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THE SQUARE

TRANSLATED BY

SONIA PITT-RIVERS & IRINA MORDUCH

One

THE CHILD CAME OVER quietly from the far side of the Square and stood behind the girl.

“I’m hungry,” he announced.

The man took this as an opportunity to start a conversation.

“I suppose it is about tea-time?”

The girl was not disconcerted: on the contrary she turned and smiled at him.

“Yes, it must be nearly half past four, when he usually has his tea.”

She took two sandwiches from a bag beside her on the bench and handed them to the child, then skillfully knotted a bib around his neck.

“He’s a nice child,” said the man.

The girl shook her head as if in denial.

“He’s not mine,” she remarked.

The child moved off with his sandwiches. It was afternoon and the Park was full of children: big ones playing marbles and hide-and-seek, small ones playing in the sand pits, while smaller ones still sat patiently waiting in their prams for the time when they would join the others.

“Although,” the girl continued, “he could be mine and, indeed, is often taken for mine. But the fact is he doesn’t belong to me.”

“I see,” said the man. “I have no children either.”

“Sometimes it seems strange, don’t you think, there should be so many children, that they are everywhere one goes and yet none of them are one’s own?”

“I suppose so, yes, when you come to think of it. But then, as you said, there are so many already.”

“But does that make any difference?”

“I should have thought that if you are fond of them anyway, if you enjoy just watching them, it matters less.”

“But couldn’t the opposite also be true?”

“Probably. I expect it depends on one’s nature: I think that some people are quite happy with the children who are already there, and I believe I am one of them. I have seen so many children and I could have had children of my own and yet I manage to be quite satisfied with the others.”

“Have you really seen so many?”

“Yes. You see, I travel.”

“I see,” the girl said in a friendly manner.

“I travel all the time, except just now of course when I’m resting.”

“Parks are good places to rest in, particularly at this time of year. I like them too. It’s nice being out of doors.”

“They cost nothing, they’re always gay because of the children and then if you don’t know many people there’s always the chance of starting a conversation.”

“That’s true. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but do you sell when you travel?”

“Yes, you could call that my profession.”

“Always the same things?”

“No, different things, but all of them small. You know those little things one always needs and so often forgets to buy. They all fit into a medium-sized suitcase. I suppose you could call me a traveling salesman if you wanted to give what I do a name.”

“Like those people you see in markets selling things from an open suitcase?”

“That’s right. I often work on the outskirts of markets.”

“I hope you don’t think it rude of me to ask, but do you manage to make a living?”

“I’ve nothing to complain of.”

“I’m glad. I thought that was probably the case.”

“I don’t mean to say that I earn a lot of money because that would not be true. But I earn something each day and in its way I call that making a living.”

“In fact you manage to live much as you would like?”

“Yes, I think I live about as well as I want to: I don’t mean that one day is always as good as another. No. Sometimes things are a little tight, but in general I manage well enough.”

“I’m glad.”

“Thank you. Yes, I manage more or less and have really nothing to worry about. Being single with no home of my own I have few worries and the ones I have are naturally only for myself—sometimes for instance I find I have run out of toothpaste, sometimes I might want for a little company. But on the whole it works out well. Thank you for asking.”

“Would you say that almost anyone could do your work? I mean is it the kind of work which practically anybody could take up?”

“Yes, indeed. I would even go so far as to say that simply through being what it is it is one of the ways of earning a living most open to everybody.”

“I should have thought it might need special qualifications?”

“Well, I suppose it is better to know how to read, if only for the newspaper in the evenings at the hotel, and also of course to know which station you are at. It makes life a little easier but that’s all. It’s not much of a qualification as you can see, and yet one can still earn enough money to live.”

“I really meant other kinds of qualification: I would have thought your work needed endurance, or patience perhaps, and a great deal of perseverance?”

“I have never done any other work so I could hardly say whether you are right or not. But I always imagined that the qualifications you mention would be necessary for any work; in fact that there could hardly be a job where they are not needed.”

“I am sorry to go on asking you all these questions but do you think you will always go on traveling like this?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. Forgive me for being so curious, but we were talking. . . .”

“Of course and it’s quite all right. But I’m afraid I don’t know if I will go on traveling. There really is no other answer I can give you: I don’t know. How does one know such things?”

“I only meant that if one traveled all the time as you do, I would have thought that one day one would want to stop and stay in one place That was all.”

“It’s true I suppose that one should want to stop. But how do you stop doing one thing and start another? How do people decide to leave one job for another, and why?”

“If I’ve understood you, the fact that you travel depends only on yourself, not on anything else?”

“I don’t think I have ever quite known how such things are decided. I have no particular attachments. In fact I am a rather solitary person and unless some great piece of luck came my way I cannot really see how I could change my work. And somehow I can’t imagine where any luck would come from: there doesn’t seem much about my life which would attract it. Of course I don’t mean that some luck could not come my way—after all one never knows—nor that if it did I would not accept it very gladly. But for the moment I must confess I cannot see much luck coming my way helping me to a decision.”

“But couldn’t you just simply want it? I mean just decide you wanted to change your work?”

“No, I don’t think so. Each day I want to be clean, well fed and sleep well, and I also like to feel decently dressed. So you see I hardly have time for wanting much more. And then, after all, I don’t really dislike traveling.”

“Can I ask you another question? How did all this start?”

“How could I begin to tell you? Things like that are so long and so complicated, and sometimes I really think they are a little beyond me. It would mean going so far back that I feel tired before I start. But on the whole I think things happened to me as they do to anyone else, no differently.”

A wind had risen, so light it seemed to carry the summer with it. For a moment it chased the clouds away, leaving a new warmth hanging over the city.

“How lovely it is,” the man said.

“Yes,” said the girl, “almost the beginning of the hot weather. From now on it will be a little warmer each day.”

“You see, I had no special aptitude for any particular work or for any particular kind of life. And so I suppose I will go on as I am. Yes, I think I will.”

“So really your feelings are only negative? They are just against any particular work or any particular life?”

“Against? No. That’s too strong a word. I can only say that I have no very strong likes. I really just came to be as I am in the way that most people come to be as they are: there is nothing special about my case.”

“But between the things that happened to you a long time ago and now, wasn’t there time for you to change—almost every day in fact—and start liking things? Anything?”

“I suppose so. I don’t deny it. For some people life must be like that and then again for others it is not. Some people must get used to the idea of never changing and I think that really is true of me. So I expect I will just go on as I am.”

“Well, for me things will change: they will not go on being the same.”

“But can you know already?”

“Yes, I can, because my situation is not one which can continue: sooner or later it must come to an end, that is part of it. I am waiting to marry. And as soon as I am married my present life will be quite finished.”

“I understand.”

“I mean that once it is over it will seem so unimportant that it might as well never have been.”

“Perhaps I too—after all it’s impossible to foresee everything, isn’t it?—might change my life one day.”

“Ah, but the difference is that I want to change mine. What I do now is hardly a job. People call it one to make things easier for themselves, but in fact it is not. It’s something different, something with no meaning outside itself like being ill or a child. And so it must come to an end.”

“I understand, but I’ve come back from a long journey and now I’m resting. I never much like thinking of the future and today, when I’m resting, even less: that’s why I am so bad at explaining to you how it is I can put up with my life as it is and not change it, and what is more, not even be able to imagine changing. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, it is I who should apologize.”

“Of course not. After all we can always talk.”

“That’s right. And it means nothing.”

“And so you are waiting for something to happen?”

“Yes. I can see no reason why I should not get married one day like everybody else. As I told you.”

“You’re quite right. There is no reason at all why you should not get married too.”

“Of course with a job like mine—one which is so looked down upon—you could say that the opposite would be more true and that there is no reason at all why anyone should want to marry me. And so somehow I think that to make it seem quite ordinary and natural, I must want it with all my might. And that is how I want it.”

“I am sure nothing is impossible. People say so at least.”

“I have thought about it a great deal: here I am, young, healthy and truthful just like any woman you see anywhere whom some man has settled for. And surely it would be surprising if somewhere there isn’t a man who won’t see that I am just as good as anyone else and settle for me. I am full of hope.”

“I am sure it will happen to you. But if you were suggesting that I make the same sort of change, I can only ask what I would do with a wife? I have nothing in the world but my suitcase and it is all I can do to keep myself.”

“Oh no, I did not mean to say that you need this particular change. I was talking of change in general. For me marriage is the only possible change, but for you it could be something else.”

“I expect you are right, but you seem to forget that people are different. You see, however much I wanted to change, even if I wanted it with all my might, I could never manage to want it as much as you do. You seem to want it at all costs.”

“Perhaps that is because for you a change would be less great than it would for me. As far as I am concerned I feel I want the greatest change there could be. I might be mistaken but still it seems to me that all the changes I see in other people are simple and easy beside the one I want for myself.”

