The Truth and Other Lies

5

The long corridor of the courthouse was deserted. Sitting on the wooden bench under the window, Gisbert Fasch clutched his brown briefcase in both hands with no further thought for his toothache. People passed him, some hurriedly, some hesitantly, and then vanished behind gray doors. In a dim recess of the court’s archives, he had found two gray files in a box labeled with question marks. A bureaucrat had scrawled on the files “Please destroy”; after that, they had lain forgotten in this box of delights. A real find — thank goodness for administrative sloth.

The court files on the Hayden case were meager and at first glance not particularly revealing. The disappearance of Henry’s mother, Charlotte Hayden, née Buntknopf, on the second of December 1979 was related in matter-of-fact terms. Since no one had reported her missing, there had been no attempt to find her. In the next paragraph — the death of the tax collector Martin E. Hayden the same day, late evening, due to a fall down stairs under the influence of alcohol. No connection was implied between the two events; there was no mention of murder. A tragedy, no doubt about it, mysterious and terrible enough to break a nine-year-old boy, make a genius or a criminal out of him, or silence him forever.

The whereabouts of Henry Hayden were noted only in passing; his fate was to be settled in a separate lawsuit. Since it was obvious that no one suspected the reappearance of his missing mother, Henry was granted the status of an orphan and it was arranged that he be sent to an orphanage.

A year after the disappearance of Charlotte Hayden, the care and education of little Henry was settled by the family court.

——

So Henry had been lying back then. His father had never been a big-game hunter; he’d been a tax collector in the dog-license department. And little Henry hadn’t been the sole survivor of a shipwreck, fished out of the ice-cold Norwegian Sea. He had simply been left behind. A bed wetter, that’s what he was — a bed wetter, a liar, and an unpredictable psychopath.

Fasch remembered meeting Henry over thirty years ago in the Catholic orphanage of Saint Renata. Henry had been about eleven years old at the time and not a nice boy. It’s quite possible that the career of every psychopath begins with a tragic event, but often that event is birth itself. Evil is born innocently. It grows up, seeks shape and form, and begins its work playfully. At that time Henry already had a pretty long history of children’s homes behind him; he’d been kicked out of all of them or he’d run away. But he never breathed a word on the subject. It was as if each day that passed were left behind him like a frozen stone.

When Henry came to Saint Renata he was a precocious, sturdy lad with a shadow of down on his upper lip. He was sporty and cheerful; there was something catlike about him. He was always up for a bit of fun, often at other people’s expense, but never without a certain charm. Henry had more experience with the girls than most of the other boys — and more experience in dealing with the authorities and fighting over the largest helping. That’s why he always ended up with the most. He radiated an almost adult indifference, which made him seem invulnerable and terrifyingly strong. Whether in class or in the children’s home, he never failed to keep an eye out for himself, but he did it so subtly that few actually realized they’d been conned.

He was especially talented at claiming as his own what was best in others, and he wangled praise and privileges in this way. Conscience presupposes respect, and he had neither. He must have felt pain, but it didn’t bother him, and punishment frightens only the weak. Henry was armored with something that couldn’t be seen.

In class he always sat next to the top students so he could crib better, but he was sloppy at cribbing and made mistakes. This arrogance could only mean that it was the theft alone he was interested in; the booty bored him as soon as he had it in his hands. On the odd occasion when he was caught, he put the blame on others. No one dared rat on him, for Henry could issue fatwas of limitless effect against anyone at any time. You never know when—that was Henry’s pledge of vengeance. The real threat was unspoken; it stuck fast like a poisoned arrow. Back then, Gisbert was reading Beowulf, the saga of Grendel, that disturbing mythical creature who comes out at night to abduct sleeping men and feast off them in its lair under the swamp. Henry was a replica of that monster. You never knew when he would strike, but you could be sure it would turn out badly.

His guest performance at the orphanage of Saint Renata lasted a year and three months. Then, one winter’s day, Henry disappeared and with him the director’s cash box. No one knew where or why he’d gone. And no one asked. It was a red-letter day. The echo of the long corridors was as cheerful as fairground music to Gisbert’s ears; even the nuns were relieved. According to the caretaker’s reports, Henry had smashed a small window in the boiler room and crawled out. Blood on the shards of glass indicated nasty gashes. Gisbert suspected him of abducting one of the other boys from the home, but no one was missing. Everyone waited for him to come back, but nobody went to look for him. As far as Gisbert could remember, the police weren’t called in, nor were the authorities informed. First they wanted to wait and see whether he really wasn’t going to come back. As the night lengthened, the boys in the dormitory lay awake listening for a long time. Henry did not return. Grendel had climbed back down to his ugly mother in the abysmal well.

