The Truth and Other Lies

9

There was something not quite right about Henry’s story. Martha hadn’t drowned on the beach. Betty didn’t believe she had returned home from the cliffs. What was clear was that her Subaru was still missing — who knew, maybe it was rusting away at the bottom of the sea with Martha in the driver’s seat. This all meant that Betty herself was mixed up in the affair. Strictly speaking, she was even partly to blame for Martha’s death, because she had stolen her husband from her — or had that been fate? If the car were to be found, there’d be a great many awkward questions. Betty decided to look on the bright side for the time being. Martha’s death had cleared the way for a life with Henry and the baby.

She remembered how Henry had once said that if you make your dreams come true you have to live with them. He’d made happiness sound like a traumatic experience you could never entirely come to terms with. He himself no longer had any dreams, Henry had added; he’d already achieved everything. Apart from that, Henry had revealed hardly anything about himself. He never spoke of his past, as if it were some unsavory thing that had to be hidden away before the guests arrived for dinner. If he spoke at all, he spoke about the time after Betty had met him. She had the feeling that, for each person, Henry chose a past to suit the occasion. He twisted it like a kaleidoscope, always revealing a different aspect of the same thing.

Moreany had proposed to her in his Jaguar in the parking lot outside the office. He spoke frankly of his feelings for her and of the fortune she would inherit when he was no longer around. Betty was surprised and genuinely touched. At the same time she felt another wave of nausea and asked him for some time to think it over, which she later regretted, because there wasn’t anything to think over. They parted with a kiss on the cheek. Moreany walked across the parking lot with a spring in his step; Betty unlocked her rental car to drive to the police. From long-established habit, she glanced up at the fourth floor. Honor Eisendraht was standing at the window.

Honor tore a leaf off the dragon tree and crushed it between her fingers. She had observed the kiss by the Jaguar and now, watching Moreany cross the parking lot on winged feet, she felt a strong desire to flay the skin off her own face. When Honor had started to work for Moreany all those years ago she had been young and desirable. Why, oh why, had she kept quiet all those years in her office chair, serving and waiting until someone younger came along and took everything away from her? It is well known that our worst mistakes are the ones we don’t notice.

Moreany came into the outer office breathing heavily; he must have taken the stairs instead of the lift. Honor wondered whether he really believed that death would make an exception for him and grant him an extra day for this ludicrous exercise.

“Have they found the poor woman?” she asked.

Moreany understood at once who she meant. “No. She must have been caught by a current; they’ll never find her.”

Moreany went into his office. He left the door ajar as usual. Honor could hear paper rustling. She got up from her chair, smoothed her skirt, and stepped into his office. Moreany was rummaging around on his desk; he was still out of breath.

“How’s Mr. Hayden?”

“Amazingly well,” Moreany replied. “Amazing.”

“Can I do anything? Shall I prepare a statement for the press?”

Moreany interrupted his search, propping himself up on the desk with both hands. “Honor, that would be wonderful. Please don’t write ‘deceased,’ no details, and put it on my desk.”

“I’ll make some valerian tea.”

“No need to do that. I have to leave again in a second.”

“A Mr. Fasch rang up three times.”

“Who is he?”

“He says he’s an old school friend of Mr. Hayden.”

Honor Eisendraht waited at the window until Moreany had gotten in his car and driven off. She went into his office. After she poured herself a double scotch from the glass decanter that stood on the little black ebony table, she sat down at his desk. “We’ll have to postpone Venice,” Moreany had said to Betty when they’d heard about Martha Hayden’s death. Yes, Honor thought, go to Venice, just you go. There’s a laguna morta there. I’ll wait there for you, Betty, you damned whore, and I’ll drown you.”

She drained the glass and began to rifle through the drawers. She removed a blond hair and a big fat fly from the pen groove. Honor was looking for travel documents, plane tickets, or a hotel reservation in Venice. The middle drawer was locked. Honor felt for the key under the leather desk mat and unlocked it. Along with notes and press cuttings, she found an empty pillbox and some cash. Right at the bottom was a yellow A5 envelope, unmarked. It wasn’t sealed. She opened it gingerly. Inside were two MRI images of Moreany’s lumbar vertebrae and histological findings of the tumors that had permeated his vertebral body.

Reports in hand, Honor hurried back into the outer office, shuffled the tarot deck, and turned over the top card. It was the Tower again. Now there was no longer the shadow of a doubt.

At the police station Betty reported her Subaru stolen. As she was filling out the insurance form beneath the searching gaze of the officer on duty, she could feel her breasts ache and the nausea return. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had anything to eat. Moments later she was throwing up sour water in a urinal, because the women’s toilet was occupied. The reason for her nausea was not Moreany’s proposal, nor was it Henry’s absurd story about his wife’s death on the beach. It was clearly the baby in her belly. It wouldn’t be possible to conceal it for much longer. She urgently needed to decide on a plan of action with Henry.

She left the police station through the steel security door and leaned against the sunlit brick wall surrounding the grounds. Mechanically, she took a cigarette from the packet, lit it, and inhaled. The menthol smoke tasted revolting. Betty threw the cigarette onto the street along with the packet and bought herself a newspaper at a kiosk.

Author Henry Hayden’s Wife Drowned, it said on the bottom of the front page in smallish print. It was just a brief report without a photograph. Betty dug her telephone out of her bag and called Henry. Because she knew he didn’t have an answering machine, she let it ring for a long time. Henry didn’t answer. Betty waited about a minute and then tried again.

