Liar

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  She didn’t know whether she was writing to force herself to stop telling that story, or the opposite, to unburden herself of the secret on the pages so she could close the notebook and move through her life with a lighter step. When she finished writing she wiped the tears from her eyes, put the notebook back in its regular hiding place and got under the covers. She stared at the ceiling for a long time.

  The next morning, Maya lay in her bed and waited – any minute now Nofar would knock at the door and ask to borrow something from her wardrobe. Though they both had to be in school at the same time, Maya would always get up late, with the indifference of someone who would look wonderful even in a shower curtain. Nofar would always knock on her door half an hour before Maya got up, not only because she was concerned about being late, but also because of some unspoken anger. In the end, Maya would wake up and shout, “Come in!” and Nofar would dash into the room straight to the wardrobe. She would pull something out, unfold it, return it – but not exactly the way it had been – take out something else, everything was too tight, too close-fitting. So it was each morning, and with every minute that passed, Nofar’s resentment of her sister grew. It wasn’t Maya’s clothes that she coveted, but the body on which the clothes fitted so perfectly. And then it would suddenly explode into the well-practised accusations and shouts, “Let me sleep!” “Can’t you help me when I ask you?” “Couldn’t you have done that last night?” until their mother came and ordered them to stop, and they both lapsed into angry silence.

  But that morning, Nofar didn’t come in to forage through Maya’s wardrobe. Nor did she appear the next morning. At first, Maya was glad – at last she had her precious moments of sleep back. But over the next few days she found herself waking up earlier and earlier. An unknown force sent her to her big sister’s room. Now it was Maya’s turn to knock at Nofar’s door and ask to rummage through the secrets in her older sister’s wardrobe. Nofar was willing and happy, not to mention gratified, to open the door. And if the clothes were returned with new stains or an annoying crease, Nofar didn’t care. But when Maya took the purple fountain pen to an exam and came back without it, the shouts rose to high heaven.

  13

  IT WAS AN OMELETTE consisting of three egg whites that made Lavi realize his father knew. It appeared on the table four days after Nofar’s interview on the news and Lavi had already lost hope. Lieutenant-Colonel Arieh Maimon had recently developed prostate problems, and he’d spent most of Nofar’s interview trying to pee normally. He was nowhere near the TV when the girl from the ice-cream parlour talked about her friend, Lavi Maimon, who was training to be accepted into an elite combat unit. Lavi had hoped the information would reach his father somehow – after all, the news had so many viewers, someone he knew would certainly notice. But after several days he sensed that there was no longer any chance. Not only did his father maintain his usual silence, but so did his classmates. Maybe none of them had been watching TV that day. Or maybe they had, but it never occurred to them that the “Lavi Maimon” the girl had mentioned was the same lacklustre boy from the fourth floor. After four days of silence, Lavi gave up hope. And that was when the omelette consisting of three egg whites appeared on the table.

  “What’s that?” his mother asked in surprise. Lieutenant-Colonel Arieh Maimon was not the sort of man who made omelettes. “It’s for the boy, he needs protein.” He spoke the words from behind the op-ed pages, which is why he didn’t see the flush that spread across his son’s cheeks. Lavi dug his fork into a hill of the egg-white omelette his father had made and knew that the next taste in his mouth would be the taste of manliness. He remembered quite well his father’s stories about the time he trained to try for the unit. Every morning he would run ten kilometres in the sand and do a triple-digit number of sit-ups before heading home, where he fried himself an egg-white omelette. There is nothing like it – so he said – for building and strengthening muscles. Arieh Maimon’s mother had been a hard-working woman who struggled to put food in the mouths of her four children as well as that of her useless husband. The eggs, if there were any, were rationed, and the young Arieh would make an egg-white omelette with eggs he stole from the neighbouring kibbutz. Those were his first operations deep into enemy territory, so even before he joined the army, Arieh Maimon had become highly proficient at boldly infiltrating a hostile environment. It is no wonder, then, that he passed the examination for the elite combat unit with flying colours.

