Four Novels Read online

  “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 me
an?”

  “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.”