Agota Kristof: The Book of Lies

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."