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liedthricePLAYER
Name/Handle: World
Contact: MSN - the.second.advent@hotmail.com. Plurk - World_rescue
Personal DW: worldrescue
CHARACTER
Name: Lucas "Claus" T.
Series: "The Book of Lies" series, also known as "The Notebook, The Proof and the Third Lie."
Canon: OU
Age: 47
Timeline: The end of "The Third Lie," after his death.
History: Agota Kristof's trilogy The Book of Lies is a minimalist, postmodern political satire on the relationship between a divided Europe during World War II, as well as the hatred and distrust that continued on long after. It is also a cautionary tale about the effects of war and violent parenting on young children, and the long-lasting effects of abuse. The series is a complicated thing in that everything until the epilogue is entirely an intricate lie to the reader. There is no reason for the reader to believe that the narrator would be lying to them (in fact, the title of the series "The Book of Lies" was later changed to the name of each chapter, "The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie", to prevent the reader from becoming suspicious), but at the very end of the novel it is discovered the entire story up until that point was a work of fiction created by main character Lucas in order to convince himself and others of the existence of his fictional brother Claus.
To simplify things, I will explain the canon as the truth instead of the lies, and will specify when a lie occurs.
Lucas T and his twin brother were born in the late 1930s in Budapest, Hungary (referred to as "Big Town"), and were raised in the chaos of World War II. Their Father was conscripted as a war correspondent, but the day of his departure, demanded he and his wife divorce. He had been sleeping with another woman for some time and recently discovered he had gotten her pregnant, and wished to cut all ties with his current wife and children. Their mother does not handle this news well and murders her husband - shooting him in the kitchen several times with the revolver she stole off of his uniform holster. What she realized too late, however, was that Lucas and his twin had been listening to their fight around the corner - and a bullet that was meant for her husband ricocheted off the wall and struck Lucas in the back. Lucas lost consciousness and his Mother, believing she had killed her four-year-old son, went mad.
Unable to be cared for by their mother, Lucas and his brother were split up after the accident. Lucas was sent to a recovery hospital for the handicapped in another town called "S" (which was later bombed, and so Lucas was presumed to have died), and his brother was sent to live with another family. They never saw eachother again.
The recovery hospital was a living hell for Lucas and a poor replacement for childhood. Though he eventually recovered from his wound, the trauma from the incident had addled his memory, and rather than tell him the truth and risk his remembering the nurses convinced him he was suffering from poliomyelitis. All he could remember was having a family once, a twin brother who he loved very much, but even he could only wonder if he dreamt up such a story. Extremely mature and intelligent for his age, Lucas did not fit in well with the other children and brutally bullied them, until eventually his behavior attracted the attention of the director. Lucas was locked away in isolation for his behavior for some time, and only one person sought to console him: the hospital's teacher. Now eight years old and with no other maternal or guiding figure in his life, Lucas fell madly in love with the woman. They often spoke in private and befriended eachother despite the age gap. When Lucas expressed he would like to sleep in the same bed as her from now on, the teacher reluctantly agreed, and Lucas moved from spending his nights in the hospital to her quarters.
One day during class, the town of S was firebombed. The Recovery Hospital was hit, and though almost all the patients in the hospital died, the Teacher threw her body over Lucas to protect him and died in his place, her head crushed by falling debris. Never quite recovering from the loss of his first love, Lucas was traumatized and deemed mentally unsound for integration into society. A nun offered to find him a home where he would be taken care of, and put him under the care of a childless old woman named Maria in a place called the Town of "K" (never named, but presumed to be either Koszeg or Kormend in Hungary). He called her "Grandmother." She called him "Son of a Bitch."
From this point in his life on, to deal with the loneliness and cruelty he endured at Grandmother's house, Lucas constructs an intricate lie. The transcript of his lie is the first book of the series, "The Notebook."
During his stay, Lucas writes a long, detailed log, using the pronoun "we", of his life at Grandmother's House. He pretends as if he is living with his twin brother named Claus (an anagram of Lucas), and the two of them never leave eachother's side. They are one in the same: they feel the same emotions, speak the same words, work as one being, and always seem to know what the other is thinking. In this lie, they are dropped off at their biological Grandmother's house by their mother who can no longer take care of them because of the ongoing war. Their father has been missing in action for years. Though their mother gives Lucas and Claus money and clothes to live off of for awhile, their Grandmother steals their possessions and forces them to provide for themselves, even at their young age. Lucas and Claus have no choice but to live off their Grandmother's land, planting crops and raising animals in order to sell to the market and obtain food and water. However, because they are children, they are easily taken advantage of by the townspeople. They are beaten, sworn at, tortured, mugged, abused, and even sexually assaulted. In order to stop themselves from feeling hurt by this, the boys construct a plan to desensitize themselves to every cruelty in the world. They torture eachother, scream insults at eachother, force one another to murder their pets, starve eachother, and much more, until they no longer comprehend fear, pain, or hurt. Likewise, when a young woman passing by takes pity on them and holds the two boys in her arms to comfort them, they realize they must also desensitize themselves to love. And while they are successful in distancing themselves from feeling anything for any other person (including their own mother, who actually abandoned Lucas and Claus to live with another man and bear his child. They choose to stay behind and live with their Grandmother when their mother returns), the one thing they cannot force themselves to do is distance themselves from eachother. No matter what, the boys are bound by a deep and unbreakable brotherly love.