“But don’t you think that even if everyone needed to change, and needed it very badly indeed, that even so they would feel differently about it according to their own particular circumstances?”

“I am sorry but I must explain that I am quite uninterested in particular circumstances. As I told you I am full of hope and what is more I do everything possible to make my hopes come true. For instance every Saturday I go to the local Dance Hall and dance with anyone who asks me. They say that the truth will out and I believe that one day someone will take me for what I am, a perfectly marriageable young woman who would make just as good a wife as anyone else.”

“I don’t think it would help me to go dancing, even if I wanted to change, and wanted it less than you do. My profession is insignificant: in fact it can hardly even be called a profession since it only just provides enough for one person, or perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a half-person. And so I couldn’t, even for an instant, imagine that anything like that would change my life.”

“But then perhaps, as I said before, it would be enough for you to change your work?”

“Yes, but how? How does one change a profession, even such a miserable one as mine? One which doesn’t even allow me to marry? All I do is to go with my suitcase through one day to the next, from one night to another and even from one meal to the next meal, and there is no time for me to stop and think about it as perhaps I should. No, if I were to change then the opportunity must come to me: I have no time to meet it halfway. And then again I should, perhaps, explain that I never felt that anyone particularly needed my services or my company—so much so that quite often I am amazed that I occupy any place in the world at all.”

“Then perhaps the change you should make would be just to feel differently about things?”

“Of course. But you know how it is. After all, one is what one is and how could anyone change so radically? Also I have come to like my work, even if it could hardly be called that: I like catching trains, and sleeping almost anywhere no longer worries me much.”

“You must not mind my saying this, but it seems to me that you should never have let yourself become like this.”

“You could perhaps say I was always a little predisposed to it.”

“For me it would be terrible to go through life with nothing but a suitcase full of things to sell. I think I should be frightened.”

“Of course that can happen, especially at the beginning, but one gets used to little things like that.”

“I think in spite of everything I would rather be as I am, in my present position rather than in yours. But perhaps that is because I am only twenty.”

“But you musn’t think that my work has nothing but disadvantages. That would be quite wrong. With all the time I have on my hands for instance, on the road, in trains, in Squares like this, I can think of all manner of things. I have time to look around and even time to work out reasons for things.”

“But I thought you said you had only enough time to think of yourself? Or rather of managing to keep yourself and of nothing else?”

“No. What I lack is time to think of the future, but I have time to think of other things, or perhaps I should say I make it. Because, after all, if one can face struggling a little more than others do, just to get enough to eat, it is only possible on condition that once a meal is over one can stop thinking about the whole problem. If immediately one meal is finished you had to start thinking about the next one it would be enough to drive you mad.”

“I imagine so. But you see, what would drive me mad would be going from city to city as you do with no other company than a suitcase.”

“Oh, one is not always alone you know. I mean so alone that one might go mad. No, there are boats and trains full of people to watch and observe and then, if one ever feels one is really going mad, there is always something to be done about it.”

“But what good would it do me to make the best of things since all I want is to finish with my present position? In the end all your attitude does for you is to give you more reasons for not finishing with yours.”

“That is not completely true, because should an opportunity arise for me to change my work I would certainly seize it: no, my attitude helps me in other ways. For example it helps me to see the advantages of my profession, such as traveling a great deal and possibly of becoming a little wiser than I was before. I am not saying I am right. I could easily be wrong and, without realizing it, have become far less wise than I ever was. But then, since I wouldn’t know, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“And so you are continually traveling? As continually as I stay in one place?”

“Yes. And even if sometimes I go back to the same places they can be different. In the spring for instance cherries appear in the markets. That is really what I wanted to say and not that I thought I was right in putting up with my life as it is.”

“You’re right. Quite soon, in about six weeks, the first cherries will be in the markets. I am glad for your sake. But tell me what other things you see when you travel?”

“Oh, a thousand things. One time it will be spring and another winter; either sunshine or snow, making the place unrecognizable. But I think it is really the cherries which change things the most: suddenly there they are, and the whole marketplace becomes scarlet. Yes, they will be there in about six weeks. You see, that is what I wanted to explain, not that I thought my work was entirely satisfactory.”

“But apart from the cherries and the sunshine and the snow, what else do you see?”

“Sometimes nothing much: small things you would hardly notice, but a number of little things which added together seem to change a place. Places can be familiar and unfamiliar at the same time: a market which once seemed hostile can, quite suddenly, become warm and friendly.”

“But sometimes isn’t everything exactly the same?”

“Yes. Sometimes so exactly the same that you can only think you left it the night before. I have never understood how this could happen because after all it would seem impossible that anything could remain so much the same.”

“Tell me more about other things you see.”

“Well, sometimes a new block of flats which was half built when last I was there is finished and lived in: full of people and noise. And the odd thing is that although the town had never seemed overcrowded before, there it suddenly is—a brand new block of flats, completed and inhabited as if had always been utterly necessary.”

“All the things you describe and the changes you notice are there for anyone to see, aren’t they? They are not things which exist for you alone, for you and for no one else?”

“Sometimes there are things which I alone can see, but only negligible things. In general you are right: the things I notice are mostly changes in the weather, in buildings, things which anyone would notice. And yet sometimes, just by watching them carefully, such things can affect one just as much as events which are completely personal. In fact it feels as though they were personal, as if somehow one had put the cherries there oneself.”

“I see what you mean and I am trying to put myself in your place, but it’s no good, I still think I should be frightened.”

“That does happen. It happens to me sometimes when I wake up at night. But on the whole it is only at night that I feel frightened, although I can also feel it at dusk—but then only when it’s raining or there’s a fog.”

“Isn’t it strange that although I have never actually experienced the fear we are talking about, I can still understand a little what it must be like.”

“It is not the kind of fear you might feel if you said to yourself that when you died no one would care. No, it’s another kind of fear, a general one which affects everything and not just you alone.”

“As if you were suddenly terrified of being yourself, of being what you are instead of different, almost instead of being some quite other kind of thing.”

“Yes. It comes from feeling at the same time like everyone else, exactly like everyone else, and yet being oneself. In fact I think it is just that: being one kind of thing rather than another. . . .”

“It’s complicated, but I understand.”

“As for the other kind of fear—the fear of thinking that no one would notice if you died—it seems to me that sometimes this can make one happier. I think that if you knew that when you died no one would suffer, not even a dog, it makes it easier to bear the thought of dying.”

“I am trying to follow you, but I am afraid I don’t understand. Perhaps because women are different from men? All I do know is that I could not bear to live as you do, alone with that suitcase. It is not that I would not like to travel, but unless there was someone who cared for me somewhere in the world I don’t think I could do it. In fact I can only say that I would prefer to be where I am.”

“But could you not think of traveling while waiting for what you want?”

“No. I don’t believe you know what it is to want to change one’s life. I must stay here and think about it, think with all my might, or else I know I will never manage to change.”

“Perhaps. I don’t really know.”

“How could you know? Because, however modest a way of life you have, it is at least yours. So how could you know what it is like to be nothing?”

“Am I right in thinking that no one would particularly care if you died either?”

“No one. And I’ve been twenty now for two weeks. But one day someone will care. I know it. I am full of hope. Otherwise nothing would be possible.”

“You are quite right. Why shouldn’t someone care about you as much as about anyone else?”

“That’s just it. That’s just what I say to myself.”

“You’re right, and now I’d like to ask you a question. Do you get enough to eat?”

“Yes, thank you, I do. I eat as much as and even more than I need. Always alone, but one eats well in my job since after all one does the cooking; and good things too. Even if I have to force myself I always eat a great deal because sometimes I feel I would like to be fatter and more impressive so that people would notice me more. I think that if I were bigger and stronger I would stand a better chance of getting what I want. You may say I’m wrong, but it seems to me that if I were radiantly healthy people would find me more attractive. And so you see, we are really very different.”

“Probably. But in my own way I am also someone who tries. I must have explained myself badly just now. I assure you that if I should ever want to change, why then I would set about it like everyone else.”

“You know, it is not very easy to believe you when you say that.”

“Perhaps, but you see while I have nothing against hope in general, the fact is that there has never seemed much reason for it to concern me. And yet I feel that it would not take a great deal for me to feel that hope is as necessary to me as it is to others. It might only need the smallest bit of faith. Perhaps I lack the time for it, who knows? I don’t mean the time I spend in trains thinking of this or that, or passing the time of day with other people, no, I mean the other kind of time: the time anyone has, each day, to think of the one that follows. I just lack the time to start thinking about that particular subject and so discovering that it might mean something to me too.”

“And yet it seems to me, as I think you yourself said, that there was a time when you were like everyone else?”

