Nofar looked tensely at her mother holding the notebook, her eyes following the movement of Ronit’s eyes as she read. If only she believed it and didn’t ask any more questions. She never thought she would dare to lie to her mother like this, but seeing Maya’s eyes searching the mattress last night, she realized she had no choice. At first she thought she would simply destroy the incriminating pages, but immediately rejected the idea. Maybe Maya had photocopied them. So instead of destroying the words Maya had discovered, she surrounded them with additional words. They had surged from her pen with the speed of an escaping prisoner. She had scribbled quickly for long hours without stopping, the minutes nipping at her heels, her fingers hurting from holding the pen for so long. At any moment the door might open and her mother would demand the notebook. She had spun the ins and outs of the plot all night, until the first rays of dawn appeared. She collapsed on the bed in exhaustion and put the notebook back in its burglarized hiding place.
Now, in the living room, Ronit read her daughter’s notebook and Nofar tried to read her mother’s face. Again and again she repeated a silent prayer: let her believe me. And yet, when her mother looked up from the notebook and hugged her, Nofar felt something inside her crack. Her mother’s arms encircled her, and in that embrace she burst into tears. Ronit stroked Nofar’s head and said, “Enough, sweetie, I’m sorry I made you show it to me,” apologizing for invading her privacy. Then she praised the writing and the style, and all the while Nofar was enclosed in the familiar embrace, which on the one hand was pleasant and on the other scratched like steel wool. Distressed, she wanted to break out of the comforting arms, but in the end she only burrowed more deeply into her mother’s embrace, crying so hard that Ronit suddenly froze, wondering why. She drew back, held Nofar by the shoulders and asked, “Nofar, is it really just a story?” And although the girl had felt suffocated in that embrace only a moment before, now that her mother had backed away from her she felt suffocated without it, and she gathered all her strength to say in a steady voice, her eyes wide with innocence, “Of course, it’s just a story. What else could it be?”
40
“START VOLUNTEERING,” the lawyer told him, “you have to start volunteering.” They were sitting on indescribably soft and comfortable black armchairs in the lawyer’s office, and Avishai Milner thought about all the rape and murder cases that had paid for them. He ran admiring hands over the Italian-made leather and considered how many of the clients who had upholstered them were people like him, who had done nothing, and how many had actually done a lot. He thought of asking the lawyer, but decided not to not only because it wasn’t polite, but also because every minute there cost him twenty shekels. And yet it annoyed him that the best advice one of the leading defence lawyers in the country could give him was to start volunteering. The lawyer sensed that. Nonetheless, he didn’t get those armchairs only because of his knowledge of the law. He also had to have a good knowledge of people. He knew he had just told Avishai Milner the last thing he wanted to hear, but he also knew it was the thing that would make Avishai Milner hire him. People value someone who tells them what they don’t want to hear. The defence attorney decided to say that out loud. “You know, Avishai, I understand that the last thing you want to hear now is go out and volunteer. But as a defence attorney, my job is to tell you the things you don’t want to hear. That’s the only way we have a chance to get you out of this.” For the first time since their meeting had begun, Avishai Milner didn’t wonder whether the last sentence was worth its weight in legal fees. The lawyer leant forward with a movement that caused his lower back to hurt, but was an inseparable part of the courtship dance required to attract a new client. “Judges place a high value on such things. Retirement homes. Children with cancer. Find something you can connect with. And if, God forbid, you’re convicted, it can help reduce your sentence.” The lawyer saw the fear that the word “convicted” ignited in his client’s eyes and leant forward a bit more. Now he felt real pain in that spot on his back. “I’m not saying it will happen. But we have to cover you for every possible situation.”
