Lies from the Attic

by Tamara Avner

  For me, meeting Aner Schwartz was an invitation to conduct some commando-style infiltration into Zvika’s hidden life.

  Although the box still wouldn’t open, I learned that Aner had a matching box and that he was willing to consider a prisoner exchange as part of a lucrative Jibril deal by which I were to liberate several poems written in Zvika’s quivering Jell-O-like English.

  The problem was that I had no access to my box, which probably held the mushy poems which Aner desired so much and that I couldn’t bust it open since it was, in some sick and twisted way, my only way of relating to my mother. In any case, I still had to provide hard material evidence in exchange for information. I spent several days dazed by this notion, even trying to write several poems of my own, but these ended up looking more like an English for Dummies exercise. Since I was always blessed with sound judgment and knew that Aner would sniff out my forgery, I kept wandering about the house, running the tip of my index finger on Zvika’s bullet while trying to come up with some creative solution.

  Look, I’m willing to grant Ruth Solomon, Oded’s own piranha, one thing. There really are no coincidences. Everything is predetermined, everything happens for a reason and old man fate watches pedantically from the sidelines, occasionally throwing clues in the air like so much confetti, pointing and laughing with his endless ‘I told you so’s. Every now and again, though, we do manage to pick up some of the hints he’s been dropping.

  I ran to my parents’ bedroom and opened my mother’s underwear drawer. You’re still not getting it? The poems!! The English poems from mom’s underwear drawer! It’s been years since I last visited them. When I was little, I didn’t even bother with them, with their cursive handwriting and all. But now? There they were. Inside a clear nylon folder. Eight or nine of them. That infantile Pablo, better keep my fingers crossed that he wrote them in English and not Spanish or anything. A sigh of relief dripped from my mouth like saliva over fresh caught prey. English it is.

  The very next day I was already down at the local print store getting them all Xeroxed, carefully omitting mom’s name from the top of each page. Then, I put them right back where I found them, just in case she found solace – or excitement – in rereading them.

  With my limited knowledge of the English language, I hazarded the guess that Pablo copied them from somewhere rather than concocted them in his frantic mind. But I trusted that they would be enough for now.

  The prisoner exchange with Aner was set up for the following week.

  One night, I got a text from Yaniv Swissa.

  “Awake?”

  Idiot.

  “Can I come over?”

  “Where are you?” I finally replied, when my antennae suddenly jerked into action.

  “In Rishon, Stenger just dropped me off”.

  “What were you guys doing in Rishon?” It took me a second to dial him.

  “He was summoned to console some family, you know, that volunteering thing he does”.

  Jerk.

  “By the City Officer?”

  “Yeah… So, can I come over? I’m right here in the neighborhood”.

  “Where exactly are you?”

  “He dropped me off on Hamitzpe Street. I’m five minutes from your place…”

  “What’s the family’s name? Maybe it’s someone I know?”

  “I don’t know. So, should I stop by?”

  Ten minutes later, I was already parked at the end of Hamitzpe Street, wearing my best jogging clothes – a tight white crop top, running shorts and Nike shoes – after ascertaining that Oded’s car was indeed parked a few houses away.

  Over the next two hours, two couples entered building number seven. In both cases, the woman was wiping tears from her eyes and the man followed her, gazing at the ground with his arm around her shoulder.

  Bingo.

  The hours tick-tocked by as I waited in my car, listening to the radio, undoing my bandage and rolling it up and down my arm.

  At six in the morning, I spotted him leaving the building with two junior officers in combat uniform, who followed him on both sides, like an arrow shaped flock of birds.

  I got out of the car, straightened my socks, made sure that my shirt revealed everything just below my navel and started jogging. I ran past them and stopped short right in front of him. The two officers recoiled before this unknown character that jumped them after a sleepless night, but he stood unflinchingly still.

  “Hey! What a surprise! What are you doing here this early in the morning?” I panted out, hoping my nipples are as erect as they usually get when I exercise.

  “Yeah, hello, how are you?”

  I suddenly noticed that his face was grey, the corners of his mouth were drooped and his bloodshot eyes were frantically stirring in their sockets.

  “Okay then, I won’t be bothering you, I can see that…” I blurted and kept running on the sidewalk. After several vigorous leaps, I stopped at the end of the street and turned around.

  They kept standing there for another minute or two, talking with lowered heads. Then the two officers got into the military car that was parked nearby and he stepped towards his BMW.

  I ran back, breathing hard.

  “You look beat. You shouldn’t be driving like this. Why don’t you hop over, take a shower, pull yourself together. You must have a long day ahead of you…”

  He lifted his eyes from the car keys he was holding in his hand and gave me a long look. It was as if he was trying to remember where he knew me from and what sent me dropping out of the sky at him like a gunned down goose.

  “You live right around here, right?”

  Hook, line and sinker. He slipped right into the bag of ducks I had hanging from my shoulder.