——

To stick to the facts, Travis Forster was a pseudonym. Everyone has the right to assume a more melodious name than Gisbert Fasch, but nobody has the right to steal other people’s lives and call himself a writer if he isn’t one. Gisbert Fasch had created his nom de plume out of the names of two idols and had it entered in his passport. He chose the first name because of the fictional figure Travis Bickle, whose struggle for recognition and respect he had greatly admired ever since watching Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. He chose the surname because of the adventurer Georg Forster, a figure who has received too little attention in world history.

Gisbert Fasch, as we shall call him for the sake of simplicity, looked back from the wooden bench of the criminal court at the stuffy dormitory of Saint Renata, which in those days was studded with small portholes like the bowels of a ship. Saint Renata was a gulag; the most brutal individuals held sway over the weak, and Henry was the worst of them all. On his first day, he’d knocked out two of Gisbert’s front teeth because he wanted the upper bunk. He was not entitled to the upper bunk; as a new boy, Henry had to sleep on the bottom. Two dozen boys listened to the goings-on in the dark. After lights-out, Henry came climbing into Gisbert’s bed like the terrible Grendel and set on him without warning. He laid hold of him and dragged him onto the lower bunk. Nobody laughed; they were all terrified. Gisbert never forgot that night. He lay awake with his mouth full of blood, while the psychopath in the bunk above him screamed in his sleep and wet the bed.

When, decades later, Fasch saw the name Henry Hayden in a literary supplement, he thought it must be just a coincidence. The review spoke of his great success, then delivered a paean to his style and vigor — there was no way it could be referring to Henry. But there was a photograph portraying the author. It was him. The same gray-green eyes, the same malicious winner’s smile. Grendel was back. The gap in Gisbert’s teeth had long since been closed with two post crowns, but the memory still hurt. He bought the novel shrink-wrapped in the bookshop on the corner, ripped it open, and began to read, walking along.

Frank Ellis was indeed a no-nonsense thriller, really well written, spare, and precise down to the smallest detail — by no means the novel of the century, but that’s of no relevance here. Every sentence a stronghold read the critic’s praise on the cover. Millions had bought and read it. Fasch felt his teeth ache. He couldn’t work out how that unfeeling monster had managed to write a bestseller on his own. But if he hadn’t written the novel, then who had? And what had he done in all those years between the children’s gulag and getting published? He’d left no clues. No high school diploma, not a single publication, not so much as a minor contribution to an anthology. One would assume that a psychopath would at least have a criminal record, but nothing like that was to be found. Hayden hadn’t studied — no trace of him as a budding author anywhere, no sign of friends or fellow writers. Had he perhaps published under a pseudonym? And if so, what? Don’t even the most secretive writers reveal themselves through their lives? Aren’t they always in search of a readership? Not Henry Hayden. After escaping from the children’s home he’d gone straight underground, only to burst into prominence decades later, a comet in the literary sky.

Gisbert began his investigations secretly, as with everything he did — at least in the realm of art. With age, his dream of becoming a writer was beginning to fade. He’d long since stopped sending off manuscripts. The white nights of stapling paper in copy shops were a thing of the past, as were all those pointless readings to audiences of literary pedants, their index fingers yellow from smoking, crumbs of tobacco between their teeth. Fasch spent eleven years working on his novel about Stone Age nomads. In the end, after receiving nothing but pro forma letters of rejection, he published his life’s work himself under the pseudonym Travis Forster. That plunged him straight into bankruptcy. For another six years he led a miserable existence under the heel of the bankruptcy court. Copies of the book stood piled up unread in his small apartment; in the end he had them made into insulating fiber. After this purge of his literary self he stopped writing. His short stories, plays, and radio dramas stayed in the drawer. He went back to calling himself Gisbert Fasch and had his pseudonym removed from his passport. Basta.

Now Fasch was teaching German as a second language, mostly to Africans. He helped them create a new existence. These people cross the Atlantic in a rowboat, fleeing drought and war and poverty, and then find they have no right to residence in the land of Cockaigne without a language certificate. Gisbert’s work was right and good, and he enjoyed it. A decent job. As a hobby he wrote book reviews on Amazon. Only positive ones, mind you; he thought negative reviews were about as unproductive as the black stuff under his toenails. He wrote them under his old pseudonym, Travis Forster. For old times’ sake. But he wasn’t satisfied with himself.

