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.