The Truth and Other Lies: A Novel

by Sascha Arango

  “Gisbert,” said Henry, sitting down again on the chair at his bedside. “What do you know about me?”

  21

  The area of low pressure originated somewhere over the North Atlantic to the west of the Faroes. Unusually for the time of year, there were rising columns of warm air, and, because of the falling atmospheric pressure, cooler air was being sucked in. The first gusts of wind were getting up. Millions of tons of superfine water droplets were rising, turning into ice crystals and beginning to rotate counterclockwise. The low-pressure area drifted eastward with increasing speed. Only an hour later the meteorological service for shipping transmitted the first gale warning to the Scottish coastal radio stations.

  In the garden of his property Henry had positioned himself next to a sweeping branch of the cherry tree and was pointing the 85 millimeter lens of his Canon toward the open barn door. He swatted the midges out of his face and waited. The figure inside the barn wasn’t moving; it seemed to be standing in its own shadow. Nor was the body transparent. There were even individual fields of light reflected on it. As usual, half the face was missing. Henry pressed the shutter release yet again. As expected, the camera display showed a shot of the barn door and nothing else.

  Henry had been sure right from the start that figments of the imagination couldn’t be photographed, not even with state-of-the-art digital cameras, for the very reason that they are just figments. Only recently he had learned in the Forensic Journal that amputees who suffer from phantom pains feel relief when they wear a prosthesis. The brain accepts the artificial limb and stops sending pain alerts; it seems content with makeshift solutions.

  He had acted on this admittedly rather simpleminded train of thought by taking photographs of his hallucination in order to convince himself of its nonexistence. If my brain will just grasp what I already know, he thought, maybe these hallucinations will stop.

  Meanwhile Poncho was dozing in the shade like a railroad-crossing attendant after a hearty lunch. Now and again he opened one eye, in case something happened to pass by after all, and then shut it again. In his world there was nothing makeshift—only pleasant and unpleasant things. Henry placed the camera on the tripod, set the delay to ten seconds, and turned around. He closed his eyes and waited with his back to the barn until he heard the sound of the shutter releasing.

  Onboard the Drina, Obradin heard the gale warning on his mobile radio transceiver as he started up the new diesel engine. The barometer showed a fall in pressure of three hectopascals in the past hour. The cold front was already moving over the Shetland Islands. The storm with hurricane-force gusts was heading for the southern North Sea. In the course of the coming night it would smash into the coast. Shipping to and from Stavanger had already been suspended. The diesel started up, emitting a gray cloud of soot, and began to run steadily. Obradin checked the oil pressure and laid his hand on the side of the boat. The Volvo engine barely made the wood vibrate. A fabulous engine, thought Obradin, but no way had his wife won it in the lottery.

  Meanwhile Jenssen was attaching a nylon rope to a concrete post and carefully lowering himself over the reinforced roadside. He rested on a rock ledge, from which he was able to climb down farther until he reached the crevice that held the brown object he’d seen from the road. He lay down on his belly and looked into the dark hollow. On the gleaming leathery surface he could make out a metal fitting that looked like tarnished brass, and on it a handle. Triumphantly Jenssen stuck his muscular arm into the crevice; he couldn’t quite reach the handle. He sat up, took off a trainer and sock, and tried to get hold of the bag with his foot. That too failed, because his calf was too fat for the narrow crevice. Above him he could hear the sound of a car driving around the bend where Fasch had come to grief. Cursing, Jenssen began to look for a stick. The sparse vegetation around the crevice yielded nothing, but he could see a dried-up bush about fifteen feet away whose withered boughs seemed to be the right length. He wound the rope around his belly, pulled on it to check the tension, then swung out along the rock face.

  ———

  Henry’s phone rang. Honor Eisendraht’s voice was husky with excitement. “We’ve found your manuscript, Mr. Hayden, we’ve found it!”

  Henry put the Canon on the ground. “Where?”

  “On this little memory stick in Betty’s office. Imagine. The police only opened the office again this morning. The stick was in a glass dish on her desk. She digitalized your manuscript page by page. We’re all over the moon—Moreany in particular. He’s making a special trip in to the office. White Darkness—is that the title?”