“Yes, but almost so much so that I was never able to do anything about it. I could never make up my mind to choose a profession. No one can be everything at once or, as you said, want everything at once, and personally I was never able to get over this difficulty. But after all I have traveled, my suitcase takes me to a great many places and once I even went to a foreign country. I didn’t sell much there but I saw it. If anyone had told me some years ago that I should want to go there I would never have believed them, and yet you see one day when I woke up I suddenly felt I would like to visit it and I went; and although very little has happened to me in my life at least I managed that—I went to that country.”

“But aren’t people unhappy in this country of yours?”

“Yes.”

“And there are girls like me, waiting for something to happen?”

“I expect so, yes.”

“So what is the point of it?”

“Of course it’s true that people are unhappy and die there and there are probably girls like you waiting hopefully for something to happen to them. But why not know that country as well as just this one where we are, even if some things are the same. Why not see another country?”

“Because . . . and I am sure I am wrong, and I am sure you will tell me I am, but the fact is that it is a matter of complete indifference to me.”

“Ah, but wait. There for instance the winters are less harsh than here: in fact you would hardly know it was winter.”

“But what use is a whole country to anyone, or a whole city or even the whole of one warm winter? It’s no use, you can say what you like but you can only be where you are, when you are and so what is the point?”

“But that is exactly the point. The town where I went ends in a big square surrounded by huge balustrades which seem to go on for ever. . . .”

“I am afraid I simply don’t want to hear about it.”

“The whole town is built in white limestone: imagine, it is like snow in the heart of summer. It is built on a peninsula surrounded by the sea.”

“And the sea I suppose is blue. It is blue isn’t it?”

“Yes, very blue.”

“Well, I am sorry, but I must tell you that people who talk of how blue the sea is make me sick.”

“But how can I help it? From the Zoo you can see it surrounding the whole town. And to anybody it must seem blue. It’s not my fault.”

“No. For me, without those ties of affection I was talking about, it would be black. And then, although I don’t want to offend you in any way, you must see that I am much too preoccupied with my desire to change my life to be able to go away or travel or see new things. You can see as many towns as you like but it never gets you anywhere. And once you have stopped looking, there you are, exactly where you were before.”

“But I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. I’m not talking of those huge events which change a whole life, no, just of the things which give pleasure while one is doing them. Traveling is a great distraction. Everyone has always traveled, the Greeks, the Phoenicians: it has always been so, all through history.”

“It’s true that we’re talking of different things. Travel or cities by the sea are not the things I want. First of all I want to belong to myself, to own something, not necessarily something very wonderful, but something which is mine, a place of my own, maybe only one room, but mine. Why sometimes I even find myself dreaming of a gas stove.”

“You know it would be just the same as traveling. You wouldn’t be able to stop. Once you had the gas stove you would want a refrigerator and after that something else. It would be just like traveling, going from city to city. It would never end.”

“Excuse me, but do you see anything wrong in my wanting something further perhaps after I have the refrigerator?”

“Of course not. No, certainly not. I was only speaking for myself, and as far as I am concerned I find your idea even more exhausting than traveling and then going on traveling, moving as I do from place to place.”

“I was born and grew up like everyone else and I know how to look around me: I look at things very carefully and I can see no reason why I should remain as I am. I must start somehow, anyhow, to become of consequence. And if at this stage I began losing heart at the thought of a refrigerator I might never even possess the gas stove. And anyway, how am I to know if it would weary me or not? If you say it would, it might be because you have given the matter a great deal of thought or perhaps even because at some time you very much disliked one particular refrigerator.”

“No, it is not that. Not only have I never possessed a refrigerator, but I have never had the slightest chance of doing so. No, it’s only an idea, and if I talked of refrigerators like that it was probably only because to someone who travels they seem especially heavy and immobile. I don’t suppose I would have made the same remarks about another object. And yet I do understand, I assure you, that it would be impossible for you to travel before you had the gas stove, or even perhaps, the refrigerator. And I expect I am quite wrong to be so easily discouraged at the mere thought of a refrigerator.”

“It does seem very strange.”

“There was one day in my life, just one, when I no longer wanted to live. I was hungry, and as I had no money it was absolutely essential for me to work if I was to eat. It was as if I had forgotten that this was as true of everyone as of me. That day I felt quite unused to life and there seemed no point in going on living because I couldn’t see why things should go on for me as they did for other people. It took me a whole day to get over this feeling. Then, of course, I took my suitcase to the market and afterwards I had a meal and things went on as they had before. But with this difference, that ever since that day I find that any thought of the future—and after all thinking of a refrigerator is thinking of the future—is much more frightening than before.”

“I would have guessed that.”

“Since then, when I think about myself, it is simply in terms of one person more or one person less, and so you see that a refrigerator more or less can hardly seem as important to me as it does to you.”

“Tell me, did this happen before or after you went to that country you liked so much?”

“After. But when I think about that country I feel pleased and I think it would have been a pity for one more person not to have seen it. I don’t mean that I imagine I was especially made to appreciate it. No, it just seems to me that since we are here, it is better to see one country more rather than one less.”

“I can’t feel as you do and yet I do understand what you are saying and I think you are right to say it. What you really mean is that since we are alive anyhow it is better to see things than not to see them. It was that you meant, wasn’t it? And that seeing them makes the time pass quickly and more pleasantly?”

“Yes, it is a little like that. Perhaps the only difference between us is that we feel differently about how to spend our time?”

“Not only that, because as yet I have not had the time to become tired of anything, except of waiting of course. I don’t mean that you are necessarily happier than I am, but simply that if you were unhappy you could imagine something which would help, like moving to another city, selling something different, or even . . . even bigger things. But I can’t start thinking of anything yet, not even the smallest thing. My life has not begun except, of course, for the fact that I am alive. There are times, in summer for example when the weather is fine, when I feel that something might have begun for me even without there being any proof of it, and then I am frightened. I become frightened of giving in to the fine weather and forgetting what I want even for a second, of losing myself in something unimportant. I am sure that if at this stage I started thinking of anything except the one big thing, I would be lost.”

“But it seemed to me for instance that you were fond of that little boy?”

“It makes no difference. If I am I don’t want to know it. If I started finding consolation in my life, if I was able, to however small a degree, to put up with it then I know I would be lost. I have a great deal of work to do, and I do it. Indeed I am so good at my work that each day they give me a little more to do, and I accept it. Naturally it has ended by them giving me the hardest things to do, dreadful things, and yet I do them and I never complain. Because if I refused it would mean that I imagined that my situation, as it stands, could be improved, that it could be made somehow bearable, and then, of course, it would end up one day by becoming bearable.”

“And yet it seems strange to be able to make one’s life easier and refuse to do so.”

“I suppose so, but I must do whatever they ask. I have never refused anything although it would have been easy at the beginning and now it would be easier still since I am asked to do more and more. But for as long as I can remember it has always been like this: I accepted everything quite quietly so that one day I would be quite unable to accept anything any more. You may say that this is a rather childish way of looking at things, but I could never find another way of being sure that I would get what I wanted. You see, I know that people can get used to anything and all around me I see people who are still where I am, but ten years later. There is nothing people cannot get accustomed to, even to a life like mine, and so I must be careful, very careful indeed, not to become accustomed to it myself. Sometimes I am frightened, because although I am aware of this danger, it is still so great that I am afraid that even I, aware as I am, might give in to it. But please go on telling me about the changes you see when you travel, apart from the snow, the cherries and the new buildings?”

“Well, sometimes the hotel has changed hands and the new owner is friendly and talkative where the old one was tired of trying to please and never spoke to his clients.”

“Tell me, it is true isn’t it that I must not take things for granted: that each day I must still be amazed to be where I am or else I shall never succeed?”

“I think that everyone is amazed, each day, to be still where they are. I think people are amazed quite naturally. I doubt if one can decide to be amazed at one thing more than at another.”

“Each morning I am a little more surprised to find myself still where I am. I don’t do it on purpose: I just wake up and, immediately, I am surprised. Then I start remembering things . . . I was a child like any other: there was nothing to show I was different. At cherry time we used to go and steal fruit in the orchards. We were stealing it right up to the last day, because it was in that season that I was sent into service. But tell me more about the things you see when you travel?”

“I used to steal cherries like you, and there was nothing which seemed to make me different from other children, except perhaps that even then I loved them very much. Well, apart from a change of proprietor in a hotel, sometimes a radio has been installed. That’s a big change, when a café without music suddenly becomes a café with music: then of course they have many more customers and everyone stays much later. And that makes an evening to the good.”

“You said to the good?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I sometimes think: if only we had known. . . . My mother simply came up to me and said, ‘Well, you must come along now.’ And I just let myself be led away like an animal to the slaughterhouse. If only I had known then, I promise you I would have fought. I would have saved myself. I would have begged my mother to let me stay. I would have persuaded her.”

