Friendly Fire: A Duet

Sixth Candle

WHEN SHE GETS home she is careful not to turn on any lights, so as not to call attention to the lateness of the hour, but when she sees her babysitter lying curled on the couch in his clothes and shoes, she nudges him gently. For a moment Ya'ari imagines that his wife has returned from Africa, and the thought of the end of the journey showers joy on his sleeping soul. But the voice of his daughter-in-law, imploring him to take off his shoes and put on Moran's T-shirt and sweatpants, dissolves his dream in a flash. The Hanukkah party has redoubled Efrat's radiance; luckily, her flimsy shawl is still draped around her shoulders, so he won't have to deal again in the dark with the perfumed cleavage of the young woman who is leaning over him at 2:15 in the morning and wondering why he didn't get himself better organized for bed.

"Your children wore me out so much, that even your hard sofa managed to put me to sleep."

Efrat is surprised that a technical expert like him didn't realize that this sofa can be folded out. She left him a sheet and blanket, after all, plus clean sweatpants, so why didn't he make himself a bed and go to sleep? Get up, get up, I'll teach you how the sofa opens… it's really simple.

"No, forget it, Efrati, I'm going home."

But pangs of conscience over the delightful party that ran so late harden her in her refusal to accept the nighttime departure of the grandfather who executed his duty so faithfully. No, she will not let him drive on a holiday weekend night, when the drunks have begun to take to the road. Moran would not forgive her if something should happen to him. And she tugs his arm and stands him on his feet, and with uncharacteristic quickness opens the sofa, to prove to him that comfortable sleep is also possible at her house. She fits the sheet and spreads the blanket, and hands him the folded T-shirt and sweatpants. No, says her stern gaze, you are not as young and strong as you think. Lie down, and I'll close the blinds so the sun won't wake you. And in the morning I'll make sure the kids don't bother you.

"Please, Amotz," she says, "do it for me, wait till it gets light."

He cannot remember this beauty ever pleading, to him or to others. Maybe she is trying through him to expiate some guilt that's weighing on her.

"The sun is unimportant," he mumbles as he sees her flipping the switch and lowering all the blinds. "In any case I get up before it does."

And although it seems so easy and natural to go home, he surrenders to his daughter-in-law, who apparently turns into an efficient homemaker only in the dead of night. She drops the shawl from her shoulders and brings him another pillow, then bare-armed she slaps it again and again, as if it were the source of sin in her home, and gives him a clean towel and quickly departs, to enable him to change from his wrinkled clothes into his son's sleeping outfit.

Although the sweatpants belong to the fruit of his own loins, he is reluctant to slip into them, not least for fear they'll be tight on him. He puts on only the T-shirt, and lifts the blinds a bit so the sun will not forget him. Then he lies down on his back on the wide sofa bed and covers himself with the blanket.

In fact, he has never before spent a whole night at his son's home. In the early days after Nadi's Caesarian birth, when Daniela stayed to help Moran out, sometimes remaining all night, he would always go home to sleep. And now, for no reason, even though his own bed is only a few kilometers from here, he has agreed to stay with his grandchildren, lying close to where his daughter-in-law readies herself for sleep. She takes an endless shower, and even after the slit of light under her closed door has gone out, music is still playing in her room, soft and annoying.

If he were to leave now, she couldn't stop him. But his fear that she will sleep through the morning while the children wander around the house neglected gets him to his feet only to knock on her door and whisper irritably: Efrati, if you want me to stay here, at least turn down that weird music.

THAT SAME ANTICIPATED sun will rise too late to wake his wife in East Africa. Well before dawn, she is roused by the engine noise of the two pickup trucks delivering the scientific team to the base camp for their weekend break. From her high window, under a sky still swirling with stars, she can make out the silhouettes of a few of them as they alight from the vehicles, dragging knapsacks and duffels.

Tonight, the head of the team, the Tanzanian Seloha Abu, and the Ugandan archaeologist, Dr. Kukiriza, are tired, silent, and lost in thought, like soldiers returning from a difficult mission or arduous training. They even had a casualty: the Tunisian woman, Zohara al-Ukbi, ill with malaria. They carefully lower her onto a stretcher. The circle of respect and concern that forms around her is soon joined by the white administrator and the Sudanese nurse, who lean in the dim light toward her suffering face, wish her well, and obtain her permission to house her in the infirmary.

One after another the scientists disappear through the main doorway en route to their rooms on the first and second floors, leaving behind them cardboard boxes filled with fossils and fragments of rock. And the elderly groundskeeper, as Daniela's loyal friend and devoted chaperone, takes all these into the kitchen.

Perhaps because of the old elevator shaft that never housed an elevator, echoes of the scientists' voices filter into her room, and the sound of a lively flow in the water pipes testifies that it's not sleep the exhausted diggers want most, but a quick return to a civilized condition.

