The Stone on the Fire
“He hastened his pace, finally reached the little square where the cook's hut stood, ran to it, kicked the door open, and brusquely hurled the stone onto the still glowing fire in the centre of the room.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE GROWING STONE
D’Arrast is a French engineer in a Brazilian village. A local cook has vowed to carry a heavy stone to the church in a religious procession, and on the day he collapses under it, unable to finish.
D’Arrast picks up the stone. But he does not carry it to the church. He carries it, staggering, to the cook’s own hut, kicks the door open, and throws it onto the fire.
It is one of the strangest gestures in Camus, and readers have argued about it for seventy years. Here is one reading. The stone was supposed to go to the place where suffering is offered up and given an explanation. D’Arrast takes it instead to where people actually live, to the hearth, to the smell of poverty and ashes. He refuses to let the burden mean something in heaven and insists that it belongs to the ordinary house.
He is not rewarded for this. The story ends with the family telling him to sit down with them, which is the whole of the prize. You carry other people’s weight not to redeem it but to set it down somewhere warm.
Take one load off someone without turning it into a lesson.
