by Joël Dicker
“What problems? You can’t leave! Harry, you can’t leave!”
“Nola … I have to tell you something. I’m not a famous writer. I lied about everything. About myself, about my career. I don’t have any money left. I can’t afford to stay in this house any longer. I can’t stay here.”
“We’ll find a solution! I know you’re going to become a famous writer. You’re going to make lots of money! Your first book was wonderful, and this book that you’re working so hard on—it will be a huge success; I’m sure of it!”
“This book is a monstrosity, Nola. It’s full of horrible words.”
“What horrible words?”
“Words I shouldn’t have written. But it’s because of the love I feel.”
“Then make them beautiful! Work on them! Write beautiful words!”
She took him by the hand and sat him down on the deck. She brought him his papers, his notebooks, his pens. She made coffee, put on an opera record, and opened the living room windows so he would hear it properly. She knew that music helped him concentrate. Obediently he pulled himself together and set to work, starting all over again; he was going to write as if his relationship with Nola were a possibility. He wrote for two hours, the words coming unprompted, perfectly formed sentences pouring naturally from his pen as it danced upon the paper. For the first time since he had been in Somerset, he felt as if his novel were truly being born.
When he lifted his eyes from the page, he noticed that Nola—sitting in a wicker chair, set back so as not to disturb him—had fallen asleep. The sunlight was glorious, the air hot. And suddenly it seemed to him, with this novel, with Nola, with this house by the sea, that his life was a wonder. It even seemed to him that leaving Somerset was not a bad thing: He would finish his novel in New York, he would become a great writer, and he would wait for Nola. Leaving did not mean he had to lose her. Quite the opposite, perhaps. Once she had finished high school, she could go to college in New York. And they would be together. Until then they would write to each other, and see each other during the holidays. The years would pass, and soon their love would no longer be forbidden. Gently, he woke Nola. She smiled at him and stretched.
“How’s your writing going?”
“Really well.”
“That’s wonderful, Harry! Can I read it?”
“Soon. I promise.”
A flock of seagulls flew over the water.
“Don’t forget the seagulls. You have to put seagulls in your novel.”
“There’ll be seagulls on every page, Nola. What would you think about coming to Martha’s Vineyard with me? There’s a room available next week.”
She beamed.
“Yes! Let’s go! Let’s go together.”
“But what will you tell your parents?”
“Don’t worry about that, darling Harry. I’ll take care of my parents. You just concentrate on your writing. So, are you going to stay?”
“No, Nola. I have to leave at the end of the month. I can’t pay for this house anymore.”
“The end of the month? But that’s now.”
“I know.”
Her eyes welled up with tears.
“New York isn’t far. You can come and visit me. We’ll write to each other. We’ll talk on the phone. And why not go to college there? You told me you had dreamed of seeing New York.”
“College? But that’s three years away!”
“Don’t worry. The time will pass quickly. Time flies when you’re in love.”
“Don’t leave me, Harry. I don’t want Martha’s Vineyard to be our farewell trip.”
“Nola, I don’t have any more money. I can’t stay here.”
“Please—we’ll find a solution. Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“So there you go. If we love each other, we’ll find a way. People who love each other always find a way to go on loving each other. Promise to at least think about it.”
“Alright, I promise.”
They went away one week later, at dawn on Monday, July 28, without ever having talked again about the departure that, in Harry’s mind, was inevitable. Harry blamed himself for getting swept away by his dreams of greatness. How could he have been so naive as to expect to write a great novel in the space of a single summer?
They met at four in the morning, in the marina parking lot. Somerset was sleeping. They drove as far as Boston, making good time. There they ate breakfast. Then they continued directly to Falmouth, where they took the ferry. It was mid-morning when they arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. From then on, they lived as if in a dream, in that beautiful hotel by the ocean. They swam, they walked, they ate together in the hotel’s large dining room, and nobody looked at them or asked them any questions. On Martha’s Vineyard, they were able to live.
*
They had been there for four days. Stretched out on the hot sand, in their cove, sheltered from the world, they thought of nothing but the happiness they felt at being together. She played around with the camera, and he thought about his book.
She’d told Harry that her parents believed she was at a friend’s house, but she’d lied. She’d run away. It would have been too complicated to justify a whole week’s absence, so she’d escaped through her bedroom window at dawn. And while she and Harry were relaxing on the beach, David Kellergan was agonizing in Somerset. On Monday morning he’d found her bedroom empty. He hadn’t notified the police. First she’d attempted suicide, and now she’d run away; if he told the police, everyone would know. He decided to give himself seven days to find her. Seven days, as the Lord had made the week. He spent them in his car, crisscrossing the area. He feared the worst. After seven days, he would leave it to the authorities.
Harry didn’t suspect a thing. He was blinded by love. Perhaps that was also why, the morning they left for Martha’s Vineyard, when Nola met him at dawn in the marina parking lot, he didn’t see the figure lurking in the darkness, watching them.
