"What's on your mind, Claus?"

"I'd like to sleep here, just for one night. Do you mind, Peter?"

"This is your home."

Report drawn up by the authorities of the town of K. for the attention of the embassy of D.

Re: request for the repatriation of your citizen Claus T., presently held in the prison of the town of K.

Claus T., aged fifty, holder of a valid passport and a thirty-day tourist visa, arrived in this town on April 2 of this year. He rented a room in the only hotel in town, the Grand Hotel in the main square.

Claus T. spent three weeks in the hotel, behaving like a tourist, walking around town, visiting historic sights, having his meals in the hotel restaurant, or in other restaurants in town.

Claus T. often visited the bookshop opposite the hotel to buy paper and pencils. Conversant in the local language, he chatted readily with the bookseller, Mrs. B., and with other persons in public places.

After three weeks, Claus T. asked Mrs. B. if she would rent him the two rooms above the bookshop on a monthly basis. As he offered a good price, Mrs. B. gave up the two-room apartment and went to stay with her daughter, who lives nearby.

Claus T. requested an extension to his visa on three occasions, which was granted without difficulty. However, his fourth request for an extension was refused in August. Claus T. disregarded this refusal, and owing to negligence on the part of our employees, the matter rested there until the month of October. On October 30, in the course of a routine identity check, our local police established that Claus T.'s papers were no longer in order.

At this point, Claus T. had run out of money. He owed two months' rent to Mrs. B. He was hardly eating. He went from bar to bar playing the harmonica. Drunkards bought him drinks. Mrs. B. brought him a little soup each day.

During his interrogation, Claus T. claimed to have been born in our country, and to have spent his childhood in our town, at his grandmother's house, and declared his wish to remain here until the return of his brother Lucas T. The said Lucas does not appear in any of the records of the town of K. Neither does Claus T.

We request you to settle the enclosed invoice (fine, administrative costs, rent for Mrs. B.) and to repatriate Claus T. on your own responsibility.

Signed, on behalf of the authorities of the town of K.: I.S.

Postscript

We have naturally, for reasons of security, examined the manuscript in the possession of Claus T. He claims that this manuscript proves the existence of his brother Lucas, who wrote the major part of it himself, Claus himself having merely added the last few pages, chapter number eight. However, the manuscript is in the same handwriting from beginning to end, and the sheets of paper show no signs of age. The entire text was written in one sequence, by the same person, over a period of time not exceeding six months, that is, by Claus T. himself during his stay in our town.

As for the content of the text, this can only be a fiction, since neither the events described nor the characters portrayed ever existed in the town of K., with the sole exception of one person, the supposed grandmother of Claus T., whom we have traced. This woman did in fact own a house on the present site of our playing field. Deceased without heir thirty-five years ago, she appears in our records under the name Maria Z., wife of V.

It is possible that during the war she was entrusted with the care of one or more children.

The Third Lie

The third book in the Book of Lies series, 1996

Translated by Marc Roma

Part one

I am in prison in the small town of my childhood.

It's not a real prison but a cell in the basement of the local police station, a building no different from the rest of the buildings in town. It too is a single-storied house.

My cell must have been a laundry room at one time; its door and window look out onto the courtyard. Window bars have been installed on the inside in a way that makes it impossible to reach through and break the glass. A toilet in the corner is concealed by a curtain. Against one wall are four chairs and a table bolted to the floor; on the opposite wall are four collapsible beds. Three of them are still folded up.

I am alone in my cell. There aren't many criminals in this town, and when there is one he is immediately brought to the neighboring town, the regional seat, twelve miles away.

I'm not a criminal. I'm here because my papers are not in order; my visa has expired. I've also run into debt.

In the morning my guard brings me breakfast-milk, coffee, bread. I drink some coffee and then shower. My guard finishes my breakfast and cleans my cell. The door is left open; I can go out into the courtyard if I want. The courtyard is enclosed by high walls covered with ivy and wild vines. Behind one of these walls, the one to the left as you leave my cell, is a school playground. I hear the children laughing, playing, and shouting during recess. The school was there when I was a child, as I recall, although I never went. The prison was here, on the other hand, as I also recall because I went there once.

For one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening I walk around the courtyard, a habit I developed during my childhood, when at the age of five I had to learn how to walk again.

This annoys my guard, because while I'm doing it I don't speak a word and don't hear the questions he asks me.

I pace with my eyes to the ground, my hands behind my back, turning and following the line of the walls. The ground is paved, but grass grows in the gaps between the stones.

The courtyard is almost square. Fifteen paces long, thirteen paces wide. Supposing I take three-foot strides, the courtyard's area must be 195 square yards. But my stride is probably not that long.

In the middle of the courtyard is a round table with two garden chairs; against the back wall is a wooden bench.

It is by sitting on that bench that I am able to see the greatest amount of my childhood sky.

The bookseller came to visit me on the very first day, bringing my personal effects and some vegetable soup. She continues to show up every day around noon with soup. I tell her I'm well fed here, that my guard brings me a full meal twice a day from the restaurant across the street, but she keeps coming with her soup. I eat a little out of politeness and I pass the pot to my guard, who finishes it.

I apologize to the bookseller for the mess that I left in the apartment.

She says, "Don't mention it. My daughter and I have already cleaned everything up. Mostly there was a lot of paper. I burned every sheet that was crumpled or thrown in the wastebasket. I left the others on the table, but the police came and took them."

I remain silent for a moment and then say, "I still owe you two months' rent."

She laughs. "I asked you far too much for that little apartment. But if you mean it, you can pay me when you come back. Next year, maybe."

I say, "I don't think I'll be coming back. My embassy will pay."

She asks me if there is anything I want, and I say, "Yes, paper and pencils. But I have no money."

She says, "I should have thought of it myself."

I say to her, "Thank you. The embassy will reimburse you for everything."

She says, "You're always going on about money. I wish you'd talk about something else. What are you writing, for instance?"

"What I write is absolutely meaningless."

She insists. "What I want to know is whether you write things that are true or things that are made up."