“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.
I Haven’t Slept in Ten Years
THREE 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.”