The Liar

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  “Now light it.”

  With a trembling hand, Nofar lit it again. The flame was redder and hotter, illuminating and darkening the roof at one and the same time. Nofar looked at her mother. It might have been the interplay of flame and shadow that made her face seem so strange. Like someone else’s mother. Ronit gazed at her daughter’s tormented expression, at the notebook, at the roof of the five-story building, and said, “Now finish what you started.”

  The notebook in Nofar’s hand was heavy. When the flame touched the first page, the spark that rose from it scorched her fingers. And yet she didn’t move, remained bending on the roof, burning page after page, not only the incriminating ones but the entire notebook, and all her words curled up and melted in the heat. In the end, after the last of the pages had been burned to ash, Nofar looked up for the first time to meet her mother’s eyes. She needed to see her to know that this moment existed, that the roof, the lighter, her burned fingertips, the small pile of ashes in front of her actually existed. But her mother was no longer there.

  Nofar didn’t know how long she remained on the roof. The TV sets in the apartments across the way were turned off one by one, until all the windows became dark. Then she went downstairs. The house was dark and quiet, as if everyone was asleep, even though her mother and Maya were obviously wide-awake. Nofar opened the cabinet and took out a box of cornflakes. She hadn’t eaten since morning, and now she was suddenly very hungry. She chewed quickly, with her mouth open. Her thoughts returned over and over again to that moment, to the woman who, simultaneously, was and wasn’t her mother. Her hair smelled of smoke, so she took a shower and shampooed it thoroughly. She cleaned under her nails until the bits of paper were gone and the charcoal stains were washed away. She scrubbed herself with soap twice, but the scorched smell seemed to rise through the foam. She turned off the water and dried herself. She ran her fingers through her hair, sprayed on deodorant, rubbed in cream, added perfume. She dropped the towel, turned on the water in the bathtub, and filled it to the brim. She stayed in the water for a full forty minutes, her skin wrinkled like an old lady’s, but the smell of burned paper still clung to her.

  46

  “For the life of me, I don’t understand why you’re insisting on this.” Superintendent Alon looked very tired, even more tired than usual. Dorit wondered whether it might have been better to postpone the conversation to a day when he was less tired, but since his wife, Miri, had given birth to the twins, Superintendent Alon was tired all the time.

  “I’m just saying that it’s odd that on Thursday afternoon, the mother called and asked when she could see me, and on Friday morning she called to cancel. Her voice sounded strange on the phone. And on top of that, the girl refused to take a polygraph when—”

  “It wasn’t the girl who refused, it was her father.”

  “So why did her father refuse to let her take the polygraph?”

  Superintendent Alon sighed. He spoke slowly, in a tone that tried to be nice but actually wasn’t nice at all. “Dorit, you yourself are a mother, and if, God forbid, your daughter was going through something, wouldn’t you go crazy if the police asked her to take a lie detector test?” Dorit said nothing. She had the feeling that he didn’t expect her to answer his question. Superintendent Alon nodded. Clearly, her silence was the correct response. “I don’t understand why you even suggested it to the father. Since when do we ask teenagers to take lie detector tests? And especially in such a clear-cut case—”

  “I’m not sure this case is so clear-cut. I’m telling you, the mother’s voice on the phone was strange.” Superintendent Alon’s eyes opened so wide that she could see the capillaries under his lids. “Are you crazy? The suspect confessed—confessed!—the first time we questioned him. And that girl, she gave the most convincing testimony I’ve ever heard in my life. Did you see her on the Friday night news? Miri cried in front of the TV set!”

  “She speaks well, that’s true.”

  Superintendent Alon gave her an admonishing look. He glanced through the window of his office at the bustling corridor, then lowered his voice even though the door was closed and no one could hear them. “Do you understand that you’re talking about the victim of sexual assault here? Let me explain to you what sexual assault is—”

  “I really don’t need you to explain to me what sexual assault is.”

