Friendly Fire (22 page)

Something has gone wrong for her, has wounded her, thinks Ya'ari. Maybe the world has stopped marveling at her beauty.

"And if it's your bed, why is it a tragedy?"

"Because he wet my blankets and sheet."

"Nadi still wets the bed? I didn't know."

"I very much hope that you really didn't know," she says, with a harsh sarcasm that he never imagined she was capable of.

Ya'ari is stunned. But he heeds his wife's warnings and avoids a harsh response; instead he speaks to the young woman with warmth and tenderness.

"Efrati, what happened? Why are you so angry?"

Now her voice cracks a little.

"Nothing. I'm tired and wasted from all this Hanukkah stuff. And Moran's confinement, and also Daniela's trip. I had so much hoped she would help me during the vacation with the kids. Everything all of a sudden is on my head and making me crazy. Anyway, I'll get over it ... only please, don't forget to come over tomorrow night, as you promised, for candle-lighting. When Nadi got up, the first thing he said was where did Grandpa disappear to and when is he coming back?"

"He's a sweetheart."

"So you'll come tomorrow?"

"Of course."

In the dining hall the sermon has ended, short and sweet, and the four candles and the shammash are burning as the recruits sing. Ya'ari, meanwhile, has found his way to the front gate, where the Ethiopian guards have lit a holiday campfire of their own. Apparently they have added a foreign substance to the fire, perhaps brought from home, which turns the flame from red to purple.

L
OOKING OUT AT
the tracks as the train pulls into Morogoro, Daniela is surprised to discover that the three porters who carried the straw baskets in Dar es Salaam have already arrived and are there to greet them. No, Yirmiyahu corrects her, it only looks that way to you because these are members of the same tribe, maybe relatives of the others—though exactly how they got the news that we'd be on this train and would need assistance, that's anybody's guess.

Led by the three new porters, they walk to the gas station to pick up the trusty Land Rover. Freshly washed, its hood raised, it awaits the inspection of the Sudanese driver: the oil filter has been changed, the carburetor cleaned, and the spark plugs polished to assure quick, precise firing. As the porters empty the big baskets and organize their contents into cardboard boxes, Sijjin Kuang bends over the recesses of the engine, making sure that all her wishes have been fulfilled.

Yirmiyahu distributes bills and coins all around. The big straw baskets will change hands again, and more than once, in their serpentine journey back to the marketplace in the capital.

An airplane lands on a nearby runway. Only two days have passed since I landed here, Daniela reminds herself, and in another four I'll take off for home.

For the third time during the visit Yirmiyahu apologizes to his guest for exiling her to the backseat. Sijjin Kuang takes her place behind the wheel.

"What's this? You stopped driving in Africa?" Daniela asks Yirmiyahu with some asperity. "I mean, you always loved to drive, and when you were over at our house, you never minded bringing me home at night from wherever I was."

Yirmiyahu still loves to drive, even though in Africa the roads are difficult, but when the Sudanese woman is with him he gives up the wheel because for her, control over the car helps console her grief and replaces her lost sexuality.

Daniela is astounded by his loose tongue. How vulgar. And what does he know about her sexuality?

Yirmiyahu turns his body around to speak directly to his sister-in-law, who shields her eyes with her hand. As it plows westward, the car faces the sun directly.

He knows nothing. A white man like him cannot understand the sexuality of an orphaned African woman. And it would never occur to him to spy on her to get at the truth. He appreciates her femininity and has no racial hang-ups, but he senses from within his own soul, the soul of someone whose own sexuality has faded, that the memory of a family massacred before her eyes has snuffed out her womanliness. At least this is how he feels, because this is also what happened to Daniela's sister. The friendly fire burned out what little sexuality she still had.

"No, please don't use that expression again."

"Why?"

"It sounds cynical. Drop it. For my sake."

"You're wrong, no cynicism intended. It's a realistic description, and also a poetic one..."

"You're stubborn as a mule, Yirmi..."

"The original mule wasn't me, but Shuli, your sister. And because I, in contrast to Amotz, failed abjectly to protect her from suffering, I agreed not to claim her sexuality, and rightly so, for it was there and only there that he could not join us."

