Secret Letters From 0 to 10

Ernest's boring life suddenly veers down an unexpected path when Victoria, the new girl at school, falls head-over-heels in love with him, declares that the two will wed in less than fourteen years, and begins handing out wedding invitations to all their friends.

Chapter One Ernest He always walked slowly toward the building where he lived, never raising his head, always taking the same old way. It had never entered his mind to try the slightest variation in his route. He had never even crossed to the other side of the street. He would just take himself straight to school, then straight back home again. Every day he trudged up the same fifty-seven steps to the third floor. He never skipped steps or rushed. Ernest was never in a hurry. The ten years of his life had passed so far at a turtle's pace, as if it had been slowed down by the premature onset of old age.
Every day he put his schoolbag down in his room which, although the smallest, was the least cluttered in the house. It could have been a closet or a cell in an old prison: just a bed, a table, a chair, and a closet, all in immaculate order. He took out his schoolbooks and got ready for his homework before going to get his snack from the kitchen table.
A large green apple and a cracker had been waiting there for him since lunchtime. Every day, the housekeeper put them out after clearing away his lunch. The snack was always the same.
After a few bites he usually didn't feel like any more of the apple, but he finished it just the same. Then he began to do his homework, working methodically and with concentration. He knew that the quicker it was done, the sooner he would be free to take another look inside the only cupboard in the house which was not kept locked.