“But we don’t know.”

“The cherry season went on that year like all the others. People would pass under my window singing and I would be there behind the curtains watching them, and I got scolded for it.”

“I was left free to pick cherries for a long time. . . .”

“There I was behind the window like a criminal and yet my only crime was to be sixteen. But you? You said you went on picking them for a long time?”

“Longer than most people. And yet you see. . . .”

“Tell me more about your cafés full of people and music.”

“I like them very much. I don’t really think I could go on living without them.”

“I think I would like them too. I can see myself at the bar with my husband, listening to the radio. People would talk to us and we would make conversation. We would be with each other and with the others. Sometimes I feel how nice it would be to go and sit in a café but if you are a single young woman you can hardly afford to do so.”

“I forgot to add that sometimes someone looks at you.”

“I see, and comes over?”

“Yes, they come over.”

“For no reason?”

“For no particular reason, but then the conversation somehow becomes less general.”

“And then?”

“I never stay longer than two days in any town. Three at the most. The things I sell are not so essential.”

“Alas.”

The wind, which had died down, rose again scattering the clouds, and once more the sudden warmth in the air brought thoughts of approaching summer.

“But the weather is really wonderful today,” the man said again.

“It is nearly summer.”

“Perhaps the fact is that one never really starts anything: perhaps things are always in the future?”

“If you can say that, it is because each day is full enough for you to prevent you thinking of the next. But my days are empty, a desert.”

“But don’t you do anything of which you could say later that at least it was something to the good?”

“No, nothing. I work all day, but I never do anything of which I could say what you have just said. I cannot even think in those terms.”

“Please don’t think I want to contradict you, but you must see that whatever you do, this time you are living now will count for you one day. You will look back on this desert as you describe it and discover that it was not empty at all, but full of people. You will not escape it. You think this time has not begun, and it has begun. You think you are doing nothing and in reality you are doing something. You think you are moving towards a solution and when you look round you find it’s behind you. In just this sense I did not fully appreciate that city I mentioned. The hotel wasn’t first class, the room I had reserved in advance had already been rented, it was late and I was hungry. Nothing was awaiting me in this city, except the city itself, and imagine for a moment what an enormous city, completely preoccupied with its own affairs, can be for a weary traveler seeing it for the first time.”

“No, I can’t imagine.”

“All you find is a bad room overlooking a dirty, noisy courtyard. And yet thinking back I know that this trip changed me, that much of what I had seen before making it was leading up to it and illuminated by it. You’re well aware that only after it’s all over does one know he has visited this or that town.”

“If that is the way you understand it, then perhaps you are right. Perhaps it has already started, perhaps it started on that particular day when I first wished it would start.”

“Yes, you think that nothing happens, and yet, don’t you see, it seems to me that the most important thing that has happened to you is precisely your will not to live yet.”

“I understand you, I really do, but you must also try and understand me. Even if the most important part of my life is over, I can’t know it as yet and I haven’t the time to understand it. I hope one day I will know, as you did with your journey, and that when I look back everything behind me will be clear and fall into place. But now, at this moment, I am too involved to be even able to guess at what I might feel one day.”

“I know. And I know that probably it is impossible for you to undertand things you have not yet felt, but all the same it is hard for me not to try and explain them to you.”

“You are very kind, but I am afraid that I am not very good yet at understanding the things I am told.”

“Believe me that I do understand all you have said, but even so, is it absolutely necessary to do all that work? Of course I am not trying to give you any advice, but don’t you think that someone else would make a little effort and still manage, without quite so much work, to have as much hope for the future as before? Don’t you think that another person would manage that?”

“Are you frightened that one day, if I have to wait too long and go on working a little more each day without complaining, I might suddenly lose patience altogether?”

“I admit that your kind of will power is a little frightening, but that’s not why I made my suggestion. It was just because it is difficult to accept that someone of your age should live as you do.”

“But I have no alternative, I assure you. I have thought about it a great deal.”

“Can I ask you how many people there are in the family you work for?”

“Seven.”

“And how big is the house?”

“Average.”

“And rooms?”

“Eight.”

“It’s too much.”

“But no. That’s not the way to think. I must have explained myself very badly because you haven’t understood.”

“I think that work can always be measured and that, no matter what the circumstances, work is always work.”

“Not my kind. It’s probably true of the kind of work of which it is better to do too much than too little. But if in my kind of work there was time left over to think or start enjoying oneself then one would really be lost.”

“And you’re only twenty?”

“Yes, and as they say I’ve not yet had time to do any wrong. But that seems beside the point to me.”

“On the contrary, I have a feeling that it is not and that the people you work for should remember it.”

“After all, it’s hardly their fault if I agree to do all the work they give me. I would do the same in their place.”

“I should like to tell you how I went into that town, after leaving my suitcase at the hotel.”

“Yes, I should like to hear that. But you mustn’t worry on my account: I would be most surprised if I let myself become impatient. I think all the time of the risk I would run if that should happen and so, you see, I don’t think it will.”

“I did not manage to leave my suitcase until the evening. . . .”

“You see people like me do think too. There is nothing else for us to do, buried in our work. We think a great deal, but not like you. We have dark thoughts, and all the time.”

“It was evening, just before dinner, after work.”

“People like me think the same things of the same people and our thoughts are always bad. That’s why we are so careful and why it’s not worth bothering about us. You were talking of jobs, and I wonder if something could be called a job which makes you spend your whole day thinking ill of people? But you were saying it was evening, and you had left your suitcase?”

“Yes. It was only towards the evening, after I had left my suitcase at the hotel, just before dinner, that I started walking through that town. I was looking for a restaurant and of course it’s not always easy to find exactly what one wants when price is a consideration. And while I was looking I strayed away from the center and came by accident to the Zoo. A wind had risen. People had forgotten the day’s work and were strolling through the gardens which, as I told you, were up on a hill overlooking the town.”

“But I know that life is good. Otherwise why on earth should I take so much trouble.”

“I don’t really know what happened. The moment I entered those gardens I was a man overwhelmed by a sense of living.”

“How could a garden, just seeing a garden, make a man happy?”

“And yet what I am telling you is quite an ordinary experience and other people will often tell you similar things in the course of your life. I am a person for whom talking, for example, feeling at one with other people, is a blessing, and suddenly in that garden I was so completely at home, so much at my ease, that it might have been made specially for me although it was an ordinary public garden. I don’t know how to put it any better, except perhaps to say that it was as if I had achieved something and become, for the first time, equal to my life. I could not bear to leave it. The wind had risen, the light was honey-colored and even the lions whose manes glowed in the setting sun were yawning with the pure pleasure of being there. The air smelt of lions and of fire and I breathed it as if it were the essence of friendliness which had, at last, included me. All the passers-by were preoccupied with each other, basking in the evening light. I remember thinking they were like the lions. And suddenly I was happy.”

“But in what way were you happy? Like someone resting? Like someone who is cool again after having been very hot? Or happy as other people are happy every day?”

“More than that I think. Probably because I was unused to happiness. A great surge of feeling overwhelmed me, and I did not know what to do with it.”

“A feeling which hurt?”

“Perhaps so, yes. It hurt because there seemed to be nothing which could ever appease it.”

“But that, I think, is hope.”

“Yes, that is hope, I know that really is hope. And of what? Of nothing. Just the hope of hope.”

“You know if there were only people like you in the world, no one would get anywhere.”

“But listen. You could see the sea from the bottom of each avenue in that garden, every single one led to the sea. Actually the sea really plays very little part in my life, but in that garden they were all looking at the sea, even the people who were born there, even, it seemed to me, the lions themselves. How can you avoid looking at what other people are looking at, even if normally it doesn’t mean much to you.”

“The sea couldn’t have been as blue as all that since you said the sun was setting?”

“When I left my hotel it was blue but after I had been in that garden a little while it became darker and calmer.”

“But you said a wind had come up: it couldn’t have been as calm as all that?”

“But it was such a gentle wind, if you only knew, and it was probably only blowing on the heights: on the town and not on the plain. I don’t remember exactly from which direction it came, but surely not from the open sea.”

“And then again, the setting sun couldn’t have illuminated all the lions. Not unless all the cages faced the same way on the same side of the garden looking into the sun?”

“And yet I promise you it was like that. They were all in the same place and the setting sun lit up each lion without exception.”

“And so the sun did set first over the sea?”

“Yes, you’re quite right. The city and the garden were still in sunshine although the sea was in shade. That was three years ago. That’s why I remember it all so well and like talking about it.”

“I understand. One thinks one can get by without talking, but it’s not possible. From time to time I find myself talking to strangers too, just as we are talking now.”

