How I Became A Nun Read Online Free PDF Page A

so that
     the answer was a simple yes or no. If I had
always
lied, he would have started
     translating every answer into its opposite. I considered it my duty to lie every time;
     so in order to protect myself, I had to proceed in a roundabout way, which isn’t
     all that easy when you have to reply yes or no, without hedging. On top of this, I had
     resolved never to mix any truth with my lies. I was afraid that if I lost track, chance
     would be able to intervene. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed somehow. Here
     are some of my tricks (I don’t know why I’m explaining all this, unless
     I’m hoping to inspire other patients by my example): I pretended not to have heard
     a question, and when he asked another, I replied to the first one, with a lie, of
     course; I replied, always fallaciously, to one element of the question, for example an
     adjective or a verb tense, not to the question as a whole; he would ask me “Is
     this where it was hurting?” and I would answer “No,” while suggesting
     with an ingenious movement of my eyebrows that the place in question was not where it
was
hurting before, but where it was hurting now. He picked up all these
     signals—nothing was lost on him—and despondently rephrased his question:
     “Is this where it’s hurting?” But by then I had already moved on to a
     new system, a new tactic … I should say in my defense that I was making it all up
     as I went along. Although I had veritable eons of time in which to think, I never used
     that time to plan my lies.
    “And how are we today, young Master César? Don’t we look well? Ready
     to play ball again? Let’s see how we’re going …”
    His cheerfulness was contagious. He was a short young man with a little moustache. He
     seemed to come from far away.
    From the outside world. I looked at him with a special face I had invented, which meant,
     What? What? What are you talking about? Why are you asking all these hard questions?
     Can’t you see the state I’m in? Why are you talking to me in Chinese instead
     of Spanish? He lowered his eyes, but took it as well as he could. He sat on the edge of
     the bed and began to examine me. He poked me with his finger here and there, in the
     liver, the pancreas, the gall bladder …
    “Does it hurt here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Does it hurt here?”
    “No.”
    “Here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes?”
    “…”
    Then, perplexed, he started all over again. He was looking for places where it had to be
     hurting, where an absence of pain was impossible. But he couldn’t find them; I was
     the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. I possessed the keys to pain
     …
    “Does it hurt a little bit here?”
    I made it clear that his questions had tired me out. I burst into tears and he tried to
     comfort me.
    He used his stethoscope. I believed that I could accelerate my heartbeat at will, and
     maybe I could. At once he began to manipulate me with extreme care. For some reason he
     wanted to put the stethoscope on my back, so he had to sit me up, which turned out to be
     as difficult as standing a broom handle on end. When he finally succeeded, I began
     rolling my head around wildly and retching. Fiction and reality were fused at this
     point; my simulation was becoming real, tinting all my lies with truth. For me, retching
     was something sacred, something not to be trifled with. The memory of Dad in the
     ice-cream store made retching more real than reality itself; it was the thing that made
     everything else real, and nothing could withstand it. For me, ever since, it has been
     the essence of the sacred, the source from which my calling sprang.
    When the doctor moved on, I was a complete wreck. I could hear him at the beds nearby,
     talking and laughing; I could hear the voices of the little patients answering his
     questions … All this came to me through a thick fog. I could feel myself
     plummeting into the abyss … My willfulness wasn’t deliberate. It was just