  When Lavi was a little boy, his father amazed him with stories of that period. Children’s fairy tales never interested Arieh Maimon, he preferred to tell his son true stories he could learn from and, when the day came, repeat. To his father’s great sorrow the boy grew into a skinny, drab teenager, dashing the hopes he’d had for him. Although, in front of the computer, Lavi slaughtered many enemy soldiers, more than his father had killed during his years of outstanding service, real life was different. On the surface Lavi was an only child. He had never competed with a brother for looks and smiles. But in fact there was always another boy there, the one his father had dreamt of before he was born, and in the competition between them it was clear who the loser was. At one stage or another, most parents learn to give up the imagined child, but Lavi’s father found it difficult, because for him the imaginary child was the firstborn.

  And now the protein omelette had reappeared on the table. Behind the op-ed pages, Arieh Maimon was filled with satisfaction. He didn’t ask Lavi about the combat-unit screening. The boy wanted to succeed on his own merits, without his father’s connections, and as far as Arieh Maimon was concerned, that was definitely a commendable decision, appropriate for a soldier in an elite combat unit. Nonetheless, when Lavi finished his protein omelette and chocolate milk and stood up to get ready for school, the Lieutenant-Colonel couldn’t restrain himself. He lowered the newspaper with the same deliberate movement with which he had lowered his rifle sight in the past, and gave his son an eloquent wink, one that said, in effect – I won’t say anything and you won’t say anything, because that is what men do, but we both know what we need to know, and that’s the important thing. Lavi left the table, his knees shaking. That was the first time his father had ever winked at him.

  Some plants must be watered once a day, others don’t have to be watered at all, the more they are left alone the more they thrive. That applies to lies as well; some must be reinforced by a constant stream of words, others are better off left alone, they will grow on their own. Lavi Maimon’s tests for an elite combat unit were of the second kind. Since Nofar mentioned them on TV, no one had ever spoken of them again. Lavi Maimon didn’t say a word. Arieh Maimon didn’t say a word. But the protein omelette continued to appear on the table every morning, and after a week it was joined by new trainers with special shock absorbers that were left on the threshold of Lavi’s room. The boy examined the shoes, his happiness mixed with concern. The catalogue in the shoebox heaped praise on the trainers’ performance, and Lavi wondered if it was good enough to compensate for the pathetic performance of the feet inside them. Several days later he found a watch that had a diver’s compass on his bed. He put it on hesitantly, but the feel of the metal on his wrist suddenly reminded him of the feel of handcuffs, and he took it off quickly. He had to talk to his father today. Or tomorrow.

  14

  DETECTIVE DORIT HAD CHANGED her nail polish from pink to red, and Nofar thought that was a bad sign. Her nails looked as if she had stuck them in someone’s insides. Maybe the last person she had interrogated. Nofar tried to imagine that person, whether it was a man or a woman, or a teenager like her. It was weird to think about how many people had sat on the chair facing Dorit before her, and what had happened to them since. But it was still better to think about that than about Avishai Milner. The night before she met with Detective Dorit, Nofar couldn’t stop thinking about Avishai Milner. What would happen if he killed himself in prison. What if he escaped and came after her. The night before her meeting with Detective Dorit, she turne
d on the TV and hoped that Avishai Milner’s face would just disappear in the clamour and she could finally go to sleep. But he stayed there, like the rattle of the fridge in the kitchen. Always present, even when other voices overpowered his. She didn’t fall asleep until almost dawn. When her father came to wake her and touched her shoulder, she woke with a shout that frightened both of them.

  The call from the investigation unit had come several days earlier. Just routine, a kind voice promised on the phone, a chance to go over her testimony before the file was passed on to the district attorney’s office. Nofar had no reason to doubt the truth of that, but a person who deceives ends up seeing deceit everywhere. Nofar was terrified that the summons to the police department was nothing but a trap. The red nail polish on the detective’s delicate fingers, the light filtering through the plastic shutters at an unnatural angle – it all seemed wrong to her. She was almost surprised when, after an hour and a quarter, Detective Dorit smiled at her and said, “Excellent, I think we’ve covered everything.”

