The third book in the Book of Lies series, 1996
Translated by Marc Roma
I am in prison in the small town of my childhood.
It's not a real prison but a cell in the basement of the local police station, a building no different from the rest of the buildings in town. It too is a single-storied house.
My cell must have been a laundry room at one time; its door and window look out onto the courtyard. Window bars have been installed on the inside in a way that makes it impossible to reach through and break the glass. A toilet in the corner is concealed by a curtain. Against one wall are four chairs and a table bolted to the floor; on the opposite wall are four collapsible beds. Three of them are still folded up.
I am alone in my cell. There aren't many criminals in this town, and when there is one he is immediately brought to the neighboring town, the regional seat, twelve miles away.
I'm not a criminal. I'm here because my papers are not in order; my visa has expired. I've also run into debt.
In the morning my guard brings me breakfast-milk, coffee, bread. I drink some coffee and then shower. My guard finishes my breakfast and cleans my cell. The door is left open; I can go out into the courtyard if I want. The courtyard is enclosed by high walls covered with ivy and wild vines. Behind one of these walls, the one to the left as you leave my cell, is a school playground. I hear the children laughing, playing, and shouting during recess. The school was there when I was a child, as I recall, although I never went. The prison was here, on the other hand, as I also recall because I went there once.
For one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening I walk around the courtyard, a habit I developed during my childhood, when at the age of five I had to learn how to walk again.
This annoys my guard, because while I'm doing it I don't speak a word and don't hear the questions he asks me.
I pace with my eyes to the ground, my hands behind my back, turning and following the line of the walls. The ground is paved, but grass grows in the gaps between the stones.
The courtyard is almost square. Fifteen paces long, thirteen paces wide. Supposing I take three-foot strides, the courtyard's area must be 195 square yards. But my stride is probably not that long.
In the middle of the courtyard is a round table with two garden chairs; against the back wall is a wooden bench.
It is by sitting on that bench that I am able to see the greatest amount of my childhood sky.
The bookseller came to visit me on the very first day, bringing my personal effects and some vegetable soup. She continues to show up every day around noon with soup. I tell her I'm well fed here, that my guard brings me a full meal twice a day from the restaurant across the street, but she keeps coming with her soup. I eat a little out of politeness and I pass the pot to my guard, who finishes it.
I apologize to the bookseller for the mess that I left in the apartment.
She says, "Don't mention it. My daughter and I have already cleaned everything up. Mostly there was a lot of paper. I burned every sheet that was crumpled or thrown in the wastebasket. I left the others on the table, but the police came and took them."
I remain silent for a moment and then say, "I still owe you two months' rent."
She laughs. "I asked you far too much for that little apartment. But if you mean it, you can pay me when you come back. Next year, maybe."
I say, "I don't think I'll be coming back. My embassy will pay."
She asks me if there is anything I want, and I say, "Yes, paper and pencils. But I have no money."
She says, "I should have thought of it myself."
I say to her, "Thank you. The embassy will reimburse you for everything."
She says, "You're always going on about money. I wish you'd talk about something else. What are you writing, for instance?"
"What I write is absolutely meaningless."
She insists. "What I want to know is whether you write things that are true or things that are made up."
I answer that I try to write true stories but that at a given point the story becomes unbearable because of its very truth, and then I have to change it. I tell her that I try to tell my story but all of a sudden I can't-I don't have the courage, it hurts too much. And so I embellish everything and describe things not as they happened but the way I wish they had happened.
She says, "Yes. There are lives sadder than the saddest of books."
I say, "Yes. No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as a life."
After a silence she asks, "Your limp, is it from an accident?" "No, from an illness when I was very small."
She adds, "You can hardly even notice it."
I laugh.
I have things to write with again, but I haven't got anything to drink or any cigarettes either, aside from the two or three my guard offers me after dinner. I request an interview with the chief of police, who sees me immediately. His office is upstairs. I go. I sit down in a chair across from him. He has red hair and his face is covered with red spots. A game of chess is set up on the table in front of him. The policeman looks at the board, advances a pawn, jots the move down in a notebook, and raises his pale blue eyes.
"What do you want? The inquiry isn't over yet. It will be several weeks, a month, perhaps."
I say, "I'm not in any hurry. I'm very comfortable here. Except that I need one or two little things."
"Such as?"
'The embassy wouldn't mind if you added a bottle of wine and two packs of cigarettes a day to my prison tab."
He says, "It probably wouldn't. But that would be bad for your health."
I say, "Do you know what happens to alcoholics when they're forced to stop drinking?"
He says, "No, and I don't give a damn."
I say, 'There's a risk of delirium tremens. I could die at any moment."
"No kidding."
He turns his eyes back to the board. I tell him, "The black knight."
He keeps staring at the board. "Why? I don't understand."
I advance the knight. He notes it down in his book. He ponders for a long time, then picks up his rook.
"No."
He sets down the rook and looks at me. "You play? Well?"
"I don't know. It's been a long time. But at any rate I'm better than you."
He turns redder than his spots. "I only started three months ago. And without anyone to teach me. Could you give me a few lessons?"
I say, "Gladly. But don't get angry when I win."
He says, "I'm not interested in winning. What I want is to learn."
I stand up. "Bring your set whenever you want. Ideally in the morning. The mind then is sharper than it is in the afternoon or evening."
"Thank you," he says.
He looks at the board; I wait, then cough. "What about the wine and cigarettes?"
He says, "No problem. I'll give the orders. You'll have your cigarettes and wine."
I leave the policeman's office. I go back downstairs and into the courtyard. I sit on the bench. The autumn is very mild this year. The sun sets and the sky takes on colors-orange, yellow, violet, red, and others for which there are no names.
For around two hours almost every day I play chess with the policeman. The games are long; the policeman thinks a lot, notes everything down, and always loses.
Every afternoon, after the bookseller has put away her knitting and gone off to reopen her shop, I also play cards with my guard. The card games in this country are unlike anything anywhere else. Although they are simple and there is a large element of chance to them, I always lose. We play for money, and since I don't have any my guard writes my losses down in a ledger. After every game he laughs loudly and repeats, "I'm screwed! I'm screwed!"
He is a young newly wed and his wife is expecting a baby in a few months. He often says, "If it's a boy and you're still here, I'll forgive your debt."
He talks a lot about his wife, telling me how pretty she is, especially now that she has gained weight and her buttocks and breasts have almost doubled in size. He also tells me in detail about how they met, about their "going together," their lovers' walks in the forest, her resistance, his victory, and their quick marriage, which became urgent because of the baby on the way.
But what he talks about in even greater detail and with even more pleasure is last night's dinner-how his wife prepared it, with which ingredients in what way and for how long, because "the longer it simmers the better it is."
The policeman does not speak, does not relay anything. The only disclosure he has made is that he replays, by himself and based on his notes, all of our games-once during the afternoon in his office, once again at home that night. I asked him if he was married and he replied with a shrug, "Married? Me?"
The bookseller relays nothing either. She says she has nothing to say, that she has raised two children and that she has been a widow for six years, that's all. When she asks me questions about my life in the other country, I answer by saying I have even less to tell than she, since I have raised no children and have never had a wife.
One day she says to me, "We're about the same age."
I protest: 'I'd be surprised. You seem much, much younger than me."
She blushes. "Come on, I'm not fishing for compliments. What I meant was, if you grew up in this town we must probably have gone to the same school."
I say, "Yes, only me, I never went to school."
"That's impossible. School was mandatory even then."
"Not for me. I was mentally retarded at the time."
She says, "It's impossible to talk seriously with you. You're always joking."
I am seriously ill. I have known this for exactly one year today.
It began in the other country, in my adoptive country, one morning at the beginning of November. At five.
Outside it is still night. I am having trouble breathing. An intense pain keeps me from inhaling. The pain starts in my chest and spreads to my sides, back, shoulders, arms, throat, neck, jaws. As though a huge hand were trying to crush the upper part of my body.
Stretching out my arm slowly, switching on the bedside lamp.
Gingerly sitting up. Waiting. Rising. Getting to the desk, to the telephone. Sitting down on the chair. Calling for an ambulance. No! No ambulances. Waiting.
Going to the kitchen, making coffee. Not hurrying. Taking no deep breaths. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, softly, calmly.
After my coffee, showering, shaving, brushing my teeth. Returning to the bedroom, getting dressed. Waiting eight hours and then calling not an ambulance but a taxi and my regular doctor.
He sees me on an emergency basis. He listens to me, takes an X ray of my lungs, examines my heart, measures my blood pressure.
"Get dressed."
We are now face-to-face in his office.
"Do you still smoke? How much? Do you still drink? How much?"
I answer truthfully. I don't think I have ever lied to him. I know that he doesn't give a damn, neither about my health nor my illness.
He writes in my file and looks at me. "You're doing everything you can to kill yourself. That concerns only you. It has been ten years since I formally forbade you to smoke or drink. You keep on doing both. But if you want to live another few years, you have to stop immediately."
I ask, "What do I have?"
"Cardiac angina, probably. It was to be expected. But I'm no heart specialist."
He hands me a piece of paper. "I am referring you to a well-known cardiologist. Take this to his clinic for a more in-depth examination. The sooner the better. Meanwhile, take these in case of pain."
He hands me a prescription. I ask, "Will they operate on me?"
He says, "If there's still time."
"If there isn't?"
"You could have a heart attack at any moment."
I go to the nearest pharmacy and am given two vials of pills. One of them contains ordinary painkillers; on the other I read, '"Irinitrine. For cardiac angina. Active ingredient: Nitroglycerine."
I go home, take a pill from each vial, and lie down on my bed. The pain quickly disappears and I fall asleep.
I walk through the streets in the town of my childhood. It is a ghost town; the doors and windows of the houses are shut and the silence is complete.
I reach a wide older street lined by wooden houses and tumbledown barns. The ground is dusty and it feels good to walk barefoot through the dust.
There is, however, a strange tension in the air.
I turn around and see a puma at the other end of the street. A beautiful animal, khaki-colored and golden, whose silken fur shines under the burning sun.
Suddenly everything is on fire. The houses and barns burst into flames but I must continue down the burning street because the puma too has begun to walk and follows me at some distance, with majestic slowness.
Where to turn? There's no way out. It's either fire or teeth.
Maybe at the end of the street?
It has to end somewhere, this street, all of them do, flowing into a square, another street, fields, the open countryside, unless the street happens to be a dead end, which must be the case here and is.
I can feel the puma's breath very close behind me. I don't dare turn around but I can go no farther; my feet are rooted to the ground. I wait in horror for the puma to leap onto my back, ripping me from shoulders to thighs, clawing my head, my face.
But the puma passes me by; it walks on complacently and lies at the feet of a child at the end of the street, a child who wasn't there before but is now, and it strokes the puma lying at its feet.
The child says to me, "He isn't mean. He belongs to me. Don't be scared of him. He doesn't eat people, he doesn't eat meat. He just eats souls."
There are no more flames; the fire has gone out and the street is only soft ashes cooling.
I ask the child, "You're my brother, aren't you? Were you waiting for me?"
The child shakes his head. "No, I have no brother and I'm not waiting for anyone. I am the guardian of eternal youth. The one waiting for his brother is sitting on a bench in Central Square. He's very old. Perhaps he's waiting for you."
I find my brother sitting on a bench in Central Square. When he sees me, he stands. "You're late. We must hurry."
We climb up to the cemetery and sit down on the yellow grass. Everything around us is decaying: the crosses, the trees, the bushes, the flowers. My brother scratches at the earth with his cane and white worms emerge.
My brother says, "Not everything is dead. Those are alive."
The worms writhe. The sight of them gladdens me. I say, "As soon as you begin to think, you can no longer love life."
My brother raises my chin with his cane. "Don't think. Look- have you ever seen such a beautiful sky?"
I look up. The sun sets over the town.
I answer, "No, never. Nowhere else."
We walk side by side to the castle. We come to a stop in the courtyard at the base of the battlements. My brother climbs the rampart and, when he reaches the top, starts to dance to a music that seems to come from underground. He dances, flailing his arms toward the sky, toward the stars, toward the full and rising moon. A thin silhouette in his long black coat, he advances along the ramparts, dancing, while I follow him from below, running and shouting: "No! Don't! Stop it! Come down! You'll fall!"
He comes to a halt above me. "Don't you remember? We used to climb over the rooftops and we were never afraid of falling."
"We were young, we didn't feel the height. Come down!"
He laughs. "Don't be scared. I won't fall; I can fly. I fly over the town every night."
He raises his arms, jumps, and crashes onto the courtyard stones at my feet. I lean over him, take his bald head, his wrinkled face into my hands, and I cry.
His face decomposes, his eyes disappear, and in my hands there is now nothing but an anonymous and disintegrating skull that flows through my fingers like fine sand.
I wake up in tears. My room is lit by the dusk; I have slept for most of the day. I change out of my sweat-damp shirt and wash my face. Looking at myself in the mirror, I wonder when I last cried. I cannot remember.
I light a cigarette and sit down at the window, watching night settle on the town. Under my window is an empty garden, its lone tree already leafless. Farther away are houses, windows lighting up in greater and greater numbers. There are lives behind those windows, calm and normal and peaceful lives. Couples, children, families. I also hear the faraway sound of cars. I wonder why people drive, even at night. Where are they going, and why?
Death will obliterate everything soon.
It frightens me.
I am afraid of dying, but I will not go to the hospital.
I spent most of my childhood in a hospital. My memories of that time are very vivid. I can see my bed among some twenty other beds, my closet in the corridor, my wheelchair, my crutches, the torture room with its swimming pool and devices. The treadmills on which you were forced to trudge endlessly, supported by a harness; the rings from which you had to dangle, the exercise cycles you had to keep pedaling even though you were screaming with pain.
I remember the suffering and also the smells, medicines mixed with blood, sweat, piss, and shit.
I also remember the injections, the nurses' white blouses, the questions without answers, and most of all the waiting. Waiting for what? Healing, probably, but also perhaps for something else.
I was told later that I came to the hospital in a coma, the result of a serious illness. I was four years old, and the war started.
I no longer know what there had been before the hospital.
The white house with green shutters on a quiet street, the kitchen in which my mother sang, the yard in which my father chopped wood-was it once a reality, the perfect happiness in the white house, or had I merely hallucinated it or dreamed it up during the long nights of five years spent in a hospital?
And he who lay in the other bed in the little room, who breathed at the same rhythm as me, the brother whose name I still believe I know, was he dead or had he never existed?
One day we changed hospitals. The new one was called " Rehabilitation Center," but it was still a hospital. The rooms, beds, closets, and nurses were the same, and the agonizing exercises continued.
A huge park surrounded the center. We were allowed to leave the building to splash around in a pool of mud-the more mud you got on yourself, the happier the nurses were. We were also allowed to ride the longhair ponies that bore us gently on their backs all over the park.
At six I began school in a little room in the hospital. Eight to twelve of us, depending on the state of our health, took the lessons provided by a teacher.
The teacher did not wear a white blouse, but short, narrow skirts with lively colored blouses and high-heeled shoes. Nor did she have her hair up in a bun; it flowed freely over her shoulders, and its color was like that of the chestnuts that fell from the trees in the park in the month of September.
My pockets were filled with those shiny fruits. I used them to bombard the nurses and supervisors. At night I threw them at the beds of anyone who whined or cried, to make them shut up. I also lobbed them at the panes of a greenhouse where an old gardener grew the salads we were forced to eat. Very early one morning I left a few dozen of these chestnuts in front of the director's door so that she would tumble down the staircase, but she just fell on her fat buttocks and didn't even break a bone.
At this point I no longer used a wheelchair but walked on crutches, and I was told that I was making a lot of progress.
I went to class from eight in the morning until noon. After lunch I had to nap, but instead of sleeping I read books the teacher lent me or that I borrowed from the director when she wasn't in her office. In the afternoon I did my exercises like everyone else; in the evening I had to do homework.
I finished my homework quickly and then I wrote letters. To the teacher. I never gave them to her. To my parents, to my brother. I never sent them. I didn't know their address.
