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Letters
1944
1. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
[June 1944]
Chère Maria,
I have a business meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the NRF [offices of the Nouvelle Revue française] with an editor from Monte Carlo. From the NRF we’ll surely go to the Cyrano, which is on the corner of the rue du Bac and the boulevard Saint-Germain. I’ll wait for you there until 7:30 p.m. At 7:30, I’ll be at the Frégate, on the corner of the rue du Bac and the quayside, where Marcel and Jean are meeting me. At 8:00, the normal meeting place is at the Voltaire, on the corner of the rue de Beaune and the quayside. But I think you know that.
Forgive me for not being able to wait longer. Love,
AC
2. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
4:00 p.m. [June 1944]
My little Maria,
I hoped to reach you now by calling you at home. But I don’t even have time. So, in between two meetings, I’m sending you this message. It means nothing, naturally. But I guess you’ll find it when you get home tonight and then you’ll think of me. I’m tired, I need you. But of course, I can’t say it this way: you would have to be in my arms.
Good night, ma chérie. Sleep well, think of me as much as you can. I send you kisses until tomorrow.
AC
3. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
Thursday 10:00 [evening] [June 1944]
I’ve just read your dedication, mon chéri, and now something is trembling inside of me. Even though I tell myself that sometimes people write such things on impulse, without actually meaning them—at the same time, I think there are certain words you wouldn’t write unless you truly felt them.
I’m so happy, Maria. Is that even possible? What trembles within me is a kind of wild joy. Yet at the same time, there is the bitterness I felt after you’d gone, and the sadness of your eyes at the moment you left me. It’s true that what I keep of you always has the taste of happiness mixed with anxiousness. But if you love me as you’ve written, we must have something else. This is truly our time to love each other, and we must want it strongly enough and long enough to overcome everything.
I don’t like the clear way of looking at things you claimed to have this evening. When someone has a soul, they tend to call what frustrates them lucidity, and what eludes them, truth. But that lucidity is just as blind as anything else. There is only one type of clairvoyance: the kind that wants to grasp at happiness. And I know that even though it might be very short-lived, endangered or fragile, happiness awaits us, if we reach out our hands. But we must reach out our hands.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, to you, to your dear face. This evening, I was too tired to talk to you about how I feel: my heart is overflowing with love for you. Something exists that belongs only to us, and a place where I can be with you effortlessly. These are the hours when I fall silent and when you doubt me. But that doesn’t matter, my heart is full of you. Goodbye, chérie. Thank you for the few words that have given me so much joy—thank you for your soul that loves, that I love. I kiss you with all my might.
AC
4. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
1:00 [in the morning] [June 1944]
My little Maria,
I just got home; I’m not at all tired, and I’m filled with such a yearning to be near you that I really must go to my desk to talk to you as best I can. I didn’t dare tell Marcel [Herrand] that I didn’t feel like going out to drink his champagne. And you were with so many people! But after half an hour, I’d had enough, all I needed was you. I felt such love for you, Maria, all evening, whenever I looked at you, heard your voice, which for me has now become irreplaceable. When I went up to Marcel’s, I found some pages of the play. I can no longer read them without hearing you, that is my own way of being happy with you.
I try to imagine what you’re doing and wonder in astonishment why you aren’t here. I tell myself that what is essential—the only essential thing I know, which is passion and life—would be if you came home with me tomorrow, so we might finish an evening together that we started together. But I also know that all that is in vain, apart from all the rest.
But at least, do not forget me when you leave me. Don’t forget, either, what I spent so long telling you one day, at my place, before everything started. On that day, I spoke to you from the depths of my heart, and I want, I want so much, for us to belong to each other the way I told you and the way it should be. Don’t leave me, I can imagine nothing worse than losing you. What would I do now without your face and all its overwhelming features, without your voice and your body pressed to mine?
And yet, that was not what I wanted to tell you today. Just your presence here, my desire for you, my thoughts about this evening. Good night, mon chéri. May tomorrow come quickly, and all the other days when you will belong more to me than to that damned play. I kiss you with all my might.
AC
5. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
4:00 p.m. [June 1944]
My little Maria,
I don’t know if you will think of calling me. And I don’t know how to reach you at this time of day. Though I have nothing to tell you in particular, apart from the tide that has been carrying me since yesterday and my need for the trust and love that I have in you. It’s been so long since I’ve written to you!
If you find this telegram when you get home tonight, call me. Don’t forget me between now and Saturday. Think of me all the time during those days. Tell yourself that I am near you at every moment. Goodbye, my love, my dearest love. I kiss you as I did yesterday.
Albert
6. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
Saturday 2:00 p.m. [July 1, 1944]
My little Maria,
The trip was fine and without any problems. We took the train at 7:20 and kept going until 9:00, then walked for seven kilometers to avoid a railway yard that had been bombed the day before; at 11:00, we got back on a train until noon. We waited at Meaux for two hours until we could get another train. After a new change three quarters of an hour later, we arrived at 5:00. I was as tired as an old dog, but glad to have made it. I was offered a house with a wing that had been bombed in 1940, but the rest was habitable. But it was covered in dust, and it took forty-eight hours to clean it up with the help of a good local woman.
