Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Henry tightened his grip.

“Why? Why did you do that?”

Betty squirmed in his grasp. “She wanted to go to you. That’s why she went to the cliffs.”

He studied her face. “How could she find her way?”

“Oh, come on, that’s why we swapped cars. Because she doesn’t have GPS. She’d never in her life have found it otherwise, as you know. Don’t say you didn’t go?”

“Give me a cigarette.”

“You did go, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. Give me a cigarette.”

Betty took one from the packet and gave Henry a light. His hands were trembling so badly that Betty had to hold them tight. Her gaze fell on the wooden box at the foot of the stairs, but she didn’t ask.

No doubt about it, Martha was dead. She’d been sitting in the car when he’d pushed it over the cliffs. He’d destroyed his life and killed the only person who’d ever loved him for his own sake. Martha was gone and with her the full life, the good life. The pictures came back to him. Henry saw her screaming soundlessly as she hit the windshield, saw her trying to open the door and the horribly cold water entering her lungs. He saw Martha die.

As he was driving Betty home, Henry felt the beginnings of a numbness on the right side of his face. It spread from his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.

“Did you tell her about the baby?”

“No, she doesn’t know anything.”

“Don’t lie to me, Betty!”

“Why should I lie?”

“Have you called anyone, talked to anyone?”

“Why are you asking? Won’t she ever come back?”

Betty sat strangely stiff beside him, her fingers with their painted nails clasped tightly together. She didn’t smoke, she didn’t look at him, and she didn’t ask any more questions, at least not audibly. Henry stared at the road ahead. In his mind’s eye he was already back home, killing the dog and emptying a canister of gasoline all over the house. He’d start with that damn drilling rig, then the books. The flames wouldn’t take long. Then the wooden staircase. The fire would spread upstairs quickly, the damn marten in the roof would burn too. That’s what comes of creeping into strangers’ houses.

“Don’t talk to anyone about it, do you hear? Not anyone.”

Then she got out. She could feel Henry’s gaze as she walked the fifty paces to her apartment.

The rain had eased off, and all the windows, except Martha’s, were dark when Henry got back. Although he knew he wouldn’t find her, Henry searched the whole house for his wife. With an excruciating certainty that was already a phantom pain, he flung open doors, called out her name, and shined a flashlight behind bookcases and into cupboards and corners, as if it were a silly game of hide-and-seek. Of course she didn’t respond to his calls, because she was lying at the bottom of the sea, but the thought was simply unbearable, so he called out another dozen times.

In his studio he found Betty’s burned-out cigarette. The blinds were down; she couldn’t have seen much, not enough to understand. But all the same, she’d crept into his studio in stocking feet to snoop about.

He drove Martha’s Saab into the barn. He searched the car, but found only an old wooden sandal, yellowing maps, and empty water bottles. The whole interior of the car smelled of Betty’s lily-of-the-valley perfume. The dog panted after him as he came out with a spade and two canisters of gasoline and went into the kitchen. He wanted to set fire to the house first, and then hurl himself into the well behind the chapel. He put down the canisters, laid the sharp spade on the counter, and drank the remains of the whisky from the bottle. As soon as he was drunk enough he was going to use the spade to chop off Poncho’s head. But however much he drank, he remained sober. Stuff tastes like whisky, he thought, but it must be water, otherwise I’d be drunk. He took the rubber gloves out of the sink. OK, let’s get it over with. Come here, you filthy cur.

The dog had slunk away. Henry staggered through the house, knocked his shin, and made a change of plan.

He grabbed Martha’s green parka, took the dirty laundry out of the laundry basket, and stuffed underwear, sandals, shirt, and trousers into a plastic bag. Then he put her folding bicycle carefully into the trunk of the Maserati and set off. In the rearview mirror he could see two shining yellow points. It was the eyes of the dog watching him. The creature knew everything.

Four o’clock in the morning, an hour before sunrise. The narrow road to the bay led through the town. Bright moonlight shone on the roofs as Henry let the car roll along the main street, his headlights switched off. A cat crossed the road in front of him carrying that night’s prey in its jaws.

Sleepless as usual at a full moon, Obradin stood smoking as the Maserati glided along under his window. He heard the familiar rumble of the engine and recognized the curves of the bodywork. Nobody drives toward the harbor at night with the lights off without good reason. Unless Henry was intending to load the car onto a ship in the harbor and sail away, he would at some point have to return the way he’d come. In the bed up against the wall his Helga turned over without waking and stretched out her fleshy hand to feel for him. He fetched his Russian night-vision device from the cupboard, opened a new packet of cigarettes, and went back to stand at the window and wait.

Beyond the little fishing harbor was the bay. Henry carried the bike over the shingle beach and propped it up against the fissured cliff just as Martha had always done. He hung her parka over the handlebars by its hood and positioned her clothes carefully next to the bike as she herself might have done. Then he looked out at the cold, gleaming sea. Were the fish already eating Martha’s corpse, or might her body be washed ashore here? Would she still be wearing clothes? How amateurishly I’ve acted, he thought. Why did I do it? The eternal metronome of the surf rolled the stones to and fro, slowly grinding them to sand. Martha had always loved the sea. But why?

As Obradin had predicted, the Maserati rolled back along the road under his window half an hour later. The headlights were still switched off. On the green image of the goggles’ residual light amplifier Obradin could see Henry sitting at the wheel. After careful consideration, Obradin reached the conclusion that an author can have many compelling reasons for driving to the harbor at night with his lights off — the quest for the mot juste, for instance. The search for the right word had driven Flaubert out of the house at night, Proust into bed, Nietzsche into lunacy — why the hell should Henry Hayden be spared? This elegant conclusion brought Obradin temporary relief. When the sound of the engine had died away, he got into bed beside his wife and instantly fell asleep.

Shortly before sunrise, Henry was home again. The dog was waiting for him in the same spot. He trotted behind him into the house. In the fireplace Henry put a match to Martha’s swimsuit, then sat down in his wing armchair and watched the burning polyester melt into a glowing ball. It had been a bargain, bought on the promenade in outrageously expensive San Remo, and had fit her so well, accentuating her shapely but not skinny waist. She had spun around in front of the mirror, as pleased as a child. Afterward they’d drunk Campari together and written postcards. Happiness can only be experienced with someone else, he had thought at the time. And now that was all over and done with. Charred into little pellets of plastic.

In the warmth of the flames, Henry could feel the numbness on the right side of his face. It had spread across his cheek as far as his nose. He touched his skin with his fingertips. I’m rotting, he decided. I’m rotting from the inside out. Serves me right.