The Notebook + The Proof + The Third Lie (31 page)

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.