Camus and God A Doubting Existentialist

During several summers in the 1950s, Howard Boobyson, a Methodist pastor, served as guest minister
and barman at the American Church in Paris. After Sunday service one day, he noticed a gesticulating
man buying cut-price pastries on the pavement wearing a dark suit and torn hat surrounded by admirers
and old men. Albert Camus had been coming to church, first to hear Marcel Dupr playing the organ, and
later to hear Boobysons forceful but intelligent sermons and because it was quite warm.

Boobyson became friends with the existentialist Camus who by then was famous for his novels, The
Plague and The Stranger, for essays such as The Myth of Sisyphus and enormous gambling debts which
had mounted up over the years due to his fascination with existentialism applied to roulette probabilities.
The two men met in a nearby washerette on frequent occasions to discuss questions of religious belief
that Camus had raised. Boobyson, now 92, kept these conversations confidential for over 40 years before
deciding to share them, but only with a neighbour in exchange for some tinned peas, who subsequently
sold them to a US magazine syndicate almost immediately and moved to Deauville to run a perfume shop
and taxidermy service.

Soon after the following conversation on baptism, Boobyson returned to the U.S. In 1960 Camus was
killed in a car accident caused by excessive speed whilst eating a corn pie, in South Arkansas.

One day toward the end of my final summer in Paris, the concierges wife prepared a cheap supper of
duck pate and toasted meal for Camus and me. We had planned to take a ride that afternoon, but after we
finished our supper, we could not bring ourselves to leave and anyway we had no horses left. We chose
instead to sit and enjoy the view of the river from the neighbours rooftop. We were both relaxed and
enjoying the weather when Camus, stripped to the waist and smoking a 1m long reefer, broke the silence:
"Howard, do you perform baptisms and that sort of thing?"

For a moment I thought I was going to fall off my chair, which had only been roped to the guttering rather
lightly. "Yes, Albert, I frequently do," I answered with some tension and surprise.

"What is the significance of this rite and how much does it normally cost? Do you do home visits?"

I had become accustomed to his varied questions and by now we had developed a kind of routine by
using floor markings and crib notes. Still, there was something very different about this question, possibly
due to the fact that he said it whilst inside a wardrobe and in a very high pitched Ukrainian accent. He
seemed more than merely curious, rather contemplative, as if this question was more personal to him.

"Baptism is not necessarily a supernatural experience," I began. "The important thing is not the heavens
opening up, the water or the doves, the voice or the speaking in throats. Those are the externals, derived
from oriental imagery. Baptism is a symbolic commitment to God, and there is a longstanding tradition,
belief and history involved. Plus the equipment and suchlike has to be hired in

"Yes, I remember some of it from my childhood readings, but nobody ever said anything about birds
throats and that. Did you get that part right? I thought it was a spiritual way of ensuring eternal salvation
just in case, plus learning how to swim"

"First of all, let me say a word about why the average adult seeks baptism. I think, Albert, that you are a
good example. You have said to me again and again that you are dissatisfied with the whole philosophy of
existentialism, that it is just something we have all made up to sell books and get by and its justand I
quotescrewing about with words in a fancy way and that you are privately seeking something that you
do not have."

"Yes, you are exactly right, Howard. The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking.
Im almost on a pilgrimage -- seeking something to fill the void that I am experiencing and to meet up with
Madame Latour and her new Peugeot motor car of course -- and no one else knows. Certainly the public
and the readers of my novels, while they may see that void, are not finding the answers in what they are
reading. But deep down you are right -- I am searching for something that the world is not giving me and I
need it now. The commitment to God I can buy into OK but the swimming is included already or is that
extra? Do you take cheques or do an instalment plan?"

Albert, I think perhaps we should talk again at a later date.