Almost three years passed this way. I no longer needed crutches; I could walk with a cane. I knew how to read, write, and do arithmetic. We weren't given grades, but I often got the gold star that was stuck up beside our names on the wall. I was especially strong at mental arithmetic.
The teacher had a room at the hospital, but she didn't always sleep there. She went into town in the evening and didn't come back until morning. I asked her if she wanted to take me with her, and she answered that it was impossible, that I wasn't allowed to leave the center, but she promised to bring me chocolate. She gave me the chocolate secretly because there wasn't enough for everybody.
One evening I said to her, "I've had enough sleeping with the other boys. I'd like to sleep with a woman."
She laughed. "You'd like to sleep in the girls' room?"
"No. Not with girls. With a woman."
"Which woman?"
"Well, with you. I'd like to sleep in your room, in your bed."
She kissed me on the eyelids. "Little boys your age should sleep alone."
"Do you sleep alone too?"
"Yes, me too."
One afternoon she appeared under my hiding place, which was high up in a walnut tree whose branches formed a comfortable sort of seat where I could read and from which the town was visible.
The teacher said to me, "Tonight, when everyone's asleep, you can come to my room."
I didn't wait until everyone was asleep. I might well have waited until morning. They were never all asleep at the same time. There were those who cried, those who went to the bathroom ten times a night, those who climbed into each other's beds to do things, those who talked until dawn.
I gave my usual whacks to the crybabies, then I went to see the little blond paralytic who doesn't move and doesn't speak. All he does is look at the ceiling, or the sky if he is brought outside, and smile. I took his hand, held it to my face, and then placed my hands against his face. He looked at the ceiling and smiled.
I left the dormitory and went into the teacher's room. She wasn't there. I lay down in her bed. It smelled nice. I fell asleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night she was lying beside me, her arms crossed over her face. I uncrossed her arms, put them around me, pressed myself against her, and stayed that way, awake, until morning.
Some of us received letters, which the nurses handed out or read to the recipients if they were unable to do so themselves. Afterward, when they asked me, I read their letters to them again. Generally I read the exact opposite of what the letters actually said. The results were, for instance: "Our dear child, whatever you do, don't get well. We're getting along just fine without you. We don't miss you at all. We hope that you'll remain where you are, because the last thing we want is a cripple in the house. Still, we send you a couple of kisses, and be good, because the people taking care of you are very good. We couldn't do as much for you. We're lucky that someone else is doing the job for us, since there is no place for you in this family, where everyone else is healthy. Your parents, sisters, and brothers."
The person I read the letter to said, 'That's not how the nurse read my letter."
I said, "She read it differently because she didn't want to hurt your feelings. I read what the letter really says. I think you have a right to know the truth."
He said, "I have the right, yes, but I don't like the truth. The nurse was right to read it differently."
He cried.
Many of us also got packages. Cakes, cookies, ham, sausages, jam, honey. The director said that these packages had to be shared among everyone. Still, some of the children hid food in their beds or closets.
I went up to one of these children and asked, "You're not afraid that it might be poisoned?"
"Poisoned? Why?"
"Parents prefer a dead child to a crippled one. Haven't you ever thought about that?"
"No, never. You're a liar. Get lost."
Later I saw the child throwing his package out with the center's garbage.
Some parents also came to see their children. I waited for them at the front door of the center. I asked them the reason for their visit and the name of their child. When they answered I said, "I'm so sorry. Your child died two days ago. You haven't received our letter yet?"
After that I ran off quickly to hide.
The director called me in. She asked, "Why are you so nasty?"
"Nasty? Me? I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know very well what I'm talking about. You told a child's parents that he was dead."
"So? Wasn't he dead?"
"No, and you're perfectly aware of the fact."
"I must have gotten the names mixed up. They all sound the same."
"Except yours, right? But no child died this week."
"No? Well, I must have been thinking of last week."
"Yes, obviously. But I am advising you to make no more mistakes about names, or weeks. And I forbid you from talking to parents and visitors. I also forbid you from reading letters to the children who can't read."
I said, "I was only trying to be helpful."
She said, "I forbid you from being helpful to anyone. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Madame Director, I understand. But no one should complain if I won't help them up stairs, if I don't pick them up when they fall down, if I don't explain their sums to them, if I don't correct the spelling in their letters. If you forbid me from being of help, forbid them from asking me for it."
She looked at me for a long time and then said, "Fine. Get out."
I left her office and saw a child crying because he had dropped his apple and couldn't pick it up. I walked past him and said, "You can cry but that won't get you your apple back, you oaf."
He asked me from his wheelchair, "Couldn't you please bring it to me?"
I said, "You're going to have to do it yourself, idiot."
That evening the director came into the dining hall. She made a speech and at the end of it she said that no one should ask favors of anyone but the nurses, the teacher, or, as a last resort, her.
As a consequence of all this I had to go twice weekly into the little room next to the infirmary, where a very old woman sat in a big armchair with a thick cover over her knees. I had already heard about her. The other children who went into the room said that the old woman was very nice and grandmotherly and that it was pleasant to be there, lying down on a cot or sitting at a table and drawing whatever you wanted. You could also look at picture books and you could say whatever you pleased.
The first time I went we didn't say anything to each other except good morning. Afterward I grew bored-none of her books interested me, I didn't want to draw-so I paced from the door to the window and from the window to the door.
After a while she asked me, "Why do you constantly pace like that?"
I stopped and replied, "I have to exercise my weak leg. I pace whenever I can, when I don't have anything else to do."
She smiled a wrinkled smile. "It seems to be doing very well, that leg."
"Not well enough."
I threw my cane onto the bed, took a few steps, and fell down by the window.
"See how well it's doing?"
I crawled back and retrieved my cane. "When I can do without this, I'll be better."
I didn't go the next few times I was meant to. They looked for me everywhere but couldn't find me. I was deep in the garden, up in the branches of my walnut tree. Only the teacher knew about my hiding place.
The final time the director herself brought me to the little room just after the midday meal. She shoved me inside and I fell onto the bed. I didn't stir. The old woman asked me questions.
"Do you remember your parents?"
I answered, "No, not at all. How about you?"
She kept on with her questions.
"What do you think about at night before falling asleep?"
"Sleeping. And you?"
She asked me: "You told some parents that their child had died. Why?"
'To make them happy."
"Why?"
"Because they're happier knowing that their child is dead and not a cripple."
"How do you know that?"
"I just know, that's all."
The old woman asked me again: "Do you do these things because your own parents never come to see you?"
I said to her, "What business is that of yours?"
She continued: "They never write to you. They don't send you packages. And so you avenge yourself on the other children."
I rose from the bed and said, "Yes, and on you too."
I hit her with my cane, then fell.
She screamed.
She kept screaming and I kept hitting her, right there from the floor where I had fallen. My blows struck only her legs and knees.
Nurses came in, drawn by the screams. They pinned me and brought me to a little room like the first one, only here there was no desk, no bookshelf, just a bed and nothing else. There were also bars on the windows and the door was locked from the outside.
I slept briefly.
When I awoke I pounded on the door, kicked the door, shouted. I cried out for my things, my homework, my books.
No one answered.
In the middle of the night the teacher came into my room and lay down beside me on the narrow bed. I buried my face in her hair and suddenly I was seized by a fit of trembling. It shook my whole body; hiccups came out of my mouth, my eyes filled with water, my nose ran. I sobbed helplessly.
There was less and less food at the center; the park had to be turned into a vegetable garden. Everyone who could worked under the gardener's direction. We planted potatoes, beans, carrots. I was sorry I was no longer confined to a wheelchair.
More and more often we also had to go down into the basement because of air raid warnings, which came almost every night. The nurses carried in their arms those who couldn't walk. Amid piles of potatoes and bags of coal I found the teacher, pressed myself against her, and told her not to be afraid.
When the bomb hit the center we were in class; there had been no warning. Bombs started falling everywhere around us. The other pupils hid under the tables but I stayed where I was; I had just been reciting a poem. The teacher threw herself over me, knocking me to the ground; I couldn't see anything, and she was suffocating me. I tried to push her off, but she grew heavier and heavier. A thick, warm, salty liquid flowed into my eyes, my mouth, down my throat, and I fell unconscious.
I woke up in a gymnasium. A nun was wiping my face with a damp cloth, and she was saying to someone, "This one isn't hurt, I think."
I began to throw up.
Everywhere in the gymnasium people were lying down on straw mattresses. Children and adults. Some were crying; others weren't moving, and it was hard to tell if they were alive or dead. I looked for the teacher among them but couldn't find her. The little blond paralytic wasn't there either.
The next day they interrogated me, asking me my name, who my parents were, my address, but I blocked my ears and didn't answer the questions, didn't say a word. Then they thought I was a deaf-mute and left me alone.
I was given a new cane, and one morning a nun took me by the hand. We went to the station, got onto a train, and came to another town. We crossed it by foot until we reached the very last house, right next to the forest. The sister left me there with an old peasant woman whom I later learned to call "Grandmother."
She called me "son of a bitch."
I am sitting on a bench at the station. I am waiting for my train. I am almost an hour early.
From here I can see the whole town, the town where I have lived for nearly forty years.
At one time, when I first came, it was a charming small town with a lake, forest, low old houses, and many parks. Now it is cut off from the lake by a highway, its forest has been decimated, its parks have disappeared, and tall buildings have made it ugly. Its narrow old streets are packed with cars, even on the sidewalks. The old bistros have been replaced by soulless restaurants and fast-food places where people eat quickly, sometimes even standing up.
I look at this town for the last time. I will never come back; I do not want to die here.
I didn't say good-bye or farewell to anyone. I don't have friends here, much less girlfriends. My many mistresses must be married, housewives, and no longer so young now. It has been a long time since I last recognized one on the street.
My best friend, Peter, who had been my tutor in my youth, died of a heart attack two years ago. His wife, Clara, who had been my first mistress, killed herself a long time before that; she couldn't face the prospect of old age.
I go leaving no one and nothing behind me. I have sold everything. It wasn't much. My furniture was worth nothing, my books even less. I got a little money for my old piano and my few paintings, but that's all.
The train arrives and I get in. I have only one suitcase. I am leaving here with little more than I came with. In this rich and free country I have made no fortune.
I have a tourist visa for my native land, a visa that expires in only one month but that can be renewed. I hope my money will last me for a few months, perhaps a year. I have also stocked up on medications.
Two hours later I arrive at a large metropolitan train station. More waiting, and then I take a night train on which I have reserved a berth-a low berth, since I know that I will not sleep and that I will often get up to smoke a cigarette.
For the time being I am alone.
Slowly the compartment fills. An old woman, two young girls, a man of about my age. I go out into the corridor to smoke and look at the night. At around two I go to bed, and I think I sleep a little.
Early in the morning we come to another large station. Three hours of waiting, which I spend at the canteen, drinking coffee.
This time the train I board is from my native country. There are very few travelers. The seats are uncomfortable, the windows dirty, the ashtrays full, the floor black and sticky, the toilets almost unusable. No restaurant car or even bar car. The travelers take out their lunches and eat, leaving greasy paper and empty bottles on the windowsills or throwing them to the floor under the seats.
Only two of the travelers speak the language of my country. I listen but say nothing.
I look out the window. The countryside changes. We leave the mountains and come onto a plain.
My pains start again.
I swallow my medications without water. I didn't think to bring a drink with me and I am repelled at the thought of asking for one from the other travelers.
I close my eyes. I know that we are approaching the border.
We're there. The train stops, and border guards, customs officials, and policemen come aboard. I am asked for my papers and they are given back to me with a smile. On the other hand, the two travelers who speak the language of the country are lengthily questioned and their bags are searched.
The train moves off; at each stop now, the only people who get on are from this country.
My little town is on another line than that of the trains coming from abroad. I reach the neighboring town, which is farther into the country and bigger. I could make my connection immediately; I am shown the small red train, only three cars long, that leaves for the little town on the hour from Track One. I watch the train pull out.
I leave the station, get into a taxi, and have myself taken to a hotel. I go up to my room, get in bed, and fall asleep immediately.
When I awake I draw the curtains from my window. It faces west. Over there, behind my little town's mountain, the sun is setting.
Every day I go to the station and watch the red train come and leave again. Then I take a walk around town. At night I drink at the hotel bar or at another bar in town, surrounded by strangers.
My room has a balcony. I often sit there now that it's getting warmer. From there I look at an immense sky of the sort I haven't seen for forty years.
I walk farther and farther in the town; I even leave it and go out into the countryside.
I skirt a wall of stone and steel. Behind it a bird sings and I glimpse the bare branches of chestnut trees.
The cast-iron gate is open. I enter and sit down on the big moss-covered boulder just inside the wall. We used to call this boulder the "black" rock even though it was never black but rather gray or blue, and now it is completely green.
I look at the park and recognize it. I also recognize the big building at its far end. The trees may be the same, but the birds probably aren't. So many years have passed. How long does a tree live? A bird? I have no idea.
And how long do people live? Forever, it seems to me, since I see the center's director approaching.
She asks me, "What are you doing here, sir?"
I rise and say, "I am only looking, Madame Director. I spent five years of my childhood here."
"When?"
"About forty years ago. Forty-five. I recognize you. You were the director of the Rehabilitation Center."
She cries out, "What nerve! For your information, sir, I wasn't even born forty years ago, but I can spot perverts from a mile away. Leave or I will call the police."
I go, return to my hotel, and drink with a stranger. I tell him about what happened with the director. "Obviously they're not the same person. The other one must have died."
My new friend raises his glass. "Conclusion: Either directors across the ages all look alike, or they live for a really long time.
Tomorrow I'llgo to your center with you. You can see it again for as long as you want."
The next day the stranger picks me up at the hotel. He drives me to the center. Just before we turn in, at the gate, he says to me, "You know, the old woman you saw, it really was her. Only she's no longer director here or anywhere else. I looked into it. Your center is now an old folk's home."
I say, 'I'd just like to see the dormitory. And the garden."
The walnut tree is there, but it seems stunted to me. It will die soon.
I say to my companion, "It's going to die, my tree."
He says, "Don't be sentimental. Everything dies."
We enter the building. We walk down the corridor and go into the room that belonged to me and so many other children forty years ago. I stop at the threshold and look. Nothing has changed. A dozen beds, white walls, the white beds empty. They always are at this hour.
I take the stairs at a run and open the door to the room where I had been locked up for several days. The bed is still there, in the same place. Perhaps it's even the same bed.
A young woman shows us out and says, "Everything here was bombed out. But it was all rebuilt. Just like before. Everything is like it was before. It's a very beautiful building and it must not be altered."
My pains come back one afternoon. I return to the hotel, take my medications, pack my bags, pay my bill, and call a taxi. 'To the station."
The taxi stops in front of the station and I say to the driver, "Please go buy me a ticket for the town of K. I'm ill."
The driver says, "That's not my job. I brought you to the station. Get out. I want nothing to do with a sick man."
He puts my suitcase down on the sidewalk and opens my door. "Out. Get out of my car."
I hand my wallet with its foreign money to him. "I beg you."
The driver goes into the station building, comes back with my wallet, helps me out of the car, takes me by the arm, carries my suitcase, accompanies me to Track One, and waits for the train with me. When it comes he helps me in, sets my suitcase down beside me, and asks the conductor to look after me.
The train leaves. There is almost no one in the other compartments. Smoking is forbidden.
I close my eyes and my pain fades away. The train stops nearly every ten minutes. I know that I once made this journey forty years ago.
The train had stopped before it arrived at the station in the little town. The nun grabbed my arm and shook me but I didn't move. She jumped out of the train, ran, and lay down in a field. All the passengers had run out and lain down in the fields. I was alone in the compartment. Planes flew over us and strafed the train. When silence returned the nun returned too. She slapped me and the train started moving again.
I open my eyes. We will arrive soon. I can already see the silver cloud over the mountain, and then the castle walls and the bell towers of many churches appear.
On the twenty-second of the month of April, after an absence of forty years, I am again in the small town of my childhood.
The station hasn't changed. Except that it's cleaner, even flower-filled, with the local flowers whose name I don't know and that I have never seen anywhere else.
