Albert Camus
BETWEEN YES AND NO
If
it is true that the only paradise is that \:Vhich one has
lost, I know what name to give that something tender and inhuman
which dwells within me today. An emigrant comes back to his native
land. And I, I remember. Irony, tautness, all is silent, and here am
I repatriated. I do not want to ponder my happiness. It is a good
deal simpler and a good deal easier than that. For of those hours
which I summon up from the depth of oblivion, there has been pre–
served intact the memory of a pure emotion, of a moment suspended
in eternity. That alone is true in me, and I am always aware of it
too late. We take pleasure in the trailing off of a gesture, in the
propriety of a tree in the landscape. And all we have for recreating
this love is a detail, but an adequate detail: the odor of a room that
has remained closed too long, the peculiar sound of a footstep on
the road. And · so with me. And if I loved at the time and gave of
myself, I was myself at last since only love restores us to ourselves.
Slow, peaceful and sober, these hours return just as potent, just as
moving-because it is evening, because the hour is sad and there is
a kind of vague desire in the starless sky. Each recaptured gesture re–
veals me to myself. Someone once said to me, "It's so difficult to
live." And I remember the tone. Another time someone murmured,
"The worst mistake, after all, is to make someone suffer." When all
is over, the thirst for life is quenched. Is that what is called happiness?
As
we look back over these memories, we clothe everything in the
same sober garment, and death appears like a backdrop with faded
tones. We rake up our past. We feel our distress and we love the bet–
ter for it. Yes, maybe that's what happiness is, the pathetic feeling
of our unhappiness.
That's just what it's like this evening. In this Moorish cafe, at the
