The Garden Square

by Marguerite Duras

  “Yes. And even if sometimes I go back to the same places, they can be different. In the spring, for instance, you will find cherries in the markets. That is what I really 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 two months, there will be cherries in the markets. I am glad for your sake. But tell me, what other things can you see on your travels?”

  “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 there in about two months. You see, that is what I wanted to explain – not that I thought my work was entirely satisfactory.”

  “But apart from the cherries in the markets and the sunshine and the snow, what else do you see?”

  “Sometimes nothing much, nothing that you can see, even. But a number of little things 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 isn’t everything exactly the same sometimes?”

  “Yes. Sometimes everything is so identical that it seems you left it only 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.”

  “But apart from the cherries in the markets and the sunshine and the snow?”

  “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 the odd thing is that although the town had never seemed overcrowded before, there it suddenly is – a brand-new block of flats, completed and inhabited as if it had always been utterly necessary.”

  “All the things you describe and the changes you notice are there for anyone to see, aren’t they? They are not things which exist for you alone?”

  “Sometimes there are things which I alone can see, but only negligible things. In general you are right: the things I notice are mostly changes in the weather, in buildings, things which anyone would notice. And yet sometimes, just by watching them carefully, such things can affect one just as much as events that are completely personal. In fact it feels as though they were personal, as if somehow I had put the cherries there myself.”

  “I see what you mean, and I am trying to put myself in your place, but it’s no good: I still think I should be frightened.”

  “That does happen. It happens to me sometimes when I wake up at night, for example. But on the whole it is only at night that I feel frightened, although I can also feel it at dusk – but then only when it’s raining or there’s a fog.”

  “Isn’t it strange that although I have never actually experienced the fear we are talking about, I can still understand a little what it must be like?”

  “You see, it is not the kind of fear you might feel if you said to yourself that when you died no one would notice. No, it’s another kind of fear, a general one which affects everything and not just you alone.”

  “As if you were suddenly terrified of being yourself, of being what you are instead of someone different, almost instead of being quite some other kind of thing, perhaps?”

  “Yes. It comes from feeling at the same time like everyone else, exactly like everyone else, and yet being oneself. In fact I think it is just that: being one kind of thing rather than another…”

  “It’s complicated, but I understand.”

  “As for the other kind of fear – the fear of thinking that no one would notice if you died – it seems to me that sometimes this can make one happier. I think that if you knew that when you died no one would suffer, not even a small dog, it makes it easier to bear the thought of dying.”

  “I am trying to follow you, but I am afraid I don’t understand. Perhaps because women are different from men? All I do know is that I could not bear to live as you do, alone with that suitcase. It is not that I would not like to travel, but unless there was someone who cared for me somewhere in the world I don’t think I could do it. In fact I can only say that I would prefer to be where I am.”

  “But could you not think of travelling while waiting for what you want?”

  “No. I don’t believe you know what it is to want to change one’s life. I must stay here and think about it, think with all my might, or else I know I will never manage to change.”

  “Perhaps, as you say, I don’t really know.”

  “How could you know? Because however modest a way of life you have, it is at least yours. So how could you know what it is like to be nothing?”

  “Am I right in thinking that no one would particularly care if you died either?”

  “No one. And I’ve been twenty now for two weeks. But one day someone will care. I know it. I am full of hope. Otherwise nothing would be possible.”

  “You are quite right. Why shouldn’t someone care about you as much as about anyone else?”

  “That’s just it. That’s just what I say to myself.”

  “You’re right, and now I’d like to ask you a question. Do you get enough to eat?”

  “Yes thank you, I do. I eat as much as and even more than I need. Always alone, but you eat well in my job since, after all, you do the cooking – and good things too, even a leg of lamb sometimes. Not only do I have enough to eat, but I eat a great deal as well. I even have to force myself sometimes, because I feel I would like to be fatter and more impressive, so that people would notice me more. I think that if I were bigger and stronger I would stand a better chance of getting what I want. You may say I’m wrong, but it seems to me that if I were radiantly healthy people would find me more attractive. And so you see, we are really very different.”

  “Probably. But in my own way I also have a positive attitude. I must have explained myself badly just now. I assure you that if I should ever want to change, why then I would set about it like everyone else.”

  “Sorry, but it is not very easy to believe you when you say that.”

  “Perhaps, but you see while I have nothing against hope in general, the fact is that there has never seemed much reason for it to concern me. And yet I feel that it would not take a great deal for me to feel that hope is as necessary to me as it is to others. It might only need the smallest bit of faith. Perhaps I lack the time for it, who knows? I don’t mean the time I spend in trains thinking of this or that, or chatting with other people, no, I mean the other kind of time: the time anyone has, each day, to think of the one that follows. I just lack the time to start thinking about that particular subject and so discovering that it might mean something to me too.”

