Sascha Arango: The Truth and Other Lies

“Even so, you call him father.”

“I have no other.”

“Why did he come into your room that night?”

“He came to get me. He pulled me to the top of the stairs. I clung to the banisters. He yanked at me with all his strength. Then my pajamas ripped. They were completely soaked because I’d wet the bed. He lost his balance and fell down the stairs. Forever.”

“What did you do?”

Henry laughed. “I went back to bed. Do you want to see the cellar?”

As they were fighting their way through the garden to the street, Jenssen stopped again. He placed a foot on a grass-covered mound of earth. “What’s this?”

Henry wiped the dust and burrs from his sleeve. “Holes. I dug everything up — looked for her all over the place. But I never found my mother.”

They reached the parking lot outside the cemetery after nightfall. For a while they sat beside each other in silence, then Jenssen opened the door. “Mr. Hayden, do you know where Betty Hansen is now?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here.”

“And where would you be?”

“At home with my wife.”

——

Henry Hayden disappeared without a trace before the novel was published. Contrary to all expectations, the book did not become a bestseller. Critics described the ending as strange and distressing. A year after Hayden’s disappearance, Obradin Basarić received a postcard from a stranger, on which was written in exquisite handwriting and brown ink: “Better always alone than never.”

SASCHA ARANGOis one of Germany’s most prominent screenplay writers and a two-time winner of the Grimme Prize, a prestigious award for German television, for his work on the long-running detective series Tatort. The Truth and Other Lies , his first novel, will be published in more than thirteen countries in 2015.

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