The Truth and Other Lies

by Sascha Arango

  “Now tell me.”

  Henry cleared his throat as if about to read out a school essay. He’d never been good at this kind of thing. “I don’t think Martha would have ever wanted you to go to prison for her death—for fifteen years, if not more. No, she definitely would not have wanted that.”

  This was not a confession. This sounded somehow worse. Betty wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility that it was a bad joke, and she kept her cool. “Me—in prison? Ah-ha. For what?”

  “Now just imagine,” Henry continued in a worried tone, “that the police find my wife dead in your car. You did report it stolen?”

  She nodded.

  “What are they going to think? There’s no farewell note, nothing that points to suicide. The only thing they can think is that you did it.”

  “Me?” Her voice rose an octave. “You were the one who was last with her on the cliffs.”

  Henry sadly shook his head. “No, darling. It wasn’t like that.”

  She leaned forward. Henry spotted an alluring vein on her forehead that he’d never seen before.

  “You didn’t go?”

  “Nope, I didn’t.”

  “Then where were you?”

  “I went to the movies. Korean film. Completely fascinating.”

  The steak arrived. Betty waited, controlling herself with difficulty. Her nails quietly scraped the damask tablecloth. The smell of the deep-fried potatoes on his plate made her want to throw up. She fiddled with the cloth, the vein on her forehead throbbing. If it burst, then my problem would be taken care of, Henry mused as he spun the steak around on his plate. She leaned back and looked out the window onto the street, still drawing fine lines on the tablecloth with her fingernails. Henry could tell that she was replaying the events of that evening. He let her take her time, spearing fries with his fork, rubbing them over the steak and putting them in his mouth.

  Betty finally got to the point.

  “You ran upstairs to her room to look for her. Did you think your wife was at home? Or was that all playacting?”

  “I thought she was at home, my love. I was absolutely certain she was in her room. She’s always in bed at that time.”

  Betty’s eyes narrowed. “If you thought that, then why did you stage her death on the beach?”

  “I didn’t. Her bike really was there. Martha had left it there. God knows why. Do you remember how I took you home that evening?”

  Of course she remembered. “After that I went straight to the cliffs. Your car wasn’t there anymore. The tire tracks led straight into the sea. And there were butts on the ground. She smoked your cigarettes and then . . .”

  Betty covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God, how awful!”

  She had understood. Henry put down his knife and fork on the edge of his plate. “Don’t worry. It rained all night. You can’t see anything anymore.”

  “Don’t worry? Why didn’t you call the police straightaway?”

  “I wanted to. Then I thought about it. I don’t know whether it was right, but I decided that you . . . that the two of you are all I have. You and the baby.”

  He stretched his open hand across the table. Betty took it in hers. Her fingers were clammy.

  “You did it for me?”

  “And the baby. Our baby.”

  Baby. He saw her tears. Why is it that women always cry over that word? How can one word do that?

  “We must go to the police, Henry. Straightaway.”

  “No need. They’ve already been to me. After you left with Moreany. How is he, by the way?”

  Betty didn’t want to talk about Moreany and his silly proposal just now. She clutched Henry’s hand like a prayer book.

  “Henry, we’re going to the police now and we’re going to tell them what happened.”

  Henry played a quick round of pick-up-sticks with his fries. “What did happen, darling?” he asked softly but insistently. “What really happened?”

  Unsurprisingly, she let go of his hand.

  “What do you mean by ‘really’?”

  “Are you going to drink that?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he downed her glass of water. Now he lowered his voice even further. “Did Martha drive to the cliffs alone or did you take her there?”

  Betty half rose from her chair in indignation. “You don’t really think I killed your wife?”

  “Did you?”

  Betty looked around desperately for justice, but there was none. She was visibly fighting back the urge to get up and walk away. She didn’t. She sat there; she didn’t have the strength. Henry felt sympathy for her, but unfortunately he was going to have to strangle her now like the dying deer in the field.

  “To be frank,” he continued, “I did think that for a while, yes. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I thought you’d killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “Out of love for me. What was I supposed to think, for God’s sake? Martha drives to your apartment in her car. Then she drives to the cliffs in your car and disappears. And where were you?”

  Betty closed her eyes briefly. “I was at home. You know that.”

  “I know, but do you have an alibi?”

  She began to blink. “That’s a stupid word, Henry. I was at home, that’s all. I was waiting for you to call.”

  “I did have my doubts,” Henry admitted.

  “But you don’t anymore?”

  “No. None.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I think Martha drowned. And the police think so too. You’re not implicated at all. That’s what I think.”

  “But she was sitting in my car.”

  “Yes, that was a mistake. It must be the last one we make.”

  Betty pressed herself up against the chair back, her arms folded in front of her chest. “What mistakes can we make now?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  Henry pushed his plate aside and made an unsuccessful attempt to take her hand.

  “Everyone will think I’m your lover if you have a baby with me.”

  “So what? Aren’t you my lover?”

  “Of course I am. But the timing. It would be fatal if it came out shortly after the death of my wife that you’re pregnant by me.”

  “What are we to do?” Betty asked, hardly audible. Henry lip-read the words.

