The Truth and Other Lies (8 page)

“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.

“Martha?”

Henry came in from the garden. He took off his rubber boots at the bootjack and listened. He looked at the clock. It was getting to be nine. Really she ought to be asleep still, but—how odd—her bicycle wasn’t where it usually was, leaning beside the door.

The vegetable stew was already cooking on the stove. Henry had just nipped out into the garden to pull up a few shallots. He put them on the kitchen counter next to the Patek Philippe, which he’d gift wrapped. The dog sniffed at his trousers.

“Where’s Martha, Poncho?”

The dog put his head on one side.
What do you want from me?
he seemed to ask.

“Then I’ll just have to do it myself.”

Henry climbed the stairs to Martha’s room and knocked gently.

“Martha?”

He put his hand on the doorknob and carefully opened the door.

“Darling? Are you awake?”

The standard lamp was on, the bed was untouched, and a book lay open on the pillow. The dog came into the room behind Henry and sniffed. Martha wasn’t in the bathroom either. Henry flung open the window and called out her name, but she didn’t reply. That was odd. But not yet cause for concern. Maybe she was in the barn.

He ran a little faster on the way down, put his boots back on and went out of the house. He opened the back door; her Saab was still there. Maybe she’d just gotten up early, taken her bike, and cycled to the sea.

Henry closed the barn door again. He stopped to think. She knows I’m already awake—she wouldn’t leave without letting me know? No, she wouldn’t. Henry decided to drive to the sea to look for her.

He opened the car door to let Poncho onto the passenger seat; the dog was simply crazy about riding in the car. But he didn’t get in; he lay down and pressed his nose to the ground. He normally did that only when Henry got out the garden hose to shower him down after he’d rolled in something foul. Henry took a piece of dried meat out of his pocket and held it up, but the dog didn’t move. Henry threw him the treat, got in the car, and started the engine. The dog knew everything.

Obradin was just pulling up the shutters in front of the fishmonger’s when Henry stopped outside and lowered his window.

“Obradin, have you seen my wife? Has she come past?”

Obradin shook his head. “I’ve only seen my own wife. I have cod. Do you want some cod?”

“Later.”

“Have you caught the marten?”

“Not yet.”

Henry drove on slowly. In the rearview mirror, he saw that Obradin was watching him. Before the harbor he took the westerly fork and reached the bay a minute later. The wind was coming in from the sea; the red flag that warned of dangerous currents was fluttering wildly. Henry left the key in the ignition, got out of the car, and walked the hundred yards over the shingle beach to the water. Martha’s bike was still propped up against the cliff. But her green parka was no longer hanging on the handlebars. The wind had blown her clothes over the beach; some of them were caught between the rocks. He saw one of Martha’s green rubber sandals lying on the shingle and bent down to pick it up. Shreds of dried seaweed were dancing over the pebbles. The surf was now ash-gray with gleaming white crests.

Right by the water stood Martha in her green parka.

His heart missed a beat when he saw her, his throat fired up, his knees began to tremble. She was standing with her back to him, barefoot, her trousers rolled up. Her hair was concealed beneath her hood. She bent down, picked up a pebble. Henry ran across the shingle to her.

“Martha!”

She turned around in alarm. Henry stood still. No, it wasn’t her. This woman was much younger; her face was pink from the wind. She smiled, startled.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were my wife. That’s her parka.”

The woman pulled the hood down off her head and Henry saw her short, reddish-brown hair. She was young, not yet thirty, and began to undo the parka. If God is another word for nature, Henry thought, then there’s no reason to doubt his existence.

“No, leave it.”

With Martha’s sandal in his hand, he shaded his eyes and looked out to sea. The woman followed his gaze.

“Are you looking for somebody?”

“My wife. She’s about your size and my age.”

Now she too looked around.

“Sorry, I haven’t seen anyone here.” An apologetic smile revealed white teeth set in firm, pink gums.