There is also a bus, which pulls out filled with the few travelers from the train and workers from the factory across the street.
I don't take the bus. I stay here, in front of the station, my suitcase on the ground, and I look at the avenue of chestnut trees along Station Street, which leads into town.
"May I carry your suitcase, sir?"
A child of about ten is standing before me.
He says, "You've missed the bus. There won't be another one for half an hour."
I say to him, "No matter. I'll walk."
He says, "Your suitcase is heavy."
He picks up my suitcase and doesn't let go. I laugh. "Yes, it's heavy. You won't be able to carry it very far, that I know. I've done your sort of work before."
The child sets the suitcase down. "Really? When?"
"When I was your age. A long time ago."
"And where was that?"
"Here. In front of this station."
He says, "I can carry this suitcase. No problem."
I say, "Fine, but give me ten minutes' head start. I want to walk alone. And take your time, I'm in no hurry. I'llwait for you at the Black Garden. If it still exists."
"Yes, sir, it exists."
The Black Garden is a small park at the end of the avenue of chestnuts, and there's nothing black in it except the cast-iron fence that encloses it. There I sit on a bench and wait for the child. He soon arrives, puts my suitcase down on another bench across from me, and sits, out of breath.
I light a cigarette and ask, "Why do you do this?"
He says, "I want to buy a bike. A dirt bike. Would you give me a cigarette?" "No. No cigarettes for you. I'm dying because of cigarettes. Do you want to die of cigarettes too?"
He says to me, "We're all dying of one thing or another. That's what all the experts say, anyway."
"What else do they say, the experts?"
"That the world is fucked. And that there's nothing to do about it. It's too late."
"Where have you heard all this?"
"Everywhere. At school. Especially on television."
I toss away my cigarette. "You're not getting a cigarette, no matter what."
He says to me, "You're mean."
I say, "Yes, I'm mean. So? Is there a hotel somewhere in this town?"
"Sure, there are a couple. You don't know? And you seem to know the town so well."
I say, "When I lived here there weren't any hotels. Not one."
He says, "That must have been a long time ago then. There's a brand-new hotel on Central Square. It's called the Grand Hotel because it's the biggest."
"Let's go."
In front of the hotel the child sets down my suitcase.
"I can't go in, sir. The woman at the reception desk knows me. She'll tell my mother."
"What? That you carried my suitcase?"
"Yes. My mother doesn't want me carrying suitcases."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She doesn't want me doing it. She just wants me to study."
I ask: "Your parents-what do they do?"
He says, "I don't have parents. Only a mother. No father, I've never had one."
"And what does she do, your mother?"
"She works right here at the hotel. She cleans the floors twice a day. But she wants me to have an education."
"An education as what?"
"That she couldn't say, since she doesn't know what educated people do. She thinks professor or doctor, I guess."
I say, "Good. How much for carrying the suitcase?"
He says, "It's up to you, sir."
I give him two coins.
"That enough?"
"Yes, sir."
"No, sir, that's not enough. Don't tell me you've carried that heavy suitcase all the way from the station for as little as that."
He says, "I take what I'm given, sir. I don't have the right to charge more. And then there are poor people. Sometimes I end up carrying suitcases for free. I like the work. I like waiting at the station. I like seeing the people who arrive. The people from here, I know them all by sight. I like seeing the people who come from other places. Like you. You've come from far away, haven't you?"
"Yes, very far. Another country."
I give him a banknote and enter the hotel.
I choose a corner room from which I can see the whole square, the church, the grocery store, the shops, the bookseller's.
It's nine at night and the square is empty. Lights are on in the houses. Blinds are being lowered, shutters closed, curtains pulled; the town is going to bed.
I settle down at one of the windows in my room and watch the square, the houses, late into the night.
During my childhood I often dreamed of living in one of the houses on Central Square -it didn't matter which one-but most of all the blue house where there was and still is a bookseller's.
But the only one I lived in when I was here was the ramshackle one belonging to Grandmother, far from the center of town, at its very limits, near the frontier.
At Grandmother's I worked from morning till night, as she did herself. She fed me and housed me, but she never gave me money, which I needed to buy soap, toothpaste, clothes, and shoes. So at night I came to town and played the harmonica in bars. I sold the wood that I gathered in the forest along with mushrooms and chestnuts. I also sold eggs that I stole from Grandmother, as well as fish, which I quickly learned to catch. I also did all sorts of work for anyone who would pay. I delivered messages, letters, and packages; people trusted me because they thought I was a deaf-mute.
In the beginning I didn't speak, not even to Grandmother, but soon I had to talk numbers in order to sell my wares.
I spent much time at night on Central Square. I looked through the window of the bookseller-stationer's, at the white paper, the school notebooks, the erasers, the pencils. All of it was too expensive for me.
To make a bit more money, whenever I could I went to the station and waited for travelers. I carried their suitcases.
And so I was able to buy paper, a pencil and eraser, and a big notebook in which I wrote down my first lies.
Several months after the death of Grandmother some people came into the house without knocking. They were three men, one in the uniform of a border guard. The other two were in civilian dress. One of these two didn't say anything but only noted things down. He was young, almost as young as I. The other had white hair. It was he who questioned me.
"How long have you lived here?"
I say, "I don't know. Since the hospital was bombed."
"Which hospital?"
"I don't know. The center."
The man in the uniform interrupts. "He was already here when I took command of this unit."
The civilian asks, "When was that?"
'Three years ago. But he was here before that."
"How do you know?"
"It's obvious. He worked around the house like someone who had always been here."
The white-haired man turns to me. "Are you related to Mrs. V., née Maria Z.?"
I say, "She was my grandmother."
He asks me, "Do you have documents proving the relationship?"
I say, "No, I don't have any papers. All I have are the sheets I buy at the bookseller's."
He says, "This is the situation. Take this down!"
The younger civilian writes: "Mrs. V., née Maria Z., is deceased without heirs, and so all her possessions, house, and lands will become state property belonging communally to the town of Z., which will make use of them as it deems fit."
The men stand up and I ask them, "What should I do?"
They look at one another. The uniformed man says, "You must leave."
"Why?"
"Because this place doesn't belong to you."
I ask, "When do I have to leave?"
"I don't know."
He looks at the white-haired man in civilian clothes, who says, "We'll inform you soon enough. How old are you?"
"Fifteen, nearly. I can't leave before the tomatoes ripen."
He says, "Of course, the tomatoes. You're only fifteen? Well, then, there's no problem."
I ask, "Where should I go?"
He is silent for a moment and looks at the man in uniform; the man in uniform looks back at him. The civilian lowers his eyes. "Don't worry. You'll be taken care of. Above all, don't be scared."
The three men go outside. I follow them, walking on the grass to make no noise.
The border guard says, "Can't you leave him alone? He's a good little fellow and he works hard."
The man in civilian dress says, "That's beside the point. The law is clear. The property of Mrs. V. belongs to the commune. Your little fellow has been living on it illegally for almost two years."
"And who's been harmed by it?"
"No one. But come on-why are you defending that little good-for-nothing?"
"For three years I've watched him tending his garden and his animals. He's not a good-for-nothing, in any case no more than you are."
"You dare call me a good-for-nothing?"
"I didn't say that. All I said is that he's no more of one than you are. And anyway I don't give a damn. Not about you, not about him. In three weeks I'll be out of the service and tending my own garden. You, sir, will have a soul on your conscience if you turn that child out into the street. Good night, and sleep well."
The civilian says, "We won't be turning him out. We'll take care of him."
They leave. Several days later they come back. The same man with the white hair and the young man; they have brought a woman with them. She is older and wears eyeglasses; she looks like the director at the center.
She says to me, "Listen to me carefully. We don't want to hurt you; we want to take care of you. You're coming with us to a nice house where there are children like you."
I say to her, 'I'm not a child anymore. I don't want to be taken care of. And I don't want to go to a hospital either."
She says, "It isn't a hospital. You'll be able to study there."
We're in the kitchen. The woman speaks but I don't listen. The white-haired man speaks too. I don't listen to him either.
Only the young man who writes everything down doesn't speak; he doesn't even look at me.
As she leaves, the woman says, "Don't worry. We're on your side. Everything will be better soon. We won't abandon you; we're going to take care of you. We're going to rescue you."
The man adds, "You can stay here for the summer. The demolition will begin at the end of August."
I'm scared, scared of going to a house where I will be taken care of, where I will be rescued. I must leave here. I ask myself where I could go.
I buy a map of the country and one of the capital. Every day I go to the station and consult the schedule. I ask how much tickets are to this or that town. I only have a very little bit of money and don't want to use what Grandmother left me. She had warned me: "No one must know that you have all this. You'll be questioned, locked up, and everything will be taken from you. And never tell the truth. Pretend you don't understand the questions. If people take you for an idiot, so much the better."
Grandmother's legacy is buried under the bench in front of the house, a canvas bag that contains jewels, gold pieces, and money. If I tried to sell it all, I would be accused of having stolen it.
It was at the station that I met the man who wanted to cross the border.
It is night. The man is there, in front of the station, his hands in his pockets. The other travelers are already gone. Station Square is deserted.
The man signals me to come closer and I walk toward him. He has no luggage.
I say, "Usually I carry travelers' bags. But I see that you don't have any."
He says, "No, I don't."
I say, "If I could be of some other service. I can see that you're a stranger in town."
"And how can you tell I'm a stranger?"
I say, "No one in town wears clothes like yours. And everyone in our town has the same face. A face that's recognized and familiar. You can tell who people from our town are even if you don't know them personally. When a stranger comes he's immediately spotted."
The man looks around us. "Do you think I've been spotted already?"
"Absolutely. But if your papers are in order it won't matter much. You'll present them at the police station tomorrow morning, and you can stay as long as you like. There's no hotel, but I can show you to houses where they rent out rooms."
The man says, "Follow me."
He sets off toward town, but instead of taking the main road he veers off to the right, onto a small dusty road, and sits down between two bushes. I sit down beside him and ask, "Are you trying to hide? Why?"
He asks me, "Do you know the town well?"
"Yes, perfectly."
"The border?"
"That too."
"Your parents?"
"I don't have any."
"They're dead?"
"I don't know."
"Whose house do you live at?"
"Mine. It's Grandmother's house. She's dead."
"With anyone else?"
"Alone."
"Where's your house?"
"At the other end of town. Near the border."
"Could you put me up for one night? I have a lot of money."
"Yes, I can put you up."
"Do you know a way we can get to your house without being seen?"
"Yes."
"Let's go. I'll follow you."
We walk in the fields behind the houses. Sometimes we have to clamber over fences and gates and cross gardens and private yards. Night has fallen, and the man behind me makes no noise.
When we reach Grandmother's house I congratulate him: "Even at your age you had no trouble following me."
He laughs. "At my age? I'm only forty, and I fought in the war. I learned how to get through towns without making noise."
After some time he adds, "You're right. I'm old now. My youth was swallowed up by the war. Do you have anything to drink?"
I set some brandy on the table and say, "You want to cross the border, don't you?"
He laughs again. "How did you guess? Do you have anything to eat?"
I say, "I can make you a mushroom omelet. I also have goat's cheese."
He drinks while I make dinner.
We eat. I ask him, "How did you make it into the frontier zone? You need a special permit to come to our town."
He says, "I have a sister who lives here. I asked permission to visit her and it was granted."
"But you're not going to see her."
"No. I don't want to make trouble for her. Here, burn all this in your stove."
He gives me his identity card and other papers. I throw everything into the fire.
I ask, "Why do you want to leave?"
"That's not your business. Show me the way, that's all I ask. I'll give you all the money I have."
He puts banknotes on the table.
I say, "It's no great sacrifice to leave that much behind. Anyway it's not worth anything on the other side."
He says, "But here, for a young fellow like you, it's worth quite a bit."
I throw the bills into the fire.
"You know, I don't need money that much. I have everything I want here."
We watch the money burn. I say, "You can't cross the frontier without risking your life."
The man says, "I know."
I say, "You should also know that I could turn you in right now. There's a border post right across from my house, and I collaborate with them. I'm an informer."
Very pale, the man says, "An informer, at your age?"
"Age has nothing to do with it. I've turned in a number of people who wanted to cross the frontier. I see and report on everything that goes on in the forest."
"But why?"
"Because sometimes they send in plants to see if I inform on them or not. Until now I was forced to report them whether they were plants or not."
"Why until now?"
"Because tomorrow I'm crossing the frontier with you. I want to get out of here too."
A little before noon the next day we cross the frontier.
The man walks in front and doesn't have a hope. Near the second barrier a land mine goes off and takes him with it. I walk behind him and risk nothing.
I watch the empty square until late into the night. When I finally go to bed, I dream.
I go down to the river; my brother is there, sitting on the bank, fishing. I sit down beside him.
"You getting many?"
"No. I was waiting for you."
He stands and packs up his rod. "It's been a long time since there were fish here. There isn't even water anymore."
He reaches for a rock and throws it at the other rocks in the dried-up river.
We walk toward town. I stop in front of a house with green shutters. My brother says, "Yes, it was our house. You recognized it."
I say, "Yes, but it wasn't here before. It was in another town."
My brother corrects me: "In another life. And now it's here and it's empty."
We reach Central Square.
In front of the bookshop door two little boys are sitting on the stairs that lead up to the living quarters.
My brother says, 'Those are my sons. Their mother is gone."
We go into the kitchen. My brother makes the evening meal. The children eat in silence, not raising their eyes.
I say, 'They're happy, your sons."
"Very happy. I'm going to put them to bed."
When he returns he says, "Let's go to my room."
We go into the large room and my brother retrieves a bottle hidden behind the books on the shelves.
"This is all that's left. The barrels are empty."
We drink. My brother strokes the red plush tablecloth.
"You see, nothing's changed. I kept everything. Even this hideous tablecloth. Tomorrow you can move in to the house."
I say, "I don't want to. I'd rather play with your children."
My brother says, "My children don't play."
"What do they do?"
"They are preparing to make it through life."
I say, "I made it through life and haven't found anything."
My brother says, "There's nothing to find. What were you looking for?"
"You. It's because of you that I came back."
My brother laughs. "Because of me? You know very well that I'm just a dream. You must accept that. There is nothing anywhere."
I am cold and stand up.
"It's late. I have to go back."
"Go back? Where?"
'To the hotel."
"What hotel? You're at home here. I'm going to introduce you to our parents."
"Our parents? Where are they?"
My brother points at the brown door that leads into the other half of the apartment.
'There. They're asleep."
'Together?"
"As ever."
I say, "They shouldn't be woken up."
My brother says, "Why not? They'll be overjoyed to see you after all these years."
I step backward toward the door.
"No, no, I don't want to see them again."
My brother grabs my arm. "You don't want to, you don't have to. I see them every day. You should see them at least once, just once!"
My brother pulls me toward the brown door; with my free hand I grab a very heavy glass ashtray from the table and hit him on the back of the neck with it.
My brother's forehead slams into the door and he falls. There is blood on the floor all around his head.
I leave the house and sit on a bench. An enormous moon lights the empty square.
An old man stops in front of me and asks for a cigarette. I offer him one, as well as a light.
He stays there, standing in front of me, smoking his cigarette.
After a few moments he asks, "So, then, you killed him?"
I say, "Yes."
The old man says, "You did what you had to do. That's good. Few people do what must be done."
I say, "It was because he wanted to open the door."
"You did well. It was good that you stopped him. You had to kill him. With that everything falls into order, the order of things."
I say, "But he won't be here anymore. Order doesn't mean much to me if he isn't here anymore."
The old man says, "On the contrary. From now on he'll always be with you wherever you go."
The old man moves off; he rings at the door of a little house and goes in.
When I wake up the square has already been busy for quite some time. People are moving around it on foot or by bicycle. There are very few cars. The shops are open, including the bookseller's. The hotel corridors are being vacuumed.
I open my door and call out to the cleaning woman: "Could you bring me a cup of coffee?"
She turns around; it is a young woman with very black hair.
'I'm not allowed to serve the guests, sir, I'm just a cleaning woman. We don't have room service. There's a restaurant and a bar."
I go back into my room, brush my teeth, shower, then climb back in under the covers. I'mcold.