In the paediatric oncology department, they thanked him politely and told him they didn’t need any more volunteers. He suspected that they dismissed him because of the negative publicity he’d received and tried again, using a different name. The secretary called two days later with a similar response. Apart from their regular staff of volunteers, they were getting a non-stop flow of TV stars, actors on children’s programmes, unknown singers, well-known singers and formerly well-known singers. They all want to come, to sing, dance, make the children laugh, be photographed, especially to be photographed. The children – she hated to say – were really exhausted, mostly because those volunteers bring candy with them, and there’s so much candy in the department that, in addition to cancer, they’ll soon have diabetes too. I can give you the number of the regular oncology department, the secretary said, they really need volunteers there. Avishai Milner wrote down the number and then threw it in the waste bin.
In the end, he appeared at the door of a pre-school for autistic children. Before that there had been a disastrous attempt at an old-age home. In his imagination he filled the place with song, restored the minds of the demented with the help of his voice and his guitar. But the old folks, though they could barely move, and some were mentally disabled, were able to recognize “that one from the news”. They drove him away with shouts and canes. In the pre-school for autistic children he was blessedly anonymous. None of the kids knew him. Neither did the teachers. They had too much on their minds to wonder where they knew the face of the guy who played the guitar. And the assistant, a sweet eighteen-year-old doing her national service, blushed as she showed him her engagement ring and during the break knitted a skullcap for her fiancé. Avishai Milner looked at the children and was repelled, but after scolding himself for his reaction, he forced himself to approach them. How difficult it was to look at them. How much he wanted to leave. Those children appeared in his dreams at night, and he was afraid he would catch that thing they had. He knew that the faceless woman in the dream was his wife, he knew she was carrying his child, and maybe the baby would have it too. Hesitantly, he told his dream to the national-service girl, who nodded and said she’d also had dreams like that at the beginning, even worse ones, but really, you get used to it. He observed her in astonishment as, with endless patience, she played with the kids. One day, when he had come to play the guitar for them, she greeted him with tears of happiness in her eyes – for a moment he thought it might be her wedding day – and told him that one of the children had spoken his first sentence that morning. There were many terrible days in the pre-school, days when he almost got up and left. But since he didn’t leave, he saw how even the terrible days passed, and on the day that followed a small miracle happened, or the opposite, he came into the kindergarten and he could tell from the tired eyes of the teachers that today was even worse. One way or the other, the hours he played his guitar in the kindergarten were separate and apart from his regular life. He navigated them as if they were an ocean in which he sometimes drowned, sometimes floated. When the national-service girl signalled to him, he put down his guitar and hurried after her to see: a girl was eating by herself. A boy was organizing his toys. And he knew that the national-service girl was a hundred times better than he was. He was ashamed for being what he was, for being ready to leave that place the moment he could, and even if that shame was the only thing he took away with him, he did not leave the pre-school empty-handed.
41
IT WAS ALMOST BY ACCIDENT that Nofar finally found out about the picture Lavi had taken, although even accidents are directed by an unknown hand. Otherwise, how can we explain that the last bus arrived a full three minutes early that night? Was it the driver speeding through the city streets in his rush to return to the arms of his sleeping wife? Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t, but either way, Nofar and Lavi had to run as fast as they could to the bus stop. A moment
earlier they had been sitting together in the closed ice-cream parlour. Lavi helped Nofar pick up the last chair, then treated himself to a double scoop. They were sure they had several minutes before the last bus arrived when Nofar suddenly saw it on the other side of the window. Without a word, she leapt out of her chair, grabbed her bag and phone and began to run. Lavi hurried after her, waving his arms like a windmill. Yes, the hurrying driver couldn’t miss the skinny boy waving desperately at him to stop, and yes, the driver was hurrying home to his bed, but he too had a heart. And so he stopped and waited for the panting girl to catch up and board, and he even waited another second for the boy to arrive and kiss her goodnight, because many years ago he too had been a teenager dashing to catch the last bus. Lavi was so happy Nofar had managed to get on the bus that it took a few minutes for him to realize that she had taken his phone with her. When she ran out of the ice-cream parlour, she hadn’t differentiated between the two black phones that were identical in size and shape. But in contrast to the physical resemblance, their contents were very different. Nofar would discover that during her ride home. At first she was alarmed at her mistake, and then, after calming down a bit, she thought it was funny. She quickly texted her own phone from the one she had in her hand: “I took your phone hostage. Prisoner exchange tomorrow,” and added a smiley. She waited for him to reply, and as she wondered why it was taking him so long, she wandered through his phone.
