“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,