The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  “He betrayed you all,” I shout, but they simply go on smiling.

  Arellia goes black, but soon the lighthouse light returns. Every one of them has vanished but for me. I’m standing face to face with me. I hear the roars of Claws von Snout. The other me seems not to mind, or else she doesn’t hear the things I do. But then I see that she’s not me. She’s the Shadow She, the also-Anne whom I betrayed.

  Why must it all take place again, the same dark road, the same cold wind, the scent of perfume in the car? She didn’t have to travel far. She’s wearing the black coat she wore that winter night, the coat that wasn’t found. Soon, the snow will start. The wind is cold and she’s so small. They look at me, those strange green eyes. She never blinks. If only I could turn back time—the end would come the way it came. Nothing would be different. I’d turn my back on her again, just as, moments ago, I turned my back on Anne Frank. I’d betray, again, the girl called Anne, who said, “I’m just an also-Anne.” Von Snout was there but no one else to hear her shout. His was the only voice she heard. She and I are alike, but I’m not the one for whom bells toll.

  She stares at me and says, “I vanished then; you’ll vanish when the wind blows from the west again.”

  WADE

  I was surprised that, not long after we told them of our plan to go through Amsterdam rather than London on our way back to Canada, the others—all of them—decided to come with us.

  “I can’t stand the idea of you being in Amsterdam by yourselves,” Gloria said when she came by to give us the news. “The place is full of so many reminders of Dad, and even Mom—I’m sure that one or more of us have been there with them twenty times over the years. We’re not about to leave Bethany in the house by herself, and Fritz says he and Carmen have business to conduct in Amsterdam. I can just imagine what he means by ‘business.’ The two of them will wind up in jail for life if they’re ever caught bringing drugs into South Africa.”

  * * *

  —

  Some shopping had to be done before the seven of us left. I had promised my parents and brothers and sisters that I would bring them back souvenirs. Rachel and Bethany each wanted a neck pillow to help them sleep on the flight. Gloria and Max were in search of things to give to Max’s many relatives in Amsterdam. As Max was out of town and Rachel was spending most of every day with Bethany at the Apostles house and Fritz and Carmen, who wore only used clothes, had more or less sworn an oath to never be caught dead in a mall, Gloria and I were left to do the shopping.

  Gloria picked me up in Max’s BMW in mid-afternoon. She didn’t come in but merely blew the horn and waited for me. She shifted over to the passenger side as I came down the driveway. “It’s an automatic,” she said when I got in.

  “I’ve never driven on the left side of the road,” I said, but she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “I’ll guide you. It doesn’t look right, a woman driving a man around.”

  “Rachel doesn’t mind,” I said. “Neither do I.”

  “How do you know she doesn’t mind?” Gloria said. “And you should mind.”

  I was wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans and a pair of leather sandals. “Someone should teach Rachel how to dress you,” Gloria said. “After someone teaches her how to dress herself.” She wore a low-cut, lavender-coloured number that rode up her legs when she crossed them.

  I had feared that I would have to run a gauntlet of flirtation but, except to tell me where to drive and warn me that I was drifting into oncoming traffic, she said almost nothing. We made it to the mall, which was so busy I had to park on the lowest, least-used level of the underground lot after navigating a series of sharply winding and steeply descending ramps.

  I picked up some things for my family first, and then Gloria shopped in a frenzy, never bothering to tell me which way she was headed or when she was leaving one store and making for another. I felt like I was ten years old, all but chasing her to keep up lest I be left behind and have to ask directions from a grown-up.

  At last, we carried our bags back to the car in the underground parking. I drove the BMW back up the winding, steep ramps. I had no sooner stopped the car at an automatic pay booth a few feet short of the exit when two men in black fatigues and toting machine guns appeared from out of nowhere, flanking the car. At the sound of a thud against the window, I turned my head and looked into the barrel of a gun.

  My mind and body braced pointlessly for a bullet that would have killed me so fast I wouldn’t have had time to hear the shot or the breaking of the glass. “Jesus,” I heard myself shout. Gloria grabbed my hand and cried out, “Don’t shoot,” over and over.

  The two men slowly moved around to the front of the car, their guns trained on us all the while. I put my hands up and Gloria did too. “What do they want?” I managed to say.

  Gloria began to stamp her foot over and over, hissing, “That bastard Fritz, that bastard Fritz,” each time she made contact with the car mat.

  “What about Fritz?” I whispered.

  “I knew he’d screw it up somehow,” she said. “How could he have been so stupid? Jesus.”

  Abruptly, the two men lowered their guns as if some third person we couldn’t see had told them to, then backed away from each other until they no longer blocked our way. With a loud bang, the metal door in front of us lurched into motion, rising, slowly opening, admitting daylight until I was blinded by the sun.

  “Get us out of here,” Gloria said. “Just drive. Go, go.”

  I drew in a deep breath and slowly released it as I managed to pull out of the parking garage and onto the ramp that led to the street. As I merged into traffic, Gloria began to sob uncontrollably.

