We run off to the forest, we find a suitable branch, and while she watches, we cut the stick to Grandmother's size. She promptly grabs it and threatens us:

"You'll be sorry if everything isn't in order!" She goes out into the garden. We follow her at a distance. She goes into the privy, and we hear her muttering: "Diapers! What an idea! They're completely mad!" When she goes back to the house, we take a look in the privy. She has thrown the rubber pants and diapers down the hole.

Grandmother's Treasure

One evening, Grandmother says:

"Shut all the doors and windows tight. I want to talk to you, and I don't want anyone to hear us."

"Nobody ever comes this way, Grandmother."

"You know the frontier guards are always prowling around. And they're quite capable of listening at people's doors. And bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil."

We ask:

"You want to write something, Grandmother?"

She shouts:

"Do as you're told! Don't ask questions!"

We shut the windows and doors, we bring the paper and pencil. Sitting at the other end of the table, Grandmother draws something on the sheet of paper. She says in a whisper:

"This is where my treasure is hidden."

She hands us the sheet of paper. On it she has drawn a rectangle, a cross, and under the cross, a circle. Grandmother asks:

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, Grandmother, we understand. But we knew already."

"What! What did you know already?"

We reply in a whisper:

"That your treasure is hidden under the cross on Grandfather's grave."

Grandmother is silent for a moment, then she says:

"I might have suspected as much. Have you known for a long time?"

"For a very long time, Grandmother. Ever since we saw you tending Grandfather's grave."

Grandmother breathes very heavily:

"There's no point in getting excited. Anyway, it's all yours. You're clever enough now to know what to do with it."

We say:

"For the moment, there's not much we can do with it."

Grandmother says:

"No. You're right. You must wait. Will you be able to wait?"

"Yes, Grandmother."

All three of us are silent for a moment, then Grandmother says:

"That isn't all. The next time I have an attack, I don't want any part of your bath, your rubber pants, or your diapers."

She gets up and rummages around on the shelf among her bottles. She comes back with a small blue flask:

"Instead of all your filthy medicines, you'll pour the contents of this flask into my first cup of milk."

We say nothing. She shouts:

"Do you understand, sons of a bitch?"

We say nothing. She says:

"Maybe you're afraid of the autopsy, you little brats? There won't be any autopsy. Nobody's going to make a fuss when an old woman dies after a second attack."

. We say:

"We aren't afraid of the autopsy, Grandmother. We just think that you may recover a second time."

"No. I won't recover. I know it. So we must put an end to it as soon as possible."

We say nothing, Grandmother starts to cry:

"You don't know what it's like to be paralyzed. To see everything, hear everything, and not be able to move. If you aren't even capable of doing this simple little thing for me, then you're ingrates, vipers I have nursed in my bosom."

We say:

"Don't cry, Grandmother. We'll do it; if you really want us to, we'll do it."

Our Father

When our Father arrives, the three of us are working in the kitchen because it's raining outside.

Father stops in front of the door, arms folded, legs apart. He asks:

"Where's my wife?" Grandmother sniggers:

"Well, well! So she really did have a husband." Father says:

"Yes, I'm your daughter's husband. And these are my sons."

He looks at us and adds:

"You really have grown up. But you haven't changed." Grandmother says:

"My daughter, your wife, entrusted the children to me." Father says:

"She'd have done better to entrust them to someone else. Where is she? I've been told she went abroad. Is that true?"

Grandmother says:

"That's old news, all that. Where have you been all this time?"

Father says:

"I've been a prisoner of war. And now I want to find my wife again. Don't try to hide anything from me, you old witch."

Grandmother says:

"I really appreciate your way of thanking me for what I've done for your children."

Father shouts:

"I don't give a damn! Where's my wife?"

Grandmother says:

"You don't give a damn? About your children and me? All right, I'll show you where your wife is!"

Grandmother goes out into the garden, and we follow her. With her stick, she points to the flower bed that we have planted over Mother's grave:

"There! That's where your wife is. In the ground."

Father asks:

"Dead? From what? When?"

Grandmother says:

"Dead. From a shell. A few days before the end of the war."

Father says:

"It's forbidden to bury people just anywhere."

Grandmother says:

"We buried her where she died. And that isn't just anywhere. It's my garden. It was also her garden when she was a little girl."

Father looks at the wet flowers and says:

"I want to see her."

Grandmother says:

"You shouldn't. The dead must not be disturbed."

Father says:

"In any case, she'll have to be buried in a cemetery. It's the law. Get me a spade."

Grandmother shrugs her shoulders:

"Get him a spade."

In the rain, we watch Father demolish our little flower garden, we watch him dig. He gets to the blankets, he pulls them away. A big skeleton is lying there, with a tiny skeleton pressed to its breast.

Father asks:

"What's that, that thing on her?"

We say:

"It's a baby. Our little sister."

Grandmother says:

"I did tell you to leave the dead in peace. Come and wash your hands in the kitchen."

Father doesn't answer. He stares at the skeletons. His face is wet with sweat, tears, and rain. He climbs laboriously out of the hole and walks off without turning around, his hands and clothes all muddy.

We ask Grandmother:

"What shall we do?"

She says:

"Fill the hole in again. What else can we do?"

We say:

"You go back into the warm, Grandmother. We'll take care of all this."

She goes in.

We carry the skeletons up to the attic in a blanket and spread the bones out on straw to dry. Then we go down and fill in the hole where nobody is lying anymore.

Later, we spend months smoothing and polishing the skull and bones of our Mother and the baby, then we carefully reassemble the skeletons by attaching each bone to thin pieces of wire. When our work is done, we hang Mother's skeleton from one of the attic beams with the baby's skeleton clinging to her neck.