A Walk
When old Levas, bookkeeper in the service of Messrs. Labuze and Company, left the shop, he stood for some moments dazzled by the brilliance of the setting sun. All day long he had worked in the yellow light of a gas-jet, in the depths of the back part of the shop, which looked on to a courtyard as narrow and deep as a well. So dark was the little room in which he had spent his days for the past forty years that, even in the height of summer, artificial light was rarely to be dispensed with between the hours of twelve and three.
It was always damp and cold there; and the smell from the ditch under the window came into the gloomy room, filling it with an odour of decay and drains.
For forty years Monsieur Levas had been arriving at this prison at eight o’clock each morning, and staying there till seven at night, bent over his ledgers, writing with the savage concentration of a good workman.
He was now making three thousand francs a year, having begun at fifteen hundred francs. He had remained a bachelor, his means not permitting him to take a wife. And, never having had anything, he did not desire much. From time to time, however, wearying of his monotonous and endless task, he would formulate a Platonic wish: “Lord, if I had five thousand pounds, I’d have an easy time of it.” But he never had had an easy time, having never had anything but his monthly salary.
His life had gone by without adventures, without passions, almost without hopes. The facility of dreaming, planted in every man, had never blossomed in the narrow bed of his ambitions.
At the age of twenty-one he had gone into Labuze and Company. And he had never come out.
In 1856 his father died, and in 1859 his mother. Since then the only event had been a change of lodgings in 1860, his landlord having proposed to raise the rent.
Every day, at six o’clock precisely, his alarm clock made him leap out of bed with its fearful clatter, like a chain being unwound. Twice, however, once in 1866 and once in 1874, the mechanism had gone wrong, without his ever having found out why. He dressed, made his bed, swept out his room, and dusted his armchair and the top of his chest of drawers. These tasks took an hour and a half.
Then he went out, bought a roll at Lahure’s bakery, where he had known eleven different proprietors without the shop ever changing its name, and started off, eating his bread.
His entire existence had therefore taken place in the dark, narrow office, always covered with the same wallpaper. He had come into it in his youth as assistant to Monsieur Brument and with the ambition to take his place. He had taken his place, and hoped for nothing more.
All the harvest of memories which other men gather in the course of life, the unexpected happenings, the happy or tragic loves, the adventurous journeys, all the chances of a free existence, had passed him by. Days, weeks, months, seasons, years, were all alike. At the same hour each day he rose, went out, arrived at the office, lunched, left the office, dined, and went to bed, without anything having ever interrupted the regular monotony of the same actions, the same events, and the same thoughts.
Once upon a time he had looked at his fair moustache and curly hair in the little round mirror left behind by his predecessor. Now, every evening, before going, he contemplated in the same mirror his white moustache and his bald forehead. Forty years had gone by, long and swift, empty as a day of sorrow, alike as the hours of a sleepless night. Forty years of which nothing remained, not even a memory, not even a grief since the death of his parents. Nothing.
On this day Monsieur Levas stood dazzled, at the street-door, by the brilliance of the setting sun; instead of returning home, he thought of taking a little walk before dinner, as he did four or five times a year.
He reached the boulevards, where a flood of people streamed past under the budding trees. It was a spring evening, one of those first evenings of generous warmth which thrill the heart with a madness of life.
Monsieur Levas