Fasch followed Henry through all the European capitals, listening to him at various festivals, studying his rather skimpy interviews, analyzing all his quotations. Several times they came face-to-face but, even when their eyes met, Henry didn’t recognize Fasch. For such a discerning connoisseur of human nature, he had an incredibly bad memory for faces.

Henry could have filled huge halls, but he always chose bookshops for his readings. Fasch attended every one of them. The front rows were filled almost entirely with women, most of them at that alluring age between thirty and fifty. Fasch could see them positively hanging on Henry’s lips, listening until their thighs grew wet, letting his words enter them, all the time pretending they’d come only for the culture. Those readings were nothing but a secret lubrication fest.

True, it was powerful stuff. What Henry read was gripping, without a single superfluous word. Nonchalant in his custom-made shoes and his tweed jacket, he always read with a degree of indifference in his voice, such as the Roman emperors must have felt at the sight of the laurel wreath. He didn’t read expressively, but with an unobtrusive and down-to-earth detachment, as if he couldn’t wait to catch the train home and return at last to the solitude of his writer’s dungeon. Poor old Henry, Fasch thought. You can’t even read.

Henry took his time at the book-signing. He chatted charmingly and had his photo taken with his swooning female readers. He could captivate them all, but he never took any of them home. At some point Fasch decided to carry out the litmus test and lined up along with the others. He handed Henry a copy of Aggravating Circumstances to sign.

“For Gisbert Fasch, please.”

Henry glanced up and looked him in the eye. It was the gaze of a lion that has eaten its fill and watches the gazelles passing by. He gave a friendly nod and wrote, For Gisbert Fasch from Henry Hayden. That was all. Not so much as the flicker of an eyelid. He really had forgotten him, just as he’d forgotten the teeth he’d knocked out of his mouth and the essays he’d cribbed off him. Just as well.

From then on, Fasch avoided any more personal encounters, so as not to alert his enemy. Instead he began to piece together all the available fragments of Henry Hayden’s lost biography. It was a task that fulfilled him in every way. He stopped smoking — but that was nothing. He came off antidepressants, whose side effect is to make you so terribly fat, and he slept through the night again. Even his perfectly round bald patch stopped spreading. Find an enemy for life and you’ve no more need of a doctor.

——

Henry drove into town for lunch, parked in an underground parking lot at the station, and threw the red cell phone in a trash can near the ticket machine. In the elevator up he wondered whether he should give Betty an apartment of her own as a parting gift, but he dismissed the idea and ate a meatball at a stand right next to the parking lot, where the male prostitutes warmed themselves in the winter. Henry liked the district around the station and he liked meatballs with hot mustard. No one recognized him here; there was an atmosphere of mild despair. Anything discarded here lay around for a while.

There was no question of suggesting abortion to Betty. Maybe she’d think of it herself, in which case he would of course agree to pay for it. “We’ll still be friends” made equally inappropriate parting words; after all, they never had been friends. On the contrary, he’d always desired her more than he’d liked her. She must have sensed it, because, whenever he penetrated her, her immune system was turned on. Instead of receiving him, she resisted, which aroused him all the more, adding as it did a hint of rape to every act of intercourse. How this could have resulted in a child remained a mystery to Henry. In a somewhat throwaway remark, Betty had once summed up the sexual component of their relationship: “It may not be a match made in heaven, Henry, but we can improvise.”

But now it was over. The breakup had to be quick and conclusive; there should be no room left for hope. It was time to cleanse his conscience and start on something new. And yes, he would miss her. He’d miss her a lot. But not until after they’d split up.

Opposite the fast-food stand Henry discovered a pawnshop. INSTANT CASH was etched in the bulletproof glass door. He liked the empty promise. Henry finished the meatball, licked his fingers clean, and crossed the road with a spring in his step.

The locked door opened with a buzz. Two bespectacled men sat behind panes of armored glass, fingering pieces of jewelry. They could smell at once that he had money. Henry asked to see a diamond necklace, but it struck him as too showy; after all, splitting up is not a cause for celebration. A brooch was far too old-fashioned; and as for earrings — they were completely off-target! He was just about to leave the shop when his eye was caught by a Patek Philippe. He liked its tasteful shape; it was elegant and practical, and Betty loved practical things. What is more, like everything in a pawnshop, the watch was tied up with a tragedy. Who sells a watch if he doesn’t have to? Maybe the previous owner had been driven by need or hatred or a dark secret. Whatever had brought this watch here, its history lent it patina. Henry bought it. If Betty threw it in his face, he could always give it to Martha on their wedding anniversary.

