Liar

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  Nofar was silent.

  The journalist tried again. Patiently. “You reported for your shift and…” She offered this sentence to the girl as if she were handing a paddle to a drowning person. Nofar just had to grab hold of it, but, as if she had decided to go under, she didn’t reply. Orders were given from the control room: one more try, and if it doesn’t work, cut to commercials.

  Nofar cleared her throat. Swallowed. Took a deep breath. Then began to speak. And the words, wonder of wonders, rolled off her tongue, round and perfect. Like pebbles. Like dinner rolls. She hadn’t watched endless episodes of endless TV series for nothing. It turned out that she had learnt many things from the small screen, even things she didn’t know she knew: how to express herself in brief, clear sentences, interspersed with short, meaningful breaks wrapped in doleful glances. How to lead her listeners down a winding but clearly marked narrative path with high and low points, since it contained, “I thought I was lost,” as well as, “At the last minute, I was saved.” No less important than the words themselves, however, was the face of the girl speaking them. It must be acknowledged: the make-up artist had outdone herself, and not because she had made the girl extraordinarily beautiful. Striking beauty sometimes strikes too hard. But Nofar, with her average face, was endowed with precisely the requisite amount of charm. The skilled make-up artist, wise enough to know this, had made the girl remarkably sweet, stopping before the sweetness became cloying.

  As Nofar answered the reporter’s questions, an image of Shir passed through her mind. Is she watching me now? Does she miss me in spite of everything? She thought about all the Friday evenings she and Shir had sat together in front of the TV talking about the programmes to keep from talking about the fact that all their classmates went out Friday evenings except for them. To her disappointment, she suddenly realized that Shir, Yotam and the others weren’t even home now, but at some film, with everyone. There was always an “everyone”. The interview would be over soon and she would go home. The make-up would come off and her pimples would be there as always. This time, there was no make-up artist to block her tears.

  Slowly they filled her eyes, round and heavy, and the reporter, who was about to wind up the interview, decided to wait a bit. The audience at home was having dinner now, watching and eating. And there’s nothing to help you digest food better than the tears of an attractive young girl. The first tear was already rolling down her cheek, and along with it rolled the thousands of tears of the viewing audience and the photogenic tears of the reporter. Nofar’s tears made her eyes immeasurably bluer, a bottomless sea.

  The reporter began to shift her glance from the girl’s teary face to the camera. But Nofar suddenly panicked: in the excitement of the interview, she had completely forgotten the black-eyed boy. There was no way of knowing what upset her more, the fear that he would expose her or the knowledge of how disappointed he would be if the interview ended and he was left out. So she dared to interrupt the reporter at the exact moment she was about to speak again.

  “I just… wanted to say…”

  “Our time is up.”

  “But it’s important. The person who saved me. The one who taught me to scream for help in emergencies: my friend Lavi Maimon. He’s going to join an elite combat unit.”

  “Thank you, Nofar Shalev. You are a very brave girl. When we return: the flu epidemic and the tensions on the northern border.”

  The news broadcast sailed on and Nofar, having done her part, was tossed unceremoniously off the deck. The reporter, the cameras, the army of producers – they all glided on their way in calm waters. Only the kind-hearted make-up artist came out to wave goodbye before Nofar and her mother stepped into the taxi. And that friendly wave finally brought it home to Nofar: it was truly over. The interview had ended and she was being sent home to the wasteland of her life. The driver pulled away and Nofar looked through the window, committing every single detail of the place to memory, until the studios disappeared from sight.

  7

  IT WAS LATE WHEN THEY ARRIVED home from the studio. Maya stood in the dark hallway, her face illuminated by the dim light coming from the bathroom, the rest of her body concealed by darkness. “I waited for you.” She went over to Nofar and wrapped her slender, tanned arms around her body. “You were wonderful.” Despite the year that separated them, they were exactly the same height. “But what did they do to your face? You look completely different!” Even before their mother could protest that it was the middle of the night, they had already closed themselves in the bathroom to better examine the make-up artist’s handiwork in the mirror. Standing beside each other was so pleasant – why hadn’t they done it even once that entire summer vacation? “You look fantastic,” Maya said, moving her face closer to Nofar’s to see better, “and you spoke so well. I was really proud of you, proud you’re my sister.”

