The Truth and Other Lies

by Sascha Arango

  Henry could understand the man perfectly, but he didn’t reply. Jenssen took a piece of paper out of his folder and handed it to him. It had clearly been torn from a book. Four words from a line of printed text were visible.

  “We found this in your wife’s jacket.”

  Henry put on his reading glasses that he’d brought with him especially for his stay in custody. A message had been scribbled over the scrap of print in a ballpoint pen that had pierced the paper in several places; the writing surface had evidently been soft. The hand was rounded, feminine.

  “It says: If I can do anything and there’s a phone number.” He gave the scrap of paper back to Jenssen. “That’s not Martha’s writing.”

  “We rang up. The number belongs to a certain Sonja Reens.”

  Henry saw the young woman before him, standing in Martha’s parka by the sea, huddled up with cold.

  “She’s the daughter of Elenor Reens, our mayor. I met her on the beach when I was looking for my wife.”

  “That’s right. She sends her regards and asked how you were.”

  “And?” Henry asked. “How am I?”

  “I don’t want to begin to imagine,” Jenssen replied and pointed at the scrap of paper in Henry’s hand. “Do the words seem familiar to you?”

  Henry read the printed words out loud: “Always alone than never.” He didn’t have the shimmer of an idea what this crap was supposed to mean.

  “Doesn’t ring any bells?”

  Triumph flared in Jenssen’s eyes as if he’d just landed on the Planet of the Apes. An inner voice told Henry it would be better if he did know the phrase, so he decided—as so often—to play the odds and make a wild guess. We don’t, incidentally, make use of our hidden talent for guesswork half often enough. Beyond comprehension and consciousness, an army of anonymous neurons is working things out for us. Electric charges are transformed into memories; deep down inside us, knowledge emerges and generates the visions of the unconscious. You just have to trust them.

  “It’s mine. The phrase is mine.”

  Jenssen was as surprised as he was disappointed. “Bingo,” he said appreciatively. “I recognized it straightaway too and looked it up. Bottom of page one hundred and two. Only ‘better’ is missing. ‘Better always alone than never.’ It’s from your novel, Mr. Hayden. Aggravating Circumstances. I think it’s your best book.”

  “Very impressive,” Henry murmured with admiration. “Just goes to show how valuable an attentive reader is.”

  11

  He decided to go and have a look. At the five-mile marker he turned off toward the cliffs—instead of driving home, which would have been a lot more sensible. As every amateur knows, murderers often return to the scene of their crime, only to be arrested when they get there. They go because they are sentimental, or because they are curious, just like everyone else. Some go out of vanity, and others, listening to the voice of conscience, go out of regret; they return because they can’t believe they were really capable of such an act. Henry, for his part, after his visit to forensics, had arrived at the conclusion that the police believed it was an accident. That meant there was no reason not to visit the place where his wife was and see how things had been going for her in the interim. Martha would have expected it, in Henry’s opinion.

  Even from a long way off he could see flashing danger signs. As he rounded the fatal bend where that poor twit had simply kept straight on and driven into the concrete barrier, the tow truck came the other way with the car on its bed. It was a write-off—a miracle that anyone had survived in it. Now Henry remembered that their eyes had met just before the car had crashed. Instead of watching the road, the driver had looked at him, as if in surprise, as if he’d recognized him. Well, a lot of people on the road recognized me, Henry thought, and who cares—the lucky devil survived the crash thanks to me.

  On the forest track Henry parked the car in the usual place and walked over the perforated concrete slabs toward the cliffs, whistling. Here and there little white clouds scudded across the sky; the scent of fresh pine needles filled the warm air. Ought to go for more walks, he thought; it does one good.

  On the cliffs, just where the Subaru had been parked, there was now a camper van. If license plates are to be trusted, an English family with children was vacationing there amid an impressive amount of camping equipment, which lay spread about the ground in a kind of organized chaos. A treasure trove for the forensic team. The whole area was sprinkled with saliva and sweat, not to mention excrement, hair, dandruff, and goodness knows what else. God bless this family, Henry exulted. Even the best forensic scientists in the world would be kept busy here for a thousand years.