  “Listen, I’ll explain it to you—sexual assault is something very serious. We have eyewitnesses who were on the scene right after it happened and heard it all live. We have the confession of the suspect himself. We have the detailed testimony of that brave girl you’ve turned against now, God knows why.”

  “I want to call Avishai Milner here again. And I want to see her again. No polygraph, just a talk.”

  “No talk,” Superintendent Alon said and stood up. When he stood, you could see how broad and tall he was, and how much time had passed since he’d polished his shoes. Anger pulsed in Dorit’s temples. This was her case, her investigation, and no one had ever told her what to do with her cases. She opened her mouth to protest, but Superintendent Alon spoke first, “Dore’le, I’m doing this for you. This is a high-profile case. You should be thankful the father didn’t talk to any journalists about that lie detector test. Everyone would have hauled us over the coals, and when I say us I mean you, because I don’t intend to end up being the shit from the police who harasses female victims.”

  And with that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over, because Superintendent Alon put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and walked her to the door, giving her an amiable but decisive smile before he closed himself in his office again. Detective Dorit stood in the corridor for a long minute. She could still feel the touch of Superintendent Alon’s heavy, bearish fingers on her shoulder. She turned and went back to her office, threw the summons she had already prepared for Avishai Milner into the trash, took her bag, and hurried downstairs.

  The deaf-mute stood in his usual place on the busy street. Through the traffic noise Dorit could hear his never-ending muttering, “It didn’t happen! She’s lying!” Two taxis stopped with a squeal of brakes when she stepped resolutely off the pavement. She crossed the street in five determined steps and stood in front of the beggar. He stopped his muttering and looked at her hopefully.

  “You stand here across from the police station one more time and I’ll arrest you for vagrancy. Do you understand me?”

  47

  On the first day of the week, the city wakes in alarm, leaps out of its weekend coma like a student who realizes she has woken up late on the morning of an exam. Bus drivers pull quickly away from the stop, close their hearts to the pleading of a running passerby. Deaf to the shouts of pedestrians, motorcyclists don’t hesitate to drive onto the sidewalk in order to bypass a stubborn traffic light. At falafel stands, the oil grows increasingly hotter. Eggplants are slaughtered casually. Pita bread arrives hot from the bakers in packages of ten, swollen and sweaty. In cafés, the weekend newspapers that customers had fought over the night before are now thrown away. In government offices, clerks gather the courage to unlock the doors and announce “We’re open”—it’s the first day of the week and a throng of people is about to charge inside. No one stands still. The city, as if attacked by fleas, jiggles and scratches.

  As the streets filled with people, Nofar stood and watched, running her fingers through her hair. It seemed to her that everyone was wondering why she stopped there. As if, somehow, even though she wasn’t blocking anyone’s path, her lack of movement was disrupting the traffic.

  People looked at Nofar, but Nofar didn’t look at them. It was shadows that preoccupied her. Everyone who walks on the street has a shadow attached at the heel. Noon will reduce it to a negligible narrow stripe, but as the day lengthens it too will lengthen until night comes and people blend together into one large darkness. To flee that darkness, they will hurry off to their illuminated homes. But for the moment, morning shadows. How many of the people passing
her here had already lied today, between brushing their teeth and drinking their first cup of coffee? How many lasted until noon? Small tall thick thin lovely ugly white lies, always white.

  Maybe she would go to the police station now. It was probably busy there, too, on Sunday morning. She’d wait patiently until Detective Dorit was free. It wasn’t an emergency. She had time. The hours would pass, the shadows would grow longer, and when the detective called her in, she would tell her exactly that: the shadow wasn’t attached to her foot now, she was attached to the shadow.

