Free The Notebook + The Proof + The Third Lie by Agota Kristof Page A

slips off; a completely bald skull appears. We put her shawl back on. We stay by her bedside for a long time, holding her hands and watching her breathe.
     
     

The Policeman
    We are having our breakfast with Grandmother. A man comes into the kitchen without knocking. He shows his police card.
    Immediately, Grandmother starts shouting:
    "I don't want the police in my house! I've done nothing!"
    The policeman says:
    "No, nothing, never. Just a few little poisonings here and there."
    Grandmother says:
    "Nothing was ever proved. You can't do anything to me."
    The policeman says:
    "Take it easy, Grandmother. We're not going to dig up the dead. We've got enough to do burying them."
    "Then what do you want?"
    The policeman looks at us and says:
    "The acorn doesn't fall far from the oak."
    Grandmother looks at us too:
    "I should hope not. What have you been doing now, sons of a bitch?"
    The policeman asks:
    "Where were you yesterday evening?"
    We answer:
    "Here."
    "You weren't hanging around the cafés as usual?"
    "No. We stayed here because Grandmother had an accident."
    Grandmother says very quickly:
    "I fell going down to the cellar. The steps are all mossy, and I slipped. I banged my head. The kids brought me back up and looked after me. They stayed by my bedside all night."
    The policeman says:
    "You've got a bad bump there, I can see. You must be careful at your age. Very well. We're going to search the house. Come with me, all three of you. We'll start with the cellar."
    Grandmother opens the cellar door, and we go down. The policeman moves everything, the sacks, the cans, the baskets, and the pile of potatoes.
    Grandmother asks us in a whisper:
    "What's he looking for?"
    We shrug our shoulders.
    After the cellar, the policeman searches the kitchen. Then Grandmother has to unlock her room. The policeman strips her bed. There is nothing in the bed or in the straw mattress, just a bit of cash under the pillow.
    At the door of the officer's room, the policeman asks:
    "What's in here?"
    Grandmother says:
    "It's a room I rent to a foreign officer. I don't have the key."
    The policeman looks at the door to the attic:
    "You don't have a ladder?"
    Grandmother says:
    "It's broken."
    "How do you get up there?"
    "I don't. Only the kids go up there."
    The policeman says:
    "Well, let's go, kids."
    We climb up to the attic by the rope. The policeman opens the chest where we keep the things we need for our studies: Bible, dictionary, paper, pencils, and the Notebook in which everything is written. But the policeman hasn't come to read. He rummages through a pile of old clothes and blankets one more time, and we go down again. Back downstairs, the policeman looks around him and says:
    "I obviously can't dig up the whole garden. Right. Come with me."
    He takes us into the forest, to the edge of the big hole where we found the corpse. The corpse isn't there anymore. The policeman asks:
    "Have you ever been here before?"
    "No. Never. We would have been afraid to go so far."
    "You've never seen this hole or a dead soldier?"
    "No, never."
    "When they found that dead soldier, his rifle, his cartridges, and his grenades were missing."
    We say:
    "He must have been very absentminded and careless, that soldier, to have lost all those things so indispensable to a soldier."
    The policeman says:
    "He didn't lose them. They were stolen from him after he died. You often come into the forest, don't you have any ideas on the matter?"
    "No. No ideas at all."
    "Yet someone certainly took that rifle, those cartridges, and those grenades."
    We say:
    "Who would dare to touch such dangerous things?"
     
     

The Interrogation
    We are in the policeman's office. He is sitting at a table, we are standing in front of him. He gets paper and pencil. He is smoking. He asks us questions:
    "How long have you known the priest's housekeeper?"
    "Since the spring."
    "Where did you meet her?"
    "At Grandmother's. She came for potatoes."
    "You deliver wood to the priest's house.