  “I have to pull over,” I said. “We’re both too upset, and I don’t know the way. And what was that about Fritz?”

  “You’re not pulling over until we’re out of the city. I won’t have people gawking at me while I’m trying to explain myself to someone who will never understand and whose opinion of me I do not give a shit about. There is a place out by the house that overlooks the sea. You’ll drive but you won’t say a word until we get there.”

  * * *

  —

  She stood with her back to the water, the offshore wind turning her hair into a black pennant. I looked at the road, which wound halfway up the cliff that faced the sea, then at her house in the distance, the glass walls of its upper storey glinting in the sun.

  Arms still folded, eyes on the ground, she walked in her high heels back to the car, turned and leaned back against the hood. The red dust of South Africa fanned out across the water, casting faint and fleeting shadows on the sea.

  Seagulls used the offshore wind to hover above the water, rising and dipping like kites. They eyed us, hoping perhaps that we had stopped to have some food that we might share with them or leave behind.

  “What happened back there, Gloria?” I said. “Why did you say those things about Fritz?”

  “They were only mall cops,” she said. “They must have mistaken us for someone else. There must have been a robbery or something. This doesn’t happen to me every day, Wade.” Sniffling, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I was terrified. No one has ever aimed a gun at me before. And all I could think was that it could just as easily have been Fritz who was driving, because he does nothing all day but lie around that house with Carmen and get stoned. Fritz could have taken you there. If I wound up hurt or worse, it would be Fritz’s fault.”

  “Gloria, when that gun was pointed at my face, the first thing that came to my mind was not Fritz. I don’t believe he’s the first thing that came to your mind. Fritz and me shopping together? That’s almost as unlikely as you and Fritz shopping together.”

  She struck the hood of the car with the heel of her hand. “All right,” she said. “All right, just give me a second.”

  “You didn’t think they mistook us for someone else,” I
said. “You thought they knew exactly who we were.”

  She leaned on the car, eyes downcast as I moved to stand in front of her. She was waiting to see if I could guess.

  “Your parents,” I said. “You thought Fritz had turned on you, or slipped up. I can’t believe—”

  She laughed. “Fritz knows more about it than you or I will ever know.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “Jesus—”

  “You can’t believe it. You can’t believe this; you can’t believe that. Ever since you came to South Africa, you’ve had a look of disbelief on your face, or a look of disapproval, or sometimes a smug look. I know what you think of me. But I’m not some vapid twit who always dreamed of being a stewardess. I left home as soon as I could, the best way I knew how. I don’t care what you think of me, but I know. I’d rather live here than anywhere else because, if you’re white, you can do almost anything and people will either pretend not to notice or explain it away. The police have no proof, though they may have suspicions, which they’ll keep to themselves unless Fritz does what the sight of that gun pointed at me made me think he’d already done.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Something like you just said. I thought he messed it up, somehow, maybe tried to keep all the money for himself, or shot off his mouth to someone while he was stoned. I’ll explain it all if you give me a chance. I panicked at the mall. If I had had the time to think it through…”

  I moved even closer to her but she turned her head away.

  “Rachel…,” I said.

  “She had absolutely nothing to do with it. Fritz and I agreed that the fewer who knew the better. She didn’t, she doesn’t, know anything about it. Bethany and Carmen don’t know either, or Max. I wouldn’t trust any of them to keep a secret like that. Fritz is the only one I needed, anyway.”

  “But not Rachel.”

  “Not your precious Rachel. Rachel…for a long time, I assumed that Dad had done to her what he did to Bethany and me, and maybe Carmen. Seeing you and her together, I think that, maybe, for some reason that no one will ever guess, he never laid a hand on her.”

  “But—”

  “Listen. LISTEN. And don’t interrupt until I’m finished. Don’t you judge me until you know.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Gloria,” I said, barely able to keep from breaking into tears.

  I turned away from her and took a few steps toward the sea. The tide was coming in, the waves exploding in white froth upon the rocks just as the waves below our house in Petty Harbour did when the tide was on the rise. “Come back and sit beside me,” she called. I returned to the car and leaned with her against the grille of the BMW.

  “For a while, I lived two lives,” she said. “The two of them ran side by side, and I moved back and forth between them pretty easily. Family outings, picnics on the beach, visits to the zoo, birthday parties, school trips. We sang the South African national anthem two or three times a day. I knew it by heart and I loved every word of it, and believed every word of it. But my other life was always there, at night, mostly behind closed doors. Secrets. Promises. Warnings. ‘Don’t tell your mother what you did. She’ll be very upset with you. You know how sad your mother gets when you misbehave. Don’t tell your sisters.’ I was convinced that Dad did what he did because of something I did. I tried to think of what it was so that I could stop doing it, but…Sometimes he told me to tell him I was sorry, and I did.”

  I couldn’t credit the things she was saying. Nor could I look her in the eye, for I knew I was wearing the look of disbelief that so offended her.

  “I soon had a reputation among the boys and girls at school. Especially the boys. A reputation that I earned and lived up to. Glory Hole van Hout. I didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs like my sisters did. I wasn’t invited to parties. But I knew things that other girls my age didn’t know. Things that some of them probably still don’t know.

