The Truth and Other Lies

by Sascha Arango

  Although she couldn’t see Henry’s eyes against the light, she thought she could feel his penetrating gaze.

  “No key? You don’t have a key at all?”

  “No.” Betty leaned forward and took the envelope from the coffee table. “It was your idea to report it stolen. Why are we behaving like criminals, Henry? Why are we doing this to ourselves instead of simply grieving for your wife and being pleased about our baby?”

  She shaded her eyes, so she could see Henry.

  “Can you come out of the light, please? I can’t see you.”

  Henry let down the electric blinds; it was at once cooler and pleasantly dim in the large room. He was visible once again.

  “I’m going to the police, Henry. It doesn’t make sense any longer.”

  “Ah,” he said quietly—and then, after a long pause—“You know what will happen then?”

  Betty took the CD out of the envelope. The light was refracted into the colors of the spectrum. She spun it in her hand. She’s already gone into defensive mother mode, thought Henry all of a sudden. She’s not scared of me anymore. She just wants to keep the baby safe.

  “What happens then I quite frankly don’t care,” Betty replied. “I think truth is the best policy for us. I don’t want our baby to be born in prison. Wouldn’t you like to have a look?”

  Henry stared at the silver disc in her hand. It had all begun with that image. A little photo of a living piece of tissue, no bigger than a matchbox. At the sight of the fetus, the demon in him had been aroused, his old mate and protector from difficult times. Follow me, it had whispered, and Henry had once again followed. It had driven with him to the cliffs to kill his wife and crept in after him among the rafters of his house where the marten lurked. The demon had told him the correct bend in which to lie in wait for his enemy, and was even now whispering its dark plan in his ear.

  “The novel’s finished.”

  Betty looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

  “Yes. I suddenly saw the end. Then I sat down and wrote. I’ve been working through the night.”

  She put the CD back on the table. “I can’t believe it. Can I read it?”

  “By all means. Read it, tell me what you think, and then we’ll celebrate.” Henry went over to his desk and took the manuscript. He weighed it in his hand and passed it to her. “I haven’t had time to type it up on the computer yet. That’s the only version. There’s still no copy.” He saw that Betty was about to object, and raised his hand.

  “I’d like you to read it before Moreany. And afterward we’ll go to the police together and clear up this whole business. And now”—Henry joined her on the sofa and reached for the CD—“show me our baby.”

  16

  The Drina pitched and rolled in the light swell that was blown into the harbor by the west wind. Obradin pushed a can with the top sliced off under the oil drain outlet of the diesel engine and opened the valve. A change of oil might do the engine good—or it might be the extreme unction. He pursed his lips to whistle his usual little tune, but no sound came out—only air. He could chew much better with his nice new incisors, and cold things didn’t hurt anymore, but he could no longer whistle.

  Black with powdered metal, the oil flowed into the can, shimmering in the sunlight that fell through the hatch into the engine room. Obradin dipped in an index finger and rubbed the black grease experimentally between finger and thumb. A shadow fell into the engine room. Obradin turned his massive skull. Glancing up he saw Henry standing over him, his arms folded. He’d pulled his hat low over his forehead. If the expression on his face was anything to go by, it must be something serious.

  Henry inhaled tobacco smoke and let his gaze wander along the quayside wall.

  “I have to get away from here, my friend.”

  Obradin saw the smoke stream out of Henry’s nostrils like cold winter breath. It curled and dispersed over the seaweed-green nets. There just couldn’t be a better place for a man-to-man talk than his pitching, rolling, wonderfully hideous Drina.

  “I’m in deep shit and don’t know any other way out, so I’m going to make myself scarce. But first”—Henry laid his hand holding the cigarette on Obradin’s oil-stained trousers—“I wanted to see you again. You don’t know what my life’s been like; you’ve never asked. You’ve never wanted to know where I come from, or what I’ve done, or what I get up to during the day.” He pushed the brim of his hat a little higher up his forehead and smiled sadly at Obradin. “You don’t know how much good that does me.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “Away from here. I’ll lie low until everyone’s given up searching for me.”

