The Most Beautiful Book in the World (16 page)

“Your hair . . .”

Tatyana pointed to the thick halo of hair surrounding Olga's stern face. And went on staring at her.

“When I first saw you, I thought that . . .”

Olga interrupted her with her hand and, for the first time, she smiled.

“You are correct.”

As Tatyana's eyes filled with wonder, Olga slipped her hand behind her ear, dug about in her curls and then, her eyes shining, she pulled out a thin pencil and handed it to her fellow prisoner.

“It's a deal.”

 

It is no easy thing to measure the joy that warmed the women's hearts during the days that followed. Through that little pencil lead they had once again found their hearts, their ties with the world from before, a way to embrace their children. Captivity no longer seemed as arduous. Nor did guilt. For some of them did feel terrible remorse for the fact that they had put their political activities before their family life; now that they had been shipped off to the depths of the gulag, leaving their children at the mercy of a society they had despised and fought against, they could not help but regret their militancy and suspect that they had failed in their duty, and thus proven themselves to be bad mothers. Would it not have been better simply to keep quiet, like so many other Soviet women, and immerse themselves in domestic values? To save their own skins, and the skins of their loved ones, rather than struggle to save everyone's?

While each of the prisoners had several sheets of paper, there was only one pencil. So after several meetings they agreed that each woman would have the right to three full sheets before all of the sheets were bound together in a stitched notebook which would be smuggled out at the first opportunity.

The second rule: each woman must write her pages without making any mistakes, in order not to waste the pencil lead.

While their decision was greeted with general enthusiasm that evening, the days that followed were more troublesome. Confronted with the obligation to concentrate all their thoughts onto three small sheets, each woman struggled: how to put together three essential pages, three testamentary pages that would imprint the essence of a life, that would pass on to their children their souls and their values, and convey for all eternity the significance of their time on earth?

The undertaking became a torture. Every evening sobs could be heard from the bunks. Some of the women couldn't sleep; others moaned in their dreams.

The moment they could seize a break in their forced labor, they would try to exchange their ideas.

“I'm going to tell my daughter why I am here and not with her. So that she'll understand, and maybe she'll forgive me.”

“Three pages of guilty conscience to give yourself a clear conscience—do you really think that's a good idea?”

“I want to tell my daughter how I met her father, so that she'll know that she was born because of the love between us.”

“Oh yes? And what if all she really cares about is finding out why you didn't stick around to love her.”

“I want to tell my three daughters about their birth, because each of their births was the most beautiful moment in my life.”

“That's a bit short, no? You don't think they'll be sorry you restricted your memories to their arrival on the scene? You'd do better to talk about what came afterwards.”

“I want to tell them what I would like to do for them.”

“Hmm.”

In the course of their discussions, they uncovered a singular detail: all of them had given birth to daughters. The coincidence amused them, then surprised them, to such a degree that they came to wonder whether the decision to incarcerate all the mothers of daughters together in ward 13 had not been deliberate on the part of the authorities.

But this diversion did not bring an end to their ordeal: what should they write?

Every evening Olga would wave the pencil and call out, “Who wants to begin?”

Every evening a diffuse silence would settle over the women. Time passed, perceptibly, like stalactites dripping from the ceiling of a cave. The women, heads down, waited for one of them to shout, “Me!” and to deliver them temporarily from their troubles but, after a few coughs and furtive glances, the most courageous would eventually say that they were still thinking.

“I've nearly got it . . . tomorrow perhaps.”

“Yes, me too, I'm getting there, but I'm not quite sure . . .”

The days went by, whirling with snow flurries, crisp with immaculate frost. Although the prisoners had waited two years for the pencil, three months had already gone by and not one of them asked for the pencil or even accepted it.

So imagine their surprise when one Sunday, after Olga had lifted up the object and uttered the ritual words, Lily answered eagerly, “I'll have it, thanks.”

They turned around, stunned, to look at plump, blonde Lily, the most scatterbrained of them all, the most sentimental, the least headstrong—in short: the most normal. If someone had tried to forecast who among the prisoners would be first to start writing her three pages, Lily would surely have been placed among the stragglers. First would be Tatyana, or perhaps Olga, or even Irina—but sweet, ordinary Lily?

Tatyana could not help but stammer, “Lily . . . are you sure?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“You're not going to . . . scribble, make a mistake . . . well, wear down the pencil?”

“No, I've had a good think: I'll manage without any mistakes.”

Skeptical, Olga handed Lily the pencil. As she was giving it to her, she exchanged glances with Tatyana, who seemed to confirm that they were surely committing a blunder.

On the days that followed, the women in ward 13 stared at Lily every time she would go off on her own to write, sitting on the floor, alternating inspiration—eyes raised to the ceiling—and expiration, her shoulders curved to hide the marks she was making on the paper from the others.

On Wednesday she announced, satisfied, “I've finished. Who wants the pencil?”

A gloomy silence met her question.

“Who wants the pencil?”

Not a single woman dared look at another. Lily concluded, calmly, “Right, then I'll put it back in Olga's hair until tomorrow.”

Olga merely grunted when Lily hid the object deep in her curls.

