Yesterday Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1996 by Éditions du Seuil

  English language translation © 1997 by David Watson

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first printed in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in French as Hier by Éditions du Seuil, Paris, in 1996.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kristóf, Ágota, author. | Watson, David, 1959–translator.

  Title: Yesterday / Ágota Kristóf ; translated by David Watson.

  Other titles: Hier. English

  Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2019. | Originally published: London : Secker & Warburg, 1997.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019009793| ISBN 9780486839134 | ISBN 0486839133

  Subjects: LCSH: Adultery—Fiction. | Factories—Fiction. | Rural-urban migration—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ2671.R55 H5413 2019 | DDC 843/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009793

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  83913301

  www.doverpublications.com

  2019

  Contents

  Escape

  Of course, I didn’t die

  The Lie

  The doctor asks me

  I Think

  Today I start

  The Dead Bird

  I rarely go around

  They

  I am tired

  The Rain

  I cycle home

  The Boat Travelers

  Two years after

  Yesterday everything was more beautiful the music in the trees the wind in my hair and in your outstretched hands the sun

  Escape

  Yesterday, a familiar wind was blowing. A wind I had come across before.

  Spring had come early. I was walking in the wind with a brisk, determined step, as every morning. Yet I wanted to go back to my bed and lie there, motionless, without thoughts, without desires, lie there until the moment when I felt the presence of that thing which is not voice, taste, or smell, simply a very vague memory, something from beyond the borders of memory.

  Slowly, the door opened and in a moment of terror my dangling hands felt the soft, silky fur of the tiger.

  “Music,” it said. “Play something! On the violin or the piano. Preferably the piano. Play!”

  “I don’t know how,” I said. “I’ve never played the piano in my whole life, I don’t have a piano, I’ve never had one.”

  “In your whole life? Nonsense! Go to the window and play!”

  Outside my window there was a forest. I saw the birds gathering on the branches to listen to me playing. I saw the birds. Their little heads tilted and their staring eyes looking right through me.

  My music grew louder and louder. It became unbearable.

  A dead bird fell from a branch.

  The music stopped.

  I turned around.

  The tiger sat in the middle of the room, smiling.

  “That’s enough for today,” it said. “You should practice more often.”

  “Yes, I promise I will practice. But I’m expecting visitors, you see, if you don’t mind. They, these people, might find it strange, you being here, in my house.”

  “Of course,” it said with a yawn.

  It went out with a supple stride and I double-locked the door behind it.

  “See you again,” it called out as it left.

  Line was waiting for me at the factory entrance, leaning against the wall. She looked so pale and sad that I decided to stop and talk to her. However, I walked past her, not even turning my head in her direction.

  A short while later, after I had started up my machine, she stood next to me.

  “You know, it’s strange. I’ve never seen you laugh. I’ve known you for years. In all the years I’ve known you, I haven’t seen you laugh once.”

  I looked at her and burst out laughing.

  “I’d rather you didn’t do that,” she said.

  At that moment I felt a stab of anxiety and I leaned over to the window to see whether the wind was still there. The movement of the trees reassured me.

  When I turned around, Line had gone. Then I spoke to her:

  “Line, I love you. I really love you, Line, but I don’t have time to think about that, there are so many things I have to think about, this wind, for example, I have to go out now and walk in the wind. Not with you, Line, don’t be angry. Walking in the wind is something you have to do alone, because there is a tiger and a piano whose music kills birds, and only the wind can banish the fear, it’s a well-known fact, I’ve been aware of it for a long time.”

  The machines rang out the Angelus all around me.

  I walked along the corridor. The door was open.

  This door was always open and I had never tried to leave by this door.

  Why?

  The wind swept the streets. These empty streets seemed strange to me. I had never seen them on a weekday morning.

  Later, I sat down on a stone bench and cried.

  In the afternoon, the sun came out. There were small clouds scurrying across the sky and it was very mild.

  I went into a café, I was hungry. The waiter placed a plate of sandwiches in front of me.

  I said to myself:

  “Now you must go back to the factory. You must go back, you have no reason for being off work. Yes, now I will go back.”

  I started crying again and I noticed that I had eaten all the sandwiches.

  I took the bus to save time. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I could put in another two and a half hours’ work.

  The sky clouded over.

  When the bus went past the factory, the conductor looked at me. Further on, he tapped me on the shoulder.

  “End of the line, sir.”

  The place where I got off was a sort of park. Trees, a few houses. It was already dark when I went into the forest.

  Now the rain was getting heavy, it was mixed with snow. The wind was lashing my face. But it was him, the same wind.

  I walked, faster and faster, towards a summit.

  I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anything in any case. With each step I bumped into a tree.

  “Water!”

  Way above me, someone had called out.

  It was ridiculous, there was water everywhere.

  I, too, was thirsty. I threw my head back, spread my arms and let myself fall. I shoved my face into the cold mud and I didn’t move.

