by Tamara Avner
Still, he seemed so haughty, so content that he left me no choice. When he stepped out to the restroom for a minute, I went through his bag. I found that the CD had something scrawled on it with a black felt-tip pen, an obnoxious clerk’s handwriting spelled out: Operation Jacob’s Ladder – Investigation Report.
As I was wont to do those past few weeks, I made my way from the prison in Zrifin up to Jerusalem, parked my car outside Oded’s residence at 5 Bartenura Street and waited.
I was waiting to see his wife, I was waiting to see him. I was waiting to see who showed up first.
It took him forever.
“What’s up?”
“My jewel, how are you? I haven’t heard from you all day, sweetie”.
I wanted to kill him. I have been waiting all day for him to call. He somehow forgot about forgetting to call me the day before, and the day before that was Shabbat and before that he had to go on a business trip to Greece to close some big important deal, so in total, he completely forgot about me for five whole days.
“Where are you, earth angle?”
“In Rishon, where else would I be? Where are you?”
“I’m already home, sweetie. Gila’s coming in a few minutes. How have you been, gorgeous? Everything still in place? Talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
That filthy, pathetic little liar.
I’ve been waiting by his house for forty-five minutes, he’s neither here nor anywhere close to here. He better start watching his step, messing with me like that.
Lying son of a bitch.
He lobbed his lies at me like a tennis-ball machine and I couldn’t even groundstroke. There shouldn’t be any lies between us. We’re soul mates, cut from the same cloth.
Subtler measures were in order. Live surveillance, rather than passive staking out. The next day, I left the parking lot of the Tel Aviv District Court, where Oded was litigating some liquidation case all day, and started following him back to Jerusalem. So far, so good. That is, until we were almost in Jerusalem and he suddenly took the turn leading up to Mount Scopus. I figured that he might be heading to the General Police Headquarters in East Jerusalem, but then he went right past it, turning left towards Wadi Joz. Could I have missed him? Could I be following the wrong car? I came closer and saw Oded’s big head. For a moment, I thought he might have noticed me in the rear view mirror. He wound his way through the narrow streets and finally stopped the car next to one of the houses. I pulled over too, parking at the side of the road, right next to the wadi’s edge. As he left his car, some local Arab man came up to him and they exchanged a few words. Then, Oded picked up his briefcase from the back seat and the two men walked inside. I saw the lights turn on in one of the doorways, then I saw the light in one of the apartments come up.
I called his cell-phone.
No answer.
I thought I heard his ringtone coming through one of the windows.
I called again.
No answer.
I waited there for about thirty minutes. After he wouldn’t come out and after all the Arab guys in the neighborhood came out to stare at the Jewish girl, sitting like a sitting duck in her IDF issued Renault Megan, I started the engine and drove off. Fuck.
For the third time in my life, I heard a distant voice that sounded like tearing fabric, like stitches being ripped. When I listened carefully, I managed to locate the source – it was coming from inside, from within me. But by then there was no turning back, you see? I was in too deep.
Just for a moment, I want to revisit the first time I felt that abdominal tear.
My meeting with Aner.
I had two choices.
I could summon Mom and Dad for a talk and present all the sound and articulate arguments in favor of them opening the box and letting me know exactly what’s inside and what it means about Zvika: what his story was, what his problems were, what happened to him on the first day of the war and how exactly he ended up dead.
Or I could venture out and discover all this on my own.
I decided in favor of the talk. So there we were one night, Mom, Dad and me sitting around the dinner table and I told them about what I found out. They cried and said they were so sorry that I had to find things out by chance rather than hear it from them. Mom reached into her bra and took out the key to the box. We opened it together, going over each and every document, spreading them out like a fan that told the entire story of Zvika’s life and the circumstances of his death. We hugged and kissed each other and we promised never to keep secrets again.
Ya think?
Several years earlier, I overheard a phone call between Mom and a woman who must have been their Casualties Officer. Mom was letting her have it, threatening her that if she so much as took one step in the general direction of our house, she’ll call the Chief of Staff and the police. That ended all contact with the military, as far as they were concerned, and painted a very clear border for me. Apart from the annual memorial visit to his grave and the laying of seasonal offerings by the shrine, with tight lips and hollow eyes, Zvika’s name wasn’t so much as mentioned, and the more time had passed since the day he was taken up to heaven by a whirlwind, the deeper and more dreaded this secret became and my parents’ touchiness about it climbed and soared.
Merely broaching the subject might have caused the two of them to run up to the roof of Migdal Shalom, Tel Aviv’s first skyscraper, and jump right off, to swallow excessive amounts of sleeping pills and quietly crawl into bed, like tired dogs after a long walk, just in order to save themselves from having to go back and deal with the terrible monster of obliviousness and doubt that nested on their heads and decked their faces with perpetual agony. That was especially true of Mom. Dad probably already had one foot in the great beyond, anyway.
And I wasn’t ready for that.
