The Truth and Other Lies: A Novel

by Sascha Arango

  ———

  To stick to the facts, Travis Forster was a pseudonym. Everyone has the right to assume a more melodious name than Gisbert Fasch, but nobody has the right to steal other people’s lives and call himself a writer if he isn’t one. Gisbert Fasch had created his nom de plume out of the names of two idols and had it entered in his passport. He chose the first name because of the fictional figure Travis Bickle, whose struggle for recognition and respect he had greatly admired ever since watching Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. He chose the surname because of the adventurer Georg Forster, a figure who has received too little attention in world history.

  Gisbert Fasch, as we shall call him for the sake of simplicity, looked back from the wooden bench of the criminal court at the stuffy dormitory of Saint Renata, which in those days was studded with small portholes like the bowels of a ship. Saint Renata was a gulag; the most brutal individuals held sway over the weak, and Henry was the worst of them all. On his first day, he’d knocked out two of Gisbert’s front teeth because he wanted the upper bunk. He was not entitled to the upper bunk; as a new boy, Henry had to sleep on the bottom. Two dozen boys listened to the goings-on in the dark. After lights-out, Henry came climbing into Gisbert’s bed like the terrible Grendel and set on him without warning. He laid hold of him and dragged him onto the lower bunk. Nobody laughed; they were all terrified. Gisbert never forgot that night. He lay awake with his mouth full of blood, while the psychopath in the bunk above him screamed in his sleep and wet the bed.

  When, decades later, Fasch saw the name Henry Hayden in a literary supplement, he thought it must be just a coincidence. The review spoke of his great success, then delivered a paean to his style and vigor—there was no way it could be referring to Henry. But there was a photograph portraying the author. It was him. The same gray-green eyes, the same malicious winner’s smile. Grendel was back. The gap in Gisbert’s teeth had long since been closed with two post crowns, but the memory still hurt. He bought the novel shrink-wrapped in the bookshop on the corner, ripped it open, and began to read, walking along.

  Frank Ellis was indeed a no-nonsense thriller, really well written, spare, and precise down to the smallest detail—by no means the novel of the century, but that’s of no relevance here. Every sentence a stronghold read the critic’s praise on the cover. Millions had bought and read it. Fasch felt his teeth ache. He couldn’t work out how that unfeeling monster had managed to write a bestseller on his own. But if he hadn’t written the novel, then who had? And what had he done in all those years between the children’s gulag and getting published? He’d left no clues. No high school diploma, not a single publication, not so much as a minor contribution to an anthology. One would assume that a psychopath would at least have a criminal record, but nothing like that was to be found. Hayden hadn’t studied—no trace of him as a budding author anywhere, no sign of friends or fellow writers. Had he perhaps published under a pseudonym? And if so, what? Don’t even the most secretive writers reveal themselves through their lives? Aren’t they always in search of a readership? Not Henry Hayden. After escaping from the children’s home he’d gone straight underground, only to burst into prominence decades later, a comet in the literary sky.

  Gisbert began his investigations secretly, as with everything he did—at least in the realm of art. With age, his dream of becoming a writer was beginning to fade. He’d long since stopped sending off manuscripts. The white nights of stapling paper in copy shops were a thing of the past, as were all those pointless readings to audiences of literary pedants, their index fingers yellow from smoking, crumbs of tobacco between their teeth. Fasch spent eleven years working on his novel about Stone Age nomads. In the end, after receiving nothing but pro forma letters of rejection, he published his life’s work himself under the pseudonym Travis Forster. That plunged him straight into bankruptcy. For another six years he led a miserable existence under the heel of the bankruptcy court. Copies of the book stood piled up unread in his small apartment; in the end he had them made into insulating fiber. After this purge of his literary self he stopped writing. His short stories, plays, and radio dramas stayed in the drawer. He went back to calling himself Gisbert Fasch and had his pseudonym removed from his passport. Basta.

