Free Four Novels by Marguerite Duras Page A

never any difficulty in talking to children about that sort of thing. It can become a little monotonous, but that’s how it is.”
    “They can’t understand other things, unhappiness for example, and I don’t think it does much good to mention them.”
    “If you talk to them of things that don’t interest them they simply stop listening and wander off.”
    “Sometimes I have conversations on my own.”
    “That has happened to me too.”
    “I don’t mean I talk to myself. I speak to a completely imaginary person, not just anybody, but to my worst enemy. You see, although I haven’t any friends yet, I invent enemies.”
    “And what do you say to them?”
    “I insult them: and always without the slightest explanation. Why do I do this?”
    “Who knows? Probably because an enemy never understands one and I think you would be hard put to it to accept being understood and to give in to the particular comfort it brings.”
    “After all, my insults are a form of talking aren’t they? And I never mention my work.”
    “Yes, it is talking; and since no one hears you and it gives you some satisfaction it seems better to go on.”
    “When I spoke of the unhappiness which children cannot understandI was talking of unhappiness in general, the unhappiness everyone knows about, not of a particular kind of personal unhappiness.”
    “I knew that. The fact 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 theevening 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