  Henry bit his lip, and rubbed an earlobe. “The working title. You’ve saved my life, Honor,” he exulted as best he could. “That’s marvelous news.” With a glance over his shoulder, Henry looked into the barn. The phantom had vanished.

  “I’m so happy for you, Mr. Hayden. I’ll get it printed out straightaway if that’s all right with you.”

  “No!” Henry yelled. “Wait till I come.” He made a plan. “I’ll come around this evening. As soon as I’ve seen off my visitor here.”

  Honor hesitated. “You weren’t thinking of driving in the storm, were you, Mr. Hayden?”

  “What storm?”

  ———

  The bag was moving. Carefully Jenssen pulled on the small branch whose bent tip was hooked into the brass fitting. Sweat was pouring into his eyes. He took no notice of an extremely rare lizard climbing over the stones. Then the branch snapped. “Shit!” Jenssen bellowed. “Shit, shit, shit!” The policeman threw the broken stick into the crevice and thumped his fist on the stone. It had taken him a quarter of an hour to tear off that gnarled old bough. Although it was long since dead, it had resisted with every last one of its withered fibers—only to break like cotton candy.

  Jenssen removed his shirt and felt the cold air coming off the sea. Dark mountains of clouds were gathering on the horizon. He pressed himself up against the sandy rock once more, pushed his hand into the crevice again, breathed out to gain another centimeter, grasped the handle, and pulled the bag out. It was a lady’s handbag made of artificial leather. The contents were entirely rotten. Dead insects spilled out and crumbled into dust in the wind.

  ———

  Henry unscrewed the can and poured half a liter of Super 98 gasoline into the briefcase containing Gisbert Fasch’s documents. He closed the can again, set it down, struck a match. The wind blew it out. The fourth match was the first to burn properly. With a dull bang the bag ignited and emitted thick black smoke. He watched until the leather darkened; gusts of wind made the fire hiss. The dog had awoken from its railroad-crossing-attendant’s sleep and was dashing about in agitation, barking at the wind.

  Clouds were scudding over the roof, and the blackberry bushes were being buffeted. Henry saw that the attic windows were open. The gale would complete the work of destruction that he had begun. Can you guess how it ends? Martha’s last question was also a warning and more precisely a vision—that everything that is begun must somehow also come to a close.

  ———

  After the devastating storm tide in January, fifteen years earlier, disaster control had been steadily improved. Back then the hurricane had caught everybody off guard. It had lifted the fishing cutters out of the dock, swirling them up and piling them into grotesque rubbish heaps. It flattened the historic houses on the harbor and plucked chestnut trees like buttercups from outside the parish hall. Torrents of water had surged through the town like a winding sheet, plowing the streets and sweeping away the gravestones from the little cemetery.

  The last windows of the main street were being boarded up with chipboard as Henry drove into town. Two hours before sunset it was already dark. Heavy rain had set in with gusts that reached gale forces of seven or eight. Men were having to hold on tight as they threw sandbags from trucks onto front doorsteps. Henry stopped at the roadblock where Elenor Reens was standing, dressed in the uniform of the voluntary fire brigade. He let his window down a lit
tle. Rain sprayed into his face.

  “Do you need any help?”

  “We need all the help we can get.” Elenor pointed down the street. “Help Obradin’s wife board up the windows.”

  “Where’s Sonja?”

  “She’s too young for you.” Elenor knocked on the roof of the car and waved him through.

  Helga was struggling all alone outside the fish shop window. She was small, and her arms were too short and too weak to fasten the heavy sheets of chipboard into position. Henry got out of the car; the rain drenched him instantly. He took hold of the board, turning it out of the wind. “Where’s Obradin?” he yelled. Helga shrugged and shouted something he didn’t understand. After two unsuccessful attempts they pushed the board into the brackets together. Helga snapped the iron bolt shut. Then Henry dragged his barking dog out of the car into the shop. Scared, and small as a pup, it fled into a corner and cowered there. Henry noticed that the fish counter was empty and clean.

  “What’s going on? Where’s Obradin?”

  “Where do you think? On his mistress!” Helga wiped her face with the back of her hand—hard to tell whether it was rain or tears. “That maniac’s started to drink again. He spends his entire time on that bloody cutter fiddling around with the new engine as if there was nothing else in the world. He’s going to leave me, I can feel it.”

