Sascha Arango: The Truth and Other Lies

The entire helmet collection disappeared into the earth along with the dead fireman. Martha’s mother blossomed; she gave away the yellow birds and emigrated a year later with an American businessman to Wisconsin, where she was struck by lightning. From then on she wrote long (now only ever left-handed) letters about her new life in America.

Then Moreany’s call came. Henry cycled to the publisher’s. If he had had any idea what a fateful course the whole affair would take, he might perhaps not have gone.

——

Betty was waiting for him in the lobby. They got into the elevator together and went up to the fourth floor. Her lily-of-the-valley perfume filled the elevator. She saw that he had handyman’s hands; he spotted a small hole in her earlobe and the constellation of the Big Dipper mapped out on her throat in ravishing freckles. On the regrettably short journey up he could intuit her sizing up his DNA. When the elevator doors opened, the essentials between them had been settled.

Moreany came around the side of his publisher’s desk and touched Henry with both hands, as you might greet a long-lost friend. His desk was laden with books and manuscripts. Right on top was the manuscript of Frank Ellis . This was pretty much what Henry had imagined a publisher would look like.

Henry kept his promise to Martha and introduced himself as the author. This turned out to be quite straightforward. He didn’t have to say or prove anything special, because everyone knows an author can’t do anything except write, and anyone can write. You don’t need any particular knowledge or skill, or have to say anything particular about yourself. Apart from a modicum of life experience, you don’t require any education to speak of; there’s no need to produce a diploma, only a manuscript. You leave the final judgment to your critics and readers, because the less you speak about your work the more radiant your aura. He wasn’t interested in literature, Henry explained. He just wanted to write. That hit the spot.

The novel sold fantastically well. When the first royalty check arrived, he and Martha moved into a larger, warmer apartment and got married. The money kept on pouring in, heaps of it. Money didn’t trigger any kind of buying reflex or wasteful impulses in Martha. She carried on writing undeterred while Henry went on shopping sprees. He bought himself costly suits, expensive moments with beautiful women, and an Italian car. Moreany gave Henry a share in the profits that were now raining down on Moreany Publishing House. Henry felt like a gangster who had pulled off the perfect crime, and he drove Martha all the way across Europe to Portugal in the Maserati. They stayed in good hotels; otherwise nothing much changed. Martha continued to write at night; Henry played tennis and saw to everything else. He did the shopping, wrote shopping lists, and learned to cook Asian food.

Every afternoon he would read the new pages. No one except him got to see a single line before the book was finished. He only ever said whether he liked it or not. Mostly he did like it. Finally he would take the finished manuscript in person to Moreany. Betty and Moreany would read it simultaneously in Moreany’s wood-paneled office, while Henry lay on the sofa in the adjoining room and read the Adventures of the Grand Vizier Iznogoud , which are, as it happens, the best comics in the world.

For hours, absolute silence would reign in the publishing house, until Betty and Moreany had finished reading. Then Moreany would summon the sales manager. “We have a book!” he would shout. Eight weeks later the press campaign would be launched. Only selected journalists were allowed a look at a proof copy in Moreany’s office. They had to sign confidentiality agreements, because although they were expected to hype up the novel they were also to torment the public by withholding information.

Martha never accompanied Henry to public appearances. When he went to writers festivals or public readings it was Betty who went with him. A lot of people took her for his wife, which to all appearances made complete sense, because they looked like the perfect couple.

Wherever he went, Henry was greeted with applause, smiled at, shown around, and congratulated. He didn’t look particularly happy on such occasions, because he didn’t enjoy the tours. This, however, strengthened the general delight at his modesty, especially among women. Henry’s shy, understated manner was purely precautionary, for he never forgot that he wasn’t a writer, but a mere fraud, a frog in a snake’s territory.

Besides, he had trouble remembering all the friendly faces and new names. Whenever he stood still, knots of people formed. Cameras flashed, greedy eyes drank him in without letting up, and he was always being shown something he wasn’t interested in or having something explained to him he didn’t really understand. He gave short interviews, but refused to discuss his working methods. The feeling of unreality intensified; reality began to blur like a watercolor in the rain — first at the edges, then altogether. Martha had warned him that success was a mere shadow that shifts with the moving sun. The day will come, Henry thought, when the sun will set and they’ll realize I don’t exist.

It was from his critics that Henry learned how his work was to be interpreted. He knew himself that the novels were good — after all, he was the one who’d discovered them. But just how good they were, and why exactly, came as a surprise to him. He felt sorry for all those poor artists who aren’t discovered until after they’ve perished from nutritional edema. He would have liked to have read Martha some of the most flattering reviews, but she didn’t want to know anything about them. She was already at work on the next novel. Fame meant nothing to her. She read no reviews on principle, while he read every single one, underlining the most flattering passages with a ruler, cutting them out and sticking them in a scrapbook, a habit he’d always been praised for at school. Every sentence a stronghold . He particularly liked that phrase. It was in bold type in the blurb and had been penned by a certain Peffenkofer who wrote for the literary supplement of one of the big dailies. It was so wonderfully pithy, Henry thought, it might have been something he would say. But it wasn’t. Nothing was his.

Death of an author on a wet road. A lurch, one’s entire life flashing past, then eternity. Such were Henry’s thoughts as he drove home from the cliffs past luminous yellow rape fields. Could any death be more tragic and at the same time more unjust than that inflicted by the cold hand of chance? And so fitting for him. Camus had died such a death, and Randall Jarrell and Ödön von Horváth — no, not him, poor thing. He was killed by a branch falling from a tree on the Champs-Élysées.

Henry was now forty-four. The sun of success was beating down on him; death would immortalize him, and the secret was safe with Martha. She would carry on writing after his death and leave all the manuscripts to rot in the cellar. Henry found that very reassuring, even if he didn’t intend to die before his wife. In this instant, however, he wished he could. Anything was easier than to confess to her that he was father to a child with another woman. And with Betty of all people.

Henry saw the two women standing at his grave. Martha, the hidden source of his fame, so delicate and unfathomable, side by side with Betty, the freckled Venus, the mother of his child. He hoped that the two of them would get along and not wage war on one another; they were after all so very different. And between them his child. Martha would spot the child’s resemblance to Henry straightaway. Would she ever be able to forgive him? Did Betty have what it takes to make a good mother? Not really. But what did it matter to him now? A lot of people would weep at his grave, some indeed would suffer, others would be very pleased. But the best thing was that he wouldn’t be available for anyone; he’d no longer have to be ashamed of himself, or put on an act, or be afraid of anything. Terrific.