That was when she saw it, and at first she didn’t realize whom she was seeing. The face was there – the blue eyes, the delicate shape of the nose, the teasing smile on the lips – and yet it took a few seconds for her to understand that she knew that beautiful face quite well. She knew the girl standing there, straight and confident, and she knew the empty space beside her, the place where Nofar herself had stood before she had been cut out by the computer programme.
They say that experienced birdwatchers can identify a bird in the undergrowth by only a single cry, so well do they know the sounds. City people are also well practised: with closed eyes, they can distinguish between the individual parts of the urban cacophony – the hum of a refuse-collection truck, the music coming from a convenience store, the “wah-wah-wah” of a baby crying, the “ah-ah-ah” of a woman moaning, the “scrinch” of autumn leaves underfoot, the “bloop” of beer bottles being opened. But amid this endless mixture, it is difficult to hear the “tak!” of a young heart as it breaks. And so the bus kept moving, soon the driver would wrap himself in his sleeping wife’s arms. He can’t be blamed for not noticing that the girl who had skipped onto the bus with the light steps of a doe was leaving it now as pale as a corpse.
*
The next day, Lavi Maimon went to the alley and found it empty. The guy working in the ice-cream parlour handed him his phone and said that Nofar had been there earlier and asked for Lavi to leave her phone. There were questions in the guy’s eyes, but Lavi ignored them. She didn’t want to see him. She’d found out. The dread that had been born in his stomach the moment he posted the picture to the group now shot up to his chest. And there it settled, heavy as an elephant. There was no way of knowing how Lavi managed to climb the four floors to his apartment. He called her over and over again all that day, with no success. He thought of texting her, but didn’t know what to say. When it was time for the evening shift, he looked out of his window at the ice-cream parlour but didn’t have the courage to go down.
On the days that followed, Nofar made a frightening discovery: a person could walk around with a broken heart and no one would notice. True, she tried to conceal it: she didn’t cry in public, pretended to be fine. And yet. Every time his name flickered on the screen, she thought of Maya. How beautiful her little sister was. The sort of beauty that causes sparrows to fly backward. That causes turtles to race forward. And causes boys to lie. Since finding out about the notebook, Nofar hadn’t exchanged a single word with Maya, and if at first the silence between them had been oppressive, now it was truly toxic. Lavi wrote dozens of messages to Nofar, but she didn’t open any of them. Even if she had the fleeting thought that she might be able to forgive him, that picture bit into her flesh once again like a hungry dog.
The passing days joined together. Nofar replied to her parents’ cautious questions about Lavi with unintelligible mumbling. It embarrassed her that they knew they were no longer seeing each other. As if what he had done reflected not only on him, but also on her. She wasn’t beautiful enough. Good enough. Accomplished enough. As soon as Maya entered the house, Nofar hurried to leave. She stood on the street and watched the bus stop fill with people, and she kept watching even after the bus arrived and emptied out. Like a beating heart, the bus stop filled up and emptied out filled up and emptied out. She spent most of her time in her room, and she spent her time at school staring mournfully into space. Her teachers thought she was just beginning to process the trauma. The girls in her class competed for the role of supportive friend, the one whose shoulder would absorb the precious tears and whose ears would hear the whispered not-yet-published details of the incident.
