18 Dec The hardest thing was my habit of thinking like a free man (ALBERT CAMUS)
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Still, there was one thing in those early days that was really irksome: my habit of thinking like a free man. For instance, I would suddenly be seized with a desire to go down to the beach for a swim.
And merely to have imagined the sound of ripples at my feet, the smooth feel of the water on my body as I struck out, and the wonderful sensa- tion of relief it gave brought home still more cruelly the narrowness of my cell.
Still, that phase lasted a few months only. Afterward, I had prisoner’s thoughts. I waited for the daily walk in the courtyard or a visit from my lawyer.
As for the rest of the time, I managed quite well, really. I’ve often thought that had I been compelled to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but gaze up at the patch of sky just overhead, I’d have got used to it by degrees.
I’d have learned to watch for the passing of birds or drifting clouds, as I had come to watch for my lawyer’s odd neckties, or, in another world, to wait patiently till
Sunday for a spell of love-making with Marie.
Well, here, anyhow, I wasn’t penned in a hollow tree trunk.
There were others in the world worse off than I.
I remembered it had been one of Mother’s pet ideas—she was always voicing it—that in the long run one gets used to anything.
“The stranger”
ALBERT CAMUS