  “And yet it seems to me – forgive me again – as I think you yourself said, that there was a time when you were like everyone else, no?”

  “Precisely, but almost so much so that I was never able to do anything about it. No one can be everything at once or, as you said, want everything at once, and personally I was never able to get over this difficulty. I could never make up my mind to choose a profession. But after all, I have travelled, my suitcase takes me to a great many places, and once I even went to a foreign country. I didn’t sell much there, but I saw it. If anyone had told me some years ago that I should want to go there, I would never have believed them, and yet, you see, when I woke up one day I suddenly felt I would like to visit it and I went. Although very little has happened to me in my life, at least I managed that – I went to that country.”

  “But aren’t there unhappy people in this country of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there are girls like me, waiting for something to happen?”

  “I expect so, yes.”

  “So what is the point of it?”

  “Of course it’s true that peopl
e are unhappy and die there, and there are probably girls like you waiting hopefully for something to happen to them. But why not get to know that country instead of this one where we are, even if some things are the same? Why not see another country?”

  “Because – and you may tell me that I am wrong – I am completely indifferent to it.”

  “Ah, but wait. There for instance the winters are less harsh than here: in fact you would hardly know it was winter…”

  “But what use is a whole country to anyone, or a whole city or even the whole of one warm winter? It’s no use: you can say what you like, but you can only be where you are when you are, and so what is the point?”

  “But exactly. The town where I went ends in a big square surrounded by huge balustrades which seem to go on for ever.”

  “I am afraid I simply don’t want to hear about it.”

  “The whole town is built in white limestone – imagine: it is like snow in the heart of summer. It is built on a peninsula surrounded by the sea.”

  “And the sea I suppose is blue. It is blue, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is blue.”

  “Well I am sorry, but I must tell you that people who talk of how blue the sea is make me sick.”

  “But how can I help it? From the zoo you can see it surrounding the whole town. And to anybody it must seem blue. It’s not my fault.”

  “No. For me, without those ties of affection I was talking about, it would be black. And then, although I don’t want to offend you in any way, you must see that I am much too preoccupied with my desire to change my life to be able to go away or travel or see new things. You can see as many towns as you like, but it never gets you anywhere. And once you have stopped looking, there you are, exactly where you were before.”

  “But I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. I’m not talking of those huge events that change a whole life, no, just of the things which give pleasure while one is doing them. Travelling is a great distraction. Everyone has always travelled, the Greeks, the Phoenicians: it has always been so, all through history.”

  “It’s true that we’re talking of different things. To travel or see cities by the sea is not the kind of change I want. First of all I want to belong to myself, to own something, not necessarily something very wonderful, but something which is mine, a place of my own, maybe only one room, but mine. Why sometimes I even find myself dreaming of a gas stove.”

  “You know it would be just the same as travelling. You wouldn’t be able to stop. Once you had the gas stove, you would want a refrigerator, and after that something else. It would be just like travelling, going from city to city. It would never end.”

  “Excuse me, but do you see anything wrong in my wanting something further perhaps after I have the refrigerator?”

  “Of course not. No, certainly not. I was only speaking for myself, and as far as I am concerned I find your idea even more exhausting than travelling and then travelling some more, moving as I do from place to place.”

  “I was born and grew up like everyone else, and I know how to look around me: I look at things very carefully, and I can see no reason why I should remain as I am. I must start somehow, anyhow, to become of consequence. And if at this stage I began losing heart at the thought of a refrigerator I might never even possess the gas stove. And anyway, how am I to know if it would weary me or not? If you say it would, it might be because you have given the matter a great deal of thought, or perhaps even because at some time you got tired of one particular refrigerator.”

  “No, it is not that. Not only have I never possessed a refrigerator, but I have never had the slightest chance of doing so. No, it’s only an idea, and if I talked of refrigerators like that it was probably only because to someone who travels they seem especially heavy and immobile. I don’t suppose I would have made the same remarks about another object. And yet I do understand, I assure you, that it would be impossible for you to travel before you had the gas stove, or even, perhaps, the refrigerator. And I expect I am quite wrong to be so easily discouraged at the mere thought of a refrigerator.”

  “Yes, it does seem very strange.”

