Next Life Might Be Kinder (23 page)

I
THINK IT WAS
Edward G. Robinson, but it may have been John Garfield, in some noir movie or other, who spoke the line “Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I guess I lied in a big way, all right.” To the three detectives in Philip and Cynthia's living room I had lied in a big way. Because here is what had happened the night before.

Lily Svetgartot had telephoned me at about eight
P.M.
(She had finagled my unlisted number from Philip or Cynthia.) “Sam, I had too much to drink and mentioned to Mr. Istvakson about seeing you on the beach near Philip and Cynthia's house that night in the moonlight. Also, Emily Kalman told him you had mistaken her for your wife. Now he's driving out to Port Medway to have a look for himself. For the purposes of research. I've never seen him so excited.”

“He can't leave well enough alone,” I had told her.

“No, even if ‘well enough' isn't really very well at all.”

The best thing would have been for me to have stayed in my cottage. What could Istvakson have done but wander around the empty beach and drive home? I started to drink Scotch and, while drinking, pictured him driving, dressed in a Robert Mitchum raincoat (no one wore a raincoat like Robert Mitchum), his car screeching and spinning off a cliff, maybe near Peggy's Cove. I don't like Scotch all that much; after three or four drinks I walked across to the beach and waited. In half an hour or so, I saw the yellow tunnels of his headlights in the fog. Lily Svetgartot must've provided him with directions. She must have. It was pelting down rain. He parked his car at a steep angle in front of Philip and Cynthia's house. The house was dark except for a light in the kitchen. Istvakson was what Elizabeth would call a big stumblebum. Ungainly in his black raincoat and galoshes, he moved heavily and was carrying a camera. He saw me and started to shout, “Where is she? Where is she?”

“Go back to Halifax!” I shouted. “Get in your car and go back to Halifax!”

On the beach now, Peter Istvakson started taking photographs in a crazy way, turning left and right, spinning around sharply—light flashes every ten seconds or so—lest he miss Elizabeth behind him, to his left, to his right, or behind him again. He stumbled and fell, righting himself with difficulty, snapping photographs.

“Sam Lattimore, my writer,” he said in half-garbled pleading. “This place. This place you come down to see your wife. I'm sorry for violating this beach. But I've found my ending. I've discovered my ending.”

He reeled unsteadily backward into the water, roughhoused by waves, up to his waist. He attempted to hold his camera above his head, but when he saw that wasn't working, he flung it in a high arc onto the beach. And then I walked into the ocean myself, right up to Istvakson, said, “Go back to Halifax!” and pushed him. Even harder a second time, pushed him. He groaned, “What—?” He lost his footing, falling backward into the waves. His arms and legs flailed for a few seconds. Then he disappeared.

I may have been under every influence except sanity, but I recognized this for what it was, the exact thing it was. The water taking him. One minute here, the next gone. Though I had not held him under, still it was a hands-on drowning. I can testify to that.
Give me a witness!
I'm that witness. I began wildly sweeping my arms beneath the water. Nothing. I stepped forward, sliding my feet along, again waving my arms as deep in the water as I could manage. I changed direction, probed with one foot and then the other, half losing my own balance, sobering up. I don't know how long I was out there. Life seemed to be moving in slow motion, even taking in breath was difficult, fits and starts, anxious. I was aware of thinking,
Don't black out again. Don't black out.
I turned back to shore. There was Elizabeth. Holding her books. I didn't know what she had or hadn't seen. She took a few tentative steps backward, then turned and walked toward the trees. I thought,
If she saw what I did, she won't come back.

Standing there. Attempting to keep my balance. Staring at the water. Feeling the pull of the tide. I then thought—I remember thinking,
I have a nice fire going in the fireplace.
I had become the person who had done this thing. Just in the time it took to drag myself out of the cold water is all it took to say to myself: You won't own up.

I didn't knock on Philip and Cynthia's door to own up. I didn't call the Halifax police to own up. I didn't call Lily Svetgartot to own up. The only other thing I remember from that night was saying out loud—it wasn't a prayer—“I hope Elizabeth didn't see anything.”

