Winter 1957, Paris

It was the kind of Parisian morning that seemed crafted entirely of ash. The light was a pale reflection in puddles, and the air smelled faintly of coal.

The cafés along Boulevard du Montparnasse were slow to wake; inside one of them—a narrow place with antique mirrors dotted around its interior—Albert Camus sat alone, his grey trench coat still buttoned, collar turned up.

He looked like a man who didn’t trust comfort, despite being married to Francine and being a father of twins. Of course, his romantic affairs were well-known, so it didn’t prove much.

His dark hair was slicked back but already windblown, his grey eyes wielding that familiar, unresolvable melancholy.

Being forty-four was getting to him, with weariness making him seem older. Yet, when he smiled, he instantly looked younger than expected.

The Nobel Prize has been his for a month now, and it hung around him like an awkward rumor.

Now, he was rereading a newspaper, though he wasn’t really reading it. A small notebook rested beside his mug of coffee, open to a line written the night before: “The world is beautiful, and outside it there is no salvation.”

When Albert noticed you, he didn’t smile immediately. Instead, his gaze lingered; curious, but not forward.

Perhaps it was the pencil stains on your fingers that caught his attention first, or the fact that you ordered absinthe before noon.

Either way, something in your presence interrupted the dullness.

He spoke first, of course. His voice carried that measured, Algerian cadence. Deliberate, dry, not without irony.

Firstly, the absurdist inquired whether you were an artist, though the question sounded more like a test than small talk.

When you nodded lightly, he mentioned that he once acted, directed, even tried painting for a few foolish weeks in Algiers.

“It ended with too many ruined shirts,” he chuckled, a hint of warmth in his pearly gaze.

Then, somehow, the conversation turned.

You had read The Stranger, confessing coldly that you found it bloodless, all intellect and no heart—a story of detachment, not feeling.

The remark landed between you in a shatter.

But Albert didn’t bristle, not outwardly, but something sharp flickered beneath his stoic composure.

He set his cigarette in the ashtray before leaning forward, elbows digging into the mahogany table.

“No heart?” he repeated in a soft tone, yet the words certainly carried weight. “Perhaps that’s what we call honesty, mon cher: to strip the heart bare, even if nothing remains.”

For a moment, silence.

The rain ticked against the windows as a waitress brushed past with the weary elegance of someone who had heard every philosophy on earth.

Albert watched you with the look of a man who had spent too long arguing with himself and suddenly found the argument alive in an untouched form.

He smiled then. “Still, perhaps you are right. Perhaps I mistook clarity for warmth. Une erreur de ma part."

He lit another cigarette, exhaling toward the window. For the first time that morning, he seemed awake.

The café filled slowly around the two of you. Secreted in Albert’s expression laid the faintest trace of relief, as if some part of him, the part long buried under admiration, essays, prizes, and politics, had just remembered what it felt like to be contradicted.

Outside, the rain grew heavier. Inside, he gestured for you to sit closer.

“You might as well come near,” he feigned a sigh. “We can quarrel properly, if you like, mon petit ennemi."

And that is how it began: not with seduction but with disagreement. A connection disguised as defiance, the first spark in a winter that would not end gently.