And so they decide they must destroy it by any means possible.
The year they turn fifteen their father finally locates them after Grandmother dies. Though he was a war correspondent, he had been imprisoned and tortured by the government as punishment for not writing propoganda in his articles. They trick their father into believing they can escape across the border and live a peaceful life in the neighbouring country by crossing what they call "The Frontier". However, the frontier they send him across is actually a minefield - for which Lucas and Claus have determined the exact layout. There is a diagonal line of mines across the field - the only way to get across is to make someone go ahead first, and to walk exactly in their footsteps.
After sacrificing their father to gain access to the neighbouring country, Claus crosses the minefield safely. Lucas stays behind. And from then on, the boys are forever separated by the iron curtain for over fifty years, in what they have called an exercise in separation.
But remember, Claus never existed. It was all a lie.
Instead it was only Lucas who brainwashed and killed a man to cross into the neighbouring country instead of living a solitary life in the Town of K after Maria's death. After crossing the border into Austria, Lucas wrote three lies on his immigration papers. First, he wrote he was eighteen, not fifteen. Second, though the man who tried to cross the border with him was not his father, he insisted that his father had been the one who convinced him to cross. And finally, he signs his name "Claus"- after the twin brother he had imagined for himself.
From this point on Lucas "lives" as the other twin brother "Claus" on the other side, and writes a long, complicated (and completely fictional) memoir about his "true self" who had been the one to stay behind. This lie is the entire second book in the trilogy, "The Proof." In this lie, Lucas cannot bear the loss of Claus, and becomes gravely ill. He cannot eat without becoming sick, cannot drink, and has no energy to do any of the work he and Claus used to do together. Though he is brought to the brink of death, soon he meets a young woman named Yasmin, who has given birth to her father's son, Mathias, and has been shunned from her family. When Lucas allows Yasmin and Mathias to stay with him, his illness begins to recede, but after he and Yasmin get into a violent argument, Lucas accidentally kills her in a fit of rage. Burying her body in the gardens, he tells her son Mathias the next day his mother left for Big Town and left him in his care. He decides to formally adopt Mathias. The rest of his story centres around Lucas using Mathias to fill the empty hole the loss of his brother had created, even when Mathias continually expresses a distrust of his new father. Eventually, when Mathias turns seven, Lucas meets one of the child's schoolmates - who happens to look exactly like Claus did. Though the boy had just brought himself to love Lucas, Mathias comes to believe that Lucas loves this schoolmate more than he loves him, and hangs himself in the attic. Lucas comes home to find Mathias dead, and goes insane - vanishing years later, disappearing into the forest, never to be seen again.
Of course, none of this actually happened. But the real Lucas, on the other side of the border, stays in role. As "Claus," he tells all of this story as if it was real. He speaks constantly of a brother named Lucas waiting for him behind the iron curtain for him to return someday. He repeats this lie for over thirty years, so frequently and so heartfully that eventually he loses track of what is the truth and what is the lie. He remembers living alone at Grandmother's, but was that true? Is his name Claus, or Lucas? He believes he knows the truth, but cannot prove either of what he believes or what he has made up.
For many years Lucas lives a fairly comfortable life: a gambler, a smoker, a drinker, and a charming flirt. Though he played the part of a ladies' man, he never once dedicated himself to someone, never finding a person who could fill the emptiness he felt after his Teacher's death. On his forty-sixth birthday, Lucas is awoken by extreme chest pain, but traumatized from his childhood experience in the hospital he refuses to call an ambulance. He suffers alone in his apartment until he is strong enough to stand, and calls his general practitioner on the grounds of an emergency. His Doctor diagnoses Lucas with Cardiac Angina, brought upon by his carefree lifestyle of excessive smoking and constant drinking. He warns Lucas if he doesn't go to the hospital and undergo surgery immediately, he could die at any moment.
Refusing to get treatment, Lucas decides the last thing he must do before he dies is to find his real brother.
And then the year is 1989 and the iron curtain binding Europe is raised.
Near his fourty-seventh birthday, Lucas legally crosses the Austria-Hungarian border again by train and enters into the town of K, calling himself Claus and claiming he is looking for his brother "Lucas", who supposedly stayed behind in his Grandmother's house during the War. When he is detained by the authorities after his visa expires, "Claus" presents his brother's memoir to help the authorities track down his brother. But a forensic analysis proves that the document had been written by "Claus" himself in one sitting, the very first time the reader is ever informed that the character Lucas of the town of K was a complete lie. There was, and never has been, any proof of Lucas T of the town of K ever existing.
