Cecily's Reviews > A Clean Well-Lighted Place

One day, I’ll be glad I read this story, but right now, it hurts. It was either exactly the right time for me to have read it or very much not.

It opens with a poignant description of a solitary old man, the last customer of the night, as he often is, drinking outside a café, “in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light”.
Then you’re hit by this exchange between the two waiters:
“‘Last week he tried to commit suicide,’ one waiter said.
‘Why?’
‘He was in despair.’
‘What about?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How do you know it was nothing?’
‘He has plenty of money.’”

The right to life death

The comment about money is thoughtless rather than unkind, though a later comment to the old man, who the waiter knows is deaf, is certainly mean. What struck me more was that the old man’s niece had intervened to prevent his suicide - without apparently doing anything to improve his life or happiness.

The right to live one's life as one likes (within the bounds of the law, and hopefully of kindness to others) is a fundamental human right.

But surely one also has the right to end one's life as and when one likes (though again, one should be considerate of those affected)?

How one reacts and doesn't, to self-destructive behaviour and possible suicide, whether in others or oneself, is fraught with painful questions, and no clear guidance on how to answer them. Some who are pulled back from the brink live to be glad of it, but by no means all. I don’t think there’s a way to tell who will be in which camp.

Whether staring into the abyss or up to the heavens, letting go can be appealing…


Image: Hands reaching up towards the sun, but is it for rescue or abandonment? (Source)

Hemingway died by suicide, albeit nearly thirty years after writing this story. If someone had intervened, maybe we'd have more of his writings to enjoy, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would have been the right thing to do. And yet who could knowingly let someone who isn't terminally ill go ahead with it?

Other themes

Most readers probably focus on ageing and attitudes to age, the need for comfort and light (but oddly, not necessarily for company), and the meaning of life. I couldn’t get past the suicide theme, along with the nihilism of the older waiter.

There are the three ages of man: the young waiter eager to get home to his wife; the middle-aged and single insomniac waiter who is sympathetic to, and identifies somewhat with the old man, and the old man himself.

The young waiter says:
“‘I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.’

The older waiter counters with the dignity of the old man, and resists closing the café and sending the old man to a bar:
“Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café.”
Later, he asks himself:
“What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.”

The old man just asks for (yet) another brandy.
Drowning his sorrows or a slower route to suicide?


Image: Light and the dark, from the shadow of leaves (Source)

See also

• Something about this made me immediately think of Edward Hopper’s famous painting, Nighthawks. However, this is set in Spain, and the lonely customer is sitting outside a clean, well-lighted café that is explicitly not a bar - although he is drinking alcohol.

• The two observing waiters, from different generations, came to mind when I read the less pleasant scenario of three roofers lusting after a woman in Doris Lessing's A Woman on a Roof, which I reviewed HERE.

• Literary-themed tribute to my late father, who died by suicide, HERE.

• Ali Smith uses this title as the title of one of the short stories in her collection, Public library and other stories, which I reviewed HERE.

Short story club

I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.