  The Drina was dancing in a veil of white spray, the mast listing in the swell like a metronome. The masthead lights and sidelights were on, and the motor was running. Henry kept his head down as he ran over the pier, so as not to be blown into the sea. Only two ropes held the cutter to tall wooden posts. Jets of water gushed up between the side of the boat and the pier. Henry reached one of the posts, clung to it, and crawled on all fours over the wooden gangplank to board the pitching and tossing cutter.

  Obradin was lying drunk beside the engine. A lot of water had already gotten into the engine room. Henry turned him onto his back.

  “Cast off, my friend, we’re setting sail!” Obradin mumbled in a drunken stupor. His lunch with a good deal of onions and salad was sticking to his face and chest.

  Henry sat Obradin up, who at once let loose a volcanic belch. He slapped him in the face a few times with the back of his hand. “Don’t be stupid, come ashore. Don’t make your wife unhappy.”

  “What does she know about unhappiness? Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.” More water surged in. Obradin’s eyes closed again. Henry shook him.

  “There is no tomorrow, you boozer. The hurricane’s coming; you won’t get back!”

  Henry tried to pull Obradin up. With an effortless arm movement the massive man shoved him away, so that Henry went crashing into the engine. Obradin came to for a second, got to his feet, and clenched his fists. “We’re quits, Henry! You’ve given and you’ve received. I don’t owe you anymore.” Then his eyes rolled up and he collapsed backward, ending up with his head lying in the water.

  Grand last words. Henry sized things up. They were quits. Obradin’s death would eliminate that blasted residual risk, the devil in the detail, the thoughtless word, the mere nothing you forget, the trifling mistake that wrecks everything. Obradin would drown and the human factor would drown with him. No one would ever see any link with Betty’s disappearance. Henry only had to leave the boat and let fate do its work. It hadn’t disappointed him yet. But, instead, Henry loosened his belt, tied it around Obradin’s torso, and hauled him off the cutter. We’ll have to regard it as one of those sporadic acts of goodness that Henry thought of as mere interruptions to human wickedness, and that inescapably lead to punishment.

  The hurricane raged for two hours. The shipping alert came over the radio transceiver every few minutes: Violent storm ten to eleven in north veering westerly, Skagerrak west twelve veering northeasterly, decreasing eleven. Henry lay down in exhaustion next to the snoring Obradin on a cot in the parish hall, where a kind of emergency hospital had been improvised. The outer walls of the building were strengthened with reinforced concrete, and windows and doors secured with aluminum blinds. They could have survived an air raid without even noticing. Occasionally the earth trembled. Otherwise it was as dull as the waiting room of an operating room. Women whispered, men murmured, children wailed, dogs panted, and in between times the monotonous voice blared out from the radio transceiver . . . Skagerrak west eleven veering northeasterly, decreasing ten . . . It would have been a good moment to die, but he, Henry the Great, did not die—only others did that.

  Dressed in her fire brigade uniform, Elenor Reens was distributing coffee and butter cookies. Henry thought of Sonja and his dog. His eyes were drooping. In a blur he saw Elenor with her coffeepot and her goddamned kindness and generosity, her striving for happiness and justice, and that desire for togetherness that he found so incomprehensible. His trousers were soaked and his face was numb. Then he closed his eyes and was entering his parents’ house. He climbed the stairs slowly, the way his father used to. He saw light under the door of the bedroom. He heard a rustling in the room, opened the door, saw the drenched mattress. Little Henry had tried to hide the wet sheets again. Behind his closed eyelids he felt anger. He grabbed hold of the boy, pulled him out from under the bed. “Why are you hiding from me? Why aren’t you in school? Why do you wet the bed every night? Where’s your goddamned mother?”

  22

  Here and there splintered rafters still stood out against the cloudless sky, hung with shreds of insulating fiber. The entire roof truss had taken off in the wind. Countless pieces of debris lay strewn about the garden. Timber, branches, leaves, splinters of wood, bricks, uprooted plants, and a great deal of glass. In among all the detritus, Henry found the dead marten. The animal was lying between the bricks with a broken neck. Henry buried it to stop the dog from eating it.

