The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel Read online

  “You really were going to elope?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why you said it was your fault when you called me the other day? You arranged to meet her, and she disappeared on her way to your rendezvous . . .”

  He nodded, appalled.

  “Were it not for that meeting, she might still be alive today.”

  When we left the room, Roth told me that this story about the planned elopement was a disaster, and that it must not get out, under any circumstances. If the prosecution got hold of this, Harry was screwed. In the parking lot, we went our separate ways. I waited until I was in my car before opening my notebook and reading what Harry had written:

  Marcus—on my desk there is a porcelain pot. Inside, you’ll find a key. It’s the key to my locker at the gym in Montburry. Number 201. Everything is there. Burn it all. I am in danger.

  Montburry was about ten miles inland of Somerset. I went there that afternoon after stopping by Goose Cove and finding the key in the pot, hidden under paper clips. There was only one gym in Montburry, in a modern glass building on the town’s main road. In the empty changing rooms, I found locker 201 and opened it with the key. Inside was a sweat suit, some protein bars, a pair of weight-lifting gloves, and the wooden box I had discovered a few months earlier in Harry’s office. It was all in there: the photographs, the articles, the handwritten note from Nola. I also found a thickly bound sheaf of yellowed pages. The cover page was blank; there was no title. I flipped through the other pages. It was a handwritten text, and as soon as I had read the opening lines, I understood that this was the manuscript of The Origin of Evil. So this manuscript that I had searched so long for a few months earlier had been hidden in a gym locker all that time. I sat down on a bench and took a moment to skim the pages, excited and amazed: The writing was perfect, with no cross outs. Men entered the locker room to get changed, but I took no notice; I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the manuscript. The masterpiece I had so desperately wanted to write . . . Harry had written it. He had sat at a table in a diner and written words of absolute genius, taking care to hide within his work the story of his love affair with Nola Kellergan.

  When I got back to Goose Cove, I obeyed Harry to the letter. I lit a fire in the living room hearth and threw the contents of the box into it: the letter, the photographs, the press clips, and last, the manuscript. I am in danger, he had written to me. But what danger did he mean? The flames grew higher. Nola’s letter turned to ashes, and the photographs burned from the inside out, disappearing completely in the heat. The manuscript caught fire in a huge orange flame, and the pages disintegrated into cinders. Sitting in front of the fireplace, I watched Harry and Nola’s story disappear.

  Tuesday, June 3, 1975

  The weather was bad today. It was late afternoon and the beach was deserted. The sky was darker and more threatening than it had been since his arrival in Somerset. The wind whipped up the ocean, which foamed and raged. Soon it would rain. It was the bad weather that had drawn him out of the house: He had gone down the wooden staircase that led from the deck to the beach and had sat on the sand. With his notebook on his knees, he let his pen slide over the paper; the imminent storm inspired him with ideas for a great novel. In recent weeks he’d had several good ideas for his new book, but none of them had led anywhere.

  The first drops fell from the sky, sporadically at first, and then suddenly it was a shower. He wanted to run and find shelter, but it was at that moment that he saw her: She was barefoot by the ocean, her sandals in her hand, dancing in the rain and skipping in the waves. He watched her, wonderstruck. She was following the pattern of the eddies, careful not to wet the hem of her dress. In a brief moment of inattention, she let the water rise up to her ankles and laughed with surprise. She waded a little deeper into the gray ocean, whirling around and offering herself to the immensity. It was as if the world belonged to her. The wind blew her blond hair, but a yellow clip in the shape of flowers prevented it from blowing into her face. Torrents of water were now pouring from the sky.

  When she noticed his presence about thirty feet from her, she stopped in her tracks. Embarrassed that he had seen her, she called out, “Sorry . . . I didn’t notice you there.”

  He felt his heart pound.

  “Please don’t apologize,” he replied. “Continue. Please continue! It’s the first time I’ve seen someone love rain so much.”

  She was radiant.

  “You love it too?” she asked enthusiastically.

  “Love what?”

  “The rain.”

  “No . . . I . . . I hate it, in fact.”

  Her smile was glorious.

  “How can you hate rain? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Look at it! Look!”

  He lifted his head. Water was beading on his face. He watched those millions of dashes streaking the landscape, and he turned around in a circle. She did the same. They laughed. They were both soaked. They ended up taking refuge between the deck pillars. From his pocket he took out a pack of cigarettes that had been partly spared the deluge, and lit one.

  “Can I have one?” she asked.

  He handed her the pack and she took one. He was captivated.

  “You’re the author, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “From New York . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a question for you: Why leave New York to come to this hole?”

  He smiled. “I felt like a change of scenery.”

  “I would love to visit New York!” she said. “I’d walk around for hours, and I’d see all the shows on Broadway. I would love to be a star. A star in New York . . .”

  “Excuse me,” Harry said, “but do we know each other?”

  She laughed again that delicious laugh.

  “No. But everyone knows who you are. You’re the author. Welcome to Somerset. My name is Nola. Nola Kellergan.”