Afternoon, four o’clock. The best time of the day, when it’s too late to catch up on whatever you’ve failed to do, when the light grows softer and the ice cubes glint in your glass. You treat yourself to a long drink instead of an afternoon nap, forget your vices, write imaginary letters, and escort yourself out of this squandered, pointlessly spent day.

Henry sauntered through the pedestrian precinct with its shops and cafés. He’d donned a baseball cap and large dark glasses so as to look like a celebrity who doesn’t want to be recognized. But nobody recognized him. Just like every day, Henry had the feeling that he’d achieved nothing, and so he couldn’t decide whether or not he deserved a short visit to a bookshop. People were pouring out of the surrounding buildings now, most of them after a hardworking nine-to-five day. They’d been slogging away for a ridiculously paltry sum of money, thoroughly and conscientiously doing their bit for family, nation, and pension. Sometimes Henry wished he could be like them, leading a normal life, and knowing what it’s like to knock off after a day’s work, at peace with oneself.

He went into a bookshop. On the table right next to the entrance he saw two of his novels, nicely displayed on a small plinth. He signed a copy surreptitiously and left the shop. He still had three hours. In an empty hardware store he found a wooden trap that was over three feet long and had flaps at both ends. It was surprisingly cheap. The salesman pulled the trap down from the enormous shelves and explained how it worked. “This is our marten hotel,” he said, not without modest pride. He snapped the flaps open and shut. “The little brutes check in, but they never check out.” Henry could smell the microorganisms inhabiting his yellowish salesman’s tongue. How, for heaven’s sake, did the poor guy put up with the monotony of his existence in among all this brand-new junk? To avoid having to inhale any more explanations, Henry fled to the checkout. Still two hours to go.

In a mall cinema he watched a Korean film in which a man was locked in a room for fifteen years without finding out why. Henry was surprised it hadn’t ever happened to him. He had bought two movie tickets, one for him, one for the marten trap. It lay there on the seat beside him like a child’s coffin. Before the film was over and the lights went up, Henry took the wooden box and crept out of the theater. It was time.

Toward seven in the evening, Henry drove back along the main road in the direction of the coast. It was already growing dark. There were no cars coming the other way and the rain fell in transparent sheets. He passed a defunct bus stop and turned off onto the sandy forest track, rolling slowly with dimmed headlights over the concrete slabs to the cliffs.

The rain was steaming on the warm earth, and swathes of mist were rising. A piece of wasteland covered with tall grasses opened out at the edge of the cliffs, shielded from the wind by pines. Crumbling foundations and rusty iron rods still stuck up out of the grass. Maybe an old bunker or a weather station had once stood there. Henry could feel the palms of his hands grow moist; his heart was beating more rapidly. As soon as he saw Betty coming, he would get into her car and tell her everything. He looked at the clock; it wasn’t yet eight. It had to be done quickly. His message would be like a sharp butcher’s knife — inflicting no pain and wielded by a sure hand. Maybe she would scream and hit him; she was bound to cry.

Betty’s green Subaru was already there. Close to the cliffs, as usual. Henry switched off the lights and rolled up to the car from behind. He could see Betty’s silhouette behind the steering wheel, illuminated by a little light in the rearview mirror, the inevitable cigarette in her right hand. She was probably listening to loud music and hadn’t noticed him yet. She had to stop that damn smoking, he thought. Maybe she’ll stop if I give her the watch.

There was a slight lurch as the bumpers touched. Henry put his foot a little way down on the accelerator and the Maserati effortlessly pushed the Subaru forward. Henry saw the brake lights flare up, then the car tipped over the edge of the cliff and vanished.

For a while Henry sat there motionless; he left the engine running. Hope the airbag didn’t go off, he thought, closing his eyes and leaning back on the leather headrest. She must be hitting the windshield now and trying to open the door. It’s dark down there; the cold salt water will help her die. Maybe she died when the car hit the water. The child in her belly won’t notice anything; it doesn’t know that it was ever alive, poor thing.

After about ten minutes he opened his eyes and switched the engine off. He got out to have a look around. The rain soaked his shirt instantly. He went and stood at the edge of the cliffs and looked down. The rock face fell away vertically; the car had fallen straight in without touching it. There was nothing to be seen; the sea had swallowed up the car — the black, indifferent sea. This would have been the right moment to jump in after it. But Henry felt nothing but the cold rain and the certainty that he had done something irreversible. He examined the front of his car. Not so much as a dent on the license plate. He ran his thumb over it; rainwater fell in his eyes. He was a criminal now, a murderer. Just as he had foreseen.