*
They returned to Somerset on the afternoon of Sunday, August 3. As they crossed the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Nola began to cry. “Don’t go, Harry. Don’t leave me here.” She told him that he’d worked so well on his book in the past few days that he couldn’t risk losing his inspiration. “I’ll look after you,” she said, “and you won’t have to do anything but concentrate on your writing. You’re writing a wonderful novel—it would be wrong of you to ruin everything.” And she was right: She was his muse, his inspiration, the reason he was able to write so well. But it was too late; he no longer had enough money to pay for the house. He had to leave.
He dropped Nola a few blocks from her house, and they kissed one last time. Her cheeks were covered in tears. She held on to him tightly to stop him from leaving.
“Tell me you’ll still be here in the morning!”
“Nola, I …”
“I’ll bring you warm bread, I’ll make you coffee. I’ll take care of everything. I will be your wife, and you will be a great writer. Tell me you’ll be here …”
“I’ll be here.”
Her expression was suddenly radiant.
“Really?”
“I’ll be here. I promise.”
“Promising is not enough, Harry. Swear it! Swear in the name of our love that you won’t leave me.”
“I swear it, Nola.”
He lied because it was too difficult. As soon as she disappeared around the corner, he drove quickly back to Goose Cove. He had to move fast; he didn’t want to risk her coming to see him and catching him in the act of escaping. By that evening he would be in Boston. Once inside he hurriedly gathered his belongings. He crammed his suitcases into the trunk of his car and threw everything else he had in the backseat. Then he closed the shutters and turned off the lights. And he ran away. He ran away from love.
He wanted to leave her a message. He scrawled a few lines—Darling Nola, I had to leave. I will write to you. I love you forever—on a scrap of paper he jammed in the door f
rame, and then removed, out of fear that someone else might find it. So, no message—that was safer. He locked the door behind him, got in his car, and drove off. He fled as fast as he could. Goodbye, Goose Cove. Goodbye, New Hampshire. Goodbye, Nola.
It was over, forever.
17
Escape Attempt
“You should prepare for your writing as you prepare for a boxing match, Marcus: In the days leading up to the fight, you should be training at only seventy per cent so the rage that explodes on the day of the match has been allowed to slowly simmer and rise within you.”
“What does that mean?”
“That when you have an idea, rather than immediately turning it into one of your unreadable stories and publishing it on the first page of your magazine. You should not let it out. You should nurture it inside you to allow it to ripen until you feel it’s the right moment. This will be number—where are we now?”
“Eighteen.”
“No, we’re at seventeen.”
“So why ask me, if you already know?”
“To see if you’re paying attention.”
“Alright: number seventeen, Harry. Turn your ideas …”
“… into illuminations.”
In the visitors’ room of the New Hampshire state prison on Tuesday, July 1, 2008, I listened, rapt, as Harry told me that on the evening of August 3, 1975, as he was about to leave Somerset, just as he got onto Shore Road, he passed a car coming the other way, and it instantly did a U-turn and sped after him.
Sunday evening—August 3, 1975
For a moment he thought it was a police car, but it had no siren or flashing light. A car was hot on his heels, honking its horn, and he had no idea why. Suddenly he was afraid he was going to be held up. He stepped on the gas, but his pursuer managed to pass him and force him to come to a stop on the shoulder by swerving in front of him. Harry leaped out of his car, ready to fight, before recognizing Stern’s chauffeur, Luther Caleb, as he got out of the other car.
“You’re out of your mind!” Harry yelled.
“Pleave excuve me, Mifter Quebert. I didn’t mean to fcare you. But Mifter Ftern defperately wantf to fee you. I’ve been fearching for you for feveral dayv now.”
“What does Mr Stern want?”
Harry was trembling, his blood pumping furiously through his veins.
“I have no idea, fir,” Luther said. “But he faid it wav important. He’ve waiting for you at hiv houfe.”
Harry grudgingly agreed to follow Luther to Concord. Night was falling. They drove until they reached Stern’s vast property, where Caleb, without a word, guided Harry through the house to a wide terrace. Stern was sitting at a table, wearing a light bathrobe and drinking lemonade. As soon as he saw Harry, he stood up to greet him, visibly relieved.
“I was starting to think I would never manage to find you! Thank you for coming here at such a late hour. I called you at the house, I sent Luther to look for you every day. But there was no sign of you. Where on earth were you hiding?”
“I was out of town. What’s so important?”
“I know everything! And you wanted to keep me in the dark?”
Harry felt himself weaken. So Stern knew about Nola.
“Wh—what are you talking about?” he stammered, playing for time.
“The house at Goose Cove, of course! Why didn’t you tell me you were going to have to give it up? The agency told me you were returning the keys tomorrow, so you can understand why it was so urgent that I speak to you. I think it’s such a shame that you’re leaving. I don’t need the money from renting out the house, and I would like to support your writing. I want you to stay at Goose Cove while you finish your novel. What do you think? You told me the place inspired you, so why leave? I’ve already arranged everything with the agency. If you enjoy being in that house, then stay a few months longer. I would be very proud to have contributed to the creation of a great novel. Please don’t refuse. I don’t know many writers … I have my heart set on helping you.”
