Tomy and the Planet of Lies (22 page)

I advised Tomy to write back, but to formulate his answer in such a way that she didn't land in his bed. Tomy answered as always: he could not lie. Nevertheless, he composed a few lines, which he showed to me before sliding them under Edith's door. He told her that she was a bright and charming being—his words—and that he, too, felt warmth for her. But he had no need for physical contact, for his thoughts moved on another plane. This only served to enflame Edith even more and the next morning he found a second letter. Tomy said he would have to tell Edith about his true identity, and I begged him urgently not to. Edith would not be able to understand or cope with the knowledge.

Three times we sat together after dinner and Tomy described his “visits.” He had taken over various scientists with diverse specialties—always with their understanding. One scientist after the other had suggested, by means of mental pictures, the name of a colleague. Tomy would then ask if he could call the colleague and ask him if he would be prepared to take part in a scientific experiment. Only one scientist had even entertained the possibility of thought transference, all the rest had simply laughed but taken part in the experiment anyway—if only for fun. The rest had been routine, Tomy assured us, and the amazement on the part of the scientists had been great. He had used a similar modus operandi with the politicians. All in all he had visited thirty-four different people around the world.

“Thirty-four people in the last few days?” I was shocked, “And now they all know me?”

“Yes,” said Tomy simply.

In the following weeks I received several anonymous calls and letters. Most of the callers preferred not to reveal their identities at first. They feared for their reputations, their sanity, and were very insecure about the events that had played out within them. Most of the calls began with the same question:

“Hello, am I speaking to Erich von Däniken?”

“Yes, the original.”

“I was given your telephone number by a mutual acquaintance and would really like it if we could get to know each other.”

“I have many acquaintances, but a personal appointment depends on my agenda. My appointment calendar is fairly full. Who was the acquaintance who gave you my number, then?”

A clearing of a throat. Then: “Hmmm. I can't recall the family name right now, but does the name Tomy mean anything to you?”

“Of course, why didn't you say so sooner? So, when would you like to talk?”

I talked to all of these people—some of them many times—even those who had contacted me by letter. Nobody tried any funny business—it was a small circle of insiders, people who had had the same experience and weren't looking for publicity. One happy side effect: scientists and journalists who had previously pilloried my work, taking neither my books nor me seriously, suddenly changed their tunes and defended my views.

Looking back now, I can see that since Tomy's visit in late fall of 1987 the positions of countless people seems to have changed. Intellectuals started acting tolerantly—favorably even—towards this Erich von Däniken; they influenced their friends and acquaintances, and the same happened in journalistic circles.

I asked Tomy if he had taken over Chantal in the meantime, to find out if she knew who killed Ercan. Tomy simply said, laconically, “She'll be here on Sunday.” He knew nothing new regarding Ercan. People, said Tomy, may be interesting in that respect, but totally dishonest.

“A planet of lies that robs me of any pleasure I might have had in this body.”

“Does that apply to me too?”

“You know yourself when you lie,” he laughed, “but your lies, too, are unnecessary. Try doing without them for a while!”

* * *

On Sunday evening I was jogging through the park with the dogs when Neptune suddenly shot off like a streak of lightning towards the veranda door. The door was closed and with its heavy iron door handles it was one of the very few he couldn't open from outside. As far as I knew, Tomy was in the kitchen helping Ebet with the cooking. Then I heard something that could have been a shot, or any one of a dozen other things, and then a shout that sounded like an order being given in a language I didn't understand. Then the slamming of a car door and the squeal of tires.

Tomy! I suddenly had a dreadful thought. Heavy-legged, like in one of those dreams where you are being chased and can't get away, I found myself unable to move. Tomy! I cried out silently, but my knees failed me and I sank to the grass. The next thing that I felt was a wave of wellbeing, calm, and warmth. Tomy was inside me.

“She did it.”

“Who?”

“Chantal.”

“
What
did she do?”

“She killed my body.”

“How? For God's sake
how
?

Tomy showed me what had happened, transmitting the pictures directly into my consciousness like a grim newsreel.