Although it is not yet four A.M., and she is entitled to go back to bed, Daniela realizes that the presence of the team will make it impossible for her to recover her interrupted sleep. And so when the first rays of light begin to pierce the big kitchen windows, the Israeli guest appears, washed and smiling and properly made up, and is greeted convivially by the two South African geologists, who have decided on a big breakfast before they shower or sleep. Because they still appreciatively remember the tourist's rapt attention to the comments of their colleague Kukiriza and have not forgotten their own silence on that occasion, they invite the white woman to join in their meal, so they can expand her understanding of the scientific purpose of the dig, this time from a geological standpoint.

"We wanted to tell you," one of them says, "that Jeremy surprised us when he brought you along three days ago, and the interest you showed in the work of the team made us very happy. It is clear to us, of course, that this interest is only out of politeness, yet the way in which you asked and listened left a good taste with all of us, and when we heard you were still here, and we would meet you again, we had another reason to be glad about our weekend. Am I exaggerating?" He suddenly turns with concern to his friend, who has been nodding in spirited agreement while scrambling egg after egg and mixing in chopped vegetables and bits of sausage.

"You see," the first geologist continues, "we work in total isolation. Our excavation site does not appear on any tourist route, and so visitors do not happen by, not even black people, so that we may explain to them what we aim to achieve. The only two whites we've seen came to us one year ago, and they were representatives of UNESCO in Paris, financial people who were not here to take an interest and to learn but only to make sure that we were not needlessly wasting money. Our connection with universities and research institutes is only by correspondence, and before we get an answer so much time passes that we almost forget what the question was. Therefore all interest, even what comes by chance, we greatly appreciate. Your brother-in-law is an honest and efficient man, but he finds it hard to understand our intentions. The more we try to explain to him what we are looking for, the more he gets confused about periods, not by thousands of years but by millions. But of course dating is the heart of the matter, the main struggle we face. This is what gives importance to the stones that capture or encase the fossils; here is manifested the contribution of the geologist, without which no evolutionary conclusion may be drawn to explain who survived and why they survived, who became extinct and why, and what price was paid by the survivor, and who benefited from the extinction."

Daniela flashes a pleasant smile at the exuberant young man, whose English is almost a mother tongue. And before the huge omelet bubbling in the skillet finishes capturing and encasing the vegetables and meat, he hastens to set on the table, as an appetizer, a fragment of rock to illustrate his lecture.

Now, in the brightening light of day, she learns that the two young men are M.A. candidates from the University of Durban, Absalom Vilkazi and Sifu Sumana, and Daniela listens to their explanations appreciatively and patiently, with the mature serenity of a woman who in three years will be sixty but is unconcerned by her advancing age, trusting in the faithfulness of her husband.

EVEN ON THIS gray, wintry Saturday morning, the children get up early. He senses the feathery footsteps of his granddaughter, who approaches the sofa to check whether Grandpa has been replaced in the middle of the night by a subcontractor; and she doesn't settle for the familiar head resting on the pillow but pulls down the blanket a little to confirm that the body is his as well. She does this cautiously and with restraint, despite the laughter which seems about to erupt from inside her, and Ya'ari clamps his eyelids tight and keeps his face toward the wall, curious to see how his granddaughter will handle his slumber. First she tries to tug lightly at his hair, and when there is no response, she tickles the back of his neck; she seems caught between a desire to wake him and reluctance to make outright contact with an old man's strange body. Ya'ari remains frozen, still and unmoving. I know, Grandpa, that you're not asleep, a sweet whisper wafts by his ear, but he, face to the wall, stubbornly refuses to respond. She hesitates, then climbs onto the sofa, hops over his body in her bare feet, and installs herself between him and the wall. With a small but determined hand she now tries to pry open his eyelids. But I know you're not asleep, she says with self-justification.

Ya'ari pops open his eyes. See, she declares victoriously, I knew you weren't asleep. And then, without a word, he sweeps up the blanket and pulls it over his five-year-old granddaughter, carbon copy of her mother. He speaks straight into the blue eyes that dance with laughter, demanding an explanation:

"Why did you cry last night, after Imma left? You know that I know how to take care of you just like Grandma Daniela. So tell me, why did you keep crying like that? Just to make me crazy?"

The girl listens attentively, but she seems disinclined to answer. The laughter in her eyes subsides a bit, and still clutched in his embrace, she tries to evade the gaze that seeks to probe her hidden thoughts. Since she is his first grandchild, she has always received the royal treatment. From her earliest years she got used to climbing into their bed at their house, lying between him and Daniela and chatting about life. But now, instead of a forgiving and indulgent grandma, on her other side there is only a bare silent wall, and she seems to start feeling mildly anxious next to the grandfather who insists on an explanation for the crying marathon.

"Do you remember how you held your head, as if it were going to fall off?"

Her pupils contract with the effort of recollection, and she gives a little nod of confirmation.

