“Like those people you see in markets selling things from an open suitcase?”
“That’s right. I often work on the outskirts of markets.”
“I hope you don’t think it rude of me to ask, but do you manage to make a living?”
“I’ve nothing to complain of.”
“I’m glad. I thought that was probably the case.”
“I don’t mean to say that I earn a lot of money because that would not be true. But I earn something each day and in its way I call that making a living.”
“In fact you manage to live much as you would like?”
“Yes, I think I live about as well as I want to: I don’t mean that one day is always as good as another. No. Sometimes things are a little tight, but in general I manage well enough.”
“I’m glad.”
“Thank you. Yes, I manage more or less and have really nothing to worry about. Being single with no home of my own I have few worries and the ones I have are naturally only for myself—sometimes for instance I find I have run out of toothpaste, sometimes I might want for a little company. But on the whole it works out well. Thank you for asking.”
“Would you say that almost anyone could do your work? I mean is it the kind of work which practically anybody could take up?”
“Yes, indeed. I would even go so far as to say that simply through being what it is it is one of the ways of earning a living most open to everybody.”
“I should have thought it might need special qualifications?”
“Well, I suppose it is better to know how to read, if only for the newspaper in the evenings at the hotel, and also of course to know which station you are at. It makes life a little easier but that’s all. It’s not much of a qualification as you can see, and yet one can still earn enough money to live.”
“I really meant other kinds of qualification: I would have thought your work needed endurance, or patience perhaps, and a great deal of perseverance?”
“I have never done any other work so I could hardly say whether you are right or not. But I always imagined that the qualifications you mention would be necessary for any work; in fact that there could hardly be a job where they are not needed.”
“I am sorry to go on asking you all these questions but do you think you will always go on traveling like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me for being so curious, but we were talking. . . .”
“Of course and it’s quite all right. But I’m afraid I don’t know if I will go on traveling. There really is no other answer I can give you: I don’t know. How does one know such things?”
“I only meant that if one traveled all the time as you do, I would have thought that one day one would want to stop and stay in one place That was all.”
“It’s true I suppose that one should want to stop. But how do you stop doing one thing and start another? How do people decide to leave one job for another, and why?”
“If I’ve understood you, the fact that you travel depends only on yourself, not on anything else?”
“I don’t think I have ever quite known how such things are decided. I have no particular attachments. In fact I am a rather solitary person and unless some great piece of luck came my way I cannot really see how I could change my work. And somehow I can’t imagine where any luck would come from: there doesn’t seem much about my life which would attract it. Of course I don’t mean that some luck could not come my way—after all one never knows—nor that if it did I would not accept it very gladly. But for the moment I must confess I cannot see much luck coming my way helping me to a decision.”
“But couldn’t you just simply want it? I mean just decide you wanted to change your work?”
“No, I don’t think so. Each day I want to be clean, well fed and sleep well, and I also like to feel decently dressed. So you see I hardly have time for wanting much more. And then, after all, I don’t really dislike traveling.”
“Can I ask you another question? How did all this start?”
“How could I begin to tell you? Things like that are so long and so complicated, and sometimes I really think they are a little beyond me. It would mean going so far back that I feel tired before I start. But on the whole I think things happened to me as they do to anyone else, no differently.”
A wind had risen, so light it seemed to carry the summer with it. For a moment it chased the clouds away, leaving a new warmth hanging over the city.
“How lovely it is,” the man said.
“Yes,” said the girl, “almost the beginning of the hot weather. From now on it will be a little warmer each day.”
“You see, I had no special aptitude for any particular work or for any particular kind of life. And so I suppose I will go on as I am. Yes, I think I will.”
“So really your feelings are only negative? They are just against any particular work or any particular life?”
“Against? No. That’s too strong a word. I can only say that I have no very strong likes. I really just came to be as I am in the way that most people come to be as they are: there is nothing special about my case.”
“But between the things that happened to you a long time ago and now, wasn’t there time for you to change—almost every day in fact—and start liking things? Anything?”
“I suppose so. I don’t deny it. For some people life must be like that and then again for others it is not. Some people must get used to the idea of never changing and I think that really is true of me. So I expect I will just go on as I am.”
“Well, for me things will change: they will not go on being the same.”
“But can you know already?”
“Yes, I can, because my situation is not one which can continue: sooner or later it must come to an end, that is part of it. I am waiting to marry. And as soon as I am married my present life will be quite finished.”
“I understand.”
“I mean that once it is over it will seem so unimportant that it might as well never have been.”
“Perhaps I too—after all it’s impossible to foresee everything, isn’t it?—might change my life one day.”
“Ah, but the difference is that I want to change mine. What I do now is hardly a job. People call it one to make things easier for themselves, but in fact it is not. It’s something different, something with no meaning outside itself like being ill or a child. And so it must come to an end.”
“I understand, but I’ve come back from a long journey and now I’m resting. I never much like thinking of the future and today, when I’m resting, even less: that’s why I am so bad at explaining to you how it is I can put up with my life as it is and not change it, and what is more, not even be able to imagine changing. I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, it is I who should apologize.”
“Of course not. After all we can always talk.”
“That’s right. And it means nothing.”
“And so you are waiting for something to happen?”
“Yes. I can see no reason why I should not get married one day like everybody else. As I told you.”
“You’re