Gail Hareven - Lies, First Person

A bird twitters. A squirrel scurries past and suddenly stops dead for no reason. Hush, quiet. The fair, slow sister is speaking in a spate of words.

If necessary I’ll be a squirrel frozen on the spot, or a transparent cloud in the sky. If necessary I’ll be the step at her feet, because she deserves to have me at her feet, and this is what I deserve too: to be silent, to be still, to be as if I’m not there, because it’s better for her, definitely better for my sister for me not to be there. For years I overshadowed her and for years she was silenced. This is her chapter, now she is speaking. From here on to the end I’ll suspend myself and I won’t interrupt her. The sister who thought it was urgent to rush to the rescue will no longer push in. The dark sister will be the audience only.

A transparent, barely perceptible cloud hangs in the sky. A squirrel bites its nail till it bleeds.

“I talked about it to my husband, and he had doubts. You know, Aaron never showed any sign of repentance. I’m not even sure if he understood what he did, though how could he not understand? After all, he’s a learned man and he knew how to write a book. Anyone who can write a book must surely be capable of understanding.

“So however much we talked it over, Barnett still wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do. And when we went to talk to our pastor and his wife they both still had questions. Mindy — who’s a very clever woman — Mindy told me that true forgiveness is a very high challenge, and before I took any steps, it was important for me to be sure that I could really and truly meet the challenge. Sometimes a Christian can deceive himself that he’s forgiven, but his forgiveness is actually a kind of fraud, and God, who sees into our hearts, doesn’t buy the fraud, even if the person who forgave really wants his fraud to be true. That’s how she explained it to me and I’m sure her words were wise. But however much I looked into my heart, and examined it, I couldn’t see any lie there. I hadn’t yet forgiven. Not yet. But I was ready to ask God to help me to forgive. The four of us met a few more times and talked. We prayed together for understanding. And in the end what we understood was that it was forbidden to pardon someone who had no repentance, but what was possible, what I as a Christian could do, was to forgive Aaron as if on condition. That is to say, to tell him or write to him that if he was ever ready to confess what he had done to me, that if he succeeded in doing that, acknowledging his sin and admitting it and taking responsibility — if that happened, then he would have my forgiveness. That I would give it fully. And that’s what I did in the end. That’s what I wrote to Aaron. Not right away, but a few months after our last consultation, because we had several. I wasn’t sure where to send my letter, and Barnett said that we could send it to the university. We didn’t know if he was still working there, but Barnett said that even if he wasn’t, they would forward his mail to him. He got the address for me, and then, once I already had the address, one evening I sat down and wrote the letter. It wasn’t a long letter, and when I finished it, I asked my husband to read it and correct my spelling mistakes. And again something wonderful happened, you won’t believe it, which is that I didn’t have any spelling mistakes, not a single one, as if some invisible hand was guiding mine when I wrote it. That’s what I felt.

“We went to bed. In the morning Barnett drove to one of the farms here, and I went with him. On the way I dropped the letter in a mailbox.

“I know that you want to hear what happened with the letter. That’s what you asked me at the beginning, and in the meantime I’m talking and talking, and you with your patience. . I’m so grateful to you. I’m sure there’s a different way of telling it, but I don’t know how to explain in any other way. So if you’re worried, I know how you worry, I sent the letter and it was as if nothing happened. He never answered me. As if I had never written that letter. But the truth is, that in reality my letter actually changed things, it changed them a lot. Wait, I’ll tell you.

“Barnett drove to the farm, and I went along. And while he was working I sat in the kitchen with the farmer’s wife, but I was in a state because all kinds of things were going round in my head, including the things Mindy said to me. Even though I knew, I really knew that I wasn’t lying to God, what she said stayed with me. My heart was beating so hard, like I’d been running, I could hardly speak, and so I left her in the kitchen and went out for a walk to try to calm down.

“I’m not a writer like you, I don’t exactly know how to tell you what happened next: it was autumn, like now, before the leaves finish falling, when the trees are bright red, and the ones that aren’t are green as can be. The sun was shining, a kindly sun, not a bit like the sun in Israel, and I simply walked in the sun, and as I walked I started to see the beauty, such beauty, and this beauty increased. You know how it is when beauty is like a pain, only the opposite? You go deeper and deeper in, and the beauty becomes like a wave that wipes out everything until there’s nothing left but beauty.

“That’s how it was for me, suddenly I started to see, to see how that beauty was really there, and how God had really given us such beauty, and how he was giving me the gift of seeing it. And my heart filled with the sun, as if the sun were honey on my heart, and I walked and walked with that honey, and suddenly I started to cry because I understood what it was that God had given me because I had forgiven. Because I had forgiven, I would always be able to see that green and that red of the autumn leaves, and now that my heart was full of sun I would never, ever have to remember what Aaron had done to me again.

“I had forgiven him the sin he had sinned against me, and then God had given me this gift of taking what had happened and making it go away. Because what Aaron had done, the things he did, the sin he committed against me — was like a dark prison where I had been locked up together with him, and then, when I forgave him, when I freed him of the sin, the prison was no longer there, and I was no longer a prisoner of the sin, and suddenly — beauty and sun.

“The prison guard had vanished, and he would never return because I had set him free. And that’s it, that’s it, there’s no more guard to cover my eyes. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, the memory hasn’t been wiped out, but Uncle Aaron isn’t important anymore, and he can’t be important, and he’ll never be important again. This was the grace that I suddenly understood.

“I walked for a long time. I don’t know how long I went on walking in the fields, because the time that I walked was like years and also like a single minute, in which you suddenly see everything, and everything that exists is contained in that minute. At some point I saw Barnett and the farmer, and Barnett saw me and started walking in my direction. He was holding something white in his hands, and when he came close I saw he was carrying a lamb in his arms. You see, it wasn’t the season for giving birth at all, and nevertheless a sheep there had given birth, and perhaps because it wasn’t the season her lamb didn’t want to come out and it got stuck, so that Barnett had to pull it out by force.

“So in the midst of all the beauty I see Barnett coming toward me with a wet lamb in his arms, in the midst of all the beauty. . you understand what happened? No, how can you understand if I don’t tell you? A year later Sarah was born. Exactly one year later. Even though I was past the age of child-bearing, like Sarah in the Bible, and both Barnett and I had resigned ourselves to being childless, God in his infinite patience and mercy gave us a child.