The Fall

by Albert Camus

Paris is an authentic trompe-l’œil, a splendid stage set inhabited by four million extras. Nearly five million, at the last census? Well, well, they must have been breeding. It wouldn’t surprise me. I always thought our fellow citizens were crazy about two things: ideas and fornication.

I sometimes try to imagine what future historians will say about us. They’ll be able to sum up modern man in a single sentence: he fornicated and read the papers.

I never cross a bridge at night – because of a vow. After all, what would happen if someone were to jump in the water? One of two things could happen: you would go in after, to fish the person out, and in cold weather it could be the death of you. Or you would abandon the poor creature; but repressing an urge to dive can lead to strange sorts of cramp.

I specialized, in good causes. Widows and orphans, as they say; though I’m not sure why, because there are abusive widows and vicious orphans.

However. I was on the right side, and that was enough to ease my conscience. A sense of legality, the satisfaction of being right and the joy of self-esteem: these, my dear sir, are powerful incentives to keep us on our feet and moving forward. On the other hand, if you deprive men of these, you transform them into rabid dogs. How many crimes have been committed for no other reason than that the perpetrator could not bear being in the wrong! I once knew an industrialist who had a perfect wife, the object of universal admiration, and yet he was unfaithful to her. The man literally raged at being in the wrong, of not being awarded or being able to award himself a certificate of good conduct. The more perfect his wife appeared, the more furious he became. In the end, his wrongness became unbearable to him. So what do you think he did? He gave up being unfaithful? No. He killed her. That’s how I came to meet him.

I have always mocked the greed which, in our society, takes the place of ambition.

A friend of mine, a great Christian, agreed that your first reaction when you see a beggar coming towards your door is unpleasant. Well, with me it was worse: I rejoiced. Let’s say no more.

And indeed, being polite was a great joy to me. If the opportunity arose some mornings for me to give up my seat on the bus or the métro to someone who obviously deserved it, or to pick up something that an old lady had dropped and to return it to her with a smile that I knew only too well, or merely to give up my taxi to a person who was in more of a hurry than I was, then my whole day would be lit up by it. I have to confess that I even welcomed those days when there was a public transport strike, providing me with the opportunity to stop my car and pick up some of my unfortunate fellow citizens, stranded at the bus stops on their way home. In short, giving up my seat in the theatre so that a couple could be reunited or, on a journey, lifting a young woman’s bag into the rack that was too high for her were deeds that I performed more often than other people, because I more often kept an eye open for the opportunity to do so and gained greater pleasure from it.

Familiar when I needed to be, silent when that was necessary and capable of being both easy-going and serious, I was always in tune with my surroundings. As a result, I was very popular and enjoyed great social success. I was not bad-looking and could be both a tireless dancer and an unobtrusive scholar, as well as managing simultaneously to love women and justice, which is no easy matter; and I practised sport and the fine arts … in short, I’ll say no more in case you might suspect me of being smug. But I ask you to imagine a man in the prime of life, in perfect health, many-talented, skilled in physical exercise as well as in the exercise of the mind, neither poor nor rich, who sleeps soundly and is deeply satisfied with himself, yet shows it only in pleasant sociability. So I think you must allow me to speak, in all modesty, of a successful life.

It’s true: I was at ease in everything, yet satisfied with nothing. Each joy made me yearn for another. I went from one party to the next. There were times when I danced for nights on end, more and more intoxicated with people and life. Sometimes, late in those nights of dancing, slightly tipsy, my frenzy and the mad abandonment of those around me drove me into a rapture that was at once weary and satiated, so that it appeared to me, in the extreme of fatigue, that I finally understood the secret of life and the world. But by the following morning the weariness had vanished and with it the secret; so I was off again … In that way, I kept on running, always nourished, never full, not knowing when to stop, until the day, or rather the evening when the music stopped and the lights went out. The party at which I had once been happy … But let me call on our friend, the apeman. Nod your head to thank him and, above all, drink with me because I need your sympathy.