However, after much searching, the foreign embassy detaining Lucas does eventually discover a man with almost an identical name living in what had been their parents' house when they were children - a poet named not Claus, but Klaus T. The entire time, Lucas T had never known the real spelling of his brother's name.
The truth is that Klaus is, in fact, Lucas's brother who was uninjured in the shooting. Klaus was left behind in a broken family, his mother gone insane from accidentally "killing" her son, Klaus forced to live with the woman his father impregnated, Antonia. Antonia soon gave birth to Lucas and Klaus' half-sister Sarah, and as Sarah grew up, Klaus fell in love with her. When Sarah reaches puberty, she finds herself falling for her brother as well, and confesses her love. Though the two of them never have intercourse, Klaus and Sarah share an intimate moment together - which Antonia arrives home to discover. Realizing what he has done, Klaus flees Antonia's house, swearing never to return. With nowhere else to go, Klaus returns to his mother's home to find her recovered enough to live a stable life. He spends the rest of his life nursing her... but is also cruelly emotionally abused by her. She repeats constantly she wishes Klaus was the one who had been shot instead, that Lucas had been the one to survive, and that she loved Lucas far more than she had ever loved him. Still, Klaus cannot bring himself to leave his mother, and remains there throughout his adulthood. Fast forward over thirty years - when Lucas arrives on their doorstep one night, declaring himself his mother's "dead" son.
Though Klaus recognizes Lucas immediately, and knows Lucas's confession that he is his twin brother to be entirely true, Klaus uses his own set of lies to convince Lucas that what he believes about the past never happened, or had nothing to do with him, so that his Mother will never learn the truth. Klaus convinces Lucas that his younger brother died of Polio, and was buried in a mass grave beside both of his dead parents. Lucas, who recognizes the house and finally has his memories return to him, catches on that Klaus is lying to him, and tries to convince him of the truth, but Klaus sends him away and never opens the door to him again.
Knowing Klaus will not change his mind, Lucas waits to die of his heart condition, hoping death will come for him quickly. However, since his arrival in the town of K, his chest pain had suddenly vanished. After visiting a Doctor, Lucas discovers he does not, in fact, have cardiac angina, but was misdiagnosed. His chest pain was from stress and depression, a condition that is uncomfortable to live with but not life-threatening. Lucas, unable to reunite with his brother after all and unable to die, throws himself in front of the local train and kills himself. The series ends with Klaus burying Lucas in the family plot, waiting for his mother to die to bury her next to Lucas, and considers throwing himself in front of the train to die, as well.
There we go. That only took me ten read-throughs to uncover...
Personality: Lucas, though severely depressed and desensitized, is a naturally kindhearted person. He pretends to be unaffected and steeled against the feelings of others, but is secretly very empathetic and considerate. Though he cares little about his own well-being, he is shown to be looking out for those around him, including strangers. Though Lucas himself is poor, he does not believe in charity, and will always give something in exchange for another's hard work even if they do not want it or deserve it. In the beginning of The Third Lie, Lucas pays a impoverished preteen boy a large sum just for carrying his suitcases. When a prostitute offers her body to him, he agrees not because he desires her company (rather, he doesn't want it), but because he understands that she desperately needs the money. And even when a friend of his refuses to allow him to pay for using a room in her home, Lucas continues to leave money on the kitchen table for her as rent.
However, Lucas is not afraid to do what he decides "must be done." During his childhood at grandmother's, he preformed many cruel acts so long as he decided it was what was necessary. He slit the throat of a blind woman who begged him to die, blackmailed a priest who was sexually abusing a friend of his, put a bomb inside the oven of a woman who hated and mocked the Jewish, stole food for a starving young girl and her mother, poisoned his "Grandmother" who had a stroke and could no longer move, and violently attacked a Doctor who was cheating on his wife. He is completely numb to guilt and does not regret any of his actions.
Lucas also indulges freely in life's pleasures, regardless of whether they are moral or legal. He is an alcoholic as well as a smoker, and insists on eating all his meals at bars, surrounded by company. Wine is his drink of choice because of its potency. When his visa is denied a renewal during his vacation, he stubbornly refuses to leave, and instead lives inside the country as an entertainer illegally for many months. He loves to read, and has completely memorized the Bible not because he believes in it, but because he finds it engaging. He also isn't afraid to get into fights or become violent when someone insults him, and even in his old age sparks a few bar fights. Regardless of his coarse lifestyle, Lucas is somehow still an elegant and proper man. He is always kind and generous, mindful of those in need, and chooses his battles wisely.
As he is a natural liar, it is impossible to ever tell whether or not Lucas is telling the truth. He constantly keeps up the fictional guise of "Claus" to protect him and those around him from learning his sad truth. Whenever he speaks of his past he does so bluntly and seemingly honestly, though he often divulges different "truths" to different people. Whenever Lucas is asked to report something to someone else, especially if it is bad news, he always blemishes the truth, giving instead exactly what the recipient wants to hear. This is not out of wickedness, as he truly believes he's doing a good deed. Lucas follows "what one doesn't know can't hurt them" as law. For example, after Mathias' death in "The Proof", instead of instructing the reader Mathias had died, he writes, "Mathias is no longer afraid of the dark and does not have nightmares anymore."