  Now Fasch was teaching German as a second language, mostly to Africans. He helped them create a new existence. These people cross the Atlantic in a rowboat, fleeing drought and war and poverty, and then find they have no right to residence in the land of Cockaigne without a language certificate. Gisbert’s work was right and good, and he enjoyed it. A decent job. As a hobby he wrote book reviews on Amazon. Only positive ones, mind you; he thought negative reviews were about as unproductive as the black stuff under his toenails. He wrote them under his old pseudonym, Travis Forster. For old times’ sake. But he wasn’t satisfied with himself.

  Fasch followed Henry through all the European capitals, listening to him at various festivals, studying his rather skimpy interviews, analyzing all his quotations. Several times they came face-to-face but, even when their eyes met, Henry didn’t recognize Fasch. For such a discerning connoisseur of human nature, he had an incredibly bad memory for faces.

  Henry could have filled huge halls, but he always chose bookshops for his readings. Fasch attended every one of them. The front rows were filled almost entirely with women, most of them at that alluring age between thirty and fifty. Fasch could see them positively hanging on Henry’s lips, listening until their thighs grew wet, letting his words enter them, all the time pretending they’d come only for the culture. Those readings were nothing but a secret lubrication fest.

  True, it was powerful stuff. What Henry read was gripping, without a single superfluous word. Nonchalant in his custom-made shoes and his tweed jacket, he always read with a degree of indifference in his voice, such as the Roman emperors must have felt at the sight of the laurel wreath. He didn’t read expressively, but with an unobtrusive and down-to-earth detachment, as if he couldn’t wait to catch the train home and return at last to the solitude of his writer’s dungeon. Poor old Henry, Fasch thought. You can’t even read.

  Henry took his time at the book-signing. He chatted charmingly and had his photo taken with his swooning female readers. He could captivate them all, but he never took any of them home. At some point Fasch decided to carry out the litmus test and lined up along with the others. He handed Henry a copy of Aggravating Circumstances to sign.

  “For Gisbert Fasch, please.”

  Henry glanced up and looked him in the eye. It was the gaze of a lion that has eaten its fill and watches the gazelles passing by. He gave a friendly nod and wrote, For Gisbert Fasch from Henry Hayden. That was all. Not so much as the flicker of an eyelid. He really had forgotten him, just as he’d forgotten the teeth he’d knocked out of his mouth and the essays he’d cribbed off him. Just as well.

  From then on, Fasch avoided any more personal encounters, so as not to alert his enemy. Instead he began to piece together all the available fragments of Henry Hayden’s lost biography. It was a task that fulfilled him in every way. He stopped smoking—but that was nothing. He came off antidepressants, whose side effect is to make you so terribly fat, and he slept through the night again. Even his perfectly round bald patch stopped spreading. Find an enemy for life and you’ve no more need of a doctor.

  ———

  Henry drove into town for lunch, parked in an underground parking lot at the station, and threw the red cell phone in a trash can near the ticket machine. In the elevator up he wondered whether he should give Betty an apartment of her own as a parting gift, but he dismissed the idea and ate a meatball at a stand right next to the parking lot, where the male prostitutes warmed themselves in the winter. Henry liked the district around the station and he liked meatballs with hot mustard. No one recognized him here; there was an atmosphere of mild despair. Anything discarded here lay around for a while.

  There was no question of suggesting abortion to Betty. Maybe she’d think of it herse
lf, in which case he would of course agree to pay for it. “We’ll still be friends” made equally inappropriate parting words; after all, they never had been friends. On the contrary, he’d always desired her more than he’d liked her. She must have sensed it, because, whenever he penetrated her, her immune system was turned on. Instead of receiving him, she resisted, which aroused him all the more, adding as it did a hint of rape to every act of intercourse. How this could have resulted in a child remained a mystery to Henry. In a somewhat throwaway remark, Betty had once summed up the sexual component of their relationship: “It may not be a match made in heaven, Henry, but we can improvise.”

