Gail Hareven - Lies, First Person

It turned out that there was nothing to fear: apparently the good doctor was not in the habit of looking at the faces of the women on whom he performed abortions, or maybe he just had a lousy memory. The first thing he said was that everything was in order after the procedure, and that if a problem existed it was certainly not connected to the procedure. I don’t remember how many times he repeated the word, procedure, but that was the word he used.

“Let me examine you anyway.”

There were a thousand things the girl could have done: told him who she was, threatened him, said that she didn’t want to be examined and she only came for a consultation, asked him if he was in the habit of performing abortions on girls brought in by men old enough to be their fathers.

She could have done a thousand things, but she didn’t do any of them. She neither confronted him nor found a way out. She stood up and obeyed his instructions, went behind the screen, took off her jeans and panties and put them on a stool, sat in the chair and parted her legs. That’s what she did. Because that’s what he told her to do, and she was Elisheva, and before she could think her feet were already in the stirrups, and a hand in a rubber glove was rummaging inside her.

“That’s it, that’s all. A gynecological examination,” I said to Oded. “And if you want to know, I wasn’t a virgin either. I wonder if he would have noticed if I was. Never mind, people pay a far higher price when they’re fighting for the truth. And in the end, what price did I already pay? A medical examination, that’s all. Women have them all the time. It just happened to be the first gynecological examination I ever had.”

If I had any clear wishes as to my husband’s reaction, I would have said that he fulfilled them all.

He didn’t ask “But why? Why did you let him do it?” He didn’t question me at all, or try to caress me, or comfort the child I was then from the heights of the present.

“A bad business,” he said shortly after I had finished, “a very bad business, but I’m glad you told me.”

He went to make coffee and after he put the cup in my hand, he spoke about “trained and experienced fighting men’ who were overtaken by paralysis. He mentioned a case involving one of his commanding officers, and another involving a well-known lawyer suddenly struck dumb in court.

I needed to hear his voice speaking, and he gave me his voice, and so we lay side by side while he spoke to me of this and that: about Nimrod’s new love affair — was it true love or simply the product of loneliness? About his father who kept announcing his intentions of winding down his activities in the office, and in complete contradiction to his declarations had started to interfere in his son’s cases to an extent he had never done before; and again about his old dream of teaching school: “It’s just a dream, I don’t think I’ll ever realize it, but lately I’ve been thinking that if I could only find the right place, maybe I could teach for a few hours on a volunteer basis. To teach judo, for example. Maybe I’d just teach girls. What do you say? You think something could come of it?”

And I listened to my husband’s soothing chit-chat, I really did listen, and I even replied. Only when the light in the shed vanished into the light of the rising sun, his voice departed from its gentle, everyday tone and took on an exaggerated casualness. “So I’ll pick you up at home tonight and we’ll go to the seminar to see and hear. And two other things: one, the dinner my parents aren’t going to attend is supposed to take place the day after tomorrow. And two, if you’re interested, I assume you’re interested and that you’ve already found out for yourself: he’s staying at the Hyatt.”

“How do you know?”

“So you didn’t check it out. Good, then you have to admit that there are a few advantages to being married to a lawyer. Even though it wasn’t something I needed a detective to find out. I simply phoned the university and asked the spokeswoman.”

“But what did you say to her? Did you give her your name?”

“Certainly not. I gave her a false name and said that I ran a book club. And that we wanted to invite him to speak to us.”

The question of the First Person’s location had been preying on my mind for the past few days, but why did it concern my husband? I didn’t know.

It was a morning of surprises, and worn out by surprises I could only surmise that he had located the predator in order to minimize the anxieties of his preyed-upon wife.

The hands of the clock approached the hour when the alarm was supposed to go off, and in the moments remaining we said no more.

I remembered the arrowhead of the wild geese in the sky. For some reason it occurred to me that after reaching its destination, whenever it did so, perhaps even now, the slow, screeching arrow would turn around and return to the country from which it had departed.

I imagined geese and clouds and saw continents from above, I sailed with them in the sky. I must have dozed off, and when I woke Oded was already dressed in his jogging outfit and busy tying his shoes, and I was covered with a sheet.

With the pale satin material covering my body, I went on lying there and thinking about what could never be.

I thought that if I could only do what needed to be done and live to see more mornings like this, I would go down on my knees and wash the feet of all the gods.

And I vowed that if only it could be, then I would never, ever again want to get into some car bomb and blow myself up in the role of some god or other.

Evening started to fall, and the terrible heat did not abate. My husband picked me up at the house and we drove to the Cinematheque, and parked the Defender next to the Scottish church. In the dusky light we crossed the narrow bridge leading to the Valley of Hinnom and went down the steps to the Cinematheque, and at ten past six I saw the First Person.

I heard him speak to the audience, and no doubts entered my mind: I knew with a certain knowledge that the past, the present, and the future would be better without him, and that I had to erase him. But that’s no way to tell a story. There are details without which the truth does not become a story, and the truth does not become a story without cold shivers running down my spine, and hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and my heart beating faster as the hands of the clock advanced. Heart beats are imperative, because the heart creates credibility, and without it nobody will believe me.

My wrist watch has no hands, but my heart definitely beat faster: here is my heart, pounding at an ever-increasing rhythm as we cross the bridge — who is that walking behind me? — my heart pounds in my ears, and here I am opening it, revealing all.

There was indeed a dark red pounding in my ears, but at the same time I should point out that I didn’t miss a word, and that I heard every sound that the First Person uttered. Because from the moment he started to speak my thoughts no longer strayed: no images of loathsome tortures invaded my mind, I had no sister, nor did I imagine a body in front of the car. Everything that had haunted me went away now that I was face to face with the haunter.

He took the stage and spoke, he had been invited to lecture, and I was present at his lecture, in full possession of all my faculties, and therefore I am competent to bear witness. So to hell with the cardiology report. The increase in the rate of my heartbeat is only a marginal symptom.

I intended to arrive exactly on time for the beginning of the panel. In places like the Cinematheque, there are always people you have to wave or nod to, and I wanted to avoid waves and nods and definitely from having to reply to “What are you doing here, research for Alice?” or “Where did you disappear to? We heard you were in America.”