"The Book of Lies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kristof Agota)

The Theft

With our boots and our warm clothes, we can go out again. We slide on the frozen stream, we go look for wood in the forest.

We take an axe and a saw with us. We can no longer collect the dead wood lying on the ground; the layer of snow is too thick. We climb trees, saw off the dead branches, and chop them up with the axe. During this work, we aren't cold. We even sweat. So we can take off our gloves and put them in our pockets so that they won't wear out too quickly.

One day, coming back with our two bundles of firewood, we make a detour to go see Harelip.

The snow in front of the shack has not been cleared, and there are no footprints leading to it. The chimney is not smoking.

We knock on the door, no one answers. We go in. At first we see nothing, it is so dark, but our eyes soon adjust to the gloom.

It's a room that serves as kitchen and bedroom. In the darkest corner, there's a bed. We approach. We call out. Someone moves under the blankets and old clothes; Harelip's head emerges.

We ask:

"Is your mother there?"

She says:

"Yes."

"Is she dead?"

"I don't know."

We put down our wood and light a fire in the stove, because it's as cold in the room as outside. Then we go back to Grandmother's and get some potatoes and dried beans from the cellar. We milk one of the goats and come back to our neighbor's. We heat the milk. We melt some snow in a saucepan and cook the beans in it. We bake the potatoes in the oven.

Harelip gets up and totters over to a chair by the fire.

Our neighbor isn't dead. We pour some goat's milk into her mouth. We say to Harelip:

"When all this is ready, eat and give some to your mother. We'll be back."

With the money the cobbler gave back to us, we have bought a few pairs of socks, but we haven't spent it all. We go into a grocer's to buy some flour, and take some salt and sugar without paying for them. We also go to the butchers's; we buy a small slab of bacon and take a big sausage without paying for it. We return to Harelip's. She and her mother have already eaten everything. The mother is still in bed, Harelip is washing up.

We say to her:

"We'll bring you a bundle of firewood every day. Some beans and potatoes too. But for the rest, you need money. We don't have any more. Without money, you can't go into a shop. You have to buy something if you're going to steal something else."

She says:

"You really are smart. You're right. They don't even let me into the shops. I'd never have thought you were capable of stealing."

We say:

"Why not? It will be our exercise in cunning. But we need a little money. Absolutely."

She thinks about it and says:

"Go ask the parish priest. He used to give me money sometimes when I let him see my slit."

"He asked you to do that?"

"Yes. And sometimes he put his finger in. And afterward he gave me money not to tell anybody. Tell him Harelip and her mother need money."