  Apart from the odd broken window, the rest of the building was battered but unscathed. His good-byes had been made in installments. First to Martha, then Betty, and now the marten. There was no more reason to stay there. He would sell the house, no doubt at a bad price, but at a profit nevertheless. It was time for a fresh start.

  Poncho ran around sniffing, wagging his tail in great excitement. The creative destruction of the gale had released some new and interesting smells. A bombed-out city with its aroma of putrid devastation must be an El Dorado for dogs. The gable wall of the barn had been blown in by the wind; parts of it had fallen onto Martha’s Saab and put dents in the bodywork. The windshield was shattered, and the driver’s door stood open.

  “Come on, get in, come and sit with me.”

  Henry turned his head to where the voice was coming from. It was Martha’s voice, as clear and gentle as during all the years of their marriage. It had never been loud and it wasn’t loud now. Martha wasn’t sitting in the car, which didn’t really surprise Henry. After all, incorporeal presences can go where they like.

  “I’m fed up with playing at being a writer,” he said quietly, but firmly, for hallucinations should be treated with respect, but not mollycoddled. “It was what you wanted. I did it for you, I enjoyed doing it, but you no longer exist. I don’t want to be a writer anymore.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “Nothing definite. Bring all this to an end.”

  ———

  Henry gathered from the local paper that the hurricane had wreaked considerably less havoc than had been feared. Among the insurance companies, the news went down as a red-letter day in the history of natural disaster settlement. One can only congratulate the shareholders. For the most part the storm had affected ordinary people who couldn’t afford expensive insurance policies. A lot of fishing boats, some docks, school buildings, and bridges near the coast were destroyed or damaged. Nothing of any significance to a multinational concern.

  Under “Local News,” Henry came across the following announcement: “. . . on the stretch of coastline that was particularly badly hit, volunteer coast guards yesterday discovered the wreck of a car with a dead woman at the wheel. The homicide sq
uad has already begun conducting investigations.”

  So they had found her. Henry tried to imagine what poor Jenssen would make of it when he found out who the corpse had once been, and in whose car it was now sitting. He would presumably be astonished. Martha’s decomposition was no doubt quite a bit more advanced than that of the fat drowned female body that Henry had seen in forensics. The storm would be ruled out as a possible cause of the accident.

  Henry wasn’t counting on being informed about his wife’s death any time soon. It is well known that the police begin by looking for the most plausible explanation to help them come up with a strategy for solving the crime. Every crime is based on a matrix of invisible connections, but only the culprit has the key to the motive and the sequence of events. The search for a perfectly plausible explanation would take a little while and was bound to lead nowhere, inasmuch as Martha’s death in Betty’s car had been a simple mishap, an unfortunate chain of circumstances. A “mishap” like that is beyond all logical reasoning. Long hours would then be wasted on trying to puzzle things out, amid growing frustration and annoyance. Only then would the investigators come to Henry to ask him for the most precious thing needed to ascertain the truth: the culprit’s knowledge. Henry alone could clear everything up, and he alone was not willing to do so. This gave him plenty of time to prepare himself. He resolved to employ a proven tactic for keeping out of trouble: he would play dumb in a clever way.

  Henry spent the days that followed clearing up in his garden. As he had predicted, nothing happened. He received an estimate on the damage to his house, informed the insurance company, and got in touch with an architect. Then Claus Moreany died.

  He died in a hospital in Venice. First, though, he married his secretary Honor Eisendraht on his sickbed and bequeathed to her the publishing house and his entire private wealth. She had his body flown home and his grave prepared in the Moreany family mausoleum. The funeral was to take place a week after his death. In the meantime Honor Moreany took provisional charge of the company, until everything to do with the will had been settled. She continued to work from her dragon-tree outer office where the Bisley filing cabinet housed those confidential documents without which no one can run a publishing house. Honor spared no time in giving up her small apartment and moving, together with her budgerigar, into her late husband’s villa, where the first thing she did was to get a pest controller to decontaminate the pantry. Being a methodical person, she immediately began to sort through the tower-high piles of unopened mail, which rose like stalagmites in Moreany’s study. First she sorted it in order of date of receipt, and then she opened all the envelopes one after the other using an Aztec sacrificial knife she had found in one of the drawers of Moreany’s antique bureau.