Friendly Fire: A Duet

Fifth Candle

ON FRIDAY 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."

Ya'ari hangs his head and recalls Gottlieb's words, that people like this have a different agenda and with a touch of inner satisfaction he says, "I may not be a bereaved father like you, Mr. Kidron, only a bereaved uncle, but I have insider knowledge, family knowledge, of your grief, and I respect it a great deal. So please, don't be angry that I made a little joke. You can rest easy: this is what I came here for, and I'm going to arrange a four-way meeting with the elevator manufacturer and the contractor and the architect, so that in a team effort we can determine where the winds are sneaking in, and after we discover the source and maybe also the cause, we'll try to calm them down."

AS SOON AS they return to the farm, Daniela, exhausted from the journey to Dar es Salaam and the walk down her sister's via dolorosa, excuses herself to her brother-in-law and the nurse, takes what remains of the sweets, and goes up to her room. With uncharacteristic speed she strips off the dress that she can now no longer wear on this trip, takes a long shower, and decides to forgo the candies, whose aftertaste and excessive sweetness she finds repellent, and to go to bed hungry. She does not touch the novel lying beside her bed, opting instead to turn out the light immediately, find the right position, and fall into a deep sleep.

The next morning she wakes early. When five A.M. dawns on her wristwatch, she knows her night is over; she has no magic up her sleeve to eke out any extra sleep. For half an hour she stays curled up in the darkness with her eyes open, taking mental inventory of all her family members in their familiar beds, but finds it hard to imagine the sleeping arrangements of the military prisoner. In the end, hunger forces her to rise in the hesitating dawn, if only for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread.

In principle she could speed up time by returning to her novel. If the editor only made it clearer on the back cover that some sort of rewarding surprise awaited the reader, maybe anticipation would lend her some patience. But her hunch is that there will be no real dramatic twist in the plot or acquisition of self-knowledge on the part of the main character. The most she can expect is a change in her own understanding of the intention or genre of this novel. Which is ultimately not much of a reversal and depends upon the willingness of the reader. But this novel is not broad or deep enough for the effort.

No, she has no desire to go back to the novel. But if she had Friday's Ha'aretz spread open in her hands, she could use that to satisfy her hunger and keep lying in bed. Unlike her husband, she knows how to glean from its various columns new signs of human compassion in the world.

But until she gets back to Israel she will not have a newspaper. So she dresses in the clothes she wore on the airplane and makes her way down the dark stairway to the vast kitchen. I'm already a little bit of the landlady here, she thinks to herself, amused. But in the kitchen a small light is on. The old groundskeeper who yesterday helped her locate coffee and sugar stands up straight as she enters. Was it his idea to wait for her, following her previous failure to find the coffee and sugar on her own, or is he here on the secret orders of her host?

But she's glad of his company, and warmly takes his hand in both of hers and squeezes it firmly. In lieu of her husband, she has at her disposal a shriveled old man who has already boiled the water and placed a plate and cup and silverware on the table along with jars of coffee and sugar, and now removes the grayish milk from the fridge. Maybe in the meantime he has learned to pronounce the English name of the animal that produced it, so that the white woman can consent to lighten her coffee.

Even if most of the sights and details of this visit to Africa fade with the passage of time, she knows she will never forget till her dying day the old wizened African who serves her like a husband, in a huge kitchen before dawn.

MUCH AS YA'ARI would like to delay his mission of mercy to Jerusalem, which will almost certainly come to naught, the drive goes quickly. All wheeling and dealing in the capital sloughs off on the weekend to the coastal plain. Jerusalem on the eve of the Sabbath becomes a provincial town, not locked shut, exactly, but nearly abandoned and therefore very easy to get into. It's not even nine in the morning and already he is parking his car on a small street near the old Knesset building.

Sometimes design jobs in Jerusalem come Ya'ari's way, though no longer in the city center, but rather in the suburbs, primarily the newer office parks. His visit to the area near the old Knesset, now the headquarters of the Rabbinical Court, is almost a tourist excursion, and he takes a moment to enter the building and examine a small exhibition of black-and-white photos of days long gone but not forgotten. Although he never lived in Jerusalem, and in the '50s and '60s there was no television to inflict the city's politicians on the public, he still remembers well the newsreels screened in the movie theaters. The prime minister and his cabinet would walk around simply and naturally, without the trappings of power or burly security men, in the middle of King George V Street where he is walking now, and only two policemen were needed to direct the traffic around them.

But why wallow in nostalgia for the good old days? Wasn't this same modest, innocent Knesset building pelted with stones and bottles during the stormy debate whether to accept German reparations for the Holocaust? It's better not to romanticize the purity of the past; better to concentrate on the present. He locates his destination, then steps into a pleasant café at the corner and orders a fresh croissant and a large coffee. This way he can excuse himself at the outset from whatever refreshments Mrs. Bennett might offer and be able to make a quick getaway from her home. Not only does he not want to be regarded by anyone as a technician of old elevators, he is also particularly reluctant to meet a woman who meant something to his father; maybe he loved her, even if today she is just a girl of eighty-one.

But for all his efforts, he hasn't turned the clock very far forward. When at last he climbs the stairs to the fourth floor, it is still only 9:20, so he lingers on every landing, checking the names of the tenants. On the top floor, beside an iron ladder that ascends to the roof, there is a single door, with a name on it in Hebrew and English: Dr. Devorah Bennett, Psychoanalyst. He doesn't ring the bell but instead knocks lightly, to test her hearing.

A conversation is apparently going on inside, since the tenant's voice is loudly audible. Nonetheless she is aware of his tap on the door and opens it. There she is, an elderly light-haired woman, shrunken and wrinkled but also nimble and elfin and cheerful, who holds a phone in her hand and keeps talking: Yes, it's your son. Punctual, like his father.

Ya'ari's mood sours at once: clearly this old girl was a good-looking woman in her day, and if she was never actually his father's lover, she was surely the object of his lust. The only question is whether all this happened before or after the death of his mother.

"It's your father on the phone," she says, gracefully waving the receiver. "He called to see if you had arrived. Would you care to speak with him?"

"No," retorts Ya'ari, "I'll report to him after my visit."

"No, Yulik," she shouts into the phone, pressing it close to her ear, "your son has decided to speak with you only after the house call, so good-bye for now, my dear, and don't bother us any more." She gently replaces the phone receiver and extends to Ya'ari a liver-spotted hand.

"Thank you for agreeing to come and see me after all. Don't worry, I know you're only an engineer and not a technician, but if you give me a diagnosis, it'll be possible for me to look for a cure. Your father said he isn't going for his walk in the park today but is staying by the phone, so if you want to ask him something during the inspection, he's ready."

"I have nothing to ask him," Ya'ari interrupts, "and by the way, did you know that my father is confined to a wheelchair and takes his walk with a Filipino who pushes him?"

Mrs. Bennett wasn't told about the wheelchair, but she'd guessed, having known for years about the Parkinson's disease, and she was very cross with the man who was ashamed of his illness and stopped visiting her, because what was there to be ashamed of? To tremble is human too.

Ya'ari studies her. "He visited you, in recent years?"

"Of course. After your mother's death, we were more than friends… so far as our age permitted. But sit, please, drink a cup of tea, so you'll have strength to listen to the yowling of my elevator. It's all ready; it won't take much of your time."

On a table in the living room, beside a menorah prepared for the evening with five candles, are waiting two shiny white cups, a sugar bowl, packets of Sweet 'n' Low, teabags of various types, and little saucers of cookies and chocolate squares. Dominating this array is a vase stuffed with flowers.

"Thank you, I already had mine at that nice café next to the Knesset."

"So you didn't count on me," she says, without complaint. "A shame that you didn't hear from your father how good I am at pampering. It's my loss, as they say these days. But at least sweeten your bitterness a little with a piece of chocolate."

A little smile crosses Ya'ari's lips. He nibbles a chocolate square and looks around, but sees no trace of an elevator.

"You are obviously looking for the elevator. Please, come with me."

She leads him into the corridor of the apartment, which, it turns out, is not at all small. The clutter that typically accumulates in old people's apartments is not oppressive here. The ancient furniture is polished, and the upholstery shows no signs of wear or neglect. On the hooks on the backs of the doors, coats hang in orderly fashion. He follows her, looking at the whitish flaxen hair braided and bunched at the nape. They walk past her consultation room, where photos of Sigmund Freud in youth and age peek out from shelves stuffed with journals and books, then the bathroom and kitchen, and finally her bedroom, in the center of which stands a big double bed covered by a spread decorated with flowers and peacocks and scattered with many silk pillows.

There is still no sign of an elevator. Now she goes over to a large closet and opens wide two of its doors, as reverently as if it were the Holy Ark of the synagogue. But instead of a curtain, she slides aside a thin metal grille, revealing, at last, the elevator — small, narrow, and the incarnation of his nocturnal vision of that fifth elevator in the corner. Inside the car are three buttons: green for up, blue for down, red for help in an emergency.

WHILE SHE DRINKS her coffee, Daniela offers her pack of cigarettes to the elderly African, who is watching her from across the table. The man accepts a cigarette, selects a small branch from the stack of firewood, opens the door of the stove and pokes it in, and before lighting his own brings the flame to the cigarette between her lips.

His name is Richard. There is no way to tell whether this is his original name or a name given to him in the days when he worked at a local English farm. It has been many years now since he used much English, and he remembers only bits of the language — fossilized remains whose meaning he can still reconstruct. When spoken to, he tilts his head with great attention, as if to encourage the speaker to rattle off more and more words, until one comes up that will enable him to figure out the rest.

She likes this old man, and since the morning is young and Yirmiyahu and Sijjin Kuang haven't yet arrived, she is willing to chatter to him indefinitely, without expecting him to understand much or reply. She just wants him to feel that she respects him and is grateful for his help, and she also believes that among all the words she generously heaps upon him, eventually there will be one that registers. And that word must have arrived, she thinks, when suddenly he rises from his seat and leads her up to the first floor and opens the door of the room temporarily occupied by her brother-in-law. It isn't large, and the bed inside is narrow and disheveled. For some reason Daniela is relieved that there is no second bed, unmade or otherwise, even though she really doesn't care and has no right to worry about something no longer significant. The groundskeeper quietly limps over to the bed and straightens the sheets, and she is drawn to the little window, which looks out on the dirt road she took to the village of the sadly wise elephant. The rain of the night before has cleansed the world and sweetened the morning light, and before the sun gets too strong she can take a walk and not sit around idly waiting for her brother-in-law to show up.

But is she allowed to walk alone? Why not? She remembers the tranquil road very well and has no intention of going too far. For a moment she considers asking Richard to escort her, but really, why impose upon him and also on herself? She hurries up to her room before the sun can get stronger, takes her sister's windbreaker, gets some dollar bills and sticks them in a pocket — money Amotz put in her purse for emergencies — and returns to the ground floor, hoping the old man will witness her departure. But he has already vanished, gone as silently as he came.

The air is fresh, the road a bit muddy. Not overdoing it, she climbs the hill slowly, feeling liberated but a bit fearful too. Now and then she looks behind her, but no one is there. Even when she reaches the top there is no one to be seen. She does not think about animals. Everything here is open and exposed; if some animal is hiding nearby, it must be small and harmless.

