Yesterday, my head didn't hurt and I could sleep. It was months ago that I read this book. It was weeks ago, and then days ago that I turned on my computer and sat down to not write a review (or whatever these things are that I call reviews. Loosely, a review). Hours ago, too. Now it's really tomorrow. I've had that debate many times about if it is today or tomorrow if it's the hour when you or other people are usually asleep. I usually fall on the side of it is tomorrow after midnight. Time has no meaning, anyway. My goodreads friend Kristen recently sent me a link to an article about how I'm normal and other people aren't normal because we're not really supposed to sleep eight hours straight (I seldom sleep all at once and I dream all day). I have it on the highest authority (the birds told me) that sleep doesn't count unless it is uninterrupted, if you're a parrot. Birds die in dreams in Yesterday. Birds sleep on one foot. This bird falls off its branch. No feet. They couldn't have been holding on.
There are hardly any reviews of Yesterday on the internet. One review on goodreads says that it is a love story. It is not a love story in the sense of two people who love each other who cannot be together. It is a love story for the thing that you tell yourself will happen some day. The uninterrupted sleep dream of the daytime that you could carry inside of you all day that would make possible avoiding everything else that you cannot deal with. The unrequited tomorrow. Eyes to not see the dirty apartment. Eat lunch alone, sit alone, read alone, speak languages alone, sleep alone, leave unnoticed alone, write alone. When she comes her name will be Line. When she comes everything will start. I will know it when it happens. Tomorrow...
Sandor's past is a fairy tale with a Line, his sister, although she does not know it. His mother is the village prostitute. His father made her so when he knocked her up when she was too young. Now he still visits her, along with all the other men of the village, and scorns her (with the men and women of the village. Children, too. Probably the animals). His son is in his class and lives on charity from his own father. Line recognizes the charity and tells Sandor so. It's the kind of charity when someone tells you that you are receiving charity. So, not charity at all. The mother's love is the kind of love where she would tell you that you are her son and living off of her sweat (and bodily fluids of all those men). So, not really love. She has sex in a room with the door open (his father is the only man who shuts the door, so at least there's that). When she washes her privates by squatting over a bucket my mind flushed back to an opening scene from the Bela Tarr film of Satanstango (I still haven't finished watching it and I've had it checked out for months). It's a vivid bucket squatting private washing scene. Doors open. The actress reminded me of Jeanne Moreau and not in a good way. In the someone is acting here way and always remind you of someone else and not who they are supposed to be at that moment (not necessarily bad, either. Just you never forget it's acting). The people in Sandor's life have a someone is acting way way about them. This is charity, this is love, this is what we want from you. And don't you forget it! He kills and runs away. The "frontier" outside of communist Hungary. It could be anywhere great wide frontier of closed off. Grouped together, always like some kind of refugee. Their language. And don't you forget it, I mean it!
Agota Kristof writes in a fairy tale way that moves me. I'm impatient with a lot of fairy tales because I don't feel the need for the fairy tale when it's implied. Or taken for granted, rather. "But we all want this! Look- it's a prince!" Sandor's one day will to keep going... This is how it is going to be. Soul mates exist. I get that. I read constantly and watch tons of films (the ones that I don't keep rented out for months, anyway) to keep some dream going. Yesterday, today, tomorrow...
Line comes again and it is the same Line. The apartment is still filthy, the dream of that soul mate thing could still happen tomorrow... Not today. Not sister. Not that she ever knew. Not that it was her fault. You don't have these dreams of tomorrow it's going to be so amazing and ignore all other possibilities to actually get anything you want. (His poor kids. The poor dead birds who are sacrificed in all of his sleepy time dreams.) If your dreams are so ruthless they blot out tomorrow. Sandor doesn't hold on anymore. He could have said "This is what I want from you. And don't I forget it!"
I guess I didn't feel that I needed Sandor to have his dreams. I wasn't crushed when he gives them up. It felt more like a dream I could have had and then nights of dreamless sleep. Do you miss dreams you don't have? (The loss of dreams in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter absolutely gutted me. So it did in Agota Kristof's Three Novels.) Fall in love... fall out of love. Here is its echo and here is its shadow.
I have no more Agota Kristof novels to read unless more are ever translated into English, or if I learn French. I guess I have the idea that I'll ever learn French.
There is also a film version made by Soldini. I used to walk by his film "Bread and Tulips" in the foreign film section when there were still local video stores. I always passed by it. I came to have a dismissive silly romance idea about it. The cover for "Burning in the Wind" looks like something I would pass by in a video store and dismiss as a silly romance. I've been wrong doing that before, though. (Hey! According to the imdb there's a film version of The Third Lie as well. I learn something new every day. Except for yesterday. I didn't learn squat yesterday. It doesn't look like it's an easy film to obtain... Nor does Burning in the Wind, for that matter.)
My alarm clock is set for me to wake up soon (I get up really freaking early). I should get up and turn it off instead of waiting for it. I hate that sound more than most other sounds.