The other man said to Simon:
“I’m a nurse, but at present I’m nothing but a loafer. I come from Naples, where I cared for the sick at the International Hospital. It’s quite possible that ten days from now I’ll be somewhere in the American interior, or else in Russia; they send us wherever nurses are needed, even to the South Sea Islands. It’s one way to see the world, quite true, but your own homeland becomes so unfamiliar, I can’t express this clearly enough. You for example no doubt have always lived in your own native land, it constantly surrounds you, you feel encircled by familiar sights, you do your work here, you’re happy here and surely experience adversity here as well, never mind, but at least you’re allowed to feel connected to a soil, a land, a sky, if I may say it thus. It’s lovely to be bound to something. You feel at ease, you have the right to feel at ease, and every reason to expect the understanding and love of your fellow men. But me? Nothing of the sort! You see, I’ve grown too wicked for my own narrowly circumscribed homeland — perhaps also too good, too all-comprehending. I can no longer share the sentiments of my countrymen. I now understand their preferences just as little as I do their anger and dislikes. In any case, I’m a stranger there, and when you’ve become a stranger, people do hold it against you. And certainly they’re right — for it was wrong of me to become estranged. Even if my views about so many things are now more worldly and intelligent, what use is this if they serve only to offend my countrymen’s sensibilities? They must be wicked views if they cause offense. You have to hold a country’s customs and values sacred if you don’t wish to become a stranger there one day, as has happened now with me. In any case, I’ll soon be traveling far from home again, to wherever my patients are—”
He smiled and asked Simon: “What do you do?”
“I’m an outlandish figure in my own homeland,” Simon replied. “Actually I’m a copy clerk, and you can no doubt imagine how great a role I therefore play in my fatherland, where the copyist is pretty much at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. Other young people intent on pursuing commercial trades go off traveling to distant lands for educational purposes and then return home with a sack full of knowledge to find that honorable positions have been reserved for them. I however — take my word for it — shall always remain in this country. It’s as if I were afraid that in other countries no sun would shine, or an inferior one. I’m bound fast to this place and am always seeing new things amid the old, perhaps this is why I’m so unwilling to leave. I’m going to the dogs here, I can see that perfectly well, and nonetheless I must, or so it seems to me, go on breathing beneath the sky of my homeland if I wish to live at all. Naturally I don’t enjoy much respect, I’m generally seen as a wastrel, but this doesn’t matter at all to me, not one bit. Here I am and shall no doubt remain. It’s so sweet to remain. Does nature go abroad? Do trees wander off to procure for themselves greener leaves in other places so they can come home and flaunt their new splendor? Rivers and clouds are always leaving, but this is a different, more profound sort of leave-taking, without any returning. It’s not really a departure anyhow, just a flying, flowing way of being at rest. Such a depature — how beautiful it is, if I may say so! I’m always looking at the trees and telling myself: They aren’t leaving either, so why shouldn’t I be permitted to remain? When I find myself in a city in winter, I feel tempted to see it in spring: Seeing a tree in winter, I wish to see it resplendent in the springtime, sending out its first enchanting leaves. After spring, the summer always comes, inexplicably beautiful and quiet, like a glowing huge green wave arising from the unfathomable depths of the world, and of course I wish to enjoy the summer here, do you understand me, sir, here, where I saw the spring blossoming. Take, for example, this little strip of meadow or lawn. How sweet it looks in early spring when the snow upon it has just melted beneath the sun’s rays. It’s this tree and this lawn and this world that matter: In other places, I don’t think I’d even notice summer. What it comes down to is that I have a truly devilish desire to remain right where I am, along with all sorts of not terribly amusing reasons that preclude my undertaking a journey abroad. For example: Would I have any money for travel? As you surely know, a person needs money to travel by rail or boat. I have money enough for perhaps twenty more meals; but I don’t have the money to travel. And I’m glad not to have any. Let other folks go traveling and come home more clever. I’m clever enough to be able to die here with dignity one day, in the land of my birth.”
After a brief moment of silence, during which the nurse gazed at him intently, he went on:
“What’s more, I haven’t the least desire to pursue some splendid career. What means the most to some people means least to me. I cannot in God’s name value careerist ambitions. I want to live, but I don’t want to go running down some career path — supposedly such a grand enterprise. What’s so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you! I prefer to remain poor but healthy and forego a stately dwelling in favor of an inexpensive room, even if the view is of the darkest of alleyways; I’d rather live with financial difficulties than be faced with the difficult decision of where to travel on summer holidays to restore my ruined health, though to be sure I currently enjoy the respect of only a single person, namely myself. But this is the one whose respect is worth the world to me; I am free and can always, when necessity commands, sell my freedom for a certain length of time so as to be free again after. It’s worth remaining poor for the sake of freedom. I have enough to eat; for I possess the talent of feeling sated after eating very little. I fly into a rage whenever someone approaches me with the words ‘lifetime position’ and all the presumptions implied therein. I wish to remain a human being. In a word: I love what is risky, unfathomable, floating and uncontrolled!”
“I like you,” the nurse said.
“I certainly had no intention of inducing you to like me, but it nonetheless pleases me if you do, as I’ve been speaking quite freely and frankly. Incidentally, there was no call for me to be so testy in speaking of others. That’s always stupid — you have no right to disparage circumstances simply because they don’t happen to be to your liking. One can always leave, I can always leave! But no, things are quite to my liking. My situation pleases me. People please me just as they are. For my part, I use all the means at my disposal to induce my fellow men to like me. I’m hardworking and industrious when I have a task to perform, but I won’t sacrifice the pleasure I take in the world for anyone’s sake, at most I’d sacrifice it for our sacred fatherland — the occasion for which, however, has to this day failed to present itself, a circumstance I expect to continue. Let them pursue their careers, I can understand this, they wish to live in comfort and see to it their children will also have something, they’re good providers whose actions are nothing if not laudable; so let them also leave me to do as I please, to pluck life’s pleasures as I see fit — this is something everyone tries to do, every one of us, just not in the same way. How wonderful it is to be mature enough to let others do as they will in their own way, as best they know how. No, if a person has faithfully discharged his duties for thirty years, he is certainly no fool when he reaches the end of his career, as I said before in my testiness; rather, he is a man of honor who has earned the wreaths that will be placed on his grave. You see, I don’t want any wreaths on my grave — that’s the whole difference. My end is a matter of no interest to me. They’re always telling me, other people, that I shall have to pay bitterly one day for my cockiness. Well then, so I’ll pay, and I’ll learn then what it means to pay for something. I like to learn things and so I’m not nearly as apprehensive as people who worry about their nice smooth futures. I’m always afraid some life experience might pass me by. In this sense I’m as ambitious as ten Napoleons. But now I’m hungry, I’d like to get something to eat, would you join me? It would be a pleasure for me.”