As she descends the slope the farm disappears from view. But she recalls the road clearly and feels serenely confident that she'll find her way back. Two young women at the river are busy with laundry. When Daniela draws nearer she notices that their breasts are bare, so she bows her head in a gesture of respect and gives a friendly smile. She greets them in simple English and also points behind her, toward the farm hidden behind the hill, in order to explain to them where she belongs and where she will return. But the two young women seem unconcerned by the presence of the older white woman. They laugh and splash each other. Their breasts are perfectly formed, smooth and solid. Thatches of youthful pubic hair are visible between their long legs. One of them says something to her friend, and suddenly they point toward the village, and each cups a hand over her eye as both try in vain to find the right word to spur the lone tourist to keep walking. "Elephant," they finally exclaim. "Elephant!" they shout, delighted to have lit upon the word.

Daniela confirms that she gets their message. Indeed, she tells them, she has already twice visited this elephant, once at night. But the girls don't understand her, and encourage her to continue up the next slope. Daniela laughs and tells them, "If you say so, I'll keep walking," and she looks back and sees the elderly grounds-keeper standing on the first hilltop. Apparently someone is looking after her and taking care of her, as always. And so she presses bravely on to a third visit with the melancholy elephant.

But as she draws near, she can't spot the shed: the elephant must have moved on to display his wonders somewhere else. She advances further and sees she has arrived just in time to say goodbye. The shed has been dismantled, but the elephant himself is still chained to the tree stump, and his energetic and experienced owner is struggling to cover his prized asset, that blue cyclops eye, with a colorful bandage, apparently to protect it from the dust of the road and perhaps from the evil eye of demons. The elephant rebels, flopping his head from side to side, projecting his trunk skyward and protesting with a strange roar, which the surrounding Africans mimic with joyous laughter.

Finally some onlookers volunteer to help the owner subdue the huge animal, and the bandage is bound tight behind the opposite ear. Though it seems unlikely that these Africans have seen the cartoon elephant her grandchildren love on TV — an elephant suffering from a toothache who comes to the rabbit for a cure — they laugh gleefully nonetheless at the sight of the great animal tied in a bandage.

Her heart beating fast, Daniela pushes into the crowd. They are indifferent to her presence now; they are riveted by the creature who is desperately shaking his enormous head, trying to shed the bandage. Daniela shudders at the elephant's suffering, as if he were a member of her family. She makes her way to his owner, who stands stubborn and determined before the rebellious beast, holding his chain, ready to take to the road, and she unzips her sister's pocket and takes out a bill and offers it to the owner in front of the entire crowd, on condition that he remove the bandage and again show her the unique eye.

The man, who doubtless recalls and recognizes the white woman, seems amazed and excited by the offer. For the money in her hand — and only now does she realize her mistake — is a hundred-dollar bill; and although he has worked hard to tie the bandage, he cannot pass up a donation of a single dollar, much less a hundred, offered him with such decisiveness and likely to change his life. He therefore hurries to fasten the chain to the tree stump, to command the elephant to kneel and even lie down completely before the magnanimous, demanding woman. He searches behind the ear, which is flapping like a fan, and finds the knot, and undoes and removes the colorful cloth, to the delight of all assembled.

And within the welling yellow-green blueness that peers at her with longing, moisture slowly condenses into a tear, and after the first flows another, and the tears of the mute animal, who may also be expressing thanks, melt the tourist's heart, as if this moment finally fulfills the wish she has brought to Africa on the holiday of Hanukkah.

"HELP FROM WHOM?" Ya'ari is perplexed.

"From a partner, for example, if he were here," Mrs. Bennett says, smiling, and Ya'ari appreciates her sprightly humor.

"But why the bedroom?"

"Because only here, in that corner, did your father feel confident we wouldn't run into a water pipe in the wall, or telephone wires, or electricity. He was sure that if he went from here into the roof, he wouldn't endanger or ruin anything."

Ya'ari hesitates a bit before cautiously entering the tiny car. Indeed, a sophisticated engineering feat, almost devilishly clever, was accomplished here in the 1950s. His father had succeeded in fitting into a corner of the bedroom a hydraulic elevator with an oil-driven piston attached sideways to the wall, with a small hand-shaped fork lifting the elevator cab along two guide rails seven meters in height, up through a dark little nook to an exit on the roof.

But the psychoanalyst, perhaps with his father's help, has not left the elevator naked, a mere technological marvel. She has devoted some effort to beautifying its interior, as well as the shaft encasing it, so that both would blend naturally into the apartment. Two sides of the elevator car are paneled in dark oak, and lest a passenger forget his face en route, however briefly, a small mirror has been affixed to one side. But the third side has been left exposed to the piston attached to the shaft, which is essentially a natural extension of the wall of the room and has therefore been plastered and even decorated, with a picture of a dignified European gentleman.

"You brought your Freud in here too?" He can't help teasing the elderly psychologist.

"That is not Freud. Here I have placed Jung."

"Who's that?"

"If you sit down afterward for a cup of tea, I'll tell you all about him."

Ya'ari glances genially at his interlocutor, then carefully closes the iron grille and presses the up button. First there is only a faint but protracted humming, indicating a problem with the flow of electricity, then suddenly the elevator shakes violently, lurches and screeches as if fighting off a hostile foreign invader, and finally, for no apparent reason, calms down and surrenders, and with a strange and heartrending wail begins to crawl slowly upward, allowing Ya'ari to see that the entire open wall along the shaft is neatly plastered and hung with paintings, landscapes executed by an amateur.

The shaking and shuddering grow worse toward the end of the little trip, as if a powerful hidden hand is restraining the elevator from climbing beyond the roof. Finally it stops, but the wailing continues for several seconds more, ending at last on a sort of death rattle. To Ya'ari's ears these are not the howls of a cat in heat, as Dr. Bennett described them to his father, but the keening of a jackal, like the ones that prowled in the night when he was a boy.

The clean winter sunlight of Jerusalem dazzles him as he emerges onto the large flat roof, streaked with ancient tar. Paunchy old water tanks surround a shiny satellite dish, and the cables from the dish sprawl in every direction. In the eastern corner stands a white table, chairs chained to its legs so that a spirited wind will not send them flying.

His father claimed that the tenant was able to look out on the walls of the Old City during the years of Jerusalem divided, but now, in the unified-divided capital, the Ottoman era has disappeared behind forests of antennas and ranges of water tanks. Only the towers of the Augusta Victoria hospital and the Russian church can be seen standing tall on the crest of the Mount of Olives. He turns to the west, toward Beit Frumin, former home of the Knesset, and looks fondly at the old three-story building. A hidden elevator, he laughs to himself, that rises secretly to the opposite roof from the bedroom of a single woman, might have tempted someone to pick off a pesky political rival as he innocently arrived to attend the plenum.

The iron trapdoor over the ladder flies open and hits the roof with a loud clang. Armed in sunglasses and a straw hat, Mrs. Bennett, having climbed up by the ladder attached to the wall, rebukes the elevator engineer for not taking care to close the grille, so that she could summon the cab for herself.

"Oh. Sorry, but I thought you were afraid to ride in it."

"Why? What danger is there in a little shaking? Besides, your father also set me up an emergency switch that releases the hydraulic pressure and allows the elevator to go down by itself."

"I didn't notice it." He smiles sympathetically at the old girl who stands there all wrinkled and gaily speaks of "hydraulic pressure.""I see that my father really did think of everything here."

"Your father is a true friend, a friend for life. If he were a bit healthier, he would surely be here instead of you."

"No doubt."

"So what do you think of my elevator? Why is it in pain?"

Ya'ari shrugs, his gaze still fixed on the old Knesset.

"Tell me," he ignores her question, "were you already living here when the demonstrators threw rocks at the Knesset because of the reparation payments?"

"Certainly. I sometimes felt like throwing a rock at that Knesset, but not because of the reparations, which I got, too. For different reasons."

"Such as?"

"There was no shortage of reasons. But the sun out here is too strong for history. Let's go back down."

Despite the water tanks and the aggregation of antennas, it's pleasant on this old-time Jerusalem roof. The Judean desert purifies and brightens the air.

"You go down in the elevator, and I'll use the ladder."

"Why? Let's ride down together. Your father set it up so the elevator could hold two people."

And really, why not try to squeeze into the tiny elevator with her, to check out what two riders would feel like?

She gets in first and shrinks into a corner, and he enters next and presses against her with his back and leans over to push the down button. And again, from the depths, comes a faint buzzing, and the elevator shudders furiously, and with Mrs. Bennett pressed against him smelling pleasantly of soap, the yowling begins, and after a slow descent a mighty hand halts the car with a vengeance, as if to thwart a premeditated desire to break into the apartment downstairs.

He opens the metal grille and retreats into the corner so she can get out first.

"You heard that? So what do you say?"

Ya'ari shrugs and asks her in what year, exactly, his father installed the elevator.

"In fifty-four."

"And you're certain my father brought me along?"

"I remember you. A boy of seven."

"Eight…"

"Just a little tyke, sitting here in the corner watching his father with such admiration. Well, so how old are you now?"

"Not hard to figure out."

"Still a little boy."

"Careful, that's what my father calls you, a little girl…"

"Which is very gratifying and sweet. You can't imagine how nice it is of him to call me a girl."

"And my mother, you knew her?" he blurts out testily.

"Of course. A strong woman. Straightforward. She, too, would come to visit me sometimes with your father. Once we even took her in the elevator."

"Strange," he mutters with quiet indignation, "they never told me about you."

"Apparently I was some sort of secret of theirs," she says, and drops her wrinkled eyelid in a wink.

Ya'ari feels dizzy. He closes his eyes for a moment and tries to revisit his moonlight epiphany. As if she can sense his inner turmoil, Devorah Bennett asks again carefully, somewhat concerned: So what do you say? Can it be fixed?

And he recovers and delivers a quick diagnosis.

"The vibration seems to come from the piston that produces the oil pressure. It will have to be dismantled and checked. But how do you take apart a weird creature like this? Perhaps my father will have an idea. Though finding spare parts will be impossible. The only way is to have them custom-made, and that is definitely not simple."

"But possible."

"Maybe."

"And the yowling?"

"Maybe there's a little cat hiding in there after all?" Now he winks.

"No," she says, smiling kindly, "there is no cat and never was."

"So there's no choice: we'll have to bring in an expert with a sensitive ear to tell us the source of this weeping and wailing. Otherwise we'll have to start dismantling old parts of the electrical system, which will crumble in our hands and we'll never be able to put them back together."

"So we have a big production here," she sighs.

"So it would seem. Meanwhile, give me a tape measure, if you own such a thing."

AND AFTERWARD THE elephant stands up and goes on its way, but without the bandage on its eye. In appreciation of the animal that has suddenly enriched him, the owner spares it the onus of the bandage, rolls up the colorful cloth, and ties it to the pack already loaded onto the elephant's back. Then, without further delay, as if afraid that someone might want to share in his newfound wealth, he puts on dark glasses, takes the chain in his hands and pulls the elephant after him. The animal, too, is clearly happy to get moving and make tracks in the open plain after being tied up for many days in a claustrophobic shed. Some local youths run after them, keeping up for a considerable distance before turning around and walking slowly back to the village.

The equatorial sun beats down on the hatless head of the Israeli; it's time to return to the farm. Witnessing the speedy departure of the animal owner and his removal of the elephant's bandage, the Africans have apparently decided that this older woman — visiting for the third time, and this time alone — must possess power and influence, and they therefore accompany her on her way back.