“When people need to talk it can be felt very strongly, and strangely enough people in general seem to resent it. It is only in Squares that it seems quite natural. Tell me again, you said there were eight rooms where you worked? Big rooms?”

“I couldn’t really say since I don’t suppose anyone else would see them in quite the same way as I do. Most of the time they seem big, but perhaps they’re not as big as all that. It really depends. On some days they seem endless and on others I think I could stifle they seem so tiny. But why did you ask?”

“It was only out of curiosity. For no other reason.”

“I know that I must seem stupid to you, but I can’t help it.”

“I would say you are a very ambitious person, if I have really understood you, someone who wants everything that everyone else has, but wants it so much that one could almost say your desire is heroic.”

“That word doesn’t frighten me, although I had not thought of it in that way. You could almost say I have so little that I could have anything. After all I could want to die with the same violence as I want to live. And is there anything, any one little thing in my life to which I could sacrifice my courage? And who or what could weaken it? Anyone would do the same as I do: anyone, I mean, who wanted what I want as much as I do.”

“I expect so. Since everyone does what he has to do. Yes, I expect there are cases where it is impossible to be anything else but heroic.”

“You see, if just once I refused the work they give me, no matter what it was, it would mean that I had begun to manage things, to defend myself, to take an interest in what I was doing. It would start with one thing, go on to another, and could end anywhere. I would begin to defend my rights so well that I would take them seriously and end by thinking they existed. They would matter to me. I wouldn’t be bored any more and so I would be lost.”

There was a silence between them. The sun, which had been hidden by the clouds, came out again. Then the girl started talking once more.

“Did you stay on in that town after being so happy in that garden?”

“I stayed for several days. Sometimes I do stay longer than usual in a place.”

“Tell me, do you think that anyone can experience the feelings you had in that garden?”

“There must be some people who never do. It’s an almost unbearable idea but I suppose there are such people.”

“You don’t know for certain do you?”

“No. I can easily be mistaken. The fact is I really don’t know.”

“And yet you seem to know about these things.”

“No more than anyone else.”

“There’s something else I want to ask you: as the sun sets very quickly in those countries, surely, even if it set first on the sea, the shade must have reached the town soon afterwards? The sunset must have been over very soon, perhaps ten minutes after it had begun.”

“You are quite right, and yet I assure you it was just at that moment that I arrived; just at the moment when everything is alight.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

“It doesn’t sound as though you do.”

“But I do, completely. And anyway you could have arrived at any other moment without changing all that followed, couldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I did arrive then, even if that moment only lasts for a few minutes a day.”

“But that isn’t really the point?”

“No, that isn’t really the point.”

“And afterwards?”

“Afterwards the garden was the same, except that it became night. A coolness came up from the sea and people were happy for the day had been hot.”

“But even so, eventually you had to eat?”

“Suddenly I was no longer very hungry. I was thirsty. I didn’t have dinner that evening. Perhaps I just forgot about it.”

“But that’s why you had left your hotel, to eat I mean?”

“Yes, but then I forgot about it.”

“For me, you see, the days are like the night.”

“But that is a little because you want them to be like that. You would like to emerge from your present situation just as you were when you entered it, as one wakes up from a long sleep. I know, of course, what it is to want to create night all around one but it seems to me that however hard one tries the dangers of the day break through.”

“Only my night is not as dark as all that and I doubt if the day is really a threat to it. I’m twenty. Nothing has happened to me yet. I sleep well. But one day I must wake up and for ever. It must happen.”

“And so each day is the same for you, even though they may be different?”

“Tonight, like every Thursday night, there will be people for dinner. I will eat chicken all alone in the kitchen.”

“And the murmur of their conversation will reach you the same way? So very much the same that you could imagine that each Thursday they said exactly the same things.”

“Yes, and as usual, I won’t understand anything they talk about.”

“And you will be all alone, there in the kitchen, surrounded by the remnants of food in a sort of drowsy lull. And then you will be called to take away the meat plates and serve the next course.”

“They will ring for me, but they won’t waken me. I serve at table half-asleep,”

“Just as they are waited on, in absolute ignorance of what you might be like. And so in a way you are quits: they can neither make you happy nor sad, and so you sleep.”

“Yes. And then the guests will leave and the house will be quiet till the morning.”

“When you will start ignoring them all over again, while trying to wait on them as well as possible.”

“I expect so. But I sleep well! If you only knew how well I sleep. There is nothing they can do to disturb my sleep. But why are we talking about these things?”

“I don’t know, perhaps just to make you remember them.”

“Perhaps it is that. But you see one day, yes one day, I shall go into the drawing room and I shall speak.”

“Yes, you must.”

“I shall say: ‘This evening I shall not be serving dinner.’ Madam will turn round in surprise. And I will say: ‘Why should I serve dinner since as from this evening . . . as from this evening’ . . . but no, I cannot even imagine how things of such importance are said.”

The man made no reply. He seemed only attentive to the softness of the wind, which once more, had risen. The girl seemed to expect no response to what she had just said.

“Soon it will be summer,” said the man and added with a groan, “We really are the lowest of the low.”

“It’s said that someone has to be.”

“Yes, indeed and that everything has its place.”

“And yet sometimes one wonders why this should be so.”

“Why us rather than others?”

“Yes. Although sometimes, in cases like ours, one wonders whether its being us or someone else makes any difference. Sometimes one just wonders.”

“Yes, and sometimes, in certain instances, that is a consoling thought.”

“Not for me. That could never be a consoling thought. I must believe that I myself am concerned rather than anyone else. Without that belief I am lost.”

“Who knows? Perhaps things will soon change for you. Soon and very suddenly: perhaps even this very summer you will go into that drawing room and announce that, as from that moment, the world can manage without your services.”

“Who knows indeed? And you could call it pride, but when I say the world, I really mean the whole world. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I will open the door of that drawing room and then, suddenly, everything will be said and forever.”

“And you will always remember that moment as I remember my journey. I have never been on so wonderful a journey since, nor one which made me so happy.”

“Why are you suddenly so sad? Do you see anything sad in the fact that one day I must open that door? On the contrary doesn’t it seem the most desirable thing in the world?”

“It seems utterly desirable to me, and even more than that. No, if I felt a little sad when you talked of it—and I did feel a little sad—it was only because once you have opened that door it will have been opened forever, and afterwards you will never be able to do it again. And then, sometimes, it seems so hard, so very hard to go back to a country which pleased me as well as that one did, that occasionally I wonder if it would not have been better never to have seen it at all.”

“I wish I could, but you must see I cannot understand what it is like to have seen that city and to want to go back to it, nor can I understand the sadness you seem to feel at the thought of waiting for that moment. You could try as hard as you liked to tell me there was something sad about it, I could never understand. I know nothing, or rather I know nothing except this: that one day I must open that door and speak to those people.”

“Of course, of course. You mustn’t take any notice of what I say. Those thoughts simply came into my mind when you were talking, but I didn’t want them to discourage you. In fact quite the opposite. I’d like to ask you more about that door. What special moment are you waiting for, to open it? For instance why couldn’t you do it this evening?”

“Alone I could never do it.”

“You mean that being without money or education you could only begin in the same way all over again and that really there would be no point to it?”

“I mean that and other things. I don’t really know how to describe it, but being alone I feel as if I had no meaning. I can’t change by myself. No. I will go on visiting that Dance Hall and one day a man will ask me to be his wife. Then I will open that door. I couldn’t do it before that happened.”

“How do you know if it would turn out like that if you have never tried?”

“I have tried. And because of that I know that alone . . . I would be, as I said, somehow meaningless. I wouldn’t know any more what it was to want to change. I would simply be there, doing nothing, telling myself that nothing was worthwhile.”

“I think I see what you mean: in fact I believe I understand it all.”

“One day someone must choose me. Then I will be able to change. I don’t mean this is true for everyone. I am simply saying it is true for me. I have already tried and I know. I don’t know all this just because I know what it is like to be hungry, no, but because when I was hungry I realized I didn’t care. I hardly knew who it was in me who was hungry.”

“I see all that: I can see how one could feel like that: in fact I can guess it, although personally I have never felt the need to be singled out as you want to be; or perhaps I really mean that if such a thought ever did cross my mind I never attached much importance to it.”

“You must understand: you must try to understand that I have never been wanted by anyone, ever, except of course for my capacity for housework; and that is not choosing me as a person but simply wanting something impersonal which makes me as anonymous as possible. And so I must be wanted by someone, just once, and even if only once. Otherwise I shall exist so little even to myself that I would be incapable of knowing how to want to choose anything. That is why, you see, I attach so much importance to marriage.”

“Yes, I do see and I follow what you are saying, but in spite of all that, and with the best will in the world, I cannot really see how you hope to be chosen when you cannot make a choice for yourself?”