Harry sighed with relief and collapsed into a chair. He instantly accepted Elijah Stern’s offer. It was an unhoped-for opportunity: being able to stay in the house for a few more months, being able to finish his novel with Nola’s inspiration. If he lived frugally, he should be able to make ends meet. He stayed with Stern for a while on the terrace, talking literature. He felt obligated to be polite to his benefactor, but all he wanted was to drive back immediately to Somerset so he could find Nola and tell her he had found a solution. Then he worried that maybe she had already paid an impromptu visit to Goose Cove. Had she found the door locked? Had she discovered that he had run away, that he had been ready to abandon her? The thought made him anxious, and after allowing a decent amount of time to pass, he made his excuses and left, driving at top speed back to Goose Cove. He hurriedly unlocked the house, opened the shutters, turned on the lights, put all his belongings back in their place, and covered up all traces of his escape attempt. Nola must never know.
*
“So that’s how I was able to remain at Goose Cove and finish my novel,” Harry told me. “And in the weeks that followed, that’s all I did: write. I wrote like a madman, I wrote in a fever, I wrote so much that I lost all sense of morning and evening, of hunger and thirst. I wrote without stopping, I wrote until my eyes hurt, until my wrists and head hurt, until everything hurt. I wrote until I wanted to throw up. For three weeks I wrote night and day. And that whole time, Nola looked after me. She came to check that I was O.K., made sure I was eating, made sure I was sleeping, and whenever she saw that I couldn’t write anymore, she took me out for a walk. She was discreet, invisible, omnipresent. Thanks to her, everything was possible. And best of all, she typed up my handwritten pages on a portable Remington. She often took a section of the manuscript home with her. Without asking me. The next day, she would tell me what she thought. She often went into rhapsodies. She told me it was a magnificent novel, that it was the greatest thing she had ever read. With her wide eyes full of love, she made me feel ten feet tall.”
“What did you say to her about the house?” I asked.
“That I loved her more than anything, that I wanted to stay near her, and that I had come to an arrangement with my bank that enabled me to continue renting Goose Cove. It was thanks to her that I was able to write that book, Marcus. I no longer went to Clark’s; I was hardly ever seen in town. She looked after me and took care of everything. She even told me I couldn’t go shopping on my own because I didn’t know what I needed, so we went shopping together in supermarkets far from Somerset, where nobody would bother us. Whenever she discovered that I had skipped a meal or eaten a bar of chocolate for dinner, she would be angry with me. I loved it when she was angry … I wish she could have gone on being sweetly angry with me throughout all my books, all my life.”
“So you really did write The Origin of Evil in a few weeks?”
“Yes. I was possessed by a kind of creative fever that I have never experienced since. Was it powered by love? Undoubtedly. I think that when Nola disappeared, part of my talent disappeared with her. Now you understand why I beg you not to worry when you feel uninspired.”
A guard came in and told us that time was almost up.
“So you said Nola took the manuscript with her?” I said quickly, trying not to lose the thread of our conversation.
“She took home the parts she had typed up. She reread them and gave me her opinion. Marcus, that month—August, 1975—was paradise. I was so happy. We were so happy. But in spite of that, I remained haunted by the idea that someone knew about us. Someone who was capable of scrawling obscenities on a mirror. That same someone might easily spy on us from the woods and see everything. The thought made me sick.”
“Is that why the two of you wanted to leave? I mean, when you arranged to elope, the night of August 30—why did you do that?”
“That was because something awful happened. Are you recording this?”
“Yes.”
&nbs
p; “I’m going to tell you about a very serious incident, so that you’ll understand. But no-one else can know about it.”
“You can trust me.”
“You know, for our week on Martha’s Vineyard, instead of saying she was with a friend, Nola had simply run away. She left without saying a word to anyone. When I saw her again the day after our return, she was terribly upset. She told me her mother had beaten her, and indeed her body was covered in bruises. That day, she told me her mother often punished her for nothing. That she hit her with a metal ruler, and also did a really terrible thing: She filled a bowl with water, took her daughter by her hair, and forced her head underwater. Just like they do to terrorist suspects. She said it was to deliver her.”
“Deliver her?”
“Deliver her from evil. A kind of baptism, I imagine. Jesus in the Jordan River, or something like that. At first I couldn’t believe it, but the evidence was there. So I asked her why her father didn’t intervene, and she said he locked himself in the garage and played music very loud whenever her mother punished her. He didn’t want to hear, she said. Nola couldn’t take it anymore—she’d had enough. I wanted to go see the Kellergans, to deal with this problem, to put an end to it, but Nola begged me not to. She told me she would get in terrible trouble, that her parents would move away, and that we would never see each other again. But still, this couldn’t be allowed to continue. So toward the end of August—around the twentieth—we decided we had to leave. Soon. And secretly, of course. We were going to go to British Columbia, maybe, and live in a cabin. Have a simple life by the edge of a lake. Nobody would ever have known.”
“So that’s why you decided to elope?”
“Yes.”
“But why don’t you want anyone to know this?”
“That’s only the beginning of the story. Soon afterward I made a terrible discovery about Nola’s mother—”
At that moment we were interrupted by the guard again. The visit was over.
“Let’s finish this conversation next time, Marcus,” Harry said, standing up. “But in the meantime, keep it to yourself.”