On the way home he headed for a gas station and bought a packet of chewing gum to get rid of the nasty taste in his mouth. He paid in cash, giving the money to an obese cashier who looked like an albino rabbit that had managed to escape from the laboratory. As he was paying her, he caught a glimpse of himself in the surveillance mirror over the till. Just look at that, he thought, I look the same as ever. Tomorrow afternoon at the latest someone would inform the police. Who would it be? Probably Moreany. The good man was always so easily worried, and everyone knows instinctively when it’s bad news. Then the waiting would begin, and the hoping and worrying — and in the end it would all turn out just as he feared, or even worse. The hardest thing, Henry was sure, would be the waiting itself.

It would probably be parents and concerned friends who would start to look first, get hold of a key and go to Betty’s apartment. There the ultrasound image of his baby would be hanging on the corkboard next to the fridge for all to see. But no, a pregnant woman doesn’t hang a scan by the fridge; a thing like that she carries around with her, in her handbag, for example. Maybe Betty had told the gynecologist who the father was. But why should she? It wasn’t relevant after all. This reminded him that he had always wanted to ask Betty if she kept a diary. Doesn’t every woman keep a diary at some point in her life? Presumably Betty had too. He should have asked her.

Henry was almost at the door when he heard a woman’s voice.

“Hey… you?”

Henry stopped in his tracks and turned around. The giant rabbit at the till was waving the packet of chewing gum at him. He’d forgotten it.

Henry went back, took the chewing gum, and got in the car. She would remember him. Sooner or later the police would be knocking at his door. He was prepared and he would pass every test, because he had nothing to reproach himself for. He had done what had to be done. He drove home to make Martha her chamomile tea.

The light was on in Martha’s room. That meant she’d already gone upstairs to commune with the nocturnal writing demon. Henry put down the marten trap quietly at the foot of the stairs and crept into the kitchen to boil water for the tea, and to feed the dog. The enormous kitchen was neat and tidy as usual; it smelled of grease on metal. Poncho was wagging his tail as usual. It was absolutely silent as usual. Everything was as usual. Then he suddenly thought of the phone. He tried to remember whether or not he’d taken out the little SIM card. He’d been thoughtless.

What if the phone was still working and Betty had rung him up in extremis? Who else would she call? After all she couldn’t know that he had been the dark shadow who’d pushed her over the cliffs from behind — who suspects a thing like that? The phone in the trash can next to the parking lot ticket machine would have rung; he hadn’t turned it off. Maybe someone had heard the ringing and answered it — but no, you don’t make phone calls underwater. No one can talk underwater; the cold sea gets into your mouth and into your nose. You want to live, you flail around, you blow bubbles, you struggle until your hands are battered and bleeding. No sensible person makes a phone call in such a moment. Do they?

Henry supported himself with one hand on the kitchen island’s countertop and drank scotch straight from the bottle. The cigarettes. Betty was forever flicking the burning butts into the countryside. How often had he stamped the damn things out in annoyance, preventing how many forest fires? It’s well known that cigarette butts are the first thing the forensic team looks for; every child knows that from television. Betty’s saliva on them was a major lead. And then there was his puked-up lasagna too, full of murderer’s DNA. Half a kilo of it. It was just a question of finding its owner. He might just as well have nailed signs to the trees displaying his photo and phone number. Wouldn’t it be better to call a lawyer straightaway? But what was he to say? That he’d killed his mistress by accident? That he’d just forgotten to brake?

No one would believe him. No, if anything he ought to talk to Martha first and explain everything to her; he’d done it for her after all. Martha would be bound to understand him and forgive him. Martha was never cross with him. Then again — maybe she would be this time. But she definitely wouldn’t go to the police. Poor thing, who was to look after her, if he wasn’t there anymore?

On a sudden impulse, Henry went to the window. It was still raining. Only I know what I’ve done, he thought. Who in the world would suspect him? And who would ever think of searching by the cliffs? There was no chance of tire tracks of any evidential value being found now. That was good. The rain and sea were his allies, not that he’d ever been able to bear either of them.

Henry relaxed. Strictly speaking, it could just as well have been an accident — no, it really had been an accident. Because it would all have happened just the same without him; it was entirely Betty’s fault. A case of fateful inadvertence. She had stopped at the very edge of the cliffs, hadn’t put the car into gear, hadn’t even put on the hand brake — thoughtless, the way women are. She had simply rolled a little too far. Who was going to think anything else? Who could prove the contrary? And who would ever find her?