  Nofar smiled. So did Maya. She had a gorgeous smile. Even when she was a very young child, people said she should appear in commercials: anyone would easily buy diapers or laundry detergent from her, even an expensive air conditioner in three instalments. She didn’t sell any of those things, which made them love her that much more. Even before she knew how to talk, she felt that love, which was so natural to her that it never occurred to her that it might end. It was like the sun rising, like night falling, the way of the world, and since she expected it with such certainty, people’s love kept coming the way sunrise and nightfall keep coming, because when everyone expects something, disappointing them is unthinkable.

  When Nofar had left for the studio, Maya sat down in front of the TV and waited. Every few minutes the phone buzzed with another offer to go out, but she rejected all of them. Her big sister would appear on the news soon and she wanted to see that. She waited patiently while the newscasters talked about a crisis in the coalition and she yawned mildly at the protests of the opposition, and when Nofar’s face finally appeared on the screen she applauded enthusiastically with the generosity of a victor. But then Nofar was struck dumb and her little sister’s heart shrank. Nofar sat paralysed in the studio and Maya sat paralysed on the couch, the mortification she felt for her big sister like an actual physical pain. As the seconds of her sister’s paralysis ticked by, the pressure in Maya’s chest grew unbearable. She had already covered her face with a pillow so she wouldn’t have to look at her, when Nofar suddenly began to speak.

  And how beautifully she spoke! When the interview was over, Maya hurried to send her recording of it to everyone she could. There was a slight bitterness on the tip of her tongue that she was only barely aware of. It took a while until she suddenly felt that her breath was sour. The younger sister was not used to that taste on her tongue. Having no choice, she told the boy who loved her not to come by that night, she didn’t feel well. Again and again, she inhaled the air she breathed into her palm; perhaps that revolting sourness had evaporated. But instead of evaporating, the smell only grew stronger as she continued to look at her sister’s face radiating from the screen. When Nofar came home they became immersed in conversation in the bathroom, and Maya no longer felt that strange taste on her tongue. She thought it had passed.

  In the middle of the night, Lavi lay on his back on the fourth floor. He had already tried lying on his stomach. And on his side as well. To no avail. He hadn’t been able to calm down since the interview was broadcast, six hours and forty-one minutes earlier. How beautiful she had been as she told her story. How her eyes had glowed when she mentioned his non-existent enlistment in an elite combat unit. And those tears that had rolled down her cheeks – he’d wanted to stick out his tongue and lick them off gently. And that frightened him, because, like most boys his age, he too watched porn all the time, but it was that first tear and his burning desire to catch it with his tongue that suddenly shamed him so much, that gave him away.

  Over and over again, he recalled the previous day’s events. A four-minute interview. A miniature eternity. Over and over again, he returned to that sweet moment
when the girl interrupted the reporter’s summary and mentioned his name. She hadn’t forgotten him. She had done what he asked. And though he knew he hadn’t given her a choice, he nonetheless trembled to the depths of his soul.

  Nofar got out of bed at dawn. The furniture in her room was as she had left it, and for some reason it surprised her that the desk, the bed, the wardrobe hadn’t switched places because of what had happened the night before. She kept going over it in her mind. Four minutes turned into four hours because Nofar contemplated every second from every possible angle, expanding the moments in her thoughts. The commotion in her head was so loud that she didn’t hear the sounds coming from the next room, where Maya was mumbling in her sleep.

  Walking out into the hallway, Nofar feared she might bump into someone from the family, as if the meeting of their eyes might kindle a feeling in her that had been extinguished until now. But when she reached the living room she found it empty. Couches, a rug, a TV set. Everything in place. Everything normal. She looked at the clock. At least an hour until the others woke up. An entire hour’s pleasure reliving the joys of last night. Because so it is, sitting alone in the seam between day and night: dreams are still stronger than regrets, yearning overcomes inhibition, until the sun rises to shame us and drive our desires back to their burrows.

