“Yes.”
They were silent. Imperceptibly the sun was sinking and once more a memory of winter lay over the city. It was the girl who started the conversation again.
“What I meant,” she began, “was that something of that happiness must remain in the air. Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t know.”
“I would like to ask you something more. Could you tell me more about those things we were discussing—the things that could take place in a train for example?”
“Not really. They happen, that’s all. You know, few people would put up with a traveling salesman of my status.”
“But I am only a maid and I still hope. You mustn’t talk like that.”
“I am sorry. I explained myself badly. You will change but I don’t think I will, or rather I don’t think so any more. And whichever way you look at it there is nothing to be done about it. Even if I could have wished that things had been different I can never forget the traveling salesman I have become. When I was twenty I was smart and gay and played tennis. That is how my life started. I mean a life can begin anyhow—a fact we do not appreciate enough. And then time passes and we discover that life has very few solutions: and things become established until one fine day we find they are so established that the very idea of changing them seems absurd.”
“That must be a terrible moment.”
“No. It passes unnoticed as time passes. But you mustn’t be sad. I am not complaining about my life and to tell you the truth I don’t think about it much. The least thing amuses me.”
“And yet you give the impression of not having told the whole truth about your life.”
“I assure you I am not someone to be pitied.”
“I too know that life is terrible. I am not as stupid as that. I know it is as terrible as it is good.”
Once more a silence fell between the man and the girl. The sun was sinking even lower.
“Although I only took the train in small stages,” the man said, “I don’t think it can be very expensive.”
“I spend very little money,” said the girl, “in fact the only expenses I have are connected with dancing. So you see even if the train was expensive I could still afford the journey if I wanted to. But I am afraid that wherever I was I would feel I was wasting my time. I would say to myself: what are you doing here instead of being at that Dance Hall? For the moment your place is there and nowhere else. Wherever I was I would think of it. If it interests you the Dance Hall is called the Mecca: by the station. A lot of soldiers go there and unfortunately they never think of marrying, but there are other people too and one never knows.”
“Thank you. But you know they also have dances in that town and if you did decide to make the journey you could go to them. And no one would know who you were there.”
“Are they held in the Garden?”
“Yes, in the open air. On Saturdays they last all night.”
“I see. But then I would have to lie about what I am. I know you will say that it’s not my fault that I have to do the job I do, but it still makes me feel as if I had a crime to conceal.”
“But since you want to change so much surely concealing it would only be a half-lie?”
“I think I could only lie about something for which I was responsible, but not about anything else. And although it sounds strange I feel almost as if I had chosen that particular Dance Hall and that what I want must happen there. It’s a small one but it suits me as I really have no illusions about what I am or what I might become. I would feel strange and out of place anywhere else. If you were to come there we could have a dance while waiting for someone else to ask me. I mean if you would like to, of course. I dance well and I’ve never been taught.”
“I dance well too.”
“Don’t you find that strange? Why should we dance well? Why us rather than anyone else?”
“Us rather than the people who dance badly you mean?”
“Yes, I know some. If you could only see them. They have no idea at all. It’s double dutch to them. . . .”
“But you’re laughing.”
“What else can I do? People who dance badly always make me laugh. They try, they concentrate and there’s nothing to be done about it: they simply can’t manage.”
“It must be because dancing is something which cannot entirely be learned. Do the ones you know hop or shuffle?”
“She hops and he shuffles with the result . . . I can hardly describe it to you. And yet it’s obviously not their fault.”
“No, it’s not their fault. And yet it’s difficult not to feel that somehow there is a certain justice in the fact that they can’t dance.”
“We may be wrong.”
“Yes, we may be and after all it doesn’t matter so much whether one dances well or badly.”
“No, it’s of no great importance. Yet all the same it’s as if we had a secret strength concealed in us. Oh, nothing very much of course. . . . And yet don’t you think I’m right?”
“But they could just as easily have been good dancers?”
“Yes, that’s true, but then there would be something else, although I can’t imagine what, which we would have and they would not: I don’t know what it would be but it would be something.”
“I don’t know either, but I think you’re right.”
“I love dancing. It is probably the only thing I do now which I would like to go on doing for the rest of my life.”
“I feel the same. I think everyone likes dancing, even people like us, and perhaps we would not be such good dancers if we didn’t enjoy it so much.”
“But perhaps we don’t know exactly how much we do enjoy it? How could we know?”
“I don’t think it matters. If it suits us so well we should go on not knowing.”
