“I am sure nothing is impossible. People say so at least.”
“I have thought about it a great deal: here I am, young, healthy and truthful just like any woman you see anywhere whom some man has settled for. And surely it would be surprising if somewhere there isn’t a man who won’t see that I am just as good as anyone else and settle for me. I am full of hope.”
“I am sure it will happen to you. But if you were suggesting that I make the same sort of change, I can only ask what I would do with a wife? I have nothing in the world but my suitcase and it is all I can do to keep myself.”
“Oh no, I did not mean to say that you need this particular change. I was talking of change in general. For me marriage is the only possible change, but for you it could be something else.”
“I expect you are right, but you seem to forget that people are different. You see, however much I wanted to change, even if I wanted it with all my might, I could never manage to want it as much as you do. You seem to want it at all costs.”
“Perhaps that is because for you a change would be less great than it would for me. As far as I am concerned I feel I want the greatest change there could be. I might be mistaken but still it seems to me that all the changes I see in other people are simple and easy beside the one I want for myself.”
“But don’t you think that even if everyone needed to change, and needed it very badly indeed, that even so they would feel differently about it according to their own particular circumstances?”
“I am sorry but I must explain that I am quite uninterested in particular circumstances. As I told you I am full of hope and what is more I do everything possible to make my hopes come true. For instance every Saturday I go to the local Dance Hall and dance with anyone who asks me. They say that the truth will out and I believe that one day someone will take me for what I am, a perfectly marriageable young woman who would make just as good a wife as anyone else.”
“I don’t think it would help me to go dancing, even if I wanted to change, and wanted it less than you do. My profession is insignificant: in fact it can hardly even be called a profession since it only just provides enough for one person, or perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a half-person. And so I couldn’t, even for an instant, imagine that anything like that would change my life.”
“But then perhaps, as I said before, it would be enough for you to change your work?”
“Yes, but how? How does one change a profession, even such a miserable one as mine? One which doesn’t even allow me to marry? All I do is to go with my suitcase through one day to the next, from one night to another and even from one meal to the next meal, and there is no time for me to stop and think about it as perhaps I should. No, if I were to change then the opportunity must come to me: I have no time to meet it halfway. And then again I should, perhaps, explain that I never felt that anyone particularly needed my services or my company—so much so that quite often I am amazed that I occupy any place in the world at all.”
“Then perhaps the change you should make would be just to feel differently about things?”
“Of course. But you know how it is. After all, one is what one is and how could anyone change so radically? Also I have come to like my work, even if it could hardly be called that: I like catching trains, and sleeping almost anywhere no longer worries me much.”
“You must not mind my saying this, but it seems to me that you should never have let yourself become like this.”
“You could perhaps say I was always a little predisposed to it.”
“For me it would be terrible to go through life with nothing but a suitcase full of things to sell. I think I should be frightened.”
“Of course that can happen, especially at the beginning, but one gets used to little things like that.”
“I think in spite of everything I would rather be as I am, in my present position rather than in yours. But perhaps that is because I am only twenty.”
“But you musn’t think that my work has nothing but disadvantages. That would be quite wrong. With all the time I have on my hands for instance, on the road, in trains, in Squares like this, I can think of all manner of things. I have time to look around and even time to work out reasons for things.”
“But I thought you said you had only enough time to think of yourself? Or rather of managing to keep yourself and of nothing else?”
“No. What I lack is time to think of the future, but I have time to think of other things, or perhaps I should say I make it. Because, after all, if one can face struggling a little more than others do, just to get enough to eat, it is only possible on condition that once a meal is over one can stop thinking about the whole problem. If immediately one meal is finished you had to start thinking about the next one it would be enough to drive you mad.”
“I imagine so. But you see, what would drive me mad would be going from city to city as you do with no other company than a suitcase.”
“Oh, one is not always alone you know. I mean so alone that one might go mad. No, there are boats and trains full of people to watch and observe and then, if one ever feels one is really going mad, there is always something to be done about it.”
“But what good would it do me to make the best of things since all I want is to finish with my present position? In the end all your attitude does for you is to give you more reasons for not finishing with yours.”
“That is not completely true, because should an opportunity arise for me to change my work I would certainly seize it: no, my attitude helps me in other ways. For example it helps me to see the advantages of my profession, such as traveling a great deal and possibly of becoming a little wiser than I was before. I am not saying I am right. I could easily be wrong and, without realizing it, have become far less wise than I ever was. But then, since I wouldn’t know, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“And so you are continually traveling? As continually as I stay in one place?”
“Yes. And even if sometimes I go back to the same places they can be different. In the spring for instance cherries appear in the markets. That is really what I wanted to say and not that I thought I was right in putting up with my life as it is.”
“You’re right. Quite soon, in about six weeks, the first cherries will be in the markets. I am glad for your sake. But tell me what other things you see when you travel?”
“Oh, a thousand things. One time it will be spring and another winter; either sunshine or snow, making the place unrecognizable. But I think it is really the cherries which change things the most: suddenly there they are, and the whole marketplace becomes scarlet. Yes, they will be there in about six weeks. You see, that is what I wanted to explain, not that I thought my work was entirely satisfactory.”
“But apart from the cherries and the sunshine and the snow, what else do you see?”
“Sometimes nothing much: small things you would hardly notice, but a number of little things which added together seem to change a place. Places can be familiar and unfamiliar at the same time: a market which once seemed hostile can, quite suddenly, become warm and friendly.”
“But sometimes isn’t everything exactly the same?”
“Yes. Sometimes so exactly the same that you can only think you left it the night before. I have never understood how this could happen because after all it would seem impossible that anything could remain so much the same.”
“Tell me more about other things you see.”
“Well, sometimes a new block of flats which was half built when last I was there is finished and lived in: full of people and noise. And