Thus surrounded, the English teacher feels as if she were on a class trip — at the magnetic center, on a brilliant morning, of a parade of youths, and men and women too. For a moment she is frightened, but she is careful not to speed up, lest this be interpreted as running away. She passes by the river, where some gray cows are drinking, and as she climbs the next hill, she notices the shady path that she missed, the same path she took with Yirmiyahu on that first day. The entourage is still at her heels when Yirmiyahu grabs her by the hand.

"You can't wander around here by yourself," he says angrily.

"Why?" she says, smiling with relief. "Don't tell me it's dangerous here."

"Not dangerous, and the people here aren't violent, but all the same, do not go out again by yourself."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter, and nothing will be," he snaps, "even so you are not to go wandering around by yourself."

And the youths who escorted her, and have halted a few paces back, feel the anger of the tall, bald, peeled man, and their eyes glitter with inquisitive anxiety, waiting to see if the muzungu man will raise a hand against the benevolent woman. She suddenly feels humiliated but maintains her composure.

"I'm not wandering around… I'm taking a walk."

"Then don't take a walk either."

"Why?"

"Why, why, why… because that's what I am asking of you and that's what I am saying." By now he is shouting with impatience. "You came without Amotz, and you won't go around anywhere alone. You know that Amotz would never allow you to wander around here by yourself…"

She continues to argue, though she doesn't know why.

"You are not Amotz, and you have no authority over me. And why are you so angry? Unlike Shuli, I really don't enjoy being alone. I always feel good in the company of people, and I thought you would be available most of the time, but this morning you disappeared."

"In general I don't have much work, but if sometimes I get busier, like last night, it only helps me."

Helps you how? she would like to protest, flaunting her pain at the old, bald man whose white clothes dazzle her eyes in the sunlight. To erase Shuli, and Eyali too? But she bites her tongue.

AFTER JOTTING DOWN the tiny elevator's dimensions on a slip of paper, Ya'ari bids farewell to Devorah Bennett without making any definite promises. The continuing absence of his wife increases his hunger for his children. It was only two days ago that Nofar lit Hanukkah candles with him, but the presence of the weird friend she brought precluded any chance — and perhaps by design — of a more personal conversation. Since I already ended up on a Friday in Jerusalem, Ya'ari figures as he walks past the old Knesset building, why hurry back? So before he gets into the car, he calls his daughter's cell phone, only to discover it's been turned off. In other words, she's at the hospital. When she's on duty, she always turns the device off entirely, so as not to disturb the calibrations of any sensitive electronic apparatus. But instead of giving up and simply calling to leave a message with her landlord, he decides to write her a note this time; after all, this is a rare chance to have a peek at his daughter's rented room, which he hasn't seen since he helped her move to Jerusalem, when she made the final decision to defer her army duty by doing national service at the hospital.

He is gratified that the landlords, a married couple, both medical residents at the hospital where Nofar works, remember and recognize her father, whose appearance and body language remind them of her. They welcome him warmly, while wondering how he could have forgotten that on Friday mornings Nofar is always on duty and her phone is turned off. Ya'ari assures them that he knew all that, but since he happened to be in Jerusalem today he is taking the opportunity to have a look at the room his daughter has been living in for nearly a year, and perhaps to leave her a note. Might that be possible? From the time he helped her move, he hasn't had a chance to see how she has settled in.

As he enters his daughter's rented room, he has a few misgivings. He knows that Nofar will not be happy about this invasion, even if he only leaves a little note. She would not want him to see — though it is exactly what he expected to see — the chaos of clothes, beddings, books and papers, leftover food, and wilted flowers: an elemental disorder, created almost on principle, which for some reason does not at all trouble the young landlords, who stand now in the doorway singing their tenant's praises.

Surprised and touched, Ya'ari nods in agreement. Yes, he knows the merits of his daughter, who may resemble him externally but on the inside is very much like her mother. That is to say, she is a person whose boundaries are clear and firm, which is why she can live amid total disarray. The two get a good laugh from this charming explanation, which they can now use to justify the mess in their own quarters. And Ya'ari is grateful to the young couple who've taken his daughter under their wing, and interrogates them a bit about themselves, their schedules at the hospital, the nature of their specializations, and from there moves to medicine itself, what's new and what's passé, and since the conversation is free-flowing and frank, he permits himself a question he would like them to keep confidential. Doesn't Nofar seem to them anguished and lonely? Lonely, no, definitely not, the two declare as one, for in the evenings, when she is off duty, sometimes a friend will come, different ones, it's true, to take her to a movie or a pub. But unhappy? That could be. It's as if — the landlady hesitates — as if, despite her youth, she has already lost something irreplaceable.

Ya'ari looks at the photo hanging over Nofar's bed, Eyal as a teenager — a picture he hadn't known existed — and mumbles something about the source of his family's melancholy. But there's no need for any explanation, because the landlords have already heard about the tragedy in detail. Nofar talks again and again about the friendly fire — those are the words she uses. Now, the couple inquire of the father, How is it that such a story is so deeply embedded in her? How old was she at the time, anyway? Because it seems to them that she gets a bit confused about dates.

Very young, says the father, eleven and a half, in the middle of sixth grade. The age difference between her and her cousin was substantial, almost thirteen years. Eyal studied medicine at university under army auspices, but afterward she did not serve at the hospital, instead insisting on combat duty. If he were still alive, he would now be a doctor like you. But the age difference, Ya'ari adds with a bitter smile, did not prevent Nofar from imagining that not only was she in love with her cousin but also that he was in love with her. Maybe he sent off signals that we were unaware of but which made a strong impression on her, and possibly because of this, she remains stalled.

From the landlords' expression, the father senses he may have said too much. Because they love and respect their unhappy boarder, it's wrong for him to explain to them things that Nofar herself has not yet worked out. Now anxious to make a clean getaway, he checks his watch and looks for a piece of paper, but even such a minor thing as that is not easy to find in her room. He locates a prescription pad from the hospital, tears out a page and writes:

Nofar, my dear,

Grandpa made me come to Jerusalem to take care of an old elevator of some long-ago lover of his. So I thought if I was already here in your sad city, why not have coffee together? But I didn't remember that you're on duty this morning, so it turns out I'm missing you yet again. Moran is still stuck in the army, and Imma, till Sunday in case you've forgotten, is with Yirmi in Africa. Tonight I'm lighting candles at Efrat's. How about joining us? The kids will be happy. And Efrati, too, of course. It'll be less sad that way. So as usual I'm on my cell, waiting for a sign of life from you.

Kisses, Abba

He clears a space on the messy table and leaves the note in a conspicuous place. Then he looks again at the picture of the teenage boy and suddenly realizes that Nofar will not forgive him for invading her deepest privacy. He quickly resolves to erase his presence. He crumples the note and sticks it in his pocket, then goes out to the landlords, seated now in the kitchen with their baby, and when they invite him to join them, Ya'ari abashedly asks that they pretend he was never there. I know her well, he apologizes, she's sensitive about her independence, and it would be hard for her to accept that without warning I broke into her chaos. So please, don't tell her I was here. Don't tell her anything. I didn't leave a note. I'll call her later… that would be easier for her too. So thanks… and apologies… I'm sorry… I apologize… And without giving them a chance to regret his leaving, he departs.

Perhaps it is the easterly winds which arose overnight that boost his speeding car on the highway from Jerusalem to the coastal plain. To assuage his loneliness for his absent wife, he will have to settle for his father, whose admirable generosity of spirit has piqued his curiosity. So Ya'ari gets down to business and announces into the speakerphone:

"That's it, Abba, I was over at your lady friend's house."

"So what's going on with her?"

"Your elevator is great, and so's the little girl…"

"Watch it, Amotz, you are too clever by far."

YIRMI RELAXES A bit, smiles and squeezes Daniela's shoulder, as if to heal the sting of his unexpected harangue and allay the anxiety of the old African who alerted him and now stands to one side, watching.

They return to the farm, and the old groundskeeper decides to defuse the family quarrel with a good meal. He fires the baking oven and kneads a big pita bread. Into a pot of boiling water he tosses roots and vegetable peelings, kernels of corn, and cubes of meat. Two other chefs rise from their cots in a nearby pantry and join in his labors. Meanwhile Yirmi, sitting opposite Daniela, is curious to know what drew his sister-in-law so strongly to the elephant that she went to see it a third time. But Daniela is not quite ready to lay bare her feelings to someone who has just scolded her in the presence of strangers, and instead of explaining what drove her to contemplate a spectacular genetic defect in search of primal human heartbreak, she needles her brother-in-law by telling him with childish pride about the hundred dollars she gave to the elephant's owner to remove the bandage.

"A hundred dollars? Are you out of your mind?"

It wasn't on purpose. Even though the money wasn't that much for her, she still has her limits. She'd been sure that all the bills she stuffed into her jacket pocket were small ones, because Amotz always held on to the big bills. It was only when she took out the money that she realized what it was, and by then it was too late; the man snatched it quickly and tucked it in his shorts and immediately complied with her request, and when the elephant crouched before her, its giant eye shed a tear, and then another.

"Tears? An elephant?"

That is what she saw with her own eyes. So how could she tell the owner, Wait, I made a mistake, ever since my sister's death I've been a little scattered, and by accident I gave you a hundred-dollar bill, but ten is enough for you, so give it back, please.

"He would also have been fine with one dollar."

"Who decides that one dollar is enough for him? You? On what basis?" she snaps at her brother-in-law. "Drop it, Yirmi, I actually like the idea that a hundred-dollar bill Amotz put in my purse should pass so naturally into the hands of this man, who might take better care of his elephant from now on."

"Which we will never know, but one thing is certain: you wrought a small revolution in the life of one African man, who will remember you always."

"It's nice to know that at least one man in Africa will think of me till the end of his life. One of these days, you'll be somewhere else."

"How do you know? Anything's possible… I owe nothing to anyone; I'm free as a bird."

"In which case, both you and the elephant's owner will remember I was here."

"I will? Why is that? All right, Shuli's love for you was always unconditional, even if you were an annoying child and tagged along with her and went into her room without knocking. But to remember? I'm here to forget, not to remember."

"What are you talking about?" she asks with trepidation.

"You know very well. I'm here not only to build up my pension but also to forget him and everyone who reminds me of him."

"Forget Eyali? How is that possible?"

"It's possible… why not? He is no longer anywhere, and I am still not a Sudanese who believes in winds and spirits."

"Why spirits? Is that the only way to talk about memory?"

"Memory is finished. I milked his death dry. You can't imagine how I investigated this death and everything I learned about it. But my responsibility is over. And if our Eyali — all of ours, yours too, why not? you also loved him very much — if this son happened to come back to life, believe me, I would say to him: My dear boy, bravo, you've managed to return to the world that had no pity for you, that took you by surprise and finished you off with two precise gunshots. But I ask you now, with all my love, please take pity on me and find yourself a different father."

"Are you sick?' she mutters. "A different father?"

"Why not? I'm over seventy now; I don't have many years left. I did my duty, I filled my quota of worry and suffering. At Eyali's bar mitzvah, after he finished reading the Haftorah, the rabbi told me to declare in a clear voice: 'Blessed is He who has released me from punishment for this one's sins,' and I repeated those repellent words against my will, as if the devil had made me do it. But now, after almost twenty years, I realize that bar mitzvah devil wasn't altogether stupid. Now I bow my head and say simply, 'Blessed is he who released me.' If my son wants to be a 'wanted' man again and not the one wanting — by all means, but he should be so kind as to find himself a different father."