“It was some kind of high-voltage device. The doorbell rang and I went to open the door while Elisabeth stayed in the kitchen. Chantal was standing there in a strange-looking, shiny oilskin overall; she suddenly thrust an object with two electrodes against my body. The current was far higher than the normal Taser that American law enforcer's use. The heart muscle of my body went into spasm.”

“
Why
? Tell me why! Quick! Go and take over that good-for-nothing bitch and find out why!”

“I can't. She's dead.”

Despite Tomy's calming presence, I was finding it extremely difficult to keep my thoughts from running wild. Wobbling slightly, I stood back up. Elisabeth and Otto appeared at the veranda door. They screamed something, but I wasn't listening. I just staggered off towards them.

Tomy didn't need to explain anything. Smoothly, almost indifferently, images popped into my conscious mind—Tomy playing back the events as they had happened. Him standing at the house door, Chantal in her strange protective suit with the pistol-like weapon in her right hand. Then the pain as Tomy's body convulsed and he attempted to stabilize his own heart. The sudden appearance of a dark Cadillac, its rear door thrown open revealing the commandant from Taftan in Iran. He was wearing a dark jacket, black pants, and a white shirt with a blue tie. Then an image of the commandant springing out of the car, barking an order in Arabic and then—without hesitation—shooting Chantal in the back.

Through Tomy's own eyes, which were now beginning to fade, I saw a second man jump out of the Cadillac. He ran around the car, opened the trunk and then the two of them each grabbed one of Chantal's legs. They dragged her lifeless body into the trunk of the car, swung themselves back onto the rear seat and the car roared off. Finally, I experienced how Tomy left his dying body and entered my consciousness.

By now I had reached the veranda door. Neptune shot by Elisabeth and Otto and stood, hackles raised, in a defensive position next to Tomy's now lifeless body. He didn't sniff around the body, didn't lick him. He simply stood legs apart and with a furrowed brow about a meter away. Elisabeth spoke a few calming words to him. The other two dogs also arrived— neither approached Tomy, whose bent body lay on the carpet just inside the door.

Otto quickly explained that he had been upstairs and had heard the doorbell and then a shot, the slamming of the car doors and the squealing of the tires. Elisabeth had heard nothing from the kitchen. Obviously, Tomy had heard the doorbell, but she had only noticed that he had left the room, nothing more.

Using my most commanding tone I interrupted their explanations:

“Be quiet, you two! Tomy is in me. It is only this body,” I pointed to the lifeless form on the floor, “that is dead.”

But I could have howled, I felt so helpless.

“Hello Elisabeth, hello Otto,” said Tomy with my voice. We took ourselves off to the living room and sat down on the sofa. Tomy described for the others what he had already shown me.

During the explanation the doorbell rang again. Otto went to the door, looking through the spyhole before he opened up. It was Marc. His first reaction was shocked horror as he saw Tomy's dead body lying on the floor. But we quickly ushered him through to where we were sitting, where Tomy—in my voice—welcomed him back.

“Tomy,” Marc turned to me, “please show me that you're all right.”

I felt Tomy flow out of me. Marc suddenly began to giggle, making ‘ooh' and ‘aah' noises as he had done back in the Intercontinental in Teheran when Tomy had taken him over for the first time. Ebet and Otto stared back and forth between Marc and me.

“That is uncanny! No, fantastic!” cried Otto, slapping his knee. At just that moment Edith walked in, dissolved into a sobbing bundle of misery.

“Yes, Tomy has passed away,” I said to her reassuringly and put my arm around her shoulder. “But you know, Edith, we've been expecting this moment for a long time. Tomy was very ill.”

The housemaid tore loose and ran up upstairs to her room. Tomy, now speaking through Marc, noted, “You should get rid of my body.”

Ebet, however, still had questions:

“Why did Chantal kill you? Her of all people? And why on earth did that Iranian commandant shoot Chantal?”

They were questions that I also was desperate to know the answers to. What was a four-star Iranian general doing here in Switzerland? Especially at the very moment that Chantal stood at our door? I had almost forgotten the general with his white temples, his immaculately combed hair, and black armband of mourning.

