J=Albert Camus story #2

Albert Camus in a funny hat goes skiing.

The train had arrived in Aix au Provence on a sunny morning, the air
laced with snow about to fall. Albert Camus stood on the railway
platform and waited for Ludivine (Lou-lou) to arrive. The easter bonnet
he still wore had not travelled well during the four hours his train
took to climb to this pristine resort. The remaining two chicks now
hung, dangled, across his eyeline and the garlands were reduced to
ragged stubs. His charcoal-coloured coat had only a perfunctory collar,
a collar designed for a metropolis not this mountainous open space, so
he puffed his mohair scarf up to cover his neck, and waited for a
sighting of his hostess' eager madness. Her invitation had sat on the
bureau of his Paris apartment, untended and unwanted, for three weeks.
When all that business with the stolen cutlery had become too
intrusive, he was happy to discover that the invitation provided him
with this timely escape.

Lou-lou also represented an indulgent escape for him from the arch
cuneiform of parisian intelligentsia. She was utterly animalistic,
forward. Primal. This was the type of young woman for whom authors like
Albert were invented. She responded physiologically to his stature as a
contemporous man of letters, and was therefore well equipped in
matching his reputation for salacious exuberance and intellectual
infantilism. But when she appeared at the end of the platform, Albert's
heart sank and shrivelled in an instant. She was with two german men,
thick-featured and so white they were almost blue, with red cheeks like
cartoon orphans. The three of them hoisted their ski's into the air, a
clear sign for Albert that they were going to pulverise all his dreams
of an easy weekend of lovemaking and conversation, with a sickening
outdoor wholesomeness.

As they marched towards him down the platform, Albert decided to play
the wounded soldier card, and made his own nose bleed. It was a skill
he had learnt from his goalkeeping coach in Marseille, a trick to turn
a referee, a trick he had also used to cause a diversion in a
restaurant, and a court-room.

He pinched his nose at the top of his pronounced bridge, found the soft
gap between the carthilage and bone, and forced a thumbnail in with
sudden ferocity. To the world it looked as if he were just relieving
some pressure, or had experienced a sensation in there. It always
caused a warm trickle of disobedient blood to appear, instantly
creating sympathy, embarrassment and time for Albert to think.

The crimson cascade did the trick. Lou-lou forgot all about her
teutonic escorts and rushed to attend her patient. Albert reasoned that
any woman with a heart capable of caressing could not resist a child
with a bleeding nose. He was right. Lou-lou gently lured Albert into
the waiting room, where she dabbed at his nostrils with a scented
handkerchief. The two germans paraded outside, visible as obedient
rectangles through the dappled glass. She eventually persuaded Albert
to sit, and she clutched the handkerchief to his nose.

" Albert, please " Her voice was almost lost to concern. " please take
that hat off, it looks...bizarre "

Albert peered over the handkerchief at her, and allowed his eyes to
fall into that visionary-shepherd-look that he had spent his adult life
perfecting. His muffled nasal voice still contained that timbre of
elegant authority which made him unrefusable .

" But Lou-lou, I have vowed not to remove this hat. Until I have made
love for a whole day and night, and I have come to you in the
mountains, to you my perfect twin, for such a purpose "

The young woman was overtaken by the quietest rapture, by how simply
staged had been his recognition of all her disquiet for the ordinary.
Lou-lou, as if in a dream, let her hand clutching the tissue fall away
from his face. Albert's gaze held firm. Around his mouth there was a
patina of dried blood, the pure white handkerchief now held a violent
rose on it's folds and seams. Lou-lou's eyes fill the frame, reflecting
the countenance of Albert Camus in a funny hat, his bloody lips rampant
on a smile.

Fin.