  Henry looked dreamily at the leather tips of his shoes. “I’ve gone underground a few times in my life. Once I did it for years. I lived by myself in a house with bricked-up windows and no one noticed. The house belonged to my parents; they had been dead for many years. I only went to school until sixth grade, just imagine. I can’t even do mental arithmetic. Can you believe it?”

  Obradin spat a flake of tobacco into the water. “Just goes to show how little is actually enough.”

  Henry took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He spun the hat between his fingers.

  “My wife didn’t drown on the beach.”

  Obradin jumped up and raised both arms imploringly. The Drina started to rock.

  “Don’t tell me, Henry. I don’t want to know. You’re my friend—I don’t care. It’s better you keep it to yourself.”

  Henry stood up too and stretched out his hands to him.

  “Calm down, Obradin, you have to know. The night Martha disappeared I drove to the bay.”

  Obradin put his hands over his ears. “Don’t tell me any more. Please.”

  “I’m not leaving until you know what happened that night. I saw Martha’s bike and her swimming things on the beach, but she wasn’t there.”

  Troubled, Obradin sat down again, kneading his hairy hands together. Henry saw tears in his dark eyes.

  “I know. I saw you, Henry. You drove to the bay at night with your lights off and I saw you drive back again.”

  “And what did you think?” asked Henry, taken aback. “Come on, tell me, what did you think?”

  “I didn’t think anything. You can do whatever you like.” Obradin shook his bull’s neck. A tremor racked his huge body. His shirt straining over his belly, he squirmed like a recalcitrant child. “I don’t know what I thought. It’s your business, nobody’s business but yours.”

  “There’s a woman,” Henry said softly, and sat down next to his friend again. “Another woman. A wicked woman. She’s called Betty and works at the publisher’s. She’s been pursuing me for years—claims she’s going to have a baby by me. She’s using it to blackmail me. She wants my money, but most of all she wants me.”

  And then Henry told his friend, the fishmonger Obradin, what had really gone on at the cliffs that night. The Drina pitched and rolled, wavelets sloshed against the seaweed-covered side of the boat, miniature fish passed by in little schools. Obradin listened with closed eyes; he didn’t interrupt Henry once. Only his hirsute index finger moved, playing over the seam of his trousers, as if he were taking notes.

  “She told me Martha went to visit her in order to confront her,” Henry concluded, “but Martha’s car’s still in the barn. Martha didn’t come back from the meeting. I looked for her everywhere. Betty’s car has disappeared. She’s reported it stolen. This woman’s even started using my credit cards. She’s spreading it around that she’s pregnant by me. In court she’ll say I did it. I’ll be locked up for murder and she’ll get the lot—the house, the rights to the novels, the whole lot.”

  Obradin opened his eyes and blinked into the sun. “Why don’t you just send her away?”

  Henry peered into Obradin’s face. “Send her where?”

  “Send her to a place from which no one returns.”

  “And where might that be?”

  �
�It’s quite simple,” Obradin replied quietly. “Believe me.”

  Henry shook his head violently. “I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I’ve often thought about it, I admit, but I’m too soft.”

  “Not in your novels.”

  “That’s different. That’s imagination, pure invention. In real life I can’t even kill a marten. You were in the war, Obradin. You lost your daughter. You know how to hate. I don’t know how to hate.”

  “You don’t have to hate a fish to kill it. It’s quite simple.”

  “A person’s not a fish, Obradin.” Henry slapped his thighs and got up. “Martha was the love of my life. I miss her. The house is too empty without her. I can’t write anymore. My friend, in a year or two you might get a postcard. From a stranger. That’ll be me. Until then . . .”

  Henry reached into his pocket and took out a key.

  “This opens my safe. If you ever fall on hard times, if you’re ever at your wits’ end, then use it. You’ll find the bank on page 363 of Frank Ellis. Farewell, my friend.”