So I had to set out on my own. It took me six months to start my operation. The only lead I could think of was our Casualties Officer, whose vague visage I recalled from my childhood. I also seemed to remember that her name was Ahuva, because my favorite teacher in kindergarten was called that – the one who started prancing about the second Mom failed to recognize the puffy little palm that belonged to her only daughter, whom she was supposed to love and cherish, and squeaking out “no one scream, no one shout, who will blow the candles out?” – fixing her name in my memory.
I knew exactly where Mom kept her old address books (right next to the expired pills in the top drawer of the bathroom cabinet, where else?) and after a thorough search that would have made Hercule Poirot proud, I managed to dredge up three Ahuvas whose last names I couldn’t place.
Ahuva Sorotzky, Ahuva Berman and Ahuva Lustig.
Several phone calls later, the winner turned out to be none other than Ahuva Lustig.
She told me that she retired from the army some ten years earlier and was no longer serving as a Casualties Officer. She remembered my parents and she even remembered me, as a five or six-year-old girl. She also remembered trying to introduce them to the new Casualties Officer who was replacing her but coming up against a brick wall and finally, as per my parents’ request, after consulting with the Head of the Casualties Division and the Head of the Family-liaisons Department, the army had to stand down.
“I’m calling you now because I’m writing a paper about Zvika, my brother, and I need his death certificate”.
In retrospect, you have to admit that was a brilliant move. How could a girl of barely sixteen at the time know that a proper investigation starts with a careful examination of the death certificate? There might have been some die hard watching of shows like Kojak or Columbo involved, but it was definitely sound reasoning and ultra-keen senses that did the trick.
“Listen, sweetie, we already sent all the documents we had to the family. Your parents should have it, just ask them, sweetheart”.
Sweetheart your ass.
“Yes, I understand. The thing is, it’s supposed to be a surprise and I don’t want them to know about it befo
re it’s done, you see? Maybe you could just help me with this one thing?”
She turned out to be alright, our Lustigette. Most Casualties Officers tend to be pretty alright: extrapolate from their tendency for over-identification and gushing empathy and they’re just swell gals.
“Okay, honey, I’ll see what I can do. Call me next week, will you, love?”
The road to unearthing the truth is a long and winding one.
On such a devious path, I had no choice but to hitch my bumbling cart to our very own Yaniv.
“So, what do you think?”
“What? What do I think about what?” He examines his lanky reflection in my bathroom mirror, turning his head right and left like some narcissus that was just plucked from his pond.
“What do you make of this Itay Harel guy?”
“What, that overzealous foot soldier with the unauthorized shooting?” He moves on to study the reflection of his brown stomach, gasping and making it bulge and then exhaling and sucking it in, checking the overall effect on his profile.
“So overzealous. I don’t even get why Oded is involved in all this. He’s a leftist, right? Isn’t he the one representing Palestinian families suing the state on account of trigger-happy hotheads like these?”
He puckers his lips, draws his cheeks inwards and gazes intensely into his own eyes.
“You have to realize that Oded is a complicated person, it’s not exactly as it seems. When he’s in that courtroom with that infantry soldier, he can’t see anything but Itay’s truth; he’d sell his own mother to save that boy. When he’s in the Nazareth courthouse with that Palestinian woman’s widowed husband and orphaned children, he only sees her truth, he’s willing to lay himself on the line for her”.
What a remarkably coherent sentence, you have to admit.
“And which is greater?”
“Which what is greater?”
“Which is a greater loss – his mother or the line?” I asked, although I thought I knew the answer already.
He turned away from the mirror.
“Be honest, if I never make it as a lawyer, I can always start a modeling career, right?”
It’s funny, but sometimes the biggest idiots have such priceless insights.
I put two and two together. Oded filed a motion to declassify the investigation report pretending to defend his soldier client in the military tribunal, using smoke and mirrors to get his hands on the sector’s rules of engagement, which would come in quite handy for the civil suit in which he represents the family of the Palestinian woman – the very same woman killed by the unauthorized shooting, as far as I could gather. And all this without even making a dime.
The next turn of events could hardly be called surprising. One night, I got a very late phone call, summoning me to HaKirya Base in Tel Aviv, to the chambers of the Chief Military Advocate General.
Around an oval table, under the pictures of all former chiefs of staff, sat the Chief Military Advocate General, to his right was the IDF’s Chief Prosecutor, to his left, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor and, next to her, the Head of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.
I sat at the end of the long rectangular table that intersected the oval one, with a spotlight on my face, just like a hardcore police investigation.
At this point, everyone knew I was the mistress, Oded’s other significant other. Quite the respectable position. Word of this climbed up to the top echelons and when suspicions arose that advocate Stenger had been using military documents that had no business being at his disposal in court and what’s more, he was probably suspected of passing classified material to an enemy agent – their man’s closest confidant was the first nut they set out to crack and believe you me, they brought out the big guns, hoping this little nut will simply crumble like a well-roasted pistachio inside their gallant fists.
The first Operation Entebbe is green to go – my mission is to rescue Oded Stenger from all the nonsense he’s gotten himself into, pursuing all those odd ends that justified his means. This is the first time I lay down in front of the system’s bulldozers for the love of my life. That’s me, always putting everyone else before my own best interest.