However, Lucas doesn't particularly care for being lied to. Ironically, when his brother tries to convince Lucas that the lies he came up with were actually the truth, Lucas becomes very frustrated and regrets he ever spoke to Klaus.
Though he tried to desensitize himself to all the pains of life, the one pain he never truly succeeded in erasing was the pain of loneliness and loss. When his brother rejects him, instead of feeling nothing, Lucas is heartbroken and driven to suicide. Even as a ladies' man, he worried if he fell too deeply in love with another woman, he would lose her the same way he lost the Teacher, and though he had many mistresses, never allowed himself to love them.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Lucas is an ordinary human writer with no extraordinary skills. One leg is shorter than the other because of a gunshot wound he sustained as a child, and he walks with a pronounced limp. Despite this, he is a dangerous man, able to kill in a split second. He always carries with him a razor with which to slit the throats of his enemies, and a bag of rocks and sand to knock them out if he decides not to kill them. He is extremely quick, and knows how to act in a fight. His true skill is his brilliant mind, which he uses to craft intricate and believable lies, as well as desensitize himself to pain. He also taught himself all the languages he believed he needed to know other than his Hungarian mother tongue: German during the Nazi occupation, Russian during the Soviet occupation, and Austrian-German after his immigration.
Some notes: Let me know if you have any concerns about the following:
Since little to no consistent artwork has been made of Lucas, I have chosen a PB for him. It is Viggo Mortensen, you may see the icons I have chosen here.
There may be instances in game where Claus will be need to be referred to by his last name. His last name certainly exists, but the reader is never allowed to know it, and the writer never announced what it was before her death. It is just described as an extremely rare but certainly Hungarian name. In the game Mother 3 by Shigesato Itoi, which was based on the series, they reference Lucas T.'s last name by having him come from the town of "Tazmili." I have decided to choose a similar sounding name for him, and have gone with the rare Hungarian name "Tázlári", meaning "of the small town of Tazlar". His full name will therefore be "Lucas/Claus Tázlári" whenever I am required to use it.
Finally, since he goes by the name "Claus," his name should show up as "Claus" on the apartment listings.
Third-Person Sample: It is two fifteen. These days, the sun is obscured by cloud. The local train turns the corner out of a man-made cave. Lucas must move at the right time, or else the conductor will spot him. Soon it is only a few meters away. He drops his cane and breaks into his first run in forty-three years.
A whistle sounds. The warning is meaningless. He closes his eyes. It hurts only for a moment.
A moment later, he opens them, flat on his back in the dirt, white sky above him.
A hospital, at first, he assumes. The usually calm gentleman sits up in a panic, sweating, clutching for his cane. His vision darkens until the attack wears off - and finally settles on what looks to be a deserted town.
Not a hospital, his hotel room, or even the Town of K. A place he's never been...
It appears, after being run over by a train, Lucas could move after all. Curiously the man inspects his hands (unbroken, could he still write?), his legs. Not a scratch. Stranger still was that he found himself in the very same clothes - as clean and starched as always, undamaged.
Lucas grips his walking stick with a sweaty palm and limps across the dirt. Eventually he comes to an apartment, still relatively stable, and leans against the brick. He checks his pocket - he still has a package of cigarettes and his lighter. They wouldn't last him long.
Lucas lights up and breathes out into the open air. The smoke evaporates like mist.
Where ever he found himself now, this new world unobliterated by death, of one thing he was certain. He'll wait for Klaus right here.
First-Person Sample Journal Post: [When the video begins, the PDA is already filming the lobby of the apartment buildings. A middle-aged man in a suit has made himself comfortable, seated regally with his legs crossed and a hand balanced on an upright black cane. He smiles kindly, if a bit distantly. The gentleman speaks with unaccented Russian, though the PDA makes short work of the translation.]
I have always been poor at catching up with technology. Forgive me if I am not using this correctly...
[He doesn't seem the slightest bit disturbed that he woke up in Nesreca.]
...Greetings. My name is Claus. With the state of this place and a few surrounding areas, I assume there are quite a few of you here.
[He sighs as if to sound annoyed, but his expression does not change.]
Your most kind neighbours inform me I am not allowed to leave this place. That will be acceptable, so long as one of you can tell me where I can procure a bottle of wine, fifty sheets of parchment paper, and a package of cigarettes.
Daily. I tell you this only because I absolutely need it.
[He sinks deeper into his chair, relaxing. It will only be a matter of time, now.]
One last thing. I am looking for a man named Lucas Tázlári. Should he arrive, please tell him his brother is looking for him.
Until then, I hope to come into acquaintance with each and every one of you.
[With a graceful twist of the hand, he turns off the recording.]
