The Liar

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  Be here tomorrow at six. Or I’ll tell all.

  Those were the last words he’d said to her yesterday. They were with her when she rode home on the bus after her shift. They were with her when she brushed her teeth before going to bed. They were with her when she woke up in the morning long before the alarm. And even though her head, as usual, was filled with whispers of self-loathing, she nevertheless heard another voice, the voice of Lavi Maimon as he blackmailed her. He was putting the squeeze on her, and she had the feeling that it wasn’t just a metaphorical squeeze he wanted. And thinking about that made her smile.

  Smiles have a way of catching a person’s eye, like a red balloon gliding in the sky and drawing the glances of people below. A girl with cropped hair and a tattoo on her leg came up to Nofar and said, “That’s some smile you have.” Luckily, they immediately found a trendier subject to discuss: the girl’s new tattoo. She told Nofar that she hadn’t been able to decide on just the right one, and Nofar quickly assured her that the one she had chosen was perfect for her, but what exactly was it? Cropped Hair stuck out her chest proudly and replied, “Anarchy, in Japanese.”

  (It might have been anarchy in Japanese. The tattoo artist didn’t really know. He had once been a rejected, pimply boy. Everyone had made fun of him, even though he never hurt anyone. When he grew up, he found a legitimate way to take revenge: he practiced the only profession that allowed him to hurt teenagers and take their money for doing it. With supreme concentration he pierced the tongues of teenage boys very much like those who had humiliated him when he was a child. With a steady hand he pierced the navels of teenage girls identical to those who had turned their backs on him in high school. And more than anything, he loved to tattoo the bodies of smug, self-important teenagers, promising them that, yes, of course this is the way you write anarchy in Japanese.)

  Nofar admired the tattoo at length. In her heart she wished that Shir would come by again and see her talking with a new friend. Shir didn’t come. The bell came instead. Nofar was so sorry the conversation was interrupted that she found herself asking, “What do you say we skip school today?” She had already begun to mumble that maybe that wasn’t such a great idea when Cropped Hair shrugged and said, “Why not?” and when Nofar looked up in surprise, she saw that the girl had begun walking toward the bus as she asked, “Which number goes to the beach?”

  10

  Meanwhile, Avishai Milner. Like the girl from the ice-cream parlor, he too reverted to biting his nails. In the middle of the night, realizing what he was doing, he pulled his fingers out of his mouth and looked at them in horror. Until that moment he hadn’t noticed he was doing it, but now, in the jail cell, he suddenly became aware that the long-buried habit had returned from the netherworld, covered in layers of dirt. Avishai Milner knew quite well that the habit was only the first messenger. The others were on the way. Everything he had buried, everything he had gone through, everything that had been covered with a marble gravestone in the shape of the newspaper interview he had given after winning first place: “Avishai Milner Tells All.” Now that boy was suddenly here, biting his nails. And he thought he’d gotten rid of him forever.

  He thought once again about the girl from the ice-cream parlor and clenched his fists. He had never felt such hatred. To keep himself from biting his nails, he began making lists in his mind: the ten biggest hits of the 1980s. The best films of the 1990s. During the most difficult hours, when despair crept toward him like a wet snail, he named the city streets in his mind, from north to south, struggling to remember every alley and lane.

  Avishai Milner was scheduled to be released in a few days. The bail would be high, but feasible. There, outside, he could finally prepare for battle. First of all, he would shower and get some sleep, and then he’d call his agent. He’d been trying to reach him for days, but the bastard didn’t answer. The minutes passed, and his thoughts wandered from the agent to the girl. He would grab her by the throat with one hand, and with the other he’d pull her slanderous tongue out of her mouth. When he closed his eyes, he could actually see that lying tongue flapping around in his hand like a fish out of water. He hadn’t eaten meat for sixteen years, but he would be happy to feel that red tongue between his teeth.