  “No one needs to know that the baby is mine.”

  Betty got up from the table and raised her hand. “You scare me, Henry. You’ve always scared me. But you can depend on one thing: your baby is going to be born. It’s going to be born and you’re its father whether you like it or not. Make up your mind where you stand in all this—I’m not going to make any difficulties for you. I’ll even keep it a secret if that’s what you want.”

  “Now you’re being unfair, Betty. I want it. I already love our baby.”

  She opened her handbag. Henry ducked to avoid being shrouded in pepper spray. But she only looked into the bag, rifled through it, and then closed it again.

  “What are you up to?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I’m going to go and puke.”

  “The police don’t know anything. There’s absolutely no problem as long as we don’t do anything. Not a thing, do you understand?”

  “Henry . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Your wife knew everything. Not from you; you didn’t tell her about us. Of course you didn’t. You never tell anyone anything.”

  Betty pushed a strand of hair off her forehead. She looked ravishing in her anger and disappointment. Why is it that I always want her the most when she’s about to leave? Henry wondered.

  “Do you know what, Henry? As she was leaving, your wife said to me: We have to love Henry without knowing him. I don’t know how that’s possible and I don’t believe I can do it.”

  Betty turned and left. He watched her go without regret, but not without respect, because she did have class. He wasn’t interested in where she was going or whether she’d come back. Was it really possi
ble that Martha could have known about his affair with Betty all along without letting on or making any changes in her life? Who could endure such a thing? Right up to the last moment, their love had remained warm, their daily routine unchanged. And then suddenly she visits her rival for afternoon tea? Can you guess how it ends? was Martha’s last message to him, written in pencil under the chapter she had just completed. Was it a warning, a threat, a prophecy? Henry didn’t know the answer. It exhausted him, endlessly thinking about this kind of thing. The bullet was out of the barrel, and pondering got you nowhere. Aggrieved, he flicked a half-eaten french fry onto the carpet and looked around for the waiter.

  Sitting in her armchair next to a stout column, Honor Eisendraht saw Betty hurry through the foyer and head for the marble stairs that led to the women’s restroom. She had an impossibly garish handbag under her arm. Her face was decidedly pale. Gone was the usual provocative swing of her hips; she almost staggered down the stairs. Something must have happened, no doubt something unpleasant.

  Honor had just left the stuffy, overfilled seminar room on the second floor of the hotel to have a cup of liqueur coffee. The so-called numerology seminar had been a complete farce, a rip-off. For that kind of money you deserve more than a porky woman with a pointer blathering on about trivial mathematical patterns, cosmically connected phone numbers, and hidden traits of character. Who believes in such nonsense?

  Honor had hoped to meet someone who knew a thing or two at the seminar, some spiritual person with whom she could discuss the full significance of the Tower, the sixteenth card of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. The card had come up for her twice already; it had to mean something. But there were only know-it-alls and half-wits in the seminar.

  As all initiates are well aware, the Tower is a drastic card. Lightning strikes from a black sky, and a young man and his sweetheart plunge, burning, to their deaths. The card heralds annihilation and rebirth or, equally, solitude and the end of things. It is culpably reckless to ignore it. But sometimes the signs of an imminent event remain hidden, and it is impossible to foresee the full extent of their significance. That is why you have to be prepared for anything, and sharpen your senses to find the vital clue in the shapeless mass of everyday life.

  Honor left her coffee and a big tip on the table. She took her handbag and crossed the azure-blue carpet in the direction from which Betty had come. If it’s Moreany, she vowed to herself, then the thing with the Tower card is settled and I shall hand in my resignation.

  At the window table in the wood-paneled bar, Henry Hayden was fiddling with his shirtsleeve. The poor thing looked pale and pain-stricken. How unbearable his wife’s death must have been for him. There’s no one who’ll grieve for me when I’m no longer around, and I have only myself to blame, she thought. She wanted to go up to him and hug him, but the waiter approached his table. Henry paid the bill. Honor saw something in his look that stopped her from offering him her condolences.

  Of course there’s no connection between the sum of the digits in a phone number and hidden traits of character. On the other hand, there’s no such thing as a chance encounter in a hotel; there are only inattentive observers. In the corner of the Oyster Bar, Honor realized that the fateful turn of events heralded by the Tower card was already under way. Before Hayden could spot her, she returned to the armchair next to the column, from which vantage point she could survey the entire foyer, her face concealed behind a newspaper.

  Henry came out of the bar. He shook hands, signed one of his novels at the reception desk, and exchanged a few words with a hotel guest, glancing discreetly toward the restrooms as he did so. Betty didn’t emerge. Shortly afterward he left the hotel alone. He didn’t turn around again.

  How energetic he was, Honor thought. His predator’s gait and his athletic, broad-shouldered physique had impressed her from the start. Heart, yield or break, she had read in Aggravating Circumstances. Until she saw Henry she had always believed that men of letters walked with a stoop, weighed down by the burden of their thoughts, propelled by an inner force or dragged through the world by a dark hostility. The true artist is sick—so thought the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and he spent all his life waiting for the carriage from the abyss. A blind Borges wrestled with God’s irony in the infinite library of symbols—but Henry Hayden was sporty, disciplined, always in control. And ever the artist. Quite fabulous.

