Yesterday
Page 7
I barely grasp the reply she whispers in my ear:
“I had an abortion, Sandor.”
I am silent. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know whether I am happy or sad. I hold Line very tight. She says:
“Because of you. All because of you. Koloman thought it was our child, yours and mine. Yet we have never made love.”
“No, Line, never. Did you want to keep the child?”
“Sandor, you can’t know what it feels like when you lose a child. It could have been a little boy. And Koloman forced me to get rid of him. I don’t love my husband anymore, Sandor, I detest him. I hate him. What’s more, I’m sure he has a girlfriend in town. He gets home later and later. We have decided that, as soon as we get back home, we will get a divorce.”
I say:
“Then let Koloman go back alone and stay with me. You can come and stay with me from this evening, with your little girl, everything is ready, the child’s room, our room, there is everything you need, even toys.”
“You have a child’s room at your place?”
“Yes, Line. I have been waiting for you for a long time. Later I will give you a little boy, Line. And as many other children as you want.”
“And we’ll put them in childcare while we work?”
“Why not? They will be happy there. They will have games, playmates, friends.”
“But no family. Here, they won’t have any family. No grandmother, no grandfather, no uncles, no aunts, no cousins.”
“Of course, you can’t have everything. When you leave your country, you have to adapt. But if you love me, you will accept it.”
“I love you, Sandor. But not enough to stay here.”
“If I came back home with you, would you marry me?”
“No, no, I’m sorry, Sandor, I don’t think so. How could I introduce you to my parents? This is Tobias, my husband, Esther’s son.”
“We will lie. They won’t recognize me.”
“Lie? All our lives? To my parents? To our children? To everyone? How dare you even suggest such things?”
I am at home alone. I look at the child’s room, the toys, the silk dressing gown I bought for Line.
There is nothing else to do. I have tried everything. Impotence is the worst feeling of all. I can only drink beer after beer, smoke cigarette after cigarette, sit without thoughts, without desires.
It is all over. Line will never come here. Soon, she will depart with a man she doesn’t love. I think that she will be unhappy, that she will never love another man but me.
Later, I go into the kitchen to get something to eat. I get some bacon out of the fridge. I grab a chopping board and a knife to cut the bacon.
I cut two slices, then I stop. I stare at the knife I am holding in my hand. I wipe it, I slip it into the inside pocket of my jacket. I get up, leave the house and get on my bike.
I pedal furiously. I know I am mad. I know this won’t solve anything, but I have to act, I have to do something. I have nothing left to lose and Koloman deserves to die.
He must be punished for forcing his wife to get rid of the child she was carrying, of which he was the father. I would have preferred the child to have been mine. But that wasn’t the case.
At eight o’clock in the evening, I am outside Line’s house. There is no light on in the front room. Line must be in the kitchen, or in the other room, with Violette.
The streets are empty. No passersby. I sit down on some steps, I wait.
Koloman arrives around eleven o’clock, on the last bus. I stand in front of his door and bar his way.
“What do you want, Sandor?”
“To punish you for what you made Line go through. It was your child, Koloman, not mine.”
He tries to push me away.
“Get lost, you moron.”
I take the knife out of my jacket and push it into his stomach. I can’t pull it out. Koloman wraps himself around the blade, collapses. I leave him lying there on the ground. I collect my bike. I flee, with the sound of dreadful screaming in my ears.
I am lying on my bed, I am waiting for the police. I have left the door open. So the night passes, I can’t sleep. Yet I am not afraid. Prison or factory, I don’t care. At least Line will be free of this disgusting person.
By morning, the police still haven’t arrived. It is Line who comes, around nine o’clock. It is the first time she has been to my place. She sits on the only chair.
I ask:
“Is he dead?”
“No. He is at the hospital. And as soon as he gets out, in a few days’ time, we will be leaving. The neighbors came running when they heard the cries, they called an ambulance. It is only a flesh wound.”
I say nothing. I think that I really must be quite incapable of killing anyone.
She continues:
“Koloman isn’t pressing charges. On one condition: that I let him have Violette after the divorce. I had to sign a piece of paper. He has stated he was attacked by an unknown assailant.”
“You shouldn’t have signed, Line. I don’t care if I go to prison.”
“I wanted to save you from prison, because I love you, Sandor. More than you love me. If you had really loved me, you would have gone away, far from here and forgotten me.”
“Not me, Line. I would never have forgotten you.”