But Nofar maintained her silence. After school, she hurried to work. The motorized whale carried her for five minutes before vomiting her up on the main street, and she went into the ice-cream parlour, her face expressionless, and scooped ice cream into customers’ cones. She didn’t go into the alley again. At the end of her shift she headed home, looking straight ahead. A pair of dark eyes watched her come and go, followed her from above. At his window on the fourth floor, Lavi prayed she would look up and see him. But Nofar did not raise her eyes even once.
42
LONG WEEKS HAD PASSED since the deaf-mute cried out, “She’s lying!” in front of the police station on the main street. The suspicion his words aroused in Detective Dorit had almost faded. Nonetheless, if she happened to reach the precinct early, she still took the trouble to stand in front of him and listen. But as the days went by, his words became background noise, her ear became used to them just as people who spend their days in the city are so used to the beeping of buses that they no longer hear it.
Every now and then, Dorit felt her primordial instinct of intuition reawaken, but there were always more urgent investigations, more pressing cases. There were also those annoying calls from lawyers trying to give advice about her investigations. Usually she hung up even before they began to speak, allowing only the most senior ones to have their say. Avishai Milner’s lawyer was one of the most senior lawyers among them. Dorit knew very well how much money he charged, and it was clear to her that no one pays that much money unless he is really in trouble or really guilty. Avishai Milner’s lawyer demanded that Dorit give the accuser a lie-detector test. “You do realize, don’t you, that we’re talking about a minor here?” He did. Nonetheless, he insisted, “Today’s girls have highly developed imaginations,” and hinted that it would be better to administer the polygraph now, before they went to court, so that nothing would sully, heaven forbid, the police’s handling of the case. Such insinuations might work with less experienced investigators, but they merely irritated Dorit. Avishai Milner’s lawyer was known to be very well connected, but she was the one heading up the investigation. She thanked him summarily and hung up. There was a large stack of files on her desk waiting to be read.
Nevertheless, late that evening, when she was finally alone in the interrogation room, Dorit stretched her legs and took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly, tiredly, and thought that for too long now she had wanted to go to yoga class and never found time for it. In a high-pressure job like hers, you have to know how to keep healthy. She inhaled deeply again. And there, at the base of her diaphragm, the deaf-mute’s words still waited: “She’s lying!” Dorit exhaled the words slowly. She opened the computer file documenting her meetings with Nofar Shalev. There was the transcript of the first meeting, then the second. And there, at the end of the second meeting, were the girl’s words of indecision. At the time, Dorit had been sure Nofar had suddenly got cold feet, afraid of
the emotional price she would pay if the case came to court – after all, at Nofar’s age Dorit herself had remained silent in exactly the same circumstances – but why, in fact, had she been so convinced? As Dorit read the transcript of their meeting again, and then once again, she became more certain: the girl was speaking the truth. And yet, a vague sense of discomfort grew stronger inside her.
She left the station and drove home with the radio tuned to a music station. She made dinner for herself and the children, watched TV with them until late. She checked to see that they had really gone to bed, and set her alarm although there was no need, she would wake up without it. In the shower, she washed her hair with the same shampoo she had used since she was twelve. She got into bed and closed her eyes. In the absolute silence of the empty double bed she could hear those words again. Sometimes she heard a catchy song on the car radio and just waited for some quiet time to replay it, that was how she now replayed the deaf-mute’s words: “She’s lying!” And if at first the words had hovered unattached to anything, kites without strings, they were now firmly connected to that girl from the ice-cream parlour. Today’s girls have highly developed imaginations.
When the alarm rang at six in the morning, Dorit, who was already awake, reached out and turned it off. Two hours and twenty-five minutes later she entered her office. Waiting for her on her desk were additional messages from Avishai Milner’s lawyer. Dorit tossed them in the waste bin. Sat down. Called Nofar Shalev. The ringing was cut off immediately. Either the girl was screening her or her phone was off. Dorit waited until evening and called again, with no success. Then she dialled the number of the house landline. A slightly hoarse male voice answered.
Liar Page 20