility. Furthermore, the landlords were not unwilling to help them by fur­nishing curtains from their own stores at cost prices. Real-estate philanthropy, in fact, was merely their avocation. In their regular daily life those new princes sold percale and velvet.

  Jonas had gone into raptures over the apartment’s advantages and had accepted its drawbacks with­out difficulties. “Just as you say,” he said to the landlord about the supplement for heat. As for the curtains, he agreed with Louise that it was enough to provide them just for the bedroom and to leave the other windows bare. “We have nothing to hide,” that pure heart said. Jonas had been par­ticularly entranced by the largest room, the ceiling of which was so high that there could be no question of installing a lighting system. The entrance [121] door opened directly into that room, which was joined by a narrow hall to the two others, much smaller and strung in a row. At the end of the hall were the kitchen, the water-closet, and a nook graced with the name of shower-room. Indeed, it might have been a shower if only the fixture had been installed, vertically of course, and one were willing to stand utterly motionless under the spray.

  The really extraordinary height of the ceilings and the narrowness of the rooms made of the apart­ment an odd assortment of parallelepipeds almost entirely glassed in, all doors and windows, with no wall space for the furniture, and with the human beings floating about like bottle imps in a vertical aquarium. Furthermore, all the windows opened onto a court—in other words, onto other windows in the same styl
e just across the way, behind which one could discern the lofty outline of other windows opening onto a second court. “It’s the hall of mirrors,” Jonas said in delight. On Rateau’s ad­vice, it was decided to locate the master bedroom in one of the small rooms, the other to be for the already expected baby. The big room served as a studio for Jonas during the day, as a living-room in the evening and at mealtimes. They could also in a pinch eat in the kitchen, provided that Jonas or [122] Louise was willing to remain standing. For his part, Rateau had outdone himself in ingenious inventions. By means of sliding doors, retractable shelves, and folding tables, he had managed to make up for the paucity of furniture while emphasizing the jack-­in-the-box appearance of that unusual apartment.

  But when the rooms were full of paintings and children, they had to think up a new arrangement. Before the birth of the third child, in fact, Jonas worked in the big room, Louise knitted in the bedroom, while the two children occupied the last room, raised a great rumpus there, and also tumbled at will throughout the rest of the apartment. They agreed to put the newborn in a corner of the studio, which Jonas walled off by propping up his canvases like a screen; this offered the advantage of having the baby within earshot and being able to answer his calls. Besides, Jonas never needed to bestir him­self, for Louise forestalled him. She wouldn’t wait until the baby cried before entering the studio, though with every possible precaution and always on tiptoe. Jonas, touched by such discretion, one day assured Louise that he was not so sensitive and could easily go on working despite the noise of her steps. Louise replied that she was also aiming not to waken the baby. Jonas, full of admiration for [123] the workings of the maternal instinct, laughed heartily at his misunderstanding. As a result, he didn’t dare confess that Louise’s cautious entries bothered him more than an out-and-out invasion. First, because they lasted longer, and secondly be­cause they followed a pantomime in which Louise—her arms outstretched, her shoulders thrown back, and her leg raised high—could not go un­noticed. This method even went against her avowed intentions, since Louise constantly ran the risk of bumping into one of the canvases with which the studio was cluttered. At such moments the noise would waken the baby, who would manifest his displeasure according to his capacities, which were considerable. The father, delighted by his son’s pulmonary prowess, would rush to cuddle him and soon be relieved in this by his wife. Then Jonas would pick up his canvases and, brushes in hand, would listen ecstatically to his son’s insistent and sovereign voice.

  This was just about the time that Jonas’s success brought him many friends. Those friends turned up on the telephone or in impromptu visits. The telephone, which, after due deliberation, had been put in the studio, rang often and always to the detriment of the baby’s sleep, who would then [124] min­gle his cries with the urgent ringing of the phone. If it so happened that Louise was busy caring for the other children, she strove to get to the tele­phone with them, but most of the time she would find Jonas holding the baby in one arm and in his other hand his brushes and the receiver, which was extending a friendly invitation to lunch. Jonas was always amazed that anyone was willing to lunch with him, for his conversation was dull, but he pre­ferred going out in the evening in order to keep his workday unbroken. Most of the time, unfortu­nately, the friend would be free only for lunch, and just for this particular lunch; he would insist upon holding it for his dear Jonas. His dear Jonas would accept: “Just as you say!” and after hanging up would add: “Isn’t he thoughtful!” while hand­ing the baby to Louise. Then he would go back to work, soon interrupted by lunch or dinner. He had to move the canvases out of the way, unfold the special table, and sit down with the children. Dur­ing the meal Jonas would keep an eye on the paint­ing he was working on and occasionally, in the be­ginning at least, he would find his children rather slow in chewing and swallowing, so that each meal was excessively long. But he read in his newspa­per that it was essential to eat slowly in order to [125] assimilate, and thenceforth each meal provided rea­sons for rejoicing at length.