I can see that you’re surprised at my saying that. Have you never had a sudden need for sympathy, for help or for friendship? Of course you have. I have learned to make do with sympathy. It is easier to come by and it carries no commitment.

If they do phone, it will be the day when you’re not alone and life is smiling on you.

That’s what men are like, sir: two-faced: they cannot love unless they love themselves.

I was no longer on speaking terms with him, but his very existence threatened my accustomed enjoyment of life. Then he died, and I went to his funeral. Can you tell me why?

There was one man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatter-brained woman, sacrificing everything in his life for her – friends, work, even respectability – only to acknowledge one evening that he had never loved her. He was bored, that’s all, bored, like most people; so he created from scratch a life of complications and drama for himself. Something’s got to happen – that’s the explanation for most human undertakings. Something’s got to happen, even if it’s slavery without love, or war, or death. So long live funerals!

Then I went into the bathroom to drink a glass of water. My face smiled back at me from the mirror, but it seemed to me that the smile was double

when the body is sad, the heart languishes.

I’m well aware of the fact that one cannot do without dominating or being served. Every man needs slaves just as he needs fresh air. Giving orders is like breathing, you must agree? And even the most abject man manages to breathe. The lowest on the social ladder still has his wife or child. If he’s unmarried, a dog.

I saw only superiority in myself, which explained my benevolence and peace of mind. When I did care for another person, it was out of pure condescension, freely conceded, and all the merit was mine. I would rise by a degree on the scale of self-love.

To be fair, some of my forgetfulness was commendable. You will have noticed that there are people whose religion consists in forgiving all offences against them, and who do indeed forgive, but never forget. I was not up to forgiving offences, but I did eventually forget all of them – and a person who thought that I hated him would be amazed to see me greet him with a broad smile. Depending on his character, he would then either admire my generous soul or despise my faint-heartedness, never imagining that the reason was simpler: I had forgotten even as much as his name. So the same handicap that made me indifferent or ungrateful also made me magnanimous.

All those books hardly read, those friends hardly loved, those cities hardly visited and those women hardly possessed! I went through the motions, out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Other creatures followed behind, wanting to cling on, but there was nothing there – that was the trouble. For them. As for me, I forgot. The only thing I ever remembered was myself.

I don’t think I’m a coward (though what doesn’t one think?),

The fact was I had climbed down in public – true, it was as a result of a combination of circumstances, but there are always circumstances. After the event, I saw clearly what I should have done. I imagined myself felling d’Artagnan with a right hook, getting back in my car and chasing after the swine who had hit me, catching up with him, blocking his cycle in against the pavement and delivering the beating that he so richly deserved. I ran this little film a hundred times, with odd variations, in my imagination. But it was too late and for a few days I would suffer from a feeling of bitter resentment.

Instead of that though, I was aching to get my revenge, to strike and win. As though my true desire was not to be the most intelligent and generous creature on earth, but merely to defeat whomsoever I wished, in short to be the strongest – and, moreover, in the most basic way. The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and ruling over society by violence alone.

You know what charm is: a way of obtaining the answer ‘yes’ without having asked a clear question.

respect. As people commonly say, I loved women – which amounts to saying that I never loved any one of them.

I have always thought misogyny to be both vulgar and stupid, and considered almost all the women I have known to be better than myself. However, while setting them so high, I exploited rather than served them. What does that mean?

I am not cold-hearted, far from it, in fact I am full of tenderness and I cry easily. However, my emotional impulses always turn inwards, towards myself, and I am the one I pity. It is wrong, after all, to say that I have never loved. In my life, I have had at least one great love, always with myself as its object.

In short, I have never bothered about weighty matters except in the intervals between my little excesses. I can’t think how many times, standing on the pavement in the midst of a heated debate with some friends, I have lost the thread of the argument because a real smasher was crossing the street at that moment.

So true is this that even when some of them provided me with only a small degree of pleasure, I still tried to resume our relations from time to time, helped no doubt by that peculiar desire which is stimulated by absence, followed by a suddenly rediscovered intimacy; but also to make sure that the bond between us was still there and that it was up to me alone to revive it.

in every respect, that eventually I became attached to her as I imagine a jailer is bound to his prisoner.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures. Now, did I read that somewhere, my dear fellow, or did I think it?

