If you google him, you’ll get a series of pictures of him in almost chronological order. In the first few shots, from the beginning of his career, he’s an arrogant Viking giant, his blond hair pulled back, holding various award statuettes, a different statuette on a different stage each time. In pictures taken the last few months, he’s slightly stooped, his hair is thinner, his eyes haunted. Under the pictures you’ll find a link to the huge scandal connected to his name—several days after returning from the Jerusalem International Book Fair, he found three documents from his wife on the kitchen table: a farewell letter filled with Swedish curses, a statement of claim for divorce, and one for ten million kronor owed her for being the actual writer of all the best sellers in the Scar series. She and her husband had made a quiet agreement, according to which she would write the books, and he, with his blond hair, towering height, and blue eyes, would be their PR image. It worked beautifully, sales doubled every quarter, until what happened in Colombia happened. And she decided to put an end to the sham.
—
That affair didn’t surprise me at all.
Right after I heard the knocking at the door that separated Axel Wolff’s hotel room in Jerusalem from the adjacent room, I heard a thick female voice. Open the door, please, it asked. The tone was proper. Matter-of-fact. Like the tone of voice of the woman on Waze. I didn’t sense that I was in any danger, and even after I opened the door, no alarm bells rang for me. The owner of that proper voice was properly attired, and her hair was pulled into a proper bun on the top of her head. She introduced herself as Camilla, the writer’s wife, thanked me for taking care of him, and said she wanted to check that Axel hadn’t spoken too much nonsense that evening. Because he sometimes did that when he drank.
Truthfully, I confessed, there was one sentence he kept repeating the entire time.
Jag dödade honom, Camilla asked.
How did you know?
I am his wife, after all.
Do you have any idea why he claimed that he murdered someone?
If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.
I was sure she said that with a smile. Her lips spread and curved upward until the left corner of her mouth almost merged with the small scar on her left cheek. It was clear that smiling did not come naturally to her, and her effort to seem as breezy and affable as a TV personality made it even sadder. And therefore, intriguing.
That’s why I said, I’ll risk it.
She and Axel met at a party, she told me. And immediately fell wildly in love. They left their spouses and children to be together. Three months of wild passion, just the two of them, cut off from the world like prisoners. And then came his confession: “One night, a few years ago, I killed a young man who abused my daughter. I strangled him with a rope and tossed his body into a river. Everyone thought he had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. I made sure they would think that. I left clues. I forged his suicide note. I planned it in advance, down to the smallest detail. The police never suspected. No one knew. Not my daughter. Not my ex-wife. But with you, I want to be completely honest from the beginning. To build our relationship on a foundation of trust. Do you think you can live with a murderer? Because if not, better to say it now.”
What could she do? Her heart was already his. But that secret he told her—
Secrets in general—they metastasize all through your body.
In the end, she had no choice but to write it. Of course, she didn’t write it. We, the storytellers, she said, giving me a piercing look, never tell the real secret, the dark one. That remains ours alone. Sometimes we don’t even fully admit its existence, as we transform it, remove evidence, and turn it into art.
When she completed the manuscript, she told me, she gave it to Axel to read and said, You’re its first and last reader. She had intended to turn the secret he told her into a story only to free herself of it. She had no intention, desire, or ability to deal with readers and criticism.
But Axel, realizing immediately that what she’d written had the potential to be a series, manipulated her emotionally, after manipulating her sexually, into the binding arrangement that was the basis for their joint success: She would write books, he would be “the writer.”
—
She straightened the blanket around Axel’s body, which was sprawled on the bed, and looked up at me.
And that’s how it’s been ever since, she said. Five years. Ten books in the Scar series. Thirty million copies sold throughout the world.
What a story, I said.
And now that I’ve told it, I have to kill you, she said.
I laughed.
She took out a gun she’d hidden in the hem of her corduroy pants.
I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time, she said with a sigh. A random stranger to whom I could momentarily, but only momentarily, entrust the real, dark secret that could not be written. But I warned you in advance: There are too many considerations involved here. We can’t allow ourselves to let you leave this room and spread rumors that would damage the Axel Wolff brand. Sorry.
From the moment she cocked the pistol until I opened my mouth to speak, I managed to think the following thoughts: What do I care if I die, my life lately has been on the brink anyway, and the effort to not fall into the abyss is so exhausting, but what will happen to my children, who will help them through the next stages of their lives, who will be there when they
