The Lie

by Petra Hammesfahr

  Three times Nadia went back to the car. From her final trip she brought a cardboard box full of clothes, and not just ones she’d discarded this time. On the top was a bag with the name of a classy boutique. Her shopping spree there provided her with an alibi for the hours she was spending with her stand-in; also she’d bought two of everything. Two sand-coloured suits with matching blouses, two pairs of identical court shoes and four sets of lingerie. Susanne couldn’t believe it. Nadia was already completely taken up with her preparations and, like a little child whose dearest wish was about to be fulfilled, she was on a high. “Have you had breakfast?”

  She hadn’t. Nadia immediately set about making some. While she was brewing up coffee, making toast and boiling eggs, she asked about the man she’d met on the stairs who’d stared at her as if she came from another planet. From her description it had to be Heller. Naturally he’d treated Nadia to some choice obscenities. From the way he spoke she deduced Susanne was having an affair with him.

  “Do I look as if I need it that badly?” she protested.

  Nadia gave a brief smile. “You’ve been divorced three years. He’s probably not that bad after a shower.”

  “I’m quite happy with Richard Gere,” she said, thanking her once more for everything.

  Nadia waved her thanks away. “No, no. You just can’t imagine what this means for me.”

  No, she couldn’t. When she’d been married to Dieter she’d been well aware that when he was abroad he didn’t live like a monk, but she’d never really thought about it. The idea of looking for someone herself for a bit of fun on the side had never occurred to her. She’d had neither the time, the opportunity nor the desire. An invalid mother-in-law reduced your libido to zero. - Water under the bridge. Forget it. She’d become used to doing without a man.

  Nadia put her new outfit in the wardrobe. Then they discussed who would see to what once Susanne was better. Nadia didn’t have time to do everything. Susanne was to organize driving lessons and a visit to the beautician herself. Only the hairdresser Nadia insisted on arranging herself. She suspected Susanne’s haircut was the work of some bungler from the tenement district where she lived. That kind of economizing could ruin everything. Nadia was going to make an appointment with her own hairdresser for the following week. That was to be her dress rehearsal.

  At four Nadia put on her sunglasses again, wrapped the scarf round her head and took the boutique bag, the orange juice and the suitcase in which she’d brought the used clothes. She promised to come back on Monday afternoon and left reminding Susanne to eat her fill, get a lot of sleep and take her medicine.

  Susanne spent the afternoon eating fruit until she felt one more grape and she’d burst. On Sunday she paid the price for her unaccustomed indulgence with vomiting and diarrhoea after a second helping of chicken salad. Dry toast for supper cured her overtaxed stomach. On Monday she felt fine. She was hardly coughing any more and when she did, though it sounded deafening, it was a relief.

  It was pleasant outside: not too hot, not too cold, not too humid, not too dry, in fact ideal conditions for building up her strength with a long walk in the mild sunshine. But she made do with the kitchen balcony. She spent hours looking at the photos and wallowing in visions of a future in the lap of luxury, disregarding the fact that at most this “future” would amount to no more than one or two weekends a month.

  By now the turmoil of pros and cons going round and round in her head had subsided. She made an effort to look at the whole thing rationally. She desperately needed the money. She would still look for a job and would ask Nadia at the first opportunity if she could do anything for her. Just at the moment, though, the opportunity wasn’t there.

  Nadia was completely taken up with the preparations for her first stint as stand-in, setting about them with such intensity that everything else went by the board. On the Monday she turned up shortly after five, once more in headscarf and sunglasses, with more provisions and with equipment to deal with the small discrepancies: a nail file that was worthy of the name, a concealer stick for her birthmark, an epilator for her legs, a ladies’ razor for underarm hair, tweezers for her eyebrows and depilatory cream which was gentle enough to be used in the genital area.

  Before Susanne knew what was happening, Nadia had taken off all her clothes and demonstrated what was needed. “I hope,” she said as she did this, “you haven’t got any hang-ups about getting undressed in front of a stranger. If you find it embarrassing, just tell yourself it isn’t you Michael’s seeing, but me. We sleep in the same room - naked. If you keep your underwear on, he’ll think I’m hiding something.”