  He hid in a clump of bushes and watched in delight as a naked woman in wooden sandals threw laundry over a line strung up between two trees. This late Neolithic Venus must be the mother. Her palely gleaming breasts with their neat areolae hung down, heavy but shapely; her waist had been noticeably thickened by the birth of her three children, who were throwing pinecones at one another not far from the camper van. Henry’s expert eye did not miss the cesarean scar that ran horizontally above her pudenda—very nicely healed and not at all ugly.

  In an aluminum chair, the naked family patriarch was sitting reading the newspaper, a straw hat on his head, his crossed legs marbled with varicose veins, and—what was he doing?—he was smoking cigarettes! Not hurriedly like Betty, but relishing every life-shortening drag. This cultivated Brit carefully stubbed out the butt on the aluminum chair leg, flicked it onto the ground, and proceeded to light up the next one. Henry would have liked to give him a whole truckload of cigarettes. His thriving, naked kiddies were tirelessly gathering and throwing pinecones, laughing and shouting—it was a joy to watch them. Henry had an overwhelming desire to join in their playing and throwing. What a long time it had been since he had played as boisterously as that, and how very rarely it had happened! Yes, it was a good idea to go on summer vacation with children once in a while—they have such a lot of fun.

  If there were still any tire tracks from the Subaru, they were now rolled flat and obliterated by the broad tires of the van. How fantastic! Henry decided to come back sometime. He would have loved to saunter past these nudists to the cliffs, just to have a quick look at Martha—but you shouldn’t tempt the devil, even when he’s in a good mood.

  ———

  Fat, black flies were crawling in various directions over the windows of the Maserati. The sun had heated up the inside of the car, and when Henry opened the door a swarm of flies escaped in a stream of stinking air. The smell was coming from the briefcase on the backseat, which was caked with brown bloodstains. Flies had already deposited symmetrical clusters of white eggs there.

  Nauseated, he grasped the briefcase by the handle and pulled it away. It was stuck to the seat. The handle was stained with sweat. He studied the bloody cheese curd on the reddish-brown napa leather in dismay—the best leather from hand-massaged cattle. An issue for the insurance. Yellowing sheets of paper were pouring out of the briefcase. Henry was just about to throw the bag into the bushes when he noticed a page with words circled in colored pencil. It was his third-grade report card. His name was circled in blue.

  Right at the bottom of the page were illegible signatures. The two years he spent in third grade had been particularly bad—he preferred not to think about them. The marks all ranged from Unsatisfactory to Poor—with the exception of PE. In the comments, it said, among other things: Henry will not be moved up. He is disruptive in class and copies from fellow pupils. His participation in lessons and his behavior leave much to be desired. Exclamation mark. “Copies from fellow pupils” had a red ring round it and was flanked by another exclamation mark in the margin.

  Henry saw, carefully filed and sorted in chronological order, a copy of his birth certificate, school reports, legal documents concerning his parents, records of his admission to various children’s homes, psychological assessments, newspaper articles about Henry Hayden and his n
ovels, even a copy of his marriage certificate—all marked with colored circles. Henry suppressed the urge to burn the briefcase then and there. He threw it back onto the seat, let down all the windows, and a few minutes later was rounding the bend again at a modest speed. Some firemen were sweeping the last splinters of glass from the road. So the fellow had been following him. He should have trusted his instincts and let him perish.

  The belief in human goodness is a prejudice hard to refute. Wouldn’t it be more sensible, Henry wondered, as he drove angrily along the avenue of poplars to his property, to believe in the self-evident badness of human beings? In his case, for instance, sporadic acts of goodness, such as rescuing the man from the wrecked car or strangling the deer in the field, were nothing but brief interruptions to his innate wickedness. He was a murderer, a liar, and a fraud. Not to be asked who you really are—that is the ne plus ultra of imposture. Millions of readers devoured his books, he was desirable to a lot of women, and Martha, who knew better than all the others that he was no good, had never stopped loving him. Is it possible, Henry sometimes wondered, to love a monster? Is it permissible? It is in fact obligatory, if you believe in human goodness. That belief, Henry concluded, bringing his train of thought to a close, leads inescapably to punishment. For the very belief in human goodness makes punishment necessary.

