The Book of Lies

by Agota Kristof

  "A woman from the orphanage. She went with me. She had relatives near the town of S."

  "Orphanage? I was told that you'd been placed in a family. A family that took very good care of you. You have to give me their address. I'm going to thank them."

  I begin to stammer: "I don't know their address. I wasn't there very long. Because, because they were deported. Then I went into an orphanage. I had everything I needed and everyone was very kind to me."

  The nurse says, "I'm off. I still have a lot to do. Would you see me out, Klaus?"

  I walk out to the front of the house with her. She asks me, "Where were you these seven years, Klaus?"

  I say to her, "You heard what I told my mother."

  She says, "Yes, I heard. Only it wasn't the truth. You lie very badly, my little one. We checked the orphanages and you were at none of them. And how did you find the house again? How did you know your mother had moved back in?"

  I am silent. She says, "You can keep your secret. You undoubtedly have a reason for it. But don't forget that I've been taking care of your mother for years. The more I know, the more I can help her. When you show up out of the blue with your suitcase, I have a right to ask where you've been."

  I say, "No, you don't have the right. I'm here, that's all. Tell me what to do about my mother."

  "Do what you think is best. If possible, be patient. If she has an attack, telephone me."

  "What happens when she has an attack?"

  "Don't worry. It'll be no worse than it was today. She cries out, she trembles, that's all. Here, here's my telephone number. If something goes wrong, call."

  Mother is sleeping in one of the living room armchairs. I pick up my suitcase and go unpack in the children's bedroom at the end of the hallway. There are still two beds, two adult-sized beds that our parents bought just before the "thing." I still haven't found a word to describe what happened to us. I could say drama, tragedy, catastrophe, but in my head I simply call it the "thing" for which there is no name.

  The children's bedroom is clean, as are the beds. Mother was obviously expecting us. But the one she is waiting for most eagerly is my brother Lucas.

  We are eating silently in the kitchen when suddenly Mother says, "I don't in the least regret having killed your father. If I knew who the woman he wanted to leave us for was, I'd kill her too. If I hurt Lucas it was her fault, her fault entirely, not mine."

  I say, "Mother, don't torture yourself. Lucas didn't die of his wound. He'll come back."

  Mother asks, "How could he find this house again?"

  I say, "The way I did. I found it and he'll find it too."

  Mother says, "You're right. At all costs we must stay here. It's here that he'll look for us."

  Mother takes medications in order to sleep and she goes to bed very early. During the night I go look at her in her room. She sleeps on her back in the big bed, her face turned to the window, leaving the place that had been her husband's empty.

  I sleep very little. I look at the stars, and as at Antonia's I thought about our family and this house every night, so here I think about Sarah and her family, about her grandparents in the town of K.

  When I awake I find the walnut-tree branches outside my window. I go into the kitchen and kiss Mother. She smiles at me. There's coffee and tea. The young girl brings fresh bread. I tell her that she doesn't need to come anymore, that I'll do the shopping myself.

  Mother says, "No, Veronica. Keep coming. Klaus is still too small to do the shopping."

  Veronica laughs. "He's not that small. But he won't find what you need in the shops. I work at the hospital kitchen and that's where I get the things I bring here, you see, Klaus? At the orphanage you were spoiled when it came to food. You couldn't imagine what you have to do to find something to eat in the city. You'll spend your whole time lining up outside shops."

  Mother and Veronica have quite a bit of fun together. They laugh and kiss. Veronica tells stories about her love life. Stupid stories: "So he said to me, so I said to him, so he tried to kiss me."

  Veronica helps Mother dye her hair. They use a product called henna that restores its old color to Mother's hair. Veronica also tends to Mother's face. She makes "masks" for her, she does her makeup with little brushes, tubes, and pencils.

  Mother says, "I want to look nice when Lucas comes back. I don't want him to find me ratty, old, and ugly. Do you understand, Klaus?"

  I say, "Yes, I understand. But you'd look as nice with your hair gray and no makeup on."