“I know it seems ridiculous but that is how it is. Because you see, left to myself, I would find any man suitable: any man in the world would seem suitable on the one condition that he wanted me just a little. A man who so much as noticed me would seem desirable just for that very reason, and so how on earth would I be capable of knowing who would suit me when anyone would, on the one condition that they wanted me? No, it’s impossible. Someone else must decide for me, must guess what would be best. Alone I could never know.”

“Even a child knows what is best for him.”

“But I am not a child, and if I let myself go and behaved like a child and gave in to the first temptation I came across—after all I am perfectly aware that it is there at every street corner—why then I would follow the first person who came along, the first man who just wanted me. And I would follow him simply for the pleasure I would have in being with him, and then, why then I would be lost, completely lost. You could say that I could easily make another kind of life for myself, but as you can see I no longer have the courage even to think of it.”

“But have you never thought that if you leave this choice entirely to another person it need not necessarily be the right one and might make for unhappiness later?”

“Yes, I have thought of that a little, but I cannot think now, before my life has really begun, of the harm I might possibly do later on. I just say one thing to myself and that is: if the very fact of being alive means that we can do harm, however much we don’t want to, just by choosing or making mistakes, if that is an inevitable state of affairs, why then, I too will go through with it. If I have to, if everyone has to, I can live with harm.”

“Please don’t get so excited: there will be someone one day who will discover that you exist both for him and for others, you must be sure of that. And yet you know one can almost manage to live with this lack of which you speak.”

“Which lack? Of never being chosen?”

“If you like, yes. As far as I am concerned I should be so surprised if anyone chose me, that I should simply laugh.”

“While I should be in no way surprised, I am afraid I would find it perfectly natural. It is just the contrary which astonishes me, and it astonishes me more each day. I cannot understand it and I never get used to it.”

“It will happen. I promise you.”

“Thank you for saying so. But are you saying that just to please me, or can people tell these things? Can you guess it already just from talking to me?”

“I expect such things can be guessed, yes. To tell you the truth, I said that without thinking much, but not at all because I thought it would please you. It must have been because I could see it.”

“And you? How are you so sure the opposite is true of you.”

“Well, I suppose it is because. . . . Yes, just because I am not surprised. I think it must be that. I am not at all surprised that no one has chosen me, while you are so amazed that you have not yet been singled out.”

“In your place, you know, I would force myself to want something, however hard it might be. I would not remain as you are.”

“But what can I do? Since I don’t feel this same need it could only come to me. . . . Well, from the outside. How else could it be?”

“You know you almost make me wish I was dead.”

“Is it I in particular who has that effect, or were you just speaking in general?”

“Of course I was only speaking in general. In general about us both.”

“Because there is another thing I would not really like, and that is to have provoked in anyone, even if only once, a feeling as violent as that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“And I would like to thank you too.”

“But for what?”

“I don’t really know. For your niceness.”

Two

THE CHILD CAME OVER quietly from the far side of the Park and stood beside the girl.

“I’m thirsty,” he announced.

The girl took a thermos and a mug from the bag beside her.

“I can well imagine,” said the man, “that he must be thirsty after eating those sandwiches.”

The girl uncorked the thermos. Warm milk gleamed in the sunshine.

“But as you see,” she said, “I have brought him some milk.”

The child drank the milk greedily, then gave the mug back to the girl. A milky cloud stayed round his lips. The girl wiped them. The man smiled at the child.

“If I said what I did,” he remarked, “it was only to try and make myself clear. For no other reason.”

Completely indifferent the child contemplated this man who was smiling at him. Then he went back to the sand pit. The girl’s eyes followed him.

“His name is James,” she said.

“James,” the man repeated.

But he was no longer thinking of the child.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he went on, “how a trace of milk stays round a child’s mouth when he has drunk it? It’s strange. In some ways they are so grown up: they seem to talk and walk like everyone else and then when it comes to drinking milk, one realizes. . . .”

“He doesn’t say ‘milk,’ he says ‘my milk.’”

“When I see something like that milk I suddenly feel full of hope although I could never say why. As if some pain was deadened. I think perhaps that watching these children reminds me of the lions in that Garden. I see them as minute lions, but lions all the same.”

“Yet they don’t seem to give you the same kind of happiness as those lions did in their cages facing the sun?”

“They give me a certain happiness but you are right, not the same one. Somehow children always make one feel obscurely worried, and it is not that I particularly like lions; it would be untrue to say that. It was just a way of putting things.”

“I wonder if you attach too much importance to that town with the result that the rest of your life suffers by comparison? Or is it just that never having been there I can hardly be expected to understand the happiness it gave you?”

“And yet it is probably to someone like you that I should most like to talk about it.”

“Thank you. It was kind of you to say that. But you know I didn’t want to imply that I was particularly unhappy, more unhappy I mean than anyone else would be in the same position. I was speaking of something quite different, something which I am afraid could not be solved by seeing any country, anywhere in the world.”

“I’m sorry. You see when I said that I should like to talk most about that country to someone like you I did not mean for a second that you were unhappy without knowing it, and that telling you certain things would make you feel better. I simply meant that you seemed to me to be a person who might understand what one was trying to say better than most people. That’s all. But I expect I have talked too much about that town and it is natural that you should have misunderstood.”

“No, I don’t think it is that. All I wanted was to put you right in case you had made the mistake of thinking I was unhappy. Of course there are times when I cry, naturally there are, but it’s only from impatience or irritation. I am not old enough yet to be profoundly sad about my life. That stage is to come.”

“Yes, I really do see, but don’t you think it is just possible that you might be wrong, that you don’t know which stage you have reached?”

“No, that would not be possible. Either I shall be unhappy in the same way as everyone else is, or I shall not be unhappy at all. I want to be exactly like everyone else and I shall go on trying as much as I can. I want to find out for myself if life is terrible. I shall die as I mean to and someone will care. But let’s forget all that. Please tell me more of how you felt in that town.”

“I am afraid I will tell it badly. I had no sleep and yet I was not tired.”

“And. . . .”

“I did not eat and I wasn’t hungry.”

“And then. . . .”

“All the minor problems of my life seemed to evaporate as if they had never existed except in my imagination. I thought of them as belonging to a distant past and laughed at them.”

“But surely you must have wanted to eat and sleep in the end? It would have been impossible for you to go on without feeling tired or hungry.”

“I expect so, but I didn’t stay long enough there for those feelings to come back to me.”

“And were you very tired when they did come back?”

“I slept for a whole day in a wood by the roadside.”

“Like a tramp?”

“Yes, just like a tramp with my suitcase beside me.”

“I understand.”

“No, I don’t think you can, yet.”

“I mean I am trying to understand and one day I will. One day I shall understand what you have been saying to me completely. After all, anybody could, couldn’t they?”

“Yes. I think one day you will understand them as completely as possible.”

“Ah, if only you knew how difficult the things I was telling you about can be. How difficult it is to get for yourself, completely by yourself, just the things which are common to everyone. I think I really mean how hard it is to fight the apathy which comes from wanting jus: the ordinary things which everyone else seems to have.”

“I expect it is just that which prevents so many people from trying to achieve them. I admire you for being as you are.”

“Ah, if only will power were enough! There have been men who found me attractive from time to time, but so far none of them has asked me to be his wife. There is a great difference between liking a young girl and wanting to marry her. And yet that must happen to me. Just once in my life I must be taken seriously. I wanted to ask you something: if you want a thing all the time, at every single moment of the day and night, do you think that you necessarily get it?”

“Not necessarily, no. But it still remains the best way of trying and the one with the greatest chance of success. I can really see no other way.”

“After all, we’re only talking. And as you don’t know me or I you, you can tell me the truth.”

“Yes, that’s quite true, but really and truly I can see no other way. But perhaps I haven’t had enough experience to answer your question properly.”

“Because I once heard that quite the opposite was true. That it was by trying not to want something that it finally happened.”

“But tell me, how could you manage not to want something, when you want it so much?”

“That is exactly what I say to myself, and to tell you the truth I never felt that the other was a very serious idea. I think it must apply to people who want little things, to people who already have something and want something else, but not to people like us—I didn’t mean that, I mean not to people like me who want everything, not just a part of something but . . .I don’t know how to say it. . . .”

“A whole.”

“Perhaps it is that. But please tell me more about your feelings for children. You said you were fond of them?”

“Yes. Sometimes when I have no one else to talk to I talk to them. But you know how it is, one can’t really talk to children.”

“Oh, you’re right. We are the lowest of the low.”

