Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Henry had painted her portrait. Betty had recognized herself from the very first pages. The same man who took her for his wife’s murderer and didn’t seem capable of developing the slightest feeling for his unborn baby had painted a precise and sympathetic portrait of her. As an editor you learn to separate author and work. It’s not the person but the personality that is reflected in the artist’s work. We have to love Henry without knowing him , Martha had said in parting at the door of her apartment. She had apparently loved Henry as the man he was — as the man she didn’t know.

——

At about five in the afternoon, Betty went into the photocopy room in the office and closed the door. She put Henry’s 380-page manuscript into the paper feeder, plugged in her USB stick, and pressed Scan. The machine began to suck in the pages one by one and save them on the stick as a PDF file. Then it spat each page out again. Betty stowed the manuscript in a plastic folder and put it in her handbag. She put the stick in a small Murano glass dish on her desk.

She took the elevator up to Moreany’s office. On the way she felt the movements of the baby, now growing noticeably stronger, and placed her hand on her belly. The movements immediately subsided. The horrific attacks of nausea had vanished. Betty no longer took medication, and for weeks now she had entirely avoided alcohol and cigarettes. She drank tea instead of coffee. Contrary to what she had expected, going without her daily dose of poison was easy, and the abstinence made her even more beautiful. Men openly turned and stared at her. Even the female employees at Moreany’s threw furtive glances at her.

Most of her colleagues had already gone home to drive to the coast for the weekend. Betty cleared the dirty cups away as she passed the central coffee counter. She said hello to the attractive young fellow from the publicity department who was always throwing paper airplanes at her. Then she went into Moreany’s outer office, where Honor Eisendraht stood sorting accounts at her top-secret Bisley filing cabinet — the heart-lung machine of the company, as Moreany called it. Her monitor already had its cover on. Betty saw a pack of Tarot cards next to the keyboard on her desk. The door to Moreany’s office was closed.

“Has Moreany already left?”

Eisendraht spirited away the Tarot deck and took her handbag from the back of the chair. Betty noticed her subtle perfume, her smart hairdo, and her outfit, that offset the color tones of the office.

“He left for an appointment at three.”

Betty tried to gauge from Eisendraht’s eyes whether she was withholding information from her, but the secretary’s face was an unreadable mask, something like what you see on totem poles in anthropological museums. Only the way her glance strayed to Betty’s belly betrayed what was going on inside her.

“Is there anything else?” asked Eisendraht, smoothing her sweater over her navel in a presumably unconscious gesture.

“Yes, I’ve never shown you my appreciation. That was stupid of me and I’m honestly sorry. I respect you and I admire your work. Have a nice day.”

Alone in the outer office, Honor stood motionless for a while. The dragon tree shed a leaf, otherwise nothing changed. And yet. There is a certain irony in hearing the most touching compliments emerge from the mouth of your very enemy, on whose cold disdain you have come to rely. Honor Eisendraht knew too much about women not to see with perfect lucidity that Betty meant her apology seriously, sincerely, and without expecting anything in return. She took her bag and went out of the office shrugging her shoulders. Such things happen. Nothing you can do about it.

——

Henry decided on steak and fries. No ordinary fries these, but pommes allumettes. The Thai-style red snapper at the next table looked tempting too, as did the lady with the silicon breasts who had ordered it and who would have simply loved to join Henry if circumstances permitted, which they didn’t. But a steak was enough for Henry. He savored the last of his evening drink. The sun was still high over the sea. His watch now showed 7:07 p.m. He looked in the direction of the restaurant’s lobby; the headwaiter saw his glance and came to his table at once. Of course he saw the empty place, and naturally he understood that Henry wanted to wait to order. There couldn’t be the shadow of a doubt that Henry’s dining companion was female, so he suggested vermouth, the proper drink for a gentleman who is waiting for a lady and does not wish to appear to have an indecent thirst. A moment later, Henry’s phone vibrated. It was Betty.

“Henry, I’m driving along this ghastly dusty road. Can that be right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

The air in the car shimmered. Betty looked out the side window that was clouded with dust and let it down a little further. A fine mist of particles rolled into the car, formed clouds, deposited little crystals on her skin, got into her hair and lungs, mingled with the moisture of her mucous membranes.

“What can you see?”

“Well, on the right I can see fields and pylons, and on the left there are these kinds of bushes, and, apart from that, absolutely nothing. It’s ridiculously dusty here. I’m going to look like Ben-Hur after the chariot race when I get there.”

In his mind’s eye, Henry saw that she’d taken the right road. “The pylons lead you straight here.”

Betty looked at the GPS device. “The GPS only shows a dotted road. Two point nine miles to go. Is that possible?”

“You’re doing fine. Keep straight on till you get to the water. It’s an old harbor. That’s the name of the restaurant: Old Harbor. You’re really close. Have you got my manuscript with you?”

“Of course.”

“Great. Shall I order you a drink?”

“No alcohol for me, thanks. OK, see you soon.”

Betty put the phone on top of her notebook computer and Henry’s manuscript in the open handbag beside her. She’d had a good feeling when she left work to meet Henry for dinner. The first step toward reconciliation with Honor Eisendraht had been taken. Malicious it may have been, but Eisendraht’s betrayal had had a purgative effect. She’d done Betty a real favor, even if it couldn’t have been her intention. The ultrasound images had brought the silly secretiveness to an end. No affair is worth denying a child for.

The potholes in the road were getting deeper and deeper. Betty reined in the speed. Rust-ravaged metal containers lay dotted around on the side of the road. Here and there she saw shreds of truck tires. Fountains of dust flew up in the air like powder. She tried to drive in the ruts of the broad tire tracks that had been washed out by the rain and baked into rock-hard furrows by the sun.

The more slowly she drove, the more interminable and absurd the trip seemed to her. But Henry had always had a good nose for remote and stunningly beautiful places. Betty remembered Es Verger on the Puig de Alaró on Majorca. Henry had driven doggedly upward; the engine had shrieked; the car had creaked and clattered. “We’ll get there at some point,” he said, and she had trusted him. After an endless ascent on a narrow, winding road, they had finally reached the mother of all mountain restaurants and eaten the most delicious lamb of their lives. It was that night the baby had been conceived, Betty was quite sure of it.

A sign appeared in the distance. It stood half-sunken on rusty steel posts, almost illegible from so much dust and sun. Betty could make out what looked like a fishing boat and in faded letters “… Harbor.” That must be it. Her GPS showed she was less than half a mile away. In rough outline the display showed an oblong site on the seafront. “In seven hundred feet you will reach your destination. You are approaching your destination.” A metal fence surrounded the place. The ugly concrete frontage of an industrial building came into view and seagulls sat on skeletal cranes.