  The minutes passed and she remained standing where she was. Only small children and beggars stood still on Sunday morning. Parents scolded the children, pulled them onward. No one scolded the beggars. They stood for as long as they wanted, extinguished like streetlights fired by the dawn and rehired by the evening. Nofar knew she was too old for a parent to come and take her by the hand. Although she wished for that. She watched the crying toddlers, flinging their arms about to escape the grown-ups’ determined grip, and she thought about the blessing of such a tight grip. Someone else knew where you had to go. Someone else was responsible for getting you there. If only someone would grasp her like that, take her by the hand and drag her to the detective’s office. But she was a seventeen-year-old in the middle of a busy street. She was in charge of her hand. She was free to go wherever she wanted. Free to stand still and say nothing.

  The wind danced through the branches of the orange tree, and the branches replied with graceful bows. It wasn’t clear why the tree had decided to grow in the alley, of all places, trapped between the backsides of buildings. Birds pecked at the oranges constantly, blessing their good fortune. And when the fruits finally despaired and fell from the branches to their death, the ants scurried over to the pecked oranges to suck out the marrow. So much life in a single tree, and no one knew. Only today did Nofar see the tree for the first time. Her overflowing emotions had pushed her legs from the main street, ordered her to find a quiet place where she could think. She hadn’t been to the alley since discovering Lavi’s betrayal. Now she sat down there, her legs heavy. This is where it all began. And in the midst of all that, despite all that, an orange tree. To think it had been there the entire time and she had never noticed it. Nofar stared at it intently now, not only because she wanted to escape her admonishing thoughts, but also because she wanted to make up for all the times she had passed it by without seeing it. A kind of green shiver ran through the tree, all the branches and leaves suddenly swaying. Faced with that green dance, the girl could not help but stop. Perhaps that was why she didn’t notice she wasn’t alone. She had lost herself in the tree and didn’t see the other two eyes.

  For the first time, Avishai Milner had the opportunity to look at her properly. Everything had happened so quickly that evening in the alley, and since then he hadn’t had the chance to see her face. True, he could easily have found her on the TV screen and in the pages of the newspapers, but since his release from jail on bail, he had avoided, at all cost, what he called out-and-out slander. Now it was only him, the girl, and an orange tree. She was looking at the tree and he was looking at her, and just as she was fascinated by the infinite number of possible movements hidden in the tree, he was fascinated by the infinite number of possible actions he could take. But for now, he would only look. How enjoyable it is to observe another person who is unaware of you. How unbearable the vulnerability of the one being observed. If Avishai Milner had ever assaulted Nofar Shalev it was now, as he studied every quaver of her flesh, every quiver of her face, seeing her inside and out, and she didn’t know.

  Then she turned around and saw him, and at first she didn’t seem to recognize him. She assumed he was someone who’d lost his way, or perhaps a gardener come to see how the tree was doing. Of course, she felt the natural fear of a young girl finding herself in the company of a strange man in a deserted alley. But the proximity to the busy midday street soothed her fear, and she gave him a small nod and stood up to find another place where she could be alone, when she suddenly realized who was standing before her.

  The blood drained from her face. Her body was still there, but her mind had leaped out of her, the way a trapped burglar leaps from a window. For the first minute she feared for her life. In a moment she would feel his hands on her neck. Desperate people do desperate things—who knew that better than she? But then she asked herself whether it was Avishai Milner who frightened her or she herself, what she had done to him. The midday traffic was heavy, the main street still a scream away. And Avishai Milner did not seem capable of attacking. His tortured face looked at her with more weakness than hatred. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him. All that was left of that smug, nasty customer was the shell of a person. Why did you come here now? he cursed himself. This chance meeting is likely to cost you dearly. But honestly, he hadn’t planned to see her. His feet had led him this way, and before he noticed, here he was, at the scene of the crime. Here, his former life had been stolen from him. Here, you could draw a chalk outline of the body of the man he had been.

  “Please,” he said to her suddenly. “Please.” Before he could even think about what he was doing, his legs took over and he knelt in the shadow of the orange tree, the damp earth clinging to his pants, his hands spread to the sides, and there he was, before her.