  That’s how I died.

  Soon my body mingled with the earth.

  Of course, I didn’t die. A walker found me lying in the mud, in the middle of the forest. He called an ambulance, I was taken to hospital. I wasn’t even frozen, just soaked through. I had slept one night in the forest and that’s all.

  No, I wasn’t dead, I merely had a bout of pneumonia that was nearly fatal. I had to stay in a hospital for six weeks. Once my lung condition had been cured, I was transferred to the psychiatric wing, because I had tried to kill myself.

  I was happy to stay in a hospital, because I didn’t want to go back to the factory. I was fine here, I was looked after, I could sleep. At mealtimes I had a choice of several different menus. I could even smoke in the small sitting room. I could also smoke when I was talking with the doctor.

  “You can’t write your own death.”

  The psychiatrist said this to me, and I agreed with him, because, when you are dead, you can’t write. But in myself I think that I can write anything, even if it is impossible and even if it is not true.

  Usually, I am happy to write in my head. It’s easier. In your head there are no difficulties to get
in the way. But, as soon as you write anything down, the thoughts change, become distorted, and everything turns out false. Because of words.

  The trouble is, I don’t write what I ought to write, I write just anything, things that no one can understand and that I don’t understand myself. In the evening, when I copy out what I have written in my head all day long, I wonder why I wrote all that. For whom and for what reason?

  The psychiatrist asks me:

  “Who is Line?”

  “I made Line up. She doesn’t exist.”

  “The tiger, the piano, the birds?”

  “Nightmares, that’s all.”

  “Did you try to kill yourself because of your nightmares?”

  “If I had really tried to kill myself, I would already be dead. I only wanted to rest. I couldn’t go on living like that, the factory and everything else, Line’s absence, the absence of hope. Getting up at five in the morning, walking, running down the street to catch the bus, the forty-minute journey, arriving at the fourth village, going inside the factory. Rushing to pull on the gray overalls, getting through the crush to clock in, running to your machine, starting it up, drilling the hole as quickly as possible, drilling, drilling, always the same hole in the same part, ten thousand times a day, if possible, our salaries depend on our work rate, our lives.”

  The doctor says:

  “That’s the working man’s life. Be thankful you have a job. Lots of people are unemployed. As for Line . . . There’s a pretty young blonde girl who comes to see you every day. Why couldn’t her name be Line?”

  “Because she is Yolande and she will never be called Line. She isn’t Line, she is Yolande. It’s a stupid name, isn’t it? And she is just as stupid as her name. Her dyed blonde hair gathered up on top of her head, her nails painted pink, as long as claws, her ten-centimeter-high stilettos. Yolande is small, very small, so she wears shoes with ten-centimeter heels and has a ridiculous hairstyle.”

  The doctor laughs:

  “So why do you go on seeing her?”

  “Because I don’t have anyone else. And because I don’t want to change. I once changed a lot and I am tired of it. Anyway, what difference does it make, one Yolande or another? I go to her place once a week. She cooks and I bring the wine. We’re not in love.”

  The doctor says:

  “Perhaps not as far as you’re concerned. But do you know what her feelings are?”

  “I don’t want to know. I’m not interested in her feelings. I’ll go on seeing her until Line arrives.”

  “You still believe she will?”

  “Definitely. I know she exists somewhere. I’ve always known that I came into this world only to meet her. And her, too. She came into this world only to meet me. She is called Line, she is my wife, my love, my life. I have never seen her.”

  I met Yolande when I was buying some socks. Black ones, gray ones, white tennis socks. I don’t play tennis.

  The first time I saw Yolande, I thought she was very beautiful. Graceful. She tilted her head as she handed over the socks, she smiled, she was almost dancing.

  I paid for the socks, I asked her:

  “Can I see you sometime?”

  She gave a silly laugh, but I didn’t care about her silliness. I only cared about her body.

  “Wait for me in the café over the road. I get off at five.”

  I bought a bottle of wine, then I waited in the café over the road with my socks in a plastic bag.

  Yolande arrived. We had a coffee, then we went to her place.

  She’s a good cook.

  Yolande might seem prettier to someone who hasn’t seen her first thing in the morning.

  Then she is nothing but a little crumpled thing, her hair hangs down, her makeup is a mess, she has large rings of kohl around her eyes.

  I watch her as she goes into the shower, her legs are thin, she has hardly any buttocks or breasts.

  She is in the bathroom for at least an hour. When she comes out she is the fresh and pretty Yolande again, well groomed, well made-up, perched on her ten-centimeter heels. Smiling. Laughing in her stupid way.

  Usually, I go back home late on Saturday evening, but sometimes I stay over until Sunday morning. On those occasions, I also have breakfast with her.

  She goes to get some croissants at the baker’s, which is open on Sundays, twenty minutes’ walk from her place. She makes some coffee.

