When we returned, Catherine's assistant beckoned me to the downstairs office, where they work and perform official duties. It was modest and contained an air of tranquil productivity. He asked if I would like to see the manuscript; I was so astonished that I could hardly manage an answer.
I was asked to wash my hands, which I did with some solemnity.
Camus's daughter entered, placing the manuscript of Le Premier Homme, The First Man, on the desk before me and went and sat in a chair giving us distance enough so that I could feel alone with it. For the next hour I was privileged to examine the entire manuscript page by page. It was in his hand, each page suggesting a sense of unflinching unity with his subject. One could not help but thank the gods for apportioning Camus with a righteous and judicious pen.
I turned each page carefully, marveling at the aesthetic beauty of each leaf. The first hundred watermarked sheets had Albert Camus engraved on the left-hand side; the remaining were not personalized, as though he had wearied of seeing his own name. Several pages were augmented with his confident marking, lines carefully revised and sections firmly crossed out. One could feel a sense of a focused mission and the racing heart propelling the last words of the final paragraph, the last he was to write.
I was indebted to Catherine for allowing me to examine her father's manuscript, primed to embrace this precious time, wanting for nothing. But slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favored museum to my own drafting table. Pressing me to close Songs of Innocence in order to experience, as Blake, a glimpse of the divine that may also become a poem.
That is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action. And I, time and again, am overcome with the hubris to believe I can answer that call.
The words before me were elegant, blistering. My hands vibrated. Infused with confidence, I had the urge to bolt, mount the stairs, close the heavy door that had been his, sit before my own stack of foolscap, and begin at my own beginning. An act of guiltless sacrilege.
I rested my fingertips on the edge of the last page. Catherine and I looked at one another, not saying a word. I handed her the manuscript, harboring a regret reserved for the end of an affair. I rose from the table, the unfinished violet tea gone cold, the immortelle left behind.
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