The Truth and Other Lies

by Sascha Arango

  Obradin did indeed smile. Henry put out his hand and held his mouth shut. “Don’t say anything, you Serbian bean stew, or you’ll make me laugh again. Come on. Let’s go to the dentist.”

  It was the best private practice for miles. Obradin got new teeth. First temporary ones that didn’t look bad at all—just a little rabbit-like. Later an oral surgeon put in implants, two veritable works of art, each one more expensive than a midrange car. The molar was replaced too, and a piece of bone taken from his palate to reconstruct his jaw. It goes without saying that Henry footed the bill and never mentioned it. As we have seen, Henry could be great.

  ———

  Forty miles farther south, Gisbert Fasch was transferred from the intensive care unit to a four-bed ward. Badly mangled but in full possession of his faculties. With his broken legs and one arm dangling in an aluminum sling, he looked like poor Gregor Samsa who woke up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect.

  Brown pus flowed out of Fasch’s chest through a tube into a little contraption beside his bed. This pumped out septic fluid, which then gathered in a transparent plastic pouch. The shaft of the headrest that had pierced his chest had been full of bacteria. Once every twelve hours the pouch was emptied by a nurse who seemed to be qualified for only this one task and was correspondingly bad-tempered. She also changed his diapers and washed and moisturized his behind. Her firm fingers on his scrotum were indisputably the highlight of the day.

  Every breath hurt. He had a taste in his mouth that was difficult to describe, and a whispering sound in his lung. Something in there had become infected in a big way—he could smell it. A high whistling sound pierced the walls of the ward day and night. No one seemed to hear it but him.

  The three other men on the ward all wore diapers. Anyone without a room of his own learns a lot. Such as, for instance, what dirty diapers smell like. Human beings, as Leonardo da Vinci realized long ago, are merely passageways for food and drink; all they leave behind them is a pile of shit.

  In the artificial twilight of the ward a fly was buzzing around. Fasch saw it double; he saw everything double since coming around after the anesthesia. Lured by the smell of pus, the fly orbited the patients, alighting here and there. It nibbled at the gangrenous foot of the man in the bed on his left—a nameless diabetic, who only groaned—and then vanished into the gaping maw of the motionless man on his right to lay eggs on his tongue.

  Gisbert’s head was fixed in a head clamp on account of his fractured skull. Only with a little pocket mirror was he able to see a back-to-front image of his surroundings. So as not to see everything double, he had to shut one eye. He would have liked a bed at the window and to be able to stretch out his legs. He missed Miss Wong, his long-standing partner, and on top of that his anus itched and he couldn’t scratch himself because he had a venous catheter full of nutrient solution stuck in the back of his right hand. In the mornings the resident doctor dropped in on his rounds, a cluster of medicos surrounding him like bodyguards, and asked Gisbert how we were. Well, how does he think we are, with an itchy ass and no way of scratching ourselves? It was wretched.

  The most painful thing for Gisbert was the lost briefcase. When he came to after the operation, it was his first thought. Like a mother searching for her lost child, he called out for his briefcase. They thought he was hallucinating. He was given sedatives, and in his fitful dreams he continued to search for the briefcase—with no success. Fasch wasn’t told who had rescued him and brought him to the hospital. Only that he’d been driven to the emergency room after a bad car crash.

  His hunt for Henry Hayden was over. He’d invested two years of his life in the search and they’d been the best two. Now all the precious evidence, every tiny detail, all the questions without answers, all the irreplaceable documents, were lost. Henry had gotten the better of him with a silly trick. He’d simply lain in wait for him around the corner and then bang, crash, it was over—what a defeat. If Fasch had lost all memory of the accident, as is usually the case with craniocerebral trauma, he could have recovered in peace and been grateful for his second life. But he couldn’t forget. His memory ceaselessly projected the same sequence of images onto his retinas. No sooner had he closed his eyes than he was approaching the bend again, racing straight toward Henry. Over and over again—Henry. Hallucinations arise out of nothing, figments of the imagination, but this was no figment, this was a documentary film on endless loop. It was torture. Over and over again—Henry. If this doesn’t stop, Fasch decided, I’ll kill myself.