Name/Handle: World
Contact: MSN - the.second.advent@hotmail.com. Plurk - World_rescue
Personal DW: worldrescue
CHARACTER
Name: Lucas "Claus" T.
Series: "The Book of Lies" series, also known as "The Notebook, The Proof and the Third Lie."
Canon: OU
Age: 47
Timeline: The end of "The Third Lie," after his death.
History: Agota Kristof's trilogy The Book of Lies is a minimalist, postmodern political satire on the relationship between a divided Europe during World War II, as well as the hatred and distrust that continued on long after. It is also a cautionary tale about the effects of war and violent parenting on young children, and the long-lasting effects of abuse. The series is a complicated thing in that everything until the epilogue is entirely an intricate lie to the reader. There is no reason for the reader to believe that the narrator would be lying to them (in fact, the title of the series "The Book of Lies" was later changed to the name of each chapter, "The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie", to prevent the reader from becoming suspicious), but at the very end of the novel it is discovered the entire story up until that point was a work of fiction created by main character Lucas in order to convince himself and others of the existence of his fictional brother Claus.
To simplify things, I will explain the canon as the truth instead of the lies, and will specify when a lie occurs.
Lucas T and his twin brother were born in the late 1930s in Budapest, Hungary (referred to as "Big Town"), and were raised in the chaos of World War II. Their Father was conscripted as a war correspondent, but the day of his departure, demanded he and his wife divorce. He had been sleeping with another woman for some time and recently discovered he had gotten her pregnant, and wished to cut all ties with his current wife and children. Their mother does not handle this news well and murders her husband - shooting him in the kitchen several times with the revolver she stole off of his uniform holster. What she realized too late, however, was that Lucas and his twin had been listening to their fight around the corner - and a bullet that was meant for her husband ricocheted off the wall and struck Lucas in the back. Lucas lost consciousness and his Mother, believing she had killed her four-year-old son, went mad.
Unable to be cared for by their mother, Lucas and his brother were split up after the accident. Lucas was sent to a recovery hospital for the handicapped in another town called "S" (which was later bombed, and so Lucas was presumed to have died), and his brother was sent to live with another family. They never saw eachother again.
The recovery hospital was a living hell for Lucas and a poor replacement for childhood. Though he eventually recovered from his wound, the trauma from the incident had addled his memory, and rather than tell him the truth and risk his remembering the nurses convinced him he was suffering from poliomyelitis. All he could remember was having a family once, a twin brother who he loved very much, but even he could only wonder if he dreamt up such a story. Extremely mature and intelligent for his age, Lucas did not fit in well with the other children and brutally bullied them, until eventually his behavior attracted the attention of the director. Lucas was locked away in isolation for his behavior for some time, and only one person sought to console him: the hospital's teacher. Now eight years old and with no other maternal or guiding figure in his life, Lucas fell madly in love with the woman. They often spoke in private and befriended eachother despite the age gap. When Lucas expressed he would like to sleep in the same bed as her from now on, the teacher reluctantly agreed, and Lucas moved from spending his nights in the hospital to her quarters.
One day during class, the town of S was firebombed. The Recovery Hospital was hit, and though almost all the patients in the hospital died, the Teacher threw her body over Lucas to protect him and died in his place, her head crushed by falling debris. Never quite recovering from the loss of his first love, Lucas was traumatized and deemed mentally unsound for integration into society. A nun offered to find him a home where he would be taken care of, and put him under the care of a childless old woman named Maria in a place called the Town of "K" (never named, but presumed to be either Koszeg or Kormend in Hungary). He called her "Grandmother." She called him "Son of a Bitch."
From this point in his life on, to deal with the loneliness and cruelty he endured at Grandmother's house, Lucas constructs an intricate lie. The transcript of his lie is the first book of the series, "The Notebook."
During his stay, Lucas writes a long, detailed log, using the pronoun "we", of his life at Grandmother's House. He pretends as if he is living with his twin brother named Claus (an anagram of Lucas), and the two of them never leave eachother's side. They are one in the same: they feel the same emotions, speak the same words, work as one being, and always seem to know what the other is thinking. In this lie, they are dropped off at their biological Grandmother's house by their mother who can no longer take care of them because of the ongoing war. Their father has been missing in action for years. Though their mother gives Lucas and Claus money and clothes to live off of for awhile, their Grandmother steals their possessions and forces them to provide for themselves, even at their young age. Lucas and Claus have no choice but to live off their Grandmother's land, planting crops and raising animals in order to sell to the market and obtain food and water. However, because they are children, they are easily taken advantage of by the townspeople. They are beaten, sworn at, tortured, mugged, abused, and even sexually assaulted. In order to stop themselves from feeling hurt by this, the boys construct a plan to desensitize themselves to every cruelty in the world. They torture eachother, scream insults at eachother, force one another to murder their pets, starve eachother, and much more, until they no longer comprehend fear, pain, or hurt. Likewise, when a young woman passing by takes pity on them and holds the two boys in her arms to comfort them, they realize they must also desensitize themselves to love. And while they are successful in distancing themselves from feeling anything for any other person (including their own mother, who actually abandoned Lucas and Claus to live with another man and bear his child. They choose to stay behind and live with their Grandmother when their mother returns), the one thing they cannot force themselves to do is distance themselves from eachother. No matter what, the boys are bound by a deep and unbreakable brotherly love.