  But when she sat down on the couch, she suddenly felt a pair of eyes on her. Grandpa Elkana was looking at her from his portrait on the wall. Nofar averted her gaze and tried to reimmerse herself in the wonders of the interview. The hero of the War of Independence stared at her with angry eyes. Nofar might have been crowned heroine of the day in the TV studio, but Grandpa Elkana, he knew what a genuine heroine was. It was not for nothing that his name appeared in the third paragraph on page 184 of her history textbook. Standing before the penetrating eyes of that hero in the early morning hours, Nofar felt more insignificant than a flea.

  The family always talked about his ability to shoot armed infiltrators from the nearby village while astride a galloping horse. What they failed to mention was that his great love was for the earth. How much he loved to walked barefoot through the fields and feel the soft grass on his feet in winter, the crisp thorns in summer, the kiss of centipedes intoxicated by the perfume of spring. When he went to bed, he left one leg hanging off the mattress so he could leap up at any sound, but mainly to feel the sleeping earth. He even made love to his wife standing up so he wouldn’t have to break contact with his true love for even a moment. Elkana had refused to wear shoes even to his wedding. It was only at his son’s brit that he deviated from his habit because the rabbi, having learnt from his experience under the wedding canopy, threatened not to perform the ceremony if he came barefoot again. His wife begged him, shedding endless salty tears, and he, perhaps fearing that the saltiness would damage the crops, gave in for the first and last time.

  At night, on horseback, he waited in ambush for infiltrators and shot them to death. In the morning he would go out into the fields with two hoes, so that when one grew tired of working he could replace it with the other. As long as Elkana was faithful to the land, the land was faithful to Elkana. But all that ended after the stroke, the moment his wife sat him in a wheelchair, spread a checked blanket over his lap and straightened his feet on the footrests. She knew quite well, stoop-backed Delilah that she was, what would happen when he raised his feet from the ground. If not for that, he might well have recovered. People like Elkana don’t die of strokes. A wave washes them off a pier. Lightning blackens them in a field. And indeed, the moment Elkana’s feet lost contact with the earth, his final decline was only a matter of days.

  Elkana had only one request in his will, and it surprised all the people on the kibbutz but one, who had passed away a long time before: “I want to be buried as far away as possible from Dvorkin.”

  In the days preceding the War of Independence, Eliyahu Dvorkin had been Elkana’s closest friend. Elkana wept on Dvorkin’s shoulder when, on a hot summer’s day, his favourite field went up in flames, and it was Elkana’s fist that freed the foal stuck in the womb of Dvorkin’s mare. And the famous offensive in that war, the one that had earned Elkana the line on page 184 of the high-school textbook – that too they carried out together, Elkana leading the forces and Dvorkin his second in command. But although they captured the fortress together, they withdrew from it separately. Dvorkin was the only person who knew that, surrounded by the roar of exploding shells, Elkana shouted the order to retreat. The others didn’t hear, and if they did, they didn’t believe it. It was inconceivable that such a man could be frightened by the tumult of battle.

  But there was no getting around it, he really had been frightened. The ground under his feet was covered with a layer of pine needles so thick that he could barely feel the earth beneath it, and the sudden thought that this might be their last time together, separated by those damned pine needles, filled him with such terror that his mouth roared the word “Retreat!” After all, what difference did it make who won, or what the country would be called and what names would be given to the hills and valleys? Names don’t make hills higher or valleys deeper, they have no effect on the direction of river currents. Dvorkin stood ten metres away from Elkana, ready to pass his orders back to the troops. It’s difficult to say that Elkana’s cry of “Retreat” surprised him. For a long while he had suspected that his friend’s love of the earth had become too literal. He turned back to the soldiers and gave the order, “Charge!”

  The soldiers might not have followed him. He was a head and a half shorter than Elkana and lacked his charisma. But when Dvorkin gave the order, they all thought he was echoing Elkana’s roar, and that was enough to get them racing forward. In their mad dash the soldiers carried their commander, frightened and trembling, along with them. It was only when the last of the enemy soldiers had fled that his heart began to beat normally. This did not appear on page 184, Nofar knew nothing about it; but historical accuracy requires mention of the fact that Grandpa Elkana did not receive the cut that graced his hand in the heat of the charge, but during an attempt to flee that was foiled by his second in command.