  “Harry Quebert.”

  “I know. Everyone knows—I told you.”

  He held out his hand to shake hers, but instead she leaned on his arm and, standing on tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek.

  “I have to go. Don’t tell anyone that I smoke, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Author. I hope I’ll see you again.”

  And she vanished into the pouring rain.

  Who was this girl? His heart was racing. For a long time he stayed there under the deck, motionless; he stayed there until darkness fell. He was no longer aware of the rain, or the night. He wondered how old she could be. She was too young, he knew. But he was smitten. It felt as if she had set fire to his soul.

  A call from Douglas brought me back to reality. Two hours had passed. Daylight was fading. Nothing remained in the hearth but embers.

  “Everyone is talking about you,” Douglas told me. “Nobody understands what you’re doing in New Hampshire. Everyone says it’s the biggest fuckup of your life.”

  “Everyone knows that Harry is my friend. It’s the least I can do.”

  “But this is different. There are those murders, that book. I don’t think you realize the enormity of this thing. Barnaski is furious. He says you’ve gone to New Hampshire to hide. And he’s right. Today is June 17. Thirteen days from now, you’re finished.”

  “Jesus Christ, don’t you think I know that? Is that why you’re calling? To remind me of the mess I’m in?”

  “No, I’m calling because I have an idea.”

  “An idea? All right—I’m listening.”

  “Write a book about the Harry Quebert affair.”

  “What? No, it’s out of the question. I’m not going to exploit Harry’s troubles to relaunch my career.”

  “Why is that ‘exploiting his troubles’? You told me you were going there to defend him. So prove his innocence and write a book about it. C
an you imagine how big it would be?”

  “All that in two weeks?”

  “I talked about it to Barnaski, to calm him down . . .”

  “What? You—”

  “Listen to me, Marc, before you get on your high horse. Barnaski thinks this is a golden opportunity! He says that Marcus Goldman writing about the Harry Quebert affair is a seven-figure deal! It could be the book of the year. He’s prepared to renegotiate your contract. He’s offering to wipe the slate clean: a new contract with him that would supersede the previous one, and with an advance of a million dollars. You know what that means?”

  What it meant was that this book would be a surefire bestseller, a guaranteed success, and a mountain of cash in the bargain.

  “Why would Barnaski do that for me?”

  “He’s not doing it for you; he’s doing it for himself. You don’t understand—everyone here is talking about this case. A book like that would be the deal of the century!”

  “I don’t think I’m capable of it. I don’t know how to write anymore. I don’t even know if I ever knew how to write. And investigating a crime . . . that’s what the police are for. I don’t know anything about that.”

  Douglas wouldn’t let it go. “This is the chance of a lifetime.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “When you say that, it means you won’t think about it.”

  This observation made us both laugh. He knew me well.

  “Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with a fifteen-year-old girl?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “And what is love?”

  “Marc, please, this is not the time for a philosophical conversation.”

  “But he loved her! Harry fell madly in love with this girl. He was on the beach, in front of his house. He saw her and he fell in love. Why her and not someone else?”

  “I don’t know. But I would be curious to know why you feel so bound to Quebert.”

  “Marcus the Magnificent,” I replied.

  “What?”

  “Marcus the Magnificent. A young man who couldn’t get ahead in life. Until he met Harry. It was Harry who taught me to be a writer. He taught me the importance of knowing how to fall.”

  “What are you talking about? Have you been drinking? You’re a writer because you have talent.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re not born a writer; you become one.”

  “Is that what happened at Burrows?”

  “Yes. He passed on all his knowledge to me. I owe him everything.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “If you like.”

  So that evening I told Douglas the story of what tied me to Harry. After our conversation, I went down to the beach. I needed to get some fresh air. Thick clouds could be seen through the darkness. It was a humid night; a storm was brewing. Suddenly the wind whipped up; the trees began shaking furiously as if the world itself were announcing the fall of the great Harry Quebert.

  It was much later when I returned to the house. As I reached the front door I found a plain, unaddressed envelope, inside of which I found a computer-printed note. It said:

  Go home, Goldman.

  28

  THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING HOW TO FALL

  (Burrows College, Massachusetts, 1998–2002)

  “HARRY, IF I COULD learn only one thing from you, what would it be?”

  “I’d like to ask you the same question.”

  “For me, it’s the importance of knowing how to fall.”

  “I agree entirely. Life is a long drop down, Marcus. The most important thing is knowing how to fall.”

  AS WELL AS BEING THE year of the great ice storm that paralyzed the northern United States and part of Canada, leaving millions of people in darkness for several days, 1998 was also the year I met Harry. That fall I moved to the Burrows College campus, a mix of prefabricated housing and Victorian buildings surrounded by vast and beautifully kept lawns. I was given a nice room in the east wing of dormitories, which I shared with a pleasant, skinny, bespectacled black kid from Minnesota named Jared, who had left his interfering family and, visibly terrified by his new freedom, kept asking if he was allowed to do things. “Am I allowed to buy a Coke? Am I allowed to get back to campus after ten p.m.? Am I allowed to keep food in my room? Am I allowed to skip class if I’m sick?” I always replied that since the Thirteenth Amendment had abolished slavery, he was allowed to do whatever he liked, and he glowed with happiness.