  We eat. Then I go home.

  What does Yolande do on Sunday after I leave? I don’t know. I’ve never asked her.

  The Lie

  Of all my lies, the funniest one was when I told you how much I wanted to see my country again.

  Your eyelids fluttered, you were moved, and you cleared your throat as you sought the words to comfort me and show me you understood. You didn’t dare laugh all evening. It was worth telling you the story just for that.

  When I got home, I switched on the lamps in all the rooms and I stood in front of the mirror. I looked at myself until my image became blurred and unrecognizable.

  For hours I walked around my bedroom. My books lay lifeless on the table and the shelves, my bed was cold, too neat, I had no thoughts of going to bed.

  Dawn approached and the windows of the houses opposite were all dark.

  I checked several times that the door was closed, then I tried to think about you to help me sleep but you were nothing but a gray, fleeting image like my other memories.

  Like the dark mountains I crossed one winter night, like the bedroom in the dilapidated farm where I woke up one morning, like the modern factory where I have worked for ten years, like an over-familiar landscape you no longer want to look at.

  Soon there was nothing left to think about, only the things I didn’t want to think about. I would have liked to cry a little but I couldn’t, for I didn’t have any reason to do so.

  The doctor asks me:

  “Why did you choose the name ‘Line’ for the woman you are waiting for?”

  I say:

  “Because my mother was called Line and I loved her very much. I was ten when she died.”

  He says:

  “Tell me about your childhood.”

  I was waiting for that one. My childhood! Everyone is interested in my childhood.

  I dealt with his stupid questions quite well. I had my childhood worked out ready for every occasion, my lie was in good working order. I have already employed it several times. I have told it to Yolande, to my small handful of friends and acquaintances, and I will tell the same story to Line.

  I am a war orphan. My parents were killed in the air raids. I am the only survivor from my family. I have no brothers or sisters.

  I was brought up in an orphanage, like so many other children at that time. At the age of twelve, I ran away from the orphanage, I crossed the frontier. That’s all.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  I am certainly not going to tell him about my real childhood!

  I was born in a nameless village in an insignificant country.

  My mother, Esther, begged in the village, she also slept with men, peasants who gave her flour, grain, milk. She also stole fruit and vegetables from fields and gardens, sometimes even a chicken or duckling from a farmyard.

  When the peasants slaughtered a pig they would keep the offcuts for my mother, the tripe and stuff like that, whatever the villagers didn’t want to eat.

  For us, everything was good.

  My mother was the thief, beggar, and whore of the village.

  I sat outside the house, I played with the clay, I molded it, I made huge phalluses, breasts, buttocks. I also sculpted my mother’s body in the red clay and made holes in it with my tiny fingers: the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the ears, the sex, the anus, the navel.

  My mother was full of holes, like our house, my clothes, my shoes. I stuffed the holes in my shoes with mud.

  I lived in the yard.

  When I felt hungry, or tired, or cold, I went into the h
ouse, I found something to eat, grilled potatoes, cooked grain, milk curds, sometimes some bread, and I lay down on the mattress next to the stove.

  Most of the time the bedroom door was open to allow the heat from the kitchen to spread through. I saw and heard everything that went on.

  My mother came into the kitchen to wash her behind in a bucket, wiped herself with an old rag, went back to sleep. She hardly ever talked to me and she never kissed me.

  The most surprising thing was that I was an only child. I still wonder how my mother managed to get rid of her other pregnancies and why she “kept” me. Perhaps I was her first “accident.” There are only seventeen years between us. Perhaps she then learned what she had to do to avoid being burdened with kids and to survive.

  I remember that she would sometimes stay in bed for several days at a time and all her old rags would be saturated with blood.

  Of course, I wasn’t bothered by any of this. I can even say that I had a happy childhood, since I didn’t know that childhood could be any different.

  I never went to the village. We lived next to the cemetery, in the last street in the village, in the last house. I was happy playing in the yard, in the mud. Sometimes the sky was clear, but I loved the wind, the rain, the clouds. The rain stuck my hair to my forehead, to my neck, in my eyes. The wind dried my hair, stroked my face. The monsters hiding in the clouds told me about far-away lands.

  It was harder in winter. I also loved the snowflakes, but I didn’t stay outside long. I didn’t have clothes which were warm enough and I got cold very quickly, particularly my feet.

  Sometimes a man came out of the bedroom into the kitchen. He gazed at me for a long time, he stroked my hair, he kissed me on the forehead, he pressed my hands against his cheeks.

  I didn’t like that, I was afraid of him, I trembled. But I wasn’t brave enough to push him away.

  He came often. And he wasn’t a peasant.

  I wasn’t afraid of the peasants, I detested them, I despised them, they disgusted me.

  I met this man, the one who stroked my hair, at school. There was only one school in the village. The teacher gave lessons to the pupils in every year, right up to the sixth.