Reflection
Disability as a cunning or as a sealed fate? A Reflection on The Book of Lies Trilogy by Ágota Kristóf
Dr. Malena Pastoriza
Several characters in this trilogy, set in a border town during a war, are portrayed as disabled at some point in the story, suggesting that disability can be read as a sign of the exclusion that war causes in society.
Hungarian author Ágota Kristóf published The Notebook Trilogy, also known as The Book of Lies Trilogy, between 1986 and 1991. Written originally in French, the trilogy consists of Le Grand Cahier [The Notebook] (1986), La Preuve [The Proof] (1988) and Le Troisième Mensonge [The Third Lie] (1991). Although all three books share twin brothers Claus and Lucas as protagonists and are set in the same border towns during war, each book subtly but significantly disrupts the fictional world created by the previous one. Reading them together, all at once, intensifies the sense of unease caused by the nonsense and suspension of morality that a society in war provokes in its citizens.
The trilogy can be seen as a condemnation of the exclusion and the marginalisation caused by the logic of war: society is divided between those who can become soldiers and those who cannot. The everyday lives of the great numbers of citizens who do not meet the requirements to fight for their country are suspended, frozen, and reduced to a struggle for survival during wartime. Disability plays a central role in this scenario, as it results in radical exclusion. This includes not only the exemption of army duties but also the impossibility of reintegration once war is over.
However, the three novels contain complex representations of disability that require reflection. It is worth noting that nearly every character is described as physically or mentally impaired at some point in the story. This leads us to interpret disability as a symbol of fate and shrewdness for the socially excluded. In the following lines, we will provide a few significant examples from the novels.
The disabled neighbours
Let’s start from the beginning. The Notebook tells the story of twin brothers who are taken by their mother to live with their grandmother, whom they have never met before. She lives alone in an old country house on the outskirts of town near the border. She is really bad-tempered and treats the children as strangers who do not deserve any mercy. The boys, too accustomed to their mother’s care, must learn to survive in the face of their grandma’ s animosity. To build mental and physical resilience against adversity and injustice, they engage in rigorous exercises they call “work”, such as taking turns to beat each other until fainting.
The novel’s first portrayal of disability involves the neighbours and leads to one of their regular exercises. The only neighbours for miles are a young girl and her mother, who live in squalor due to their laziness and inability to work the land, in contrast to the grandmother. Although people around say that the old lady is mad, her daughter explains to the twins that she is just deaf and blind. Meanwhile, the young girl has a harelip, and everyone calls her by that nickname. She is described as cross-eyed with snot in her nose, yellow dirt in the corners of her red eyes (which may lead to future blindness), and pimples covering her arms and legs.
As with other characters of the novel, the impairment of both mother and daughter is called into question several times. The old lady is accused of feigning deafness to avoid her daughter’s inquiries, while Harelip’s senses are proven trustworthy as she steals and shoplifts. Either way, the neighbour’s disabilities serve as both an excuse and as a limitation, dooming them to a miserable life.
However, the twins can reverse these negative perceptions by acknowledging how being blind or deaf can enhance attention and caution. The exercise involves working together, with one of them playing blind and the other acting as deaf, and communicating what they see and hear to each other.
Yasmine’s crippled son
In the second novel, The Proof, Lucas is living alone at his grandma’s house after Claus crossed the border and never returned. The war is over, and one day, Lucas discovers a young woman attempting to drown her baby. He takes them in, offering them food and shelter. The woman, Yasmine, reveals that the newborn, Mathias, is the product of incest between her and her father, and the infant bears the physical marks of this sin. Due to the corset Yasmine wore to hide her pregnancy, he is deformed in his shoulder and legs.
Yasmine allegedly goes away to the capital one day, leaving Lucas to take care of the child as if he were his own. Mathias develops a strong personality and an ambivalent bond with Lucas, whom he loves possessively and hates at the same time because of his beauty and normalcy.
Mathias’s resentment towards Lucas grows stronger over the years. Despite Lucas’s repeated affirmations of devotion, Mathias rejects him and condemns Lucas for not loving him enough due to his impairment. In the end, the little boy commits suicide in his bedroom, leaving Lucas devastated. Both victims of war, they never escaped their destiny of suffering.
The trilogy’s story and its ramifications are shocking in many ways. As a reader, it made me think about the injustice, misery and neglect caused by war. While reading, I couldn’t stop thinking about the perverse ways in which society condemns people with disabilities to segregation. These novels don’t inspire pity or hope, but display the unbearable effects of social exclusion taken to the extreme.