The maid, on the other hand, has no desire whatever to slip out of character, as is quite understandable — she runs the risk of being seriously hurt. So she must pretend that he is not resting his cheek on her shoulder, nor is his hand at the same time groping her body. She has to go on peeling vegetables, oblivious to anything else. He has done this so many times that the situation has begun to seem quite safe to her. It should be added that from the notary’s perspective, it would have been foolish not to touch her after he had moved so close. Yet at the same time he knows that nothing else is left for him. Tired right from the start of the day, he longs to feel the beating of his own heart, if only for a second, since he’s obliged to gather his strength and head out once again to his office, where he will resume the trivial little procedures that his profession requires. If the notary is to hold up the sky of shared quotidianness, he unquestionably deserves a pillar that can help to keep him in place with his burden.
Thus the maid, whose own future is uncertain, in secret from the notary’s wife has to support him beyond the scope of her daily duties, and not without sacrifices on her part. It is on her that the responsibility for the fate of his office, staff, and family will ultimately fall. If his practice fails, the maid will also find herself on the sidewalk — that much is obvious. If this happens, she will have only herself to blame. But in the first instance more important things are at stake. It is not about her, nor about the paralegals and stenographers, but the family. It is about the notary’s wife, who this morning has been sleeping off yesterday’s migraine, though truth be told for many years now she has rarely gotten up in the morning, and when she has it is only to drift about the apartment in her dressing gown. It is about the boy, fifteen years old, who is at the nearby grammar school and has just been called to the blackboard in his Latin class — lex, legis, and so on — and once again has failed to do his homework, idler that he is. And lastly it’s about the little girl, who at this moment is toddling down the hallway, the laces of her tiny shoes untied.
If she tripped over the laces and fell, she would bump her forehead and raise a hue and cry; and if in addition she woke her mother with the noise, it goes without saying that it would be the maid’s fault, which goes to show that the maid was responsible for all unforeseen circumstances, against her wishes teetering constantly on the brink of danger whatever course of action she chose, though, on the other hand, she was never allowed to make any decisions of her own accord. Certain of her duties cannot be reconciled with certain others; she cannot simultaneously look after the notary, the little girl, and herself. The simplest thing is to exclude herself right from the beginning, to forget about herself; this no one forbids her, and it would be one less thing to worry about. But both of the other two have their own needs, which cannot at any cost be ignored. Whichever of these needs she attends to, she will neglect others, and so one way or another she won’t have a leg to stand on. No one will release the maid from the contradictions inherent in the demands of the master and his mistress; neither of them, and even less their children, will resolve these complications for her. From the power and influence that have fallen to the lot of the notary, there follow certain privileges; it is easier for him than for anyone else to shift his cares to someone else’s back. His example encourages others to do the same as far as they are able. It is a rule in this story that the weaker person carries the greater burden. Thus, the weakest of all bears everything.
On the other hand, that is after all what they pay her for — to take the entire load upon herself, relinquishing all rights, accepting the brunt of her mistress’s anger without a word of complaint, taking on her own shoulders the weight of that lady’s unhappiness and disappointments. It’s obvious that she is not paid for peeling vegetables — the very idea of such extravagance is laughable. Cooking, cleaning, and ironing shirts seems a natural addendum to the whole, tasks assigned without emotion and without additional compensation. Peeling vegetables for her employers, she secretly asks herself the painful question of why it was not given to her to be someone else. In fact, it’s understandable that this question rankles; it was added like a label to the bolt of linen from which her apron was made. But there will be no answer. A maid is a maid, a wife a wife, and that’s an end of it. The costume creates the character and takes it into possession, never the other way round.
If things are to move forward, a sign marking the notary’s practice should be looked for. It ought to be a brass plate visible from far off, gleaming like gold, engraved with an appropriate inscription indicating to all passers-by, whether or not they need to know, the place where the paralegals are at work — inspiring confidence with their immaculate white shirts and their black oversleeves worn shiny from use; bustling about, utterly engrossed in their pressing paperwork; sprawling at their desks, smoking one cigarette after another, constantly reaching for the telephone. But the signplate showing the place where this establishment is supposedly located is nowhere to be seen. It is neither here nor over there; it does not appear on any of the buildings. Neither at number seven, where the notary’s private apartment is located, nor at number one, where there is a café. At number three the photographer has his studio and apartment; at number eleven is the pharmacy, where they know everyone’s aches and pains. At number nine the work-weary policeman lives on the back courtyard; while at number five the student rents a cramped little room in the attic. At number eight the washerwoman is cooped up in the basement with a washtub in which someone else’s underwear is always soaking in soapy water. At number two there is the bakery, and at number four the movie theater, though it has been closed down and the building in which it was housed is up for renovation; in the meantime, a spare set of keys is kept in neighborly fashion by the photographer at number three, in a drawer beneath a pile of unclaimed pictures. And the hotel at number ten? It’s inexpensive but quite decent, just right for middle level businesspeople. It goes without saying that if the notary’s signplate were to appear at all, any address would be good, except for numbers six and twelve, where the boys’ grammar school and the local government offices stand facing each other. Then what has happened to the plate? It seems that out of forgetfulness, or perhaps deliberately, it has not been put up at all.
What an unpleasant surprise, what an inconvenience and cause for consternation! Of course, the lack of a sign does not necessarily mean the annihilation of the office. It is assumed to have existed since time immemorial, at the very least since when the notary married his boss’s somewhat unstable daughter, in this manner becoming a partner. His father-in-law’s funeral was magnificent, and the procession started precisely from in front of the office. It’s just that it is hard to point the place out. Without a signplate, the office still continues to exist in its discreet fashion, hovering noncommittally somewhere in space, as a putative background for the vest with the gold watch chain and the overcoat with the fur collar, which the youngest paralegal is obliged to take deferentially from his employer when he appears in the doorway. Insofar as the door was ever hung in its frame; insofar as there was even a frame. It’s impossible to keep it a secret from the men in overalls that accomplished facts almost immediately become immaterial, which in their eyes renders preparatory labors futile and encourages furtive economies. And it is only thanks to such economies that their work turns out to be so extraordinarily profitable. In their nonchalance, they had been certain ahead of time that the office would not be needed; now they find themselves in a bind. It’s too late to repair the mistake. There arises the worry that they will try instead to derail the story to cause it to bypass the office along with its costly and toilsome interior decorations. For the most mundane reasons, this establishment will remain what it is — a hazy notion.