“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 mean?”
“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