Four Novels (3 page)

THE SQUARE

TRANSLATED BY

SONIA PITT-RIVERS & IRINA MORDUCH

One

T
HE CHILD CAME OVER
quietly from the far side of the Square and stood behind the girl.

“I’m hungry,” he announced.

The man took this as an opportunity to start a conversation.

“I suppose it is about tea-time?”

The girl was not disconcerted: on the contrary she turned and smiled at him.

“Yes, it must be nearly half past four, when he usually has his tea.”

She took two sandwiches from a bag beside her on the bench and handed them to the child, then skillfully knotted a bib around his neck.

“He’s a nice child,” said the man.

The girl shook her head as if in denial.

“He’s not mine,” she remarked.

The child moved off with his sandwiches. It was afternoon and the Park was full of children: big ones playing marbles and hide-and-seek, small ones playing in the sand pits, while smaller ones still sat patiently waiting in their prams for the time when they would join the others.

“Although,” the girl continued, “he could be mine and, indeed, is often taken for mine. But the fact is he doesn’t belong to me.”

“I see,” said the man. “I have no children either.”

“Sometimes it seems strange, don’t you think, there should be so many children, that they are everywhere one goes and yet none of them are one’s own?”

“I suppose so, yes, when you come to think of it. But then, as you said, there are so many already.”

“But does that make any difference?”

“I should have thought that if you are fond of them anyway, if you enjoy just watching them, it matters less.”

“But couldn’t the opposite also be true?”

“Probably. I expect it depends on one’s nature: I think that some people are quite happy with the children who are already there, and I believe I am one of them. I have seen so many children and I could have had children of my own and yet I manage to be quite satisfied with the others.”

“Have you really seen so many?”

“Yes. You see, I travel.”

“I see,” the girl said in a friendly manner.

“I travel all the time, except just now of course when I’m resting.”

“Parks are good places to rest in, particularly at this time of year. I like them too. It’s nice being out of doors.”

“They cost nothing, they’re always gay because of the children and then if you don’t know many people there’s always the chance of starting a conversation.”

“That’s true. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but do you sell when you travel?”

“Yes, you could call that my profession.”

“Always the same things?”

“No, different things, but all of them small. You know those little things one always needs and so often forgets to buy. They all fit into a medium-sized suitcase. I suppose you could call me a traveling salesman if you wanted to give what I do a name.”

“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 quite right. There is no reason at all why you should not get married too.”

“Of course with a job like mine—one which is so looked down upon—you could say that the opposite would be more true and that there is no reason at all why anyone should want to marry me. And so somehow I think that to make it seem quite ordinary and natural, I must want it with all my might. And that is how I want it.”

“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.”