  And then one day the door opened and in walked Henry Hayden. Not a ghost, waiting around a bend in the road, but the man himself. With the same professional nonchalance as a doctor, he drew up a metal stool for himself and sat down at the bedside. He looked just the same as in the lifestyle magazine. Only now there was no woman or dog at his side. What you might call a pared-down version of perfection.

  The diabetic in the next bed let out a soft hissing sound. Otherwise it was absolutely silent on the ward. “How are you?” Hayden asked in a pleasantly matter-of-fact baritone. The question may not have been original, but it was appropriate; they were in a hospital after all, the house of the sick. During the conversation that followed, Fasch kept one eye screwed up, so as not to have to see two of his enemy.

  “Who are you?” Fasch asked, after some hesitation.

  “I happened to be present when you crashed your car. My name is Henry Hayden.”

  The guy’s got a nerve, Fasch thought. Happened to be lying in wait around the bend, happened to disappear from the scene for thirty years, and now just happens to drop in. As if.

  “Haydn . . . like the composer?”

  “Something like that. Hayden with an ‘e,’ like the writer.”

  “Ah? I know your books. But I’m afraid I have trouble reading just now. As you can see.” Fasch swung the arm in the sling to and fro. “No can do.”

  Hayden moved his stool a millimeter closer to the bed. “I’d be happy to get you a few audiobooks if you’d like.”

  Fasch wondered why Hayden had visited him. Not to deliver audiobooks, that was for sure. Perhaps Hayden had been expecting to find a human vegetable and was now disappointed. Did he have any idea who he was? Could he have any idea? Fasch tried to sit up a bit, but the iron clamp prevented it. The whistling grew louder.

  “Can you hear that?” asked Fasch, to change the subject.

  “What?”

  “The whistling. There’s a whistling noise here. Something’s whistling. It’s coming through the wall.”

  Henry looked about him, listened, shrugged his shoulders.

  “Can’t hear a thing.”

  Fasch sighed. “So you can’t hear anything either. No one can except me.”

  “In that case, it’s a conspiracy.” Henry leaned toward him over the bed. “If I see or hear something and everyone else pretends there’s nothing there, then I know it’s a conspiracy.”

  Fasch had to laugh. That hurt, and not just his chest. Most of all it hurt his soul. He didn’t want to laugh. Laughter means reconciliation. It connects people, and undoes grudges. But he had already invested a lot in this grudge of his. He had tended it and watched it grow. Why should he discard it now?

  “You saw what happened?” he asked, trying to change the subject again.

  Henry nodded. “You took the bend too quickly and rammed into the barrier. Then the car overturned.”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “That’s for the best. It wasn’t pretty. Hardly possible to believe anyone could survive a thing like that.”

  “Where was I? How did I look?”

  Henry adopted a thoughtful expression. Fasch looked at his manicured hands resting on his thighs. He was wearing an IWC with a brown strap. Must have cost a chunk.

  “Your car was lying on its roof. There was broken glass all over the place . . . You were trapped on the backseat, unconscious. I pulled you free. You were completely out of it.”

/>   “You? You pulled me free?”

  Henry gave a cheerful laugh. “Of course. There was no one else around. You looked at me—your eyes were open—but you didn’t notice anything, did you?”

  “I can’t remember a thing. Did I say anything?”

  “You just gurgled.”

  “And then?”

  “A few people have asked me that. Well, there was this piece of metal stuck in your chest. Pretty big, about so big.” Henry held up two fingers to show just how big it had been.

  With his right hand, Fasch felt the painful spot where the tube disappeared into his chest. “You pulled it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you saved me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that! The doctors saved you. I just happened to be there.”

  Silent implosion of emotion. Fasch could feel his hatred turning into something else. He was overcome by sadness, but he could do nothing to prevent the transformation from taking place, and he felt sympathy and gratitude toward Henry Hayden. There was no more reason to hate him.