  Nofar looked at him with wide-open eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” His face looked suddenly old, much older that it had that night. There were blue bags under his eyes. His cheeks were sunken and his voice was a hoarse whisper. “I deserve to suffer for what I said to you. But not like this.” He shook his head and said, “Not like this” several times with nearly closed eyes, his body swaying back and forth in supplication, like a worshipper in a synagogue. “Stop this, I beg you, stop it.”

  She wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Reluctantly, she looked at his drooping shoulders, the gray that had spread through his hair with the speed of a disaster. But suddenly his kneeling before her angered her. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and lift him up. Stand up now. Be cruel. Be that man, the man who deserves it.

  But Avishai Milner, as if trying to anger her, merely closed his eyes, placing himself in her hands. He should stop, she thought. He should get up right now. But he remained where he was, still kneeling. The embarrassment he had felt at first faded. It was not humiliation he was experiencing but the opposite, the sort of spiritual uplifting he used to feel when he woke up sick with a high fever, and instead of fighting it his body simply sank pleasantly into its defeat. So it was now, on his knees before her with his eyes closed. Let her do with him whatever she wanted.

  The sight was so terrible that Nofar couldn’t control herself and burst into tears. Avishai Milner opened his eyes. He hadn’t expected that. “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  “But I didn’t do anything to you.”

  She was sobbing so hard that she didn’t hear him. It took a long moment for her to catch her breath. “If I say I lied, they’ll never forgive me.”

  “I’ll go to jail.”

  His voice trembled when he spoke, and she knew he was right, that he would sit in prison for five years. She pictured a dark cell with dangerous criminals in it, among them the innocent Avishai Milner. She heard the loudspeaker announcing the end of visiting hour, the clank of the lock on the large iron door. The face she saw before her would become wrinkled. The shoulders, already stooped, would stoop even more. And his parents—what do they think when they watch the news? What do they say to their neighbors? But she absolutely could not do it. Maybe she could have done it before, but now it was too late, and that’s what she told him, “Now it’s too late to say I lied. Now I can’t anymore.”

  She expected him to plead. To shout. She was afraid he might slap her. Even hit her. But it never entered her mind that he would smile that way. A cold, contemptuous smile that reminded her of that Avishai Milner. No problem, he said, she didn’t have to say anyth
ing. The recording on his phone would say it all. And if she didn’t want the police to come for her, she should go to them first. Because he himself was planning to walk straight over to the station.

  Now it was Nofar’s turn to fall to the ground. There was a soft thud as her knees met the damp earth of the alley. The leaves of the orange tree moved gently, as if the tree felt the switching of roles: a girl standing and a man kneeling, a girl kneeling and a man standing. And a moment later—a girl kneeling and a man who was no longer there, who had turned and gone, not smug, not fleeing, but walking with the calm, steady gait of someone who knew that, finally, his life was in his own hands.

  Her stomach seemed to hurt. Seemed to, because the connection between her head and her stomach was only partial at the moment, as if someone had cut the ropes that joined her head to her body, leaving only a thin string barely able to do the job. She heard her breathing from a distance, rapid and shallow. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth, and there was not a drop of saliva in her throat now. Maybe she should run after him. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even get up. Maybe it really was better to stay there, in the alley. She would retreat to this place and cut herself off from the city, because she could never return to it again. And it was only a small step from retreating from the city to retreating from life itself, because it would be better to die than live there when everyone found out.

  There was no way of knowing how far those thoughts would have gone if Lavi hadn’t suddenly dashed out of the ice-cream parlor, grabbed her by the shoulder, and shouted, “Come with me!”

  He chased him alone. Nofar was too shocked to move. She had stared at Lavi, her expression so tormented that the fire that had been blazing inside him grew a thousand times more intense and he shot out of the alley like a missile. His body felt stronger than it ever had before. As if during all the time he had been waiting, all the hours he had spent staring out the window in the expectation of seeing her, all the training with his father on the beach—he had been gathering strength for the moment when he could be her helpmate.