  The smell of pine wafted from the car freshener fastened to his rear view mirror as I sat in the passenger seat of his BMW, giving him directions to get to my place. We took the elevator up together and as we walked in the door, he put down his leather briefcase and proceeded to take off his shirt. I led him to the bedroom shower and then stood there gazing in inconcealable amazement as he stripped naked on his way to the shower, as if I wasn’t even there. I watched him take off his shoes and socks, remove his trousers and his briefs, unable to take my eyes off his marble breasts, the grey hairs covering them and his long lanky legs, attached to two time-worn buttocks that carried him behind the shower curtain.

  I went to the kitchen to make him some coffee.

  He stepped out of the shower, put on the T shirt I laid out on the bed for him, it was left behind by one of the many men who sowed their seed in me, then he sat down at the dining table and took a sip.

  His silence drove me wild, making all my woman parts gush and stir so that I could almost hear my uterus and ovaries whirring.

  I gently put my hand on his shoulder.

  He turned his head and kissed it with his narrow lips.

  After that his pale towering body beat hard, almost violently, against mine, shaking me down to my bones. Then we both fell asleep and I woke up about two hours later, when I felt him entering me again, this time softly, this time from behind, with long hushed movements as his head was digging into my softest pillow.

  Oded Stenger is a man of extremes. A bi-polar character if I ever saw one. On the one hand, you probably never met anyone so cynical. He held nothing sacred, nothing at all, let alone ceremonies, holidays, manners and decorum. He scoffed bitterly at any toasting of wine glasses with murmurings of “cheers”, “happy new year”, “good health” and especially “good luck”. On the other, he was as humane and soft as the inside of a clam, and there was no one in the entire world you’d rather have consoling you and cheering you up. Why, that man could really take the ‘steng’ off anything (I can see him raising one bushy eyebrow at this pun).

  I thought he was the best man I ever met, but as these things go, reality knocked me on the head with a baseball bat. He turned out to be more vicious than ISIS on a good day.

  A true seeker
of truth and justice, one who seemed to wake up every morning just to see justice served, he unfortunately revealed himself to be a dirty liar and the most crooked crook who ever walked the face of the earth. As loyal as a Sheltie puppy and as connivingly traitorous as they come. The bravest warrior, champion of the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, but also the greatest coward alive, and you’ll end up spitting scornfully on his footprints, as they slowly fade on his carefully planned escape route, after he has vanished without a trace.

  No one alive was as touching as this man, who felt nothing all his life but the touch of his own skin against himself.

  That’s all I have to say about Oded Stenger.

  “How are you, cutie-pie? How’s that cute little ass of yours?”

  “Growing”.

  “Good, honey, you keep growing it for us in that little garden of yours”.

  “And how’s the western front today?”

  “All quiet”.

  He said I was the only one who made him laugh.

  “Come on, come have some fried fish with me, nobody makes them like the Sultan”.

  And we went and had lunch or dinner at all the Arab places in Jaffa and each time he entered a restaurant, he simply whispered something in the owner’s ear and waiters came fawning about us like Snow White’s seven dwarves, not letting up until we were stretched out in our chairs with a cigarette, some mint tea and a demitasse of strong Turkish coffee.

  Then we would drive back to my Rishon apartment.

  One time he went up to the piano and hit the G key a few times, each time with a different amount of force. Then he picked up Zvika’s box, turned it upside down and examined it every which way.

  “What’s this now?”

  “What’s this what’s this now?” I came closer and took the box away from him.

  “What’s inside?”

  “This box used to belong to my brother, Zvika, the one who was killed in the war”.

  “So what’s in it?” He asked, his curiosity getting the better of his usual bureaucratic restraint. I thought I heard the contents of the box rattling in his hands.

  “I have no idea. I never opened it”.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m waiting”.

  Strangely, he seemed to know exactly what I meant. He put the box back in its place and pulled me up to him.

  Sometimes he would whisper urgently, “come on, show me where your black box is hiding”, or “come ride me with your ponies”, or “I’m just dying to water your legendary little cauliflower” – all manner of phrases that I was completely unprepared for and that drove me to think that I really had ponies inside me or that I truly had cauliflowers, black boxes, scarves and all sorts of treasures that no other woman possessed. Every now and again, after flipping each other over in bed or in the tub or on the living room rug (he suggested that I leave the kitchen sink and the laundry machine to the younger men who would follow after him, begging for my favor), we talked.

  “So what’s in that box of yours?” He asked me again one time, as I was blowing him next to the piano.

  “I dunno”, I answered.

  “What will it take for you to open it?” He said, tracing its contours with his fingers, while using his other hand to tuck my hair away so he could get a better view of what was going on about his loins.

  I disengaged myself and looked up at him. “That’s up to you. You’ll have to say the magic word”.

  “What, like open sesame? I need to find the secret password?” He giggled.

  I turned my head away from his member, reaching up to gaze deeply into his eyes.

  He pushed my head back down, presently shutting the door to the cave of wonders.