Tomy spoke, smiling through Marc's youthful features.

“I intend to find all that out. Chantal's body will give me no answers, but the commandant knows me, I was already in him. I think I'll go give him a call,” Marc grinned, “and clear up these last few mysteries.”

“Why did they take Chantal's body with them,” wondered Otto.

“That, I do not yet know,” Tomy smiled and Marc shook his shock of blond hair. “There's a time for everything. You just make sure you get rid of my body, and make sure that there are no traces of Chantal's blood in front of the door.” Marc came over to me and put his arm around my shoulders:

“The body in the hallway has still got one surprise in store for you.” Marc—that is, Tomy in Marc—smiled, and on Marc's youthful face this smile, that we all knew so well, seemed even more disarming than it ever had on Tomy's own body. He leaned his face over to me, pressing his cheek to mine, as if in a parting gesture, and ran his fingers through my hair with a gentleness that the real Marc would never have managed, and whispered, but loud enough for all to hear:

“I will go into quiescence now. I cannot take the commandant over now anyhow. He will be too agitated, and he will be busy with Chantal's body.”

“What do you mean quiescence?” I turned to Marc to question Tomy.

“I had the pleasure of visiting an old Buddhist monk. A man who welcomed me into his consciousness as if he had been expecting me his whole life. He is looking forward immensely to my next visit.”

“There was no monk among the people who have contacted me so far,” I replied.

Marc removed his arm and stood up and went and sat in an armchair opposite me.

“He won't be contacting you—you will be contacting him!” “But I don't know any Buddhist monks!” I protested.

“You will. At some time in the future.”

Marc barked a hearty laugh and then all was quiet. Otto distributed a round of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky. Even Elisabeth, who doesn't normally touch the stuff, took a small sip.

“So, what are we going to do with Tomy's body?” she asked.

We decided that the best thing to do would be to dig a grave among the trees. We went down into the cellar and found two rusty spades and a hoe. It wasn't easy digging such a large hole between the trees—the earth was a tangle of tree roots. While we men were sweating away at our work, Elisabeth went collecting pine branches and then fetched all the flowers out of every vase in the house. We carried Tomy's body, as he was when he had fallen but covered in a plastic tablecloth. Elisabeth scattered the flowers into the grave and then we men seized hold of the bundle and laid it gently down between the blooms. We didn't register Edith, watching everything from her balcony on the first floor.

It turned out to be the strangest funeral that I have ever attended. The four attendees—Ebet, Marc, Otto and I—stood around the grave after we had filled it in and covered it over with the pine branches. We sank our heads respectfully. No one cried, no one prayed. Marc pulled out his cigarette lighter and waved its flame slowly through the air. I followed suit. Elisabeth, inappropriately as ever, sang the first verse of the Beresina-Lied:

 

Unser Leben gleicht der Reise
Eines Wandrers in der Nacht;
Jeder hat in seinem Gleise
Etwas, das ihm Kummer macht

(Our life is like a journey
Of a wanderer through the night;
Everybody carries something on his way
That causes him to grieve.)

 

Otto left us for a moment and returned presently, armed with a whisky bottle, glasses and four candles. We placed the flaming candles between the pine branches, said a toast to Tomy, and then tipped the rest of the bottle on the grave. At some point Elisabeth said that Tomy had been a unique person, she had really liked him. Then she looked at me and fell into my arms. We fought back the tears together.

When a light rain began to fall, Otto inquired, “Who fancies another whisky?”

We trotted back into the house; all of us crestfallen, downbeat but not truly sad. Otto opened another bottle; Elisabeth went off into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Marc, a whisky tumbler in his hand, strolled off to the front door.

“There's blood down there on the path,” he noted.

I went and fished a bucket out of the cupboard where we kept the cleaning materials, filled it with water, and sluiced away what was left of Chantal's blood. The fine rain did the rest. We called to Edith, so she could set the table and realized that she must have left the house. Elisabeth guessed that she had gone to her girlfriend's house nearby.