"Yirmi," she says, tense and shaken, "what on earth are you talking about?"

"Do you want to poison the meal?"

"The truth liberates, it doesn't poison."

Yirmiyahu regards his sister-in-law with fondness. "If that's the case, if you also came here for the truth, then I'll give you a few new details about that 'friendly fire' that your Amotz saddled me with."

"Leave Amotz alone," she protests impatiently, "he was only trying to console you."

He puts a hand on her arm.

"I don't doubt it, and I have no complaints against him. Amotz is a practical man, after my own heart. But his 'friendly fire' made me crazy in the beginning, because it turned into a project. At any price, by any possible means, I wanted to know who this friend was who unleashed the fire, what his name was, what he looked like, where he came from, who his parents were, his teachers, everything."

"But why was that important to you? What did you want to do to him? What in the end could you do to him? Shuli never told me you were caught up in this."

"Because I never said a word to Shuli. She put an end to our sex life, and I put an end to total honesty."

"And Amotz knew about it?"

"Not Amotz or anyone else."

The black chef places before them two dishes of the meat and vegetable stew.

"This is breakfast or lunch?"

"Both. After you've contributed a hundred dollars in honor of the tears of a wandering elephant, you deserve a full meal. And don't be put off by the distinctive taste of the meat; it was cooked on a hot fire. And let's not ruin the meal with talk that I know will only upset you."

"Keep talking, I hate eating in silence. I'm listening. I never thought that identifying the soldier who accidentally shot Eyali was of any concern to you. After all, they said he was not to blame."

"Of course he wasn't. The fault was entirely Eyal's. But still I wanted a connection with the one who killed him."

"What kind of connection?"

"A connection."

"And in the end you identified the young man?"

"No, in the end I gave up and stopped trying."

WITH A TREMBLING hand the elderly Ya'ari tries to sketch for his son the inner structure of the hydraulic oil piston that raises and lowers the little elevator, and Hilario runs back and forth between rooms, fetching pages torn from his arithmetic notebook for further attempts. As the father recollects it, the two parts of the piston are screwed together internally, not joined by an exterior flange, whose bolts would rust over the years. That was how he guaranteed sturdiness and reliability for the long term, and ensured that the hydraulic oil would not leak out of unforeseen openings. But not even high-grade steel, the kind produced in Czechoslovakia before World War II, can resist forever the wear and tear of time. Therefore, it will be necessary to locate the joint, separate the two parts, remove the defective bearings and replace them with new ones.

"The sketch isn't worth the effort, Abba," his son says, "I'm sure the inside threads have melted together by now and we won't be able to take the thing apart. The only way is to take the whole mechanism out of the wall and try to install something else that'll work on the same principle."

"But there's no chance we can get ready-made parts that'll be right for my little elevator. We'll have to make a new piston from scratch, just like the old one."

"Turning a new one is a different story. I have no idea who can do it, not to mention the cost."

"Why? I'll ask Gottlieb to make it in his factory. He owes me a lot, and he'll do it for me."

"Don't kid yourself that he'll work for you. And I'm not at all sure that he's capable of turning you a new piston. Everything in his factory is automatic and programmed, and the lathes work according to standard models. Gone are the days of workshops that do custom-made private elevators on the whim of single women."

"He'll make it for me," says the father, ignoring his son's cynical remark. "I know he can do it."

Hilario stands at the ready beside the wheelchair, poised to run into his room and tear out another page for the old man. Francisco sits nearby, listening intently. In the kitchen, amid the steamy aromas of lunch, Kinzie trills a song.

"And we haven't yet discussed the wailing electrical system," Ya'ari continues in a quarrelsome tone, "which is a separate story. I'll be damned if I can figure out where you hid it, Abba, and where it gets its current."

The old man smiles. Why be damned? Where it's hidden he doesn't remember, but because this is not spirit but matter, in the end it will be found. And the elevator gets its power directly from the electric company.

"The electric company?"

Of course. Devorah Bennett's apartment, like the other old apartments in the building, never had three-phase power, and his father was wary of overloading the system, so he found a way to circumvent the apartment's wiring and supply the elevator directly from the electric company. Meaning that all these years the little girl has had a free ride, as if she were a veteran member of the company's workers' committee.

"I see this woman aroused criminal urges in you," Ya'ari jokes. "But if that's the situation, you can forget about me. I'm not going near any wailing and shaking electrical system connected to some unidentified illegitimate source."

"Don't exaggerate… you told me that Gottlieb has some woman around his plant who's an expert on technical noises, so we'll take her to Jerusalem and together we'll locate the cat and silence it."

"What's this 'we'll take' and 'we'll locate'?"

"I'll go up to Jerusalem, too. Before I die I want to see, one more time, the elevator that goes straight from her bedroom. Did you tell her I'm now in a wheelchair?"

"I gave her a hint."

"Why?"

"So she wouldn't bother you too much. But don't tell me this is a secret you're ashamed of."

"Not any more. But to tell the truth, when I first got sick I was very embarrassed, and because of that I broke off contact. Because you should know that after Mother died, I tried to give myself more freedom, to bring more substance to what I already felt about her. Amotz, to tell you the truth, when I built her the elevator in her bedroom, I really fell in love with that woman. Not one phase but all three. I almost couldn't breathe when I was near her. Afterward I tried to cool this love down. But when Mother died and I was alone, we had a lovely affair, not too intense, age-appropriate. And had it not been for all the psychiatric patients in and out of there all day, I would even have gone to live with her. But then the tremors got worse and also moved to my knees…"

Ya'ari face burns red as he hears his father's confession of love.

The Filipino woman comes out of the kitchen, small and flushed. A pixie in colorful silks, asking the boss in English if he's ready to eat.

"Maybe in a little while," he answers in his own creaky English. "But the chicken schnitzel is right from the pan, just as you like it."

"Eat, Abba. I'm not running away; I'll sit with you."

"But it's unpleasant for you to watch them feeding me."

"Not so bad. It's fine. I'll even join you."

Francisco takes a large napkin and covers the father's chest. He brings a plate with schnitzel and snap peas, cuts the chicken into little pieces, places a fork into the father's trembling hand, and in his own hand holds another fork, with which he feeds the old man.

"You also want schnitzel like Abba?" the Filipino asks Amotz.

"Schnitzel I can get anywhere. I would rather try a dish that your wife makes for you."

The Filipino woman is pleased by the compliment, and in a yellow plastic bowl, the same bowl from which Amotz as a child ate his oatmeal, serves him hot soup, rich with seafood.

"You eat shellfish?" The father is surprised.

"What can you do? From childhood you taught me to eat everything that's put in front of me."

Francisco feeds the trembling old man, wiping his lips, now and then collecting from the napkin peas that fell from his mouth and returning them to their destination. Amotz does not shrink from the painful sight, but feels his heart go out to his father as he struggles to maintain his dignity. Therefore, when the old man begins to ask gingerly about the owner of the elevator and wants a detailed description of the lady and her room, he suggests that his father invite the little girl for a visit and promises that he himself will drive her down and back.

But the old man does not want Devorah Bennett to visit him at home and see him in his miserable wheelchair. Surely not before he has proven his ability to stand behind the lifetime guarantee that he gave her.

"Let's talk to Gottlieb," he urges his son.

"Gottlieb won't do any good here. Gottlieb has already lost his love for the profession and thinks only about money."

"Very good." The old man perks up. "If he thinks only about money, then threaten that you won't order the new Defense Ministry elevators from him. I'm sure he'll hurry to make you anything you ask."

"Threaten him?" Ya'ari is taken aback. "Go that far?"

"Yes, Amotz. If you promise a woman something for a lifetime, you have to keep the promise."

"BELIEVE ME," YIRMIYAHU continues, "it wasn't easy to give up trying to identify the soldier who fired the fatal bullet. It was very important for me to meet him face to face. At first I tried to clarify it in a direct and open fashion, and found myself up against a stone wall among the members of the unit. Then I tried roundabout methods. But even though I was very clever and went so far as to visit the site and calculate possible lines of fire, I was left without a positive identification."

"Why?"

"Why? Because they were all terrified and did everything in their power to prevent it. They were afraid I was planning some sort of reprimand, an accusation, or a lawsuit. Or even that I would go outside the law, stalk the killer in some sick way. That happens sometimes, and it might have happened with me too. There was no way I could persuade them that I was actually acting out of concern for the shooter, who, although it was indisputably Eyali's own fault, might carry around a psychic wound that would infect his entire life. I wanted to be capable of calming the boy, telling him, habibi, I am the father, and I confirm your innocence. You are exonerated not only by your commanding officers but also by the parents of the boy you accidentally killed. For your good, we will keep in touch. If, in the course of your life, anxiety or guilt rise inside you over the friendly fire you aimed at a comrade who miscalculated the time of day, you can always come visit me, and I will help you ease the guilt and lighten the anxiety."

"Strange…"

"It is strange, but it's also the truth. I became obsessed with wanting to hold the finger that squeezed the trigger, as if it were the last finger that touched Eyali's soul. Yes, Daniela, in those first months I thought in terms of spirit and soul, until I abandoned all that foolishness."

On her plate remain pieces of the meat, of which she is suspicious. One of the cooks hums a cheerful African song to himself, accentuating its tempo by drumming briskly on a pot, now and then stealing a glance at the two white people. Both of them are tired, she for no apparent reason, maybe because she's so far from her husband, but Yirmiyahu definitely deserves a rest — a few hours after their return from Dar es Salaam, something justified an urgent nighttime ride out to the dig. But the rapt attention of his empathetic sister-in-law fuels his fevered confession.

"Theoretically, identifying the shooter should not have been difficult. Because this wasn't anonymous fire, coming from artillery or a helicopter, where all the sophisticated hardware can show for certain are the intended targets, not the actual hits. No, this is a simple story, almost a fable, of gunfire among friends, a small group of elite soldiers, eight all told, including the commander of the ambush: a likable officer named Micha, who because of what happened became almost like a member of our family. He also had been at university, a law graduate, and he sent Eyal to the rooftop of a local family as a lookout, in case the 'wanted man' eluded the trap they had set for him. And it wasn't one ambush, but two, north and south, each fifty or sixty meters away from the building. So it was all clear and simple. Do you remember any of what was said at the time?"

"I think so."

"If so, you'll recall that I didn't give the family many details. Shuli cut herself off entirely from the story even at the early stages, and rightly so. Whereas I kept chasing after more, digging here and digging there, with a recklessness that maybe fits a certain type of male bereavement. For example, the desire I had, later on, to find out who was the 'wanted man' on that wretched night, what made him so great that they honored him by bringing eight soldiers at night to Tulkarm."

"Why was that important to you?"

"That's exactly the question the officer from the General Security Service asked me. What's the point of telling you his name? Wanted men come and go, and the list endures forever. Soon the whole Palestinian people will be wanted by us. 'Even so,' I insisted, 'wanted for what? Wanted why?' 'Wanted for the heavenly tribunal,' the officer joked, and didn't reveal a single detail. And rightly so. Because one detail leads to another, and such information has no practical significance if the death has already occurred. But I was still in shock and I felt compelled to exhume the entire reality of that night. I asked the TV news for the tape of their coverage of the military funeral. It was a very short report, not even a minute long, and at night, when Shuli was sleeping, I played it over and over on the VCR, not to watch our own suffering, including the drama of Nofar, who seemed about to throw herself in the grave after him, but to study carefully the faces of the honor guard, who fired the three shots to which a soldier is entitled even if he caused his own death by mistake. Again and again I watched those soldiers, all of whose names and histories I knew, because I thought that maybe through facial expressions when they pulled the trigger I would discover the man behind the friendly fire."