And so they decide they must destroy it by any means possible.
The year they turn fifteen their father finally locates them after Grandmother dies. Though he was a war correspondent, he had been imprisoned and tortured by the government as punishment for not writing propoganda in his articles. They trick their father into believing they can escape across the border and live a peaceful life in the neighbouring country by crossing what they call "The Frontier". However, the frontier they send him across is actually a minefield - for which Lucas and Claus have determined the exact layout. There is a diagonal line of mines across the field - the only way to get across is to make someone go ahead first, and to walk exactly in their footsteps.
After sacrificing their father to gain access to the neighbouring country, Claus crosses the minefield safely. Lucas stays behind. And from then on, the boys are forever separated by the iron curtain for over fifty years, in what they have called an exercise in separation.
But remember, Claus never existed. It was all a lie.
Instead it was only Lucas who brainwashed and killed a man to cross into the neighbouring country instead of living a solitary life in the Town of K after Maria's death. After crossing the border into Austria, Lucas wrote three lies on his immigration papers. First, he wrote he was eighteen, not fifteen. Second, though the man who tried to cross the border with him was not his father, he insisted that his father had been the one who convinced him to cross. And finally, he signs his name "Claus"- after the twin brother he had imagined for himself.
From this point on Lucas "lives" as the other twin brother "Claus" on the other side, and writes a long, complicated (and completely fictional) memoir about his "true self" who had been the one to stay behind. This lie is the entire second book in the trilogy, "The Proof." In this lie, Lucas cannot bear the loss of Claus, and becomes gravely ill. He cannot eat without becoming sick, cannot drink, and has no energy to do any of the work he and Claus used to do together. Though he is brought to the brink of death, soon he meets a young woman named Yasmin, who has given birth to her father's son, Mathias, and has been shunned from her family. When Lucas allows Yasmin and Mathias to stay with him, his illness begins to recede, but after he and Yasmin get into a violent argument, Lucas accidentally kills her in a fit of rage. Burying her body in the gardens, he tells her son Mathias the next day his mother left for Big Town and left him in his care. He decides to formally adopt Mathias. The rest of his story centres around Lucas using Mathias to fill the empty hole the loss of his brother had created, even when Mathias continually expresses a distrust of his new father. Eventually, when Mathias turns seven, Lucas meets one of the child's schoolmates - who happens to look exactly like Claus did. Though the boy had just brought himself to love Lucas, Mathias comes to believe that Lucas loves this schoolmate more than he loves him, and hangs himself in the attic. Lucas comes home to find Mathias dead, and goes insane - vanishing years later, disappearing into the forest, never to be seen again.
Of course, none of this actually happened. But the real Lucas, on the other side of the border, stays in role. As "Claus," he tells all of this story as if it was real. He speaks constantly of a brother named Lucas waiting for him behind the iron curtain for him to return someday. He repeats this lie for over thirty years, so frequently and so heartfully that eventually he loses track of what is the truth and what is the lie. He remembers living alone at Grandmother's, but was that true? Is his name Claus, or Lucas? He believes he knows the truth, but cannot prove either of what he believes or what he has made up.
For many years Lucas lives a fairly comfortable life: a gambler, a smoker, a drinker, and a charming flirt. Though he played the part of a ladies' man, he never once dedicated himself to someone, never finding a person who could fill the emptiness he felt after his Teacher's death. On his forty-sixth birthday, Lucas is awoken by extreme chest pain, but traumatized from his childhood experience in the hospital he refuses to call an ambulance. He suffers alone in his apartment until he is strong enough to stand, and calls his general practitioner on the grounds of an emergency. His Doctor diagnoses Lucas with Cardiac Angina, brought upon by his carefree lifestyle of excessive smoking and constant drinking. He warns Lucas if he doesn't go to the hospital and undergo surgery immediately, he could die at any moment.
Refusing to get treatment, Lucas decides the last thing he must do before he dies is to find his real brother.
And then the year is 1989 and the iron curtain binding Europe is raised.
Near his fourty-seventh birthday, Lucas legally crosses the Austria-Hungarian border again by train and enters into the town of K, calling himself Claus and claiming he is looking for his brother "Lucas", who supposedly stayed behind in his Grandmother's house during the War. When he is detained by the authorities after his visa expires, "Claus" presents his brother's memoir to help the authorities track down his brother. But a forensic analysis proves that the document had been written by "Claus" himself in one sitting, the very first time the reader is ever informed that the character Lucas of the town of K was a complete lie. There was, and never has been, any proof of Lucas T of the town of K ever existing.
