The Notebook + The Proof + The Third Lie (13 page)

"Sons of a bitch! Go roast a chicken! How do you expect me to get my strength back with your plant life and your purées? I want some goat's milk too! I hope you haven't neglected anything while I've been ill!"

"No, Grandmother, we haven't neglected anything."

"Help me get up, you good-for-nothings!"

"Grandmother, you must stay in bed, the doctor said so."

"The doctor, the doctor! That imbecile! Permanently paralyzed, indeed! I'll show him how paralyzed I am!"

We help her get up, accompany her to the kitchen, and sit her down on the seat. When the chicken is cooked, she eats it all herself. After the meal, she says:

"What are you waiting for? Make me a good stout stick, hurry up, you lazybones, I want to go see if everything is in order."

We run off to the forest, we find a suitable branch, and while she watches, we cut the stick to Grandmother's size. She promptly grabs it and threatens us:

"You'll be sorry if everything isn't in order!" She goes out into the garden. We follow her at a distance. She goes into the privy, and we hear her muttering: "Diapers! What an idea! They're completely mad!" When she goes back to the house, we take a look in the privy. She has thrown the rubber pants and diapers down the hole.

Grandmother's Treasure

One evening, Grandmother says:

"Shut all the doors and windows tight. I want to talk to you, and I don't want anyone to hear us."

"Nobody ever comes this way, Grandmother."

"You know the frontier guards are always prowling around. And they're quite capable of listening at people's doors. And bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil."

We ask:

"You want to write something, Grandmother?"

She shouts:

"Do as you're told! Don't ask questions!"

We shut the windows and doors, we bring the paper and pencil. Sitting at the other end of the table, Grandmother draws something on the sheet of paper. She says in a whisper:

"This is where my treasure is hidden."

She hands us the sheet of paper. On it she has drawn a

rectangle, a cross, and under the cross, a circle. Grandmother asks:

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, Grandmother, we understand. But we knew already."

"What! What did you know already?"

We reply in a whisper:

"That your treasure is hidden under the cross on Grandfather's grave."

Grandmother is silent for a moment, then she says:

"I might have suspected as much. Have you known for a long time?"

"For a very long time, Grandmother. Ever since we saw you tending Grandfather's grave."

Grandmother breathes very heavily:

"There's no point in getting excited. Anyway, it's all yours. You're clever enough now to know what to do with it."

We say:

"For the moment, there's not much we can do with it."

Grandmother says:

"No. You're right. You must wait. Will you be able to wait?"

"Yes, Grandmother."

All three of us are silent for a moment, then Grandmother says:

"That isn't all. The next time I have an attack, I don't want any part of your bath, your rubber pants, or your diapers."

She gets up and rummages around on the shelf among her bottles. She comes back with a small blue flask:

"Instead of all your filthy medicines, you'll pour the contents of this flask into my first cup of milk."

We say nothing. She shouts:

"Do you understand, sons of a bitch?"

We say nothing. She says:

"Maybe you're afraid of the autopsy, you little brats? There won't be any autopsy. Nobody's going to make a fuss when an old woman dies after a second attack."

. We say:

"We aren't afraid of the autopsy, Grandmother. We just think that you may recover a second time."

"No. I won't recover. I know it. So we must put an end to it as soon as possible."

We say nothing, Grandmother starts to cry:

"You don't know what it's like to be paralyzed. To see everything, hear everything, and not be able to move. If you aren't even capable of doing this simple little thing for me, then you're ingrates, vipers I have nursed in my bosom."

We say:

"Don't cry, Grandmother. We'll do it; if you really want us to, we'll do it."

Our Father

When our Father arrives, the three of us are working in the kitchen because it's raining outside.

Father stops in front of the door, arms folded, legs apart. He asks:

"Where's my wife?" Grandmother sniggers:

"Well, well! So she really did have a husband." Father says:

"Yes, I'm your daughter's husband. And these are my sons."

He looks at us and adds:

"You really have grown up. But you haven't changed." Grandmother says:

"My daughter, your wife, entrusted the children to me." Father says:

"She'd have done better to entrust them to someone else. Where is she? I've been told she went abroad. Is that true?"

Grandmother says:

"That's old news, all that. Where have you been all this time?"

Father says:

"I've been a prisoner of war. And now I want to find my wife again. Don't try to hide anything from me, you old witch."

Grandmother says:

"I really appreciate your way of thanking me for what I've done for your children."

Father shouts:

"I don't give a damn! Where's my wife?"

Grandmother says:

"You don't give a damn? About your children and me? All right, I'll show you where your wife is!"

Grandmother goes out into the garden, and we follow her. With her stick, she points to the flower bed that we have planted over Mother's grave:

"There! That's where your wife is. In the ground."

Father asks:

"Dead? From what? When?"

Grandmother says:

"Dead. From a shell. A few days before the end of the war."

Father says:

"It's forbidden to bury people just anywhere."

Grandmother says:

"We buried her where she died. And that isn't just anywhere. It's my garden. It was also her garden when she was a little girl."

Father looks at the wet flowers and says:

"I want to see her."

Grandmother says:

"You shouldn't. The dead must not be disturbed."

Father says:

"In any case, she'll have to be buried in a cemetery. It's the law. Get me a spade."

Grandmother shrugs her shoulders:

"Get him a spade."

In the rain, we watch Father demolish our little flower garden, we watch him dig. He gets to the blankets, he pulls them away. A big skeleton is lying there, with a tiny skeleton pressed to its breast.

Father asks:

"What's that, that thing on her?"

We say:

"It's a baby. Our little sister."

Grandmother says:

"I did tell you to leave the dead in peace. Come and wash your hands in the kitchen."