"Who?"

"How can you not understand?"

"Eyal?"

"Obviously."

Now she is very frightened. To join us? What do you mean?

The sun is swallowed up by a great cloud, and Sijjin Kuang turns on the headlights and concentrates on the road. After many hours spent in close quarters with the two white people, she can sense their conversation is becoming important.

After Eyal's death he was allowed to be with them everywhere, all the time. It was possible to connect him to any subject, to talk about him any time he or Shuli wanted to remember him. They didn't always want to, but they knew they could. They could cry for him, they could cry for themselves, they could take pity or get angry and curse the soldier who had been so quick to shoot him and so quick to explain his mistake.

Yes, if a character in a film, or music at a concert, brought their son somehow to mind, either one of them was permitted to say a word in the middle of the movie or the performance, or sometimes to be content with a sigh, a touch, or a glance. They knew and agreed that he was available at every moment, and neither of them was allowed to say, Enough pain, now let him rest in peace. During a meal or on a trip, or at a party with friends, even while shopping, it was always possible to connect with him, even through a joke or a laugh.

But not during sex. Here exist only two, a man and a woman, and their son, dead or alive, has no place in their bed or their bedroom. Because if the dead son slipped into the shadow of a passing thought or became embodied in a bare leg or the movement of a hand, the sex would die down at once, or else be putrid. And perhaps to preserve Eyali, from the day of the funeral to the day she died, her sister resolutely put an end to her sexuality, and thereby his as well, for how could he impose himself on her when he knew that at any moment she might open the door of her mind and say, Come, my son, come back and I will grieve for you again. Could he have said, in the middle of lovemaking, Just a minute, son, stop, wait a bit, you arrived too soon. Just like that day at dawn, this, too, is a battleground, and if you take one more step into the soul of the naked woman I am holding in my arms, I'll spray you with friendly fire...

Raindrops slide down the front windshield, although minutes ago it was sunny. The road is gradually engulfed by hilly forest. When Yirmi sees that his sister-in-law, who has listened attentively to him, is shocked into silence, he slowly turns his face to the front, toward the road, as a sign that the confession is over and there is nothing more to be said.

But for Daniela the conversation is not over. Without trying to raise her voice over the engine noise, she leans forward and brings
her lips close to her brother-in-law's bald crown, and says in a near whisper:

"This confession of yours is so painful and understandable and natural. For weeks after he died, when we were thinking about you, we also couldn't touch each other. And Amotz, who always wants it—in that period he was careful not to try to persuade me. Without a word of explanation, he just went celibate. Then something strange happened, which sometimes happens to him even now. He started crying in movies, in the dark, sometimes over silly things ... and when I look over at him, he's self-conscious and ashamed..."

Yirmiyahu's skull freezes. Then slowly he turns around.

"Crying in the dark? Amotz? I don't believe it..."

"Maybe now you can understand why he was the one I chose."

O
N
F
RIDAY MORNING
Ya'ari stands by the trash bin weeding
Ha'aretz
of unnecessary supplements—national and local, real estate sections, inserts of big retail chains—and while so doing he pictures the furnace where his brother-in-law burned all the Israeli papers. If the newspapers get any fatter, we'll have to install an African furnace here too, so as not to overload the trash bin. His newspaper reading is quick and selective, though he makes sure not to miss the millimeters of rainfall, the level of the Sea of Galilee, and the synoptic weather map. When the radio chimes in with a report of dry but strong easterly winds, replacing the humid westerlies, he wonders whether a new type of wind will produce a different sort of roaring and howling at the tower or whether the wind-sucking shaft doesn't discriminate between east and west.