However, after much searching, the foreign embassy detaining Lucas does eventually discover a man with almost an identical name living in what had been their parents' house when they were children - a poet named not Claus, but Klaus T. The entire time, Lucas T had never known the real spelling of his brother's name.
The truth is that Klaus is, in fact, Lucas's brother who was uninjured in the shooting. Klaus was left behind in a broken family, his mother gone insane from accidentally "killing" her son, Klaus forced to live with the woman his father impregnated, Antonia. Antonia soon gave birth to Lucas and Klaus' half-sister Sarah, and as Sarah grew up, Klaus fell in love with her. When Sarah reaches puberty, she finds herself falling for her brother as well, and confesses her love. Though the two of them never have intercourse, Klaus and Sarah share an intimate moment together - which Antonia arrives home to discover. Realizing what he has done, Klaus flees Antonia's house, swearing never to return. With nowhere else to go, Klaus returns to his mother's home to find her recovered enough to live a stable life. He spends the rest of his life nursing her... but is also cruelly emotionally abused by her. She repeats constantly she wishes Klaus was the one who had been shot instead, that Lucas had been the one to survive, and that she loved Lucas far more than she had ever loved him. Still, Klaus cannot bring himself to leave his mother, and remains there throughout his adulthood. Fast forward over thirty years - when Lucas arrives on their doorstep one night, declaring himself his mother's "dead" son.
Though Klaus recognizes Lucas immediately, and knows Lucas's confession that he is his twin brother to be entirely true, Klaus uses his own set of lies to convince Lucas that what he believes about the past never happened, or had nothing to do with him, so that his Mother will never learn the truth. Klaus convinces Lucas that his younger brother died of Polio, and was buried in a mass grave beside both of his dead parents. Lucas, who recognizes the house and finally has his memories return to him, catches on that Klaus is lying to him, and tries to convince him of the truth, but Klaus sends him away and never opens the door to him again.
Knowing Klaus will not change his mind, Lucas waits to die of his heart condition, hoping death will come for him quickly. However, since his arrival in the town of K, his chest pain had suddenly vanished. After visiting a Doctor, Lucas discovers he does not, in fact, have cardiac angina, but was misdiagnosed. His chest pain was from stress and depression, a condition that is uncomfortable to live with but not life-threatening. Lucas, unable to reunite with his brother after all and unable to die, throws himself in front of the local train and kills himself. The series ends with Klaus burying Lucas in the family plot, waiting for his mother to die to bury her next to Lucas, and considers throwing himself in front of the train to die, as well.
There we go. That only took me ten read-throughs to uncover...
Personality: Lucas, though severely depressed and desensitized, is a naturally kindhearted person. He pretends to be unaffected and steeled against the feelings of others, but is secretly very empathetic and considerate. Though he cares little about his own well-being, he is shown to be looking out for those around him, including strangers. Though Lucas himself is poor, he does not believe in charity, and will always give something in exchange for another's hard work even if they do not want it or deserve it. In the beginning of The Third Lie, Lucas pays a impoverished preteen boy a large sum just for carrying his suitcases. When a prostitute offers her body to him, he agrees not because he desires her company (rather, he doesn't want it), but because he understands that she desperately needs the money. And even when a friend of his refuses to allow him to pay for using a room in her home, Lucas continues to leave money on the kitchen table for her as rent.
However, Lucas is not afraid to do what he decides "must be done." During his childhood at grandmother's, he preformed many cruel acts so long as he decided it was what was necessary. He slit the throat of a blind woman who begged him to die, blackmailed a priest who was sexually abusing a friend of his, put a bomb inside the oven of a woman who hated and mocked the Jewish, stole food for a starving young girl and her mother, poisoned his "Grandmother" who had a stroke and could no longer move, and violently attacked a Doctor who was cheating on his wife. He is completely numb to guilt and does not regret any of his actions.
Lucas also indulges freely in life's pleasures, regardless of whether they are moral or legal. He is an alcoholic as well as a smoker, and insists on eating all his meals at bars, surrounded by company. Wine is his drink of choice because of its potency. When his visa is denied a renewal during his vacation, he stubbornly refuses to leave, and instead lives inside the country as an entertainer illegally for many months. He loves to read, and has completely memorized the Bible not because he believes in it, but because he finds it engaging. He also isn't afraid to get into fights or become violent when someone insults him, and even in his old age sparks a few bar fights. Regardless of his coarse lifestyle, Lucas is somehow still an elegant and proper man. He is always kind and generous, mindful of those in need, and chooses his battles wisely.
As he is a natural liar, it is impossible to ever tell whether or not Lucas is telling the truth. He constantly keeps up the fictional guise of "Claus" to protect him and those around him from learning his sad truth. Whenever he speaks of his past he does so bluntly and seemingly honestly, though he often divulges different "truths" to different people. Whenever Lucas is asked to report something to someone else, especially if it is bad news, he always blemishes the truth, giving instead exactly what the recipient wants to hear. This is not out of wickedness, as he truly believes he's doing a good deed. Lucas follows "what one doesn't know can't hurt them" as law. For example, after Mathias' death in "The Proof", instead of instructing the reader Mathias had died, he writes, "Mathias is no longer afraid of the dark and does not have nightmares anymore."