  17

  The Old Harbor was the only restaurant in the region with a Michelin star. The sweeping terrace made of revamped ship decking rose up above the sea on tarred struts. From here—afloat, as it were—you could enjoy the sunset. Initiates could enjoy one of the house’s signature cocktails at the same time.

  Henry parked his Maserati next to an open-topped Bentley in Tudor Grey and walked across the meticulously raked white gravel of the parking lot, past other landmarks in automobile history. He had his sleeves rolled up and his jacket flung casually over his shoulder. He’d just had a shower, he was hungry, and he could smell his own aftershave. With a spring in his heel he took the steps two at a time and entered the sandalwood-lined lobby of the Old Harbor. Anyone who, like Henry, can reach this lobby after passing the gleaming chrome of those status symbols, without any feelings of envy or inferiority, can be said to have made it, to be one of the club.

  Although Henry was wearing dark glasses, he was recognized by the headwaiter and led to the table pour deux at the side of the terrace. It was the corner table right up against the balustrade, which offered the best view of the sun disappearing into the sea and of new guests appearing in the restaurant. There was enough room to stretch out your legs or to make an easy getaway. Henry had a quick look around him. The concept of informal dining requires only a casual dress code. Most of the male guests were wearing canvas shoes like him, sunglasses like him, and expensive watches like him. Here one could mingle with a like-minded crowd—the young-at-heart fifty-plus, as they say nowadays. The balustrade tables were in high demand and booked months in advance. On his table was a white cloth, two long-stemmed water glasses, two sets of cutlery, two little hors d’oeuvre dishes, and two discreetly patterned, laundered napkins. He glanced at his watch: 6:46 p.m. He’d come a quarter of an hour early.

  ———

  Betty had been reading all day. The blinds of her office were drawn. She had only made one brief sortie into the staff kitchen to make herself some peppermint tea. When she turned the last page, she paused, baffled. “That’s not possible,” she said out loud to herself. “That’s just not possible.” The end of the novel was missing. It didn’t say “The end” underneath either; it simply wasn’t there.

  White Darkness was an unbearably gripping novel. Betty had turned the pages with clammy fingers—now it had to happen!—and then the book just stopped. Betty stared at the large blank space on the last page as if there were a microdot hidden there that contained the secret of the ending. But there was only a speck of brown fly dirt.

  Chekhov was famous for reducing his stories to the bare minimum. He would lop the beginning and the end off each one because he thought they weren’t necessary to the plot. There is an unconfirmed rumor that his friends wanted to break into his study to rescue these endings. Countless readers of ‘The Lady with the Dog” have realized with horror . . . just as the tormented love of two lonely people is about to overcome convention, undo their endless Russian hesitancy, send them into raptures, and finally set them free . . . that suddenly it’s over, and they’ve turned the last page. The fiercely longed-for ending is no longer part of the story. It’s ghastly, but you have to accept it.

  Betty suppressed the urge to call Henry immediately. It was after all conceivable that he had simply forgotten to append the missing pages. “The novel’s finished,” he had said to her, smiling mysteriously. Had he by any chance withheld the end in order to torment her? How irrational would that be? This novel was different from its predecessors. It was more passionate and more emphatic in every detail, but without the missing pages it was nothing but a torso. Incredible, the intuitive power with which Henry could develop his characters from within his armor of indifference, thought Betty, as she drank the remains of the cold peppermint tea. She put the manuscript down beside her.

  Henry had painted her portrait. Betty had recognized herself from the very first pages. The same man who took her for his wife’s murderer and didn’t seem capable of developing the slightest feeling for his unborn baby had painted a precise and sympathetic portrait of her. As an editor you learn to separate author and work. It’s not the person but the personality that is reflected in the artist’s work. We have to love Henry without knowing him, Martha had said in parting at the door of her apartment. She had apparently loved Henry as the man he was—as the man she didn’t know.