  Elkana did not want to be a hero. He refused to tell the story of the battle. But the Prime Minister himself, all 1.6 metres of him, came to visit and reprimanded him for lowering morale. “We’re not asking you if you want to be a hero, we’re telling you that you are,” he said, adding, “Just imagine if everyone here decided on his own what he wants or doesn’t want to be.” After all, not every lie is bad, some lies build countries. The first busload of visitors arrived at the weekend and Elkana was asked to tell them what happened at the fortress. And so it continued; tours arrived at the weekends, and during the week Elkana worked in the fields. Only at night did he hear the never-ending whisper, sharp and clear, cutting across the valley, sailing along the earth, that erupted from Dvorkin’s house at the other end of the kibbutz: Liiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaar.

  Now, at dawn in the living room, Nofar stood in embarrassment before the picture of Grandpa Elkana. The first rays of the sun danced on the glass frame, adding even greater majesty to the old man’s beard. His sharp, dark eyes examined her silently, and there was no way of knowing whether the girl trembled because of them or because of the morning chill. As she left the living room to make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen, she thought for a moment that she heard a muted whisper: Liiiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaar.

  Guilt, when it comes to visit, can choose from any number of routes. It can suddenly appear from behind and sink its talons into your back. It can charge you head-on. But Nofar’s guilt, like a Persian cat, rubbed her legs fleetingly, sat for a brief moment on her lap, then moved onward. It had no desire to stay longer than that. And so the girl spent twenty whole minutes thinking truly tormenting thoughts. She was about to call the detective with the delicate fingers and confess when, all at once, she stopped herself. She didn’t owe that man with that filthy mouth of his anything at all.

  8

  LAVI MAIMON LOOKED at the
first rays of the sun filtering through the shutters and didn’t move. He was utterly exhausted. His heart had pounded furiously all night, not letting up even at dawn, as if a new branch of a 24/7 supermarket had opened in its chambers. He lay in his bed and listened to his heart hammering until his head spun. Such loud drums, such speed might be popular with the city’s partygoers, but they were more than a boy like him could bear. Someone else with such a pounding heart might have wanted to dance. Lavi wanted to die. Because he didn’t understand that the pain he was experiencing was nothing more than pleasure.

  He heard the rustling of a newspaper on the other side of the door. His father was sitting in the living room. Lieutenant-Colonel in the reserves Arieh Maimon was an early riser. Even on Saturdays, he jumped out of bed at exactly 0600 hours. The rest of the week it was his habit to ambush the newspaper-delivery boys and scare the life out of them. He listened surreptitiously at the front door, and after he heard the footfall of the poor delivery boy on the steps he waited for the precise moment he tossed the paper on the mat – and flung open the door. Arieh Maimon was very fond of the element of surprise. During his military service there was nothing he liked more than to hide in the bushes behind a hapless corporal napping at his isolated post, only to have his testicles squeezed by none other than the commander himself. After his discharge the Lieutenant-Colonel missed that sneaking around at night. He tried twice to slip unnoticed into the conference room of the company he owned, but it wasn’t the same.

  Unlike his father, Lavi woke up late. He’d never had anything in his life worth getting up early for. His father didn’t like that late rising, but there were so many things he didn’t like about his son that Lavi saw no special reason to sacrifice his morning sleep. Until several years ago, he had tried. Set his alarm clock to wake him early so he could say goodbye to his father before he left for work. But they passed those early-morning moments in silence. Wordless, embarrassing moments when they drank silently – Arieh Maimon his coffee, Lavi Maimon his chocolate milk – then parted with a nod. When the boy became a teenager, he stopped getting up early to be with his father. His father noticed this sadly, but didn’t know what to say. It was easier to charge into the depths of enemy territory than to ask his only son why he no longer woke up early to be with his father. Arieh Maimon knew the map of Lebanon very well, but the hidden paths between the living room and the boy’s room, the wadis between the hallway and the kitchen – those he wandered helplessly.