  That morning he had driven to forensics in the certainty that he would spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of his wife. On the way there, quite by the by, he had saved someone he didn’t know from Adam, helping him without a thought for the potential disadvantages. He was nearly late for his own arrest. But did that make up for the murder of his wife? No, it most certainly did not. No good deed can offset a bad one—but that’s not why you do good deeds. Is it?

  He’d been gone a few hours, and yet it seemed to Henry as if he were returning from a long journey. Something was different. Poncho didn’t come barking and running to meet him as he usually did. Then he saw Sonja Reens, the mayor’s daughter, standing on the old millstone in the garden, the dog at her feet looking up at her, riveted as if hypnotized. Even when Henry called him, he didn’t turn his head, but kept his eyes fixed on the woman. She was wearing blue jeans, flip-flops, and a white tight-fitting T-shirt. The brown skin of her upper arms shone; her T-shirt left a narrow strip of skin exposed at her waist. She raised a hand and the dog lay on its belly. She lowered it, turning her palms outward, and the dog sat up again as if pulled by strings.

  Henry snapped the car door locks open and shut. Usually Poncho came running at this sound, because it activated his going-for-a-drive reflex, but he didn’t so much as prick up an ear. For years Henry hadn’t managed to teach his dog anything except to do exactly as it pleased.

  She clapped her hands. Poncho awoke from his catalepsy and, wagging his tail, chewed the biscuit she’d given him in reward. Henry raised his index finger in reproach. “Poncho, we’d agreed that you only do that for me.” He looked at her admiringly. “How did you get him to do that?”

  Her expression betrayed an expert’s pride. “It’s so easy. Dogs love to learn. They’re grateful for the challenge. Poncho’s a nice name. It suits him. He’s a clever dog.”

  “I’m glad. Up until now I could have sworn he was stupid.”

  Henry noticed a wicker basket next to the millstone. There was a checked cloth covering it. She saw his glance.

  “I thought maybe you could do with some company, Mr. Hayden. My mother has baked rhubarb cake for you.”

  “For me?”

  Henry would have preferred waterboarding. For him, rhubarb belonged to those bitter varieties of vegetable that are made into a revolting-tasting jelly to torment defenseless children in institutional dining halls. During his odyssey through various homes and disciplinary establishments, his experience had always been the same: there’s a punishment to fit every crime, and as a reward there’s stewed rhubarb. But now was not the time for resentment.

  Sonja jumped down from the millstone—she almost seemed to glide—bent over the basket, picked it up, and swung it to and fro. Henry watched, captivated, as his shadow walked toward hers.

  “Or do you seriously mean better always alone than never?” she asked, smiling. Henry immediately recalled the scrap of paper Jenssen had shown him outside the Institute of Forensic Medicine. There are days when everything comes back to haunt me, he thought.

  “No, I didn’t write that. My wife did.”

  Her laughter rang out, irreverently. She didn’t believe him. How could she? He was telling the truth. Henry noticed that their shadows were already embracing.

  “You must excuse me, Mr. Hayden . . .”

  “Henry.”

  She blushed slightly. “Henry. I’m sorry about the page from your book, but I wanted to write you a message and didn’t have anything with me except your novel. The book belongs to my mother, by the way. She’s a big fan of yours.”

  Blessed be anyone with a mother, he thought.

  “Do you have any crème fraîche, Mr. Hayden?” She had forgotten to call him Henry.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Everything tastes better with crème fraîche.”

  “I can quite imagine,” Henry replied, and heaven be his witness that he meant it.