  Jared had two obsessions: studying, and calling his mother to tell her everything was fine. For my part, I had only one: becoming a famous writer. I spent my time writing short stories for the school literary magazine, but it published only about half of them, and always on the worst pages—the ones with the ads for local businesses that nobody was interested in: Lukas Printing, Forster Tire & Lube, Françoise Hair Salon, and Julie Hu Flowers. This seemed to me scandalous and unjust. In truth, from the time I arrived at Burrows, I had to face up to some extremely tough competition in the shape of Dominic Reinhartz, a junior with an exceptional talent for writing. His stories were always given pride of place in the magazine, and each time a new issue came out I would hear students talking admiringly about him in the library. The only unswerving support I received came from Jared, who read my short stories enthusiastically as they came off my printer and read them again when they appeared in the magazine. I always gave him a copy, but he insisted on paying the two dollars for it, two dollars that he worked so hard to earn as part of the cleaning staff at the school. His admiration for me seemed limitless. He would often say, “You’re a brilliant man, Marcus, . . . what are you doing in a place like Burrows, Massachusetts, huh?” One Indian summer evening we stretched out on the campus lawn to drink beer and watch the sky. First Jared had asked if we were allowed to drink beer on campus, then he had asked if we were allowed on the lawns at night. Finally he spotted a shooting star and cried out: “Make a wish, Marcus! Make a wish!”

  “I wish that I will succeed in life,” I replied.

  And I thought that a shooting star, though it could be beautiful, was a star that was afraid of shining and was fleeing as far away as possible. A bit like me.

  • • •

  On Thursdays, Jared and I made sure we never missed the class given by one of the most important people at the college: the writer Harry Quebert. He called the shots at Burrows, and everyone listened to and respected his opinion, not only because he was Harry Quebert—the Harry Quebert, an American institution—but also because he was naturally impressive: tall, elegant, and with a speaking voice that could be both warm and thunderous. The students were all grateful that he gave his time to such a small institution, aware that a simple phone call was all it would take for him to be hired by the most prestigious schools in the country. He was also the only professor at Burrows who taught all his courses in the main amphitheater, which was usually reserved for graduation ceremonies and theatrical performances.

  This was also the year of the Lewinsky affair: the year of the presidential blow job, when the country discovered, to its horror, that fellatio had infiltrated the highest echelons of public life. The affair was on everyone’s lips, so to speak. On campus people talked of nothing else, and we all wondered what was going to become of President Clinton.

  One Thursday morning in late October, Harry Quebert began his class with these words: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re all very excited by what’s happening in Washington at the moment, aren’t we? The Lewinsky affair . . . Consider this: In the entire history of the United States of America, two reasons have been identified for terminating a presidential term of office—being a notorious crook, like Richard Nixon, or dying. And up until today, nine presidents have had their term of office cut short for one of those two reasons. Nixon resign
ed, and the other eight died, half of them assassinated. But now a third reason may be added to that list: fellatio. Cock sucking, blow jobs, giving head, playing the skin flute. And everyone is wondering if our great president, due to having his pants around his knees, is still our great president. Because this is America’s grand obsession: sex and morality. America is a pecker paradise. And you will see, a few years from now, that no one will remember that Mr. Clinton saved our failing economy, governed expertly with a Republican majority in the Senate, or made Rabin and Arafat shake hands. But everyone will remember the Lewinsky affair, because blow jobs, ladies and gentlemen, remain engraved in people’s memories. But so what if our president likes to get sucked off occasionally? He’s not exactly the only one. Who else in this room enjoys that?”

  Harry scanned the auditorium. There was a long silence. Most of the students were staring at their shoes. Jared, sitting next to me, actually closed his eyes to avoid meeting Quebert’s gaze. I raised my hand. I was sitting toward the back, and Harry, pointing at me, called out: “Stand up, my young friend. Stand up tall so we can see you, and tell us what’s on your mind.”

  Proudly I stood on my chair.

  “I like blow jobs a lot, Professor. My name is Marcus Goldman and I love getting my dick sucked. Just like the president.”

  Harry lowered his reading glasses and gave me an amused look. “Tell us, young man, do you like being sucked off by boys or girls?”

  “By girls, Professor Quebert. I am a heterosexual and a good American. God bless our president, sex, and America.”

  There was laughter from the stunned audience, and then applause. Harry was delighted. He explained to my fellow students:

  “You see, nobody will see this poor boy the same way anymore. Everyone will think: He’s the disgusting one who likes head. And irrespective of his talents, irrespective of his qualities, he will always be ‘Mr. Blow job.’” He turned toward me again. “Mr. Blow job, could you explain to us now why you made such a confession while your fellow students all had the good sense to keep their mouths shut?”