“Falling” Camus in brief summary
The reader meets the narrator at an Amsterdam bar called “Mexico City”. The narrator, a former lawyer who had extensive practice in Paris, after a critical period in his life moved to a place where no one knows him and where he tries to get rid of his sometimes heavy memories. He is very sociable and uses the bar in some way as a temple where he meets people he likes, tells them about his life, about his sins and almost always achieves that his interlocutors answer him with frankness to frankness and confess as they would confess his confessor.
Jean-Baptiste Clemence, the so-called former lawyer, is revealed to the reader as to one of his daily interlocutors. Working in Paris, he specialized in “noble deeds”, protecting widows and orphans, as they say. He despised the judges and felt satisfaction because he was taking up a just cause. He earned his living by speaking with people he despised. Clemence was in the camp of justice, and this was enough for his
One evening, Clemence, very pleased with the past day, walked along the Bridge of Arts, completely deserted at that hour. He stopped to look at the river, he grew a sense of his own strength and completeness. Suddenly he heard a quiet laugh behind him, but when he looked back, he did not see anyone nearby. Laughter came from nowhere, His heart was beating. Arriving home, he saw his face in the mirror, it was smiling, but the smile
Clemence began to feel that some string in him was out of order, that he had forgotten how to live. He began to clearly perceive the comedian in himself and understand that day after day, only one worried him: his “I”. Women, living people, tried to grab hold of him, but they did not succeed. He quickly forgot them and always remembered only himself. In his relations with them he was guided only by sensuality. Their affection frightened him, but at the same time he did not want to let any of the women off from himself, while maintaining several connections and making many unhappy. As Clemence realized later, at that time of his life he demanded from all people and gave nothing in return: he forced many and many people to serve him, and they themselves seemed to be hiding in the refrigerator so that they were always at hand and he could use them to as necessary.
One night in November, Clemence returned from his mistress and walked along the Royal Bridge. On the bridge stood a young woman. He passed her. Descending from the bridge, he heard the noise of the human body that had collapsed into the water. Then a shout came. He wanted to run for help, but he could not move, and then he thought that it was too late, and he moved slowly on. And he did not tell anyone about anything.
His relations with friends and acquaintances were externally the same, but gradually they were upset. Those still praised his sense of harmony, but he felt in his soul only confusion, seemed vulnerable, given to the power of public opinion. People seemed to him no longer a respectful audience, to which he was accustomed, but his judges. Clemence’s attention was aggravated, and he discovered that he had enemies, and especially among people unfamiliar, for they were enraged by his behavior of a happy and contented man. On the day he saw, he felt all the wounds inflicted on him and immediately lost his strength. It seemed to him that the whole world began to laugh at him.
From that moment he began to try to find the answer to these ridicule, which actually sounded inside him. He began to shock listeners of his public lectures on jurisprudence and to behave as he would never have allowed himself to behave before. He frightened off all his clientele. With the women he got bored, because he did not play with them anymore. Then, tired of love and chastity, he decided that he had to indulge in debauchery – he perfectly replaces love, stops ridicule people and establishes silence, and most importantly, does not impose any obligations. Alcohol and women of easy virtue gave him the only worthy of his relief. Then he was attacked by immense fatigue, which still does not leave him. So several years passed. He already thought that the crisis had passed, but soon realized that it was not so, a cry,
Once in a bar of “Mexico City”, he saw on the wall a picture of “Incompetent judges” Van Eyck, stolen from the Cathedral of St. Bavona. The owner was exchanged it for a bottle of gin one of the regulars of his institution. This picture was searched by the police of three countries. Clemence persuaded the intimidated master to give it to him for safekeeping. Since then, the picture is in his apartment, he talks about it to all his interlocutors, and each of them can convey to him. Subconsciously, he strives for this, feeling his innocent guilt in front of the girl he did not save, realizing that now it will never be possible to pull her out of the water. And the heaviness of the heart will remain with him forever.
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