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perhaps even because at some time you very much disliked 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.”
    “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 person 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. 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 our time?”
    “Not only that, because as yet I have not had the time to become tired of anything, except of waiting of course. 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. My life has not begun 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. I am sure that if at this stage I started thinking of anything except the one big thing, 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 consolation in my life, if I was able, to however small a degree, to put up with it then 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