“But we don’t know.”
“The cherry season went on that year like all the others. People would pass under my window singing and I would be there behind the curtains watching them, and I got scolded for it.”
“I was left free to pick cherries for a long time. . . .”
“There I was behind the window like a criminal and yet my only crime was to be sixteen. But you? You said you went on picking them for a long time?”
“Longer than most people. And yet you see. . . .”
“Tell me more about your cafés full of people and music.”
“I like them very much. I don’t really think I could go on living without them.”
“I think I would like them too. I can see myself at the bar with my husband, listening to the radio. People would talk to us and we would make conversation. We would be with each other and with the others. Sometimes I feel how nice it would be to go and sit in a café but if you are a single young woman you can hardly afford to do so.”
“I forgot to add that sometimes someone looks at you.”
“I see, and comes over?”
“Yes, they come over.”
“For no reason?”
“For no particular reason, but then the conversation somehow becomes less general.”
“And then?”
“I never stay longer than two days in any town. Three at the most. The things I sell are not so essential.”
“Alas.”
The wind, which had died down, rose again scattering the clouds, and once more the sudden warmth in the air brought thoughts of approaching summer.
“But the weather is really wonderful today,” the man said again.
“It is nearly summer.”
“Perhaps the fact is that one never really starts anything: perhaps things are always in the future?”
“If you can say that, it is because each day is full enough for you to prevent you thinking of the next. But my days are empty, a desert.”
“But don’t you do anything of which you could say later that at least it was something to the good?”
“No, nothing. I work all day, but I never do anything of which I could say what you have just said. I cannot even think in those terms.”
“Please don’t think I want to contradict you, but you must see that whatever you do, this time you are living now will count for you one day. You will look back on this desert as you describe it and discover that it was not empty at all, but full of people. You will not escape it. You think this time has not begun, and it has begun. You think you are doing nothing and in reality you are doing something. You think you are moving towards a solution and when you look round you find it’s behind you. In just this sense I did not fully appreciate that city I mentioned. The hotel wasn’t first class, the room I had reserved in advance had already been rented, it was late and I was hungry. Nothing was awaiting me in this city, except the city itself, and imagine for a moment what an enormous city, completely preoccupied with its own affairs, can be for a weary traveler seeing it for the first time.”
“No, I can’t imagine.”
“All you find is a bad room overlooking a dirty, noisy courtyard. And yet thinking back I know that this trip changed me, that much of what I had seen before making it was leading up to it and illuminated by it. You’re well aware that only after it’s all over does one know he has visited this or that town.”
“If that is the way you understand it, then perhaps you are right. Perhaps it has already started, perhaps it started on that particular day when I first wished it would start.”
“Yes, you think that nothing happens, and yet, don’t you see, it seems to me that the most important thing that has happened to you is precisely your will not to live yet.”
“I understand you, I really do, but you must also try and understand me. Even if the most important part of my life is over, I can’t know it as yet and I haven’t the time to understand it. I hope one day I will know, as you did with your journey, and that when I look back everything behind me will be clear and fall into place. But now, at this moment, I am too involved to be even able to guess at what I might feel one day.”
“I know. And I know that probably it is impossible for you to undertand things you have not yet felt, but all the same it is hard for me not to try and explain them to you.”
“You are very kind, but I am afraid that I am not very good yet at understanding the things I am told.”
“Believe me that I do understand all you have said, but even so, is it absolutely necessary to do all that work? Of course I am not trying to give you any advice, but don’t you think that someone else would make a little effort and still manage, without quite so much work, to have as much hope for the future as before? Don’t you think that another person would manage that?”
“Are you frightened that one day, if I have to wait too long and go on working a little more each day without complaining, I might suddenly lose patience altogether?”
“I admit that your kind of will power is a little frightening, but that’s not why I made my suggestion. It was just because it is difficult to accept that someone of your age should live as you do.”
“But I have no alternative, I assure you. I have thought about it a great deal.”
“Can I ask you how many people there are in the family you work for?”
“Seven.”
“And how big is the house?”
“Average.”
“And rooms?”
“Eight.”
“It’s too much.”
“But no. That’s not the way to think. I must have explained myself very badly because you haven’t understood.”
“I think that work can always be measured and that, no matter what the circumstances, work is always work.”
“Not my kind. It’s probably true of the kind of work of which it is better to do too much than too little. But if in my kind of work there was time left over to think or start enjoying oneself then one would really be lost.”
“And you’re only twenty?”
“Yes, and as they say I’ve not yet had time to do any wrong. But that seems beside the point to me.”
“On the contrary, I have a feeling that it is not and that the people you work for should remember it.”
“After all, it’s hardly their fault if I agree to do all the work they give me. I would do the same in their place.”
“I should like to tell you how I went into that town, after leaving my suitcase at the hotel.”
“Yes, I should like to hear that. But you mustn’t worry on my account: I would be most surprised if I let myself become impatient. I think all the time of the risk I would run if that should happen and so, you see, I don’t think it will.”
“I did not manage to leave my suitcase until the evening. . . .”
“You see people like me do think too. There is nothing else for us to do, buried in our work. We think a great deal, but not like you. We have dark thoughts, and all the time.”
“It