The Lie: A Novel

by Hesh Kestin

  82

  They let Dahlia in for only a few minutes. Ari has just been wheeled from the operating room: There is danger of sepsis. The two nurses who remain in the room will not let her near. She is compelled to stand ten feet away. Ari’s face is white, his eyes closed. He is breathing through a tube attached to his throat. A dozen more tubes seem to be growing from his body like tentacles, some attached to intravenous drips, some to a bank of machines lit by multicolored bulbs and moving graphs that tell a story, but not to Dahlia. The machines hum so calmly, securely, confidently, it is almost as though Ari is an extension of the machines rather than the machines an extension of him.

  “My baby, if you can hear me, I want you to know your father and I are working things out.” She speaks the words knowing they are lies, every one of them shallow and manipulative, but perhaps encouraging, perhaps that. She cannot know if he hears her. “We’re all back together. We’re all going to have dinner together every night, the whole family, just like when you and Uri were little. We’ll be a family again. Ari?”

  Outside, she finds her husband and younger son standing, waiting. They are not permitted in the room. Only one visitor. Not one visitor at a time, just one visitor. It hardly makes sense, she thinks. What damage can family do to the boy that the sadistic enemy has not done already? But nothing has made sense since she stepped into that taxi in front of Jerusalem District Court and found herself face-to-face with Zalman Arad and ultimately with Mohammed Al-Masri. And with this. And with herself.

  83

  “I am Dr. Samuels.”

  The physician is a small man with a tidy British accent veiling carefully enunciated Hebrew, his rug of gray hair cut as short as his beard and the curling gray carpet that seems to be trying desperately to escape his chest through the V-collar of his green scrubs.

  Dahlia can see the line etched around his forehead from the elastic of the surgical cap he must just now have removed. His shoes—bright white running shoes, as though he has run an actual marathon and not spent two hours in the operating room—are still sheathed in plastic bags. She waits.

  Dr. Samuels seems to be waiting as well. It is a Jewish standoff, neither party wishing to offend the dignity of the other.

  Finally, Dudik speaks. “Doctor, we were told you would be able to . . .”

  The doctor seems unsure, as if he is in the wrong conversation. He speaks slowly in his British accent, grown heavier now. Too slowly. “Oh, yes. Of course. Is there something . . . specific . . . you wish . . . to know?”

  “I wish to know if my baby will live.”

  “Ms. . . .” He searches his mind for the name. To a surgeon, names are of little importance. “Barr, isn’t it? I—”

  “He’s white. Alabaster. I saw him.”

  “Yes, of course. That’s the way most of them, many of them, the way they are.” He seems to be choosing his words carefully, as though protective of their meaning, how they fit together, like a frightened witness in a courtroom in a foreign country who is drawing on freshly acquired but limited vocabulary, unsure of the sequence of words as they drop from his tongue, fearful of getting it wrong, perhaps of implicating himself. “Severe loss . . . of blood, failure of certain organs, specific organs, which themselves put strain, further strain, on the heart. He will regain his color. The color comes back. Some never . . . become white. Rose. They stay rose-colored. It doesn’t mean . . . much.”

  “Doctor, we’re waiting for you to tell us his condition.”

  Thank God for Dudik, she thinks. He can be such a prick, and then such a mensch. Why did I lie to Ari? Even if he couldn’t hear, it was wrong to lie. But maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe it was . . .

  “His condition?” Dudik repeats.

  Uri can contain himself no longer. “Doctor, tell us about my brother.”

  “Your brother, yes.”

  It is Dahlia who guesses. “Doctor, if you’d rather speak English, please do.”

  Dr. Samuels lets out a long sigh. The shackles have been removed from his tongue. “Thank God. A month in Israel. A new ascendant. Please tell me what you do know.” Freed from the demands of Hebrew, he is as much in charge as he must have been in the operating room.

  “Ari’s been wounded,” Dudik says. “Beyond that no one has told us anything.”

  Dr. Samuels nods. “Let me then get you up to speed. Your son has suffered massive trauma. He has lost his spleen. There is severely reduced liver capacity and absolutely zero kidney function. His right lung is punctured in two places by broken ribs. The same lung has been partially torn away from the muscles that hold it in place, a minor injury in the scheme of things but likely to be painful because, let us remember, breathing is not an occasional matter.” He pauses. “We do have a rather significant complication.”

  The Barrs simply stand there. There is no use asking what the complication is. The doctor has found his voice.

  He drops it an octave, like an amateur actor pursuing verisimilitude. “You are aware your son is a rare blood type?”

  The parents look at each other.

  “He’s never been injured,” Dahlia says. “Before this.”

  “Good job, that,” Dr. Samuels says.

  “He did have an operation as a child,” Dahlia says. “There was no problem.”

  “Of course were it a simple matter of blood transfusion, the whole thing would be rather less complicated. Blood banks keep these rare types on hand for just such an occurrence. It’s . . .” He pauses dramatically, a different actorish tick but in the same category: artifice. “It’s a matter of renal function. He’ll need a kidney. One kidney. He can get by with one. God worked it out that way. Two eyes, two hands, two ears, two kidneys. One of each is sufficient. The trouble in this case . . .”