Somewhat reassured, Henry put on his slippers, took the bottle of scotch, and crept softly down to the wine cellar to treat himself to a cigar. Not that there was anything to celebrate, but tobacco is a good antidote to negative thoughts. He sat in the cellar on the wooden stool under the naked lightbulb and smoked the entire cigar. Like all those years ago when he’d smoked his first cigar, a factory reject left by his dead father.

On that fateful night, which from a psychological point of view had marked the end of Henry’s childhood, his father had come ranting and raving up the stairs to punish Henry. Henry had hidden under the bed, his urine-soaked pajamas clinging to his legs. His father came into the room snorting like an ox, his sour beery breath polluting the air. He didn’t even turn the light on; he just reached under the bed and pulled him out. Henry could still feel that painful grip, the incredible strength with which the old man grasped him by his pajama top and then felt his trousers.

“Gone and pissed yourself again, have you, junior?”

Of course he had. It happened every night. His father dragged him out of the room to the stairs. Henry clutched the banisters and screamed for his mum. That made the old man even more furious, and he tugged at Henry, who was still clinging to the post. Then the cloth of his pajamas ripped and the heavy man crashed down the stairs to the bottom. There he remained, never to get up again. He was carried out of the house in a black plastic bag with all the neighbors looking. What happened afterward was to prove even worse.

Today, so many years later, Henry came out of the wine cellar completely drunk, tripped over the sleeping dog, and fell sideways on his face. He saw gracefully dancing lights.

The doorbell rang. Poncho leaped up and began to bark. Henry looked at the clock; it was almost eleven. The police — could they be that quick? It is well known that modern investigative techniques can perform wonders, but how the devil had they worked it all out that quickly? Maybe it had been Betty’s emergency call from the car. She hadn’t rung him; she’d rung the police. That had been her last act of revenge. Now the house was surrounded, and marksmen were lying in wait in the fields. He’d better not get up until they came into the house.

So Henry stayed lying down a little while longer. He saw the glowing cigar butt burn a small hole in the wooden floor, but it didn’t matter anymore. He remembered Dostoevsky’s superb description of the last moments of a man condemned to death before a firing squad. Never again would one minute be so intense. He didn’t like Dostoevsky otherwise, because he was so long-winded and his stories always interlocked in such a complicated way.

The doorbell rang again.

This time urgently, long-long-short, like a Morse code signal. Once again Henry saw into the future. Any second now Martha would come down the stairs. Awful idea, he thought, her watching them handcuff him and read him his rights. I expect she’ll pack my toothbrush and a change of clothes. Bound to cry then. Why did you do it? she’ll ask. I’ll have to come up with a good answer, Henry thought, and he got up to open the door on the inevitable.

Outside in the rain stood Betty.

She was alone. She looked pale and serious. Under her raincoat she had on the tailored houndstooth suit she looked so fantastic in. She’d put up her blond hair, presumably because she knew how much he liked it that way. She looked stunningly healthy and didn’t seem the least bit upset with him.

“Henry, your wife knows everything,” she said.

It was a complicated feeling. On the one hand, joy. Yes, he was glad that Martha knew everything and that Betty wasn’t hurt. Not a scratch was to be seen on her immaculate skin; she hadn’t even caught a cold from the icy water, although that could still happen of course. On the other hand, he was more than a little surprised. How had Betty managed to free herself from the sinking Subaru without ruining her hairdo? She must somehow have gone home and changed. But what was she doing turning up at his house in the best of spirits rather than going to the police? A mystery. Well, there was sure to be a straightforward explanation.

“Have you been drinking, Henry?”

“Me? Yes.”

“Henry, I must have rung you fifty times, but you just didn’t answer.”

There was no tone of reproach in her voice, Henry noted. He would have bet on her at least reproaching him for what he’d done; after all, he had tried to kill her. Instead she stepped out of the rain and kissed him on the mouth. Her kiss tasted of menthol. It was the first time she’d set foot in Henry’s house. Henry could smell the lily-of-the-valley perfume he’d given her. She’d even found time for that.

“It’s so dark here. Have you hurt yourself, my poor love?”

“I fell over.”

“You’re bleeding. Did you understand what I said?”

“No. What did you say?”

“I said: Martha came to see me earlier.”

“Who?”