  “There was one day in my life, just one, when I no longer wanted to live. I was hungry, and as I had no money it was absolutely essential for me to work if I was to eat. It was as if I had forgotten that this was as true of everyone as of me! That day I felt quite unused to life, and there seemed no point in going on living, because I couldn’t see why things should go on for me as they did for other people. It took me a whole day to get over this feeling. Then, of course, I took my suitcase to the market, and afterwards I had a meal and things went on as they had before, but with this difference – that ever since that day I find that any thought of the future, and after all thinking of a refrigerator is thinking of the future, is much more frightening than before.”

  “I would have guessed that.”

  “Since then, when I think about myself, it is simply in terms of one person more or one less, and so you see that a refrigerator more or less can hardly seem as important to me as it does to you.”

  “Tell me, did this happen before or after you went to that country you liked so much?

  “After. But when I think about that country I feel pleased, and I think it would have been a pity for one more person not to have seen it. I don’t mean that I imagine I was especially made to appreciate it. No, it just seems to me that since we are here, it is better to see one country more rather than one less.”

  “I can’t feel as you do, and yet I do understand what you are saying, and I think you are right to say it. What you really mean is that since we are alive anyhow it is better to see things than not to see them, is it not? It was that you meant, wasn’t it? And that seeing them makes the time pass quickly and more pleasantly?”

  “Yes, it is a little like that. Perhaps the only difference between us is that we feel differently about how to spend or not spend our time?”

  “Not only that, because as yet I have not had the time to become tired of anything, except of waiting of course. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t mean that you are necessarily happier than I am, but simply that if you were unhappy you could imagine something which would help, like moving to another city, selling something different, or even… even bigger things. But I can’t start thinking of anything yet, not even the smallest thing. Nothing has begun for me except, of course, for the fact that I am alive. There are times, in summer for example when the weather is fine, when I feel that something might have begun for me even without there being any proof of it, and then I am frightened. I become frightened of giving in to the fine weather and forgetting what I want even for a second, of losing myself in something unimportant, of forgetting the most important thing. I am sure that if at this stage I started thinking of details, I would be lost.”

  “But it seemed to me for instance that you were fond of that little boy?”

  “It makes no difference. If I am, I don’t want to know it. If I started finding consolations in my life, if I were able, to however small a degree, to put up with it, then, again, I know I would be lost. I have a great deal of work to do, and I do it. Indeed I am so good at my work that each day they give me a little more to do, and I accept it. Naturally it has ended in them giving me the hardest things to do, dreadful things, and yet I do them and I never complain. Because if I refused it would mean that I imagined that my situation, as it stands, could be improved, become milder, that it could be made somehow more bearable – and then, of course, it would end up one day by becoming bearable, full stop.”

  “And yet it seems strange to be able to make one’s life easier and refuse to do so.”

  “I suppose so, but I never refuse to do anything, have never refused to do whatever is asked of me. I have never refused anything, although it would have been easy at the beginning, and now it would be easier still since I am asked to do more
and more. But for as long as I can remember it has always been like this: I accepted everything quite quietly, so that one day I would be quite unable to accept anything any more. You may say that this is a rather childish way of looking at things, but I could never find another way of being sure that I would get what I wanted. You see, I know that people can get used to anything, and all around me I see people who are still where I am, but ten years later. There is nothing people cannot get accustomed to, even to a life like mine, and so I must be careful, very careful indeed, not to become accustomed to it myself. Sometimes I am frightened, yes, because although I am aware of this danger, it is still so great that I am afraid that even I, aware as I am, might give in to it. But please go on telling me about the changes you see when you travel, apart from the snow, the cherries and the new buildings?”

  “Well, sometimes the hotel has changed hands and the new owner is friendly and talkative where the old one was tired of trying to please and never spoke to his clients.”

  “Tell me, it is true, isn’t it, that I must not take things for granted: that each day I must still be amazed to be where I am or else I shall never succeed?”

  “I think that everyone is amazed, each day, to be still where they are. I think people are amazed quite naturally. I doubt if one can decide to be amazed at one thing more than at another.”

  “Each morning I am a little more surprised to find myself still where I am. I don’t do it on purpose: I just wake up and, immediately, I am surprised. Then I start remembering things… I was a child like any other: there was nothing to show I was different. At cherry time, for instance, we used to go and steal fruit in the orchards. We were stealing it right up to the last day, because it was in that season that I was sent into service. But tell me more about the things you see when you travel, apart from what you have already told me, including the hotel owner?”

  “I used to steal cherries like you, and there was nothing which seemed to make me different from other children, except perhaps that even then I loved them very much. Well, apart from a new hotel owner, sometimes a new wireless has been installed. That’s a big change, when a café without music suddenly becomes a café with music: then of course they have many more customers and everyone stays much later. And that makes one more enjoyable evening to the good.”