“But you mustn’t think either that I am unhappy simply because sometimes I need to talk so badly that I talk to children. That’s not true, because after all I must in some way have chosen my life or else I am just a madman indulging in his folly.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean what I said. I simply saw the fine weather and the words came out of their own accord. You must try to understand and not mind, because sometimes fine weather makes me doubt everything: but it never lasts for more than a few seconds. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. When I sit in Squares like this it is generally because I have been for some days without talking: when there have been no opportunities for conversation except with the people who buy my goods and they have been so rushed or standoffish that I could say nothing to them except the things that go with the sale of a reel of cotton. Naturally you mind this after some time and suddenly you want to talk and be listened to so badly that it can even produce a feeling of illness like a slight fever.”

“I know how you feel. You feel you could do without everything else, without eating, sleeping, anything rather than be silent. But in that town you were telling me about you didn’t have to talk to children?”

“Not in that town, no. I was not with children then.”

“That is what I thought.”

“I used to see them in the distance. There were lots of them in the streets: they are left very free there and from about the age of the one you look after they cross the whole town on their own to visit the Zoo. They eat at any hour and sleep in the shadow of the lions’ cages. Yes, I saw them in the distance sleeping in the shadow of those cages.”

“Children have all the time in the world and they’ll talk to anyone and always be ready to listen, but one hasn’t very much to say to them.”

“That’s the trouble. It’s true they don’t despise solitary people: in fact they like almost anyone, but then, as you said, there is so little to say to them.”

“But tell me more.”

“Oh, as far as children go one person is as good as another, provided they talk about airplanes and trains. There is never any difficulty in talking to children about that sort of thing. It can become a little monotonous, but that’s how it is.”

“They can’t understand other things, unhappiness for example, and I don’t think it does much good to mention them.”

“If you talk to them of things that don’t interest them they simply stop listening and wander off.”

“Sometimes I have conversations on my own.”

“That has happened to me too.”

“I don’t mean I talk to myself. I speak to a completely imaginary person, not just anybody, but to my worst enemy. You see, although I haven’t any friends yet, I invent enemies.”

“And what do you say to them?”

“I insult them: and always without the slightest explanation. Why do I do this?”

“Who knows? Probably because an enemy never understands one and I think you would be hard put to it to accept being understood and to give in to the particular comfort it brings.”

“After all, my insults are a form of talking aren’t they? And I never mention my work.”

“Yes, it is talking; and since no one hears you and it gives you some satisfaction it seems better to go on.”

“When I spoke of the unhappiness which children cannot understand I was talking of unhappiness in general, the unhappiness everyone knows about, not of a particular kind of personal unhappiness.”

“I knew that. The fact is we could not bear it if children could understand unhappiness. Perhaps they are the only people we cannot stand to see unhappy.”

“There are not many happy people are there?”

“I don’t think so. There are some who think it important to be happy and believe that they are, but at bottom are not really as happy as all that.”

“And yet I thought it was a duty for people to be happy, an instinct like going to the sun rather than to the dark. Look at me for instance; at all the trouble I take over it.”

“But of course it’s like a duty. I feel that too. But if people feel the need for the sun it is because they know how sad the dark can be. No one can live always in the dark.”

“I make my own darkness but since other people seek the sun, I do so too, and that is what I feel about happiness. Everything I do is for my happiness.”

“You are right and that is probably why things are simpler for you than for other people: you have no alternative, while people who have a choice can long for things they know nothing about.”

“You would think the gentleman where I am in service would be happy. He is a businessman with a great deal of money and yet he always seems distracted as if he were bored. I think sometimes that he has never looked at me, that he recognizes me without ever having seen me.”

“And yet you are a person people would look at.”

“But he doesn’t see anyone. It is as if he no longer used his eyes, That is why he sometimes seems to me less happy than one might think. As if he were tired of everything, even of looking.”

“And his wife?”

“His wife too. One could take her for being happy but I know she is not.”

“Do you find that the wives of such men are easily frightened and have the tired, shaded look of women who no longer dream?”

“Not this one. She has a clear look and nothing catches her off her guard. Everyone thinks she has everything she could want and yet I know it is not so. You learn about these things in my work. Often in the evening she comes into the kitchen with a vacant expression which doesn’t deceive me, as if she wanted my company.”

“It is just what we said: in the end people are not good at happiness. They want it of course but when they have it they eat themselves away with dreaming.”

“I don’t know if it is that people are not good at happiness or if they don’t understand what it is. Perhaps they don’t really know what it is they want or how to make use of it when they have it. They may even get tired of trying to keep it. I really don’t know. What I do know is that the word exists and that it was not invented for nothing. And just because I know that women, even those who appear to be happy, often start wondering towards evening why they are leading the lives they do, I am not going to start wondering if the word is meaningless. That is all I can say on the subject.”

“Of course it is. And when I said that happiness is difficult to stand I didn’t mean that because of that it should be avoided. I wanted to ask you: is it around six o’clock when she comes into your kitchen?”

“Yes, always around that time. I know what it means, believe me. I know it is a particular time of day when many women long for things they haven’t got: but for all that I refuse to give up.”

“It’s always the same: when everything is there for things to go right people still manage to make them go wrong. They find happiness sad.”

“It makes no difference to me. I can only say again that I want to experience that particular sadness.”

“If I said what I did, it was for no special reason. I was only talking.”

“One could say that without wanting to discourage me you were, all the same, trying to warn me.”

“Oh, hardly at all. Or only in the smallest degree, I promise you.”

“But since my work has already shown me the other side of happiness you need not worry. And in the end what does it matter if I find happiness or something else as long as it is something real I can feel and deal with. Since I am in the world I too must have my share of it. There is no reason why I should not. I will do just as everyone else does. You see, I cannot imagine dying without having had the look that my employer has in her eyes when she comes to see me in the evening.”

“It is hard to imagine you with tired eyes. You may not know it, but you have very fine eyes.”

“They will be fine when they need to be.”

“I can’t help it, but the thought that one day you might have the same look as that woman is sad, that’s all.”

“Who can tell how things will turn out? And I will go through whatever is necessary. That is my greatest hope. And after my eyes have been fine they will become clouded like everyone else’s.”

“When I said that your eyes were fine I meant that they had a wonderful expression.”

“I am sure you are wrong and even if you were right I couldn’t be satisfied with it.”

“I understand and yet I find it hard not to tell you that for other people your eyes are very beautiful.”

“Otherwise I would be lost. If for one moment I was satisfied with my eyes as they are I would be lost.”

“And so you said this woman comes into the kitchen?”

“Yes, sometimes. It is the only moment of the day when she does and she always asks the same thing, how am I getting on?”

“As if things could go differently for you from one day to another?”

“Yes, as if they could.”

“Such people have strange illusions about people like us. What else can you expect? And perhaps it is part of our job to preserve their illusion.”

“Have you ever been dependent on a boss? It seems as if you must have to understand so well.”

“No. But it is a threat which hangs over people like us so constantly that it is easier to imagine than most things.”

There was a silence between the girl and the man and one would have thought them distracted, attentive only to the softness of the air. Then once again the man started to speak. He said:

“We really agree, you know. You see, when I talked of this woman and of people who managed not to be entirely happy I did not mean that it was a reason for not following their example, for not trying in one’s own turn and in one’s own turn failing. Nor that one should deny longings such as you have for a gas stove, which would be to reject in advance all that might follow from it, such as a refrigerator or even happiness. I don’t doubt the truth of your hopes for a moment. On the contrary I think they are exactly what they should be. I really do.”

“Must you go? Is that why you said all that?”

“No, I have no need to go. I just didn’t want you to misunderstand me, that’s all.”

“The way you talked like that, all of a sudden drawing conclusions from everything we had said, made me think that perhaps you had to go.”

“No, I have nothing to go for. I just wanted to say that I understood you and like everything about you. And I was going to add that if there was one thing I didn’t quite understand, and I hate being a bore on this subject, it is still the fact that you take on so much extra work and that you always agree to do whatever they ask. Don’t blame me for coming back to it, but I can’t agree with you on this point even if I do understand your reasons. I am afraid. . . . What I am really afraid of is that you might feel that if you accept all the worst things that come your way you will one day have earned the right to be finished with them forever. . . .”

“And if that was the case?”

“Ah, no. I cannot accept that. I don’t believe that anything or anyone exists whose function it is to reward people for their personal merits, and certainly not people who are obscure or unknown. We are abandoned.”

“But if I told you it was not for that reason but so that I should never lose my horror for my work, so that I should go on feeling all the disgust I felt for it as much as ever.”

“I am sorry but even then I could not agree. I think you have already begun to live your life and even at the risk of repeating this endlessly to you and becoming a bore I really must say that I think things have already started for you, that time passes for you as much as for anyone else, and that even now you can waste it; as you do when you take on work which anyone else in your place would refuse.”

