Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

She put the car in gear. “How are you getting on with the novel?”

“Not much more to go.”

He bent down to her through the open door. “Have you told anybody about us?”

“Not a soul,” she replied.

“It is my child, isn’t it? I mean, it really is there, it is going to happen?”

“Yes, it’s yours. It’s going to happen.”

She offered him her slightly parted lips for a kiss. Reluctantly he stooped down to her; her tongue penetrated his mouth like a fat, threadless screw. Henry closed the driver’s door of the Subaru. She drove down the forest track in the direction of the main road. He watched her until she disappeared. Then he stamped out her half-smoked cigarette that lay smoldering in the grass. He believed her. Betty wouldn’t lie to him; she had far too little imagination for that. She was young and sporty, and much more elegant than Martha. She was beautiful and not as bright, but extremely practical. And now she was pregnant with his child — a paternity test was hardly necessary.

Betty’s cool pragmatism had impressed Henry from the first time they’d met. If she liked something, she took it. She had wit, she had slender feet, she had freckled breasts as round as oranges, green eyes, and curly blond hair. The first time he saw her she was wearing a dress with a print of endangered species.

Their affair had begun the moment they met. Henry hadn’t had to make an effort or put on an act or court her. As happened so often, he hadn’t had to do anything, because she thought he was a genius. For that reason it didn’t bother her in the slightest that he was married and didn’t want children. On the contrary, it was all a question of time. She had waited a long time for a man like him — she was quite frank about that. In her opinion most men lacked greatness. What she meant by that, she didn’t say.

Now Betty was editor in chief at Moreany Publishing House. She’d started out as a temp in the marketing department, although she’d considered herself overqualified because she had a degree in literature. Most of the seminars had been boring and she regretted not having taken her parents’ advice and studied law. In spite of her qualifications, the prospects of promotion at the publishing house were limited. On her lunch break she would sneak into the editors’ offices to browse. One day, out of sheer boredom, she pulled Henry’s typewritten text out of the slush pile and took it with her to read in the staff kitchen. Henry had sent the manuscript without an accompanying note, so as to save on postage. Until then he’d always been strapped for cash.

Betty read about thirty pages, leaving her food untouched. Then she rushed up to the fourth floor, into the office of Claus Moreany, the founder of the publishing house, and put an abrupt end to his afternoon nap. Four hours later the man himself was on the phone to Henry.

“Good afternoon, this is Claus Moreany.”

“Really? Gosh!”

“You have written something marvelous. Something truly marvelous. Have you sold the rights yet?”

He hadn’t. Frank Ellis sold ten million copies worldwide. A thriller, as they’re so wonderfully called, with a great deal of violence and little of a cheering nature. It was the story of an autistic man who becomes a police officer in order to find his sister’s killer. The first hundred thousand copies sold out in only a month and were no doubt read cover to cover. The profits saved Moreany Publishing House from bankruptcy. Today, eight years later, Henry was a bestselling author, his work translated into twenty languages around the world, a winner of countless prizes and God knows what else. Five bestselling novels had now been published by Moreany; all of them had been made into films or adapted for the stage, and Frank Ellis was already being used as a required text in schools. Almost a classic. And Henry was still married to Martha.

Apart from Henry, only Martha knew that he hadn’t written a single word of the novels himself.

Henry had often wondered what course his life would have taken if he hadn’t met Martha. The answer he gave himself never varied — the same as before. He would not have become a significant author, would not, as a result, have been able to live a free and prosperous life, certainly wouldn’t drive an Italian sports car — and no one would know his name. Henry was quite straight with himself on the matter. He would have remained invisible — an art in itself. Of course, the struggle for survival is exciting. It is, after all, only scarcity that gives things their value; money loses all meaning as soon as there’s plenty of it. No denying any of that. But aren’t apathy and indifference a reasonable price to pay for a life of wealth and luxury, and better than hunger and suffering and bad teeth any day? You don’t have to be famous to be happy, especially as popularity is all too often confused with significance. But ever since Henry had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity into the light of a particular existence, his life had been incomparably more comfortable. And so for years now his sole concern had been to preserve the status quo. There was no more for him to achieve. In that he remained a realist. Even if it was boring.

The manuscript of Frank Ellis was his discovery. It was lying wrapped in greaseproof paper under a stranger’s bed. Henry found it, his head throbbing with pain, as he hunted for his left sock so that he could steal out of the stranger’s room as he’d stolen out of so many others. He couldn’t remember the woman lying next to him in bed, and he felt no desire to get to know her now. He could only see her foot and the feminine silhouette running from the dip of her pelvis up to her fine, chestnut-brown hair, and he investigated no further. The stove was cold; the room was dark. It smelled of dust and bad breath. Time to make himself scarce.

Henry was hideously thirsty because he’d drunk a particularly large amount of alcohol the night before. It had been the eve of his thirty-sixth birthday. Nobody had wished him any happy returns. How could they? Nobody knew. Who could possibly know? Drifters don’t form close friendships, and his parents had been dead for a long time.

He had no apartment of his own, no fixed income, and no idea what he was to do next in life. Why should he? The future is uncertain. Anyone who says he knows what the future holds is a liar. The past is nothing but memory and thus pure fabrication — the present alone is certain, gives us space to evolve, and is over again in an instant. What tormented Henry far more than uncertainty was the thought of certainty. Knowing what lay in store for him was tantamount to the pendulum over the pit. What was there left to hope for except remorse, death, and decay? In keeping with this entirely clear-eyed outlook, Henry defined his life as a cumulative process, to be judged by historians only after his death. And happy is he who leaves nothing behind; he need fear no judgment.

Keeping silent goes against human nature . Thus the opening sentence of Martha’s manuscript. It might easily, Henry thought, be something he would say. Absolutely to the point and so simple. He read the next sentence, and then on and on. His left sock stayed off; he didn’t creep out of the little apartment; nor did he, as was his wont, walk off with whatever cash or items of value that happened to be lying around in order to buy himself something to eat.

From the first paragraph he had the impression that the story was not unlike his own. He read the whole manuscript in a sitting, turning the pages as quietly as he could, so as not to wake up the unknown woman gently snoring beside him. There were no corrections on the densely typed pages as far as he could make out, and no typos either — not a comma out of place. Every now and then Henry stopped reading for a moment to take a closer look at the sleeping woman. Was it possible they’d met before? Had he told her about himself and then forgotten they’d ever met? What was her name again? Had she even mentioned it? She hadn’t talked much, that was for sure. She was unprepossessing, delicate, with long eyelashes that now shielded her closed eyes.