  He had never thought it was possible to hate so much, but of course, he had also never thought it was possible to spend three days in jail for something he didn’t do. And since he had quite a bit of time to wait for his release on bail, he could continue to plan: where he would lie in wait for her, how he would hide all traces. He would maintain firmly that he had slept at his parents’ house that night. Like Nofar, Avishai Milner had spent his nights watching TV series. Like her, he was well acquainted with the precise planning of a murder. Until, realizing how much preparation and attention to detail was needed to actually carry out the deed, he suddenly trembled. “Stop it right now,” he whispered to himself, and when that didn’t help, he shouted out the words.

  The guard on duty came to ask if everything was all right. “Instead of shouting, why don’t you sing something?” But Avishai Milner did not sing for an audience of one. The guard shrugged and went off, leaving him sitting in his cell, his face angry, his fists clenched. And the thought of her tongueless body, like a song he couldn’t get out of his head, played endlessly on the strings of his soul.

  11

  On the first day of the school year, the beach was left to its own devices. Only the day before, vacationers had lain on the sand, limbs spread, groggy from the heat. Suntan oil had glittered on their skin, making them look like a school of fish caught in a net, flopping around, scales glistening, mouths open. But September had arrived. The beach-cleaners began looking for other jobs. For four months they had spent their days there without stepping even once into the water. Birds spread their feathered wings and flew south, while tourists flew west on their motorized wings. The last of the plastic bags sank to the seafloor, twisted around a sea anemone, and stopped moving. The sea and all that dwelled in it breathed a sigh of relief, even the suffocating anemone. The dry land would not bother them for a full eight months. The ebb and flow of the tides occurs slowly over a period of several hours, but the start of the school year happens all at once, the single blow of a sword that decapitates the summer and brings the beach season to an abrupt end.

  But right then, four feet began splashing gleefully in the surf, accompanied by screams and laughter. “It’s cold!” “Stop whining!” The girl from the ice-cream parlor and the girl with cropped hair ran fearlessly into the waves, despite the sign warning “No Swimming,” or perhaps because of it, since there is nothing sweeter than swimming in forbidden waters. Until that moment, they had thought they were breaking only their parents’ and the school’s rules, but now it seemed they were breaking municipal rules as well, and the knowledge made their bodies vibrate with excitement. In their underwear and bras they floated, abandoning their bodies to the gaping eyes of the clouds and the storks. They shivered because of the cold water and the excitement caused by their near-nakedness. When one of them thought the other wasn’t looking, she took a quick glance at her friend’s body. Silently, they made precise comparisons of rear ends and thighs, breasts and navels, and it was clear to both of them that what one was lacking, nature had given to the other, and vice versa. That discovery, instead of arousing envy, actually reinforced the fondness they felt for each other.

  They floated on their backs and talked about the teachers they hated, about how they had sneaked onto the bus through the back door, and about everything they would do when they finished high school. Cropped Hair couldn’t decide whether to live in London or Paris, and Nofar tried as hard as she could to help her make the decision, hoping her new friend didn’t realize that she had never been to London and had spent only three days in Paris when she was seven. In fact, Cropped Hair had never visited London either, or Paris for that matter, but you don’t need a passport to float in the sea and make plans. Each girl peed in the water when she though
t the other wouldn’t notice, and both talked about couples who did it without condoms right there, in the water, wondering whether they could get pregnant just from swimming near a couple like that, and decided they couldn’t.

  When they came out of the water they lay in silence on the soft sand, letting the sun warm their skin. Cropped Hair sat up and looked at Nofar. “You’re very brave, you know.” Nofar averted her gaze quickly. “What you did on TV…,” and to Nofar’s complete surprise Cropped Hair burst into tears. In all the years they had passed each other in the school corridors, Nofar had never imagined that the girl with the cropped hair was a crier. She looked strong, always cheerful, and now she was crying right there in front of her. Nofar didn’t know whether to look away politely or look directly at her, whether to reach out and touch the girl’s hand as she dug in the sand or let her keep digging to the place where the sand ends and water begins, and even farther, to the beating heart of the planet. Her movements were so desperate that Nofar was convinced she would reach that place in the end.