Anyone other than Lily—not as good, more aware of the complexities of the human heart—might have noticed that the women in the ward were now training jealous gazes upon her, perhaps even a touch of hatred. How had Lily, who really was close to being a moron, managed to succeed where the others had failed?

A week went by, and every evening provided another opportunity for the women to relive their defeat.

Finally, the following Wednesday at midnight, when the sound of breathing indicated that most of the women were fast asleep, Tatyana, tired of tossing and turning in her bunk, dragged herself silently over to Lily's bunk.

Lily smiled at her, gazing up at the dark ceiling.

“Lily, I beg you, can you tell me what you wrote?”

“Of course, Tatyana, would you like to read it?”

“Yes.”

How would she manage? It was after curfew.

Tatyana huddled at the window. Beyond a spider's web was a field of pure snow, made blue by moonlight; if she twisted her neck, Tatyana could just make out the three small pages.

Lily drew near and asked, her tone that of a little girl who has done something naughty, “Well, what do you think?”

“Lily, you're a genius.”

And Tatyana took Lily in her arms to kiss her several times over on her plump cheeks.

The next morning Tatyana asked two favors of Lily: permission to follow her example, and permission to share it with the other women.

Lily lowered her lashes, blushed as if she'd just been offered a bouquet of flowers, and chirped a few words which—though garbled, a sort of cooing in her throat—meant yes.

 

Epilogue

 

Moscow, December 2005.

Fifty years have passed since these events took place.

The man who is writing these lines is visiting Russia. The Soviet regime has fallen, and there are no more camps—although this in no way means that injustice is a thing of the past.

In the salons of the embassy of France I meet the artists who for years now have been putting on my plays.

Among them is a woman in her sixties who seizes my arm with a sort of affectionate familiarity, a mixture of brazenness and respect. Her smile glows with kindness. It is impossible to resist the mauve of her eyes . . . I follow her over to the window of the palace, with its view over the lights of Moscow.

“Would you like me to show you the most beautiful book in the world?”

“And here I was clinging to hopes of writing it myself, and you tell me I'm too late. What a blow! Are you sure of this? The most beautiful book in the world?”

“Yes. Other people might write beautiful books, but this one is the most beautiful.”

We sit down on one of those oversized, worn sofas that must adorn the grand salons of embassies the world over.

She tells me about her mother, Lily, who spent several years in the gulag, and then about the women who shared that time with her, and finally the story of the book, just as I have related it above.

“I'm the one who owns the notebook. Because my mother was the first one to leave ward 13, she managed to sneak it out, sewn in her skirts. Mother has died, the others too. However, the daughters of the imprisoned comrades come to look at it from time to time: we have tea together and talk about our mothers, and then we read through it again. They've entrusted me with the task of looking after it. When I won't be here anymore, I don't know where it will go. Will a museum take it? I wonder. And yet it is the most beautiful book in the world. The book of our mothers.”

She positions her face beneath my own, as if she were going to kiss me, and winks at me.

“Would you like to see it?”

We make an appointment.

The next day, I climb the enormous stairway leading to the apartment she shares with her sister and two cousins.

In the middle of the table, amidst the tea and sugar cookies, the book is waiting, a notebook of fragile sheets which the decades have left more brittle than ever.

My hostesses settle me into a worn armchair, and I begin to read the most beautiful book in the world, written by those who fought for freedom, rebels whom Stalin considered dangerous, the resistance fighters of ward 13, each of whom had written three sheets to her daughter, fearful that she might never see her again.

On every page there was a recipe.

 

 

T
his book came about when writing was forbidden to me.

A year ago, I was offered the opportunity to direct a film. As I had to work hard to prepare myself, to master the language of images, framing, sound, and editing, I had no opportunity to write. Later, the day before we were to shoot our first scene, I was handed a contract which forbade me from any skiing or violent sports; when I put my initials to it, I was also made to understand that it would also be preferable if I did no writing either, although, in any case, I wouldn't have the time.

That was too much of a provocation.

During the shooting and editing, therefore, I took advantage of the few rare hours when I had nothing to do in order to isolate myself from my crew; in the morning at breakfast, or in the evening in a hotel room, I sat at a table and wrote these short stories which I had been carrying around in my mind for a long time. This allowed me to rediscover the joy of clandestine writing, the one I'd known as an adolescent: filling the pages brought back an appetite for secret pleasures.

Ordinarily, short stories are made into films. Here, the contrary has occurred. Not only did my film allow me to write these short stories, but once it was finished—and once again to do just the opposite—I decided to adapt the original screenplay into a short story.

The film was called
Odette Toulemonde,
and the short story as well. However, anyone who is interested in both the cinema and literature, and who becomes acquainted with the two versions, will notice above all their differences, for I really did try to tell the same story using two languages, and unequal means: words in this case, and animated images on the screen.

 

August 15, 2006

 

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, playwright, novelist, and author of short stories, was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix du Théâtre in 2001. He is one of Europe's most popular and best-selling authors. His books include
Oscar and the Lady in Pink
(1999),
The Gospel According to Pilate
(2000), and
My Life with Mozart
(2005). The film
Odette Toulemonde
, Schmitt's début as screenwriter and director, was released in 2007.