But it was one thing to think about going to the town, another to go there; one thing to dream, another to act. I wanted to get to town to escape the annoying talk, the embarrassing looks, and the general feeling that I was a bother, a trouble to someone. But in town that is what I became. For when I tried to carry out my intention of no longer taking lunch with the family, I was given no peace, day or night, until finally the landlady caught me in the middle of the street, because evidently that was a politer place for our conversation than up in my room. Out of stubbornness I had refused to set foot in the family’s rooms, and she told me she wanted to have a serious talk with me. So we walked and looked for quieter places, as if we were a couple of lovers, drawing aside from people, and we talked about my lunchtimes and the future, for the landlady was able to easily link those two subjects, saying, “When a person can’t eat a proper lunch, he can’t become a proper person and has no future.”
“But why should a person have a future?” I asked, merely to ask and to draw the conversation into some impersonal realm.
“You’re talking like a child!” cried the landlady. “Really, you men are children!” she continued almost in rapture, for nothing moved her mind so easily as the thought of children. “So is a person a butterfly or a midge, to be without a future?”
“People don’t have a greater future than any midge,” I said sagely. “They’re merely born, they live and die, nothing more.”
“Nothing more!” cried the landlady in amazement.
“What else then?” I asked. “Perhaps a person leaves behind bigger piles of rubbish than a midge.”
“Something, anyway!” cried the landlady as if in triumph. “Bigger piles of rubbish! If anyone who doesn’t know you heard that, they would definitely think you’re either a halfwit or unhappily in love.”
“Thank God!” I mentally repeated the landlord’s words, “at last we’ve got around to love.”
“Believe me, Mr Studious, men always start talking like that when they’re unhappy in love. Unhappy love only changes your own life and other people’s into a pile of rubbish.”
“Then people are only unhappy in love,” I tried to wisecrack, “for just think about it, my good lady, what have we got from the ancient Greeks and Romans? A pile of rubbish!”
“What about the pyramids?” she asked. “What about the pharaohs’ tombs? They’ve lasted thousands of years and they’re not rubbish yet!”
“What’s the significance of a few thousand years, when the age of the earth is counted in millions?” I retorted.
“But what’s the point of you going to school, if you talk like that?” said the landlady.
“I wouldn’t have talked otherwise – it was just an idea,” I replied.
“So now out of hunger, a noose around the neck or a bullet to the head, eh?”
“Why those?” I asked back.
“Because that’s how you’ll end up anyway, if you go God knows where to eat your lunch, just to get it a few cents cheaper. How long will your health stand it?”
“Half the world goes God knows where to eat lunch these days, and if so-called culture carries on developing at the same rate, soon everybody will be going God knows where to eat lunch, especially in towns,” I explained in self-defence. “Even you, my dear lady, used to talk about it.”
“And I recommended it, did I?” she asked. “I mentioned it as a warning. I don’t believe in any culture where you don’t get fed properly. If every last thing is changed into a factory business, then all culture will come to an end. Strange that they haven’t made or invented machines that play football or lawn tennis!”
“That’s a slightly cleaner activity than preparing food, that’s why.”
“And you think people love cleanliness? I don’t think so. Why do people smear themselves with grease and oil so terribly? As if they were some kind of machine? Believe me, I have a feeling that a person doesn’t want to be anything other than a machine.”
“Well, you see,” I said, “you must agree that if a person is a machine, you can shove any old food or fuel into it at any factory or office.”
“Phew, shocking!” she cried in English, and asked, “So you don’t care what sort of can or hose it’s done from, then?”
“Almost,” I said, adding, “Please, madam, you said ‘shocking’. But where do all these cans and ready-made sauces and condensed milks come from? The place where they say ‘shocking’. I read in some book about an Englishman who complained about his wife’s carelessness and laziness in preparing food. But is there culture in England? Or isn’t there?”
“Listen, you’re arguing with me about nothing,” she said. “You’re arguing so as not to come to the point. An Englishman has a place to live, where he can get God knows what to enrich his stomach, with plenty of preserves and sauces and our bacon, but you don’t have a place to live. You don’t have factories and plants to make the food for your stomach in droplets and powders, when you’re exhausted from working. That’s why you have to eat differently from an Englishman.”
“I do eat differently.” I replied. “I don’t put our bacon in my mouth, and tinned food and all sorts of sauces are priced out of my reach.”
“Ah, let’s leave off this useless chat,” she said impatiently, “and talk sensibly. You say you can get by more cheaply without a proper lunch. All right, I believe you. But you do eat lunch, don’t you?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” I replied. “As my pocket demands or denies.”
“Ah, so even going completely without lunch?” she exclaimed.
“As it happens, sometimes without lunch, sometimes without breakfast or dinner,” I said.
“Is that really so?” she enquired, as if she didn’t believe me.
“Just so, my dear lady,” I confirmed.
“And you don’t want to eat lunch at my place even on the most favourable terms any more?”
“No, thank you,” I replied.
“Then you know what I think, and forgive me for expressing my opinion: you’re not refusing the offer of lunch just for reasons of economy; you must have some other reasons.”
“What others?” I asked, starting to laugh, but I felt that my laugh betrayed what the landlady was guessing. My laughter clearly gave me away.
“I don’t know what others,” she said. “There must be something in us or our lunches that you don’t like. But I will tell you one thing: as long as you won’t eat a proper lunch, I won’t take the rent for the room from you either.”
“Then I’ll pay it into your current account at your bank or I’ll look for another room,” I replied.
“Look, tell me what’s wrong with you!” she now cried in surprise. “I’d like to help you and it won’t cause me any difficulty – why don’t you want my help?”
“My dear lady, I don’t need help at the moment,” I replied, “and that’s that.”
“How can you not need it, when you can’t even eat lunch any more?”
“Oh Lord! There are more people like this in the world than there are who do eat a proper lunch,” I replied, as if indifferent. “And as I said before, if culture carries on developing at this rate, there soon won’t be any more proper lunches made.”
“Forget your culture and your development! I don’t want to hear any more about them!” she cried, getting agitated. “Your culture is only good for poisoners!”
“My dear lady, real culture might be at the point where it makes people immune to poisons. You know that anaemic people are given rat poison. I had a school friend who was regularly fed on rat poison, which they used to call arsenic. Just think, that if a tiny droplet of rat poison is fed to a person, what would happen if he could ingest a large amount of it. Perhaps a person might live only on rat poison and that would be the real culture.”
“You turn everything into a silly joke,” said the landlady, “but I’m no longer so young that I’m interested in men’s silliness. I only wanted to talk directly and openly with you.”