  “Say it.”

  “Mrs. Barr, the fact is your son will need a replacement kidney from someone with precisely the same blood profile.”

  “Which is why . . .”

  “Indeed, Mr. Barr, which is why we were in such a hurry to ascertain which of you might be the ideal donor.”

  “I’m ready, doctor.”

  “Yes, well, Mr. Barr, I’m rather afraid a father’s will in some cases is insufficient. Wasn’t it Herzl who said ’If you will it, it is no dream’? Unfortunately Herzl was not a physician. Your blood type is not compatible. Your son’s body would reject your kidney in a manner most violent. The strain of such a rejection would be enough to finish him. He requires a perfect match.”

  Dahlia and Uri speak at once, precisely together, and in the same words. “Let it be me.”

  Dr. Samuels offers a mild, wry smile, at once admiring and discouraged. “Perhaps there is another family member, someone close by?”

  “You mean . . .”

  “None of you is suitable. This kind of thing, it often skips a generation.”

  The conversation stops.

  “A grandparent?” Dahlia says.

  “A grandparent, yes.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Dahlia,” Dudik says, “you’ve got to ask her.”

  “She wouldn’t cross the street to save all of our lives.” She turns to the doctor. “What about dialysis? People live without kidneys.”

  “Madam, your son needs a functioning kidney. Within hours. Unfortunately, not just any kidney will do.”

  “You’ve got to try,” Dudik tells Dahlia. “We’ve got to contact her. She can be here in an hour.”

  “She’s not at home. She’s here.”

  “In Jerusalem?”

  “It’s what she does. This is where she does it.”

  “Demonstrating?”

  “She doesn’t play tennis, Dudik.”

  “But it’s six A.M. Who demonstrates at—”

  “They’ve got a tent. They sleep there. Don’t you read anything outside the financial pages?”

  “I read the entire paper. It’s just, it never occurred to me these crazy leftists . . .”

  “Leftists, rightists, vegetari
ans,” she says. “It’s a virtual summer camp.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Dudik says.

  “Mom, I can go with you. Maybe she’ll see me and—”

  “I’ll go alone.”

  “I’ll take you, then.”

  “Dudik, please let me do this my way. You stay with Uri. Uri, take care of your father. Take care of each other.”

  She draws her phone out of her bag and snaps it open as if cocking a gun. “This is Chief Supt. Dahlia Barr, badge 6402931. I need to be connected with Zeltzer immediately. This is an emergency.” A response. “I understand it’s six in the morning. That’s when emergencies occur.” She eases up. “I’ll take full responsibility. Barr, Dahlia, chief superintendent, 6402931. Now put me through.”

  84

  In a light rain the Knesset plaza looks like a campsite: tents of all shapes and sizes, some of olive duck and some in the colorful ripstop nylon of naturalists or young backpackers off to see the world after military service. The police car carrying Dahlia and a truck bearing a dozen bleary-eyed Border Police enter the plaza, where the two groups of demonstrators are separated by a line of barbed wire and a wall of portable toilets alternately facing one encampment and the other. It occurs to Dahlia that here, only in the most basic of animal functions, can the two viciously opposed sides be found in peaceful proximity.

  “Bloody hell,” the constable driving her says. “How do we tell them apart?”

  “You see the two flagpoles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One of them is at half-mast.”

  “That’s the one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Who died?”

  “According to them,” she says, “democracy, justice, socialism—take your pick. Park here.”

  Even as Dahlia sets foot on the flagstone pavement, the officer commanding the Border Police unit has his men out of the truck and lined up. They are in full riot gear.

  He salutes her. “Commander?”

  “We will need to do this tent by tent.”

  The officer does not even bother to acknowledge the order. “You four with the chief super. The rest stand by.”

  The four follow Dahlia in single file like heavily armed goslings.

  She stops at the first tent: three men and an incredibly pacific dog, a brown Labrador, which wags its tail and then burrows down next to its master.

  In the second tent, a bright red and yellow affair with a multitude of zippers and flaps, a young couple in the same sleeping bag are shocked awake. They are so tightly entwined they can hardly sit up.

  “Where is Erika Fine?”

  The two look at her and the Border Policemen behind her with an unpleasant mixture of moral rectitude and bravado. “We speak no Hebrew,” the boy says in thick English. He is perhaps nineteen. German, probably, or Austrian. Maybe Swiss.

  “Where is Erika Fine?” Dahlia repeats in English. “Which tent?”

  “If we knew, we wouldn’t tell the police,” the boy says. “In every fascist country, it is the same.”

  “Have a nice day,” Dahlia says.

  In the third tent they find her. Predictably Auntie Zeinab is with her. Between their air mattresses are an empty red plastic milk crate on which rest a candle, mostly burnt down, and an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock emitting a loud, metallic tick-tock. In front of the crate is a large aluminum cook pot, the kind used for soup.

  “Erika!”

  Her mother stirs awake. She takes in the scene as though she has just dreamed it. “So, my daughter is now a full-fledged Gestapo.”