Father doesn't answer. He stares at the skeletons. His face is wet with sweat, tears, and rain. He climbs laboriously out of the hole and walks off without turning around, his hands and clothes all muddy.

We ask Grandmother:

"What shall we do?"

She says:

"Fill the hole in again. What else can we do?"

We say:

"You go back into the warm, Grandmother. We'll take care of all this."

She goes in.

We carry the skeletons up to the attic in a blanket and spread the bones out on straw to dry. Then we go down and fill in the hole where nobody is lying anymore.

Later, we spend months smoothing and polishing the skull and bones of our Mother and the baby, then we carefully reassemble the skeletons by attaching each bone to thin pieces of wire. When our work is done, we hang Mother's skeleton from one of the attic beams with the baby's skeleton clinging to her neck.

Our Father Comes Back

We don't see our Father again until several years later.

In the meantime, Grandmother has had a new attack, and we have helped her die as she asked us to do. She is now buried in the same grave as Grandfather. Before they opened the grave, we recovered the treasure and hid it under the bench in front of our window, where the rifle, the cartridges, and the grenades still are.

Father arrives one evening and asks:

"Where's your Grandmother?"

"She's dead."

"You live alone? How do you manage?"

"Very well, Father."

He says:

"I've come here in hiding. You must help me."

We say: "We haven't heard from you in years."

He shows us his hands. He no longer has any fingernails. They have been torn out at the roots:

"I've just come out of prison. They tortured me."

"Why?"

"I don't know. For no particular reason. I'm a politically suspect person. I'm not allowed to practice my profession. I'm under constant surveillance. My apartment is searched regularly. It's impossible for me to live much longer in this country."

We say:

"You want to cross the frontier."

He says:

"Yes. You live here, you must know . .

"Yes, we know. The frontier is impassable."

Father lowers his head, looks at his hands for a moment, then says:

"There must be a weak spot somewhere. There must be a way of getting through."

"At the risk of your life, yes."

"I'd rather die than stay here."

"You must make up your own mind when you know all the facts, Father."

He says:

"I'm listening."

We explain:

"The first problem is to get as far as the first barbed wire without meeting a patrol or being seen from one of the watch- towers. It can be done. We know the times of the patrols and the positions of the watchtowers. The fence is one and a half meters high and a meter wide. You need two boards. One to climb onto the fence, the other to put on top so that you can stand up on it. If you lose your balance, you fall into the wire and you can't get out."

Father says:

"I won't lose my balance."

We go on:

"You have to retrieve the two boards and do the same thing at the next fence, seven meters further on."

Father laughs:

"It's child's play."

"Yes, but the space between the two fences is mined."

Father goes pale:

"Then it's impossible."

"No. It's a matter of luck. The mines are arranged in a zig-zag, in a W. If you follow a straight line, you only risk walking on one mine. And if you take big steps, you have almost a one in seven chance of avoiding it."

Father thinks for a moment, then says: "I'll risk it."

We say:

"In that case, we are quite willing to help you. We'll go with you to the first fence."

Father says:

"Okay. Thanks. You wouldn't have something to eat, by any chance?"

We give him some bread and goat cheese. We also offer him some wine from Grandmother's old vineyard. We pour into his glass a few drops of the sleeping potion that Grandmother was so good at making out of plants.

We take Father into our room and say: "Good night, Father. Sleep well. We'll wake you tomorrow."

We go to bed on the corner seat in the kitchen.

The Separation

Next morning, we get up very early. We make sure that Father is sleeping soundly.

We cut four boards.

We dig up Grandmother's treasure: gold and silver coins and a lot of jewelry. We put most of it into a linen sack. We also take a grenade each, in case we are surprised by a patrol. By getting rid of the patrol, we can gain time.

We make a reconnaissance tour near the frontier to locate the best place: a dead angle between two watchtowers. There, at the foot of a tall tree, we hide the linen sack and two of the boards.

We go back and eat. Later, we bring Father his breakfast. We have to shake him to wake him up. He rubs his eyes and says:

"It's been a long time since I slept so well."

We put the tray on his knees. He says:

"What a feast! Milk, coffee, eggs, ham, butter, jam! You just can't find these things in the Big Town. How do you do it?"

"We work. Eat up, Father. We won't have time to give you another meal before you leave."

He asks:

"I'm going this evening?"

We say:

"You're going right now. As soon as you're ready."

He says:

"Are you crazy? I refuse to cross that bitch of a frontier in broad daylight! They'll see us!"

We say:

"We have to see too, Father. Only stupid people try to cross the frontier at night. At night, the frequency of the patrols is four times greater and the area is continually swept by searchlights. On the other hand, the surveillance is relaxed around eleven in the morning. The frontier guards think that nobody would be crazy enough to try to get through at that hour."

Father says:

"You're absolutely right. I put myself in your hands."

We ask:

"Will you allow us to search your pockets while you eat?"

"My pockets? Why?"

"You mustn't be identified. If anything happens to you and they learn that you are our father, we'll be accused as accessories."

Father says:

"You think of everything."

We say:

"We have to think of our own safety."

We search his clothes. We take his papers, his identity card, his address book, a train ticket, some bills, and a photograph of Mother. We burn everything in the kitchen stove, except the photograph.

At eleven o'clock, we leave. Each of us carries a board.

Father carries nothing. We ask him just to follow us and make as little noise as possible.

We are getting near the frontier. We tell Father to lie down behind the big tree and not to move.

Soon, a few meters away from us, a two-man patrol passes by. We can hear them talking:

"I wonder what there'll be to eat."

"The same shit as usual."

"There's shit and shit. Yesterday it was disgusting, but it's good sometimes."