  Henry put his head to one side. “I wonder why you didn’t brake?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t brake. You just drove straight on.”

  Fasch closed his eyes. Once more he was speeding into the bend with the blazing sea before him . . . he was shooting toward Henry, light reflecting on his sunglasses, a fleeting glimpse of his mother’s photo, and then . . . Hayden was right, he really hadn’t braked.

  When Fasch opened his eyes, Henry was standing over him with compressed lips, looking at him with cold fascination. There he was again: Grendel, the monster from the swamp.

  “Don’t you feel well?” asked Henry. “Should I fetch a doctor?”

  “Please don’t!” Fasch replied. “I have enough problems as it is.”

  Henry pressed the bell next to his bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving you on your own now. You need to sleep.”

  The door opened and two male nurses came into the ward. Henry gave them a nod. They fiddled around with the contraptions at the side of the bed. Fasch felt a sense of panic.

  “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  One of the nurses bent over him. “Keep calm, we’re just taking you to another room, all right?”

  “Why? It’s nice here. I don’t want to leave.”

  One story higher, Fasch was wheeled into a room for private patients. It was peaceful and clean. It had a floor-to-ceiling window with white curtains. There were flowers on a round glass table, a plasma screen on the wall, a Kandinsky print over the sink, a brand-new tablet computer on a mobile table. Only the minibar’s missing, Fasch thought, and coughed up a lump of catarrh. His bed was wheeled to the window so that he could see the park. The pus-pumping contraption was plugged in again, and then at last he was left alone. Gisbert Fasch looked out the window and thought of his partner, the silent Miss Wong. She never came to visit.

  14

  The guy’s not a cop, Henry decided, as the elevator door closed behind him. He’s not a private detective either. He’s a perfectly normal man with a bee in his bonnet. An amateur. He must have been after Henry for quite some time. Why had he put on an act, pretended not to know him? If he were just a fan who had made a clumsy attempt to get close to his idol, he would have owned up to it in the hospital, if not sooner. Maybe he just wanted to make his mark and write a biography of him. Perhaps during his research he’d come across the gap in Henry’s past and smelled blood.

  Whoever uncovers me will undoubtedly become famous, Henry thought, and pressed the button for the ground floor. On his way down it occurred to him that Fasch hadn’t asked about the briefcase. Of course, he would have given himself away then, but how could he not miss it? Gathering all that stuff would have cost time, effort, and money. He would surely set great store on getting it back.

  So much was clear to Henry: this fellow had come perilously close to uncovering his secret and wanted to do him harm, but didn’t know how. Now he has a problem because he owes me. Maybe he’ll never walk again, thought Henry with a flicker of compassion. Nevertheless, Henry had to keep ahead of him, find out his plan, which wouldn’t be so difficult—anyone looking for clues invariably leaves his own clues along the way. Deep down inside, Henry had the feeling he’d met Fasch before. Sometime and somewhere.

  He strolled through the little park in front of the hospital to the parking lot. It was hot. Flakes of blossom floated between the lime trees, a gardener was mowing the lawn, a sprinkler was soaking a stray newspaper. People in dressing gowns sat on benches. A bald woman on crutches was with her family. She’d obviously survived chemo and was glad to be alive. Congratulations are in order, thought Henry, feeling moved.

  He stopped and turned around. His gaze wandered up the façade to the open window on the fourth floor. Fasch waved to him from his bed. Henry waved back. You can buy silence; but you can’t buy goodwill. No one knew that better than Henry.

  He took the Maserati to Car Wash Royale to have the congealed blood removed from the seat leather. A troop of cleaners in silly paper caps hurled themselves at the job. Henry explained to the suspicious boss’s son that a wounded deer was responsible.

  While the troop set to work, Henry sauntered out of pure curiosity into the nearest multistory parking garage, where he rummaged through the trash can next to the ticket machine for the red telephone. He ignored the camera diagonally above him; after all, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. The phone was of course long gone—crushed to pulp when the can was emptied, or in Africa.