  Nofar was dumbstruck by embarrassment, but Cropped Hair welcomed the quiet. She was grateful for the silence that left room for her words, like an old man who approaches a bench on the street and sees the people sitting on it squeeze together to make room for him. Slowly she began to speak. “I understand,” she said, “because it happened to…” Nofar was surprised to hear how differently Cropped Hair was speaking now. As if someone had tied a sack of lead to the end of every word and they plunged downward the moment they were uttered. “It happened to me, too.”

  A long while passed before Cropped Hair spoke again. Finally she talked about the shift manager in the café where she had worked the previous summer. He followed her every time she went into the storeroom. At first he just made comments, then he started touching her. At closing time one night he sent everyone home and remained alone with her. She didn’t know why she didn’t tell her parents. There was no reason. They’re really okay. She didn’t tell her friends either. And she broke up with the boyfriend she had at the time—she didn’t want anyone to touch her. But what she really didn’t understand was how she had stood there and let him. Why she didn’t say anything, didn’t scream, and not afterward either, when she could have said something. But she was ashamed. She didn’t have the courage. What if they said she was making it up? She was so scared about what people would say about her that she didn’t say anything. She had passed the place twice this summer, but she couldn’t bring herself to go inside. Through the window she looked at the tight face of the waitress, who was about her age, and wondered if he was doing it to her, too.

  Cropped Hair grew silent. A tear rolled down her cheek and fell into the sea. A tear rolled down Nofar’s cheek as well, but she quickly wiped it away with her wrist. So it wouldn’t fall into the sea and contaminate the pure tear of her friend.

  12

  Lavi Maimon stood at the entrance to the ice-cream parlor and waited. It was 6:20 and she still hadn’t come. Maybe she would never come there again. The thought made his stomach churn like the coffee-bean grinder in the café next door. The hours that had passed since he saw her the day before had left him with the taste of anticipated pleasure, a tingling in his body that, until now, he had experienced only when masturbating. But this time, there was another person involved apart from himself. A real girl. She might be less beautiful and less well built than the ones in his imagination, but that only made her a hundred times more exciting than they were. Her defects gave her presence. The secret he kept for her thrilled him. It was like holding a chick between his palms. Something soft and delicate vibrating between his fingers. He walked gingerly all day, saving it for her.

  Lavi Maimon waited ten minutes. Twenty minutes. And there is no way of knowing what the poor boy’s fate might have been if she hadn’t suddenly appeared, running to the ice-cream parlor at 6:25, her face flushed and sand in her hair. She’s sick, he thought, and her eyes were indeed glowing unnaturally. Hearing Cropped Hair’s confession had been like swallowing a small ball of fire. Nofar had spent the afternoon wandering the city streets blindly. At 5:00 she received a message from her new friend. It was so good to finally tell the secret, it said, and the words were like a can of gasoline thrown on the small ball of fire in her stomach.

  At 6:15 she headed for the ice-cream parlor. Not for a moment did she forget the boy and the threat he’d made the day before. She had held it close all night. But since this morning at the beach, the sense of shame she felt refused to abate. When she stood before him, he gave her a look he hoped would seem cold and said, “You were supposed to be here at six. You’re late one more time and I’ll tell everyone you lied.” Nofar, having spent the day filled with the torment of a ball of fire rolling around inside her body, said, “So tell them.”

