The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  Julia laughed. ‘I can’t believe he’s still talking about that. I’m the first to admit that his wedding wasn’t my finest hour, and I’ve tried to apologize to him many times. But he made that impossible because he stopped speaking to me. Yes, I suppose I wanted to tease him a little bit about his conformist life choices. I wanted it to be funny, you know? But maybe I got the tone wrong, and I can also see that his wedding wasn’t the right moment to do what I did. And I should obviously also have known that he lacks any sense of humour whatsoever. I mean any! His guests got what I was trying to do, though. They were all laughing and cheering. I got standing ovations, Clare. They loved it. The whole party was in stitches. It was only Jonathan who didn’t get it. And his wife, of course. Anyway. Mea culpa.’

  That completely contradicted Jonathan’s account of the scene. He had mentioned that all his guests were horrified and disgusted, and that Julia’s speech was met with icy silence.

  ‘And what about your parents, Julia?’ I asked next. ‘They’re distraught. They just can’t believe that their beloved, brilliant daughter has killed twenty-four people. Your father desperately wants to see you. Your mother is drinking like a fish. Their lives are ruined. They may never recover.’

  Julia shifted in her seat and looked uncomfortable, and then defiant. ‘You do know I’m adopted, right? Didn’t Rose and Tim tell you?’

  ‘I did know, but only because Chris told me. Your parents didn’t mention it.’

  She looked genuinely surprised. ‘Well, that’s interesting. I guess they’re keeping their promise then. I didn’t think they would, to be honest. It would have been so much easier for them to tell the truth. That I’m not theirs, I mean. That in my case, the most well-meaning and heart-warming nurture couldn’t overcome my evil nature, or whatever comforting theories people try to embrace in situations like this.’

  ‘How did it make you feel, learning that you were adopted?’ I asked.

  Julia shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I was obviously shocked when I found out, but in the end, it didn’t really change much. They were nice about it, emphasizing how much they loved me, and promising that they’d never tell anyone, including Jonathan and Amy. That it would remain our secret. That they loved me just as much as my siblings. But I think I’d always felt very different from most people, including my family. In other ways, it also made sense to me. It explained why Tim had always been so over-indulgent and over-protective of me – I always suspected there was something suspicious about that. You know, that there was something insincere about his too-showy adoration? Deep down, he was probably trying to compensate for the fact that, despite his best intentions, he just couldn’t love me as much as Jonathan and Amy. No matter how hard he tried. But I don’t blame him. It must be difficult.’

  Julia reflected for a while before she continued: ‘You know, his excessive veneration of me actually caused a lot of tension in the family. Jonathan and Amy felt threatened by it, obviously, and so did Rose. I think she always thought of it as wrong, the way he was so in awe of me. Ultimately, it turned her against me. I think at some point Rose even started to see me as a rival. I often wish I wasn’t what people think of as beautiful, you know? I hate it. I want people to like me for who I am, not how I look. I just don’t think Tim ever really did.’

  For a moment, Julia looked very sad and vulnerable. I felt a strong urge to take her hand into mine and to comfort her. ‘What about your real mother? Have you ever tried to find out about her?’ I asked.

  Julia shrugged again. ‘Why? She made her choice and she must have had her reasons.’ Then her gaze hardened, and she straightened her back. ‘In any case I’m sorry to hear that Tim is in a bad place. As for Rose, she always drank too much – apparently even before my arrival. So that particular problem has absolutely nothing to do with me. And anyway, I prefer not to discuss my parents. I’m obviously very sorry that I’ve caused them pain. They don’t deserve that. Neither of them.’ Then she leaned back in her chair and raised her chin. She seemed to have closed up like a clam sensing danger, and I decided to move on to my next question.

  ‘Do you remember Alison Fisher, with whom you studied in Edinburgh before you dropped out?’

  Julia reflected for a while. ‘Yes, Alison. That does ring a bell. I think she and I took the same classes, before I left. What about her?’

