Friendly Fire (16 page)

O
N HIS EVENING
visits, when his father's house is clean and organized, Ya'ari typically gives one short ring and then opens the door with his key, but this morning he rings longer and waits to allow those inside to prepare for his arrival. In fact, the Filipinos send Hilario to open the door, hoping that his sweet fluent Hebrew, and maybe also his adorable turban, will help the boss's son forgive the unaccustomed mess.

The father's morning ablutions have left the apartment very warm, and its residents' identity is more pronounced now than in the evening: it is there in the pungent smells of food cooked the night before, still cooling in a corner of the living room; the infant girl clad only in a diaper and set upon the dining table; the pajamas decorated with pictures of Asian birds, strewn on unmade beds; and the baby's mother, her nakedness swathed in a silken robe of many spectacular colors.

"What is this, Hilario, no school today?"

"It's vacation, Mr. Ya'ari. The holiday of the Maccabees," announces the little student, excited as ever by the mysteries of Judaism.

On the way to his father's bedroom, Amotz peeks into his own childhood room, now occupied by Hilario and his Israeli-born sister. Amid the electronic war toys, beneath the posters of mythic figures from children's movies, he can discern a few prehistoric items, such as the Monopoly game of his youth.

His father has been returned to bed after the morning's elaborate bathing, and Ya'ari is not used to chatting with a father wrapped comfortably in two blankets with only his head visible, collared by a colorful towel and showing no sign of the tremors of his disease.

"Don't be angry with me for insisting that you come this morning," he says, "but this friend of mine, Devorah Bennett, told me she had been trying to reach me for days, and that you and others at the office were hiding my phone number from her. So listen, habibi, this woman is a dear friend, and after Imma died she helped me a great deal during a difficult period. By the way, before I forget, what about Daniela, did you hear from her?"

"Today she goes to Dar es Salaam, where Yirmi will connect her with me by phone."

"If you get the chance, give her my regards, and tell her I hope her visit with her brother-in-law will help her get herself together."

"The problem with her is guilt ... she always felt guilty toward her sister, for no reason, and after she passed away the guilt only intensified."

"A little guilt, even for no reason, can still be something productive and healthy," says the elderly elevator designer, "particularly if it is toward family or friends, and it should always be listened to. This is why I want you to help me with my little guilt regarding the friend in Jerusalem. She is nine years younger than I am, meaning she should now be eighty-one years of age. What can I say, a slip of a girl, and many years ago I helped her out with a private elevator, so she could go straight from the apartment to the roof and make some use of it. A simple elevator, small, just for one floor, with a Czech mechanism from before the world war that works on oil pressure with a piston that lifts it from the side. But the construction was all mine. Gottlieb built it according to my plans. And when your mother and I visited Germany in the early fifties, we found a few spare parts in an old scrap warehouse, and I shipped them back to Israel as research materials. You'll soon see it for yourself."

"What makes you think I'll see it?"

"Because I gave my friend a lifetime warranty. She is an intellectual lady and a bit artistic, and during the British Mandate she
had an English husband, one-quarter Jewish, who didn't last long here after the establishment of the State. The building is in the center of town, and after a beauty salon opened up on the ground floor, I suggested to her, so she could have a quiet corner, to put in an elevator straight from her flat to the roof, which was not being used and could be reached only by a ladder from the stairwell. So this way she made herself a nice, quiet retreat, which is also cool in the summer evenings, as you'll see."

"Why do you think I should see it?"

"Because your father is asking you to. This is a woman who helped me a great deal after Imma died. She hasn't got the means to bring in a technician, who in any case will not be familiar with such an elevator. It's a building on King George Street, opposite the old Knesset, and she apparently doesn't plan to leave it while she is alive, and therefore she needs the elevator that gives her access to the roof. When Jerusalem was divided, before '67, you could see the Old City from there. And I gather that the elevator is also still alive and only needs adjustment, and to have its seal changed. You'll check for yourself."

"But what good can I do? I'm a design engineer, not a technician."

The father shuts his eyes and falls silent.