There is a knock at the door. The cleaning woman comes in and sets a tray down on the night table.
"You can pay for the coffee at the bar whenever you like."
She lies down beside me on the bed and offers me her lips. I turn my head away.
"No, my lovely one. I'm old and ill."
She stands and says, "I have very little money. The work I do is very badly paid. I'd like to give my son a dirt bike as a birthday present. And I have no husband."
"I understand."
I give her a banknote without knowing if it is too little or too much; I still haven't figured out the prices of things here.
Around three in the afternoon I go out.
I walk slowly. Nevertheless, after half an hour I come to the end of the town. Where Grandmother's house used to be there is a very well-maintained athletic field. Children are playing on it.
For a long time I sit on the riverbank, then I return to town. I pass through the old section, the little streets around the castle; I climb up to the cemetery but cannot find Grandmother's grave.
Every day I walk like this for hours on end through every part of town. Especially through the narrow streets where the houses have sunk into the earth and their windows are at ground level. Sometimes I sit in a park or on the low walls of the castle or on a tomb in the cemetery. When I'm hungry I go into a little bistro and eat what it has to offer. Then I drink with the workers. No one recognizes me, no one remembers me.
One day I go into the bookseller's to buy paper and pencils. The fat man of my childhood is no longer there; now it is a woman who runs the place. She is sitting and knitting in an armchair near the French door that looks out onto the garden. She smiles at me.
"I know you. I see you going in and out of the hotel every day. Except for when you return too late and I'm already asleep. I live above the bookshop and like to look at the square at night."
I say, "Me too."
She asks, "Are you vacationing here? For very long?"
"Yes, vacationing. In a way. I'd like to spend as much time here as possible. It depends on my visa as well as on my money."
"Your visa? You're a foreigner? You don't look it."
"I spent my childhood in this town. I was born in this country. But I've been abroad for a very long time."
She says, 'There are a lot of foreigners here now that the country is free. Those who went away after the revolution come back to visit, but more than anything it's the curious ones, the tourists. You'll see, when the nice weather sets in they'll come by the busload. That'll be the end of our peace and quiet."
In fact the hotel is increasingly filled. Saturdays are dance nights; sometimes the dances last until four in the morning. I can stand neither the music nor the shouts and laughter of the people amusing themselves. So I stay out in the streets, sitting down on a bench with a bottle of wine I have bought earlier in the day, and wait.
One night a small boy sits down next to me.
"Can I stay here next to you, mister? I get a little scared at night."
I recognize his voice. It's the child who carried my suitcase when I arrived. I ask him, "What are you doing out so late?"
He says, "I'm waiting for my mother. When there are parties she has to stay to help serve and to do the dishes."
"So? All you have to do is stay home and sleep quietly."
"I can't sleep quietly. I'm afraid something will happen to my mother. We live far away from here and I can't let her walk alone. There are men who attack women walking alone at night. I saw it on television."
"And children aren't attacked?"
"No, not really. Just women. Especially if they're pretty. I could defend myself. I can run very fast."
We wait. Slowly silence descends inside the hotel. A woman comes out, the one who brings me coffee in the morning. The little boy runs to her and they go off together, hand in hand.
Other staff members come out of the hotel and quickly fade into the distance.
I climb up to my room.
The next day I go see the bookseller.
"It's impossible for me to stay in the hotel any longer. It's too crowded and there's too much noise. Would you know of anyone who might rent me a room?"
She says, "Come live at my place. Here, upstairs."
"I would be disturbing you."
"No, not at all. I'll live at my daughter's, it's not far from here. You'd have the whole floor. Two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom."
"For how much?"
"How much do you pay at the hotel?"
I tell her. She smiles.
"Those are tourist prices. I'd let you live here for half that much. I'd even clean up for you after I closed the shop. You're always out then anyway, so I wouldn't disturb you. Would you like to see the apartment?"
"No, I'm sure it will be fine. When could I move in?"
"As early as tomorrow, if you like. All I have to do is collect my clothes and my things."
The next day I pack my suitcase and settle my bill at the hotel. I arrive at the bookseller's just before it closes. The bookseller hands me a key.
'That's the key to the front door. It's possible to get up to the apartment directly from the store, but you'll be using the other door, the street door. I'll show you."
She closes the shop. We climb up a narrow staircase lighted by two windows that look onto the garden. The bookseller explains to me, "The door to the left is the bedroom, across from the bathroom. The second door is the living room, from which you can also pass through into the bedroom. The kitchen is at the end. There's a refrigerator. I've left some food in it."
I say, "I only need coffee and wine. I eat my meals in bars."
She says, "That's not very healthy. The coffee is on the shelf and there's a bottle of wine in the fridge. I'll go now. I hope you like it here."
She leaves. I immediately open the bottle of wine; I'll lay in a supply tomorrow. I go into the living room. It's a big room, simply furnished. Between its two windows is a large table covered with a red plush cloth. I immediately cover it with my papers and pencils. Then I go into the bedroom, which is narrow and has only a single window, or rather a French door that leads out onto a little balcony.
I lift my suitcase onto the bed and put my clothes away in the empty closet.
I do not go out that night. I finish the bottle of wine and settle in front of one of the living room windows in a deep armchair. I watch the square, and then I go to sleep in a bed that smells like soap.
When I get up around ten o'clock the next morning I find two newspapers on the kitchen table and a pot of vegetable soup on the stove. The first thing I do is make myself some coffee, which I drink while reading the newspapers. I have the soup later, around four in the afternoon, before going out.
The bookseller does not disturb me. I only see her when I pay a visit downstairs. When I'm out she cleans the apartment, taking away my dirty laundry as well and bringing it back washed and ironed.
Time passes quickly. I have to appear in the neighboring town, the regional capital, to have my visa renewed. A young woman stamps my passport RENEWED FOR ONE MONTH. I pay and thank her. She smiles at me: "Tonight I'llbe at the bar of the Grand Hotel. There'll be a lot of foreigners there; you might run into some compatriots."
I say, "Yes, perhaps I'll come."
I immediately take the red train back home to my town.
The following month the young woman is less amiable; she stamps my passport without saying a word. The third time she crisply warns me that a fourth time will be impossible.
Toward the end of summer I have almost run out of money; I am forced to economize. I buy a harmonica and play in bars, as I did in my childhood. The patrons offer me drinks. As for meals, I am content with the bookseller's vegetable soups. In September and October I am no longer able to pay my rent. The bookseller does not ask me for it; she continues to clean, to do my laundry, to bring me soup.
I don't know how I'llget by, but I don't want to return to the other country; I must stay here, I must die here, in this town.
My pains have not reappeared since my arrival despite my excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
On the thirtieth of October I celebrate my birthday with my drinking friends in the town's more popular bars. They all pay for me. Couples dance to the sound of my harmonica. Women kiss me. I am drunk. I begin to talk about my brother the way I always do when I've drunk too much. Everybody in town knows my story: I'm looking for my brother who I lived with here, in this town, until I was fifteen. It is here that I must find him; I am waiting for him and know that he will come when he hears that I have returned from abroad.
All this is a lie. I know very well that I was already alone in this town, with Grandmother, that even then I only fantasized that there were two of us, me and my brother, in order to endure the unbearable solitude.
The bar quiets down somewhat around midnight. I no longer play, I just drink.
A scruffy old man sits down in front of me. He drinks from my glass. He says, "I remember you both very well, your brother and you."
I say nothing. Another man, a younger one, brings a liter of wine to my table. I ask for a clean glass. We drink.
The younger man asks me, "What would you give me if I found your brother?"
I tell him, "I have no more money."
He laughs. "But you can wire for money from abroad. All foreigners are rich."
"Not me. I couldn't even buy you a drink."
He laughs. "It doesn't matter. Another liter, on me."
The waitress brings more wine and says, "That's the last one. I can't serve you anymore. If we don't close up we'll get into trouble with the police."
The old man continues to drink next to us, saying from time to time, "Yes, I knew you wel), you two, you were already pretty wild in those days. Yes, yes."
The younger man says to me, "I know that your brother is hiding in the forest. I've sometimes seen him off in the distance. He's made clothes out of army blankets and he goes barefoot even in winter. He lives on herbs, roots, chestnuts, and small animals. He has long gray hair and a gray beard. He has a knife and matches, and he smokes cigarettes that he rolls himself, which proves that he must come into town sometimes at night. Maybe the girls who live on the other side of the cemetery and who sell their bodies know him. One of them at least. Perhaps she sees him secretly and gives him what he needs. We could organize a search. If we all look for him we could trap him."
I stand up and hit him.
"Liar! That isn't my brother. And if you want to trap anyone, count me out."
I hit him again and he falls from his chair. I tip over the table and keep screaming: "He's not my brother!"
The waitress shouts in the street: "Police! Police!"
Someone must have telephoned because the police arrive very quickly. Two of them. On foot. The tavern falls silent. One of the policemen asks, "What's going on? This place should have closed up long ago."
The man I hit whimpers, "He hit me."
Several people point at me: "It was him."
The policeman picks the man up. "Stop complaining. You're not even scratched. And you're plastered as usual. You'd better go home. You'd all better go home."
He turns to me. "I don't know you. Show me your papers."
I try to escape but the people around me grab me. The policeman digs through my pockets and finds my passport. He studies it for a long time and says to his colleague, "His visa is expired. Has been for months. We'll have to bring him in."
I struggle but they put handcuffs on me and lead me out onto the street. I stagger and am having trouble walking, so they practically carry me all the way to the station. There they take off my handcuffs, lie me down on a bed, and leave, shutting the door behind them.
The next morning a police officer questions me. He is young, his hair is red, and his face is covered with red spots.
He says to me, "You have no right to remain in our country. You must leave."
I say, "I don't have money for the train. I don't have any money at all."
'I'll notify your embassy. They'll repatriate you."
I say, "I don't want to leave. I have to find my brother."
The officer shrugs. "You can come back whenever you want. You could even move here permanently, but there are rules for that. They'll explain to you at your embassy. As for your brother, I'll look into the matter. Do you have any information about him that could help us?"
"Yes, I have a manuscript written in his own hand. It's on the living room table in my apartment above the bookseller's." "And how did you come into possession of this manuscript?" "Someone left it in my name at the reception desk."
He says, "Odd, very odd."
One morning in November I am summoned to the policeman's office. He tells me to sit and hands me my manuscript.
"Here, I'm giving it back to you. It's just fiction, and it has nothing to do with your brother."
We are silent. The window is open. It's raining and cold. At last the officer speaks. "Even as far as you're concerned we haven't found anything in the municipal archives."
I say, "Naturally. Grandmother never declared me. And I never went to school. But I know that I was born in the capital."
'The archives there were totally destroyed by the bombing. They're coming for you at two this afternoon."
He added that very quickly.
I hide my hands under the table because they are shaking.
"At two? Today?"
"Yes, I'm sorry. It's so sudden. But I repeat, you can come back whenever you like. You can come back permanently. Many emigrants have. Our country currently belongs to the free world. Soon you won't even need a visa."
I tell him, "That will be too late for me. I have a bad heart. I came back because I wanted to die here. As for my brother, perhaps he never existed."
The officer says, "Yes, that's probably true. If you keep going on about him people will think you're insane."
"Is that what you think too?"
He shakes his head. "No, I only think you're confusing reality with fiction. Your fiction. I also feel that you should return to your country, think things over, and then come back. Permanently perhaps. That's what I hope for you, and for me."
"Because of our chess games?"
"No, not just that."
He stands and extends his hand.
"I won't be here when you leave, so I'll say good-bye to you now. Return to your cell."
I return to my cell. My guard says to me, "It looks like you're leaving today."
"Yes, so it seems."
I lie down on my bed and wait. At noon the bookseller arrives with her soup. I tell her I have to go. She cries. She pulls a sweater out of her bag and says, "I knitted you this. Put it on, it's cold out."
I put on the sweater and say, "Thank you. I still owe you two months' rent. I hope the embassy will pay it."
She says, "Who cares? You're coming back, aren't you?"
'I'll try."
She leaves in tears. She has to open her shop.
My guard and I are sitting in my cell. He says, "It's funny to think that you won't be here tomorrow. But you'll come back, of course. Meanwhile, I'm canceling your debt."
I say, "No, absolutely not. I'll pay you as soon as the embassy people come."
He says, "No, no, it was all just for fun. And I cheated."
"Ah, so that's why you always won."
"Don't hold it against me. I just can't help cheating."
He sniffles and wipes his nose.
"You know, if I have a son I'll give him your first name."
I tell him, "Give him my brother's name instead, Lucas. That would make me happiest."
He thinks.
"Lucas? That's a nice name. I'll talk it over with my wife. Maybe she won't object. Anyway, it's not up to her. I'm the one who decides in my house."
"I'm sure of it."
A policeman comes to collect me from my cell. My guard and I go out into the courtyard, where there is a well-dressed man with a hat, tie, and umbrella. The stones in the courtyard glisten in the rain.
The man from the embassy says, "A car is waiting for us. I've already taken care of your debts."
He speaks in a language that I shouldn't understand but do anyway. I motion to my guard.
"I owe that man a certain amount. It's a debt of honor."
"How much?"
He pays, takes me by the arm, and leads me to a big black car parked in front of the house. A chauffeur in a visored cap opens the doors.
The car pulls away. I ask the man from the embassy if we can stop for a minute in front of the bookseller's on Central Square, but he just looks at me uncomprehendingly and I realize that I have spoken to him in my old language, the language of this country.
The chauffeur drives quickly; we pass the square, we're already on Station Street, and soon my little town is well behind us.
It's hot in the car. Through the window I watch the villages parade by, the fields and poplars and acacias, my country's landscape beaten by the rain and the wind.
I suddenly turn to the man from the embassy. "This isn't the road to the border. We're going in the opposite direction."
He says, "First we're taking you to the embassy in the capital. You'll cross the border several days from now, by train."
I close my eyes.
The child crosses the frontier.
The man goes first; the child waits. There is an explosion. The child approaches. The man is lying near the second barrier. Then the child makes his move. Walking in the man's footsteps, then over his motionless body, he reaches the other side and hides behind some bushes.
A squad of border guards arrives in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. There is a sergeant and several soldiers. One of them says, "The poor fuck."
Another: "What rotten luck. He almost made it."
The sergeant cries out, "Stop your chatter. We have to collect the body."
The soldiers say:
"What's left of it."
"Why?"
The sergeant says: "Identification. Orders are orders. The body must be retrieved. Any volunteers?"
The soldiers look at one another.
"The land mines. We might not make it."
"So what. It's your duty. Bunch of cowards."
One soldier raises his hand. 'I'llgo."
"Bravo. Go to it, son. The rest of you move back."
The soldier walks slowly up to the shattered body, then breaks into a run. He passes by the child without seeing him.
The sergeant screams: "The bastard! Shoot him! Fire!"
The soldiers do not shoot.
"He's on the other side. We can't shoot over there."
The sergeant raises his rifle. Two foreign border guards appear on the other side. The sergeant lowers his weapon and hands it to a soldier. He walks up to the corpse, hoists it onto his back, returns, and drops it to the ground. He wipes his face with the sleeve of his uniform. "You'll pay for this, you sons of bitches. You're all nothing but a pile of shit."
The soldiers wrap the body in a tarpaulin and put it in the back of their vehicle. They drive off. The two foreign border guards go away too.
The child remains where he is, not moving a muscle. He falls asleep. Early in the morning he is awakened by the singing of birds. He clutches his coat and rubber boots to himself and heads toward the village. He comes across two border guards, who ask him, "Hey, you. Where are you coming from?"
'The other side of the frontier."
"You crossed it? When?"
"Yesterday. With my father. But he fell. He stayed on the ground after the explosion and the soldiers from over there came and took him away."
"Yes, we were there. But we didn't see you. The soldier who deserted didn't see you either." "I hid. I was scared."
"How come you speak our language?"
"I learned it from soldiers during the war. You think they'll make my father better again?"
The guards lower their eyes. "Definitely. Come with us. You must be hungry."
The guards bring the child to the village and ask one of their wives to take care of him.
