The Notebook + The Proof + The Third Lie Read Free Page B

thus learning whole pages of the Bible by heart.
    This is how a composition lesson proceeds:
    We are sitting at the kitchen table with our sheets of graph paper, our pencils, and the notebook. We are alone.
    One of us says:
    "The title of your composition is: 'Arrival at Grandmother's.' "
    The other says:
    "The title of your composition is: 'Our Chores.' "
    We start writing. We have two hours to deal with the subject and two sheets of paper at our disposal.
    At the end of two hours we exchange our sheets of paper. Each of us corrects the other's spelling mistakes with the help of the dictionary and writes at the bottom of the page: "Good" or "Not good." If it's "Not good," we throw the composition in the fire and try to deal with the same subject in the next lesson. If it's "Good," we can copy the composition into the notebook.
    To decide whether it's "Good" or "Not good," we have a very simple rule: the composition must be true. We must describe what is, what we see, what we hear, what we do.
    For example, it is forbidden to write, "Grandmother is like a witch"; but we are allowed to write, "People call Grandmother the Witch."
    It is forbidden to write, "The Little Town is beautiful," because the Little Town may be beautiful to us and ugly to someone else.
    Similarly, if we write, "The orderly is nice," this isn't a truth, because the orderly may be capable of malicious acts that we know nothing about. So we would simply write, "The orderly has given us some blankets."
    We would write, "We eat a lot of walnuts," and not "We love walnuts," because the word "love" is not a reliable word, it lacks precision and objectivity. "To love walnuts" and "to love Mother" don't mean the same thing. The first expression designates a pleasant taste in the mouth, the second a feeling.
    Words that define feelings are very vague. It is better to avoid using them and stick to the description of objects, human beings, and oneself, that is to say, to the faithful description of facts.
     
     

Our Neighbor and Her Daughter
    Our neighbor is not as old as Grandmother. She lives with her daughter in the last house of the Little Town. It is a completely dilapidated shack with several holes in the roof. Around it there is a garden, but it is not cultivated like Grandmother's garden. Nothing grows there but weeds.
    The neighbor spends all day sitting on a stool in her garden looking straight in front of her at who knows what. In the evenings or when it rains, her daughter takes her by the arm and leads her indoors. Sometimes her daughter forgets her or isn't there, and then the mother spends the whole night outside, whatever the weather.
    People say that our neighbor is mad, that she lost her mind when the man who made her pregnant abandoned her.
    Grandmother says that the neighbor is simply lazy and prefers to stay poor rather than get down to work.
    The neighbor's daughter is no taller than we are, but she is a bit older. During the day, she begs in the town, outside cafés and at street corners. At the market, she picks up vegetables and rotten fruit that people throw away and takes them home. She also steals anything she can. Several times we have had to chase her out of our garden when she was trying to take fruit and eggs.
    Once, we catch her drinking milk by sucking the udder of one of our goats.
    When she sees us, she gets up, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, steps back, and says:
    "Don't hurt me!"
    She adds:
    "I run very fast. You won't catch me."
    We look at her. It's the first time we've seen her close up. She has a harelip, she's cross-eyed, she has snot in her nose and yellow dirt in the corners of her red eyes. Her legs and arms are covered with pimples.
    She says:
    "I'm called Harelip. I like milk."
    She smiles. Her teeth are black.
    "I like milk, but what I like best is sucking the udder. It's good. It's hard and soft at the same time."
    We say nothing. She approaches us.
    "I like to suck something else, too."
    She stretches out