THE FIRST DAY: ALBERT CAMUS MEETS CRAZY HORSE IN THE KINGDOM

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Contents

Prologue January 5, 1960.....................xixACT I.........................................1Scene 1.......................................3Scene 2.......................................10Scene 3.......................................19Scene 4.......................................29Scene 5.......................................37ACT II........................................49Scene 1.......................................51Scene 2.......................................54ACT III.......................................73Scene 1.......................................75Scene 2.......................................85ACT IV........................................93Scene 1.......................................95Scene 2.......................................103Scene 3.......................................112ACT V.........................................117Scene 1.......................................119Scene 2.......................................132ACT VI........................................149Scene 1.......................................151Scene 2.......................................164ACT VII.......................................179

Chapter One

SCENE 1

There are mountains in the distance, a range of sloping hills the summits of which are veiled by clouds, diaphanous, and tinged with a golden light as if by a honey-tinted sun. Still, no sun is visible. As the two men walk with a reflective pace toward the horizon Crazy Horse drops his arm from around Albert Camus' shoulders. They continue walking side-by-side as they begin to consider the power of human love and the effects of injustice in the affairs of men on Earth.

CAMUS: Those hills in the distance, they remind me of mountains I sometimes wandered on earth. In the Auvergne. Where I frequently recuperated from attacks of tuberculosis.

CH: I am not surprised. When I first arrived, I thought I was looking at the Black Hills. Or the foothills of the Rockies. This kingdom is like that. However, your bouts with tuberculosis are over now.

CAMUS: Really? I know I feel wonderful just now. But such salubrious feelings were generally simply a temporary respite, an illusion of health. Up till now!

CH: The wound in my side made by that drunken Private Walker when he ran his bayonet through me wasn't so much as a scar when I entered the realm of Wakan Tanka.

CAMUS: This seems to be a kingdom of miracles!

CH: No. It's really not. Here, the miraculous is the norm.

CAMUS: Exclaiming, but reflectively. No more tuberculosis. Or Private Walkers. How truly wonderful! But tell me, why did this drunken soldier stab you? What was going on? I confess, the legend of Crazy Horse I know well and, certainly, I am familiar with the injustice and cruelties committed by the invading Europeans against the natives of America as they marched across the continent, claiming the land as if it had been created for them alone. However, I am ignorant of the event that delivered you to this kingdom of the Great Spirit.

CH: You say so much with your many words, Albert Camus.

CAMUS: Please, si vous plait, call me "Albert." Simply "Albert."

CH: And you, you shall call me "Tushunca Uitco."

CAMUS: Is that your name in your native tongue?

CH: Indeed. In the language of the Lakota Sioux my name means "horse whose spirit cannot be broken," and you are one who should call me by my true name. Not the name meaning a loco horse, what the white man called me.

CAMUS: Merci.

CH: But you asked me how I came to be fatally injured, so I shall tell you. But not before I ask you how it is you, a Frenchman, can talk of the Europeans as you do. Are you not loyal to your people? Do you not realize that the French were like the English, and like the Spanish, and like the Americans who first were English?

Albert Camus speaks, but only after he and his companion have walked several steps in silence. As they walk, Albert Camus realizes—probably unconsciously—that their steps make no noise. They walk in silence, as if on air, and yet the surface on which they tread appears solid.

CAMUS: You mean, I suppose, that the French, like the English, like the Americans, invaded occupied lands, subdued the residents of those lands, and claimed them as territories of France.

CH: Yes. Of course, you understand. Even today, Albert Camus (then, correcting himself quickly), Albert, your countrymen rule in the Southeast of Asia, in North Africa, in West Africa. So how is it you speak with opprobrium of the bluecoats of the U. S. Army when what the government in Washington did is much like what the government in Paris does today? Were you, yourself, not a patriotic citizen of your tribe?

As he asks this question, Crazy Horse glances at the man walking on his right, beside him. Albert Camus feels the eyes of Crazy Horse upon him but stares at the surface of the road directly before him as if he had not noticed his companion's glance.

CAMUS: Perhaps I can best explain myself by asking a question of you?

CH: I will answer any question you should ask since you are a man of good faith.

CAMUS: You were loyal to your tribe. I do not question that. And yet, did you not nearly bring the Oglala to civil war, and all for the love of a woman?

Despite himself, Crazy Horse's pace suddenly quickens. While he had been walking slowly, befitting the nature of his conversation with Albert Camus, he suddenly begins to stride. His companion matches him, stride-for-stride. When he does speak, he does so clearly, forcefully.

CH: You remind me, Albert. Eighty years in the kingdom of wonder and praise may be but an instant, but it is long enough for me to have forgotten the force of human love. But I am not certain how my feelings as a man are relevant to what your nation does as a people.

CAMUS: My loyalty was not, is not now, to the government in Paris. It was to people. To people I loved. To people I might have loved had I known them. To people whom those I loved, loved in turn.

The two men continue to stride at a quick pace for a few more yards when Crazy Horse gradually, unconsciously, begins to slow his pace to a walk.

CH: Yes. Yes. I can understand. You are my brother, Albert. Wakan Tanka in his incomprehensible wisdom must have understood this. Hence, I am walking and talking with you now. And thus it is I will tell you about the event that delivered me to this kingdom back in 1877.

Now it is Albert Camus who glances at the man to his left and, as he does so, smiles.

CAMUS: But first, you must tell me about the power of human love. Is this power so easily forgotten in the Kingdom of the Great Spirit?

CH: No. No, that is not quite what happens. (Pausing, as if to consider his words.) Rather, it is human love, the love that certain men and women on earth feel for their fellow creatures that, more than anything else, transports these men and women to the Kingdom of the Great Spirit when their mortality is shed. And, once here, it is as if we are love, each of us a word spoken in love by the Great Spirit. When one is love, one has difficulty remembering what it was like to love in a world in which love seems irrational, almost self-defeating. Indeed, in which to love often means to die.

CAMUS: I'm not sure I...