"Give him something to eat, then bring him to the police station. Tell them that we'll come at eleven to make a report."
The woman is fat and blond, her face red and smiling.
She asks the child, "You like milk and cheese? Lunch isn't ready yet."
"Yes, ma'am, I like everything. I'll eat anything."
The woman serves him.
"No, wait, go wash up first. At least your face and hands. I'llget your clothes nice and clean, but I guess you don't have anything to change into."
"No, ma'am."
'I'll lend you one of my husband's shirts. It'll be too big for you, but that doesn't matter. Just roll up the sleeves. Here's a towel. The bathroom is right there."
The child takes his coat and rubber boots into the bathroom with him. He washes, returns to the kitchen, eats bread and cheese and drinks milk. He says, "Thank you, ma'am."
She says, "You're well brought up and polite. And you speak our language very well. Did your mother stay on the other side?"
"No, she died during the war."
"Poor little thing. Come, we have to go to the commissioner's. Don't be scared, the policeman's nice, he's a friend of my husband's."
At the station she tells the policeman, "Here's the son of the man who tried to cross yesterday. My husband will come by at eleven. I'd be glad to look after the child while they're coming to a decision. Perhaps he'll have to be sent back because he's a minor."
The policeman says, "We'll see. In any case I'll send him back to you for lunch."
The woman leaves and the policeman hands the child a questionnaire.
"Fill it out. If you don't understand any of the questions, ask me."
When the child hands the questionnaire back the policeman reads it out loud: "Full name, Claus T. Age eighteen. You're not very big for your age."
"It's because I was ill as a child."
"Do you have an identity card?"
"No, nothing. My father and I burned all our papers before we left."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Something about being caught. My father told me to do it."
"Your father stepped on a land mine. If you'd been walking with him you'd have been blown up too."
"I didn't walk with him. He told me to wait until he was on the other side, then to follow him at a distance."
"Why did you cross in the first place?"
"It was my father who wanted to. They were putting him in prison all the time and watching him. He didn't want to live there anymore. And he took me with him because he didn't want me to be alone."
"Your mother?" "She died in a bombing during the war. Afterward I lived with my grandmother, but she died too."
"So you don't have anyone left over there. No one who will call for you to be returned. Except the authorities, if you committed any crime."
"I haven't committed any crimes."
"Good. All we have to do now is wait for my superiors to decide. For the time being you're not allowed to leave the village. Here. Sign this paper there."
The child signs the statement, in which there are three lies.
The man he crossed the frontier with was not his father.
The child is not eighteen, but fifteen.
His name is not Claus.
Some weeks later a man from the city comes to the border guard's house. He says to the child, "My name is Peter N. I will take care of you from now on. Here is your identity card. All it needs is your signature."
The child looks at the card. His birthdate has been moved back three years, his first name is "Claus," and his nationality is "None."
The very same day Peter and Claus take the bus to the city. Along the way Peter asks questions:
"What did you do before, Claus? Were you a student?"
"A student? No. I worked in my garden, tended my animals, played my harmonica in bars, carried travelers' bags for them."
"And what would you like to do in the future?"
"I don't know. Nothing. Why is it so necessary to do anything?"
"One has to make a living."
"That I know. I've always done that. I'm happy to do any sort of work to make a little money." "A little money? Through any sort of work? You could get a scholarship and go to school."
"I don't want to go to school."
"And yet you should, even just a little bit, to learn the language better. You speak it well enough, but you also have to know how to read and write it. You'll live in a youth house with other students. You'll have your own room. You'll take language courses and after that we'll see."
Peter and Claus spend the night at a hotel in a big city. In the morning they take a train to a smaller city situated between a forest and a lake. The youth house is on a steep street in the middle of a garden near the center of town.
A couple, the director of the house and his wife, meet them. They bring Claus to his room. The window looks out onto the park.
Claus asks, "Who takes care of the garden?"
The director's wife says, "I do, but the children help out a great deal."
Claus says, "I'll help you too. Your flowers are very pretty."
The director's wife says, "Thank you, Claus. You'll be completely free here, but you have to be back in at eleven every night at the latest. You'll clean your own room. You can borrow a vacuum cleaner from the super."
The director says, "If you have any problems, talk to me."
Peter says, "You'll be comfortable here, won't you, Claus?"
Claus is also shown the dining room, the showers, and the common room. He is introduced to the boys and girls there.
Later Peter shows Claus the town, then brings him to his house.
"You can find me here if you need me. This is my wife, Clara."
The three of them have lunch together, then spend the afternoon shopping for clothes and shoes.
Claus says, 'I've never had this many clothes in my life."
Peter smiles. "You can throw away your old coat and boots. You'll be getting some money each month for school expenses and pocket money. If you need anything more, tell me. Your board and tuition are paid for, of course."
Claus asks, "Who's giving me all this money? You?"
"No, I'm just your tutor. The money comes from the state. Since you have no parents, the state is obligated to take care of you until you're in a position to make a living on your own."
Claus says, "I hope that will happen as soon as possible."
"In a year you'll decide if you want to go to school or take an apprenticeship."
"I don't want to go to school."
"We'll see, we'll see. Have you no ambition at all, Claus?"
"Ambition? I don't know. All I want is peace to write."
"To write? What? You want to be a writer?"
"Yes. You don't have to go to school to be a writer. You just have to know how to write without too many mistakes. I want to learn how to write in your language properly, but that's all I need."
Peter says, "Writing is no way to earn a living."
Claus says, "No, I know. But I can work during the day and quietly write at night. That's what I did at Grandmother's."
"What? You've already written something?"
"Yes. I've filled a couple of notebooks. They're wrapped up in my old coat. When I've learned to write your language, I'll translate them and show them to you."
They are in his room at the youth house. Claus unties the string around his old coat. He sets five school notebooks on the table. Peter opens them one after the other.
'I'm very curious to know what's in these notebooks. Is it a journal of some kind?"
Claus says, "No, it's all lies." "Lies?"
"Yes. Made-up things. Stories that aren't true but might be." Peter says, "Hurry up and learn to write our language, Claus."
We arrive at the capital around seven in the evening. The weather has grown worse; it's cold and the raindrops have turned into ice crystals.
The embassy building is in the middle of a large garden. I am brought to a well-heated room with a double bed and a bathroom. It's like a suite in a luxury hotel.
A waiter brings me a meal. I eat very little of it. The meal is not like the kind to which I grew reaccustomed in the little town. I set the tray down outside my door. A man is seated in the corridor a few yards away.
I shower and brush my teeth with a brand-new toothbrush I found in the bathroom. I also find a comb and, on my bed, a pair of pajamas. I go to bed.
My pains come back. I wait for a while but they become unbearable. I get up, look through my suitcase, find my medications, take two pills, and return to bed. Instead of going away the pains intensify. I drag myself to the door and open it; the man is still sitting there. I say to him, "A doctor, please. I'm ill. My heart."
He picks up a telephone hung on the wall next to him. I don't remember what happens next; I faint. I wake up in a hospital bed.
I stay in the hospital for three days. I undergo all sorts of examinations. At last the cardiologist comes to see me.
"You can get up and dress. You're going back to the embassy."
I ask, "You're not going to operate on me?"
"No operation is necessary. Your heart is perfectly sound. Your pains are the result of anxiety and nervousness and a profound depression. Don't take any more trinitrine, just the sedatives I've prescribed for you."
He extends his hand to me. "Don't be afraid. You still have a very long time to live."
"I don't want to live much longer."
"As soon as you're out of your depression you'll change your mind."
A car returns me to the embassy. I am brought into an office. A smiling young man with curly hair motions me toward a leather armchair.
"Have a seat. I'm happy that everything went well at the hospital. But that's not why I called you here. You're looking for your family, and for your brother in particular, are you not?"
"Yes, my twin brother. But not very hopefully. Have you found something? I was told that the archives were destroyed."
"I didn't need the archives. I simply looked in the phone book. There's a man in this city whose name is the same as yours. The same last name as well as first name."
"Claus?"
"Yes, Klaus T., with a 'K.' So it obviously can't be your brother. But he might be related to you and could give you some information. Here is his address and telephone number in case you'd like to contact him."
I take the address and say, "I don't know. I'd like to see the street he lives on and his house first."
"I understand. We can spin by around five-thirty. I'll come with you. Without valid papers you can't go out alone."
We cross the city. It is already almost night. In the car the curly-haired man says to me, "I did some research on your homonym. He's one of this country's most important poets."
I say, "The bookseller who rented me her apartment never mentioned it. And yet she must have known his name."
"Not necessarily. Klaus T. writes under a pen name, Klaus Lucas. He's said to be a misanthrope. He's never seen in public and nothing is known about his private life."
The car stops in a narrow street between two rows of single- storied houses surrounded by gardens.
The curly-haired man says, 'There-number eighteen. This is it. It's one of the prettiest parts of the city. Also the quietest and most expensive."
I say nothing. I look at the house. It is somewhat set back from the street. A few steps lead from the garden to the front door. The green shutters are open on the four windows that look out onto the street. A light is on in the kitchen, and a blue light soon appears in the two living room windows. For the moment the study remains dark. The other part of the house, the part that looks out over the courtyard in the back, is invisible from here. There are three more rooms there: the parents' bedroom, the children's room, and a guest bedroom that Mother used mostly as a sewing room.
In the courtyard there was sort of a shed for firewood, bikes, and our larger toys. I remember two red tricycles and wooden scooters. I also recall hoops that we rolled down the street with sticks. A huge kite leaned against one of the walls. In the courtyard there was a swing with two seats hanging side by side. Our mother pushed us, and we tried to swing up into the branches of the walnut tree that may still be there behind the house.
The man from the embassy asks me, "Does all this remind you of anything?"
I say, "No, nothing. I was only four at the time."
"Do you want to try right now?"
"No, I'll call tonight."
"Yes, that would be best. He's not a man who readily receives visitors. It might be impossible for you to see him."
We return to the embassy. I go up to my room. I place the number beside the telephone. I take a sedative and open the window. It's snowing. The flakes make a watery sound as they fall on the yellow grass and black earth of the garden. I lie down on the bed.
I walk through the streets of an unfamiliar town. It's snowing and growing darker and darker. The streets I am following become less and less well lit. Our old house is on one of the last streets. Farther off it is already the countryside. A completely lightless night. There is a bar across from the house. I go in and order a bottle of wine. I am the only customer.
The windows of the house light up all at once. I see shadows moving through the curtains. I finish the bottle, leave the bar, cross the street, and ring at the garden door. No one answers; the bell isn't working. I open the cast-iron gate; it isn't locked. I climb the five steps that lead to the door on the veranda. I ring again. Two times, three times. A man's voice asks from behind the door, "Who is it? What do you want? Who are you?"
I say, "It's me, Claus."
"Claus? Claus who?"
"Don't you have a son named Claus?"
"Our son is here, inside the house. With us. Leave."
The man moves away from the door. I ring again, knock, cry out, "Father, Father, let me in. I made a mistake. My name is Lucas. I'm your son Lucas."
A woman's voice says, "Let him in."
The door opens. An old man says to me, "Come in, then."
He leads me into the living room and sits down in an armchair. A very old woman is seated in another. She says to me, "So, you claim to be our son Lucas? Where were you until now?"
"Abroad."
My father says, "Yes, abroad. And why have you come back now?"
"To see you, Father. You both, and Klaus too."
My mother says, "Klaus didn't go away."
Father says, "We looked for you for years."
Mother continues, "After that we forgot you. You shouldn't have come back. It's upsetting everyone. We lead quiet lives and we don't want to be upset."
I ask, "Where is Klaus? I want to see him."
Mother says, "He's in his room. As usual. He's sleeping. He mustn't be woken up. He's only four, he needs his sleep."
Father says, "Nothing proves that you're Lucas. Go away."
I don't hear them anymore; I leave the living room, open the door to the children's room, and switch on the ceiling light. Sitting up in his bed, a little boy looks at me and begins to cry. My parents run in. Mother takes the little boy in her arms and rocks him.
"Don't be afraid, little one."
Father grabs my arm, pulls me across the living room and the veranda, opens the door, and shoves me down the stairs.
"You woke him up, you idiot. Get lost." I fall, my head strikes a step, I bleed, I lie there in the snow.
The cold awakens me. The wind and snow are coming into my room and the floor under the window is wet.
I shut the window, fetch a towel from the bathroom, and sponge up the puddle. I tremble and my teeth chatter. It's hot in the bathroom; I sit on the edge of the tub, take another sedative, and wait for my shivering to stop.
It's seven in the evening. I am brought a meal. I ask the waiter if I can have a bottle of wine.
He says, "I'll go see."
He brings the bottle several minutes later.
I say, "You can clear away the tray."
I drink. I pace around my room. From the window to the door, from the door to the window.
At eight I sit down on the bed and dial my brother's telephone number.
It is eight o'clock when the telephone rings. Mother has already gone to bed. I'm watching television, a detective movie, as I do every night.
I spit the biscuit I am eating into a paper napkin. I can finish it later.
I pick up the telephone. I don't say my name, just "Hello."
A man's voice at the other end says, "This is Lucas T. I'd like to speak to my brother, Klaus T."
I am silent. Sweat runs down my back. Finally I say, "There's some sort of mistake. I have no brother."
The voice says, "Yes you do. A twin brother. Lucas."
"My brother died a long time ago."
"No, I'm not dead. I'm alive, Klaus, and I'd like to see you again."
"Where are you? Where have you been?"
"I lived abroad for a long time. I'm here right now, in the capital, at the embassy of D."
I inhale deeply and say in one breath, "I don't think you're my brother. I see no one and don't want to be disturbed."
He insists. "Five minutes, Klaus. I'm asking you for five minutes. I'm leaving the country in two days and not coming back."
"Come tomorrow. But not before eight in the evening."
He says, "Thank you. I'll be at our house-I mean at your house-at eight-thirty."
He hangs up.
I wipe my forehead. I return to the television. I can no longer follow the movie. I throw the rest of my biscuit in the trash can. I can't eat anymore. "At our house." Yes, it was our house once, but that was a long time ago. Now it's my house and everything here belongs to me alone.
I quietly open the door to Mother's bedroom. She is asleep. She's so small you'd think she was a child. I brush the gray hair off her face, kiss her on the forehead, and stroke her wrinkled hands on the bed cover. She smiles in her sleep, squeezes my hand, and murmurs, "My little one. There you are."
Then she says the name of my brother: "Lucas, my little Lucas."
I leave the room, get a bottle of strong alcohol from the kitchen, and settle in the study to write, as I do every night. This study used to be our father's; I haven't changed anything, not the old typewriter, not the uncomfortable wooden chair, not the lamp, not the pencil holder. I try to write but I can only cry and think about the thing that has ruined all of our lives.
Lucas will come tomorrow. I know it's him. I knew it was him from the very first ring. My telephone almost never rings. I had it installed for Mother, in case of emergencies, to order in when I don't have the strength to go to the market or when her condition doesn't allow me to leave.
Lucas will come tomorrow. How to make sure that Mother doesn't find out? That she doesn't wake up during Lucas's visit? Get her out of here? Escape? Where? How? What excuse to give Mother? We've never left here. Mother doesn't want to leave. She thinks it's the only place where Lucas could find us again when he comes.
And it is in fact here that he has found us.
If it's really him.
It's really him.
I don't need any proof. I know. I knew, I have always known, that he wasn't dead, that he would come back.
But why now? Why this late? Why after an absence of fifty years?
I have to protect myself. I have to protect Mother. I don't want Lucas to destroy our peace, our routine, our happiness. I do not want our lives turned upside down. Neither Mother nor I could bear Lucas starting to root around in our past, reviving memories, asking Mother questions.
At all costs I must fend off Lucas, keep him from reopening that terrible wound.
It is winter. I must save coal. I take the edge off the cold in Mother's room with an electric heater that I turn on an hour before she goes to bed and turn off when she has fallen asleep, then turn on again an hour before she wakes up.
As far as I'm concerned, the heat of the kitchen stove and a bit of coal for the living room stove are enough. I wake up early to light the kitchen stove, and once it has produced enough embers I take some into the living room stove. I add a few lumps of coal and in half an hour it's warm in there too.
