“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.”
“And yet sometimes time takes so long to pass that you feel almost as if it was something which had been dragged out of your own insides.”
“Why not take a little trip for eight days or so? For a holiday. You