  But now it was over. The breakup had to be quick and conclusive; there should be no room left for hope. It was time to cleanse his conscience and start on something new. And yes, he would miss her. He’d miss her a lot. But not until after they’d split up.

  Opposite the fast-food stand Henry discovered a pawnshop. INSTANT CASH was etched in the bulletproof glass door. He liked the empty promise. Henry finished the meatball, licked his fingers clean, and crossed the road with a spring in his step.

  The locked door opened with a buzz. Two bespectacled men sat behind panes of armored glass, fingering pieces of jewelry. They could smell at once that he had money. Henry asked to see a diamond necklace, but it struck him as too showy; after all, splitting up is not a cause for celebration. A brooch was far too old-fashioned; and as for earrings—they were completely off-target! He was just about to leave the shop when his eye was caught by a Patek Philippe. He liked its tasteful shape; it was elegant and practical, and Betty loved practical things. What is more, like everything in a pawnshop, the watch was tied up with a tragedy. Who sells a watch if he doesn’t have to? Maybe the previous owner had been driven by need or hatred or a dark secret. Whatever had brought this watch here, its history lent it patina. Henry bought it. If Betty threw it in his face, he could always give it to Martha on their wedding anniversary.

  Afternoon, four o’clock. The best time of the day, when it’s too late to catch up on whatever you’ve failed to do, when the light grows softer and the ice cubes glint in your glass. You treat yourself to a long drink instead of an afternoon nap, forget your vices, write imaginary letters, and escort yourself out of this squandered, pointlessly spent day.

  Henry sauntered through the pedestrian precinct with its shops and cafés. He’d donned a baseball cap and large dark glasses so as to look like a celebrity who doesn’t want to be recognized. But nobody recognized him. Just like every day, Henry had the feeling that he’d achieved nothing, and so he couldn’t decide whether or not he deserved a short visit to a bookshop. People were pouring out of the surrounding buildings now, most of them after a hardworking nine-to-five day. They’d been slogging away for a ridiculously paltry sum of money, thoroughly and conscientiously doing their bit for family, nation, and pension. Sometimes Henry wished he could be like them, leading a normal life, and knowing what it’s like to knock off after a day’s work, at peace with oneself.

  He went into a bookshop. On the table right next to the entrance he saw two of his novels, nicely displayed on a small plinth. He signed a copy surreptitiously and left the shop. He still had three hours. In an empty hardware store he found a wooden trap that was over three feet long and had flaps at both ends. It was surprisingly cheap. The salesman pulled the trap down from the enormous shelves and explained how it worked. “This is our marten hotel,” he said, not without modest pride. He snapped the flaps open and shut. “The little brutes check in, but they never check out.” Henry could smell the microorganisms inhabiting his yellowish salesman’s tongue. How, for heaven’s sake, did the poor guy put up with the monotony of his existence in among all this brand-new junk? To avoid having to inhale any more explanations, Henry fled to the checkout. Still two hours to go.

  In a mall cinema he watched a Korean film in which a man was locked in a room for fifteen years without finding out why. Henry was surprised it hadn’t ever happened to him. He had bought two movie tickets, one for him, one for the marten trap. It lay there on the seat beside him like a child’s coffin. Before the film was over and the lights went up, Henry took the wooden box and crept out of the theater. It was time.

  Toward seven in the evening, Henry drove back along the main road in the direction of the coast. It was already growing dark. There were no cars coming the other way and the rain fell in transparent sheets. He passed a defunct bus stop and turned off onto the sandy forest track, rolling slowly with dimmed headlights over the concrete slabs to the cliffs.

  The rain was steaming on the warm earth, and swathes of mist were rising. A piece of wasteland covered with tall grasses opened out at the edge of the cliffs, shielded from the wind by pines. Crumbling foundations and rusty iron rods still stuck up out of the grass. Maybe an old bunker or a weather station had once stood there. Henry could feel the palms of his hands grow moist; his heart was beating more rapidly. As soon as he saw Betty coming, he would get into her car and tell her everything. He looked at the clock; it wasn’t yet eight. It had to be done quickly. His message would be like a sharp butcher’s knife—inflicting no pain and wielded by a sure hand. Maybe she would scream and hit him; she was bound to cry.