  Mother slaps me. "Go to your room, Klaus, or go for a walk. You're getting on my nerves."

  She adds to Veronica, "Why didn't I have a daughter like you?"

  I go. I circle around the house where Antonia and Sarah live, or I wander through the cemetery looking for my father's grave. I only came here once and the cemetery is big.

  I go home and try to help Mother out in the garden, but she says to me, "Go play. Get out your scooter or your tricycle."

  I look at Mother.

  "Don't you realize that those are toys for four-year-olds?"

  She says, 'There are always the swings."

  "I don't feel like swinging either."

  I go into the kitchen, get a knife, and I cut the cords, the four cords of the swing.

  Mother says, "You could at least have left one of them. Lucas would have liked it. You're a difficult child, Klaus. Nasty, even."

  I go up to the children's room. Lying on my bed, I write poems.

  Sometimes in the evening Mother calls us: "Lucas, Klaus, dinnertime!"

  I go to the kitchen. Mother looks at me and puts back the third plate meant for Lucas, or she throws the plate into the sink, where of course it breaks, or again she serves Lucas as though he were there.

  Sometimes too Mother comes into the children's room in the middle of the night. She fluffs Lucas's pillow and talks to him: "Sleep well. Sweet dreams. Till tomorrow."

  After that she goes away, although she sometimes also stays longer, kneeling next to his bed, and she falls asleep with her head on Lucas's pillow.

  I remain motionless in my bed, breathing as softly as possible, and when I wake up the next morning Mother is no longer there.

  I touch the pillow on the other bed; it is still damp with Mother's tears.

  Whatever I do is never good enough for Mother. When a pea falls from my plate, she says, "You'll never learn to eat properly. Look at Lucas, he never soils the tablecloth."

  If I spend the day pulling weeds from the garden and come back inside all muddy, she says to me, "You're filthy as a pig. Lucas wouldn't have gotten dirty."

  When Mother gets her money, her little bit of money from the state, she goes to town and comes back with expensive toys that she hides under Lucas's bed. She warns me, "Don't touch. These toys have to stay new for when Lucas comes back."

  I am now familiar with the medications Mother must take.

  The nurse explained everything to me.

  So when she doesn't want to take her medications or forgets them, I administer them in her coffee, her tea, her soup.

  In September I begin school, the same school where I went before the war. I should have found Sarah there. She isn't there.

  After class I ring Antonia's doorbell. No one answers. I open the door with my key. No one's there. I go into Sarah's room. I open the drawers, the cupboards. No notebook, no piece of clothing.

  I leave, throw the apartment key in front of a passing streetcar, and go home to my mother's.

  At the end of September I run across Antonia at the cemetery. I've finally found the grave. I bring a bouquet of white carnations, my father's favorite flower. Another bouquet is already resting on the tomb. I put mine down next to the other one.

  From out of who knows where, Antonia asks me, "Did you come to our place?"

  "Yes. Sarah's room is empty. Where did she go?"

  Antonia says, 'To my parents'. She has to forget you. She thought of nothing but you, she was always wanting to go see
you. At your mother's, anywhere."

  I say, "Me too. I think about her all the time. I can't live without her. I want to be with her, no matter where and no matter how."

  Antonia takes me in her arms.

  "You're brother and sister. Don't forget that, Klaus. You can't love each other the way you do. I should never have taken you in with us."

  I say, "Brother and sister. What does it matter? No one will know. We have different names."

  "Don't insist, Klaus, don't insist. Forget Sarah."

  I don't answer. Antonia adds, "I'm expecting a child. I'm married."

  I say, "You love another man and have another life. So why do you still come here?"

  "I don't know. Maybe because of you. You were my son for seven years."

  I say, "No, never. I have one mother only, the one I'm living with now, the one you drove insane. Because of you I lost my father, my brother, and now you're also taking away my little sister."

  Antonia says, "Believe me, Klaus, I regret all that. I didn't want it. I couldn't imagine the consequences. I truly loved your father."