  “Then we moved to Canada.” She folded her arms and tightly hugged herself. The wind blew her hair over her face but she didn’t bother with it.

  “The others, maybe even Carmen, thought we were going somewhere where everything would be different, where everything unpleasant would just go away. Me, I was leaving a boyfriend I knew I would never see again, a handful of friends I knew I would never see again. And I was leaving the one place on earth that, in spite of everything, was home to me. I have a lot of good childhood memories. Children can enjoy themselves in spite of almost anything. I did. The bad, as bad as it was, didn’t spoil the good, not entirely, not at first, at least. But it did more and more as I got older. I knew we were not setting sail to a new life. I knew that we were bringing with us more bad than good. And I felt, believe it or not, that what we were leaving behind was more good than bad.

  “I got engaged. I got married. I got divorced. A few times. I wound up back here with Max. When I heard that Dad was retiring and the two of them were moving back here…For so long, I had thought the most I would have to deal with was a visit every year. I thought I could handle that.

  “Max loves it here. He often says that there is nowhere else that he would live, not even Amsterdam. I’m going to have children, Wade. Girls, maybe. If Max goes on insisting he doesn’t want children, he’ll have to get used to not having me. And I know how this sounds but, if Dad was alive, I can’t say for certain that I would be able to shield a baby girl from him, or a ten-year-old, or a teenager. I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t go on pretending that everything was fine and looking the other way, that I wouldn’t leave my children alone with him or them, because that’s what daughters do—they leave their children with their grandparents, the last people who would ever harm them. I don’t know for certain what happened to Carmen and Rachel. I should know, but I don’t. Like Mom, I covered up for him because I didn’t want anyone to know about me, because I thought I was to blame.

  “The thing is…it never stopped, Wade. Do you know what I mean? I can’t explain it. Maybe someone can, but I can’t. I’m afraid that, if I tell Max any of this, he won’t want me anymore, in part because I lied to him and in part because he’ll be sickened by the sight of me. My father once said to me, ‘A woman belongs forever to the first man who has her. And he should be the only man who has her. But even if he’s not, she’ll be his forever. I was the first man to have you, Gloria. You will always be mine.’ ”

  She looked sideways at me.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Since they moved back, every night that Max was away, I stood at the window that faced that road. If, by nine, Dad hadn’t shown up, I knew he wasn’t coming. I felt relieved, but there was always the next night to think about.

  “Dad would tell Mom he couldn’t sleep knowing I was out there by myself in that big house on the coast—even though the house is guarded by a man with a machine gun. And she’d say, ‘Well, you know I don’t sleep well in any bed but my own.’ So he came out to the house by himself. It even made sense to Max. ‘Dad slept over every night while you were away,’ I’d tell him, and all Max would do was smile as if he was amused, or even charmed, by Dad’s concern for me. Sometimes, I think that even Max was pretending not to know, especially after Bethany made her accusations.

  “I didn’t accuse them, disown them, tell them I never wanted to see them again. To move away from them was one thing, but to disown them was something that I simply couldn’t bring myself to do. I couldn’t accuse him. Where did doing that get Bethany? I couldn’t defy him or resist him. Or her. It was easier, in a way, to pretend, to let everyone go on pretending that the van Houts were what they seemed to be.

  “When I opened the door, Dad didn’t push past me. He merely waited for me to step aside, as he knew I would, as I always have.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “I can imagine what it was like for Bethany. Mom goes out from time to time in the middle of the afternoon. I d
on’t know where she goes and she isn’t gone for long, but long enough. And then there’s Carmen. I have no idea. My guess is yes, but I have no idea.

  “I would have handled the whole thing myself if I could, but I had no money, so I told Max that Rachel and you were nearly broke. He never asks questions when I ask him for money. All he said was ‘How much?’ I told him not to mention it to either of you because you’d be embarrassed. And then I got in touch with Fritz.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “This was the only way I could think of to stop it. The point of all this, Wade—I say it again—is that he never stopped and he never would have. If there was any other way to stop him, they’d be alive today. Mom—she wasn’t supposed to be there. She was supposed to be at that reunion.

  “Fritz has been keeping his eyes on me ever since, looking for signs that I’ve told Max or someone else what we did. He’s always watching me. But he did everything he was supposed to. I have to give him that much credit.

  “Fritz and I, we did our parts. Max did his, too, though he doesn’t know it. I’m begging you, don’t tell him, and don’t tell Fritz that you know what happened. And please, please don’t tell Bethany, Carmen or Rachel. They had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “I think Rachel loves me,” I said. “She says she does. I think she does. And I’m not sure I could take it if she didn’t, or even if she loved me less, which she would after she found out that I’d been keeping such a secret from her. I couldn’t take it if she left me again. I wish that Hans had done nothing to any of you, but I’m also sure that what happened to you and Bethany didn’t happen to Rachel. I don’t understand why it didn’t, but I’m sure it didn’t. I’d feel it, wouldn’t I?”