"Absurd…"

"That's right, absurd. But that's how it was, then. What can I say? It's also normal and natural. The first months of mourning are a whirlwind of absurdity. On the outside you keep your cool, and inside you lurch from fantasy to madness, and until I came to a final, philosophical flash of recognition, at night on the rooftop of that house in Tulkarm, I was unable to get free of all that absurdity and begin the process of forgetting.

"For you have to understand. His friends didn't abandon us. We aren't the Americans or Japanese, who send telegrams of condolence to parents in distant cities and say, Bye-bye and we won't be seeing you. With us there are established customs of bereavement, rules by which you don't abandon the soldier's family but instead maintain a connection. An institutional connection and a personal one. The soldiers from his company come to visit now and then and become a bit like relatives, inviting you to their family functions, talking about themselves, sharing their experiences. At first they come as a whole group, awkward strapping boys who barely fit into the living room and keep an eye on one another lest a careless word slip out. But after they have studied the nature of the bereaved parents and confirmed that these remain civilized people and that death has not eradicated the essence of their humanity, they let themselves come for more intimate visits — in threes, in pairs, even alone, and in this way they pass your suspicions from one to the next, back and forth, like a volleyball, and some of them are discharged and continue to visit you as civilians, and your presumptuous, pathetic, and pointless attempt to identify the shooter becomes harder and more complicated every day. The individual friendly fire is absorbed into the 'fire of our own forces,' a collective fire, and then slowly, slowly is transformed from army fire to civilian fire, and civilian fire to undefined fire, until the shooter himself is no longer sure whether one night he got up and shot his friend by mistake. And then I said to myself, if so, I need to shift direction, and instead of chasing after shadows to offer forgiveness to someone who doesn't need it or ask for it, let's demand that the army show me the place; let me go to the roof of this house in Tulkarm to understand what misled my son. But this is a story for another time. Now I want to sleep. What did you want to say?"

"Please, Yirmi, don't say again that Nofar only seemed as if she wanted to throw herself… because it was very real, Yirmi, believe me, the girl was in total despair at the funeral, and it still lingers."

"Forgive me, Daniela," he says, distressed, "I didn't mean… of course it was all real… Nofar is a wonderful girl… and her love for Eyal was wonderful too."

IF INDEED HE intends to threaten Gottlieb, Amotz Ya'ari decides, it should be done carefully and politely, and not in the presence of his father, who out of romantic enthusiasm might just yank the phone from his hand in the middle of the call and wreck the subtlety of the threat with the indignant impatience of an old man who knows his time is up. He clears the taste of the seafood from his mouth with a Filipino cookie, pats Hilario on the head, and drives to the office.

A drizzly Friday. Two in the afternoon. Throughout the neighborhood offices are already closed, but in the big room at Ya'ari's firm, a man and a woman are engaged in spirited conversation in front of a computer. The two young engineers each took a healthy chunk of time off during the week for their children's Hanukkah diversions, and now, on a free day, have abandoned their spouses to make up for lost time. Ya'ari is proud of the sense of duty he has instilled in his workers but does not join their discussion, lest they detain him with a question requiring a complicated answer. He smiles and waves, and without further ado sequesters himself in his office.

Although he did not expect a second call from his wife, whose actual self he will embrace in another seventy-five hours, he is slightly disappointed by the silence. He dials Gottlieb's cell.

It's urgent? It can't wait? grumbles the manufacturer. He's in a café, enjoying the company of fellow manufacturers; it's hard for him to talk and harder to hear. What is this? Because your wife isn't back yet from Africa, you have to bother me even on a Friday?

"Very impressive of you to remember her schedule," Ya'ari says. "I see that over the years you've become one of the family."

The maker of elevators lowers his defenses and is prepared to listen to a short speech, provided it is spoken loud and clearly. Ya'ari conveys the essence of his father's request: Gottlieb is to make new parts for a one-of-a-kind piston that grew old in a tiny ancient Jerusalem elevator. Why make them? Gottlieb wants to know. Why not replace the whole elevator, and at the same time widen it a little? It can't be widened, it's the narrow elevator of an old lady; it goes from a bedroom closet straight up to the roof. It's impossible to make it wider or to replace it. That's the situation.

Gottlieb is in a hurry to rejoin his friends, whose gales of laughter are impeding the phone conversation, and so he promises that on Sunday he'll check out the capabilities of his old metal lathe, which for quite some years has been out of commission. You should know, he scolds Ya'ari, this is not for you, because you are a difficult person, but only because your old man is asking. What can I do, sighs the manufacturer. I have been attached to him for fifty years.

Ya'ari now also requests the services of the woman technician who specializes in noises, to locate the source of the humming in the electrical system of this same elevator.

"If you want to hire the musical ear of my expert," Gottlieb informs him with satisfaction, "you'll have to pay her separately. Not on my tab. She can take a formal day off, and you can play with her all you like."

"But wait a minute, we also need her for the wind problem in the tower, and that's not on my account."

"The wind complaint? Why does that keep coming back? We took that one off the docket. We agreed that we have no responsibility for anything that wails due to the failures of the construction company."

"No, Gottlieb, listen, it's not that simple. I visited there this morning, and the wailing and roaring are really insufferable. And I also ran into that head of the committee, the bereaved tenant…"

"What made you go there?" Gottlieb interrupts him angrily, "after I warned you not to go near the tower or that guy, who automatically makes you feel guilty over everything. They want us to incur major expenses, without our being at fault for anything. If they want to open up the elevators and examine the shaft, by all means — but on the condition that they pay for every minute of the technicians' time. Listen, Ya'ari, I'm warning you, if you're looking for trouble, go get mixed up in this by yourself. These winds do not interest me in any shape or form. I'm out of the whole deal."

"You're not out of anything," Ya'ari answers evenly, "you have no choice. I promised this tenant, head of the committee, that the two of us, together with the architect and the construction company, will find the source of the problem. You can't let yourself off and just disappear. Because if you damage my credibility, in the future I'll cut you out of things that matter to you."

"Like what, for example?"

"For example, the new elevators for the Defense Ministry. Believe me, Gottlieb, if we order them from the Chinese, we'll save the state money."

Now silence looms on the other side. Ya'ari hears the breathing of the maker of elevators, who feels a sharp wound to his pocketbook.

"Now you're threatening me?"

"If you like, call it a threat."

"You know I can threaten you too."

"Obviously, everyone in this country has someone he can threaten. Nobody has immunity."

"You included."

"Of course."

"And this is how you threaten a man that a few minutes ago you said was a member of your family?"

"It's because you're a member of the family," Ya'ari says, laughing.

"Watch out, I'll complain about you to your father."

"You watch out, he's the one who gave me the idea of threatening you."

"So the two of you decided to ruin my weekend."

"Nothing will get ruined, Gottlieb, my friend. For the time being we're talking not about money, just time. What do those winds wandering in the tower want from us, after all? That we track them down with patience and concentration. To provide them an honorable exit."

OUTSIDE A HARD rain falls, a rapid downpour that began without warning, but the farm's great kitchen has been heated by cooking the dishes destined for the hungry band of scientists who will arrive tomorrow from the dig and stay for the weekend. Yirmiyahu's hand props up his head as if it might otherwise snap off from exhaustion and roll down the table between the greasy plates. His nighttime ride to the excavations — its purpose is still unclear to Daniela — was particularly fatiguing; Sijjin Kuang's friends, the stars and the moon, were hidden by heavy clouds, and she had to navigate by the trees and winds, which deceived her time after time. Now he can't keep his eyes open, and so he lumbers upstairs to his temporary room, while his sister-in-law stays at the big dining table and watches the chefs at work, smiling distractedly. The Africans are drawn to the mature white woman and are delighted to ask her to sample one newly cooked dish after another, until she, too, decides to go up to her room. The rain has ended as abruptly as it began, and a sparkling sun comes out to savor the world, but after her brother-in-law's scolding she dares not leave the compound by herself, even for a brief stroll.

She wonders if her visit has gone on too long. Today there was a flight from Morogoro to Nairobi, and from there she could have reached Tel Aviv by dawn tomorrow, with one stopover in Amman. But yet another connection, and in Amman of all places, had frightened Amotz, and she herself had thought it not quite right to make a consolation visit all the way from Asia to Africa for only three nights. If only she had a Friday newspaper, she could even enjoy the time off from her husband and home, but there's not a shred of newsprint to be found in any language, and she can only hope that by the time she returns on Monday Amotz will not have thrown away everything worth reading.

She asks the cooks if there might be a little transistor radio in the kitchen to link her to the wider world, and although they understand her request, they have no such device, but they promise her that the scientists arriving from the excavation site will be able to furnish her with up-to-date news. Out there in the canyon stands a big dish that collects stories of everything interesting and important in the world. However, in the meantime, she will have to do without connection to the world.

But what she cannot ignore is a worsening headache. Is it just an ordinary headache, or a symptom of the high blood pressure that she first developed after her sister's death? The family doctor was not overly impressed and saw it mainly as an emotional reaction, so rather than prescribe a daily medicine he recommended a daily walk and weight loss, and instructed Amotz to monitor his wife's pressure now and then.

A daily walk and losing weight do not much appeal to a woman disinclined to accept physical limitations on her free will. It's easier to roll up a sleeve and extend a bare arm to her husband, so he can strap the cuff around it and assure her that her sensations are harmless. But here on a remote farm in Africa, she must rely only on herself, and since two blood pressure pills are taped to her passport, there's no reason not to swallow one of them and bring the other back to Israel. She heads to her room, to her passport.

But before taking the pill, she decides to have a few words with the Sudanese nurse. Surely Sijjin Kuang must have an instrument like her husband's. She returns to the kitchen, where the cooks direct her to the camp clinic, a small shack in back of the main building that in colonial days had been a stable for horses. There she finds the Sudanese asleep on the mat-covered floor, wrapped in a black robe, her long body folded like a giant bird's. Without waking her, Daniela glances around the modest infirmary, which reminds her of the one at the school where she teaches. A glassed-in cupboard holds rows of jars and bandages and adhesives, syringes and bottles of disinfectant. On a small table lie a stethoscope and a number of gleaming instruments for probing the orifices of the human body, and there in the corner hangs the blood-pressure machine.

The sleeping nurse-driver is clearly recovering from her navigational adventures of the night before. Daniela quietly retreats to wait on a bench outside. Her headache has not let up; the little pill her husband gave her is tucked in her hand, and she wonders if she should just swallow it and do without the checkup. But she has the feeling that the touch of Sijjin's velvety desert fingers might do her even more good than the strong hand of her husband.

She closes her eyes, allowing the peaceful hum of nature to ease her pain a bit. Aromas from the kitchen flow to her through the pure, clear air. Her distaste for kitchen work always rouses her dormant female guilt, so she changes position, lying down on the hard bench and folding her hands beneath her head as a pillow. It can't be that Shuli hid things from her. After the tragedy she would call her sister two or three times a day to give emotional support and have long heart-to-heart talks. Had Shuli known, found out even indirectly, that Yirmi had spent a night on the roof of a Palestinian house in Tulkarm, she would have told her immediately. But Shuli hadn't known. When the couple's sex life came to an end, so did the complete openness.