“Your wife.” Betty spoke to him as if to a child. Henry didn’t like that, but now was not the moment for such trifles. “She already knows everything. Why have you been keeping it from me all this time?”

Henry could hear himself breathing.

“What does Martha know?”

Betty gave a ringing laugh. “Don’t play dumb. She knows about us two. Everything. Has done all along.”

He wondered whether he should go back to the cellar and see whether he’d fallen asleep smoking.

“Did you tell her?” he asked.

“Me? No, you told her everything.” Betty poked his chest with her index finger. Another thing he couldn’t stand.

“She came to see me. In my apartment. It’s all a lot easier than we thought.”

“How does she know where you live?”

The conversation was beginning to tire Betty. She took off her raincoat. “Well, really, she can’t know that from anyone except you. She was sad, and she was very angry and very worried about you. We drank tea together and she told me about your writing crisis. Really, she understands you and she loves you. Afterward she drove to the cliffs.”

Something cold reached into Henry’s chest. It broke through his ribs and churned everything up inside him. Betty saw him turn gray.

——

Martha’s room was neat and tidy as usual. The standard lamp was on, there was a white sheet of paper in the typewriter and the wastepaper basket was empty. Her bed was untouched. A book lay open on the pillow; her swimsuit was next to the bed. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. Henry flung open the window. Martha’s white Saab was parked below in the rain. The headlights were on; the windshield wipers were moving to and fro. He called out her name, but she did not reply.

As he was going slowly down the stairs, he saw Betty’s raincoat on the marten trap. Her slim shoes stood beside it. In the visitors’ bathroom it was dark; the door stood ajar. There were no lights on in the kitchen. Henry followed the smell of cigarette along the wood-paneled corridor to his studio. She came toward him soundlessly out of the dark.

“What’s happened, Henry?”

“She’s gone. Martha’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone? Just like that?”

“Why did you come here?”

“Martha and I had arranged to swap cars again. She asked me to. Hasn’t she come back?”

Betty wanted to walk past him out of the dark corridor. He held her back.

“What are you doing in my studio?”

“You’re hurting me! I was looking for Martha. She’s bound to come back soon. Don’t worry.”

Henry noticed that she was no longer holding the cigarette.

“What did you talk about?”

“What do you think? About you, of course. We must have talked for a whole hour about you. She idolizes you. Then I told her where we always meet.”

Henry tightened his grip.

“Why? Why did you do that?”

Betty squirmed in his grasp. “She wanted to go to you. That’s why she went to the cliffs.”

He studied her face. “How could she find her way?”

“Oh, come on, that’s why we swapped cars. Because she doesn’t have GPS. She’d never in her life have found it otherwise, as you know. Don’t say you didn’t go?”

“Give me a cigarette.”

“You did go, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. Give me a cigarette.”

Betty took one from the packet and gave Henry a light. His hands were trembling so badly that Betty had to hold them tight. Her gaze fell on the wooden box at the foot of the stairs, but she didn’t ask.

No doubt about it, Martha was dead. She’d been sitting in the car when he’d pushed it over the cliffs. He’d destroyed his life and killed the only person who’d ever loved him for his own sake. Martha was gone and with her the full life, the good life. The pictures came back to him. Henry saw her screaming soundlessly as she hit the windshield, saw her trying to open the door and the horribly cold water entering her lungs. He saw Martha die.

As he was driving Betty home, Henry felt the beginnings of a numbness on the right side of his face. It spread from his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.

“Did you tell her about the baby?”

“No, she doesn’t know anything.”

“Don’t lie to me, Betty!”

“Why should I lie?”

“Have you called anyone, talked to anyone?”

“Why are you asking? Won’t she ever come back?”

Betty sat strangely stiff beside him, her fingers with their painted nails clasped tightly together. She didn’t smoke, she didn’t look at him, and she didn’t ask any more questions, at least not audibly. Henry stared at the road ahead. In his mind’s eye he was already back home, killing the dog and emptying a canister of gasoline all over the house. He’d start with that damn drilling rig, then the books. The flames wouldn’t take long. Then the wooden staircase. The fire would spread upstairs quickly, the damn marten in the roof would burn too. That’s what comes of creeping into strangers’ houses.

“Don’t talk to anyone about it, do you hear? Not anyone.”

Then she got out. She could feel Henry’s gaze as she walked the fifty paces to her apartment.