“But the dreadful part is that when the Dance is over I start remembering. Suddenly it’s Sunday and I mutter ‘Old Bitch’ as I wash her. I don’t think I’m a nasty person, but of course I have no one to reassure me on this point and so I can only believe myself. When I say ‘Bitch’ she smiles.”
“I can tell you that you are not a nasty person.”
“But when I think about the people I work for my thoughts are so evil, if you only knew, just as if my wretchedness was their fault. I try to reason with myself but I can never manage to think in any other way.”
“Don’t worry about those thoughts. You are not a nasty person.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do. One day you will be very giving, with yourself and with your time.”
“You really are nice.”
“But I didn’t say that out of niceness.”
“But you, what will happen to you?”
“Nothing. As you can see I am no longer very young.”
“But you. . . . You who once thought of killing yourself—because you did say that.”
“Oh, that was only laziness at the thought of having to go on feeding myself: nothing serious really.”
“But that’s impossible. Something will happen to you or else it will only be because you don’t want anything to happen.”
“Nothing happens to me except the things that happen to everyone, every day.”
“You say that, but in that town?”
“There I was not alone. And then, afterwards, I was alone again. I think it was just luck.”
“No. When someone is without any hope at all, as you are, it is because something happened to him: it’s the only explanation.”
“One day you will understand. There are people like me, people who get so much pleasure from just being alive that they can get by without hope. I sing while I shave—what more do you want?”
“But were you unhappy after you left that town?”
“Yes.”
“And did you think of staying in your room and never leaving it again?”
“No, not then. Because then I knew that it is possible not to be alone, even if only by accident.”
&nb
sp; “Tell me what else you do, apart from singing while you shave?”
“I sell my goods, then I eat, then I travel, then I read the newspapers. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy the newspapers. I read them from cover to cover including the advertisements. I get so absorbed in a newspaper that when I put it down I have to think for a minute who I am.”
“But I meant other things: what do you do apart from all the obvious things, apart from shaving and selling your goods and taking trains and eating and reading the newspapers? I mean those things which no one appears to be doing, but which everyone is doing all the same.”
“I see what you mean. . . . But I really don’t know what I do apart from the things I mentioned. I don’t deny that sometimes I do wonder what I am doing, but just wondering doesn’t seem to be enough. I probably don’t wonder hard enough and I think it’s perfectly possible that I shall never know. You see I believe that it is quite usual to be like me and that a great many people go through life without ever exactly knowing why.”
“But it seems to me that one could try to know a little harder than you do.”
“But I hang by a thread. I even hold on to myself by the merest thread. So you see life is easier for me than it is for you, which explains everything. And then too I can manage to live without having to know certain things.”
Once more they were silent. Then the girl went on:
“I still can’t understand. Forgive me for going back to the subject, but I still can’t understand how you came to be as you are, nor even how you came to do the work you do.”
“But as I told you, little by little. My brothers and sisters are all successful people who knew what they wanted. And I can only say once again that I didn’t know. They can’t understand either how I managed to come down so much in the world.”
“That seems an odd way of putting it: I would rather say, how did you come to be so discouraged? And it’s still beyond me to understand how you came to do such wretched work.”
“Perhaps it comes from the fact that the idea of success was always a little vague in my mind. I never quite understood what it had to do with me. And after all I don’t find my work quite so wretched.”
“I am sorry to have used that expression, although I thought it would have been all right from me since my own work can hardly even be described as work. I only said that to try and make you tell me more. I wanted you to see that I found you mysterious, not that I was blaming you.”
“I understand that and I’m sorry I took you up. I know there are people in the world who can judge what I do on its own merits and not necessarily despise it. I didn’t mind anything you said. To tell you the truth I was only half aware of what I was saying myself. I am afraid it always bores me to talk of myself in the past.”
Again they were silent. This time the memory of winter became insistent. The sun would no longer reappear: it had reached the stage where it was hidden by the mass of the city’s buildings. The girl remained silent. The man started to talk to her again:
“I wanted to say,” he went on, “that I would be very unhappy if you thought, even for an instant, that I was trying to influence you in any way. Even when we talked about that old woman we were, after all, only talking. . . .”
“Please let’s not talk about that any more.”
“All right, let’s not talk about it any more. All I meant was that by understanding people, by trying at least to put yourself in their place, by trying to determine what might make their waiting easier you make certain suppositions and hypotheses. But from there to giving advice is quite a step to take, and I regret having taken it unconsciously. . . .”
“Please let’s not talk about me any more.”
“All right.”
“But I wanted to ask you something. What happened after you left that town?”
The man was silent and the girl did not try to break his silence. Then, when she no longer seemed to expect a reply, he said:
“I told you. I was unhappy.”