Relaxation saturates her body, even on the hard bench. She grows drowsy, lulled by the rustle of native grasses. She believes she hears the faint sounds of a flute. Or maybe there is a radio here after all. A soft hand touches her. The Sudanese nurse, tall and serious, has placed a comforting hand on Daniela's shoulder and a finger to her own lips, warning her to keep silent. Don't budge, no sudden moves.

About twenty meters away stands an unfamiliar black animal, like a giant cat, its thick bristly tail erect, raising two front paws with very long curly claws. Its sharp narrow mouth, like a small reptile's, is thrust toward a gold-colored snake, which rises from the grass with a quivering tongue and audibly exhales, as if into a silent flute.

The two creatures are equally hypnotized, each wary of drawing nearer to the other. The black animal seems capable of subduing the snake with its jaws and claws, and might indeed be designed by nature to do so, yet it hesitates; perhaps it prefers to confront prey less audacious and dangerous. But how to back away from the snake without losing face? How to break off contact without damaging the dignity of its purposes? It therefore growls more loudly and bares its jaws, so that the snake will stop cocking its flashy head and coiling its body with that whispering hiss. But the snake, too, has its pride, and though it cannot swallow or digest such a big black cat, it would at least like to shut it up.

Sijjin Kuang silently leads Daniela into the clinic. It could take a while for those animals to find the courage to disengage, she tells her, keeping her voice down. Did you want me for something? And although Daniela's headache is gone, she asks her anyway to check her blood pressure and tell her if she should take the pill she has in her hand. The Sudanese nurse willingly complies. Unlike Amotz, she doesn't check her while seated, but has her lie down and asks her not merely to roll up her sleeve but also to remove her blouse.

This is very pleasant for Daniela, and as she hoped and expected, the coal-black skin of the young woman's hands has a rich velvety touch. Sijjin Kuang also takes more care than her husband to strap the cuff properly around her upper arm. Does my white peeled flesh bother this sad young woman? Daniela asks herself. She is upset that Sijjin Kuang, now focused on the movement of the needle in the gauge, has seen only her aging belly and sagging arms, and not her breasts that have kept their youthful shape.

"Your blood pressure is normal," Sijjin Kuang says in her good English, and helps Daniela get up and put her shirt back on. Beyond the open door it is quiet. During the examination the two animals outside must have mustered the courage to part, or else, who knows, maybe the black catlike animal is now dragging the golden snake, mangled, back to its lair.

"I hear that you had a hard night," Daniela says sympathetically to the nurse as she puts away the instrument. "Yirmiyahu said you got lost a few times," she adds.

Sijjin Kuang smiles, exposing perfect white teeth.

"Your brother-in-law is a spoiled person," she says, astonishing Daniela with a remark that ignores her sympathy and instead casts an unexpected light on the man she has known since her childhood.

FROM WITHIN THE elevator descending to the depths of the old Knesset, he wakes to the ring of his irate daughter-in-law reprimanding him: "What's with you, Grandpa? The kids are waiting for you to light candles."

Agitated, he shakes off a deep, boundless sleep. When a man like him races between an old prune of eighty and an elderly father spoon-fed in a wheelchair, his sixty-one years seem light as air. But when he's alone in bed, in a dark room, he feels their full weight. Is it merely cumulative fatigue, or has the lack of the wife lying beside him greatly weakened his inherent readiness for the world?

Guilt feelings about the two grandchildren waiting for him by the menorah spur him to action, and with amazing speed he throws on his clothes and, not pausing to wash his face, jumps into his car and races toward his son's house in the twilight of a slow Friday. As he sits at the Halacha junction in north Tel Aviv, a red light takes forever to change, and one scene from his dream returns, half-remembered. It was in the old Knesset. He had come dressed in a technician's uniform, tool box in hand, and a doorman in a visored cap and blue flannel suit let him through the inner door and ushered him into an old elevator, broad and well appointed, the kind he always liked. But instead of taking him up to the third floor, so he could look out at the roof of the apartment of his father's old lover, the doorman pushed the basement button and told him, be prepared for an endless descent, in Turkish times this was a deep cistern.

He phones Efrat to find out whether to buy cake on the way, or ice cream, or something else to please her and the children. No, too late, his daughter-in-law scolds him, this time it's enough to just bring yourself, but hurry, the children are losing patience and will light the candles by themselves. What happened to you? You're usually so punctual.

By now his blood is boiling. As it happens, Efrati, he mutters ironically, I actually work for a living. And he wants to persist and remind this indolent beauty of his sixty-one years, but he remembers his wife's warning to respect her pride, so he hastily hangs up, before a curse can slip from his lips. Yet to preserve his status in the eyes of his grandchildren he can't let himself show up empty-handed, so he stops in front of a brightly lit convenience store.

There, amid a throng of teenagers, the sweet-toothed spirit of his wife descends upon him, and he extravagantly scoops up candies. Especially inviting are two ornate tubes shaped like canes and stuffed with colorful toffees, and two figurines, a boy and a girl, fashioned of dark chocolate.

Neta and Nadi cling to him with love. The absence of a father automatically raises the grandfather's stock. He hugs and kisses them, then lightly hugs Efrat and brushes her cheek. He first felt free to give her a kiss only after Moran announced their engagement, and over the years, even after the two children, he has never dared show greater affection.

"The candy only after dinner," he declares didactically, but too late. The detached head of the chocolate boy is already in Nadi's mouth. "You little cannibal," he says, planting a kiss on the toddler but forbidding him to keep eating the body of the headless boy.

The menorah is ready, crowned by the shammash. Ya'ari turns over the box of candles in order to properly recite the blessings printed on the back. It would be poor form to garble the text in front of the children. But suddenly Neta insists that Grandpa say the blessings with a kippa on his head, just like her kindergarten teacher's husband.

Efrat shuffles around in a shabby bathrobe, looking tired and wilted, her pretty face pale and her hair unkempt. Moran phoned in the morning and asked her and the kids to come visit tomorrow, she tells him as she searches for a kippa. Not easy to find one in this house, not even the paper kind they hand out at funerals. But clever Neta resourcefully cuts a skullcap of sorts from a sheet of red construction paper, fastening it into shape with staples. Ya'ari puts it on with a clownish smile and is about to light the candles when Nadi observes that he is a boy and not a girl and thus requires a kippa, too, so they wait for Neta to produce another cap, which almost covers her little brother's eyes.

Now all is ready, and the excited children demand that the light be turned out so that the candles will banish the darkness, as the popular song goes. Efrat looks sad, sitting on the sofa in the dark, lost in thought. Is she pregnant again? Ya'ari wonders, excited, as he removes the shammash from its place and lights it, trying to read the first blessing by its glow and then the second. Mechanically, he starts singing "Maoz tsur," as he hands the candle to Neta, who lights the first candle and the second, then hesitantly hands the shammash over to Nadi, who is already standing on a little chair, poised to light the third and fourth. And when only the fifth is left, Ya'ari takes the shammash and turns to Efrat, Come, Efrati, you light a candle, too. She looks at him distantly and doesn't budge from her seat. I've already lit enough candles on this holiday, give it to Neta, and he gives the shammash to Neta, who lights the fifth candle; suddenly her brother goes berserk, first trying to knock over the burning menorah, and when his Grandpa stops him, he gets down on his knees like a Muslim at prayer and bangs his head against the floor, wailing furiously — why did his sister light the fifth candle and not he? And there is no way to quell his jealousy other than to extinguish the fifth candle and hand him the shammash. And he's still not satisfied: Why wasn't he the first to light the fifth candle?

Over dinner Ya'ari tells his daughter-in-law and grandchildren about the little elevator that his father built for a Mrs. Bennett in Jerusalem, describing how it rose from the closet in the bedroom directly to the roof, and which part of the Old City you could still see from there. Afterward he talks about the woman herself, and jokes about the ancient love that was awakened between the builder and his client. His daughter-in-law is interested in the story. The possibility that Moran's grandfather had an adventure in Jerusalem in the 1950s tickles her imagination. She goes back and calculates the dates and years: when the elevator was built, when old Ya'ari's wife died, when the Parkinson's set in. With methodical nosiness she wants to reconstruct the whole picture, to ascertain how long during the life of Moran's grandmother, whom she'd known only in her last two years, did Moran's grandfather keep a secret lover in Jerusalem.

Ya'ari attempts to protect his parents, with little success. Efrat cross-checks the dates and proves to him that his father is no saint. Why should he be a saint? asks Ya'ari. Because you and Daniela want to give the impression that you always do the right thing, that you're perfect people. Ya'ari chuckles. What do you mean, perfect? We have our faults. Of course, his daughter-in-law giggles, too, and her reddening face reassumes its wonderful sheen. But somehow, she insists, you manage to persuade all of us that your faults are actually virtues. Amotz laughs heartily and keeps his cool. Maybe Daniela, but not me. And he looks approvingly at the blush that has returned to his daughter-in-law's face.

Nadi eats the limbs and body of the chocolate boy and wants to eat Neta's chocolate girl too. But she succeeds in moving it to higher ground, safe from his jaws.

On television, standing beside a fighter jet, the Minister of Defense lights the Hanukkah candles and sings, in a pleasant voice, "He Who performed miracles for our forefathers." Nofar calls and chats affectionately with her sister-in-law and also asks her niece and nephew to kiss her over the phone. Ya'ari hesitantly takes the receiver, wondering with mild trepidation whether the landlords have revealed his impulsive visit to her room. It turns out they kept their promise, but Ya'ari's father did tell his granddaughter about her father's visit to an old client in Jerusalem, and she's disappointed that he didn't think to come visit her at the hospital. She would have taken him to the trauma unit, where she is now working at her own request, so he could start believing in the resurrection of the dead.

Nadi has landed on the sofa, asleep. Ya'ari helps his granddaughter put on her pajamas, covers her with a blanket and reads her a story about a family that doesn't care that a mouse is roaming freely in their house. The dishes are piled in the sink, the tablecloth is stained, the Hanukkah candles dwindle. His restless daughter-in-law paces from room to room, making call after call to find a babysitter, but it turns out that on a Friday night at the height of the holiday no young girl is willing to pass up her friends' party. Listen, Efrati, he says kindly to the desperate woman, I'll stay here this evening with the kids. You also deserve a little joy in your life. She looks up with amazement, not knowing if he's being ironic or serious. But it could be till late, she warns her father-in-law. Whatever you want, he answers graciously. I caught up on my sleep this afternoon; staying up won't be a problem.

Why stay up? his daughter-in-law says. She'll spread a sheet and blanket on the sofa and give him one of Moran's clean T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, and he can sleep peacefully here till morning. Now he is taken aback. I don't understand — you're planning to come home only in the morning? No way to know, she says with a mysterious smile. It depends how things go at the party. What things is she talking about? Ya'ari wonders to himself. Maybe he ought to set a curfew for the mother of his grandchildren and get her back here by midnight. But it's too late for that. Efrat has come alive: in an instant the depressed and worn-out housewife has been transformed into a happy young woman, a radiant beauty, her heels clicking proudly about the apartment. She puts on a dress that fashionably exposes all that may and must be exposed of a woman, barring her nipples, which still belong to her husband, and on her unblemished skin she strews some sort of sparkling stardust, meant to ease the entry of a lovely woman into tonight's banquet of the gods.