He washes the breakfast dishes in the sink, it being only fair that in the absence of the mistress of the house the electric dishwasher also get a rest. But the silence around him feels oppressive, especially as he looks ahead to a long, slow Saturday. Although he told the owner of the Jerusalem elevator to expect him by nine
A.M.,
he knows from experience that it's impolitic to barge in on an older woman before she gets properly organized. His mood is good. He pleasantly replays in his mind Moran's favorable reaction to his nocturnal sketch. So on his way to Jerusalem he is willing to go listen again to those whining winds before agreeing with the manufacturer on where to hold firm and where to give in. Until candle-lighting time with the grandchildren there is no important person on the horizon he can or should arrange to meet. For many years now he and his wife have made all of their visits together, and if he should invite himself someplace two days after Daniela left on her trip, it might seem suspicious, as if he were taking advantage of her absence to tell his friends something new about himself.

Once again he transmits the electronic signal to the iron gate and descends into the underground garage. He is careful to wait for the car that has followed him inside to claim its parking spot, and only then he steers his own to one of the empty spaces, which are fewer now than on his last visit. As he opens the fire door that separates the parking from the elevators, it seems to him that the easterly winds have worsened the roaring—perhaps because of their dryness. No doubt about it, this noise is a major nuisance and ought to prompt some soul-searching on the part of the architect and the construction company—though the elevator factory and his own design firm are not exempt from scrutiny either. Ya'ari does not call for an elevator right away but instead stands still and listens, and when the tenant who has just parked his car walks up, the stranger standing stupidly before the elevator doors understandably arouses his suspicion.

The tenant is an older man with a melancholy face and sunken cheeks. He wears old khaki pants, and his shoes are covered with fresh mud, as if he were returning from a tramp through the fields. Although his apartment keys already dangle from his hand, at the sight of the visitor standing as if in silent prayer opposite the motionless elevators, he, too, refrains from calling one, merely tilting his head and listening with a grave expression. Each man steals a sidelong glance at the other; already they are forming suspicions. Finally the tenant steps to the side and takes his cell phone from his pocket, and just as Ya'ari, who has had enough of the wailing winds, is about to open the fire door and return to his car, a melody tinkles in his pocket and stops him short.

The voice of the tenant talking in the corner merges with the one on Ya'ari's phone.

"Yes, Kidron, it's me."

"Now do you believe that the winds are real and not a hallucination?" The tenant continues to talk from mobile to mobile at a few meters' distance.

But Ya'ari, who prefers face-to-face conversations with real voices, hangs up.

"Real, obviously. I never accused you of hallucinating. But I doubt, or rather, I deny, the responsibility of my firm for this condition."

"The building company is also ducking out, and the architect is AWOL, and your friend Gottlieb is hiding in a hole, so who in the end will assume this orphan responsibility?"

"There's no simple answer to that. Responsibility still needs to be determined and assigned. But forgive me if I ask you something that may seem impertinent."

"What?"

"Is this howling really so horrible?"

"
What?
"

"After all, stormy winds are rare in this sunny country, and in Tel Aviv they're especially rare, and the ride in an elevator, even to the top floor, takes no more than a minute..."

"So what?"

"So what's all the fuss about? Because in a certain sense, from another standpoint, the sound of the wind in a sealed apartment tower in the heart of the city only adds a touch of living nature: a taste of clouds, or maybe the aroma of mountains..."

"Aroma of mountains? Have you lost your mind?"

"I'm only suggesting an option, a different way of looking at the whole thing."

"Maybe it's an option for you, Mr. Ya'ari, but certainly not for the people who live here. And if you think that with oddball fantasies like these you and your firm can weasel out of the responsibility for your
defective design, let me tell you, it won't work. Because we'll hound you all the way to a court of law."

"Don't you have anything more important to do?" Ya'ari asks with a cordial smile.

"I do," the man answers firmly, "but I also have a great deal of free time to get involved with many things. As you see, here it is only six-thirty
A.M.,
and I have already finished my workday, which began one hour ago."

A little chill runs down Ya'ari's back.

"That's because my work is brief," the tenant continues, "though not easy. I go every morning to the military cemetery, to my son's grave, walk around the gravestone a bit, pull a few weeds, remove an old pebble and replace it with a new one. Sometimes, if a tear comes, I also have to wipe it. All in all, not much employment. Which is why I have plenty of time to demand that others fulfill their obligations."