  ‘Oh, I met her, too, and she told me that the two of you had been close friends before you met Chris.’

  ‘That’s strange. I only vaguely remember her… Pretty, black hair? A little hyperactive? I think we might have had coffee a few times.’

  ‘And then you met Chris, and the two of you went travelling.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Chris mentioned you were working on a dossier together – what became of it?’

  ‘I lost faith in it. I lost faith in the power of words. Words – they’re hot air, black marks on dead paper. People consume them just as mindlessly as they consume everything else.’ Then Julia paused and looked at me again, intently, her eyes burning their way right into my soul. ‘What about you, Clare? Do you still believe in the power of words? After everything that’s happened to you?’

  This time, I held her gaze. ‘I used to,’ I said. ‘But now I don’t know anymore.’ Then we both remained silent for a while.

  ‘What triggered your change of heart?’ I asked her eventually. ‘Chris said you changed completely on that trip, so much so that at some point he didn’t recognize you anymore, and that you suddenly turned cold on him.’

  ‘Well, that’s his side of the story. I was completely in love with Chris, but he turned out to be a real bastard. He broke my heart. Did he tell you that he slept with just about every backpacker who happened to cross his path when he thought I wasn’t looking? That he was high and drunk all the time? That he had the attention span and work ethic of a puppy dog and lost interest in our project after about a month or so, and that I did all the hard work on my own while he hung out in bars and chatted up women? And did he tell you about what I witnessed on the coffee farm, and what happened afterwards?’

  ‘He did tell me about the coffee farm incident, yes.’

  ‘I’m glad he did. Although even he never understood the true significance of those events. He just didn’t get it. Instead, he became really unpleasant about the fact that I took the dossier work seriously and didn’t constantly want to sleep with him. But you know, anyone would have lost interest in sex after seeing what I saw on that trip. And his sleeping around didn’t exactly help, either, obviously. His reaction was pathetic, really. Instead of supporting me, he turned into a self-pitying whiner, interested only in getting high and getting laid. He, too, was just all words and no action. I’d completely misjudged him.’

  I felt as though all the stories I’d been told were melting into air. All seemed biased, shaped by frustrated emotions, misunderstandings or outright lies. I was about to say something to that effect when I noticed Julia shuddering. All colour had drained from her face. Her lips were pressed into a tight, ashen line. She shook her head as though she was trying to banish an unwanted memory.

  ‘What is it, Julia? Tell me what’s happening to you,’ I said as gently as I could.

  But Julia shook her head again, straightened her back and then met my gaze. It seemed to cost her a tremendous amount of energy to do so. ‘Let me ask you something now, Clare,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re probably disappointed with what you’ve found out about me so far. Am I right?’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘What I mean is, there are no great revelations, no dark secrets, no terrible childhood traumas with the power to explain how a good girl like me could have done what I did. Your readers will feel cheated. No fall on the head as a small child that radically altered my personality, no horrific sexual abuse in my family, no satanic corrupter figure who twisted me around his little finger and wreaked havoc with my soul. No hard evidence that I’m simply insane or plain evil, either. Nothing particu
larly dramatic, nothing very much out of the ordinary. Just the combination of a unique set of circumstances, none of which are very remarkable in their own right. Isn’t that correct?’

  Again I didn’t respond.

  Julia leaned towards me. In what was almost a whisper, she continued: ‘But let me ask you this: isn’t this scenario perhaps even more disturbing than any mono-causal explanation you might have been able to produce? Doesn’t this absence of simple answers suggest the most unsettling possibility of all – that I might be right, Clare? Right, sane, justified? Think about it.’

  ‘I have thought about it. A lot. Believe me. But killing people, innocent people, can never be justified. Don’t you feel any remorse for what you’ve done at all?’

  ‘No,’ Julia said. ‘I don’t. I feel sorrow for the pain I’ve caused, absolutely, but not remorse. What I did was necessary. It was the only way to make people realize that their own comfortable way of life is built on appalling exploitation and barbarity.’