  ———

  At about five in the afternoon, Betty went into the photocopy room in the office and closed the door. She put Henry’s 380-page manuscript into the paper feeder, plugged in her USB stick, and pressed Scan. The machine began to suck in the pages one by one and save them on the stick as a PDF file. Then it spat each page out again. Betty stowed the manuscript in a plastic folder and put it in her handbag. She put the stick in a small Murano glass dish on her desk.

  She took the elevator up to Moreany’s office. On the way she felt the movements of the baby, now growing noticeably stronger, and placed her hand on her belly. The movements immediately subsided. The horrific attacks of nausea had vanished. Betty no longer took medication, and for weeks now she had entirely avoided alcohol and cigarettes. She drank tea instead of coffee. Contrary to what she had expected, going without her daily dose of poison was easy, and the abstinence made her even more beautiful. Men openly turned and stared at her. Even the female employees at Moreany’s threw furtive glances at her.

  Most of her colleagues had already gone home to drive to the coast for the weekend. Betty cleared the dirty cups away as she passed the central coffee counter. She said hello to the attractive young fellow from the publicity department who was always throwing paper airplanes at her. Then she went into Moreany’s outer office, where Honor Eisendraht stood sorting accounts at her top-secret Bisley filing cabinet—the heart-lung machine of the company, as Moreany called it. Her monitor already had its cover on. Betty saw a pack of Tarot cards next to the keyboard on her desk. The door to Moreany’s office was closed.

  “Has Moreany already left?”

  Eisendraht spirited away the Tarot deck and took her handbag from the back of the chair. Betty noticed her subtle perfume, her smart hairdo, and her outfit, that offset the color tones of the office.

  “He left for an appointment at three.”

  Betty tried to gauge from Eisendraht’s eyes whether she was withholding information from her, but the secretary’s face was an unreadable mask, something like what you see on totem poles in anthropological museums. Only the way her glance strayed to Betty’s belly betrayed what was going on inside her.

  “Is there anything else?” asked Eisendraht, smoothing her sweater over her navel in a presumably unconscious gesture.

  “Yes, I’ve never shown you my appreciation. That was stupid of me and I’m honestly sorry. I respect you and I admire your work. Have a nice day.”

  Alone in the outer office, Honor stood motionless for a while. The dragon tree shed a leaf, otherwise nothing
changed. And yet. There is a certain irony in hearing the most touching compliments emerge from the mouth of your very enemy, on whose cold disdain you have come to rely. Honor Eisendraht knew too much about women not to see with perfect lucidity that Betty meant her apology seriously, sincerely, and without expecting anything in return. She took her bag and went out of the office shrugging her shoulders. Such things happen. Nothing you can do about it.

  ———

  Henry decided on steak and fries. No ordinary fries these, but pommes allumettes. The Thai-style red snapper at the next table looked tempting too, as did the lady with the silicon breasts who had ordered it and who would have simply loved to join Henry if circumstances permitted, which they didn’t. But a steak was enough for Henry. He savored the last of his evening drink. The sun was still high over the sea. His watch now showed 7:07 p.m. He looked in the direction of the restaurant’s lobby; the headwaiter saw his glance and came to his table at once. Of course he saw the empty place, and naturally he understood that Henry wanted to wait to order. There couldn’t be the shadow of a doubt that Henry’s dining companion was female, so he suggested vermouth, the proper drink for a gentleman who is waiting for a lady and does not wish to appear to have an indecent thirst. A moment later, Henry’s phone vibrated. It was Betty.

  “Henry, I’m driving along this ghastly dusty road. Can that be right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  The air in the car shimmered. Betty looked out the side window that was clouded with dust and let it down a little further. A fine mist of particles rolled into the car, formed clouds, deposited little crystals on her skin, got into her hair and lungs, mingled with the moisture of her mucous membranes.

  “What can you see?”

  “Well, on the right I can see fields and pylons, and on the left there are these kinds of bushes, and, apart from that, absolutely nothing. It’s ridiculously dusty here. I’m going to look like Ben-Hur after the chariot race when I get there.”