"All right," he finally says, "if you are just a designer then don't go see her in Jerusalem. Forget my request. I'll ask Moran. He has more patience, which is why he has golden hands, even though he, like you, is an engineer and not a technician."

"As you wish, ask Moran, he is an independent being, but just so you know, he's in the army right now."

"How so? He told me he's ignoring the army."

"He ignored the army, but the army didn't ignore him."

"So what's going to happen?"

"What's going to happen? Eventually they'll let him go."

"No, I mean in Jerusalem."

"In Jerusalem the slip of a girl can wait a bit. If you gave her a lifetime guarantee, then there's no danger that the warranty will run out. Meanwhile it's winter, so she won't need to go up on the roof."

"You're talking now without an ounce of compassion. But no matter. If you refuse, and the army is holding Moran, then I will ask Francisco to get me a taxi that can handle a wheelchair and bring along two Filipino friends from the old-age home, and they'll take me to Jerusalem, at least to give her a diagnosis."

"Good God, you are really stubborn. But tell me, what's going on with that damned elevator?"

"First of all, it's not damned, and second, as I told you, it's not dead at all, it's still alive, but it has, so she says, kind of a tremor when it starts moving, and also when it stops."

"Maybe it got a little old, Abba? What do you think?"

"Of course it got old, but because it is not a person, it's possible to adjust the oil pressure and replace the seal ... no?"

"Anything is possible."

"And besides which, she also says, Devorah Bennett, that there started in the elevator a wail that was never there before, as if a cat in heat were riding in it with her."

"A cat in heat?"

"Yes, that is how she describes it."

"No, Abba, for God's sake, don't talk to me about more wailing noises in elevators."

T
HIS IS EXACTLY
the same road, traveled in the opposite direction, and in the light of a broiling summer morning it goes faster, and the visitor may take in all that was hidden on the night she landed here. This time she is not in the front seat but sitting a bit cramped in the back, behind her brother-in-law's bald head, though the driver is the same driver, quiet and precise. Sijjin Kuang this morning has
her shoulders and slender arms wrapped in a sunflower-colored shawl that highlights the coal black sheen of her skin. At ten they must be in Morogoro to board a Chinese freight train carrying copper ore to the port of Dar es Salaam, where, as firmly agreed, their first order of business will be to establish a living link between the guest and her husband; only afterward will they attend to the needs of the excavation team. And even though Sijjin Kuang is plainly of different stock from the locals, Daniela is very pleased to be visiting in the company of a black African woman, whose presence affords her a quiet legitimacy.

Yesterday, visiting the excavation site, she imagined for a moment that perhaps there had developed between the elderly widower and the nurse a bond deeper than their professional one, but this morning her impression has been erased by the profound sadness she sees in this young woman, whose whole family was murdered. She observes that when her brother-in-law's hand or shoulder happen to bump into the driver's as the car rounds a bend or suddenly swerves, the Sudanese shrinks from him, as from some enemy who wished to harm her.

They drive around Mount Morogoro on a wide red-dirt road, hard as asphalt, that twists through a thick bushy forest that now and then vanishes for no reason and is replaced by a barren hilltop. She asks her brother-in-law, is the earth redder here? I remember your explaining it to Amotz and me last time, but I don't remember what you said.

"The red color comes from the iron in the soil, which also decreases its fertility."

"Iron ... I remember now, that's what you told us then too."

"See, here's proof that I'm a stable person, who doesn't easily change his mind. But if you ask Sijjin Kuang, for example, why the earth of Africa is red, she will flatly tell you it's because of all the blood that has been spilled upon it."

The driver, hearing her name mentioned, glances back at Daniela.

"And maybe because of the blood she can't forget, it's also good for you to be with her, because her tragedy is greater than yours. Next to her, you can forget your own."