Through my kitchen window, at first light, I was watching the cove through binoculars. It was lightly raining. I saw Philip, dressed in a bulky sweater, trousers, and galoshes, walk down to the beach. I followed his movements and saw him approach a body stretched half in the water and half on the sand. A few gulls scattered off. With great effort Philip dragged Istvakson, face-down, fully onto the sand. Istvakson's raincoat was spread out like enormous black wings, and he had one shoe missing. (A week later Philip told me, “The toxicology report showed Istvakson had enough alcohol in his blood to kill a horse.”) Philip then hurried to his house, and presumably it was then that he called the police, or Lily Svetgartot, or both.

In the context of continuing to lie to detectives, to this day I still haven't mentioned that, when I knew that Istvakson had drowned, I'd picked up his camera from the sand, and later I sent the film to Montreal to be developed (accompanied by a note that read, “Still photographs from a movie set”). Thirty-one photographs of a beach at night, empty but for the visible scrawls of rain. Actually, as guilt mercilessly set in, I considered handing the photographs over to the detectives, describing what had happened that night and taking the consequences. That thought was short-lived, though. Because when I sent the film to be developed, I also asked that a set of eight-by-ten prints be made. About a week later, when I put the prints in neat rows on the kitchen table, I discovered that in one photograph I was visible, my mouth in the grotesque elastic shape of Edvard Munch's
The Scream
(I was hardly recognizable, even to myself). In another photograph, Philip and Cynthia appear, albeit in silhouette, at their upstairs bedroom window. They had seen. Obviously Philip and Cynthia had seen.

Philip and Cynthia have not owned up to the detectives, protective friends that they are. Situational ethics in Port Medway. In turn, they don't know about the photographs, which are in a drawer in the guest room of my cottage.

My guess is that this is not what Istvakson had in mind for an ending.

T
HREE DAYS AFTER
the drowning, a visibly distraught Lily Svetgartot arrived at my door at about five o'clock. “I haven't slept in ten years,” she said. In appearance she was entirely disheveled, a mess. No surprise there. I stepped aside and she walked in and began talking as if in midsentence: “And Istvakson figured he had only three or four days left to shoot the movie. Contractually, Emily Kalman's work was done, but Istvakson begged her not to leave yet. So Emily gave him a week more. She likes Halifax. Istvakson was at wit's end. He was drinking like a fish. That expression, ‘like a fish,' and everyone on set was quite put off, you see. Quite put off, and quarreling, everyone was quarreling. Over the smallest things quarreling.” At the counter, she started to make coffee. She turned and said, “Sam—okay, I'm going to say this straight out. Michiko Zento has come up with an ending. She's been burning the midnight oil—right way to say it? Studying hard Istvakson's research notes. I'm just going to say it. The ending she's come up with—and I think that this comes from Istvakson's notes—rest in peace, Peter Istvakson. Though he probably won't rest in peace.”

“Miss Svetgartot—Lily. Please, just tell me what ending she's going to use.”

“What happens is, a psychiatrist that you—that is, your character—has been talking to. This is in the script, after the wife Elizabeth is murdered. Your psychiatrist reveals confidential information. About your seeing Elizabeth on the beach at night.”

“A psychiatrist does this? Unlikely. Whom does he give this information to?”

Lily took a deep breath and said, “Well, we don't actually see who. We just see the psychiatrist in a pub, and he's talking to someone. We don't see who he's talking to. The psychiatrist is all nervous and fidgety. He looks like he knows he shouldn't be talking about any of this, but he's doing it anyway.”

“Right now! I'll drive to Halifax and have a little chat with Miss Zento.”

Lily wrapped her arms around me, pressing her face close to mine. Then I felt her tighten her embrace as she said, “I'm afraid it's too late. They have already shot the ending. And Miss Zento and Mr. Akutagawa have left for Japan. Separate flights.”

“Lily,” I said, “please sit down.”