  The last thing he needed now was any kind of complication. The novel wasn’t finished, and the question of who was to finish writing it was nowhere near being answered. The baby in Betty’s belly was already growing little fingers; there was a demon of conscience living in the roof in the form of a marten, and an unknown snooper was secretly gathering clues to his past in the hope of uncovering his biggest secret. It wouldn’t be easy to find solutions to all these problems and to restore order; now was not the time for amorous experiments. There are phases in life when it’s best to act on principle, not on impulse.

  But Sonja was magnetic. Everything about the young woman attracted him. While he was making tea their eyes met in the reflection in the open kitchen window. Afterward they sat in his studio. She talked about her veterinary studies and how much she’d like to open a practice in the country, while he sucked on his cold pipe in silence, wishing it was her clitoris. Nothing would have been easier than to set her up in a practice; his lustful thoughts rose to heights too elevated for words. Every time she leaned forward to spread crème fraîche on the rhubarb cake with her teaspoon, previously inactive glands released hormones into his bloodstream. No doubt about it, everything tastes better with crème fraîche, and danger is more erotic than reason.

  A quarter of an hour later he would have eaten rhubarb cake with rusty nails if it had amused her. They discussed the pleasant isolation of country life; he talked about inspiration; she told him of her weakness for rural machinery. Just as he was about to confide in her that he’d bought a John Deere tractor to dig out the old well behind the chapel, the telephone rang. The damn telephone. The most insidious invention since the hand grenade.

  It was Betty. Sonja understood his silent glance and left the room at once. Her flip-flops were left next to the sofa in the shape of a V—If that isn’t a sign, Henry thought. Her spontaneous response suggested that their brief acquaintanceship was already becoming conspiratorial. An emotionally detached person would simply have remained sitting there. All that was needed now was to overcome small-town conventions, get through the process of grieving, remove any inconvenient people, and, last but not least, wait for Martha’s official death statement. Henry counted to five in his head and picked up the receiver.

  Betty’s voice on the phone was tense and deeper than usual. “I’m here for you,” she said. As if scorched by a hot iron, Henry spun round on his axis and looked out the picture window.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m right here for you, Henry. I’d just like you to know that I love you, I want to be with you, our baby . . .”

  Yes, our baby, our baby, tra-la-la, et cetera. Henry was no longer listening. Any residual feeling for Betty had already been atomized
by the charisma of the unknown; he could feel himself no longer feeling anything. For Betty, that is. This would have been the time for speaking frankly, coming to a financial understanding, for instance, promising to safeguard the future of their child and to part in truly sympathetic friendship. But men are never more cowardly and their lies never more pathetic than when they’re caught with their pants down. Isn’t that so, gentlemen?

  “I have to see you,” he said.

  “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”

  How right she was. He never wanted to see her again. It was high time to tell her what had really happened on the cliffs.

  12

  The longest days of the year came. They met in the Four Seasons Hotel at about eight in the evening. Not under a false name as in the past, their sunglasses on and their cell phones off, but quite openly in the foyer. People recognized Henry, greeted him, offered their condolences; it was like being at a funeral. Henry remained as unassuming and nonchalant as ever and led Betty to the Oyster Bar, where a waiter showed him to the best table and swiftly cleared away the lilies.

  Betty felt uneasy. His correctness, his choice of a public rendezvous, and above all the positively gooey gentleness with which he touched her reinforced her suspicions that he was going to confess to his wife’s murder. What do you say when you hear a thing like that? Do you treat it as a proof of love and then call the police? Would she have to testify against the father of her child? Or should she maintain a sympathetic silence and spend the rest of her life with a murderer? A dilemma. She ordered a glass of water.

  The maître d’ recommended the Belon oysters from the mudflats of Brittany. Betty had no appetite. Henry went for steak and fries as always. He never looked at the menu. If there was no steak, well, then schnitzel. Betty was poring over the menu, but Henry could see that she wasn’t going to order anything—good God, how it got on his nerves when women made a big thing about a plate of pasta. Betty clapped the menu shut at last and shook her head. The waiter slunk off, offended.