Four Novels (8 page)

“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.”