The Truth and Other Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the psychiatric clinic. Her small desk and swivel stool stood under the sloping roof at the dormer; her bed, with its white covers, stood between the dormer and the bathroom door. Henry had really wanted to buy a French château with the first million from Frank Ellis , but Martha thought castles were too big and cold, and she insisted on something more modest. While she was working on the next novel, Henry had discovered the old manor house on the coast, fucked the estate agent, and set about restoring the property straightaway.
    Henry looked around Martha’s study, listening. There was a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. There were no crumpled-up pages lying around; the small wastepaper basket was empty; there were no notes, nothing that suggested rough drafts or corrections. The cataract of words poured out of her brain and straight through the machine onto the paper; not a single word got spilled.
    “Can you hear it?”
    “I can’t hear anything.”
    “Maybe it’s asleep.”
    They both listened in silence. Now was the moment, he thought. Now he had to tell her. But his thoughts didn’t turn into words.
    “It was a stork on the roof.”
    “There aren’t storks at night, Henry.”
    “True. Where did you hear it?”
    Martha indicated a point on the ceiling. “There. Over the bed.”
    Henry pulled off his shoes, climbed onto the bed, and pressed his ear against the sloping ceiling. A narrow crawl space ran along the length of the roof between the lining and the rafters. The air it contained provided first-rate insulation. For the space of a few breaths Henry didn’t move. Then he heard it. There was indeed something gnawing in the rafters directly overhead. He could hear the rasp of sharp teeth. Then it stopped; the animal seemed to be aware of him.
    Henry got down off the bed with the expression of a concerned expert.
    “There’s something there.”
    “How big?”
    “It’s not moving anymore.”
    “A marten?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Bigger or smaller than a cat?”
    “Smaller. Don’t worry yourself. I’ll catch it.”
    “But you won’t kill it.”
    He put his shoes on. “Of course not. And now I’ll go and buy some fish.”

4
    The small town fronted onto a bay. Low houses, a natural harbor, little shops, and pointless flower beds. No monument, but a small bookshop where a framed picture of Henry hung on the wall—for the tourists who came here on pilgrimage to meet the famous author.
    Obradin Basarić, the local Serbian fishmonger, put aside his knife and washed his hands when he heard Henry’s Maserati. As he’d plastered the shop’s window with photographs of fish, he could only guess at what went on in the street. For Obradin, Henry was—since the death of Ivo Andrić— the greatest living writer. The fact that Henry had chosen to settle in this nondescript coastal town couldn’t be a coincidence, because coincidences happen only to atheists. At least once a week Henry came to him to buy fish, smoke unfiltered Bosnian cigarettes with him, and philosophize about life. This most congenial and at the same time most brilliant of all people was a lover of fish—and he, Obradin Basarić, sold fish. Where did coincidence come into that?
    Henry had asked Obradin not to tell anyone where he lived, and Obradin had promised. But the secret knowledge weighed on him. When the tourists—most of them women—came into the fishmonger’s to inquire shyly or with shameless directness about Henry, he would lie to their faces, telling them that no one of that name lived there, when all the time he would have given anything to tell them that he was a particular friend of his. At night his wife, Helga, often heard him yelling in his sleep: I know him! He’s my friend!
    “You can’t imagine how awful it is to have a secret,” he confessed to Henry when they were out fly-fishing one day. “A secret like this,” he continued, “is a parasite. It feeds on you and grows bigger and bigger. It wants