  Nadia gave her an apologetic smile and described Michael as a typical representative of his species. To be unfaithful was perfectly acceptable - for him but not for his wife. “A little affair’s nice,” Nadia said, “and to enjoy it for a whole weekend without wondering all the time what I’m going to tell my husband will be lovely. But it’s not worth jeopardizing my marriage for. And then you and me, it’s a fantastic opportunity. Who would have imagined it?!”

  Nadia couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that Michael might feel there was something odd. But what could he do? Given their amazing similarity, he was hardly going to ask Susanne who she was. He’d assume Nadia was in one of her moods. And Susanne could make sure he didn’t feel there was something odd. She just had to behave the way Nadia did, and going to bed naked was part of it.

  Although Susanne hadn’t said a word, and certainly not expressed any fears or doubts, Nadia repeated her reassurances: “You really don’t need to worry. Normally he keeps well away from me when we’ve had an argument. If the worst comes to the worst you can always make a point of taking the tampons out of the cupboard.”

  Then Nadia put her clothes back on and laid several banknotes on the table. “That should be enough. It depends how many driving lessons you need. Can you see to that tomorrow and also make an appointment with a beautician?”

  Susanne nodded, unable to take her eyes of the money. It was almost as if Nadia had placed a contract before her - stretching out her hand for the money would be like signing it.

  “Good,” said Nadia. “And make sure they let you drive straight away. You just want to refresh your driving skills, you don’t need the theory. See the beautician on Wednesday. Buy your make-up there, also the perfume. And buy some body cream, its fragrance is more intense than a lotion and you’re going to need that if you can’t use deodorant. Then you can go straight on to the solarium and the jeweller. That all has to be done by Thursday. You’re going to the hairdresser on Thursday, four o’clock. We meet on Friday, at five, in the multi-storey.”

  “Why?” She asked, just to get a word in. “You could come here.”

  “Better not,” said Nadia. “When you come out of the flat yourself someone might notice there’s two of you.”

  She thought this precaution rather excessive but said nothing. It was Nadia’s game. That she wasn’t going to stick too precisely to her rules was merely a matter of economy. A woman who’d been living on noodles for the past few months and came out in a cold sweat at the thought of her next fuel bill couldn’t just throw away several hundred euros. Should Michael Trenkler realize in the first fifteen minutes that she was trying to put one over on him, there would be no second performance and no more money. If she was careful with what she’d been given for expenses and the five hundred for the first weekend she could save herself two raids on her mother’s account.

  The next morning she went, as instructed, to a driving school and enquired about the price for a single lesson. But it was much too high, and since it wasn’t the Porsche she was going to be driving, she decided she’d manage. At the beauty parlour she just bought the required perfume and body cream. Together they cost over a hundred euros, even though she only took the smallest bottle. Everything else she bought cheaply in the supermarket.

  Then she spent two hours in front of the mirror trying things out. She was a bit o
ut of practice. At her first attempt the rouge was too dark, at the second she jabbed her eye with the mascara brush, but at the third the overall result was reasonably acceptable. She gradually started to enjoy it; it took her back to the time before Dieter and the first months after her divorce. Then it would have been unthinkable to turn up at the bank without make-up. After she’d washed it all off and redone it twenty times, it was almost perfect.

  She spent the evening removing the unwanted hair. Her armpits and pubic area were unproblematic. Her eyebrows caused her to shed a few tears and the epilator proved to be a real instrument of torture. One hour later her legs looked as if they’d got the measles. By Wednesday morning, however, all the lumps and red blotches had disappeared.

  She went to the jeweller. She was amazed how quickly and painlessly holes could be pierced in one’s body and admired the medical studs, which she had to wear for a while. After that she stretched out on a sunbed. She had a slight attack of claustrophobia but the radiation was no problem.