The rain had eased off, and all the windows, except Martha’s, were dark when Henry got back. Although he knew he wouldn’t find her, Henry searched the whole house for his wife. With an excruciating certainty that was already a phantom pain, he flung open doors, called out her name, and shined a flashlight behind bookcases and into cupboards and corners, as if it were a silly game of hide-and-seek. Of course she didn’t respond to his calls, because she was lying at the bottom of the sea, but the thought was simply unbearable, so he called out another dozen times.

In his studio he found Betty’s burned-out cigarette. The blinds were down; she couldn’t have seen much, not enough to understand. But all the same, she’d crept into his studio in stocking feet to snoop about.

He drove Martha’s Saab into the barn. He searched the car, but found only an old wooden sandal, yellowing maps, and empty water bottles. The whole interior of the car smelled of Betty’s lily-of-the-valley perfume. The dog panted after him as he came out with a spade and two canisters of gasoline and went into the kitchen. He wanted to set fire to the house first, and then hurl himself into the well behind the chapel. He put down the canisters, laid the sharp spade on the counter, and drank the remains of the whisky from the bottle. As soon as he was drunk enough he was going to use the spade to chop off Poncho’s head. But however much he drank, he remained sober. Stuff tastes like whisky, he thought, but it must be water, otherwise I’d be drunk. He took the rubber gloves out of the sink. OK, let’s get it over with. Come here, you filthy cur.

The dog had slunk away. Henry staggered through the house, knocked his shin, and made a change of plan.

He grabbed Martha’s green parka, took the dirty laundry out of the laundry basket, and stuffed underwear, sandals, shirt, and trousers into a plastic bag. Then he put her folding bicycle carefully into the trunk of the Maserati and set off. In the rearview mirror he could see two shining yellow points. It was the eyes of the dog watching him. The creature knew everything.

Four o’clock in the morning, an hour before sunrise. The narrow road to the bay led through the town. Bright moonlight shone on the roofs as Henry let the car roll along the main street, his headlights switched off. A cat crossed the road in front of him carrying that night’s prey in its jaws.

Sleepless as usual at a full moon, Obradin stood smoking as the Maserati glided along under his window. He heard the familiar rumble of the engine and recognized the curves of the bodywork. Nobody drives toward the harbor at night with the lights off without good reason. Unless Henry was intending to load the car onto a ship in the harbor and sail away, he would at some point have to return the way he’d come. In the bed up against the wall his Helga turned over without waking and stretched out her fleshy hand to feel for him. He fetched his Russian night-vision device from the cupboard, opened a new packet of cigarettes, and went back to stand at the window and wait.

Beyond the little fishing harbor was the bay. Henry carried the bike over the shingle beach and propped it up against the fissured cliff just as Martha had always done. He hung her parka over the handlebars by its hood and positioned her clothes carefully next to the bike as she herself might have done. Then he looked out at the cold, gleaming sea. Were the fish already eating Martha’s corpse, or might her body be washed ashore here? Would she still be wearing clothes? How amateurishly I’ve acted, he thought. Why did I do it? The eternal metronome of the surf rolled the stones to and fro, slowly grinding them to sand. Martha had always loved the sea. But why?

As Obradin had predicted, the Maserati rolled back along the road under his window half an hour later. The headlights were still switched off. On the green image of the goggles’ residual light amplifier Obradin could see Henry sitting at the wheel. After careful consideration, Obradin reached the conclusion that an author can have many compelling reasons for driving to the harbor at night with his lights off — the quest for the mot juste, for instance. The search for the right word had driven Flaubert out of the house at night, Proust into bed, Nietzsche into lunacy — why the hell should Henry Hayden be spared? This elegant conclusion brought Obradin temporary relief. When the sound of the engine had died away, he got into bed beside his wife and instantly fell asleep.

Shortly before sunrise, Henry was home again. The dog was waiting for him in the same spot. He trotted behind him into the house. In the fireplace Henry put a match to Martha’s swimsuit, then sat down in his wing armchair and watched the burning polyester melt into a glowing ball. It had been a bargain, bought on the promenade in outrageously expensive San Remo, and had fit her so well, accentuating her shapely but not skinny waist. She had spun around in front of the mirror, as pleased as a child. Afterward they’d drunk Campari together and written postcards. Happiness can only be experienced with someone else, he had thought at the time. And now that was all over and done with. Charred into little pellets of plastic.

In the warmth of the flames, Henry could feel the numbness on the right side of his face. It had spread across his cheek as far as his nose. He touched his skin with his fingertips. I’m rotting, he decided. I’m rotting from the inside out. Serves me right.

And then he heard a scratch of sharp teeth above him.