  Betty’s green Subaru was already there. Close to the cliffs, as usual. Henry switched off the lights and rolled up to the car from behind. He could see Betty’s silhouette behind the steering wheel, illuminated by a little light in the rearview mirror, the inevitable cigarette in her right hand. She was probably listening to loud music and hadn’t noticed him yet. She had to stop that damn smoking, he thought. Maybe she’ll stop if I give her the watch.

  There was a slight lurch as the bumpers touched. Henry put his foot a little way down on the accelerator and the Maserati effortlessly pushed the Subaru forward. Henry saw the brake lights flare up, then the car tipped over the edge of the cliff and vanished.

  For a while Henry sat there motionless; he left the engine running. Hope the airbag didn’t go off, he thought, closing his eyes and leaning back on the leather headrest. She must be hitting the windshield now and trying to open the door. It’s dark down there; the cold salt water will help her die. Maybe she died when the car hit the water. The child in her belly won’t notice anything; it doesn’t know that it was ever alive, poor thing.

  After about ten minutes he opened his eyes and switched the engine off. He got out to have a look around. The rain soaked his shirt instantly. He went and stood at the edge of the cliffs and looked down. The rock face fell away vertically; the car had fallen straight in without touching it. There was nothing to be seen; the sea had swallowed up the car—the black, indifferent sea. This would have been the right moment to jump in after it. But Henry felt nothing but the cold rain and the certainty that he had done something irreversible. He examined the front of his car. Not so much as a dent on the license plate. He ran his thumb over it; rainwater fell in his eyes. He was a criminal now, a murderer. Just as he had foreseen.

  On the way home he headed for a gas station and bought a packet of chewing gum to get rid of the nasty taste in his mouth. He paid in cash, giving the money to an obese cashier who looked like an albino rabbit that had managed to escape from the laboratory. As he was paying her, he caught a glimpse of himself in the surveillance mirror over the till. Just look at that, he thought, I look the same as ever. Tomorrow afternoon at the latest someone would inform the police. Who would it be? Probably Moreany. The good man was always so easily worried, and everyone knows instinctively when it’s bad news. Then the waiting would begin, and the hoping and worrying—and in the end it would all turn out just as he feared, or even worse. The hardest thing, Henry was sure, would be the waiting itself.

  It would probably be parents and concerned friends who would start to look first, get hold of a key and go to Betty’s apartment. There the ultrasound image of his baby would be hanging on the corkboard next to the fridge for all to see. But no, a pregnant woman doesn’t hang a scan
by the fridge; a thing like that she carries around with her, in her handbag, for example. Maybe Betty had told the gynecologist who the father was. But why should she? It wasn’t relevant after all. This reminded him that he had always wanted to ask Betty if she kept a diary. Doesn’t every woman keep a diary at some point in her life? Presumably Betty had too. He should have asked her.

  Henry was almost at the door when he heard a woman’s voice.

  “Hey . . . you?”

  Henry stopped in his tracks and turned around. The giant rabbit at the till was waving the packet of chewing gum at him. He’d forgotten it.

  Henry went back, took the chewing gum, and got in the car. She would remember him. Sooner or later the police would be knocking at his door. He was prepared and he would pass every test, because he had nothing to reproach himself for. He had done what had to be done. He drove home to make Martha her chamomile tea.

  The light was on in Martha’s room. That meant she’d already gone upstairs to commune with the nocturnal writing demon. Henry put down the marten trap quietly at the foot of the stairs and crept into the kitchen to boil water for the tea, and to feed the dog. The enormous kitchen was neat and tidy as usual; it smelled of grease on metal. Poncho was wagging his tail as usual. It was absolutely silent as usual. Everything was as usual. Then he suddenly thought of the phone. He tried to remember whether or not he’d taken out the little SIM card. He’d been thoughtless.