Four Novels by Marguerite Duras

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. I don’t believe that anything or anyone exists whose function it is to reward people for their personal merits, and certainly not people who are obscure or unknown. We are abandoned.”
    “But if I told you it was not for that reason but so that I should never lose my horror for my work, so that I should go on feeling all the disgust I felt for it as much as ever.”
    “I am sorry but even then I could not agree. I think you have already begun to live your life and even at the risk of repeating this endlessly to you and becoming a bore I really must say that I think things have already started for you, that time passes for you as much as for anyone else, and that even now you can waste it; as you do when you take on work which anyone else in your place would refuse.”
    “I think you must be very nice to be able to put yourself into other people’s places and think for them with so much understanding. I could never do that.”
    “You have other things to do; if I can think about other people it is only because I have the time for it, and as you said yourself, it is not the best kind of time.”
    “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps the fact that I have decided to change everything is a sign that things have begun for me. And the fact that I cry from time to time is probably also a sign and I expect I should no longer hide this from myself.”
    “Everyone cries, and not because of that, but simply because they are alive.”
    “But one day I checked up on my position and I discovered that it was quite usual for maids to be expected to do most of the things I have to do. That was two years ago. For instance there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that sometimes we have to look after very old women, as old as eighty-two, weighing two hundred pounds and no longer quite right in their minds, making messes in their clothes at any hour of the day or night and whom nobody wants to bother about.”
    “Did you really say two hundred pounds?”
    “Yes, I am looking after one now; and what’s more, last time she was weighed she had gained. And yet I would have you appreciate the fact that I haven’t killed her, not even that time two years ago after I had found out what was expected of me. She was fat enough then and I was eighteen. I still haven’t killed her and I never will, although it becomes easier and easier as she gets older and frailer. She is left alone in the bathroom to wash and the bathroom is at the far end of the house. All I would have to do would be to hold her head under water for three minutes and it would all be over. She is so old that even her children wouldn’t mind her death, nor would she herself since she hardly knows she is there any more. But I look after her very well and always for the reasons I explained, because if I killed her it would mean that I could imagine improving my present situation, making it bearable, and that would be contrary to my plan. No, no one can rescue me