Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

“And?” Henry asked. “How am I?”

“I don’t want to begin to imagine,” Jenssen replied and pointed at the scrap of paper in Henry’s hand. “Do the words seem familiar to you?”

Henry read the printed words out loud: “Always alone than never.” He didn’t have the shimmer of an idea what this crap was supposed to mean.

“Doesn’t ring any bells?”

Triumph flared in Jenssen’s eyes as if he’d just landed on the Planet of the Apes. An inner voice told Henry it would be better if he did know the phrase, so he decided — as so often — to play the odds and make a wild guess. We don’t, incidentally, make use of our hidden talent for guesswork half often enough. Beyond comprehension and consciousness, an army of anonymous neurons is working things out for us. Electric charges are transformed into memories; deep down inside us, knowledge emerges and generates the visions of the unconscious. You just have to trust them.

“It’s mine. The phrase is mine.”

Jenssen was as surprised as he was disappointed. “Bingo,” he said appreciatively. “I recognized it straightaway too and looked it up. Bottom of page one hundred and two. Only ‘better’ is missing. ‘Better always alone than never.’ It’s from your novel, Mr. Hayden. Aggravating Circumstances . I think it’s your best book.”

“Very impressive,” Henry murmured with admiration. “Just goes to show how valuable an attentive reader is.”

He decided to go and have a look. At the five-mile marker he turned off toward the cliffs — instead of driving home, which would have been a lot more sensible. As every amateur knows, murderers often return to the scene of their crime, only to be arrested when they get there. They go because they are sentimental, or because they are curious, just like everyone else. Some go out of vanity, and others, listening to the voice of conscience, go out of regret; they return because they can’t believe they were really capable of such an act. Henry, for his part, after his visit to forensics, had arrived at the conclusion that the police believed it was an accident. That meant there was no reason not to visit the place where his wife was and see how things had been going for her in the interim. Martha would have expected it, in Henry’s opinion.

Even from a long way off he could see flashing danger signs. As he rounded the fatal bend where that poor twit had simply kept straight on and driven into the concrete barrier, the tow truck came the other way with the car on its bed. It was a write-off — a miracle that anyone had survived in it. Now Henry remembered that their eyes had met just before the car had crashed. Instead of watching the road, the driver had looked at him, as if in surprise, as if he’d recognized him. Well, a lot of people on the road recognized me, Henry thought, and who cares — the lucky devil survived the crash thanks to me.

On the forest track Henry parked the car in the usual place and walked over the perforated concrete slabs toward the cliffs, whistling. Here and there little white clouds scudded across the sky; the scent of fresh pine needles filled the warm air. Ought to go for more walks, he thought; it does one good.

On the cliffs, just where the Subaru had been parked, there was now a camper van. If license plates are to be trusted, an English family with children was vacationing there amid an impressive amount of camping equipment, which lay spread about the ground in a kind of organized chaos. A treasure trove for the forensic team. The whole area was sprinkled with saliva and sweat, not to mention excrement, hair, dandruff, and goodness knows what else. God bless this family, Henry exulted. Even the best forensic scientists in the world would be kept busy here for a thousand years.

He hid in a clump of bushes and watched in delight as a naked woman in wooden sandals threw laundry over a line strung up between two trees. This late Neolithic Venus must be the mother. Her palely gleaming breasts with their neat areolae hung down, heavy but shapely; her waist had been noticeably thickened by the birth of her three children, who were throwing pinecones at one another not far from the camper van. Henry’s expert eye did not miss the cesarean scar that ran horizontally above her pudenda — very nicely healed and not at all ugly.

In an aluminum chair, the naked family patriarch was sitting reading the newspaper, a straw hat on his head, his crossed legs marbled with varicose veins, and — what was he doing? — he was smoking cigarettes! Not hurriedly like Betty, but relishing every life-shortening drag. This cultivated Brit carefully stubbed out the butt on the aluminum chair leg, flicked it onto the ground, and proceeded to light up the next one. Henry would have liked to give him a whole truckload of cigarettes. His thriving, naked kiddies were tirelessly gathering and throwing pinecones, laughing and shouting — it was a joy to watch them. Henry had an overwhelming desire to join in their playing and throwing. What a long time it had been since he had played as boisterously as that, and how very rarely it had happened! Yes, it was a good idea to go on summer vacation with children once in a while — they have such a lot of fun.

If there were still any tire tracks from the Subaru, they were now rolled flat and obliterated by the broad tires of the van. How fantastic! Henry decided to come back sometime. He would have loved to saunter past these nudists to the cliffs, just to have a quick look at Martha — but you shouldn’t tempt the devil, even when he’s in a good mood.

——

Fat, black flies were crawling in various directions over the windows of the Maserati. The sun had heated up the inside of the car, and when Henry opened the door a swarm of flies escaped in a stream of stinking air. The smell was coming from the briefcase on the backseat, which was caked with brown bloodstains. Flies had already deposited symmetrical clusters of white eggs there.

Nauseated, he grasped the briefcase by the handle and pulled it away. It was stuck to the seat. The handle was stained with sweat. He studied the bloody cheese curd on the reddish-brown napa leather in dismay — the best leather from hand-massaged cattle. An issue for the insurance. Yellowing sheets of paper were pouring out of the briefcase. Henry was just about to throw the bag into the bushes when he noticed a page with words circled in colored pencil. It was his third-grade report card. His name was circled in blue.

Right at the bottom of the page were illegible signatures. The two years he spent in third grade had been particularly bad — he preferred not to think about them. The marks all ranged from Unsatisfactory to Poor — with the exception of PE. In the comments, it said, among other things: Henry will not be moved up. He is disruptive in class and copies from fellow pupils. His participation in lessons and his behavior leave much to be desired. Exclamation mark. “Copies from fellow pupils” had a red ring round it and was flanked by another exclamation mark in the margin.

Henry saw, carefully filed and sorted in chronological order, a copy of his birth certificate, school reports, legal documents concerning his parents, records of his admission to various children’s homes, psychological assessments, newspaper articles about Henry Hayden and his novels, even a copy of his marriage certificate — all marked with colored circles. Henry suppressed the urge to burn the briefcase then and there. He threw it back onto the seat, let down all the windows, and a few minutes later was rounding the bend again at a modest speed. Some firemen were sweeping the last splinters of glass from the road. So the fellow had been following him. He should have trusted his instincts and let him perish.