  ‘Do you ever think about your victims, and their families, and their friends?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Julia said. ‘But I try not to.’

  ‘But how can’t you? How can twenty-four deaths not keep you awake at night?’

  ‘You think I sleep at night?’ Julia paused for a few seconds, sighed, and then said: ‘I believe that privileging the wellbeing of a few individuals over the wellbeing of the many is wrong. Sometimes it’s necessary to make sacrifices for the greater good. Sometimes it’s necessary to commit acts of violence so that the far greater violence to which many more people are subjected can be stopped.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Julia leaned forward once again, her eyes glowing. ‘Terrorism, Clare, is above all a gesture. It’s a symbolic act that registers a discontent that can’t be alleviated by institutional means. It makes real change possible.’

  ‘But I don’t believe that,’ I interrupted. ‘Most people simply abhor the callous disregard that you’ve shown for the lives of your victims, and they reject out of principle any message you might have wished to communicate. They reject it because of the way you’ve chosen to deliver it. Your message is discredited by the blood you’ve spilled.’

  Julia straightened her back. ‘Is that what you really think? I guess it’s easy to think that, it’s reassuring, and I understand why many people would choose to do so. But you? You know that it’s so much more complex than that. People might hate me, and I have to accept that, but it doesn’t follow that they necessarily hate my ideas. In fact, I know that a lot of people out there agree with them. And the fact that my ideas have received so much press coverage is in itself an achievement in our apolitical, apathetic times.’

  ‘But you’re wrong, Julia,’ I objected hotly. ‘Haven’t you been following the news? Your ideas are not at all what’s being debated. Nobody’s interested in your manifesto. Nobody’s talking about the abuse of workers in the Third World. Nobody’s talking about Café Olé’s employment practices. You know what most people are talking about? Most people are interested in just one question: whether you’re mad or evil. That’s what the world’s talking about. Your character and your looks. And how and why you became what you are. It’s the personal, not the political, that captures everyone’s attention.’

  Julia’s eyes flashed. ‘No, Clare. It’s you who’re interested in my character. Don’t project your own preoccupations onto others.’

  ‘But I’m not! Can you name any articles or TV programmes that have seriously engaged with your political demands? You can’t, can you?’

  ‘No, but for the simple reason that I gave up following the news a long time ago. As I said, I no longer believe in the power of words. Anything printed, like anything made for consumption, achieves nothing. It’s part of the problem, not the solution. You of all people should know that. The life span of a news story is shorter than that of a mayfly – do you remember when 276 girls were kidnapped by Islamist fanatics in Nigeria, and how two days later the media stopped reporting on it? And do you know what happened next? Of course you don’t.

  ‘The media always home in on the sensationalist psychodrama – that’s how they hook their audience. But that doesn’t mean that what I said earlier isn’t true. What goes on in people’s minds is not necessarily directly reflected in the media circus. Altered states of mind are not measurable in such simplistic terms.’

  ‘But that’s kettle-logic. How do you know change is taking place if you deny it can be measured or even observed?’

  ‘How do you know it isn’t happening? Your claim is just as speculative as mine. And at least mine is born out of hope. It would be naive to expect the gradual destruction of false ideology to translate directly into riots and revolutions, or into more sophisticated debates on television. It just doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘Then how does it work? How on earth can you justify murdering twenty-four people for something you can’t even prove is actually taking place?’

  Julia raised her voice for the first time. ‘Let me put it this way: how can anyone justify not doing anything, when thousands of people die each year as a direct result of our exploitation of vulnerable workers in poorer countries? I don’t follow your logic. You think twenty-four Western lives are worth more than, say, the lives of the 1,130 Bangladeshi textile workers who died last year when their derelict building collapsed? Or the 114 young women and children who perished in the most recent sweatshop blaze in Vietnam? Do the maths – add all the other threshold states into the mix. How many deaths a year are we talking about? Ten thousand? Twenty? If those deaths were the result of warfare, or ethnic cleansing, the UN would take military action.’