  I say, "So then you should understand my love for Sarah."

  'That's an impossible love."

  "Yours was too. All you had to do was leave and forget my father and the thing' would never have happened. I don't want to see you here anymore, Antonia. I don't want to see you at my father's grave."

  Antonia says, "All right, I won't come again. But I'llnever forget you, Klaus."

  Mother has very little money. She gets a small amount from the state for being an invalid. I'm a burden on her. I must find work as soon as possible. It's Veronica who suggests that I deliver newspapers.

  I get up at four o'clock in the morning, go to the printing press, and pick up my packet of newspapers. I cover my assigned streets and leave newspapers in front of doors, inside mailboxes, under the closed steel fronts of shops.

  When I get home Mother isn't awake yet. She doesn't get up until around nine o'clock. I make coffee and tea and go to school, where I have lunch. I don't get home until five in the evening.

  The nurse gradually extends the time between her visits. She tells me that Mother is better, that all she has to do now is take sedatives and sleeping pills.

  Veronica too comes less and less often. Just to tell Mother about the disappointment of her marriage.

  At fourteen I quit school. I take a typesetting apprenticeship offered to me by the newspaper I have been delivering for three years. I work from ten at night until six in the morning.

  Gaspar, my boss, shares his nightly meal with me. Mother doesn't think of making me a meal for the night; she doesn't even think of ordering coal for the winter. She thinks about nothing but Lucas.

  At the age of seventeen I become a typesetter. I'm not earning bad money compared to other jobs. Once a month I am able to take Mother to a beauty salon, where she is given a recoloring, a perm, and a "makeover" for her face and hands. She doesn't want Lucas to come back to find her old and ugly.

  My mother criticizes me constantly for having left school: "Lucas would have continued his studies. He would have become a doctor. A great doctor."

  When our tumbledown house leaks water from the roof, Mother says, "Lucas would have become an architect. A great architect."

  When I show her my first poems, Mother reads them and says, "Lucas would have become a writer. A great writer."

  I don't show my poems anymore, but hide them.

  The noise of the machines helps me write. It gives a rhythm to my phrasings and sows images in my head. When I've finished composing the newspaper I compose my own texts, which I sign with the pseudonym "Klaus Lucas" in memory of my brother dead or disappeared.

  What we print in the newspaper completely contradicts reality. A hundred times a day we print the phrase "We are free," but everywhere in the streets we see the soldiers of a foreign army, everyone knows that there are many political prisoners, trips abroad are forbidden, and even within the country we can't go wherever we want. I know because I once tried to rejoin Sarah in the small town of K. I made it to the neighboring village, where I was arrested and sent back to the capital after a night of interrogation.

  A hundred times a day we print "We live amidst abundance and happiness," and at first I think this is true for other people, that Mother and I are miserable and unhappy only because of the "thing," but Gaspar tells me we're hardly an exception, that he himself as well as his wife and three children are living more miserably than ever before.

  And when I go home from work early in the morning, when I cross paths with people who themselves are on their way to work, I see happiness nowhere, and even less abundance. When I ask why we print so many lies, Gaspar answers, "Whatever you do, don't ask questions. Do your job and don't think about anything else."

  One morning Sarah is waiting for me in front of the printing press. I walk by without recognizing her. I turn only when I hear my name: "Klaus!"

  We look at each other. I am tired, dirty, unshaven. Sarah is beautiful, fresh, and elegant. She's eighteen years old now. She speaks first.

  "Won't you kiss me, Klaus?"

  "I'msorry. I don't feel very clean."

  She gives me a kiss on the cheek. I ask, "How did you know I worked here?"

  "I asked your mother."

  "My mother? You went to our house?"

  "Yes, last night. As soon as I arrived. You were already gone."

  I take out my handkerchief and wipe my sweaty face.

  "You told her who you were?"

  "I told her I was a childhood friend. She asked me, 'From the orphanage?' I said, 'No, from school.' "

  "And Antonia? She knows you came?"

  "No. I told her I had to go enroll at the university."