  On other occasions his new friends would drop in. Rateau, for one, never came until after dinner. He was at his office during the day and, besides, he knew that painters work during the daylight hours. But Jonas’s new friends almost all belonged to the species of artists and critics. Some had painted, oth­ers were about to paint, and the remainder were concerned with what had been, or would be, painted. All, to be sure, held the labors of art in high esteem and complained of the organization of the modern world that makes so difficult the pur­suit of those labors, as well as the exercise of medi­tation, indispensable to the artist. They complained of this for whole afternoons, begging Jonas to go on working, to behave as if they weren’t there, to treat them cavalierly, for they weren’t philistines and knew the value of an artist’s time. Jonas, pleased to have friends capable of allowing one to go on working in their presence, would go back to his picture without ceasing to answer the questions asked him or to laugh at the anecdotes told him.

  Such simplicity put his friends more and more at ease. Their good spirits were so genuine that they forgot the meal hour. But the children had a better [126] memory. They would rush in, mingle with the guests, howl, be cuddled by the visitors, and pass from lap to lap. At last the light would dwindle in the square of sky outlined by the court, and Jonas would lay down his brushes. There was nothing to do but to invite the friends to share pot-luck and to go on talking, late into the night, about art of course, but especially about the untalented painters, plagiarists or self-advertisers, who weren’t there. Jonas liked to get up early to take advantage of the first hours of daylight. He knew that this would be difficult, that breakfast wouldn’t be ready on time and that he himself would be tired. But on the other hand he rejoiced to learn in an evening so many things that could not fail to be helpful to him, though in an invisible way, in his art. “In art, as in nature, nothing is ever wasted,” he used to say. “This is a result of the star.”

  To the friends were sometimes added the dis­ciples, for Jonas now had a following. At first he had been surprised, not seeing what anyone could learn from him who still had everything to discover. The artist in him was groping in the darkness; how could he have pointed out the right paths? But he readily realized that a disciple is not necessarily someone who longs to learn something. Most often, [127] on the contrary, one became a disciple for the dis­interested pleasure of teaching one’s master. Thenceforth he could humbly accept such a surfeit of honors. Jonas’s disciples explained to him at length what he had painted, and why. In this way Jonas discovered in his work many intentions that rather surprised him, and a host of things he hadn’t put there. He had thought himself poor and, thanks to his pupils, suddenly found himself rich. At times, faced with such hitherto unsuspected wealth, Jonas would feel a tingle of pride. “Nonetheless it’s true,” he would say. “That face in the background stands out. I don’t quite understand what they mean by indirect humanization. Yet, with that effect I’ve really gone somewhere.” But very soon he would transfer that uncomfortable mastery to his star. “It’s the star,” he would say, “that’s gone some­where. I’m staying home with Louise and the chil­dren.”

  In addition, the disciples had another advantage: they forced Jonas to be more severe with himself. They ranked him so high in their conversations, and especially in regard to his conscientiousness and energy, that henceforth no weakness was per­mitted him. Thus he lost his old habit of nibbling a piece of sugar or chocolate when he had finished a [128] difficult passage and before he went back to work. If he were alone, he would nevertheless have given in clandestinely to that weakness. But he was helped in his moral progress by the almost constant presence of his disciples and friends in whose sight he would have been embarrassed to nibble choco­late and whose interesting conversation he couldn’t interrupt anyway for such a petty idiosyncrasy.

  Furthermore, his disciples insisted on his remain­ing faithful to his esthetic. Jonas, who labored at length only to get
a very occasional fleeting flash in which reality would suddenly appear to him in a new light, had only a very vague idea of his own esthetic. His disciples, on the other hand, had several ideas, contradictory and categorical, and they would allow no joking on the subject. Jonas would have liked, at times, to resort to his whim, that humble friend of the artist. But his disciples’ frowns in the face of certain pictures that strayed from their idea forced him to reflect a little more about his art, and this was all to his advantage.

  Finally, the disciples helped Jonas in another way by obliging him to give his opinion about their own production. Not a day went by, in fact, without someone’s bringing him a picture barely sketched in, which its author would set between Jonas and [129] the canvas he was working on, in order to take ad­vantage of the best light. An opinion was ex­pected. Until then Jonas had always been secretly ashamed at his fundamental inability to judge a work of art. Except for a handful of pictures that carried him away, and for the obviously coarse daubs, everything seemed to him equally interesting and indifferent. Consequently he was obliged to build up a stock of judgments, which had to be varied because his disciples, like all the artists of the capital, after all had a measure of talent and, when they were around, he had to draw rather fine lines of distinction to satisfy each. Hence that happy obligation forced him to amass a vocabulary and opinions about his art. Yet his natural kindness was not embittered by the effort. He soon realized that his disciples were not asking him for criti­cisms, for which they had no use, but only for en­couragement and, if possible, praise. The praises merely had to be different. Jonas was not satisfied to be his usual agreeable self. He showed ingenuity in his ways of being so.