Let me describe everything. The countryside is a valley with two hills covered in fields and average-sized trees. It’s cool here, you can hear the sound of water and smell the grass, there are cows, a few nice-looking children, and you can hear birds singing. If you climb up a little higher, you reach more open plateaus where you can breathe better. The village: a few houses and good people. As for the house, it is hidden in the middle of a rather large garden full of trees and the last roses of the season (they aren’t red). It stands in the shadow of the old church and the upper part of the garden is a sunlit prairie that reaches as far as the church’s flying buttresses. You can sunbathe there. I’m getting settled in a bedroom and office on the first floor. When that’s done, I’ll describe it to you.
I think that at least, Michel [Gallimard], at least, might lodge with me. Pierre and Janine [Gallimard] will probably sleep elsewhere. I’m waiting impatiently for them to arrive to decide about all that and especially because I hope they’ll give me your news.
I’m writing all this to you as clearly as I can because I think that you mainly want some precise information. But, my thoughts are very different: since Thursday evening, it’s you I am living with. I feel as if we didn’t say goodbye the way we should have, and this separation, amid so many uncertainties, beneath a sky full of dangers, is difficult for me to bear. My hope is that you will come. If you can make the trip by car, do; it will be easier. Otherwise, you will have to make the long journey I made. There’s also a bicycle, so I could go and meet you. Don’t forget your promise, mon chéri, that is what I am living on at this moment. I think I might be able to find peace in this place. With a few trees, the wind, a river, I’ll manage to recapture the internal silence I lost so long ago. But that won’t be possible if I must bear your absence, as I am drawn toward your face and my memory of you. I do not at all intend to play the despairing man or let myself go. Starting on Monday, I’m going to get to work, and I will work, that’s certain. But I want you to help me and I want you to come—I especially want you to come! You and I met and fell in love passionately, impatiently, dangerously. I regret nothing and I feel that these last days I’ve lived are enough to justify a life. But there is another way to love each other, a more secret kind of fulfillment, more harmonious, which is no less beautiful and which I know we are capable of. It’s here that we will find time for that. Don’t forget that, my little Maria, and keep that chance for our love alive.
In a few hours you’ll be on stage. Today and tomorrow, my thoughts will be with you. I’ll be waiting for the moment when you sit down and say that it’s all wonderful; I’ll also look forward to the third act and the cry that I loved so much. Oh! Mon chéri, what a hard thing it is to be far from the thing one loves. I am deprived of your face, and there’s nothing in the world that I have cherished more.
Write to me a lot, and often, don’t leave me alone. I’ll wait for you for as long as it takes; I feel I have infinite patience when it comes to you. Yet I also feel an impatience in my heart that wounds me, a burning desire to experience everything and devour everything, and that impatience is my love for you. Goodbye, my little conqueror. Stay close to me in your thoughts and come to me, come quickly, I beg of you. I send you my most passionate kisses.
You can write to me as we agreed, care of Mme Parain, in Verdelot, Seine-et-Marne.
Michel
7. ALBERT CAMUS to MARIA CASARÈS
Tuesday 4:00 p.m. [July 4, 1944]
Mon chéri,
I’m writing to you in the middle of the garden, surrounded by the group from Gallimard who are reading, sleeping, or getting baked by the sun. We’re all wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts; it’s boiling hot, and the roses are shriveling in the sun.
They wrote to you yesterday, and I assume they must have told you about their trip and the main details of settling in here—we’re leading a calm little life, so calm that I am having trouble finding a balance after leaving behind all that noise and furor. All day yesterday, I was tense and unhappy, incapable of doing or saying anything kind. So I worked, a lot and badly, refusing to go out. I thought about you with sadness, without the joy I always find when I’m with you. Only once, at 6:00 in the evening, did I take a few steps into the garden, alone (they had gone swimming). It was mild outside, with a light breeze; the church clock struck six times. It’s a time of day that I’ve always liked, and I liked it yesterday with you.
They just brought me your letter; I can find no words to thank you. So now I finally have some real hope that you’ll be coming. I guess you’ll forget about the Palais-Royal. The war will be over in September, impossible to do anything serious between now and then. Drop everything and come. I’m also worried about how tired you are. Here, at least, you’ll be able to rest. When in love, it’s important to be able to make love with bodies that are rested and happy.
Oh! It’s a very good thing that your theater is no longer open. Everything will start up again afterwards. But for the moment, you can see very well that everything is working out for us, so we’ll have time to love each other. All day yesterday, I too walked around carrying the anguish you spoke of. I didn’t dream about you, you weren’t in China; I only felt that deprivation, that shadow, like a spring [suddenly] disappearing. I felt dry and barren, incapable of feeling desire or love. But in fact, it was your letter I was waiting for, and now everything has returned to me, awareness, and the spring: your face. Oh! Mon chéri, come back very quickly so that all this is over. Today, I feel I have all the strength I need to overcome everything that could keep us apart. But come and stand before me, give me your hand, don’t leave me alone. I will wait for you, confidently and happily today, and I love you with all my soul. Goodbye, Maria, I kiss your beloved face.
Michel
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