“You would have met another woman.”
“She wouldn’t have been you, she wouldn’t have been Line.”
“My name is Caroline. Line is something you made up. All the women in your life are called Line.”
“No, only you. Since you have lost everything, stay here with me.”
“Still? I think you are mad, Sandor. You’ve brought me nothing but misfortune. You have destroyed my life. I have lost two children because ovf you. I don’t want to see you again. I want to live in the same country as my daughter. Goodbye, Tobias.”
She gets up. She goes out. She closes the door.
I didn’t tell her that I was her brother.
I didn’t tell her that I tried to kill our father.
As far as my life is concerned, I can sum it up in a few words: Line came, then she went away again.
In my head I still say to her:
“Even when we were children you were ugly and wicked. I thought I loved you. I was wrong. Oh, no, Line, I don’t love you. Not you, not anyone, not anything, not life.”
The Boat Travelers
I think the sky is getting ready for rain. Perhaps it already has rained while I was crying.
Probably. Above my palms the air is different colors and, next to the dark clouds, the blue is clear.
The sun is still there, awkward, ready to fall. The lamps have taken root at the roadside.
In the off-balance evening, a bruised bird skews into the air but, in despair, it falls back at my feet.
“I was big and heavy,” it says. “People were afraid of my shadow when it fell on them come the evening. I, too, was afraid when the bombs fell. I flew far away and, once the danger was over, I returned to hover above the corpses.
“I loved death. I loved playing with death. Perched high on the summits of dark mountains, I would close my wings and let myself fall like a stone.
“But I would never see it through to the end.
“I was still afraid. I loved only the death of others.
“My own death I learned to love only later, much later.”
I take the bird in my arms, I stroke it. Its free wings are broken.
“No friend will return, once humiliated,” it says. “Go to the city. There, there is still light. A light which will make your face pale, a light that resembles death. Go where the people are happy, because they don’t know love. They are so replete they have no need of each other, nor of God. At night, they double-lock their doors and wait patiently for life to go by.”
“Yes, I know,” I tell the wounded bird. “Many years ago I got lost in a city. I didn’t know anyone there. So it didn’t matter where I was. I could h
ave been free and happy, because then I loved no one.
“I stopped beside a dark lake. A shadow passed by, stared at me intently. Or was it merely a poem I kept repeating, was it music? I don’t know, I try in vain to remember. I was afraid. I ran away.
“I had a friend. Seven years ago, he killed himself. I can’t forget the warmth of the last days of the summer, nor the hopeless tears of the forests in the rain.”
“But I know some wonderful fields,” says the injured bird. “If you could reach them, you would not know your heart. There are no flowers there, the grass waves like flags, the happy fields are boundless. You will only need to say: I would like to rest, earth of peace.”
“Yes, I know. But a shadow will pass by. A picture, a poem, a tune.”
“Then go to the mountain,” says the bird, “and let me die. I can’t bear your sadness. Sadness of gestures, of waterfalls the color of ashes, sadness of dawn striding across muddy fields.”
On the mountain the musicians have gathered. The conductor has folded in his black wings and the others have started to play.
Their boat sailed on the waves of music, chords floating in the wind.
The hooked fingers of the largest one were pushed into the wood. The other four have taken off their coats, their ribs were stretched, their knees bent, black spiders danced on their veins.
In the valley, the sun still reverberated, simple gray houses grazed on the grass of the meadow when the strongest of the musicians, a dreamer who walked in the cornfields, knelt down on the hill. And in the bottom of the boat sang the one who was the happiest of all.
The others haven’t seen the crutches of the impotent sun. A picture has been filled in with the colors of the sky. In the eyes the stars of the future have come out.
So the men on the boat have lifted their dead on to their shoulders and taken one last glance at the earth.
Two years after Caroline went away, my daughter Line was born. A year later, my son Tobias was born.
We put them in childcare in the morning. We pick them up in the evening.
My wife, Yolande, is an exemplary mother.
I am still working at the clockwork factory.
At the first village, no one gets on the bus.
I don’t write anymore.
About the Author
Born in Hungary, Ágota Kristóf left her homeland after the failed revolution of 1956 and settled in Switzerland. Her first novel, The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier), was published in English in 1989, followed by The Proof (La Preuve) in 1991. Both have been translated into fifteen languages. They are now available, along with the first English-language translation of The Third Lie, as a trilogy entitled The Book of Lies.
www.doverpublications.com