is we could not bear it if children could understand unhappiness. Perhaps they are the only people we cannot stand to see unhappy.”
“There are not many happy people are there?”
“I don’t think so. There are some who think it important to be happy and believe that they are, but at bottom are not really as happy as all that.”
“And yet I thought it was a duty for people to be happy, an instinct like going to the sun rather than to the dark. Look at me for instance; at all the trouble I take over it.”
“But of course it’s like a duty. I feel that too. But if people feel the need for the sun it is because they know how sad the dark can be. No one can live always in the dark.”
“I make my own darkness but since other people seek the sun, I do so too, and that is what I feel about happiness. Everything I do is for my happiness.”
“You are right and that is probably why things are simpler for you than for other people: you have no alternative, while people who have a choice can long for things they know nothing about.”
“You would think the gentleman where I am in service would be happy. He is a businessman with a great deal of money and yet he always seems distracted as if he were bored. I think sometimes that he has never looked at me, that he recognizes me without ever having seen me.”
“And yet you are a person people would look at.”
“But he doesn’t see anyone. It is as if he no longer used his eyes, That is why he sometimes seems to me less happy than one might think. As if he were tired of everything, even of looking.”
“And his wife?”
“His wife too. One could take her for being happy but I know she is not.”
“Do you find that the wives of such men are easily frightened and have the tired, shaded look of women who no longer dream?”
“Not this one. She has a clear look and nothing catches her off her guard. Everyone thinks she has everything she could want and yet I know it is not so. You learn about these things in my work. Often in the evening she comes into the kitchen with a vacant expression which doesn’t deceive me, as if she wanted my company.”
“It is just what we said: in the end people are not good at happiness. They want it of course but when they have it they eat themselves away with dreaming.”
“I don’t know if it is that people are not good at happiness or if they don’t understand what it is. Perhaps they don’t really know what it is they want or how to make use of it when they have it. They may even get tired of trying to keep it. I really don’t know. What I do know is that the word exists and that it was not invented for nothing. And just because I know that women, even those who appear to be happy, often start wondering towards evening why they are leading the lives they do, I am not going to start wondering if the word is meaningless. That is all I can say on the subject.”
“Of course it is. And when I said that happiness is difficult to stand I didn’t mean that because of that it should be avoided. I wanted to ask you: is it around six o’clock when she comes into your kitchen?”
“Yes, always around that time. I know what it means, believe me. I know it is a particular time of day when many women long for things they haven’t got: but for all that I refuse to give up.”
“It’s always the same: when everything is there for things to go right people still manage to make them go wrong. They find happiness sad.”
“It makes no difference to me. I can only say again that I want to experience that particular sadness.”
“If I said what I did, it was for no special reason. I was only talking.”
“One could say that without wanting to discourage me you were, all the same, trying to warn me.”
“Oh, hardly at all. Or only in the smallest degree, I promise you.”
“But since my work has already shown me the other side of happiness you need not worry. And in the end what does it matter if I find happiness or something else as long as it is something real I can feel and deal with. Since I am in the world I too must have my share of it. There is no reason why I should not. I will do just as everyone else does. You see, I cannot imagine dying without having had the look that my employer has in her eyes when she comes to see me in the evening.”
“It is hard to imagine you with tired eyes. You may not know it, but you have very fine eyes.”
“They will be fine when they need to be.”
“I can’t help it, but the thought that one day you might have the same look as that woman is sad, that’s all.”
“Who can tell how things will turn out? And I will go through whatever is necessary. That is my greatest hope. And after my eyes have been fine they will become clouded like everyone else’s.”
“When I said that your eyes were fine I meant that they had a wonderful expression.”
“I am sure you are wrong and even if you were right I couldn’t be satisfied with it.”
“I understand and yet I find it hard not to tell you that for other people your eyes are very beautiful.”
“Otherwise I would be lost. If for one moment I was satisfied with my eyes as they are I would be lost.”
“And so you said this woman comes into the kitchen?”
“Yes, sometimes. It is the only moment of the day when she does and she always asks the same thing, how am I getting on?”
“As if things could go differently for you from one day to another?”
“Yes, as if they could.”
“Such people have strange illusions about people like us. What else can you expect? And perhaps it is part of our job to preserve their illusion.”
“Have you ever been dependent on a boss? It seems as if you must have to understand so well.”
“No. But it is a threat which hangs over people like us so constantly that it is easier to imagine than most things.”
There was a silence between the girl and the man and one would have thought them distracted, attentive only to the softness of the air. Then once again the man started to speak. He said:
“We really agree, you know. You see, when I talked of this woman and of people who managed not to be entirely happy I did not mean that it was a reason for not following their example, for not trying in one’s own turn and in one’s own turn failing. Nor that one should deny longings such as you have for a gas stove, which would be to reject in advance all that might follow from it, such as a refrigerator or even happiness. I don’t doubt the truth of your hopes for a moment. On the contrary I think they are exactly what they should be. I really do.”
“Must you go? Is that why you said all that?”
“No, I have no need to go. I just didn’t want you to misunderstand me, that’s all.”
“The way you talked like that, all of a sudden drawing conclusions from everything we had said, made me think that perhaps you had to go.”
“No, I have nothing to go for. I just wanted to say that I understood you and like everything about you. And I was going to add that if there was one thing I didn’t quite understand, and I hate being a bore on this subject, it is still the fact that you take on so much extra work and that you always agree to do whatever they ask. Don’t blame me for coming back to it, but I can’t agree with you on this point even if I do understand your reasons. I am afraid. . . . What I am really afraid of is that you might feel that if you accept all the worst things that come your way you will one day have earned the right to be finished with them forever. . . .”
“And if that was the case?”
“Ah, no. I cannot accept that.