Yirmi does not respond at first. Maybe he didn't hear. Maybe he disagrees with what she said. But suddenly he turns around, pulls his sister-in-law's little hand toward him and puts it to his lips in a gesture of gratitude. Sometimes you amaze me with your accuracy, the way you touch, as if casually, the heart of the matter. Of course this woman's tragedy is greater than mine, and I realize that, but that's not the only reason why I like her to drive the car and go on my rounds with me. You will be surprised, but she does not know about our Eyali, because I told her nothing, nor have I told the others, so that no one here will have any emotional purchase on what I myself want to forget. This woman helps me peel off my identity.

"How?"

"With all those things you also like about her. She is a genuine animist, a pagan who believes in trees and stones and spirits, not as a confused appendage to some failed abstract religion and not as a cry for help out of weakness and despair, but as a natural act, a whole different faith. And therefore, unlike Christians or Muslims, she has no connection or commitment to Jews, for either good or ill, love or hate. We are not the source she comes from, or a cause for struggle or competition. To her we are simply not relevant, nor does she see herself as relevant to us. To me she is a place where we do not exist in any memories. Not religious, not historical, not mythological. To her I am only a man—admittedly white, but that's a minor detail, because it was blacks, after all, who murdered her family and her tribe. And therefore, without talk or effort, simply as one person to another, she helps me peel away my identity, like the white man, who has peeled off his blackness. Everything that has oppressed me begins to fall off, without argument or debate, so that even if a dear and familiar guest happens to descend on me, that person can't reverse the process."

"You mean me, of course."

"For example. But up to now I have no complaints: you are behaving courteously and keeping within bounds."

"O
KAY,
I
SURRENDER,
" Amotz says to his father. "Tomorrow's Friday; I'll try to get up to Jerusalem."

"But why not go today? You have all this free time now."

"What free time?"

"Your wife's not here, and you have no one to take care of or worry about."

"Don't exaggerate. I have someone left to take care of, and there's always something to worry about. So I'll hop up to Jerusalem tomorrow, not because of the yowling of an imaginary cat in heat but purely for your peace of mind."

"My peace of mind isn't a good enough reason? So before you go, let me give you a kiss."

Ya'ari can't remember the last time his father asked to kiss him. He himself, when he comes to visit and finds his father in the wheelchair, sometimes squeezes his trembling hand and lightly kisses, out of obligation, the cheek of the man from whom he has learned so much. But he doesn't recall his father ever once initiating a kiss, not for several dozen years. Now he does, as he lies naked in bed, under two blankets, and Ya'ari has to bend over him as he offers only his forehead to his father's lips.

"If you find the cat in heat inside her shaft, bring it with you so I can see it," says the father, then closes his eyes and plants a kiss on the forehead of the man of sixty.

Judging by his father's excitement, it would seem that she was a love of his, Ya'ari muses as he heads south to his office on a gray windless day. The old father even yearned to confess, but his son wouldn't let him, lest it turn out that the woman in Jerusalem had
been his lover while his mother was still alive. And even if he were told that the woman only helped his father restore his manhood after his wife's death, Ya'ari has no great desire to meet her, and certainly none to service her ancient, shaking, wailing elevator. In any case it lies beyond his power to heal its afflictions, or even diagnose them. If Moran were in town, he would certainly send him to Jerusalem to satisfy his grandpa. But Moran has sunk into the abyss of the army and has exchanged not one word with him; Ya'ari suspects that his son has begun to enjoy the freedom of his confinement.

The office is teeming. Those who took yesterday off have come early today to complete their projects. Where's Moran? ask colleagues whose work depends on him. Moran is doing reserve duty, Ya'ari says, avoiding the whole truth. But he said he would ignore the army? So he said it. Not everything he says comes true.

For a moment Ya'ari considers whether it would be right to ask one of the younger engineers to go to Jerusalem in his place. But anyone sent there would likely feel foolish and helpless when confronted with a prehistoric private elevator, and bear a grudge over the Friday needlessly stolen from him and the imposition of a technician's chore on an engineer.

He phones the lady in Jerusalem and speaks to her in practical army language: You've won, Mrs. Bennett, I will come to see your elevator tomorrow morning, but I caution you, have no illusions, I am coming only to look, not to repair. So please, don't budge from your house, starting at nine.