Late at night, when Mother is already asleep, I open the study door and the heat from the living room immediately flows in. It's a small room and warms up quickly. It is there that I change into my pajamas and bathrobe before starting to write. That way, after I have finished writing all I have to do is go to my room and climb into bed.
Tonight I pace around the house. I stop several times in the kitchen. Then I go into the children's room. I look at the garden. The bare branches of the walnut tree brush against the window. A fine snow settles in thin, frosted layers on the branches and on the ground.
I walk from one room into the other. I've already opened the study door; it is there that I will see my brother. I will close the door as soon as my brother comes, the cold be damned; I do not want Mother to hear us or for our conversation to wake her.
What will I say if that happens?
I will say, "Go back to bed, Mother, it's only a journalist."
And to the other one, to my brother, I will say, "It's only my mother-in-law, Antonia. She's been living at our house for a few years, ever since she was widowed. She's not completely right in the head. She confuses everything, gets things mixed up. She sometimes thinks that she's my real mother because she raised me."
I must keep them from seeing each other or they will recognize each other. Mother will recognize Lucas. And if Lucas doesn't recognize Mother, she will say when she recognizes him, "Lucas, my son!"
I want no "Lucas, my son!" Not anymore. It would be too easy.
Today, while Mother was taking her nap, I moved all the watches and clocks in the house forward by an hour. Luckily night falls early this time of year. It's already dark at five in the afternoon.
I make Mother's dinner an hour early. Carrot puree with potatoes, meatloaf, and crème caramel for dessert.
I set the kitchen table and go call Mother from her room. She comes into the kitchen and says, "I'm not hungry yet."
I say, "You're never hungry, Mother. But you have to eat."
She says, "I'll eat later."
I say, "Later everything will be cold."
She says, "All you have to do is reheat it. Or maybe I won't eat at all."
'I'll make you some herbal tea to whet your appetite."
Into her tea I dissolve one of the sleeping pills she usually takes. I put another next to her cup.
Ten minutes later Mother falls asleep in front of the television. I pick her up, carry her to her room, undress her, and put her to bed.
I go back into the living room. I turn down the television and mute its screen. I reset the hands on the alarm clock in the kitchen and on the living room clock.
I still have time to eat before my brother arrives. In the kitchen I have a bit of carrot puree and meatloaf. Mother has difficulty chewing despite the dentures I had made for her not too long ago. Her digestion isn't very good either.
When I've finished eating I do the dishes and put the leftovers in the refrigerator; there's just enough for tomorrow's lunch.
I settle down in the living room. I put two glasses and a bottle of brandy out on the little table next to my armchair. I drink and wait. At eight o'clock on the dot I check on Mother. She's sleeping deeply. The detective movie begins and I try to watch it. Around eight-twenty I give up on the movie and take up a post by the kitchen window. The light inside is off and it's impossible to see me from outside.
At eight-thirty exactly a big black car pulls up in front of the house and parks on the sidewalk. A man gets out, walks up to the gate, and rings.
I return to the living room and say into the intercom, "Come in. The door is open."
I turn on the veranda light, sit back down in my armchair, and my brother comes in. He is thin and pale and walks toward me with a limp; a portfolio case is tucked under his arm. Tears come into my eyes, and I rise and stretch out my hand to him. "Welcome."
He says, "I won't disturb you for long. A car is waiting for me."
I say, "Come into my study. It will be quieter in there."
I leave the television sound on. If Mother wakes up she will hear the detective show, as is usual every night.
My brother asks, "You're not switching off the television?"
"No. Why? We cannot hear it in the study."
I take the bottle and the two glasses. I sit down behind my desk and motion to a chair across from me.
"Have a seat."
I pick up the bottle.
"A glass?"
"Yes."
We drink. My brother says, "This was our father's study. Nothing has changed. I remember the lamp, the typewriter, the furniture, the chairs."
I smile. "What else do you remember?"
"Everything. The veranda and the living room. I know where the kitchen is, the children's room, the parents' room."
I say, 'That is not so difficult. All these houses are modeled on the same pattern."
He goes on: "There was a walnut tree outside the window of the children's room. Its branches touched the glass, and a swing hung from it. With two seats. We kept our scooters and tricycles in the shed at the back of the courtyard."
I say, 'There are still toys there, but not the same ones. These ones belong to my grandchildren."
We are silent. I refill the glasses. When he sets his down Lucas asks, "Tell me, Klaus, where are our parents?"
"Mine are dead. As for yours, I do not know."
"Why so formal with me, Klaus? I'm your brother, Lucas. Why don't you want to believe me?"
"Because my brother is dead. I would be very happy to see your papers, if you wouldn't mind."
My brother pulls a foreign passport out of his pocket and hands it to me. He says, "Don't believe too much of it. There are one or two errors in it."
I examine the passport.
"So you are called Claus, with a 'C.' Your date of birth is not the same as mine, and yet Lucas and I were twins. You are three years older than I am."
I hand him back his passport. My brother's hands are shaking, as is his voice.
"When I crossed the frontier I was fifteen. I gave a false birthdate to seem older, of legal age, in fact. I didn't want to be put under a guardianship."
"And the first name? Why the change in first names?"
"Because of you, Klaus. When I filled out the questionnaire at the border guards' office I thought of you, of your name, which had been with me for the whole length of my childhood. So instead of Lucas I wrote Claus. You did the same thing when you published your poems under the name Klaus Lucas. Why Lucas? In memory of me?"
I say, "In memory of my brother, actually. But how do you know I publish poems?"
"I write too, but not poems."
He opens his portfolio and takes out a large schoolboy's notebook, which he places on the table.
"This is my last manuscript. It's unfinished. I won't have time to complete it. I'm leaving it for you. You'll finish it. You have to finish it."
I open the notebook but he stops me with a gesture.
"No, not now. When I'm gone. There's something important I'd like to know. How did I get my wound?"
"What wound?"
"A wound close to the spinal column. A bullet wound. How did I get it?"
"How would you suppose me to know? My brother, Lucas, did not have a wound. He had a childhood illness. Poliomyelitis, I believe. I was no more than four or five when he died and cannot remember exactly. All I know is what I was told later on."
He says, "Yes, exactly. For a long time I too thought I had had a childhood illness. That's what I was told. But later I learned that I had been wounded by a bullet. Where? How? The war had only just started."
I remain silent and shrug. Lucas persists: "If your brother is dead, he must have a grave. His grave, where is it? Can you show me?"
"No, I cannot. My brother is buried in a mass grave in the town of S. " "Oh yes? And Father's grave, and Mother's grave, where are they? Can you show me?"
"No, I cannot do that either. My father did not come back from the war, and my mother is buried with my brother, Lucas, in the town of S. "
He asks, "So then I didn't die of poliomyelitis?"
"My brother didn't, no. He died in the middle of a bombing. My mother had just gone with him to the town of S., where he was to be treated at the rehabilitation center. The center was bombed and neither my brother nor my mother ever came back."
Lucas says, "If they told you that, they lied to you. Mother never went with me to the town of S. She never went there to see me. I had lived at the center with my alleged childhood illness for several years before it was bombed. And I wasn't killed in the bombing. I survived."
I shrug again. "You, yes. My brother, no. Nor my mother."
We look each other in the eye and I don't turn away.
"As you can see, we are talking about two different fates. You will have to pursue your investigation elsewhere."
He shakes his head. "No, Klaus, and you know it very well. You know I'm your brother, Lucas, but you deny it. What are you afraid of? Tell me, Klaus, what?"
I reply, "Nothing. What could I be afraid of? Were I convinced that you are my brother, I would be the happiest of men for having found you again."
He asks, "Why would I come find you if I weren't your brother?"
"I have no idea. There is also your appearance."
"My appearance?"
"Yes. Look at me and look at you. Is there the slightest physical resemblance between us? Lucas and I were true twins and looked perfectly alike. You are a head shorter and weigh sixty pounds less than me."
Lucas says, "You're forgetting my illness, my infirmity. It's a miracle that I learned to walk again."
I say, "Let us move on. Tell me what became of you after the bombing."
He says, "Since my parents didn't reclaim me, I was sent to live with an old peasant woman in the town of K. I lived with her and worked for her until I left for abroad."
"And what did you do abroad?"
"All sorts of things, and then I wrote books. And you, Klaus, how did you survive after the death of Mother and Father? From what you tell me, you were orphaned very young."
"Yes, very young. But I was fortunate. I spent only a few months at an orphanage. A kindly family took me in. I was very happy with them. It was a large family with four children, of which I married the eldest daughter, Sarah. We had two children, a girl and a boy. At present I am a grandfather, a very happy grandfather."
Lucas says, "It's odd. When I first came in, I had the impression that you lived alone."
"I am alone at the moment, that is true. But only until Christmas. I have pressing work to complete. A collection of new poems to prepare. After that I will rejoin my wife, Sarah, my children, and my grandchildren in the town of K., where we will all spend the holidays together. We have a house there that my wife inherited from her parents."
Lucas says, 'I've lived in the town of K. I know the place very well. Where's your house?"
" Central Square, across from the Grand Hotel, next to the bookseller's."
"I've just spent several months in the town of K. In fact I lived right above the bookseller's."
I say, "What a coincidence. It is a very pretty town, would you not agree? I often spent vacations there when I was a child, and my grandchildren like it very much. Especially the twins, my daughter's children."
"Twins? What are their names?"
"Klaus and Lucas, obviously."
"Obviously."
"For the time being my son has only one child, a little girl named Sarah after her grandmother, my wife. But my son is still young and he too may have other children."
Lucas says, "You're a happy man, Klaus."
I reply, "Yes, very happy. You too, I suppose, have a family."
He says, "No. I've always lived alone."
"Why?"
Lucas says, "I don't know. Perhaps because no one ever taught me how to love."
I say, "That is a shame. Children bring one a great deal of joy. I cannot imagine my life without them."
My brother stands up. "They're waiting for me in the car. I don't want to disturb you any longer."
I smile. "You haven't disturbed me. So, are you going to return to your adoptive country?"
"Of course. I have nothing more to do here. Farewell, Klaus."
I rise. "I will see you out."
At the garden gate I extend my hand to him. "Good-bye, sir. I hope that in the end you find your true family. I wish you much luck."
He says, "You keep in role to the very end, Klaus. Had I known you were so hard-hearted I would never have tried to find you. I sincerely regret that I came."
My brother climbs into the big black car, which starts up and drives him away.
While climbing the veranda stairs I slip on the icy steps and fall; my forehead slams into one of the stone edges, and the blood flowing into my eyes mixes with my tears. I want to remain lying here until I freeze and die but I can't; I have to take care of Mother tomorrow morning.
I enter the house and go into the bathroom; I wash my wound, disinfect it, bandage it, and then I return to the study to read my brother's manuscript.
The next morning Mother asks, "How did you hurt yourself, Klaus?"
I say, "On the stairs. I went down to make sure the gate was locked. I slipped on the ice."
Mother says, "You probably had too much to drink. You're a drunk, an incompetent, and an oaf. Haven't you made my tea yet? Unbelievable! And the house is cold too. Couldn't you get up half an hour earlier so that when I wake up I find the house warm and my tea made? You're a layabout, a good-for-nothing."
I say, "Here's the tea. In a few minutes the house will be warm, you'll see. The truth is, I didn't go to bed at all; I wrote all night long."
She says, "Again? The gentleman prefers to write all night long instead of worrying about the heat and the tea. You should write during the day, working like everyone else, not at night."
I say, "Yes, Mother. It would be better to work during the day. But at the printing press I got used to working nights. I can't help it. Anyway there are too many things to distract me during the day. There are errands to do, meals to make, but especially the street noise."
Mother says, "And there's me, isn't there? Say it, say it outright, that it's me who disturbs you. You can only write once your mother is in bed and asleep, right? You're always in such a hurry to see me off to bed at night. I understand. I've understood for quite a while."
I say, "It's true, Mother, I have to be completely alone when I write. I need silence and solitude."
She says, "As far as I can tell I'm neither very noisy nor very obtrusive. Just say the word and I won't come out of my room anymore. Once I'm in my grave I won't bother you any longer, you won't have to run errands or make the meals anymore, you'll have nothing to do but write. There at least I'll find my son Lucas, who was never mean to me, who never wished me dead and gone. I'llbe happy there, and no one will yell at me for anything."
I say, "Mother, I'm not yelling at you, and you don't disturb me in the least. I'm happy to run errands and make meals, but I need the night to write in. My poems have been our only income since I left the printing press."
She says, "Precisely. You should never have left. The printing press was a normal, reasonable job."
I say, "Mother, you know very well that I was forced to leave my job because of illness. I couldn't go on without ruining my health completely."
Mother doesn't answer; she sits down in front of the television. But she starts in again at the evening meal.
"The house is falling to bits. The downspout has come loose and the water pours out all over the garden; it'll come down inside the house soon. Weeds are taking over the garden and the rooms are all black with smoke from your cigarettes. The kitchen is yellow with it, as are the living room windows. Let's not even talk about the study or the children's room, which are both filthy with smoke. One can't even breathe in this house, not even in the garden, where the flowers have been killed off by the pestilence from inside."
I say, "Yes, Mother, calm down, Mother. There are no flowers in the garden because it's winter. I'll have the bedrooms and kitchen repainted. I'mglad you reminded me. By spring I'llhave everything repainted and the downspout fixed."
After taking her sleeping pill Mother calms down and goes to bed.
I sit in front of the television, watching a detective movie as I do every night, and drink. Then I go into my study, reread the last pages of my brother's manuscript, and begin to write.
There were always four of us at table: Father, Mother, and the two of us.
Mother sang all day long in the kitchen, the garden, and the courtyard. She also sang us to sleep at night in our room.
Father did not sing. He whistled sometimes while chopping wood for the kitchen stove, and we listened to his typewriter as he wrote in the evening and sometimes until late at night.
It was a sound as pleasant and comforting as music, as Mother's sewing machine, as the noise of the dishes being done, the singing of blackbirds in the garden, the wind in the leaves of the wild vine on the veranda or in the branches of the walnut tree in the courtyard.
The sun, the wind, night, the moon, the stars, the clouds, rain, snow-everything was a miracle. We were afraid of nothing, neither shadows nor the stories adults told among themselves. Stories of war. We were four years old.
One night Father comes home dressed in a uniform. He hangs his coat and belt on the rack near the living room door. There is a revolver holstered on his belt.
During dinner Father says, "I must go to another town. War has been declared and I've been called up."
We say, "We didn't know you were a soldier, Father. You're a journalist, not a soldier."
He says, "In wartime all men are soldiers, even journalists. Especially journalists. I have to observe and describe what happens at the front. It's called being a war correspondent."
We ask, "Why do you have a revolver?"
"Because I'm an officer. Soldiers have rifles, officers revolvers."
Father says to Mother, "Put the children to bed. I have something to talk to you about."
Mother says to us, "Off to bed. I'llcome tell you a story. Say good-bye to your father."
We kiss Father and then go to our room, but we immediately come back. We sit silently in the hallway just behind the living room door.
Father says, "I'mgoing to go live with her. It's war and I have no time to waste. I love her."
Mother asks, "What about the children?"
Father says, "She's expecting a child as well. That's why I couldn't remain silent."
"Do you want a divorce?"
"It's not the time for that. After the war we'll see. Meanwhile I'm going to recognize the baby. I might not make it back alive. One never knows."
Mother asks, "You don't love us anymore?"
Father says, "That's beside the point. I'llkeep on taking care of the boys and you. But I also love another woman. Can't you understand?"
"No. I can't understand and I don't want to."
We hear a gunshot. We open the living room door. It is Mother who has fired. She has Father's revolver in her hand. She is still shooting. Father is on the ground and Mother keeps on shooting. Beside me Lucas falls too. Mother throws down the revolver, shrieks, and kneels next to Lucas.
I run out of the house and down the street shouting "Help!" Some people grab me, bring me back to the house, try to calm me. They also try to calm Mother, but she keeps shrieking, "No, no, no!"