From the look she casts his way, it's clear she is waiting for a rave review for her performance, but Ya'ari prefers to keep quiet. Daniela has already warned him against giving his daughter-in-law the sort of compliments that a man gives a woman. You do not look at your daughter-in-law through the eyes of a man. Even what was permitted to her father is forbidden to you. Indeed she was right. For as she bends over her sleeping son, lying beside him on the sofa, to determine whether she ought to move him to his bed, the perfumed breasts that nearly brush his face, and in particular the tiny tattoo engraved above one of them, ignite a strange desire that for a brief moment takes his breath away.

"Don't move him. Let him stay here with me. Even if he wakes up, I'll manage with him."

"The main thing," she says, astonishing him, "is not to show signs of fear or weakness, because then he gets crazier."

"Gets crazier? You're not exaggerating?"

To be on the safe side, in case of an emergency, she puts Baby Mozart into the VCR. From Neta's infancy Ya'ari remembers fondly the little railway cars carrying adorable animals and the dancing of these animals, and the car that vanishes and then reappears and reconnects and disappears again, and the sea lions sliding and climbing and sliding and climbing, all of this to the masterful music of Mozart, which according to researchers calms the souls of toddlers and at the same time sharpens and broadens their minds. If such a video had been available in my day, Ya'ari likes to complain, I wouldn't be a mere engineer today, but rather a major scientist.

Overriding his objections, the gorgeous mother insists on tiptoeing in her high heels into the children's bedroom to say good bye to her drowsy girl, and to allay any potential separation anxiety by telling her that her grandpa, strong and alert, will protect her from evil spirits and bad dreams. Half-asleep, the girl mews a little protest. For the life of me, Ya'ari protests, I don't see the point of all this frankness. But Efrat's beauty apparently obliges her to report her every movement, so that her husband's imagination will not torment him. Now she wraps herself in a thin blue shawl that matches the color of her eyes.

"You won't be cold?"

"It's fine, I'll be driven door to door."

And before leaving, glowing with happiness and gratitude, she wants to kiss and hug tightly the available old babysitter, but he pulls away, lightly touching her hair, so that her flesh will not get too close to his.

"Go… go… you're wasting time."

The moment the door closes a heartrending cry bursts from the bedroom: Imma, Imma'leh, where are you? And when he hurries in and turns on the light, he finds his granddaughter, a darling duplicate of the vanished mother, standing in her bed and stubbornly wailing a lament: Imma, Imma, Imma'leh, where are you? Why did you go?

Neta is considered a well-behaved and rational child, and compared with her wild brother is sometimes defined as an angel come down from heaven. Ya'ari is therefore certain he will easily be able to calm the crying that has left her anguished and shaking. But when he tries to take her in his arms, she only increases her shrieking, propping her head with her little hand as if it were about to fall off.

He shuts the door to the children's room so that her cries will not wake her brother, but it's too late. The toddler is pounding on the closed door now with his little fist, and when he enters — barefoot, agitated, red-eyed — he climbs at once onto his bed and sits in a weird cross-legged position, coolly studying his blubbering sister, waving his little foot like a pendulum.

"But I'm here, I'm with you, I'm taking care of you," Ya'ari tries to convince his granddaughter that she has not been abandoned, but her weeping has its own momentum now and nothing will stop it. She is still holding her head in her hand, as if she felt a stroke coming on, and out of that vertigo of lamentation, throttled now and then by deep internal sobbing, throbs the relentless dirge: Imma, Imma, Imma'leh, where are you? Where did you go?

Ya'ari is desperate. He anticipated a battle with Nadi, but not with Neta, who is always willing to cooperate. And so, after unsuccessfully trying to calm her with promises, he decides on a new tactic.

"But how can this be, Neta, my darling, a big girl like you, look how your little brother is sitting quietly."

He instantly regrets his words, as a squawk of deep humiliation cuts into the weeping.

So they sit, the three of them, trapped in a loop of lamentation and monotonous wailing whose immediate cause is by now forgotten, as if performing a ritual of ancient, prehistoric loss. And her brother sits on his bed, still waving his foot. He is only two years and a few months old, but his broad, strong face testifies that he is bound to grow into an aggressive man, if not a violent one. He reminds me of somebody. But who? It is a question Ya'ari has asked himself countless times. He smiles softly at his grandson and asks for advice: So what now, Nadi, how do we calm your sister down?

"Nana wants her Imma," the toddler sums up the situation for his grandpa.

"I WANTED THE feel of that roof at night, but the military would only approve a visit in the daytime. Finally we compromised on late afternoon, which extended a bit into darkness. The company commander was friendly and tried very hard to satisfy my curiosity and to help me understand. And because he was an experienced and serious officer who knew the local residents well and wasn't afraid of his shadow, he gave himself the authority to deviate slightly from the instructions of his superiors and allowed me to remain standing on the roof, on the spot where Eyali stood, until after sundown, when lights began to go on in the houses."

At the African farm, evening is also not far off. Yirmi sits with his back to the open window, facing his bed, where his sister-in-law now lies with the novel she read slowly through the afternoon spread open at her side.

Yirmi has obviously slept soundly, without interruption. His eyes are wide open, his face is free of anger, and he exudes a pleasant, freshly washed smell. He has exchanged the sweaty clothes of his nighttime trip for clean and ironed ones; he knocked delicately on the door to his room, and only after verifying that Daniela was not asleep and was quite willing for him to enter did he do so, and turned his desk chair toward the bed and sat down with the luminous African plain stretching behind him.

"And of course it never occurred to Shuli that you were going there."

"Of course not. You think I would scare her, let her worry that she might lose me too in the same place? Even after I went there I told her nothing, because I knew she would be sure, and rightly so, that I would want to go back."

"And you did want to go back…"

"I didn't only want to, I did. But alone, without any Israeli beside me."

"And you didn't tell Amotz either."

"That's right. Because I knew that there were no secrets between you two, and the minute you knew — you, who can't keep a shred of a secret — it would get to your sister at the speed of sound."

Daniela tries to object, but she knows he is right: it is hard for her to keep a secret from her loved ones. She pulls at the blanket to cover her bare feet and suddenly longs for her mother, who died two years after Nofar was born.

"But how could you get permission to go on that roof?" she asks testily.

"It wasn't hard at all, amazingly enough. In the bereavement department of the Defense Ministry, there's this little office set up especially to deal with odd requests from parents, or children, or siblings who have lost a loved one. A middle-aged official sits there, who is himself a longtime bereaved father. He works as a volunteer alongside a woman officer who is very skilled and efficient. She makes the connections with army powers that be. A visit by parents to the place where their child fell is not unusual, provided that the area is no longer a war zone, such as Sinai or the Golan Heights or even the Lebanese border. But in the occupied territories, it's a complicated affair because there's no battlefield and yet the whole thing is a battlefield. But they still have enough flexibility to accommodate a parent, or even a brother or sister, who wants to experience the feel of the place where their loved one was killed, and perhaps also to understand why, for what. You get what I'm saying?"

"Every word."

"And my request received special attention. Because we're talking here about Israeli gunfire, where even after the official investigation is done there's always some hidden aftergrowth. So one could say that not only did the office move quickly to assist me, they were expecting me."

"What did you want to know?"

"I wanted to check."

"To check what?"

"Why for the soldiers lying in ambush he turned from a hunter into the hunted."

"But they explained it to you. He got the time wrong and came down too early from the roof."

"He did not get the time wrong, Daniela. I've already warned you more than once to drop that idea. Eyali was not a man who got the time wrong. The watch they returned to us, which was on his wrist when he was killed, showed the correct time."

"Maybe he got excited, maybe he was scared."

"No, he was not scared. Your Moran was a cowardly child, but not Eyali. Enough of your maybes, and don't try to teach me what I know better than you do. Just listen."

She reddens. But she can feel his inner torment, and without saying a word she nods, giving her full attention.

"I had never been in Tulkarm, even though the town is half an hour's drive from Netanya. We once dared to go to Hebron, and we visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We went to eat at a restaurant in Ramallah, we drove through Jericho, and many years ago we might have also visited Nablus and Jenin. But not Tulkarm. What is there to do in a small border town? Just a town, not terribly neglected, rather clean, with wide streets, avenues, and groves and orchards here and there. And houses of all shapes and sizes. Private homes of one story, or two or even three. Also houses higher than that. And of course a little refugee camp on the side. But not so bad. It's livable. There are surely worse places in the land of Israel.

"And sometimes soldiers are assigned to the rooftops. As a lookout, for an ambush. For one night only, or a few nights. And there are some prominent rooftops, strategic ones, where a whole platoon sits for a month. And under those rooftops live people. Families with children, with loves and hatreds. Not so bad. The world does not collapse. The main thing is to live.

"Remember that our story took place before the second intifada, when the whole thing was a mess, when chaos reigned on both sides. And this officer — he was a successful lawyer who had returned to the army in search of adventure — Eyali's company commander, was altogether on the other side of town that same night, also staking out that notable wanted man, who came to what end I still have no idea. Maybe he's hanging out with the heavenly tribunal, which is what that clown from the security services said, or maybe they gave up looking for him. And this officer, he knows everything, and tools me around Tulkarm as if he were in Ramat-Gan, in a fancy jeep, heavy and armored, with a silent soldier sitting in it with a machine gun. And he shows me the place where Eyali was shot, near a pile of building material, standing by a water faucet, and he points out to me the doorway of the building he rushed out of and explains where the ambush was, and with his two hands he demonstrates the angle from which the bullets were fired, one and then another. I've still got my agenda of identifying the shooter, so I ask him, By the way, if that's where the shots came from, who was the soldier that fired them? And the officer, an intelligent man, winks at me and says, Why do you care? After all, you've gotten to know them all; they're all good guys. Why should we incriminate one of them?

"All right, I say to him, then at least let's go up on the roof. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and I, Daniela, remember every detail. I climb the stairs, and some of the flights have no banister, and here and there the wall isn't plastered either, and I pass open doorways and nod shalom to entire families, children and adults, old men and women, cooking, sewing, doing homework — whole lives in this building, three actual floors, though not completely finished, but with this wide roof in place at the top, full of laundry hanging to dry, colorful sheets flapping in the wind. And the tenants did not seem surprised that again the Jews wanted to see the world from the Palestinian rooftop, and if they are bringing along an elderly civilian, it must mean something important."

"When was this exactly?"

"In the autumn. Three months after he was killed. The weather was getting cooler. That mute soldier, with the machine gun, was a Druze, and they picked him in particular so he could translate into Arabic who I was and what I wanted. But there was no need for an interpreter, because among the locals there is always someone who knows Hebrew. For example, a pregnant woman, a lovely young lady studying history at Ruppin College, near Netanya. The soldier who was killed, no, she doesn't remember him, but her father will be home soon from the orchard, and he perhaps knows more about the 'work accident.'"

"Work accident?"

"That's the expression we use when they get killed by their own mistakes — for instance, while preparing a bomb — so they pay us back with the same language; why not? Okay, we're now on the roof, and the Druze soldier leans his machine gun on the railing, and the officer describes the sector for me, and I'm walking around from one side to the other; maybe I'll find some clue, some sign of whatever caused Eyal to come down from the roof in a suspicious manner. And evening starts falling with sort of a blue mist, and the pregnant student, who came up after us, asks if she should take down any laundry, and the officer says there's no need, and he points out to the west, where Israeli lights are going on in the coastal plain, so close, close enough to touch."