  Lavi cleared his throat. He didn’t know what to say. His black curls shook slightly. Perhaps a gust of hot wind from the fire blazing under the girl’s skin had reached him. Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know what. All he knew was that the delicate little chick he had been cupping in his hands all day was teetering between life and death now. Nofar looked into his black eyes and burst into tears. Lavi touched her shoulder, and instead of calming her, that touch only intensified her weeping. Undaunted, he took her hand and led her to the nearby bench. Fifteen hours earlier a homeless man lying on it had dreamed mad dreams, but the bench was empty now, so they sat down on it and didn’t speak. Finally, Nofar told him what had happened that morning. How she had gone to the beach with the girl with the cropped hair, how they had gone into the water, how she had applauded Nofar for the courage she didn’t really have, and how the girl had told her a secret she didn’t deserve to know. Because it was the word liar that had kept Cropped Hair from speaking, the fear that people would say she was making it up. How would Nofar be able to look her in the eye during break tomorrow? (In fact, Nofar wouldn’t, but not out of choice. After that morning on the beach Cropped Hair avoided Nofar at almost any cost. When they passed each other in the corridor she averted her eyes, fearing that her secret would be reflected in Nofar’s. The secret she had shared that had brought them closer that day on the beach would keep them apart from now on.)

  It was almost seven. The cries of babies refusing to go to sleep came from the lighted apartment windows. Lavi Maimon was silent for a while, and then said, “But your story was good for her. She said so herself. It’s only because of you that she finally managed to talk about what happened.”

  Nofar looked at him with large, stunned eyes as he insisted, his words coming in spurts: that even if it wasn’t exactly what happened in the alley, it didn’t necessarily matter. The people who are so strict about sticking to the truth are the ones who benefit from it. And there are people who benefit more from a lie. It’s not their fault.

  “You’re not lying for no reason. You have no choice. Like, if you had a good enough truth, you wouldn’t have to lie, right? It’s like people who have enough food don’t need to steal. Only someone who’s hungry steals, and you wouldn’t blame them for it.”

  That was the most Lavi had said to any girl, ever, and it was quite clumsy. For the first time in his life, he regretted having spent his days playing computer games. Instead of learning how to express himself, he’d been busy piling up bodies. He had walked along the city street, battling an army of dead people he had downed with his nimble fingers on the keyboard, but what good were all those dead people when he couldn’t help one girl? If only he could take the cloud of thoughts gathering in his mind and squeeze rain out of them, one simple sentence: to tell her, for example, that lies are inseparably entwined with life. That the days are threaded on them like pearls on a string. Every round day has a small, dark hole in it where the lie that enables it to exist is strung. Such images were out of the question, and perhaps that was for the best—they tend to miss the mark. “The point is,” he said, “that it’s not a bad thing to lie when the truth is shitty. And Avishai Milner really is a piec
e of shit.”

  Nofar wiped away her tears with her wrist. She snuffled. The boy’s awkward words had managed to calm the storm a bit. Lavi waited for her to start breathing normally. Then he stood up and glanced at his watch. Seven ten. He was no longer prepared to accept such chutzpah. She should go straight to the alley and wait for him.

  “Or I’ll tell all.”

  The first day of school was over. Maya sat in her room, presiding with nimble fingers over twelve text messages simultaneously. And all that time, silence thundered from the next room. Her parents had knocked on her door twice to ask if she had heard from her sister. Out of her sense of sisterhood, Maya told them there was nothing to worry about. They didn’t have to be available twenty-four hours a day. But her stomach was churning. Twelve simultaneous text messages, and not one of them seemed as interesting as what was certainly happening to her older sister now.

  When Nofar finally returned home, Maya stayed in her room. The younger sister heard her parents’ questions coming from the other side of the door, questions that, until now, had been reserved for her: “Where were you?” and “Why so late?” and of course, “So why didn’t you call?” But it wasn’t her parents’ familiar questions that concerned her—rather, it was the answers. They were remarkably brief, which is what made them so full. She didn’t have to open the door to know that her sister had come home with the taste of a boy on her lips. That’s why they were closed so tightly. After partaking of a superb dessert, you don’t want to taste anything else so as to keep the flavor from fading, and after kisses in the dark you don’t want to talk so as to keep the words from removing what your mouth wishes to hold on to.