Gail Hareven - Lies, First Person

“That’s it, that’s one thing that came of the letter, and there’s something else too, something I’m not sure about, I just think it’s connected. We have a few friends who teach at the university. You met two of them. One of our friends teaches Jewish history and also helps with Hillel House programs — and he somehow remembered my maiden name. So a few months ago he asks me if I’m related to the Professor Gotthilf who wrote that evil book. And when I said yes, he told me that Gotthilf had published an article apologizing to everyone offended by his book and it had caused quite a sensation.

“I don’t know anything, all I know is that the book and its evil — I know they’re connected to the way he abused me. So I have this thought, maybe it’s conceited of me to think so, that my letter is also connected to the fact that he’s apologizing now. Maybe in some small way, even though he never answered me. And it may be too that this process began in him before. You know that he refused to sue that woman who wanted to spray him with acid? When I first heard this it just went in one ear and out the other. It didn’t mean anything to me. Even when I wrote him my letter, and even when I consulted our pastor. But after this friend of ours told me about his article, and how he travels from place to place and appears in public and admits that he made a terrible mistake: after I heard this, I started to think that maybe it does mean something, that he could have sued that poor survivor but he didn’t. Maybe already then he wasn’t just Satan, and because he wasn’t just Satan, the forgiveness I forgave him did change something, and what I wrote did count. It’s just a thought I have. It’s really not important, and for some reason it’s not important to me to know. I don’t need him to answer me, I don’t even want him to. He can answer or never answer. The important thing is that even if he gets in touch again — never mind what he says — you don’t have to be afraid for my sake. I know how you worry, and there really and truly is no need to worry any more. Even if the phone rings now. Even then.

“There are people who walk in darkness. I don’t know why this is, but I know that he’s one of them, like a bat that can’t see in the light.

“He talked a lot, you probably remember. There was this thing that he talked to me all the time, and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. As if he meant something by it but at the same time I never knew what he really meant.

“He’d be this way one day and that way another, different every time.

“Sometimes — it was as if it was some kind of joke of his, but perhaps he wasn’t joking — sometimes he’d speak to me in a voice like a professor’s, and in this voice he would say all kinds of things about a ‘project.’ About the ‘project’ and the thing that ‘we’re doing together.’ As if it were all some kind of experiment and he was consulting a colleague. Never mind. It doesn’t matter: but once, when I was very thirsty he suddenly brought me a glass of water and in that same voice he asked me a question that I didn’t understand at all: if I agreed with Schopenhauer that pain was more real than pleasure. Does that make sense? And then he forced me to answer him, even though I didn’t understand what answer he wanted from me.

“It doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t. I’m just upsetting you, and I don’t want to, I don’t, because I don’t even think about it any more, that story isn’t in the least important. I only want you to know that when I wrote my letter, I told him that I am truly happy now, that’s what I wrote to him. Because that’s important, it is. You see, if someone is like a bat, then you have to tell him that there is such a thing as light, otherwise how will he know? So I wrote to him, and maybe, maybe what I wrote did have a little influence.

“I want to ask you, when we were small, were you afraid a lot? Because you know, even before Aaron I was afraid a lot, and I’ve only now stopped being afraid. I had all kinds of foolish fears, not only of school. You remember the pine tree that used to creak in the wind, and we would imagine that it was uprooting itself and coming to get us? I was also afraid of those two yeshiva boys in Two Kuni Lemel , it was when you were still a baby. Daddy took me to see the movie, it was supposed to be a comedy, but something there gave me the creeps, and for a long time afterward whenever I walked down the passage I imagined two figures in black following me. Walking behind me with dancing steps and laughing and wanting to do something bad to me. I had all kinds of scary fantasies, kids are like that, it’s not important, but the point is that all my fear, all the fears, even the oldest ones are gone.

“In the prayer ‘Our father, who art in heaven’ we ask God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. So you see, do you understand? Now, ever since Sarah was born, I really feel that God has forgiven me.

“And if our father in heaven has forgiven me, what do I have to fear?”

Ivowed to keep silent. I vowed not to interrupt, not to push or prompt, to let my sister deliver her speech from the podium of the pagoda without interference.

My old-new sister told a practiced story, but her voice was as eager and alert as if this was the first time she was telling it, and she was only now making the connections as she spoke.

My sister was the heroine of her life story, and who was I to push myself into the feats of her heroism and spoil them?

A transparent cloud does not speak. A squirrel nibbles in silence. May my black tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth lest I ruin this intolerable beauty. Intolerable — yet I would tolerate it. Because it was not for me that a carpet of autumn leaves had been spread here, and not in my honor that a bird flew and a rabbit sprang.

Praise waiteth for thee in silence, and I wait, in silent anesthetized worship I wait.

I am a detail in a still life: a detail bowing my head on my knee beneath a statue of the Buddha. I am an object. I can be an object. Even an isolated object can sometimes survive in a landscape.

Only a bird will twitter. No other sound will be heard. No doubt about it, the whole of creation is united in harmony. There will be no doubt in this place, I won’t allow it, and nothing, no word of mine, will mar this triumphant beauty.

In this way, with thoughts along these lines I tried to hypnotize myself. Years after I had collapsed on the watchmaker’s doorstep and lost the connection with my legs, I tried as hard as I could to cut the connection of my own free will.

I hypnotized myself until I was a detail in a still life at her feet, until I was almost nothing at all: an object willed into paralysis. And so I remained, still and mute, until my sister said: “Our father in heaven forgave me,” and this sentence galvanized me into speech.

“For what?” I begged her, with my soul overflowing and filling the inanimate object with life. “What in God’s name did you have to be forgiven for?” My hand wandered to the toe of her shoe, and my fingers pressed the rough cold of the material and fawned on it imploringly.

“First of all for you,” Elisheva answered with the slightest hint of a smile in her voice. “For you, and for how I tormented you when you were like an angel. Do you think you succeeded in hiding the price you paid from me? The way I was then I didn’t have a choice, but I know that you didn’t join the army because of me. That first of all. First of all, you. But apart from that, even before that, before I fell on you, there was that business I’m so ashamed of, what I did when I was still in the army. .” her voice grew graver. “You know, when I locked myself in with the Uzi, please don’t ask me what I intended to, because it’s all dark. I only know that it’s something that happened, that I threatened to do something with the Uzi, and only God, who watched over me then knows how it could have ended.”