However, Lucas doesn't particularly care for being lied to. Ironically, when his brother tries to convince Lucas that the lies he came up with were actually the truth, Lucas becomes very frustrated and regrets he ever spoke to Klaus.
Though he tried to desensitize himself to all the pains of life, the one pain he never truly succeeded in erasing was the pain of loneliness and loss. When his brother rejects him, instead of feeling nothing, Lucas is heartbroken and driven to suicide. Even as a ladies' man, he worried if he fell too deeply in love with another woman, he would lose her the same way he lost the Teacher, and though he had many mistresses, never allowed himself to love them.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Lucas is an ordinary human writer with no extraordinary skills. One leg is shorter than the other because of a gunshot wound he sustained as a child, and he walks with a pronounced limp. Despite this, he is a dangerous man, able to kill in a split second. He always carries with him a razor with which to slit the throats of his enemies, and a bag of rocks and sand to knock them out if he decides not to kill them. He is extremely quick, and knows how to act in a fight. His true skill is his brilliant mind, which he uses to craft intricate and believable lies, as well as desensitize himself to pain. He also taught himself all the languages he believed he needed to know other than his Hungarian mother tongue: German during the Nazi occupation, Russian during the Soviet occupation, and Austrian-German after his immigration.
Some notes: Let me know if you have any concerns about the following:
Since little to no consistent artwork has been made of Lucas, I have chosen a PB for him. It is Viggo Mortensen, you may see the icons I have chosen here.
There may be instances in game where Claus will be need to be referred to by his last name. His last name certainly exists, but the reader is never allowed to know it, and the writer never announced what it was before her death. It is just described as an extremely rare but certainly Hungarian name. In the game Mother 3 by Shigesato Itoi, which was based on the series, they reference Lucas T.'s last name by having him come from the town of "Tazmili." I have decided to choose a similar sounding name for him, and have gone with the rare Hungarian name "Tázlári", meaning "of the small town of Tazlar". His full name will therefore be "Lucas/Claus Tázlári" whenever I am required to use it.
Finally, since he goes by the name "Claus," his name should show up as "Claus" on the apartment listings.
Third-Person Sample: It is two fifteen. These days, the sun is obscured by cloud. The local train turns the corner out of a man-made cave. Lucas must move at the right time, or else the conductor will spot him. Soon it is only a few meters away. He drops his cane and breaks into his first run in forty-three years.
A whistle sounds. The warning is meaningless. He closes his eyes. It hurts only for a moment.
A moment later, he opens them, flat on his back in the dirt, white sky above him.
A hospital, at first, he assumes. The usually calm gentleman sits up in a panic, sweating, clutching for his cane. His vision darkens until the attack wears off - and finally settles on what looks to be a deserted town.
Not a hospital, his hotel room, or even the Town of K. A place he's never been...
It appears, after being run over by a train, Lucas could move after all. Curiously the man inspects his hands (unbroken, could he still write?), his legs. Not a scratch. Stranger still was that he found himself in the very same clothes - as clean and starched as always, undamaged.
Lucas grips his walking stick with a sweaty palm and limps across the dirt. Eventually he comes to an apartment, still relatively stable, and leans against the brick. He checks his pocket - he still has a package of cigarettes and his lighter. They wouldn't last him long.
Lucas lights up and breathes out into the open air. The smoke evaporates like mist.
Where ever he found himself now, this new world unobliterated by death, of one thing he was certain. He'll wait for Klaus right here.
First-Person Sample Journal Post: [When the video begins, the PDA is already filming the lobby of the apartment buildings. A middle-aged man in a suit has made himself comfortable, seated regally with his legs crossed and a hand balanced on an upright black cane. He smiles kindly, if a bit distantly. The gentleman speaks with unaccented Russian, though the PDA makes short work of the translation.]
I have always been poor at catching up with technology. Forgive me if I am not using this correctly...
[He doesn't seem the slightest bit disturbed that he woke up in Nesreca.]
...Greetings. My name is Claus. With the state of this place and a few surrounding areas, I assume there are quite a few of you here.
[He sighs as if to sound annoyed, but his expression does not change.]
Your most kind neighbours inform me I am not allowed to leave this place. That will be acceptable, so long as one of you can tell me where I can procure a bottle of wine, fifty sheets of parchment paper, and a package of cigarettes.
Daily. I tell you this only because I absolutely need it.
[He sinks deeper into his chair, relaxing. It will only be a matter of time, now.]
One last thing. I am looking for a man named Lucas Tázlári. Should he arrive, please tell him his brother is looking for him.
Until then, I hope to come into acquaintance with each and every one of you.
[With a graceful twist of the hand, he turns off the recording.]