When his grandmother heard the creak of the book cabinet door, the chinking of its fine glass pane, she left her room and came to sit down with Ernest in the living room while he read.
"Good evening, Grandmother," said Ernest, joining her on the shabby velvet couch. No one had ever called her by her first name: Precious. It was hard to imagine anyone calling her that.
Grandmother tilted her head in greeting. She spoke rarely and little. Ernest always had the impression that if she moved too much, she would disintegrate. She was eighty years old, but the kind of eighty that is really old, like the grandmothers in fairy tales. Her skin was so wrinkled and crinkled and dry that Ernest was afraid if ever she happened to smile, it would turn to dust. But she never did smile. She walked with difficulty and ate without appetite. She looked after her grandson out of a sense of duty. She was all he had. She had brought Ernest up since his mother had died when he was born. In the Morlaisse family, people died from history's little accidents: the Second World War had claimed his grandfather, the First World War his great grandfather, and as for his father, he had disappeared: an unexplained disappearance after his wife's funeral, when Ernest was just one day old.
And so his grandmother had lost her own father when she was five and her husband when she was thirty, and when she lost her son at seventy, she had inherited a baby for whom she had neither the physical nor the moral strength. But she did what she saw had to be done.
She had instantly hired a woman hardly younger than herself to look after the baby's hygiene and nutrition. This woman, Germaine, had at that time just lost her husband. She had no children, and was looking more for an escape from loneliness than a salary. The two women got along well, because they had their prin-ciples in common . . . a lot of principles. They lived side by side in a parallel existence. Madame Morlaisse had offered to let Germaine live there, but Germaine preferred to come and go, except at the very beginning when the baby wasn't sleeping through the night yet, or sometimes if the weather was very bad.
Although Germaine was old, too, she tried to disguise her age with all the techniques of modern makeup. In fact, her creams and lotions were the only signs of the modern world in this machineless, televisionless house. Germaine struggled constantly against gray hair, wrinkles, and fat; however she had given up on the fight against depression. During his first years, she had spoken the only words Ernest ever heard, but as soon as he started school, she had clammed up like her employer.
Any conversation was limited to the strictly utilitarian, and even this was hardly necessary, for the house ran itself, apparently from sheer force of habit and lassitude; it seemed to be in a permanent state of regulated minimum service.
Germaine did the shopping and the cooking. She could have ordered the groceries by telephone, but there was no telephone. Another woman, a friend of hers, and just as old, did the housework. All their laundry was sent out.
Madame Morlaisse just sat, a silent mournful statue. At one time, she used to read beside Ernest, but now her eyes tired too easily. Often, Ernest would raise his head from his book and notice that Grandmother was dozing off, still sitting upright in her chair. Sometimes she even managed to snore, which added an extra sound effect to the usual tick tock of the clocks. Ernest knew that Grandmother wouldn't have liked to know that she snored, so he never said a word.
Even if she was in a deep sleep, she would suddenly rouse herself to listen to the eight o'clock news. The radio was one of the first models ever made, and getting her station was like trying to listen to the radio from London during the war, with the same faint sound and loud crackling. Madame Morlaisse was becoming rather hard of hearing, and it wasn't part of the newscaster's job to repeat everything three times just for her benefit. However, this was of no importance. Mrs. Morlaisse didn't really want to know what was happening in the world. From time to time she would react to certain words, names, or countries. If the newscaster happened to say Germany for example, she would repeat with a sigh, "Germany."
The important thing for her was to switch on the radio at eight o'clock, exactly as she had done every evening for all these years.
For his part, Ernest listened to the news with rapt attention from beginning to end. It was as if he half expected to hear the answer he was looking for. He wasn't interested in politics, politicians, or elections. What he was listening for, from his place on the sofa, was news of the outbreak of the Third World War, for, like those which had come before, it was sure to carry off yet another Morlaisse. At 8:30 the Morlaisses had supper. The menu was always the same: soup. Soup is easy to digest, it makes you grow, and it guarantees a good night's sleep ? that is, if it is salt- and pepper-free, of course. Germaine didn't come back in the evenings. Ernest would heat up the soup and then, having put the dirty dishes into the sink, he would go quietly to bed. Regular sleep is important for a child. Before brushing his teeth, he always said, "Goodnight, Grandmother, sleep well." Her eyes would blink in reply.
Thus, Ernest got up every weekday morning with the regularity of a well-oiled machine. He would eat two pieces of toast with marmalade (made by a cousin of Germaine's in the south of France), drink a glass of warm milk, put on his tie, pack his schoolbag, and go to school. Every day he came home for lunch, because both Germaine and his grandmother were suspicious of school food. To them, something canned or frozen wasn't food. And fish did not come in fingers, but with scales and heads. Potatoes arrived caked with mud, straight from the soil, without stopping at a processing plant. Madame Morlaisse was wary of too much salt, too much sugar, and bad influences in general. Germaine was suspicious of oil that might be rancid, fried food, rotten meat, and too much noise.
Ernest owned neither jeans nor a sweatsuit. Twice a year, a tailor would come to the house, take his measurements, and make him a suit too old-fashioned for this century and too modern for the last. It looked like something that might have been part of a school uniform. The same tailor supplied his shirts, ties, handkerchiefs, underwear, and socks, and his annual winter coat. This getup kept the other children far away from Ernest, as if he had something contagious. In any case, he would have avoided them ? not because he wanted to but because it was the safe thing to do.
Nobody made fun of him ? everybody was used to him. And he was by far the top of the class, except in composition when the subject was "My favorite TV Show," "My Vacation," or "My Sunday."
Ernest's Sundays were even less eventful than the other days of the week. The minutes clogged past like sand in a wet egg-timer. Germaine only came on Sundays to cook and serve lunch ? a Sunday lunch with meat, two vegetables, and stewed fruit for dessert.
After her nap, Madame Morlaisse would call Ernest into the living room, and, taking out a key from against her withered chest, she would open the door of the inlaid cabinet and extract a narrow china box which was the repository of the letter. She and Ernest would sit at the table that rested on a pedestal the shape of a golden lion.
"Will you read it, Grandmother?" Ernest would ask.
Madame Morlaisse would extract the sheet of paper from its envelope, carefully unfold it, and stare at it as if it contained the key to all the secrets of the universe. The only problem was, the letter was illegible. Even though Ernest knew this, every Sunday he would hope against hope. He might be at the top of the class, but he couldn't figure out even one of the letters. There were no a's, b's, or even z's. There was just a jungle of knots shouting their message inaudibly from the page.
His great-grandfather had sent this letter from a village near the front during World War I. Of all the secrets in the house, this one was the biggest ? or possibly the second biggest. Ernest hoped that if he continued to do well in school, one day he would be able to decipher all the secrets. Chapter Two