The living room is filled with people. The police arrive as well as two ambulances. They bring us all to the hospital.
In the hospital they give me an injection to make me fall asleep because I am still shouting.
The next day the doctor says, "He's fine. He wasn't hurt. He can go home."
The nurse says, "Go home where? There's no one at his house. And he's only four."
The doctor says, "Go see the social worker."
The nurse brings me to an office. The social worker is an old woman with her hair in a bun. She asks me questions:
"Do you have a grandmother? An aunt? A neighbor who's fond ofyou?"
I ask, "Where's Lucas?"
She says, "Here, in the hospital. He's hurt."
I say, "I want to see him."
She says, "He's unconscious."
"What does that mean?" "He can't talk right now."
"Is he dead?"
"No, but he must rest."
"And my mother?"
"Your mother's fine. But you can't see her either."
"Why? Is she hurt too?"
"No, she's sleeping."
"And my father's asleep too?"
"Yes, he's sleeping too."
She strokes my hair.
I ask, "How come they're all asleep and I'm not?"
She says, "That's how it is. These things happen sometimes. A whole family goes to sleep and the one who doesn't is left all alone."
"I don't want to be alone. I want to sleep too, like Lucas, like Mother, like Father."
She says, "Someone has to stay awake to wait for them and to take care of them when they come back, when they wake up."
"They'll all wake up?"
"Some of them, yes. At least we hope so."
We are quiet for a moment. She says, "You don't know anyone who could look after you while we wait?"
I ask, "Wait for what?"
"For when one of them comes back."
I say, "No, no one. And I don't want to be looked after. I want to go home."
She says, "You can't live in your house by yourself at your age. If you don't have anyone, I have to send you to an orphanage."
I say, "I don't care. If I can't live at our house I don't care where I go."
A woman comes into the office and says, "I've come for the little boy. I want to take him home with me. He doesn't have anyone else. I know his family."
The social worker tells me to go for a walk in the corridor. There are people in the corridor sitting on benches, talking. They're almost all dressed in bathrobes.
They say:
"How horrible."
"It's a pity, such a nice family."
"She was in the right."
"Men. That's men for you."
"They're a disgrace, these young women."
"And the war breaking out and all."
"There really are other things to worry about."
The woman who said "I want to take him home with me" comes out of the office. She says to me, "You can come with me. My name is Antonia. And you? Are you Lucas or Klaus?"
I offer my hand to Antonia. 'I'm Klaus."
We get on a bus and then walk. We come to a little room where there is a big bed and a smaller one, a crib.
Antonia says to me, "You're still little enough to sleep in that bed, aren't you?"
I say, "Yes."
I lie down in the crib. There's just enough room; my feet touch the bars.
Antonia goes on, 'The little bed is for the baby I'm expecting. It will be your little brother or sister."
I say, "I already have a brother. I don't want another one. Nor a sister either."
Antonia is lying on the big bed and says, "Come, come next to me."
I get out of my bed and go up to hers. She takes my hand and puts it on her stomach. "Can you feel it? It's moving. It will be with us soon."
She pulls me against herself in the bed and holds me.
"I hope that he'll be as handsome as you."
Then she puts me back in the little bed.
Each time Antonia held me I could feel the baby moving, and I thought it was Lucas. I was wrong. It was a little girl who came out of Antonia's stomach.
I am sitting in the kitchen. The two old women told me to stay here. I hear Antonia's cries. I do not move. The two old women come in from time to time to heat water and to say to me, "Sit there quietly."
Later one of the old women tells me, "You can go in."
I go into the room; Antonia holds her arms out, hugs me, and laughs. "It's a little girl. Look. A pretty little girl. Your sister."
I look inside the crib. A little crimson-colored thing is screaming. I hold her hand, count, and stroke her fingers one by one. She has ten. I stick her left thumb in her mouth and she stops crying.
Antonia smiles at me. "We'll call her Sarah. Do you like that name?"
I say, "Yes, the name doesn't matter. It isn't important. She's my little sister, isn't she?"
"Yes, your own little sister."
"And Lucas's too?"
"Yes, Lucas's too."
Antonia starts to cry. I ask her, "Where will I sleep now that the little bed is taken?"
She says, "In the kitchen. I asked my mother to make a bed for you in the kitchen."
I ask, "I can't sleep in your room anymore?"
Antonia says, "It's better for you to sleep in the kitchen. The baby will cry a lot and wake everyone up all night long."
I say, "If she cries and bothers you, all you have to do is put her thumb in her mouth. The left thumb, like me."
I go back into the kitchen. There's only one old woman there, Antonia's mother. She gives me honey sandwiches to eat. She makes me drink some milk. Then she says, "Get into bed, my little one. Choose whichever one you like best."
There are two mattresses on the floor with pillows and blankets. I choose the mattress under the window; that way I can look at the stars and the sky.
Antonia's mother lies down on the other mattress. Before going to sleep she prays: "Lord almighty, help me. The child doesn't even have a father. My daughter with a fatherless child! If my husband even knew! I lied to him. I hid the truth from him. And the other child, which isn't even hers. And this whole sad business. What must I do to save this sinner?"
Grandmother mumbles and I fall asleep, happy to be near Antonia and Sarah.
Antonia's mother rises early in the morning. She sends me off to run errands at a neighborhood store. All I have to do is hand over a list and give them money.
Antonia's mother cooks the meals. She bathes the baby and changes it several times a day. She does the laundry, which she hangs on cords over our heads in the kitchen. She mumbles the whole time. Prayers, maybe.
She does not stay long. Ten days after Sarah's birth she leaves with her suitcase and her prayers.
I'm happy all alone in the kitchen. In the morning I get up early to fetch bread and milk. When Antonia wakes up I go into her room with a bottle for Sarah and coffee for Antonia. Sometimes I give Sarah her bottle; afterward I can watch her being bathed, and I try to make her laugh with the toys that we have bought for her, Antonia and I.
Sarah becomes prettier and prettier. She grows hair and teeth, she knows how to laugh, and she has learned to suck her left thumb.
Unfortunately, Antonia has to go back to work because her parents no longer send her money.
Antonia goes away every evening. She works in a nightclub where she sings and dances. She comes back late at night and in the morning she is tired; she can't take care of Sarah.
A neighbor comes every morning; she gives Sarah her bath, then sets her down with her toys in her pen in the kitchen. I play with her while the neighbor makes lunch and washes the laundry. After doing the dishes the neighbor leaves, and after that I look after everything if Antonia is still asleep.
In the afternoon I take Sarah for walks in her carriage. We go to parks where there are playgrounds; I let Sarah run around in the grass or play in the sand, and I balance her on swings.
When I am six years old I have to go to school. Antonia comes with me on the first day. She speaks with the teacher and then leaves me there alone. When class is over I run home to see if everything's all right and to take Sarah for a walk.
We go farther and farther afield, and it is because of this, completely by chance, that I find myself on my street, the street where I lived with my parents.
I don't mention it to Antonia or anyone else. But each day I walk by the house with green shutters, stop for a moment, and cry. Sarah cries with me.
The house is abandoned. The shutters are closed, the chimney makes no smoke. The front yard is taken over by weeds; in the back, in the courtyard, the nuts have almost certainly fallen from the tree and no one has gathered them.
One evening when Sarah's asleep I leave the house. I run through the streets noiselessly and in total darkness. The lights in the town are out because of the war; the windows of the houses have been carefully blacked out. The light of the stars is enough, and all the streets, all the alleys have been engraved in my head.
I climb the fence, go around the house, and sit at the foot of the walnut tree. In the grass my hands touch nuts that are hard and dry. I fill my pockets. The next day I come back with a sack and gather as many nuts as I can carry. When she sees the sack in the kitchen Antonia asks me, "Where did these nuts come from?"
I say, "From our garden."
"What garden? We don't have a garden."
"The garden of the house where I lived before."
Antonia takes me on her knees. "How did you find it? How do you even remember? You were only four years old at the time."
I say, "And now I'm eight. Tell me, Antonia, what happened? Where did they all go? What happened to them? Mother, Father, Lucas?"
Antonia cries and squeezes me very tight. "I hoped you'd forget about all that. I've never spoken to you about it because I wanted you to forget everything."
I say, "I haven't forgotten anything. Every night when I look at the sky I think about them. They're all up there, aren't they? They're all dead."
Antonia says, "No, not all of them. Only your father. Yes, your father is dead."
"And my mother, where is she?"
"In a hospital."
"And my brother, Lucas?" "In a house of rehabilitation. In the town of S., near the border."
"What happened to him?"
"A bullet ricocheted into him."
"What bullet?"
Antonia pushes me off and stands up. "Leave me alone, Klaus. Leave me alone, I beg you."
She goes into the room, lies down on the bed, and keeps sobbing. Sarah starts to cry too. I pick her up and sit on the edge of Antonia's bed.
"Don't cry, Antonia. Tell me everything. It would be better if I knew everything. I'm big enough now to know the truth. Asking oneself questions is worse than knowing."
Antonia takes Sarah, lays her down beside her, and says to me, "Lie down on the other side. Let's let her fall asleep. She mustn't hear what I'm going to tell you."
We remain there, the three of us, lying on the bed for a long time in silence. Antonia strokes Sarah's hair and mine by turns. When we hear Sarah breathing regularly we know she has fallen asleep. Antonia, looking up at the ceiling, begins to speak. She tells me that my mother killed my father.
I say, "I remember the gunshots and the ambulances. And Lucas. Did my mother shoot Lucas too?"
"No, Lucas was wounded by a stray bullet. It hit him right next to the spine. He was unconscious for months and it was thought that he'd be crippled forever. Now there's a hope that he'll heal completely."
I ask, "Is Mother in the town of S. too, like Lucas?"
Antonia says, "No, your mother is here, in this town, in a psychiatric hospital."
I ask, "Psychiatric? What does that mean? Is she sick or is she insane?"
Antonia says, "Insanity is an illness like any other."
"Can I go see her?"
"I don't know. You shouldn't. It's too sad."
I think for a moment and then ask, "Why did my mother go insane? Why did she kill my father?"
Antonia says, "Because your father loved me. He loved us both, me and Sarah."
I say, "Sarah wasn't born yet. So it was because of you. Everything happened because of you. Without you the happiness of the house with green shutters would have lasted through the war, even after the war. Without you my father wouldn't be dead, my mother wouldn't be insane, my little brother wouldn't be a cripple, and I wouldn't be alone."
Antonia says nothing. I leave the room.
I go to the kitchen and take the money Antonia has set aside for groceries. Every night she leaves the money for the next day's groceries on the kitchen table. She never asks me for receipts.
I leave the house. I walk to a big wide street trafficked by buses and streetcars. I ask an old lady who is waiting for the bus on a corner: "Excuse me, ma'am, which is the bus that goes to the station?"
"Which station, my little one? There are three of them."
"The closest."
'Take streetcar number five, then bus number three. The conductor will tell you where to transfer."
I come to an immense station filled with people. Everyone is jostling, shouting, swearing. I get into the line waiting in front of the ticket booth. We move slowly. When at last it's my turn I say, "A ticket for the town of S."
The man says, 'The train to S. doesn't leave from here. You have to go to South Station."
I get on more buses and streetcars. It's night when I reach South Station and there are no more trains to S. until tomorrow morning. I go to the waiting room and find a seat on a bench. There are a lot of people, it smells bad, and the pipe and cigarette smoke stings my eyes. I try to sleep, but as soon as I close my eyes I see Sarah alone in the room, Sarah coming into the kitchen, Sarah crying because I'm not there. She is left alone all night because Antonia has to go to work and I'm sitting in a waiting room on my way to another town, the town where my brother, Lucas, lives.
I want to go to the town where my brother lives and I want to find him; then we will go look for my mother together. Tomorrow morning I will go to the town of S. I will.
I can't sleep. I find ration cards in my pockets; without them Antonia and Sarah will have nothing to eat.
I must go back.
I run. My gym shoes make no noise. In the morning I am near where we live; I line up for bread, then for milk, and go home.
Antonia is sitting in the kitchen. She takes me in her arms. "Where were you? Sarah and I cried all night long. You must never leave us again."
I say, "I won't leave you again. Here's the bread and the milk. Some of the money's not there. I went to the station. Then another station. I wanted to go to the town of S."
Antonia says, "We'll go there soon, together. We'll find your brother again."
I say, "I would also like to see my mother."
One Sunday afternoon we go to the psychiatric hospital. Antonia and Sarah wait in the reception room. A nurse leads me into a little visiting room furnished with a table and a couple of armchairs. Under the window is a small table with green plants on it. I sit and wait.
The nurse comes back holding the arm of a woman in a bathrobe whom she helps sit down in one of the armchairs.
"Say hello to your mother, Klaus."
I look at the woman. She is fat and old. Her half-gray hair is pulled back and fastened behind her head with a bit of string. I notice this when she turns around to take a long look at the closed door. Then she asks the nurse, "And Lucas? Where is he?"
The nurse answers, "Lucas couldn't come, but Klaus is here. Say hello to your mother, Klaus."
I say, "Good day, ma'am."
She asks, "Why are you alone? Why isn't Lucas with you?"
The nurse says, "Lucas will come too, soon."
Mother looks at me. Big tears start to roll down from her pale blue eyes. She says, "Lies. Always lies."
Her nose runs. The nurse wipes it. Mother lets her head fall to her chest. She says nothing more and doesn't look at me again.
The nurse says, "We're tired, we're going back to bed. Do you want to kiss your mother, Klaus?"
I shake my head and stand up.
The nurse says, "You can find your way back to the reception room on your own, can't you?"
I say nothing and leave the room. I walk by Antonia and Sarah without a word, leave the building, and wait outside the door. Antonia holds me by the shoulder and Sarah takes my hand, but I shrug them off and put my hands in my pockets. We walk to the bus station without saying a word.
When Antonia leaves for work that evening I say, "The woman I saw is not my mother. I'm not going to go see her again. It's you who should go see her to realize what you've done."
She asks, "Will you never be able to forgive me, Klaus?"
I don't answer. She adds, "If you knew how much I love you."
I say, "You shouldn't. You aren't my mother. It's my mother who should love me, but she loves only Lucas. And it's your fault."
The front line approaches. The town is bombed night and day. We spend a lot of time in the basement. We've brought down mattresses and bed covers. At first our neighbors come too, but one day they disappear. Antonia says they've been deported.
Antonia is out of work. The nightclub where she sang doesn't exist anymore. The school is closed. It's very hard to find food, even with ration cards. Luckily Antonia has a friend who sometimes comes and brings us bread, condensed milk, biscuits, and chocolate. At night the friend stays with us since he can't go home because of the curfew. On those nights Antonia sleeps with me in the kitchen. I hold her and speak to her about Lucas, who we will find again soon, and we fall asleep looking at the stars.
One morning Antonia wakes us early. She tells us to dress warmly, to put on several shirts and sweaters, our coats, and several pairs of socks since we're going on a long trip. She fills two suitcases with the rest of our clothes.
Antonia's friend comes for us in a car. We put the suitcases in the trunk. Antonia sits up front, Sarah and I in the back.
The car stops at the entrance to a cemetery almost across from our old house. The friend stays in the car; Antonia walks quickly, pulling Sarah and me by the hand.
We stop in front of a grave with a wooden cross upon which my father's name is written-a double name made up of mine and my brother's: Klaus-Lucas T.
Among several faded bouquets on the grave, one, of white carnations, is almost fresh.
I say to Antonia, "My mother used to plant carnations all over the garden. They were my father's favorite flower."
Antonia says, "I know. Say good-bye to your father, children."
Sarah says sweetly, "Good-bye, Father."
I say, "He wasn't Sarah's father. He was only our father, Lucas and me."
Antonia says, "I've already explained it to you. Didn't you understand? Too bad. Come, we have no time to waste."
We return to the car, which drives us to South Station. Antonia says thank you and good-bye to her friend.
We line up in front of the ticket booth. It's only then that I dare to ask Antonia, "Where are we going?"
She says, 'To my parents'. But first we're going to stop in the town of S. to take your brother Lucas with us."
I hold her hand and kiss her. 'Thank you, Antonia."