  Had they really covered everything? Had she really sat there and repeated that whole story down to the smallest detail? On the other side of the table, Detective Dorit said something and smiled, then stood up to walk Nofar to the door. But the girl remained seated, frozen and staring into space. As soon as she left, Dorit would send an email to the district attorney’s office. Nofar’s words would be sent from one government office to another, and no one would suspect that there was nothing behind them, that the words did not describe what had happened, only the words had happened, and now they were sewing Avishai Milner a striped jacket, namely a prisoner’s uniform.

  Detective Dorit looked at her and sat down again. Slowly. It seemed to Nofar that she was looking at her differently. The way someone looks at a hair she has just found in a plate of food she’s been eating heartily. “Is there something you want to tell me?” Nofar was silent. Dorit placed both hands on the table and Nofar could swear that her nail polish was even redder than before. She opened her mouth to speak, but not a single word emerged. Dorit saw it, she saw her open her mouth, saw that not a single word emerged, and Nofar thought that Dorit must know that words not spoken are the best evidence there is. Dorit’s silence continued. She was really good at being silent. She made you think she could stay silent for an eternity. Nofar didn’t know if an eternity had passed before she herself said, “Maybe that’s not exactly how it was.”

  Dorit was silent for another moment, and then asked, “So how was it?”

  Nofar lowered her gaze to the floor and felt the tears rising in her throat. Without looking up, she spoke quickly, said that maybe she’d been confused, maybe she’d spoken without thinking, maybe she hadn’t understood. Dorit listened without saying a word. She really was good at that. Gradually, her silence crushed Nofar until she too stopped speaking.

  “So what should I believe, what you’re saying now or what you told me earlier?”

  Nofar didn’t reply. She heard Dorit stand, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t want to see Dorit’s face now. She heard the detective’s steps as she walked around the table. She thought the door would open and Dorit would go out and return with policemen who would arrest her. But instead, Dorit knelt down in front of her. “I think you’re terrified, Nofar. I think you’re suddenly afraid of the trial, of facing Avishai Milner after what he did to you.” Nofar nodded, fat tears rolled down her cheeks and she didn’t lift a hand to wipe them away. “But you don’t have to be afraid. You didn’t do anything wrong. He’s the bad guy here, you have no reason to recant.” The detective’s fingers stroked her shoulder. She told Nofar about victims of sexual assault she had escorted to court, how much pressure the system brings to bear on the victim and how her heart had broken to see the monsters who had perpetrated the attacks walk away unpunished. She promised Nofar she wouldn’t let that happen again. “It’s not only your fight, it’s the fight of all the other girls who went through what you did. You need to understand that Avishai Milner is not the important thing here, the important thing is to fight against the next shit who even thinks about behaving that way.” Dorit said that she remembered very well how Nofar had come to the station the first time. It had been clear that she was traumatized, and Avishai’s open-and-shut confession had to be added to that. Really, there’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetie. Dorit’s fingers stroked her hair, and as Nofar listened to the detective’s words, she realized that she lied better than she told the truth.

  But nothing I said was true. I made it up. Because he insulted me. Because he stepped on me. Because I’ve been stepped on a million times, and that time I couldn’t take it any more. At first it was by mistake. At first I just cried a lot, and everyone there thought he did something terrible to me, and he really did, but not that, not what everyone thought, and then everything happened so fast, with the newspapers and the TV, and the people who were so nice to me for the first time in my life, and I wish they could be so nice to you when you’re not suffering from anything special, even if you’re not the victim of a crime, just to be nice for no reason, but it doesn’t work like that, it’s either or, either he’s in jail and everyone’s nice to me, or he’s out and everything goes back to the way it was. Only worse, because then I won’t be the girl everyone forgets, I’ll be the crazy one. The monster. And I want to ask you, Detective Dorit, which is better, to hate yourself alone, quietly, or to have the whole country hate you?

