Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

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 herself, 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.