——

The brute had bitten him. Henry rinsed the wound in clean water and examined it. The sharp teeth had cut right through to the bone, leaving blue-red holes below his wrist. Downstairs in the kitchen the phone was ringing. Henry ignored it and looked in Martha’s bathroom mirror.

His face was black with dust and wood shavings; cobwebs and mummified larvae hung in his hair. He looked like Indiana Jones without the hat. His left ear was encrusted with blood; his shirt was ripped to shreds; his arms, belly, and legs were studded with splinters of wood.

After opening up the wall behind Martha’s bed in a fit of frustrated pique, he’d gone on a marten hunt armed with a small speargun. It was a completely absurd undertaking — an example of what Freud rightly calls “symptomatic actions,” because they “give expression to something which the agent himself does not suspect in them and which he does not as a rule intend to let others know about, but to keep to himself.” Well, who could be blamed?

Between the roof tiles and the thermal insulation was a narrow crawl space. Henry had climbed through the hole in Martha’s wall into the roof cavity and had crawled on his stomach like a soldier over the rough-hewn planks. He kept pausing, listening, and then working his way forward again. He could smell the animal’s secretions. After a while he heard the patter of curved claws on the wood, cocked the trigger on the speargun, switched off his headlight, and held his breath.

But martens are hunters too. It could see, hear, and smell better than Henry — and this was its territory. The animal could sense danger and didn’t leave its hiding place; its instincts protected it. Animals don’t understand much, but they know everything. Humans make mistakes, because they believe; humans rush headlong toward ruin, because they hope. Animals don’t hope, they don’t look into the future, and they don’t doubt themselves. That’s why the marten didn’t leave its hiding place.

Henry found eggshells, feathers, bones, and pungent-smelling droppings that were still soft and oily. As he squeezed his way on through the labyrinth of old oak beams, long splinters of wood pushed their way into his skin. He ignored the pain. So much the better, he thought. If the filthy brute smells my blood it might make the mistake of coming closer. But the filthy brute did not appear.

At some point Henry realized that he’d lost his bearings. Martha’s room was on the west side of the house; the roof here was a good hundred feet long. He had crawled maybe sixty feet. Wind whistled through a crack from somewhere and blew dried insects up his nose. He had to sneeze and tried to turn over in the tight space. As he was performing this maneuver, he knocked his headlight off, and the battery rolled out of its plastic compartment. When Henry tried to roll onto his back in the dark he accidentally pulled the trigger. With a dull thud the steel spear landed in the beam right next to his ear. It had been driven half a finger deep into the oak. If the spear had hit him in the face, it would have pierced his brain stem. Henry had to laugh. It was ridiculous. A man who manages to shoot himself with a speargun in his own crawl space has earned his place in the Darwin Awards. Henry remained lying there doubled up for a while.

The marten came up from behind him and climbed over his legs. Henry felt its claws in his calves. Its fur was warm and silky-soft as it slid along Henry’s waist to his upper arm. The animal sniffed at him; a whisker tickling his shoulder. The marten had come to inspect its prey. Henry took stock of the situation. If he kept lying there, the marten would eat his corpse and start a family. He made a grab for it and caught its tail; the brute squeaked and bit him. Its sharp teeth pierced the nerve above his wrist. Henry recoiled, let go, went to kick out at the marten, and managed to ram the speargun into his own ear. After the pain had subsided, Henry decided to let things rest for the time being. He closed his eyes and, after a few breaths, fell asleep.

Threads of light were shining through the cracks in the roof. As he awoke, Henry could smell the putrid secretion that the marten had sprayed onto his shirt. The marten had left its mark on him! You’ve no business being here was the meaning of its stinking autograph; you’ve invaded my territory; you can’t get the better of me here.

Henry began his retreat, crawling between the beams. More splinters pushed their way into his skin. It was an eternity before he reached the hole in Martha’s bedroom wall and squeezed through the opening into his own territory. Poncho was lying on Martha’s bed wagging his tail in delight. The faithful soul had waited there for him. The dog sniffed his hand; it could smell the marten. Henry felt a warm rush of gratitude. He hugged the dog. “My friend, my good friend,” he whispered to him, “you know I’m a completely worthless idiot and you still stand by me.” Henry began to pull the splinters out of his skin.

Downstairs the phone was ringing. Henry looked up and listened. The ringing stopped and then started again. It must be Betty. It was time he told her what had really happened on the cliffs.

When he came into the kitchen after showering and bandaging his wrist, the telephone had stopped ringing. Henry saw on the display that Betty had called four times. Uncertain whether to call her back or not, he opened a tin of Premium dog food for Poncho and spread truffle paste on a slice of bread. The phone rang again. Henry saw that it wasn’t Betty and picked it up. The friendly Jenssen gave his name in a matter-of-fact tone.

“We’ve found your wife, Mr. Hayden.”

Martha’s corpse had been found on the coast nearby. Height, weight, and hair color tallied. Jenssen asked with sensitivity whether Henry thought he would be able to come to forensics to identify the dead woman.

The cold embrace of fear choked Henry. After making a note of the address of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, he put the phone down carefully, as if it were made of unfired porcelain, and felt the floor give way beneath him. He clutched a corner of the kitchen island. The room, all the house around him, shot deep down into the earth as if through an invisible shaft. As he gathered speed he became weightless, and, bewildered by the effect of the levitation, he stretched out his arms and came crashing down with his chin on the countertop.