Gail Hareven - Lies, First Person

My husband to his mother on the eve of the second Passover holiday: “I’m afraid we’re not going to make it. Elinor’s caught some bug. . no, not at the moment. . I think it’s best just to let her sleep.”

But I didn’t sleep, or I slept very little, and it occurred to me that it was a good thing that I’d spent so much time sleeping in previous years and stored up reserves: now my thoughts no longer escaped me or turned to pointless fantasies.

My abstinence from small talk also intensified my ability to concentrate on reality, and from day to day it became clear to me how I would do the deed: no more vain thoughts of cyanide and nonsensical fantasies about gold dust.

There were no weapons in the house ever since the boys had completed their army service and Oded had been relieved of reserve duty, and in any case, since I myself had been prevented from serving in the army, even if I had known how to get my hands on a gun — I wouldn’t have know how to fire it.

My black-belt-salt-of-the-earth, my worried love, was capable in principle of breaking someone’s neck, while I couldn’t even imagine myself using a knife.

The only realistic weapon available to me was the car, and from the moment it occurred to me I wondered how I hadn’t thought of it before, it seemed so obvious.

In order to run him over I would have to somehow get him to place himself in front of the wheels, because a scenario in which I lay in wait and ambushed him was far from obvious, and in fact improbable in the extreme. In order to place him in front of the wheels I would have to see him, meet him, get into conversation with him and entice him to some lonely place: the edge of a cliff? Not realistic. More realistic to think of a deserted street or a parking lot. In any case, I would have to meet him, and I would meet him, this would present no difficulties, since he wanted to meet me. At the end of the meeting I would see to it that he accompanied me to the car. I could offer him a ride. I could ask him to guide me out of the parking lot. Or maybe I could ask him to get out and check if the headlights were working: but in order to send him out of the car I would first have to get into it with him, and for this I would need to prepare myself. Stepping on the gas, on the other hand, was a routine activity, that would be the easy part, even easier than pulling a trigger. I would sit high up in front of the steering wheel, he would be opposite me but low down, opposite the silver front of the Defender. Because from the moment I began to see the picture, I saw myself in Oded’s 4x4 and not in my dilapidated little Toyota.

My husband, who is far from any kind of ostentation, bought the 4x4 less than a year before, after a long hesitation centering round his self-image, not the price of the vehicle. “Tell me honestly, at my age, with my way of life, doesn’t it seem pathetic to you?”

“You’re a man, men are pathetic, enjoy it at least.”

And he did enjoy it, even though the Jeep left the parking space no more than twice a week. Oded walked to work, but occasional drives along dirt tracks and the religious polishing of the vehicle were enough for him to delight in his acquisition.

“Do I make you laugh?”

“You bet you do. Take me for a drive on Saturday — or are you cleaning it on Saturday?”

I assumed that I would find some pretext for explaining to my husband why I needed his car. I didn’t worry too much about finding one in advance. And only a few days after the plan was born, I realized that I was going to stain my man’s precious toy so that he wouldn’t want to touch it any more. Oded wouldn’t touch it and he wouldn’t touch me, and his next woman, the artistic woman with the big breasts, he would take out for drives in a different car.

I was sorry for what I was about to do to him, but no other possibility and no other weapon was available to me. I would befoul my husband’s car, but a greater foulness would be wiped out as a result.

In the shock of his sorrow my husband would not sense the difference — perhaps he would never sense it — but after the deed was done, the ground would be more balanced, and everybody’s air, not just his, would go back to being something breathable.

•

On the last night before Not-man’s appearance in person, I went to look at my husband in his sleep. To be more precise, it was early in the morning, and to the best of my recollection, in the moments before I did so I thought again about how he would be robbed of his pleasure in his car. The thought came back, and presumably it made me sad, because I wanted very much to give, not to take away.

I stood in the bedroom doorway like a ghost. It was very hot, the hamsin was closing in without any relief. The light in the garden shed, which we left on at night, came in through the window and cast a faint light on his face. My husband had fallen asleep exposed on his back, in a trusting position that touched my heart, one arm bent above his head, the other stretched out at his side, his limp palm turned upward. Very soon, when I was caught, he would no longer sleep like this. And if I wasn’t caught? This thought was forbidden. There is nothing more weakening than the scent of happiness seeping through the wall of time and threatening to disappear, dimming the eyes with longing. There is nothing more weakening than the smell of my husband.

Will he miss me? Perhaps only in his sleep will he remember how it was between us, because the shadow of the act I was about to commit would fall backward and darken all our past for him. He would divorce me and I would accept it immediately, without any arguments I would agree to the divorce, and this moment and I would be cast out of his life forever.

I came closer to the bed, my dreaming love let out a long breath between closed lips, and I bent over and pulled down his underwear and wrapped my lips around his sleeping penis. The member woke up immediately. The rest of him a moment or two later.

At first, still half asleep, he sent a drowsy hand to my breast, and I instinctively removed his hand and returned it to the side of his body. I wanted to make him happy, with all my heart and soul I longed to give him pleasure, but I couldn’t let my love give me anything. It was enough. He had given me enough already.

But the hand I removed refused to lie still, and again it rose to underneath my jaw and moved over my throat in the dark. Again I removed it, and this time it made no more overtures, but reached for the switch of the reading lamp as soon as I laid it down.

The light went on, and a man looked at his wife. He sat up, touched my chin and took it in his hand, and without taking his eyes off me pulled up his underpants.

“Not like that,” he said, his voice hoarse and hostile.

I thought that if only he agreed to turn off the light I might be able to explain. What could I explain to him? From the look in his eyes I could see that there would be no exemptions. It was a rare expression that I knew from the rare occasions on which one of our sons crossed the line not to be crossed. “You’ll have to talk to me,” he said.

I played with the strap of my nightgown and kept quiet. There were too many things clamoring in my head: pictures, snatches of words, and what all that clamor produced in the end was: “Tomorrow night, that is, tonight, can I take your car?”

“Take my car. . and for that. .?” Judging by the disgust on his face you would have thought that I had already done the deed. This is how he would look at me from now on, if he looked at me at all. This is how he would look whenever he thought of me, and why shouldn’t he? I came from another land, and he and I were a mistake from the beginning. How I had deluded myself when I took him to Beth Hakerem. How I had let myself go on and on, talking and explaining. Just as with the foolish fantasies of gold dust and lead, I had been wasting my time. Now he was looking at me as if I were a whore.