“I think you must be very nice to be able to put yourself into other people’s places and think for them with so much understanding. I could never do that.”

“You have other things to do; if I can think about other people it is only because I have the time for it, and as you said yourself, it is not the best kind of time.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps the fact that I have decided to change everything is a sign that things have begun for me. And the fact that I cry from time to time is probably also a sign and I expect I should no longer hide this from myself.”

“Everyone cries, and not because of that, but simply because they are alive.”

“But one day I checked up on my position and I discovered that it was quite usual for maids to be expected to do most of the things I have to do. That was two years ago. For instance there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that sometimes we have to look after very old women, as old as eighty-two, weighing two hundred pounds and no longer quite right in their minds, making messes in their clothes at any hour of the day or night and whom nobody wants to bother about.”

“Did you really say two hundred pounds?”

“Yes, I am looking after one now; and what’s more, last time she was weighed she had gained. And yet I would have you appreciate the fact that I haven’t killed her, not even that time two years ago after I had found out what was expected of me. She was fat enough then and I was eighteen. I still haven’t killed her and I never will, although it becomes easier and easier as she gets older and frailer. She is left alone in the bathroom to wash and the bathroom is at the far end of the house. All I would have to do would be to hold her head under water for three minutes and it would all be over. She is so old that even her children wouldn’t mind her death, nor would she herself since she hardly knows she is there any more. But I look after her very well and always for the reasons I explained, because if I killed her it would mean that I could imagine improving my present situation, making it bearable, and that would be contrary to my plan. No, no one can rescue me except a man. I hope you don’t mind my telling you all this.”

“Ah, I no longer know what to say to you.”

“Let’s not talk about it any more.”

“Yes, but still! You said it would be easy to get rid of that old woman and no one, not even she herself, would mind. I am still not giving you advice but it seems to me that in many cases other people could do something of that nature to make their lives a little easier and still be able to hope for their future as much as before?”

“It’s no good talking to me like that. I would rather my horror became worse. It is my only chance of getting out.”

“After all, we were only talking. I just wondered whether it might not be almost a duty to prevent someone from hoping so much.”

“There seems no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that I know someone like me who did kill.”

“I don’t believe it. Perhaps she thought she had killed someone but she couldn’t really have done it.”

“It was a dog. She was sixteen. You may say it is not at all the same thing as killing a person, but she did it and says it is very much the same.”

“Perhaps she didn’t give it enough to eat. That’s not the same as killing.”

“No, it was not like that. They both had exactly the same food. It was a very valuable dog and so they had the same food: of course it was not the same as the things the people in the house ate and she stole the dog’s food once. But that wasn’t enough.”

“She was young and longed for meat as most children do.”

“She poisoned the dog. She stayed awake a long time mixing poison with its food. She told me she didn’t even think about the sleep she was losing. The dog took two days to die. Of course it is the same as killing a person. She knows. She saw it die.”

“I think it would have been more unnatural if she had not done it.”

“But why such hatred for a dog? In spite of everything he was the only friend she had. One thinks one isn’t nasty and yet one can do something like that.”

“It is situations like that which should not be allowed. From the moment they arise the people involved cannot do otherwise than as they do. It is inevitable, quite inevitable.”

“They knew it was she who killed the dog. She got the sack. They could do nothing else to her since it is not a crime to kill a dog. She said that she would almost have preferred them to punish her, she felt so guilty. Our work, you know, leads us to have the most terrible thoughts.”

“Leave it.”

“I work all day and I would even like to work harder but at something else: something in the open air which brings results you can see, which can be counted like other things, like money. I would rather break stones on the road or work steel in a foundry.”

“But then do it. Break stones on the road. Leave your present work.”

“No, I can’t. Alone, as I explained to you, alone I could not do it. I have tried, without success. Alone, without any affection, I think I should just die of hunger. I wouldn’t have the strength to force myself to go on.”

“There are women roadmenders. I’ve seen them.”

“I know. I think about them every day. But I should have started in that way. It’s too late now. A job like mine makes you so disgusted with yourself that you have even less meaning outside it than in it. You don’t even know that you exist enough for your own death to matter to you. No, from now on my only solution is a man for whom I shall exist; only then will I get out.”

“But do you know what that is called . . .?”

“No. All I know is that I must persist in this slavery for some time longer before I can enjoy things again, things as simple as eating.”

“Forgive me.”

“It doesn’t matter. I must stay where I am for as long as I have to. Please don’t think that I lack good will because it is not that. It is just that it is not worthwhile trying to make me hope less—as you put it—because if I tried to hope less than I do, I know that I would no longer hope at all. I am waiting. And while I wait I am careful not to kill anything, neither a person nor a dog, because those are serious things and could turn me into a nasty person for the rest of my life. But let’s talk a little more about you: you who travel so much and are always alone.”

“Well, yes, I travel and I am alone.”

“Perhaps one day I will travel too.”

“You can only see one thing at a time and the world is big, and you can only see it for yourself with your own two eyes. It is little enough and yet most people travel.”

“All the same, however little you can see, I expect it is a good way of passing the time.”

“The best, I think, or at least it passes for the best. Being in a train absorbs time as much as sleeping. And a ship even more: you just look at the furrows following the ship and time passes by itself.”

“And yet sometimes time takes so long to pass that you feel almost as if it was something which had been dragged out of your own insides.”

“Why not take a little trip for eight days or so? For a holiday. You need only want to. Couldn’t you do that? While still waiting of course.”

“It’s true that waiting seems very long. I joined a political party, not because I thought it would help my personal problems but I thought it might make the time pass more quickly. But even so it is very long.”

“But that is it exactly! Since you are already doing something outside your job, and you go to this Dance Hall, since in fact you are doing everything you can to be able to leave your present job one day, then surely you could also make a short journey while waiting for your life to take the turning you want it to?”

“I did not mean anything more than I said: that sometimes things seem very long.”

“All you need to do is change your mood just a fraction and then you could take a little voyage for eight days or so.”

“On Saturday when I come back from dancing I cry sometimes as I told you. How does one make a man desire one? Love cannot be forced. Perhaps it is the mood that you were talking about which makes me so undesirable: a feeling of rancor, and how could that please anyone?”

“I meant nothing more about your mood than that it prevented you from taking a holiday. I wouldn’t advise you to become like me, a person who finds hope superfluous. But you must see that from the moment you decided it was best to let that old woman live out her days, and that you must do everything they ask of you, so as one day to be free to do something quite different, then it seems to me that as a kind of compensation you could take a short holiday and go away. Why, even I would do it.”

“I understand, but tell me what would I do with a holiday? I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I would simply be there looking at new things without them giving me any pleasure.”

“You must learn, even if it is difficult. From now on as a provision against the future you must learn that. Looking at new things is something one learns.”

“Yes, but tell me again: how could I ever manage to learn how to enjoy myself in the present when I am worn out with waiting for the future? I wouldn’t have the patience to look at anything new.”

“It doesn’t matter. Forget about it. It wasn’t very important.”

“And yet if you only knew, I would so much like to be able to look at new things.”

“Tell me, when a man asks you to dance with him, do you immediately think he might marry you?”

“Yes. You see I’m too practical. All my troubles come from that. But how could I be anything else? It seems to me that I could never love anyone before I had some freedom and that can only come to me through a man.”

“And another question: if a man doesn’t ask you to dance do you still think he might marry you?”

“I think less then because I am at the Dance. When I dance I get carried away by the movement and the excitement and at those moments I think a man might most easily forget who I am, and even if he did find out he would mind it less under those circumstances than at any other time. I dance well. In fact I dance very well and when I am dancing I feel quite different from my usual self. Ah, sometimes I don’t know what to do any more.”

“But do you think about it while you are at the Dance Hall?”

“No. There I think of nothing. I think before or afterwards. There it is as if I were asleep.”

“Everything happens, believe me. We think that nothing will ever happen but it does. There is not a man among all the millions who exist, not a single one, who hasn’t known the things you are waiting for.”

“I am afraid you don’t really understand what it is I am waiting for.”

“I am talking, you see, not only of the things you know you want but also of the things you want without knowing. Of something less immediate, something of which you are still unaware.”

“Yes, I follow what you are saying. And it is true that there are things I don’t know of now. But all the same I would so like to know how those things happen.”

“They happen like anything else.”

“Just as I know I am waiting?”

“Exactly. It is difficult to talk to you of things you know so little. I think that those things either come about suddenly, all at once, or else so slowly that one scarcely notices them. And when they have happened and are there they don’t seem at all surprising: it feels as if they had always been there. One day you will wake up and there it will all be. And it will be the same for the gas stove: you will wake up one day and not even be able to explain how it came to be there.”

“But what about you? You who are always traveling and who seem, if I have understood you, to attach so little importance to events.”