Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Venice then.

Moreany picked up the receiver. “Put him through, Honor.” He signaled to Betty that Henry was on the line, but she already knew.

“Henry, old boy, how are you?”

Moreany listened for a while; Betty saw his expression darken. She could hear Henry’s deep voice; he was speaking slowly.

“I’ll come over at once.”

Moreany hung up slowly, looking at the floor as if searching for a lost answer.

“What’s happened?”

“Henry’s wife has drowned.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“That’s not possible.”

“She’s drowned. He just told me. Just now.”

“In the night? Last night?”

Moreany looked up from the floor. “I must go to him straightaway.”

Betty handed Moreany his coat, wondering whether Henry had already known Martha was dead when she’d returned Martha’s car. Would he have run up to her room to look, if he had?

Honor Eisendraht came into the office and sat down ashen-faced in the Eames chair.

“You must have heard everything, Honor. Please cancel my appointments, for tomorrow too. Betty…”

“Yes?”

“We’ll have to postpone Venice. Would you accompany me, please?”

From the window, Honor saw the two of them in the parking lot, getting into Moreany’s dark green Jaguar. He opened Betty’s door and let her get in first. Honor took her pack of tarot cards out of her handbag and shuffled them thoroughly. It was the Tower. A singularly inauspicious card.

During the hour-long drive neither spoke a word. Moreany drove fast, concentrating. Decades ago he had come second in the Mille Miglia and was still an excellent driver. The car was quiet; only the turn signal ticked when he turned a corner. Betty felt a wave of nausea and wondered whether it was fear or just a symptom of pregnancy. Martha’s unexpected call had not been a goodwill visit. “You ought to know,” she had said even before she was inside, “that I don’t hate you. The man we both love is in a serious crisis. He can’t finish his novel; I see him suffering.” Martha had been so touchingly cheerful as she had sat with her on the sofa. She had spoken of the friendship that comes from love, of good times and of urgently required changes. It is well known that people in despair grow calm once they have decided to take the final step, their spirits soothed at the prospect of the sweet release of death.

Betty lowered the car window. Why hadn’t Martha jumped into the sea before last night if she’d known everything for so long? Maybe it was revenge after all. She wanted to destroy our happiness by committing suicide, Betty thought. It was quite possible that Henry would blame her for Martha’s death. How would Moreany react when he found out about it all? Venice would be just the ticket now. Far enough away to think things over, but near enough to get back to Henry in three hours. Again the violent twinge in her womb. His child. It was inside her, growing, communicating with her. She’d have it all to herself.

The corpse was floating facedown, its outspread arms parallel to the coast. A young cormorant landed on its back and spread its wings to dry its feathers. The bird drifted past Obradin’s cutter on the back of the corpse and was carried by the current toward the promontory, whose northern tip extended into the sea for miles.

Obradin had gone out to sea, not in order to fish, but to collect his thoughts. He went slowly so as to spare the gasping engine. When the mainland was out of sight he turned it off and let the cutter drift. He sat down on the foredeck to smoke a Bosnian cigarette. He could have been mistaken, in which case it wasn’t Henry’s car he’d seen so clearly the night before. Then the man at the wheel wasn’t Henry either — or his double had just stolen his Maserati. It had been nothing but a disconcertingly detailed dream, right down to the butts that Helga had cleared off the windowsill and put on his bedside table.

And even if he hadn’t been mistaken — and there was reason to believe that this was the case — a man is entitled to drive wherever he likes at night with his lights off, and his wife’s entitled to drown wherever and whenever she likes. Coincidence without connection, and nobody’s business anyway. But then there was that matter of the bike.

Obradin had woken up before sunrise after only an hour’s sleep, and had gotten out of bed at once. He dressed quietly and drove to the harbor a few minutes later. The Drina lay rocking sluggishly at the pier. Obradin checked the ropes and the lashed-down nets, opened and closed all the hatches, made sure that the anchor was in place, jumped back onto the pier, and climbed over the concrete breakwaters that had been built by forced laborers in the last months of the war.

The sun rose. Obradin covered the few hundred yards to the beach on foot. He saw Martha’s bike propped up against a rock; every day she rode it past his shop down to the bay. But never before lunchtime. Her neatly folded clothes lay next to the bike. He shielded his eyes from the intense rays of the rising sun. After searching the bay in vain for Henry’s wife, he returned to his cutter.

Obradin gazed after the cormorant as it flew over the radio mast of his cutter toward the coast. Then he started up the diesel again. The current had pulled him a few nautical miles out to sea. He sailed slowly back to the harbor, moored the Drina, and was soon walking through the door of his fishmonger’s shop.

“The diesel’s had it,” he said. “And without the cutter we may as well give up.”

Without another word he strode past Helga (who as usual was on the phone instead of working), opened the wooden hatch in the floor, and disappeared into the cellar. He reemerged with a barrel of slivovitz on his shoulder and kicked the hatch shut.

Helga covered the receiver with her hand. “What are you up to?”

“What does it look like?”

“What about the shop?”

“We’re closing.”

“What about the fish soup?”

“There won’t be any.”

“When are you coming back?”

Obradin went around the fish counter to his Helga, stroked her cheek with his hairy fingers, and kissed her good-bye on the mouth.

“You know when.”

Only minutes later, Helga called the game warden and the doctor from the neighboring town. The two of them were to stand by at the ready; in about two hours it would be time to act again. The doctor packed his bag when he heard this; the game warden opened his gun cabinet and took out a special gun.

——

Pale and unshaven, Henry stood outside the house in his rubber boots, his shirt hanging out of his trousers. He was leaning on a shovel when Moreany’s Jaguar came over the hill. The car was trailing a cloud of dust. Even from a distance, Henry could see that Moreany was not alone. Poncho ran to meet the car and leaped around, barking. Henry saw Betty in the passenger seat. She made no move to get out. Poncho stood up on his hind legs, curious, and sniffed at the window.

The two men embraced in silence. Moreany’s smooth, rosy cheeks with their white sideburns smelled of Old Spice. Henry looked over at Betty. Why didn’t she get out? Had she already confessed everything to Moreany?

Moreany extricated himself from Henry’s embrace with reddened eyes.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“What can one say?”

“I asked Betty to come too. She was in my office when you rang.”

Henry opened the door and held out his hand to Betty. The smell of her perfume flooded out of the car. She felt his firm, warning hold as he embraced her; his stubbly chin scratched her cheek. They kissed each other like brother and sister; she felt another fierce twinge in her womb.