She withdraws her hand. "Don't thank me. I only know the name of the town; I can't remember what the rehabilitation center was called."
When Antonia pays for the tickets I realize that with the grocery money I couldn't have afforded my trip to the town of S.
The trip is uncomfortable. There are too many people; everyone is fleeing from the front. We have only one seat for the three of us; the one who sits takes Sarah on his knees while the other remains standing. We exchange places several times during the trip, which should have taken five hours but lasts more than twelve because of air raids. The train stops in the open countryside; the travelers get out and lie down in the fields. Whenever it happens I stretch my coat out on the ground, lay Sarah down on it, and crouch over her to protect her from bullets, bombs, and shrapnel.
We arrive at the town of S. late at night. We take a hotel room. Sarah and I immediately get into the big bed; Antonia goes back down to the bar to ask for information and does not return until morning.
Now she has the address of the center where Lucas should be. We go the following day.
It's a building in the middle of a park. Half of it has collapsed. It is empty We see the bare walls blackened by smoke.
The center was bombed three weeks ago.
Antonia makes inquiries. She questions the local authorities and tries to find survivors from the center. She finds the director's address. We go see her.
She says, "I remember little Lucas very well. He was the worst resident in the house. Always making trouble, always getting on people's nerves. A truly unbearable child, and incorrigible. No one ever came to see him, no one was interested in him. If I remember rightly, there was some sort of family tragedy. There is no more I can tell you."
Antonia insists: "Did you see him again after the bombing?"
The director says, "I myself was wounded in the bombing, but no one cares about me. A lot of people come to talk to me, asking questions about their children. But no one cares about me. And I spent two weeks in the hospital after the bombing. The shock, you understand. I was responsible for all those children."
Antonia asks again: "Think back. What can you tell us about Lucas? Did you see him again after the bombing? What happened to the surviving children?"
The director says, "I didn't see him again. I tell you, I was hurt too. The children who were still alive were sent back home. The dead were buried in the town cemetery. Those who weren't dead and whose addresses were unknown were sent away. To villages, to farms, to small towns. Those people are meant to return the children after the war."
Antonia consults the list of the town's dead.
She says to me, "Lucas isn't dead. We'll find him."
We get back on the train. We come to a little station; we walk to the center of town. Antonia carries the sleeping Sarah in her arms. I carry the suitcases.
We stop at Central Square. Antonia rings a doorbell and an old woman answers the door. I already know the old woman. It's Antonia's mother. She says, "God be praised! You're safe and sound. I was terribly scared. I prayed for you constantly."
She takes my face in her hands.
"And you came with them?"
I say, "I had no choice. I have to look after Sarah."
"Of course you have to look after Sarah."
She squeezes me, kisses me, then takes Sarah in her arms.
"How pretty you are, how big you are!"
Sarah says, 'I'm sleepy. I want to sleep with Klaus."
We're put to bed in the same room, the room Antonia slept in when she was a child.
Sarah calls Antonia's parents Grandmother and Grandfather; I call them Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Andreas. Uncle Andreas is a priest, and he wasn't called up because he is ill. His head shakes all the time as though he's constantly saying "no."
Uncle Andreas takes me for walks through the streets in the little town, sometimes until dusk. He says, 'I'd always wished for a son. A boy would have understood my love for this town. He would have understood the beauty of these streets, these houses, that sky. Yes, the beauty of this sky that is to be found nowhere else. Look. There are no names for the colors of that sky."
I say, "It's like a dream."
"A dream, yes. I had only one daughter. She left early, very young. She came back with a little girl and with you. You're not her son, nor my grandson, but you're the boy I've been waiting for."
I say, "But I have to go back to my mother when she's better, and I also have to find my brother, Lucas."
"Yes, of course. I hope you find them. But if you don't, you can stay with us forever. You can study and then choose the occupation that pleases you. What would you like to do when you grow up?"
"I'd like to marry Sarah."
Uncle Andreas laughs. "You can't marry Sarah. You're brother and sister. Marriage between you is impossible. It's against the law."
I say, "So I'll just live with her. No one can forbid me from keeping on living with her."
"You'll meet many other young girls you'll want to marry."
I say, "I don't think so."
Soon it becomes dangerous to walk in the streets, and at night it's forbidden to go out. What to do during the air-raid warning and bombings? During the day I give lessons to Sarah. I teach her to read and write and I make her do math exercises. There are a lot of books in the house. In the attic there are even children's books and Antonia's schoolbooks.
Uncle Andreas teaches me to play chess. When the women go to bed we begin a game and play late into the night.
At first Uncle Andreas always wins. When he begins to lose, he also loses his taste for the game.
He says to me, "You're too good for me, my boy. I don't want to play anymore. I don't want anything; all my desires have left me. I don't even have interesting dreams anymore, only boring ones."
I try to teach Sarah to play chess, but she doesn't like it. She gets tired and annoyed; she prefers simpler parlor games, and above all that I read her stories, it doesn't matter which ones, even a story I've read twenty times already.
When the war moves off into the other country, Antonia says, "We can go home to the capital."
Her mother says, "You'll starve to death. Leave Sarah here for a while. At least until you find work and a decent place to live."
Uncle Andreas says, "Leave the boy here too. There are good schools in our town. When we find his brother, we'll take him in too."
I say, "I have to return to the capital to find out what happened to my mother."
Sarah says, "If Klaus goes back to the capital, I'm going too."
Antonia says, "I'm going alone. As soon as I've found an apartment I'll come get you."
She kisses Sarah and then me. She says in my ear: "I know that you'll look after her. I trust you."
Antonia leaves and we stay with Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Andreas. We're clean and well fed, but we can't go out of the house because of the foreign soldiers and the general disorder. Aunt Mathilda is afraid something will happen to us.
We each have our own room now. Sarah sleeps in the room that had been her mother's; I sleep in the guest room.
At night I draw a chair up to the window and watch the square. It's almost empty. Only a few drunks and soldiers wander through it. Sometimes a limping child, younger than me, it seems, crosses it. He plays a tune on his harmonica; he goes into one bar, leaves, and goes into another. Around midnight, when all the bars close, the child heads westward through the town, still playing his harmonica.
One-night I point out the child with the harmonica to Uncle Andreas.
"Why isn't he forbidden from going out late at night?"
"I've been watching him for the past year. He lives with his grandmother on the other end of town. She's a very poor woman. The child is probably an orphan. He plays in bars to earn a bit of money. People are used to seeing him around. No one will harm him. He's under the protection of the whole town, and under the protection of God."
I say, "He must be happy."
Uncle says, "Definitely."
Three months later Antonia comes for us. Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Andreas don't want us to go.
Aunt Mathilda says, "Let the little girl stay. She's happy here and has everything she needs."
Uncle Andreas says, "At least leave the boy. Now that things are settling down we could start making inquiries about his brother."
Antonia says, "You can start making inquiries without him, Father. I'm taking them both. Their place is with me."
In the capital we now have a big four-bedroom apartment. In addition to these rooms there is a living room and a bathroom.
On the evening of our arrival I tell Sarah a story and stroke her hair until she falls asleep. I hear Antonia and her friend talking in the living room.
I put on my gym shoes, go down the stairs, and run through the familiar streets. The streets, side streets, and alleys are lit now; there is no more war, no more blackout, no more curfew.
I stop in front of my house; the light is on in the kitchen. At first I think that strangers have moved in. The light in the living room also goes on. It's summer and the windows are open. I go nearer. Someone is speaking, a man's voice. Stealthily I look in through the window. My mother, sitting in an armchair, is listening to the radio.
For a week I come to observe my mother, sometimes several times a day. She goes about her business, wandering from room to room, spending most of her time in the kitchen. She also tends the garden, planting and watering the flowers. At night she spends a long time reading in the parents' bedroom, whose window looks out onto the courtyard. Every other day a nurse arrives on a bicycle; she stays for around twenty minutes, chatting with Mother, taking her blood pressure, sometimes giving her an injection.
Once a day, in the morning, a young woman comes with a full basket and leaves with it empty. I continue to do the shopping for Antonia even though she can do it herself and even has a friend to help her.
Mother has grown thinner. She no longer looks like an unkempt old woman the way she did at the hospital. Her face has reassumed its former softness while her hair has its color and brightness again. It is done up in a thick russet bun.
One morning Sarah asks me, "Where do you go, Klaus? Where do you go so often? Even at night. I came into your room last night because I'd had a nightmare. You weren't there and I was scared."
"Why don't you go to Antonia's room when you're scared?"
"I can't. Because of her friend. He sleeps here almost every night. Where do you go so often, Klaus?"
"I just go for walks. Around town."
Sarah says, "You go to the empty house, you go cry in front of your empty house, don't you? Why don't you take me with you?"
I say to her, 'The house isn't empty anymore, Sarah. My mother has come back. She's living in our house again, and I have to go back too."
Sarah begins to cry. "You're going to live with your mother? You're not going to live with us anymore? What will I do without you, Klaus?"
I kiss her on the eyes. "And me? What will I do without you, Sarah?"
We're both crying; we're lying tangled together on the living room sofa. We hold each other more and more tightly, laced to each other with our arms, with our legs. Tears are flowing down our faces, in our hair, on our necks, in our ears. We're shaking with sobs, with trembling, with cold.
I feel wetness in my pants between my legs.
"What are you doing? What's going on?"
Antonia separates us, pushes us far apart, and sits down between us. She shakes my shoulder.
"What have you done?"
I cry out, "I didn't do anything bad to Sarah."
Antonia takes Sarah in her arms.
"Good God. I should have expected something like this."
Sarah says, "I think I peed in my pants."
She throws her arms around her mother's neck.
"Mama, Mama! Klaus is going to live with his mother."
Antonia stammers, "What? What?"
I say, "Yes, Antonia, it's my duty to go live with her."
Antonia cries out, "No!"
Then she says, "Yes, you should go back to your mother."
The next morning Antonia and Sarah go with me. We stop on the corner of the street, my street. Antonia kisses me and hands me a key.
"Here's the key to the apartment. You can keep coming whenever you want. I'll keep your room for you."
I say, "Thank you, Antonia. I'll come see you as often as possible."
Sarah says nothing. She's pale and her eyes are red. She looks at the sky, the blue cloudless sky of a summer morning. I look at Sarah, this little girl of seven, my first love. I will have no other.
I stop on the other side of the street in front of the house. I put down my suitcase and sit on it. I see the young girl arrive with her basket and then leave. I remain seated; I don't have the strength to stand up. Around noon I begin to get hungry; I'm dizzy and my stomach hurts.
In the afternoon the nurse arrives on her bicycle. I cross the street at a run with my suitcase and grab the nurse by the arm before she has entered the garden.
"Ma'am, excuse me, ma'am. I was waiting for you."
She asks, "What's the matter? Are you sick?"
I say, "No, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of going into the house."
"Why do you want to go into the house?"
"It's my house, my mother's. I'm afraid of my mother. I haven't seen her for seven years."
I stutter and tremble. The nurse says, 'Take it easy. You must be Klaus. Or are you Lucas?"
'I'm Klaus. Lucas isn't here. I don't know where he is. No one does. That's why I'm afraid of seeing my mother. Alone, without Lucas."
She says, "Yes, I understand. You did well to wait for me. Your mother is convinced she killed Lucas. We'll go in together. Follow me."
The nurse rings and my mother shouts from the kitchen, "Come in, it's open!"
We cross the veranda and stop in the living room. The nurse says, "I've got a big surprise for you."
My mother appears at the kitchen door. She wipes her hands on her apron, looks at me wide-eyed, and whispers, "Lucas?"
The nurse says, "No, it's Klaus. But Lucas will probably come back too."
Mother says, "No, Lucas won't come back. I killed him. I killed my little boy and he's never coming back."
Mother sits down in one of the living room armchairs and trembles. The nurse rolls up the sleeve of Mother's bathrobe and gives her an injection. My mother lets her do it. The nurse says, "Lucas isn't dead. He was transferred to a rehabilitation center, I told you already."
I say, "Yes, to a center in the town of S. I went to look for him. The center was destroyed in a bombing, but Lucas isn't on the list of the dead."
Mother asks very softly, "You're not lying, Klaus?"
"No, Mother, I'm not lying."
The nurse says, "What's certain is that you didn't kill him."
Mother is calm now. She says, "We have to go there. Who did you go with, Klaus?"
"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, Mother. 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."
I do not go back to Gaspar's. From then on I spend all my free time alone at home with Mother except for the hours when I walk aimlessly around the cemetery or the town.
At the age of forty-five I become the head of another printing press, this one belonging to a publishing house. I no longer work at night but from eight in the morning to six in the evening with two hours off at lunch. My health is already very bad at this point. My lungs are filled with lead and my badly oxygenated blood is poisoned. This is called saturnism, a disease of printers and typesetters. I have stomachaches and spells of nausea. The doctor tells me to drink a lot of milk and get a lot of fresh air. I don't like milk. I also suffer from insomnia and great physical and nervous exhaustion. After thirty years of night work it is impossible for me to get used to sleeping at night.
At the new printing press we produce all kinds of texts- poems, prose, novels. The director of the publishing house often comes in to oversee our work. One day he examines my own poems, which he has found on a shelf.
"What's this? Whose poems are these? Who is this Klaus Lucas?"
I stammer because usually I have no right to print personal texts.
"They're mine. They're my poems. I print them up after work."
"You mean to say that you're Klaus Lucas, the author of these poems?"
"Yes."
He asks, "When did you write them?"
I say, "Over the past couple of years. I wrote many others, before, when I was young."
He says, "Bring me everything you have. Come to my office tomorrow morning with everything you've written."
The next morning I go to the director's office with my poems. They add up to several hundred pages, maybe a thousand.
The director hefts the package.
"All this? You've never tried to publish them?"
I say, "I never gave it a thought. I wrote for myself, to pass the time, to amuse myself."
The director laughs. 'To amuse yourself? Your poems aren't what you might call amusing, exactly. Not the ones I've read, anyway. But maybe you were more lighthearted when you were young."
I say, "When I was young, certainly not."
He says, 'True. There wasn't much to be lighthearted about in those days. But a lot of things have changed since the revolution."
I say, "Not for me. Nothing has changed for me."
He says, "At least now we can publish your poems."
I say, "If you think it's a good idea, publish them. But I beg you not to give my address or tell my real name to anyone."
Lucas came back and left again. I sent him away. He left me his unfinished manuscript. I am trying to complete it.
The man from the embassy didn't announce he was coming. Two days after my brother's visit he rings my doorbell at nine in the evening. Luckily Mother has already gone to bed. The man has curly hair and he is thin and pale. I usher him into my study.
He says, "I don't speak your language very well, so forgive me for being blunt. Your brother, that is to say your alleged brother, Claus T., committed suicide today. He threw himself under a train at East Station at two-fifteen this afternoon, just as he was being repatriated. He left a letter for you at our embassy."
The man hands me an envelope on which is written, 'To the attention of Klaus T."
I open the envelope. On a postcard I read: "I would like to be buried beside our parents."
I hand the card to the man from the embassy.
"He wants to be buried here."
The man reads the card and asks, "Why did he sign it Lucas? Was he really your brother?"
I say, "No. But he believed it so much that I can't refuse him this."
The man says, "How strange. Two days ago, after his visit with you, we asked him if he had found anyone from his family. He said no."
I say, "It's the truth. We weren't related at all."
The man says, "But you'll still permit him to be buried beside your parents?"
I say, "Yes. Beside my father. He's the only one in my family who's dead."
We follow the hearse, the man from the embassy and I. It's snowing. I'm carrying a bouquet of white carnations and another of red. I bought them at a florist. There are no more carnations in our garden, even in summer. Mother plants all sorts of flowers, but not carnations.
A new grave is dug next to my father's. My brother's coffin is lowered into it, and a cross with a different spelling of my name is erected over it.
I come to the cemetery every day. I look at the cross inscribed with Claus's name and I wonder if I shouldn't replace it with another bearing the name of Lucas.
I also think that the four of us will soon be reunited. Once Mother is dead there will be no reason for me to go on. Not a bad idea, the train.