  Sometimes he would tell me about things that went on during his trials. In a dry didactic voice, he would describe situations so bizarre, anecdotes so esoteric that only he could have noticed them, and always with a kind of false modesty which always worked in his favor, because I knew just how he went about those hearings, how he latched right onto the weak points of the trembling animal before him, setting little traps that grew ever bigger, until finally a great wave came washing down, obliterating the opposing agenda. His cross examinations would leave witnesses smiling as if a piano was just dropped on their heads and a vague mindless grin was all they could muster to maintain their dignity. When he was done getting to the bottom of things, they all looked like some brainless supermodel with no make-up on, keeping up appearances but pathetic and oblivious, just the way he wanted them, with the audience breathing a sigh of relief – somebody other than them was caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

  When we were really in the mood we played would you rather.

  - Would you rather get your foot chopped off or lose me?

  - And your hand?

  - Both hands?

  - Would you rather we lived out our lives together but in a rickety shack or you living like a queen, but without me?

  - Would you rather be in prison for ten years and then get out and live together, or stay on like this?

  - Would you marry an Arab guy if that was the only way you could keep seeing me?

  - What about a midget?

  - Or someone with a terrible highly infectious skin disease, would you sleep with him to save my life?

  - Say I got arrested for treason and you could give false testimony in my favor and get me off the hook. Would you do that, Oded?

  - Would you rather that we kill your wife and do twenty years in prison or go on like this until the end?

  - Which would you rather do, Rakefet? Die for love or live for it, without ever obtaining it?

  And when his muse came visiting, which happened about once in a blue moon, when his Achilles heel was exposed, he would open up his tightly shut shell, revealing entire continents undisturbed by human travelers. In these preciously short moments, I saw my reflection in his eyes and it was like a priceless ruby.

  It was in these moments, when he unlocked the bolted chambers of his heart and told me about himself, his hesitations, his pain, all the places in him that longed for a tender touch, that I was blessed to find myself in his reflection, to see myself in his eyes – unique, enchanted, enchanting.

  “I’m like this only when I’m with you…” He would tell me, his bright eyes welling up.

  “Like what?” I would reply, and a hot southern wind would fill my heart.

  “Like this”, he answered, sprawled on my bed at noon.

  “Like my angel?” I gave it a shot.

  “No, just like this”.

  “What do you mean like this!?” I barked at him.

  He started giggling.

  “What are you laughing at?! What’s so funny?! Can’t you talk like a normal person? Say something!” I growled at him, not really sure what it was I was after.

  “I just love it when you get like this, Rakefet, you’re the best…” He answered, trying to grab my arm or my leg and drag me back to bed.

  And so I came to believe that I had crowned myself the unquestionable ruler of his little kingdom, leaving all the other women who came and went under his body far behind, keeping him with me in my Rishon apartment after we had sucked each other dry and heading out the door in the morning to go to the base with a slam that rattled the entire stairwell but filled me with an intoxicating sense of triumph. And, what’s even more important, feeling that my inner lining was sticking, ever so slightly, to the inside of my body. At least until next time.

  Aner turned the page over in his hands, carefully examined it from closer up and then from further away, turned it over again and gave me a look.

  “I don’t know about this…”

  “So forget about it”, came the answer, emerging from a place inside me that was up to now unknown to me. I promptly reached my hand out to take it back.

  He immediately backed away from my extended arm, went back to turning the page, read it, twisted it left and right, folded it in two and
held it against his stomach.

  “You’re sure this is his?”

  “Of course I am. What are you, retarded? We have a box at our place where we keep all his stuff”.

  Technically, that wasn’t a lie.

  “No, I just didn’t think that he would write things like this, and this handwriting, it doesn’t look anything like his…”

  “Well, duh! Of course it doesn’t. That’s because it’s in English! What are you, retarded?” I scolded him again. “Everything was different for him in English, even his speech. You said it yourself. What are you, retarded?” I barked at him again.

  “Well, I suppose it could…” He suddenly jumped up, straightened his back and barked back, “and who do you think you are? I could be your father, you know! You call me a retarded one more time and…”

  I ignored his vexation.

  “What about your end?”

  “My what?”

  “The letters he sent you, from that place?”

  “No, there aren’t any more letters, but I can tell you what you want to know”.

  Lying cocksucker faggot.

  “You liar, you said there were more letters”.

  I could see him deliberating.

  “Okay then, if I’m not getting any letters, you’re not getting the rest of these”. I picked up the bag that was sitting on the bench and turned to go.

  “Look, I have one more thing, it’s small and it’s really not a big deal… But it might still help you out…”

  I held my breath, waiting to see what kind of rabbit he’s going to pull out of his hat this time.

  “It’s just that I have no idea what you know and what you don’t know about him. I’m looking out for you here, you shouldn’t be hearing this from me anyway”.

  “Well?”

  “What I’m saying is that I’m not even entirely sure myself about what happened down there in the end, no-one really knows, with the war going on and everything, they didn’t pay too much attention to the people left behind on the home front…”