  And on Thursday she was a great hit at Nadia’s hairdresser’s with the amusing story of a man who managed to evade paying most of his taxes and made provision for his old age by sending it abroad by courier. Nadia had advised her to tell them about Herr Schrag and Röhrler so as not to let the hairdresser ask too many questions; she might arouse suspicion if her answers were wrong.

  Nadia hadn’t seemed concerned about the - to her ears - different sound of their voices. The bronchitis she was just getting over explained that. It also explained why she didn’t use the ashtray they provided. No one seemed to harbour any doubts about her identity - and she’d only spent ten minutes on make-up beforehand. She was treated deferentially, pampered with coffee and biscuits, and addressed as Frau Trenkler every two minutes.

  True, the hairdresser was a little annoyed at the awful state of her hair, but she just told him what Nadia had drummed into her: on holiday, forgetting to protect it from the blazing sun, then making the mistake of entrusting it to a foreign hairdresser. This mollified the hairdresser, at the same time providing an explanation for her efforts with the scissors.

  While she was being manicured - which Nadia also considered essential, at least for the beginning - she discovered when Nadia had last been to the salon. It was in July, just one day before their encounter by the lift in Gerler House. Nadia had cancelled her appointment for the following week because of the holiday that she had used to explain the state of her hair.

  In her mind’s eye she could see the line in Nadia’s first letter: “Perhaps I can do something to change that.” And in the mirror she saw the woman who had come out of the lift towards her. A slightly suntanned face with the touch of make-up, which hadn’t suffered under the hands of the hairdresser. The silvery studs glittered, her hair was the right shade and not one strand out of place. All at once her heart missed a beat, as if it had just dropped into a hole. The unpleasant sensation made her aware that it might work. The outward transformation at least was complete.

  Nadia was waiting in her own car, a burgundy convertible, when her double entered the multi-storey car park shortly after five on Friday. Susanne got in and immediately noticed the holiday snap of the blond man on the dashboard. It gave her a sudden feeling of unease. Nadia must love her husband very much, otherwise she would hardly have transferred his picture from one car to the other. But to her way of thinking loving a man very much was incompatible with this kind of deception. Even if he was cheating on her.

  Nadia surveyed Susanne’s hairdo and face with a look of approval, checked the shape of her eyebrows and fingernails, and even went so far as to inspect her shins to make sure all growth really had been removed. Then she took the headscarf and large sunglasses out of the glove compartment and told her to put them on. Finally she drove the Alfa Spider out into the street, asking, “Did you manage to get some driving in?”

  “Just one session,” Susanne lied. “It went OK. I surprised myself. But the instructor said it’s like swimming or riding a bike - you never forget how to do it.”

  “Great,” said Nadia. “Then that shouldn’t be a problem. There won’t be any others, either, you look perfect. How was it at the hairdresser’s?” She listened to Susanne’s account and headed for the autobahn, telling her, “Remember this route.”

  There wasn’t much to remember. They went past three exits - and that pretty quickly although the traffic was fairly heavy. Even if the Alfa Spider was less powerful than the Porsche, it was hardly noticeable. Nor was it inferior to the white sports car as far as manoeuvrability was concerned. When the fourth exit approached, Nadia finally cut down her speed. Then there came a country road lined with young trees. Nadia pulled in on the verge between two very thin trunks and pointed ahead. There was virtually nothing to be seen, just a hint of roof tiles in the green shade of countless leafy treetops.

  “From here it’s easy to find,” Nadia said. “Stay on this road. After you get to the village you have to turn left twice, then right. You can’t miss it. There are only five houses on Marienweg, two on one side, three on the other. My house is the middle one of the three.”

  Then came a long explanation of the alarm system. It sounded extremely complicated, as if she’d need an instruction manual just to open the front door. When she’d finished, Nadia did a three-point turn, which Susanne would have thought impossible on the narrow country road and drove back, explaining that in the coming week she had no time for further meetings and that her first appearance would be - next Sunday!