  An hour later the car was sparkling clean and the interior once more smelled of leather. The boss’s son came running out from his little glass cabin where his father had sat before him for forty years. He didn’t like the way Henry was distributing generous tips to the cleaning slaves, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Henry saw his suspenders straining over his belly.

  “Mr. Hayden,” he murmured in respectfully low tones, “I didn’t recognize you straightaway, but I saw your book in the trunk. My wife is a big fan of yours and I wanted to ask you . . .”

  “Would you like an autograph?”

  “My wife would be delighted, and so would I, of course.”

  Henry took the book out of the trunk and thumbed the pages. “It’s a little the worse for wear, but of course I’ll sign it for you. Was it you who came up with the name ‘Car Wash Royale’?”

  The boss’s son already had a pen to hand. “Oh no, that was my father.” He watched, curious what Henry would write.

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Sarah. She’s . . . um, yes. Sarah with an ‘h.’ ”

  He wrote Best wishes to Sarah from Henry Hayden.

  “May I ask you another thing?” the boss’s son blurted out as Henry gave him the book. “My wife writes, you see.”

  “How funny,” Henry replied. “So does mine.”

  “Just to amuse herself—for the drawer, you know, but she’s gifted. I’m not just saying that because she’s my . . . um, yes. Well now, I’m to ask you what’s the most important thing a writer should remember.”

  “That’s a complicated question to spring on someone in the afternoon. The most important thing”—Henry scratched himself under his right eyebrow with a little finger—“the most important thing is to write only about things you know.”

  “Things you know. Ah-ha.”

  “And to allow plenty of time for leaving things out. Leaving things out makes for more work than anything else.”

  “Leaving things out?”

  “Everything you don’t write, everything you leave out on purpose or delete—that’s what gives you the most trouble and takes the longest. Don’t tell anyone you got that from me.”

  Then Henry drove to his favorite fast-food stand behind the station and ate a meatball. It was time for a good plan. And it was here he had the best ideas.

  Where to begin? Tha
t amiable idiot, Detective Jenssen, wasn’t a threat just yet, because he believed in Martha’s swimming accident. The homicide squad wouldn’t stir themselves while the corpse hadn’t surfaced. But that was just the point. The corpse could surface—in every sense—at any moment. It’s well known that it takes ages for human bones to disintegrate in seawater. Algae hinder the process; unfavorable temperatures slow decomposition; the low concentration of oxygen also plays a part. Only depth is any help. The deep sea is a gratifyingly uncharted place.

  Then there was Betty. She was so angry and disappointed, she would leave him in peace for a little while. But sooner or later the baby would be born. Henry wasn’t sure whether the explanatory lecture in the Oyster Bar on the topic of What Really Happened on the Cliffs would prevent her from running to the police and blurting it all out. She was afraid. Fear is a truth drug. You should never frighten anyone who could snitch on you—Henry knew that. One word from Betty about their meeting place on the cliffs, and even the most useless policeman would put two and two together.

  And then there was Sonja. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Henry had searched his heart and decided that his desire for her was as physical as it was spiritual, a stroke of pure luck at his age. During their dramatic encounter on the beach and later on the millstone in his garden, they hadn’t touched once, but the invisible current of libido between them and the union of their shadows had been sheer magic. And she liked his dog. It was all going swimmingly. Which took Henry back to point number two: Betty. He had to compensate her in some way, placate her, reassure her—in other words, she must be gotten rid of.

  He opened the glove compartment and took out the receipt for a certain Surveillance Manual, which he had found in Fasch’s brown briefcase. “Office” had been noted on the receipt in red pen, presumably for tax purposes. Next to his address was the date of purchase. Fasch had bought this undoubtedly useful book on May third of the previous year. Just look at that, Henry thought—my birthday.

  His GPS took him straight to the right street. Cobbled and with a slight downhill slope, it ran parallel to a busy main road. The noise of the traffic splashed over the roofs and broke between the house walls. Henry turned off and parked the gleaming Maserati on a side street. It stood out in this neighborhood among all the small cars, but he needed only a quarter of an hour.