I sat there for three and a half hours as they alternated between asking me about my relationship with him and about my knowledge of the cases he was handling, the places he frequented, the people he spoke to or consorted with –questions upon questions came pelting indiscriminately down from every direction. The Chief Prosecutor played the bad cop. His eyes shot fire and brimstone and his mouth spewed saliva when he threatened to shamefully kick me out of the army, shaming me for my slutty status as Oded’s paramour, while his chubby, kind hearted deputy tried to get me to let the cat out of the bag, tempting me with promises of the wonderful catharsis and purification that will visit me the moment I confessed, as well as a personal promotion in exchange for my cooperation.
The Head of the Criminal Investigation Command sat there like some tanned listless sphinx and used his pen to scratch inside his sleeve, trying to make it to the elbow and beyond. Meanwhile, the Chief Advocate General occasionally took over the reins and did a spectacular job at whipping me with unexpected questions, a punch to the right cheek, a blow below the belt, sometimes it even felt like one of the overlooking Chiefs of Staff pushed his own little bomb outside the picture frame and into the room, while little old me sits there facing them, dodging their barrage of bullets, sweating, keeping my mouth good and shut (and it’s not like they let me get a drink of water or hop out to the little girls’ room) and once more into the fray of this deranged David and Goliath debacle, with the only slingshot at my disposal being my love and my absolute, relentless loyalty to the prime suspect.
Three and a half hours later and they still haven’t got anything out of me. Nada. Zilch. With all their tricky little ways, they tried coaxing me into any kind of admission that Oded Stenger was an Israel-hating leftist, dead set on exacting his revenge on the Zionist intruders. And I held my ground. Oded and I are romantically involved, nothing more. I have no knowledge of his cases, his associates or his relations with other people. We meet two or three times every week, he takes me to the finest restaurants and then we make love in my apartment, nothing more.
I knew that Oded was already negotiating for some plea bargain, that anything I said might foil his maneuverings. I also knew that they were mightily displeased with his stubborn, heavy handed conduct and were just waiting for a chance to take him down a notch or two, even for a little while, whether by pressing criminal charges or at least by getting him suspended from the bar association or temporarily revoking his rights to serve as a military defender. That would have made him much less of a headache. Such schemes were not unprecedented. I knew of a very senior and reputable defense attorney who got caught up in some double dealings in representing his client, the entire system pushed him up against the wall and he chose to jump to his death. Literally. I couldn’t even imagine that happening to Oded.
I could teach Hannah Senesh a thing or two, that’s for sure.
After three and a half hours, they let me go. Later, when I was lying in bed before dawn, trying to recall all the details of that unforeseen nocturnal inquiry, I could only come up with bits and pieces, like fragments of a dream. The next morning, I could barely recall a thing and it seemed as though the whole obscure ordeal was tumbling down into oblivion, into the unconscious, from which it will prove mighty difficult to dredge up again.
Clearly, I told Oded nothing, not a thing, of what happened that night. We kept up our usual meetings and on our off days I followed him to his strange sessions in East Jerusalem or sat across from his house, awaiting his return. Sometimes I watched him park his car, take out his jacket and his briefcase, usually using his free hand to hold his cell phone, and vanish into the house with the green door, which he opened far too gently, if you ask me. Sometimes, I had to accept defeat. After long hours of waiting in my car for him to come home, I went back to Rishon with my ta
il between my legs. Infuriated by his Decepticon streaks and by the fact that I was sacrificing my time, my days, even my nights for this villain.
I guess that somehow, around the edges, he could sense that something was starting to go sour between us. Still, quite unlike him, he just couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Listen”, he asked me once, “something doesn’t add up. If you’re thirty-five and your brother was killed in the Yom Kippur war, how could you possibly remember bearers coming to your house with their tall army boots? How could you remember them infesting your home before the funeral? You weren’t even born yet, were you, babe?”
He asked so casually, as if it suddenly popped up in that two-thousand RPM brain of his, some little detail that didn’t add up, but didn’t really bother him, either.
“What, are you grilling me now?” I sulked.
“Yes, I am”.
“And you, like, actually expect me to answer that?”
“Yes, I do”.
“Even if it costs us our entire wholehearted-trust-based relationship?”
“You’re giving me the run around, Schnitzelette. I can see right through these diversion tactics. Out with it. Now”.
“What are you, some Secret Service interrogator? Where do you get off giving me the third degree like this!? I don’t owe you anything! Why don’t you pick yourself up and get the fuck out of my face?” I got up and threw the first thing that came to hand at him. He dodged it at the very last minute.
He stood up, smiling awkwardly, and started laughing.
“You idiot! What’s so funny? You can save all your questions for court! Don’t you pull those tricks on me, mister, you hear?! You read me, Stenger?”
Was this a clear sign that the wall of truth that lay between us was being breached? Maybe so, but it was only a skin-deep scratch made with a fingernail, that’s all he could manage.