“But how unhappy?”
“I believe as unhappy as it is possible to be. I thought I had never been unhappy before.”
“Did that feeling go eventually?”
“Yes, in the end.”
“You were never alone in that town?”
“Never.”
“Neither during the day nor the night?”
“Never, not by day nor by night. It lasted eight days.”
“And then you were alone again? Completely alone?”
“Yes. And I have been alone ever since.”
“I suppose it was tiredness that made you sleep all day in the wood with your suitcase beside you?”
“No, it was unhappiness.”
“Yes, you did say you were as unhappy as it was possible to be. Do you still believe that?”
“Yes.”
It was the girl’s turn to be silent.
“Please don’t cry, I beg you,” the man said, smiling.
“I can’t help myself.”
“Things happen like that. Things that cannot be avoided, that no one can avoid.”
“Oh, it is not that. Those things hold no terrors for me.”
“You want them to?”
“Yes, I want them.”
“You are right, because nothing is so worth living as the things which make one so unhappy. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying any more.”
“You will see. Before the summer is out you will open that door and it will be forever.”
“Sometimes it almost doesn’t seem to matter any more.”
“But you will see. You will see. It will happen quite quickly.”
“It seems to me you should have stayed in that town. You should have tried to stay by all possible means.”
“I stayed as long as I could.”
“No, I don’t believe you did everything. I cannot believe it.”
“I did everything I thought could be done. Perhaps I didn’t go about it in the right way. Don’t think about it any more. You will see, before the summer is out things will have turned out all right for you.”
“Perhaps. Who knows? Sometimes I wonder if it is all worth so much trouble?”
“Of course it is. And after all, as you said yourself, since we are here—we didn’t ask to be but here we are—we must take the trouble. There is nothing else we can do, and you will do it. Before the summer is out you will have opened the door.”
“Sometimes I think I will never do it. That when I am ready to open it I will draw back.”
“No. You will open it.”
“If you say that it must be because you think I have chosen the best way of getting what I want, of ending my present life and finally becoming something?”
“Yes, I do think so. I think the way you have chosen is the best for you.”
“If you say that it must be because you think there are other ways which other people would have taken?”
“I expect there are other ways but I also believe they would suit you less well.”
“Are you sure of what you are saying?”
“I believe what I am saying, but neither I nor anyone else could tell you with complete certainty.”
“I ask because you said you understood things through traveling and seeing so many different places and people.”
“Perhaps I understand less well where hope is concerned. I think that if I understand anything it’s probably more than the small, ordinary things of everyday life: little problems rather than big ones. And yet I can say this: even if I am not absolutely and entirely sure of the means you have chosen, that before this summer is out you will have opened that door.”
“Thank you ail the same, very much. But tell me once again, what about you?”
“Spring is on its way and the fine weather. I will be off again.”
They were silent one last time. And one last time it was the girl who took up the conversation:
“What was it that made you get up and start off a
gain after sleeping in the wood?”
“I don’t really know. Probably simply that one just had to get up and go on.”
“A short while ago you said it was because from then on you knew it was possible not to be alone, even if only by accident?”
“It was later that I knew that. Some days later. At the time it was different. I knew nothing at all.”
“You see how different we really are. I think I should have refused to get up.”
“But of course you would not. What or who would you have refused?”
“Nothing or no one. I would have simply refused.”
“You’re wrong. You would have done as I did. It was cold, I was cold, and I got up.”
“But we are different all the same.”
“Oh, doubtless we are different in the way we take our troubles.”
“No, I think we are even more different than that.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we are more different than anyone is different from anyone else.”
“Perhaps I am mistaken.”
“Since we understand each other. Or at least we try to. And we both like dancing. You said you went to the Mecca?”
“Yes. It is a well-known place. A lot of people like us go there.”
Three
THE CHILD CAME OVER quietly from the far side of the Square and stood beside the girl.
“I’m tired,” he announced.
The man and the girl looked around them. It was darker than it had been. It was evening.
“It is true, it is late,” said the girl.
This time the man made no comment. The girl wiped the child’s hands, picked up his toys and put them into her bag, all without rising from the bench. Tired of playing, the child sat down at her feet to wait.
“Time seems shorter when one is talking,” said the girl.
“And then afterwards, suddenly, much longer.”
“Yes, like another kind of time. But it does one good to talk.”
“Yes, it does one good. It is only afterwards that it is rather sad: after one has stopped talking. Then time becomes too slow. Perhaps one should never talk.”
“Perhaps,” said the girl after a pause.
“Only because of the slowness afterwards: that was all I meant.”
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