  "At six in the morning?"

  Sarah laughs. "She's still asleep. And it's true that I'm on my way to the university. In a bit. There's time for us to have a cup of coffee somewhere."

  I say, "I'm sleepy. I'm tired. And I have to make breakfast for Mother."

  She says, "You don't seem so happy to see me, Klaus."

  "What a thing to say, Sarah! How are your grandparents?"

  "Well. But they've grown old. My mother wanted them to come here too, but Grandfather doesn't want to leave his little town. We could see each other a lot, if you want."

  "What are you going to study?"

  "I'd like to do medicine. Now that I'm back, we can see each other every day, Klaus."

  "You must have a brother or sister. Antonia was pregnant the last time I saw her."

  "Yes, I have two sisters and a little brother. But I'd like to talk about us, Klaus."

  I ask, "What does your stepfather do to keep such a crowd?"

  "He's high up in the Party. Are you trying to avoid the subject on purpose?"

  "Yes. There's no point in talking about us. There's nothing to say."

  Sarah says softly, "Have you forgotten how much we loved each other? I never forgot you, Klaus."

  "Nor I you. But there's no point in seeing each other again. Can't you see that?"

  "Yes. I've just come to see it."

  She waves down a passing taxi and leaves.

  I walk to the stop, wait for ten minutes, and take the bus the way I do every morning, a smelly and overcrowded bus.

  When I get home Mother is already up, which is unusual for her. She has her coffee in the kitchen. She smiles at me. "She's quite pretty, your little friend Sarah. What's her last name? Sarah what? What's her family name?"

  I say, "I don't know, Mother. She's not my little friend. I haven't seen her for years. She's looking for old classmates, that's all."

  Mother says, 'That's all? What a pity. It's time for you to have a little friend. But you're probably too awkward for girls to like you. Especially girls like that, the well-bred sort. And with your menial job and all. It would be completely different with Lucas. Yes, that Sarah is exactly the kind of girl that would suit Lucas."

  I say, "No doubt, Mo
ther. Excuse me, I'm terribly tired."

  I go to bed and before falling asleep I talk to Lucas in my head the way I have for many years. What I tell him is just about what I usually do. I tell him that if he's dead he's lucky and I'd very much like to be in his place. I tell him that he got the better deal, that it is I who is pulling the greater weight. I tell him that life is totally useless, that it's nonsense, an aberration, infinite suffering, the invention of a non-God whose evil surpasses understanding.

  I do not see Sarah again. Sometimes I think I see her on the street, but it's never her.

  One day I go to the house where Antonia used to live, but none of the names on the mailboxes is familiar and in any case I don't know her new name.

  Years later I receive a wedding notice. Sarah is getting married to a surgeon, and the addresses of both families are on Rose Hill, the richest and most elegant part of town.

  I was to have a great many "little friends," girls I meet in bars around the printing press, where it is now my habit to go to before and after work. These girls are factory workers or servants; I rarely see them more than once or twice, and I bring none of them back home to introduce them to Mother.

  I spend my Sunday afternoons with my boss, Gaspar, and his family. We play cards and drink beer. Gaspar has three children. The eldest daughter, Esther, plays with us; she's nearly my age and works in a textile mill where she has been a weaver since the age of thirteen. The two boys, who are slightly younger and typesetters too, go out on Sunday afternoons. They go to soccer matches or the movies or walk around town. Gaspar's wife, Anna, a weaver like her daughter, does the dishes, the laundry, and cooks the evening meal. Esther has blond hair, blue eyes, and a face that recalls Sarah's. But she isn't Sarah, she isn't my sister, she isn't my life.

  Gaspar says to me, "My daughter is in love with you. Marry her. I give her to you. You're the only one who deserves her."

  I say, "I don't want to get married, Gaspar. I have to look after my mother and wait for Lucas."

  Gaspar says, "Wait for Lucas? Poor madman."

  He adds: "If you don't want to marry Esther, it would be better if you didn't come see us again."