  Detective Dorit rang for the elevator and went down with Nofar. She offered to walk to the bus stop with her, but Nofar insisted that there was really no need. Nonetheless, Detective Dorit went with her. She lit a cigarette and said, “I can see that this is hard for you. That you’re keeping your tears inside. But I promise you that soon it’ll be behind you, just hang in there until after the trial.” Nofar waited for her to say that she was a very brave girl, but this time it didn’t happen. Maybe Dorit had actually sensed something back in the interrogation room.

  All the way home, Nofar’s legs trembled unnaturally. So that’s how it is. No one knows. Even the detectives, whose job it is to know, couldn’t guess. And how good it is that she’s still herself with the boy who’s blackmailing her. Those black eyes of his when he looks at her and threatens her, they are the only eyes that truly see her.

  15

  “AVISHAI MILNER ON THE CRIME He Didn’t Commit”.

  “Jailhouse Rock – The Famous Singer Talks About His Suffering”.

  “Justice Will Out: Avishai Milner – From Criminal to Hero”.

  He polished the headlines in his mind constantly. He came up with a new one every day. And he didn’t think only about the headlines, but also about the interviews and the pictures that would appear and what the captions would say. He spent hours thinking about the questions he would be asked and the replies he would give: sharp, damaging, moving. The scenario in his mind was written down to the smallest detail, so tangible that Avishai Milner was surprised each morning when he woke up in his cell and discovered that it still hadn’t come true.

  When Avishai Milner was a teenager, a storm covered the land. Later they would say that the writing had been on the wall, but that Saturday Avishai Milner hadn’t been interested in writing or in walls, he was too busy learning to play the guitar. There was nothing like strumming to drown out the tumult of his parents arguing in the living room. He read the notes over and over again, tried to play them over and over again, until the coveted moment arrived – the lock opened, the song burst forth and he took control of it. On the Saturday night when everything changed, the teenage Avishai Milner was sitting in his room and strumming away to his heart’s content as he watched a film on TV. But just as the plot was reaching its climax, the news broadcaster suddenly appeared on the screen. A horrified expression on his face, he said that someone had shot the Prime Minister. Avishai Milner began to shake. Not because of the Prime Minister, but because he had never seen the announcer so agitated before. He hurried into the living room, the final mom
ent of the film still lingering in his mind, and found his mother crying and his father hugging her. Later, he realized that that was the only time he ever saw his father hug his mother when she cried. Maybe because, for a change, she wasn’t crying because of him.

  The next day his mother took him to Kings of Israel Square. Sad, beautiful songs were playing on the radio, and Avishai Milner noted with satisfaction that he could play almost all of them. When they reached the square, he was shocked to see crowds of young people. Until that moment he had been sure that only mothers were affected. The enormous square, normally full of voracious pigeons, was now filled with young people in mourning. And like the pigeons, they too were hungry for something. Everyone’s sorrow would be channelled into the national tragedy, and, finally, you could cry openly without being asked why. Guitars rose from within that swamp of sorrow and blossomed like lotuses. There was singing everywhere. Circles. Endless circles, and boys and girls walked among them, sat down, stood up, lit candles, spoke a bit, wiped away tears, sang another song, wrote their phone numbers on a page they’d torn from a notebook. The next day Avishai Milner went back to the square alone, his guitar slung over his shoulder. The bus ride had taken more than an hour, and Avishai Milner spent the time preparing a first-rate list of songs, the sort that builds the sorrow gradually until it reaches its climax. But when he arrived at the square, his hands began to shake. He was surrounded by groups of teenagers in black shirts, lighting candles, their eyes melancholy. Would he really be able to fit right in with them? They could probably smell the loneliness on him. He’d sprayed his father’s aftershave on his face in vain. Desolation has a smell of its own. Like wet dog fur.