The Garden Square

by Marguerite Duras

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I simply saw the fine weather and the words came out of their own accord. You must try to understand me and not take umbrage, 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 garden 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 city you were telling me about you didn’t have to talk to children?”

  “Not in that city, 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, from about the age of five, they cross the whole town on their own to visit the zoo. They eat at any hour and sleep in the afternoon in the shadow of the lions’ cages. Yes, I saw them in the distance sleeping in the shadow of those cages.”

  “It’s true: 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, yes: they don’t have any prejudice against 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 aeroplanes 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, tell me?”

  “Who knows? Probably because an enemy never understands you, 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, it’s a form of talking isn’t it? And it’s unrelated to 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 understood 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 deep down 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 towards the sun rather than towards the darkness. Look at me for instance, at all the trouble I take over it.”

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

  “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.”

  “Don’t 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 for now.”

  “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? And does she ask you how you are getting on?”

  “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 bitter.”

  “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.�
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  “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 were saying 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 illusions.”

  “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 fairly long 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 in principle, 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 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 no need to go. I just wanted to say that I completely agree with 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 you must accept all the worst things that come your way in order to have earned the right one day to be finished with them for ever.”

  “And if that were 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, lose 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; I have the luxury, you see, of not having too much hope.”

  “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 with my trade union 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-nine, weighing up to ninety-two kilos and no longer quite right in their minds, soiling their clothes at any hour of the day or night and whom nobody wants to bother about. It’s such a struggle that, yes, I admit it, it sometimes leads to going all the way to the trade union. And it turns out that these things are not forbidden, that they haven’t even been thought about. And even if they had been thought about, you know very well that you would always be able to find some among us who would be willing to do any kind of work, that there would always be people who would accept doing what we refuse to do, who could not avoid agreeing to do what everyone else would be too ashamed to do.”

  “Did you really say ninety-two kilos?”

  “Yes, and last time she was weighed she had gained some. And yet, I would have you appreciate the fact that I haven’t killed her, not even that time two years ago after I came back from the trade union. 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 be all 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 not only do I not do it, 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 if I took care of her badly, not only would that be contrary to my plan, but they would easily find someone else to do it better. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea’ – that’s our only legal status. 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. Again, I am not giving you advice, let’s be clear, 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 tried, 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 h
ouse ate, and she stole the dog’s steak 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 all the food he ate, he was the only friend she had. One thinks one isn’t nasty and yet, you see…”

  “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 found out she was the one 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 then.”

  “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 roads or work steel in a foundry.”

  “But do it then. 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 road-menders. I have seen them.”

  “I know. I think about them every day, you can be sure of that. 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.”