  Her tip was still lying next to her coffee cup. She did some quick math to work out how many hours it had taken to earn that much, and exchanged it for a smaller amount.

  Gagging noises were coming from the third stall on the left. There was flushing, then more gagging. Honor could smell lily-of-the-valley perfume and saw the hideous bag through the gap at the bottom of the door. She went into the next-door stall, lifted the lid, and pulled up her skirt so as to produce an authentic sound. Between individual gagging attacks she heard a soft sobbing sound—strictly speaking, a whimper.

  It was a gift, a sweet reward, this chance to be privy to such an intimate moment with her rival. She nearly forgot to flush. The death of Hayden’s wife could hardly have grieved the hussy to this extent; she wasn’t capable of genuine feelings. Something must have happened between the two of them that was dramatic enough to make her cry and him leave. Honor listened in delight as her rival coughed—blood perhaps—and then left the stall to rinse out her mouth at the sink.

  The obligatory spell elapsed that women devote to making adjustments in front of the mirror. Honor tore off toilet paper and flushed again. Her cover was perfect. At last she heard the clack of heels and the door close. She let a minute pass, then left the stall, prepared for the possibility that Betty was still there, lying in wait for her at the door. She wouldn’t have put it past her. Honor would have simulated surprise, maybe even exchanged a few words, but not too many. She was, however, alone.

  An empty packet of gastric pills was in the plastic bin next to the basin. SAMPLE—NOT FOR RESALE was diagonally printed across it, and beneath that the stamp of a gynecological practice. The information leaflet was missing from the packet. Honor rifled through the bin, but found nothing except fake eyelashes, stained tissues, and empty lipstick tubes.

  In the drugstore not far from the hotel, Honor had it explained to her that women in the first trimester of pregnancy are advised not to take antiemetic tablets. But in their desperation, said the pharmacist, with an expression of concern, lots of women took them all the same. She herself had found the nausea of the first months of pregnancy her greatest ordeal in becoming a mother.

  Honor Eisendraht took the bus home. She got out one stop earlier than usual so as to walk the last few yards to her apartment. In the hall she put on her felt slippers, gave the parrot some water, lay down on her stomach on her reading couch, buried her face in a cushion, and screamed as loud as she could.

  13

  Unshaven and without his incisors, Obradin looked like a jack-o’-lantern with a full beard. He spent most of the day smoking at the open bedroom window above his fish shop, baring the yawning gap in his teeth at every passerby and looking out at the sea hidden behind the houses opposite. By now the entire town was preoccupied with the mysterious cause of his rampage. Helga remained silent, determined not to add grist to the rumor mill. Some reckoned it was schizophrenia; others suspected that something sizeable had burst in his brain. It was all conjecture.

  In the days that followed, Obradin still made no move to leave his bedroom and resume work. Helga took over the shop. She never got off the phone, but she did take the opportunity to have a lock put on the cellar door and to peel the silly fish pictures off the window.

  On Assumption Day, a glorious day in August, Henry came driving up in the best of spirits, wearing a white panama hat. Two weeks earlier his wife had drowned. You would never have guessed that he was in mourning, but everyone mourns in his own way—who’s to say what mourning looks like? He parked on the pavement in front of the fishmonger’s. He’d brought flowers and Spanish so
ap for Helga and a badger-hair shaving brush for Obradin.

  Helga related the whole story about Obradin to Henry, who already knew most of it. He slipped Helga an envelope containing money for the secret purchase of a new engine for the Drina.

  “Wait till the lottery numbers are announced,” he whispered in her ear. “Then fill in a slip with five winning numbers maximum, do you understand?”

  Helga understood and kissed both his hands. Henry fetched a cardboard box from the Maserati and climbed up to Obradin’s apartment via the stairs at the back of the shop. Because he had his hands full, he didn’t knock, but pushed down the door handle with his elbow.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you, old pal?” he asked, putting the box and the present on the bed. It didn’t escape Henry’s notice that one half of the double bed was untouched. Helga must be sleeping somewhere else just now. “I’ve brought you something to shave with.”

  The Serb was standing beside a pile of cigarette butts about the size of an anthill.

  “Wok goo you wonk?”

  Henry eyed the gap in Obradin’s teeth with respect. “Wow. You could string a clothesline in there. Now have a look at this.” He took a solar-powered marten deterrent from the cardboard box. “Ultrasound. This is the solution. Listen.”

  Henry switched on the device. YEEEEEEK—an ultra-unbearable sound shrilled out. Each man put his fingers in his ears. Henry turned it off.

  “And that’s the problem. I don’t know what frequency you need to drive away the marten and not the dog.”

  “Wok?” Obradin asked without interest.

  “Hey, you know Poncho—he’s sensitive, just like you. He goes crazy when I switch on this infernal machine. Help me adjust it. We’ll set the thing up, scare away the marten, and have a smoke. It’ll never come back. Wok goo you fink?”

  Henry chuckled. He’d always been of the opinion that feeling sorry for people only delays their recovery. A little joke helps a sick man back on his feet faster than a sympathy suppository.