"You could see the sea from there?"

"Apparently at one time you could, but today, the new tall buildings block the view. That's what the officer told me. And in his opinion, it's a good thing."

"Why good?"

"So they wouldn't desire the sea as well."

"That's what he said? Disgraceful…"

"It was maybe because his patience was running out. The father, who was supposed to arrive any minute from the orchard, never showed up. Someone apparently told him that Jews were waiting for him on the roof of his house, so he preferred to visit some sick uncle and not undergo another interrogation, where he'd have to repeat everything he already told the army, that is, nothing of importance. Does this old story interest you at all?"

"Every word."

He gets up and takes a long look out the window. Then he paces the room for a moment, picks up her novel, has a look inside, and replaces it facedown, the way it was.

"What's it about?"

"Not now. If you want, I'll try to finish it before I go home and I'll leave it for you."

"God forbid… you insist on not understanding. Don't you dare leave behind one letter of Hebrew."

She gives him a piercing look.

"So the father didn't come. And this pregnant student, who spoke Hebrew quite elegantly and gently, saw that we were getting impatient, so she called in her mother, a woman in traditional Arab dress, chubby, knowing not a word of Hebrew, and with a mischievous spirit. The mother did remember the soldier. She didn't see him, but she had heard something from her husband. In the middle of the night, on his own initiative, he brought Eyali some strong coffee, and also a pail, which the soldier had asked him for."

"On his own he brought him coffee?"

"So he would stay awake. That's the way the daughter explained it. And when I asked her, what did your father care if he was asleep, he wasn't protecting you, but the other way around, the mother looked at me with her warm eyes, and even though she knew I was the father of the soldier who was killed, she said to me unabashedly that her husband was afraid that if the Israeli soldier fell asleep, he would have the urge to kill him. But a soldier who was awake would be able to defend himself. So he brought him strong coffee. And the pregnant student translated all this in her delicate accent, while exchanging mischievous smiles with her mother."

"A complicated Arab. Bringing coffee so he won't have the urge to kill?"

"That's how she translated it. Maybe in Arabic it wasn't exactly an urge but a slightly different word. But so you don't misunderstand, this whole conversation on the roof was in a friendly spirit, everyone smiling. The officer was smiling too; only the Druze with the machine gun stayed serious."

"And then?"

"And then we really did have to get out of there, because by that time we had broken the rules completely, but I knew that this roof would continue to preoccupy me, that I would need to better understand the coffee, the bucket. Maybe that pregnant student, with her sweet lovely Hebrew, was also a factor — I mean, not she herself, but her pregnancy, or more precisely, the idea that the baby she would give birth to would also be crawling around on this rooftop. By the way, did you know that Efrat…" He hesitates.

"Efrat what?"

GRADUALLY, NETA'S LAMENT over her treacherous mother subsides. The choked-up cries are quieter, the duration between them grows longer, and the intensity of the anger and anxiety they express diminishes, though as if to preserve their honor they do not cease at once but instead die down slowly. Neta no longer has the strength to stand and hold her head theatrically, and she slowly slides down to sit on her bed. Finally, her reedy body folds up into the fetal position. The grandfather does not intervene in this process, but sits patiently, not moving, not uttering a word. From time to time he closes his eyes to lend encouragement to the girl's drowsiness. Nadi watches sternly, then suddenly gets off his bed and leaves the room, and Ya'ari motions with a finger for him to be quiet, so as not to interfere with his sister's collapse into slumber. He waits a while, until sleep has overtaken her entirely, then turns out the light and covers her with a blanket.

In the living room the candles have long since gone out. The only light comes from the kitchen. He looks for the boy but cannot find him. The exterior door is locked, and so is the door to the terrace. He looks in the bathroom, but the child isn't there. He calls, Nadi, Nadi, but there is no reply. For a moment he is seized with panic, but since his son's apartment is not large, he quickly checks the clothes closets and behind the washing machine, until he remembers the child's favorite hiding place, under his parents' bed. And there indeed lies the boy, like a gray sack. The grandfather turns on the light, but the child screams, Turn it off, turn it off, Nadi isn't here. So then Ya'ari tries to play a game in the dark and pretend to be someone who can't find his grandchild, but this time, safe under his parents' bed, the boy refuses to cooperate with the familiar game and starts screaming. Ya'ari tries to crawl under and get to him, but the child pushes him away, scratches his hand, crawls out the other side, stamps over to the locked door, and begins to kick it with his bare foot.

He doesn't want his mother or his father. His anger goes back to the fifth candle that his sister lit before him. Ya'ari therefore tries to undo the insult by cleaning the remnants of wax from the menorah and replacing all five candles. At first Nadi can hardly believe that his grandfather would go to such lengths to compensate him, but when he sees Grandpa turning on the lights, putting the kippa back on, reciting the blessings again, and placing the burning shammash in his little hand so he can light all five candles, his wrath is soothed and a little smile quivers on his tormented face.

But the smile turns out to be transitory. The spirited toddler, complicated and uncompromising, suddenly decides that a second lighting of candles on the same evening is not the real thing, that it is a ruse on his grandfather's part to pacify his jealousy of his elder sister's birthright. For a minute or two he studies with hostility the five colorful candles and the shammash burning quietly in the menorah, then suddenly blows them out like candles on a birthday cake, knocks the smoking menorah over and shoves it to the ground, then bursts into a scream and runs to the front door and kicks it hard, and calls his father's name.

Now he understands that Efrat's warning was not an exaggeration. Moran, apparently out of embarrassment, generally reports to his parents only his little boy's health problems. Ya'ari grabs the child forcefully, rips him away from the door, lifts him up and holds him tight in his arms. Nadi thrashes wildly, trying to get free, menacing his grandfather's hand with his teeth, trying to bite it. But Ya'ari, although surprised by the child's strength, won't let go his grip.

The toddler's resistance grows weaker, but when Ya'ari lays him down on the sofa and turns off the light, the boy springs up and runs to kick again at the front door, and the blow to his bare foot inspires more desperate howling. Ya'ari is again forced to grasp him in his arms. And to distract him, he puts on the Baby Mozart tape that Nadi has grown up with, which still works its magic.

And while he clasps the child in his arms in the dark, trains and ladders begin moving on the screen, and fountains and seesaws, cloth dolls of friendly animals, and the marvelously simple music of a composer who died in the prime of life reconcile a grandfather and his grandson.

The child's attention is focused on the sights and sounds so familiar to him; still, it's hard to tell whether he's still trying to break free of his grandfather or clinging to him tightly. Ya'ari remains on his feet, because when he tries to sit down on the sofa, the child bursts into a shriek of protest. And so they stand there, while delightful images flicker past them, conceived by well-meaning educators in tranquil California, and after the last note is played, and the screen goes dark, the child mumbles feebly, Again, Grandpa…

And Ya'ari has no choice but to rewind the tape.

Now, with his grandson's head on his shoulder, Ya'ari has a moment to study closely the contours of his face; he finally identifies the memory that eluded him, understanding why it escaped him before. Many years ago he also stood in the dark clutching a toddler in his arms, one who resembled this grandson. But that had been in silence, without musical accompaniment. It was on a visit to Jerusalem, before Moran was born, when he and Daniela had offered to babysit little Eyali so that Shuli and Yirmi could go out and enjoy themselves — and so he and Daniela would have a quiet hideaway for lengthy lovemaking.

The infant image of the nephew who was killed by friendly fire, flung out of the distant past and caught again in his arms, suffuses Ya'ari with a pain diluted by sweet nostalgia for his own youth. To the music of Mozart he hugs his little grandson tight, as if to inoculate him with the strong confidence he has acquired during his own life.

When the Mozart tape completes its second screening, and Nadi mumbles, half-asleep, More, Grandpa, he decides not to replay the pleasant tunes a third time but to try a fresh approach with a different video. And from the stack of tapes he grabs one from an unmarked box.

As soon as it starts to run he realizes that he has made a mistake, yet he does not stop it. This is not a tape for children, this is not even a tape for grown-ups, this is a tape that he would never have suspected his son and daughter-in-law of taking an interest in.

Although in recent years sex scenes even in mainstream films have become more brazenly explicit, they are brief — it always seems to Ya'ari that the actors are afraid they won't be up to the task when called upon to feign passion that is not their own. But this video has no story or plot, no hidden relationships among its characters: their sole purpose is to have sex, natural, open sex without impersonation or shame, accompanied by the thumping of an unseen drum.

His sleep-heavy grandson is straining his arms, and he extends a finger to stop the cassette, but the expression on the face of a young cropped-haired woman as an older man undresses her arrests him. Something in her embarrassed smile and her instinctive attempt to hide her breasts and shield her nakedness indicates that this pretty young woman is not accustomed to making love in front of the camera. It might well be the debut of a hard-up American student looking to finance her education.

The young woman closes her eyes, throws back her head, and opens her mouth wide, but her body keeps wrestling with the man who will soon demand everything from her, and this panic mixed with pleasure fascinates the viewer in the dark. Distant memories of his young wife in the days following the wedding stir his desire.

And then he hurries to shut off the video; he snatches it from the player and returns it to its box, then sticks it into the middle of the stack of tapes. He carries the sleeping toddler to his bed, changes his diaper for the night, and covers him with a blanket.

"WHAT DOES EFRAT have to do with this?" She again demands an answer.

Beyond the open window, at the horizon of the plain, the moon has shed the diaphanous haze and gleams sharp and bright.

"Efrat herself obviously has nothing to do with this," Yirmiyahu says finally. "By the way, when exactly was Nadi born? Do you know you almost didn't tell us about him?

"Nadi was born after I was here with Amotz, and at that point I didn't think Shuli was much interested in relatives."

Yirmi falls silent. He gets up from the chair and again walks around the room. Once more he distractedly picks up the novel, reads a few sentences, then puts it down. Daniela says nothing, waits.

"And still, her pregnancy turned out to be relevant. Because not long after your visit here, we got a letter from her, telling us that she was expecting."

"A letter from Efrat? Why did she write you? What did she want from you?"

"She asked our permission to call the boy she was expecting Eyal."

"Really?" Daniela is astounded. "I had no idea… she didn't say a thing. She wrote in her own name, or Moran's too?"

"Only her own. She wrote that Moran didn't know of her wish. What surprised us was that at the end of the fourth or fifth month, she was already talking so confidently about her son and planning his name."

"Yirmi, nowadays, not like in our time, the scanning they do of the embryo is so comprehensive and precise that you can know not only its sex but also the condition of every organ in its body. You can even predict if the developing child will be nice or not."

"And if he won't be nice, what then?"

"That depends on the parents." Her eyes smile, but a bit sadly, and her heart suddenly goes out to her daughter-in-law.

"So how was the birth?"

"Difficult. They had to get him out by Caesarian, he became tangled up and turned upside down. But how did you respond to her? I hope you didn't hurt her."

"I don't know exactly what went through Shuli's mind when we got the letter, because I didn't even give her a chance to think it over. That very minute I wrote Efrat my absolute refusal. I thanked her warmly for her touching intentions, yes, definitely touching, but unthinkable. You think about it, too, Daniela: Why put the burden of the dead on a child not yet born? And if I was already starting to detach, the last thing I needed was to get entangled with a new human being. By the way, what kind of child did he turn into? Nice or not?"