  No more talk of weeks of intensive training. Nadia maintained that it was a good opportunity, not a full weekend and no risk of a short-notice party at Jo and Lilo Kogler’s with Wolfgang and Ilona Blasting. Just a few hours. And Michael would have to go to the lab in the late afternoon.

  “There’s a new series of tests running,” said Nadia indignantly. “That’s always a good pretext for a rendezvous with a laboratory mouse.”

  But given the situation, Nadia said, it would be child’s play. Michael would scarcely be in the mood for a close encounter of any kind before he left. At lunch she would express her resentment at having to spend the evening alone and then say she had to go out too. All Susanne would have to do would be to show Michael the cold shoulder and meet any excuses or attempts to make up with a scornful laugh before flouncing out of the room where he was or to which he had followed her.

  “You won’t have to put up with him for long, anyway,” Nadia said. “He has to leave at five. We’ll meet at three in the multi-storey, that’ll give you time for the drive there.”

  She managed a nod. She hadn’t expected things to move forward so quickly. Her heart was pounding, she could feel the throb right to the tips of her fingers and was relieved that it didn’t occur to Nadia to get her to drive. There was no question but she would have seen through her lie about the driving lesson and realized that her money had been misappropriated.

  Next Sunday! Time was getting short. She couldn’t do anything about her driving on Saturday. On Sunday she was standing by the street outside her flat with her new hairdo and perfect make-up, wearing the clothes Nadia had bought in the boutique. Johannes Herzog gulped when she got into the BMW. “You look great,” he said.

  A compliment like that to a woman of her age from a man in his twenties was not to be sniffed at. It was just that inside she didn’t feel anything like so radiant as she looked outside. After four or five months - she couldn’t remember exactly how long it was - she’d woken at six on a damp sheet stained red. And with the period came that general out-of-sorts feeling and massive self-doubt. She couldn’t possibly drive the Alfa down the autobahn and out into the country next Sunday.

  Johannes raced round the bends in his usual style, surreptitiously giving her sidelong glances. Eventually he asked, “Don’t you feel well?”

  No. She felt anything but well. She was afraid she was going to fail miserably next Sunday right from the start, on the journey out. Johannes flung the car round the next
bend. “All this hurtling round corners is making me feel sick,” she said in answer to his question.

  It was the first time she’d criticized his driving. He was genuinely puzzled. “Am I driving too fast?”

  “I never do more than fifty on a road like this,” she said. That was the speed limit indicated on the signs they’d hurtled past only a few minutes ago.

  “I’d no idea you could drive,” he said.

  “I don’t have much opportunity,” she explained. “I haven’t got a car of my own at the moment, of course. But I’ve just been offered a company car; they want me to take over the courier work. I’d love to do it, only I’m afraid my lack of driving practice would mean I couldn’t.”

  Taking the broad hint, Johannes nobly pulled up at the side of the road. This time next week, she thought as he got out. In her mind’s eye she saw the little photo of a blond man. Michael Trenkler, who else? As it was only for a few minutes, and as he wouldn’t have time to devote himself to her to any extent, there really was no risk - provided she got there safely.

  She slid over into the driving seat. The engine was still running, Johannes had put it in neutral and applied the handbrake. Left foot on the clutch, right foot on the accelerator, engage first, take off the handbrake. And slowly - the BMW shot out into the middle of the road.

  “Easy does it,” said Johannes, leaning back and coolly crossing his legs. “You should have said something and I could have let you try sooner, I’m not fussy about letting other people drive my car. But what’s this about courier trips? I thought you worked in an office?”

  “Yes. But these courier firms aren’t a hundred percent reliable,” she explained. “If something’s urgent, you have to see it gets there yourself.”

  It all sounded somewhat laboured, but at least she was driving at almost twenty miles per hour on the right side of the road. The engine protested. She changed up into second, crept up to thirty in third and managed to reach fifty without having the feeling she was at the wheel of an uncontrollable rocket. Johannes just sat there and let her get on with it, listening to her telling him how much she was looking forward to the courier trips because, of course, they were paid extra.