Agota Kristof: The Book of Lies

We put our hands over a flame. We cut our thighs, our arms, our chests with a knife and pour alcohol on our wounds. Each time we say:

"It doesn't hurt."

After a while, we really don't feel anything anymore. It's someone else who gets hurt, someone else who gets burned, who gets cut, who feels pain.

We don't cry anymore.

When Grandmother is angry and shouts at us, we say:

"Stop shouting, Grandmother, hit us instead."

When she hits us, we say:

"More, Grandmother! Look, we are turning the other cheek, as it is written in the Bible. Strike the other cheek too, Grandmother."

She answers:

"May the devil take you with your Bible and your cheeks!"

We are lying on the corner seat in the kitchen. Our heads are touching. We aren't asleep yet, but our eyes are shut. Someone pushes at the door. We open our eyes. We are blinded by the beam of a flashlight. We ask:

"Who's there?"

A man's voice answers:

"No fear. You no fear. Two you are, or I too much drink?"

He laughs, lights the oil lamp on the table, and turns off his flashlight. We can see him properly now. He's a foreign soldier, a private. He says:

"I orderly of captain. You do what there?"

We say:

"We live here. It's Grandmother's house."

"You grandchildren of Witch? I never before see you. You be here since when?"

"For two weeks."

"Ah! I go on leave my home, in my village. Laugh much."

We ask:

"How is it you can speak our language?"

He says:

"My mother born here, in your country. Come to work in our country, waitress in café. Meet my father, marry with. When I small, my mother speak me your language. Your country and my country be friends. Fight the enemy together. You two come from where?"

"From the Big Town."

"Big Town, much danger. Bang! Bang!"

"Yes, and nothing left to eat."

"Here good to eat. Apples, pigs, chickens, everything. You stay long time? Or only holidays?"

"We'll stay until the end of the war."

"War soon end. You sleep there? Seat bare, hard, cold. Witch no want take you in room?"

"We don't want to sleep in Grandmother's room. She snores and smells. We had blankets and sheets, but she sold them."

The orderly takes some hot water from the cauldron on the stove and says:

"I must clean room. Captain also return leave tonight or tomorrow morning."

He goes out. A few minutes later, he comes back. He brings us two gray army blankets.

"No sell that, old Witch. If she too mean, you tell me. I bang-bang, I kill."

He laughs again. He covers us up, turns out the lamp, and leaves.

During the day we hide the blankets in the attic.

Grandmother says to us:

"Sons of a bitch!"

People say to us:

"Sons of a Witch! Sons of a whore!"

Others say:

"Idiots! Hoodlums! Snot-nosed kids! Asses! Slobs! Pigs! Devils! Bastards! Little shits! Punks! Murderers-to-be!"

When we hear these words, our faces get red, our ears buzz, our eyes sting, our knees tremble.

We don't want to blush or tremble anymore, we want to get used to abuse, to hurtful words.

We sit down at the kitchen table face to face, and looking each other in the eyes, we say more and more terrible words.

One of us says:

"Turd! Asshole!"

The other one says:

"Faggot! Prick!"

We go on like that until the words no longer reach our brains, no longer even reach our ears.

We exercise this way for about half an hour a day, then we go out walking in the streets.

We contrive to have people insult us, and we observe that we have now reached the stage where we don't care anymore.

But there are also the old words.

Mother used to say to us:

"My darlings! My loves! My joy! My adorable little babies!"

When we remember these words, our eyes fill with tears.

We must forget these words because nobody says such words to us now and because our memory of them is too heavy a burden to bear.

So we begin our exercise again, in a different way.

We say:

"My darlings! My loves! I love you… I shall never leave you… I shall never love anyone but you… Forever… You are my whole life…"

By force of repetition, these words gradually lose their meaning, and the pain they carry in them is assuaged.

School

This happened three years ago.

It's evening. Our parents think we are asleep. They're talking about us in the other room.

Mother says:

"They won't bear being separated."

Father says:

"They'll only be separated during school hours."

Mother says:

"They won't bear it."

"They'll have to. It's necessary for them. Everybody says so. The teachers, the psychologists, everybody. It will be difficult at first, but they'll get used to it."

Mother says:

"No, never. I know it. I know them. They are one and the same person."

Father raises his voice:

"Precisely, it isn't normal. They think together, they act together. They live in a different world. In a world of their own. It isn't very healthy. It's even rather worrying. Yes, they worry me. They're odd. You never know what they might be thinking. They're too advanced for their age. They know too much."

Mother laughs:

"You're not going to reproach them with their intelligence, I hope?"

"It isn't funny. Why are you laughing?"

Mother replies:

"Twins are always a problem. It isn't the end of the world. Everything will sort itself out."

Father says:

"Yes, everything will sort itself out if we separate them. Every individual must have his own life."

A few days later, we start school. We're in different classes. We both sit in the front row.

We are separated from one another by the whole length of the building. This distance between us seems monstrous, the pain is unbearable. It is as if they had taken half our bodies away. We can't keep our balance, we feel dizzy, we fall, we lose consciousness.

We wake up in the ambulance that is taking us to the hospital.

Mother comes to fetch us. She smiles and says:

"You'll be in the same class from tomorrow on."

At home, Father just says to us:

"Fakers!"

Soon he leaves for the front. He's a journalist, a war correspondent.

We go to school for two and a half years. The teachers also leave for the front; they are replaced by women teachers. Later, the school closes because there are too many air raids. We have learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. At Grandmother's we decide to continue our studies without a teacher, by ourselves.

At Grandmother's there is no paper, there are no pencils. We go looking for some at a shop called Booksellers and Stationers. We choose a packet of graph paper, two pencils, and a big thick notebook. We place all that on the counter in front of the fat gentleman standing on the other side. We say to him:

"We need these things, but we have no money."

The bookseller says:

"What? But… you have to pay."

We repeat:

"We have no money, but we absolutely need these things."

The bookseller says:

"The school is closed. Nobody needs notebooks or pencils."

We say:

"We are having school at home. All alone, by ourselves."

"Ask your parents for money."

"Father is at the front, and Mother has stayed in the Big Town. We live at Grandmother's, she doesn't have any money either."

The bookseller says:

"You can't buy anything without money."

We don't say anything else, we just look at him. He looks at us too. His forehead is damp with sweat. After a while he shouts:

"Don't look at me like that! Get out!"