  “Mother, I need you to come with me.”

  Nothing, not so much as a blink.

  “Mother, I need your help.”

  “Mother?” Erika’s voice drips sarcasm.

  “Please. It’s important.”

  Now Zeinab is awake. “What is happening?”

  Even in the dim light of the tent, Dahlia sees her auntie has grown old. Her hair, normally covered with a flower-printed cloth, is white, in sharp contrast to Erika’s bright red, which is dyed. It is as red, Dahlia thinks absurdly, as her politics.

  “It’s all right, auntie. I just need Erika to come with me.”

  “Police,” Zeinab says. “My dear niece, I don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand? My daughter works for the same police who oppress your people, who have detained your son. Probably even now they have him in their torture cells. I told you about this girl. She is the worst sort of traitor, a traitor to truth. Her entire family is rotten.”

  “Erika, we can have a political discussion later. I need you to come with me. Now. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “A matter of life and death. So subtle the threat, Dahlia. Let me tell you something. To remove me from this tent, from this vigil, from being a presence before the Knesset for the truth and for decency, your police goons will have physically to remove me.”

  Inexplicably, Dahlia thinks this is funny—no, she feels it. For the first time in her life, she has real power over her mother, this bitterly implacable bitch who never showed her so much as an ounce of love. No fucking wonder I am alone, no fucking wonder I turned Dudik away. She knows she is being too hard on herself, that Dudik carries his own share of responsibility for their loveless marriage. But at this moment she does not care. It is not hate that she feels boiling up within her, it is vengeance. “Constables, you heard the woman. She demands to be physically removed. I so order it.”

  Almost before Dahlia finishes speaking Erika rises from her air mattress. With a sullen grace she picks up the aluminum pot and throws it. It lands short, its acrid contents splashing out to cover Dahlia’s shoes.

  “And cuff her,” Dahlia says, leaving the tent.

  Outside, the encampment has come to life, several dozen people standing around, mostly young. A girl picks up a rock. Out of the corner of her eye, Dahlia sees the rest of the Border Police unit running up.

  The crowd has begun to chant. “Fasc-ist, po-lice. Fasc-ist, po-lice. Fasc-ist, po-lice. Fasc-ist, po—”

  A rock flies by Dahlia’s head.

  As two constables hustle a handcuffed Erika out of the tent past her—her mother has gone limp so as not to cooperate—the Border Police form a defensive line. Another rock flies. Now it is on. The Police unit moves forward, batons flailing.

  From inside the tent the two other constables remove Zeinab, likewise handcuffed. She does not go limp, but walks with dignity. As she passes Dahlia, their eyes meet. Dahlia sees it, a tiny smile lighting up the deep furrows of Zeinab’s face, a smile of reassurance, a smile of love.

  Dahlia is at once comforted and torn with guilt. Would you love me still, auntie, if you knew what I have done to your son—and what I would have done?

  85

  At the hospital Erika remains resolute: She will be the martyr. Only her eyes register confusion: Why a hospital, not a police station? She refuses to walk. Dahlia has her strapped into a wheelchair and rolled upstairs to where Dudik and Uri wait. Dr. Samuels is gone. Zeinab sits on a bench next to Uri, whom she used to watch over as a child. They have long had a special relationship. In the same way that the Arab woman has been a substitute mother for Dahlia, she has been a substitute grandmother for the boys, never seeing them without drawing from the folds of her long dress a biscuit or cellophane-wrapped hard candy.

  “Uncuff this woman,” Dahlia says.

  A policeman cuts the disposable plastic strip that holds Zeinab’s hands behind her back.

  “If she is tied, I will be tied,” she tells Dahlia.

  “Give us a minute, auntie. Erika, look at me.”

  Erika spits in her direction.

  “Piss, spit—is there anything else you’d like to spatter me with?”

  “Menstrual blood,” her mother says. “But I no longer have it. You are a shame to your family. If your father were alive . . .”

  “If my father were al
ive, I would not have to turn to you. Look, Ari has been seriously injured.” She does not bother with the circumstances. That would not help. “He needs a kidney or he will die. Mine are no good. Dudik and Uri the same. He needs a kidney. A grandparent’s may be suitable. He needs a kidney or he will die.”

  A smile widens on her mother’s face. Her eyes appear to be laughing. “This is why you brought me here?”

  “This is why.”

  “You are manipulating the police power of a fascist state to save the life of your own child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, then: What happens to those who are not similarly employed by the power structure? I will answer my own question—”

  “You always do.”

  “That child will die. Yours, because of your corrupt relationship with the state, will live. The other will die. There you have it, the very metaphor for fascism.”

  “Erika, this is not an exercise in dialectical materialism. This is Ari’s life.”

  “What if it were the life of an Arab? Zeinab’s child? Would that child have the same chance?”

  “Mother—”

  “Mother again. When you need me you call me mother.”

  “You urged me to call you Erika from the time I could speak. But you are my mother, Ari’s grandmother.”

  “Do not evade, Dahlia. This is not a kangaroo court full of lawyers who lie and judges who decide beforehand who is guilty and who is not. If it were an Arab child?”