Men are not convinced of your arguments, your sincerity or the seriousness of your suffering, except by your death. As long as you are alive, your case is debatable and you only deserve their scepticism.

But if one is to be happy, one should not worry too much about other people – which means that there is no way out. Happy and judged or absolved and miserable.

You will give a man only slight pleasure if you compliment him on the efforts through which he has become intelligent or generous, while on the contrary his face will light up if you admire his natural generosity.

For example, I never complained if people forgot the date of my birthday; they even expressed surprise, with a hint of admiration, at my reticence on this subject. But I was even more reticent about the reason for my unselfishness: I wished to be forgotten so that I could feel sorry for myself. Some days before the day, glorious among all others, the date of which I knew very well, I would be on the alert, careful not to let anything out that might stir the attention and the memory of those on whose oversight I was counting – didn’t I even think on one occasion of altering someone’s calendar? When my solitude had been clearly demonstrated, I could give myself up to the charms of virile melancholy.

Frankly, is there any excuse for this? There is one, but it is so feeble that I can’t imagine using it. In any case, here it is: I have never been able to believe, deep inside, that human affairs are serious matters. I had no idea what was serious, only that it was not in everything that I saw, which seemed to me merely an amusing, or tedious game. There really are some efforts and beliefs that I have never understood. I would always look with astonishment, and some suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money or were thrown into despair at the loss of a ‘situation’ or who sacrificed themselves with a great deal of show for the prosperity of their families. I could better understand one of my friends who decided to give up smoking and succeeded through sheer willpower. One morning, he opened the paper, read that the first hydrogen bomb had exploded, learned its admirable effects and went directly to a tobacconist’s.

‘A man like you …’, people would say to me, kindly, and I would blanch.

After loving a parrot, I had to sleep with a snake. So I looked elsewhere for the love promised by books, which I had never encountered in life.

You may have noticed that a man who really suffers from jealousy cannot wait to sleep with the woman, despite believing that she has betrayed him. Of course, what he wants is to make sure once again that his precious treasure still belongs to him. He wishes to possess it, as people say. But it’s also because immediately afterwards, he feels less jealous.

I’ll tell you a great secret, dear fellow. Don’t wait for the Last Judgement, it takes place every day.

There are always reasons for a man’s murder. What’s impossible, on the contrary, is to justify letting him continue to live. That’s why there are always lawyers for the prosecution and only sometimes for the defence.

Look, someone I used to know would divide people into three categories: those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie; those who prefer to lie rather than have nothing to hide; and finally those who like lying and concealing at the same time. I’ll let you choose which category fits me best.

‘Who among us has the most weakness?’ he asked. As a joke, I raised my hand and I was the only one to do so. ‘Very well, Jean-Baptiste will do.’ No, he didn’t say that, because in those days I had a different name. He announced that at least to put oneself forward as I had done implied the greatest virtue and he proposed electing me.

Honestly, this is a peculiar age! Can one really be surprised if people’s minds are troubled and that one of my friends, an atheist when he was a perfect husband, was converted when he became an adulterer!

You can see the advantage, I’m sure. The more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you. Better still: I incite you to judge yourself, which relieves me by that much more. My dear fellow, we are strange and miserable creatures and we have only to go back over our lives to find any number of opportunities to astonish and shock ourselves. Try it. You may be sure that I will listen to your own confession, with a great feeling of fraternity.

Now, you, you’re not only intelligent, you look like someone who’s been around. But just admit that you feel less happy with yourself today than you did five days ago.

After all, when it comes down to it, I was wrong to tell you that the main thing was to avoid judgement. The main thing is to be able to let oneself do anything, while from time to time loudly declaring one’s own unworthiness. I allow myself everything, once again, and this time without laughing. I haven’t changed my way of life: I still love myself and I still use other people. It’s just that confessing my sins permits me to start again with a lighter heart and to gratify myself twice, firstly enjoying my nature, and then a delicious repentance.