  ‘You’re right, the numbers are shocking,’ I said. ‘But you can’t just measure deaths against one another like that. That’s ridiculous! It’s not a tit-for-tat thing. Every death is a tragedy. Adding to the number of unnecessary deaths, as you’ve done, is utterly wrong!’ I was growing ever more agitated. I felt that a rhetorical sling was tightening around my neck, but I couldn’t see how to get out of it.

  ‘Is it? But what if those few deaths contributed to the demise of forms of exploitation that would lead to many thousands of deaths in the future? What really troubles people in the West is that those few deaths in a café in London are visible, while it’s so easy to turn your back on the thousands of deaths elsewhere.’

  ‘But they were innocent people, your victims! They were just drinking coffee, for Christ’s sake. That’s hardly a reason to blow them to pieces.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as innocence. Everyone in the West is complicit in some way. There are no blameless victims. But there are different levels of culpability. Each and every one of us can make a difference. We can bring down multinational corporations simply by boycotting their products. We can withhold and redistribute our money in any way we see fit. It’s our money, much more than our vote, that matters. It’s that simple, Clare. And no one who buys products whose producers have blood on their hands is innocent. No one.’

  ‘That’s so extreme; it’s inhumane! You can’t seriously think that. Surely the answer is not to just kill everyone who happens to be sipping a big-chain coffee or wearing a sweatshop-produced T-shirt. You’d have to kill almost everyone!’

  ‘Yes, more actions like mine will be needed before true change takes place. But I think there’s hope. I think people like you and me can do something that really makes a difference.’

  ‘But the change you’re talking about, Julia, it comes at far too high a price. I happened to speak to one of your victims – a wonderful person, a charitable person, a person full of love and kindness. You know what you did to her? You blinded her. You took away her sight. And she isn’t at all the kind of thoughtless, throw-away consumer you had in mind when you went on your killing spree. Ironically, she hates shopping, and she’d never even set foot in a Café Olé branch before in her life. It was pure chance that she was there. How do you feel about that?’
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  ‘I think I know who you mean. An elderly lady? I remember her. We made eye contact when I was leaving the café. She struck me as out of place. I wish she hadn’t been there. I really wish she hadn’t. I’m glad to hear she’s alive. But I stand by what I did. Sometimes painful sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.’

  ‘And how can you be so sure that you, of all people, know what the greater good is? Isn’t it terribly presumptuous, to pass judgement on which lives are worth living and which ones can be sacrificed? You’re not God!’

  ‘All I did was choose a venue. I didn’t choose the individuals who happened to be there. They made a choice to be there, and all choices have consequences.’

  ‘And why Café Olé, of all places? Because of what you’d witnessed in Guatemala?’ Again I noticed her stiffening. She shifted in her seat, but remained stubbornly silent. ‘Surely there are much more evil corporations you could have singled out, and more symbolically relevant ones,’ I continued. ‘Why not banks, why not hedge funds, why not pharmaceutical companies, why not a cheap clothing chain? And surely there are customers of more dubious products you could have targeted. What about diamonds, weapons, pornography, sex? But coffee, Julia? Lattes and cappuccinos?’

  ‘You’re right. The number of justified targets is infinite. But I had to start somewhere. It didn’t matter where.’

  I didn’t know how to respond. I felt as though all the blood had drained from my brain. I could no longer think clearly. I could no longer speak.

  Eventually, Julia broke our silence. ‘You’ve asked me a lot of questions, Clare. Now let me ask you a few. You surprise me. You’re an investigative journalist. What are you hoping your writing will achieve?’

  I could find no words with which to answer her.

  ‘Let me answer for you,’ Julia said. ‘You assume a two-step process: that sharing shocking facts with the public leads to moral outrage, and that those responsible for them will be punished. Your underlying assumption is always that moral outrage leads to change: legal action, boycotts, fines, and so on. In other words, you believe that everything you write helps to bring about justice, in one form or another. Isn’t that right?’