She let go of me and sat at the kitchen table. Her face was flushed and she began to comb her hair rapidly with her fingers. “Lily, five deep breaths,” she said, then loudly inhaled and exhaled five times. “The final ending won't please you in the least, either, Sam. It can't. See, what happens is, we are now on the beach behind Philip and Cynthia's house. There's all sorts of people there. We haven't seen any of them before. Except for Elizabeth—Emily Kalman, I mean. And the actor playing the dance instructor Arnie Moran. There's a bandstand. On the beach. There's a big wooden console radio. This radio is playing loud dance music from the 1930s. And the characters of Arnie Moran and Elizabeth are dancing to jitterbug music. It's supposed to be taking place in the 1930s, you see. A sudden time travel, and it's a kind of dance hall. And then along comes the Sam Lattimore character. He is all nicely dressed. He walks right up and cuts in on Arnie Moran. He takes his wife in his arms. The camera holds on her face a long time. She's staring right into the camera. The music gets louder. Then the screen goes dark.”

I sat down at the table. “But if Istvakson already had this in a notebook—”

“Yes, exactly,” Lily said. “Then why would he need to go down to the beach?”

I asked Lily Svetgartot to leave.

“Sam, I'd like to give you my address in Norway. The city of Bergen. I leave tomorrow for there.”

“You're a good person, Miss Svetgartot,” I said, purposely sounding as formal as humanly possible. By her expression, I could see the formality had struck a chord. “But no thank you.”

“Having my address on a piece of paper can't hurt,” she said. “That's a phrase I learned, ‘It can't hurt.' But then again, I suppose you'll always associate me with this movie you're going to hate. Associate me with everything else that's happened. How can you not?”

I walked her outside and stood on my porch and watched as she made her way over to Cynthia and Philip's door. More goodbyes. A short time later, I heard her car start up, and from my bedroom window I saw her taillights fade and finally disappear down the road.

T
HE TITLES OF
the books missing from the Port Medway Library:
A Child's Christmas in Wales,
The Black Swan in Swansea,
Lyddie by the Sea in Wales,
The Silly Caterpillar in Caerphilly,
A Treasury of Welsh Tales,
The Girl Who Walked Across Wales,
The Morning I Saw Mary Jones at the Market at Blaenau Ffestiniog, Cobbler Harry of Haverfordwest,
The Big Storm in Tonyrefail,
The Dream of Macsen Wledig,
and
Preiddeu Annwfn: A Story about a Magic Cauldron.

I spent a good two hours with the staff at John W. Doull Booksellers in Halifax, and through their kind patience ordered the missing titles. They said it might take months to obtain all eleven. As it happened, in nine weeks Doull's sent me a postcard saying that the books had arrived. The next day I drove to the bookshop, where I found a neatly packed box waiting for me. I settled my bill and then drove to the Port Medway Library and delivered the books to Bethany Dawson.

“Do you want your name mentioned in the church bulletin,” she asked, “in this regard?”

“Not necessary. But you might help me with something.”

“If I can, I will.”

“Whom do I talk to about obtaining a grave site in Port Medway?”

“Feeling right at home, are we, Mr. Lattimore?”

C
YNTHIA TELEPHONED TO
ask if I'd like to drive out to Vogler's Cove. Sitting in the café there, she told me that before I'd moved into the cottage, she and Philip had invested money in the movie. “It was fairly simple,” she said. “There had been a public call for investors, and we signed right up. We were told that roughly ten percent of the budget had to come from private sources. Just so you know, that's why we got to meet the cast and crew. The whole movie thing, it spiced up our life a little, I'll admit. But as we got to know and love you, it's become awkward, obviously. On the one hand, we had the famous actress Emily Kalman to the house for dinner. On the other hand, the movie became the bane of your existence. Which was hard for Philip and me to see happening, Sam. Really it was.”

“You've seen things, that's for sure. And you've been dear friends. That's all that matters.”

“I have to say this, too. Philip and I have seen you on the beach I can't count how often. And we have never seen Elizabeth.”

“Yet I've never once felt that you were just—”

“Hospitable to your delusions?”

“Oh, right. I told you that's what Dr. Nissensen said you were being.”

“But that's definitely not what we're doing. Want to know something? What you've been experiencing in your life—” Tears came to her eyes and she looked away.