"And do you remember," Ya'ari persists, "how you wailed away for half the night, Imma, where are you? Why did you go? You remember?"

The child nods slowly, shocked or scared by the grandpa who imitates her voice and her plaintive words.

"Why couldn't you calm down? What was upsetting you? Why wasn't I enough for you? Explain it to me, darling Neta, you know how much I love you."

She listens to him intensely, then sits upright, and with the quickness of a small animal throws off the blanket and jumps off the sofa bed.

But he seizes her little arm.

"If you love your mother so much, why are you waking me up this morning and not her?"

Her eyes open wide with astonished humiliation, and Ya'ari senses that his facetious rebuke went too far and the girl might begin a new round of weeping, and so, before she can bolt for her parents' closed bedroom door, he smiles at her forgivingly and points at her little brother, just now darting in from the children's room, his big head of hair disheveled and his eyes red, squinting balefully at the light as he climbs automatically into his high chair, which stands alongside the dining table.

"And here's your lovely little brother," he adds, trying to dampen her resentment, "who right after you stopped crying and went to sleep, began to cry and go wild. You remember, Nadi, how you went wild last night?"

The child nods.

"You remember how you kicked the door?"

The toddler glances at the door.

"What did the door do to you, that you kicked it like that?"

Nadi tries to think what the door did to him, but his sister spares him the trouble of answering.

"He always kicks the door after Imma leaves."

Ya'ari is relieved.

"Doesn't your foot hurt when you kick the door?"

Nadi soberly examines his bare foot.

"Yes," he whispers.

"So is kicking a good idea?"

The child has no answer, but the similarity to that other, faraway child still flickers in his face.

"So tell me now, kids," says Ya'ari, trying to get at the root of the mystery, "am I right that you cried and acted wild because you miss your Abba who is gone to the army?"

His suggestion seems reasonable enough to Neta, who despite everything wants to please her grandfather, but Nadi furrows his brow as if wondering whether this is the right answer, or if a deeper one lies behind it.

"So today, if you'll be good children, we'll take you to see your Abba in the army, and now let's eat some cornflakes."

And he pours the golden cereal into two colorful plastic bowls, adding milk according to each child's specific instructions.

DANIELA TAKES A knife and fork and begins to eat the omelet, which is rosy with meat and vegetables, while studying the black concave basalt stone that sits between her plate and coffee cup. This is a meaningful stone, laden with history, placed there to serve as a useful accessory in clarifying for the courteous listener not only how one can tell when Australopithecus boisei—that "eating machine" — branched off the path, clearly leading from chimpanzees to Homo sapiens, but also whether the conventional assessment, which holds that this ape ran into an evolutionary dead end, is in fact correct.

Because when we discover fossils from animals or creatures of a humanoid nature — a wisdom tooth, wrist bone, a solitary finger — embedded in ancient rock, the excavators must be religiously careful also to preserve the evidence of their surroundings. Especially the encasing rock, because that's where invaluable information is hidden that only a geologist can decipher, not merely regarding the date, which is determined by radioactive analysis, but also the question of whether this rock is a medium that just happened to capture a fragment of the prehistoric creature or whether it might also be a tool dropped from its hand. For if the ancient being knew how to use this stone to crack open his nuts, he should be upgraded a rung on the human ladder. Here is where the paleoanthropologists are dependent upon the professional eye of the geologist, and two heads are better than one. Only geologists are trained to determine whether a simple stone, like this one on the table, which is about one million six hundred thousand years old, is carrying a fetus inside.

"A fetus?"

"A metaphorical fetus," explains the second geologist, Sifu Sumana, who till now has been quietly focused on eating the last of the giant omelet straight from the pan.

"In other words," Absalom Vilkazi elaborates, "a stone that has swallowed up another, more ancient, stone, whose erosion in a particular spot indicates that it was not just any stone but rather served as an implement, a tool in the hands of an Australopithecus boisei. Even if he himself was removed from the chain of evolution en route to the great destination of the creation of man, his spirit has nonetheless not disappeared; it continues to exist."

"His spirit?" she whispers.

"Perhaps you have forgotten, dear lady," the South African geologist says in a triumphant tone, "that two and a half million years ago our Africa was naturally joined to Asia and Europe. No sea or ocean separated them. And our Australopithecus boisei, whose traces we are seeking — this great African ape who despaired of his future on this continent — traveled from Africa to Europe and contributed the genes of the bulimic 'eating machine' to the civilization that developed there."

She looks closely into his eyes to see if there is a spark of humor.

"Now you are joking."

"Why?" the South African says innocently, even as mischievous laughter dances in his eyes.

His youth, flowering in the morning light, appeals to her. His English sounds natural and fluent, even though with his parents he probably speaks Zulu or Sesotho. Without a doubt, Daniela thinks, the elimination of apartheid has made this black man stand taller, and now, as he is confident in his identity, he is trying to challenge smug and prosperous Europe as an equal. And suddenly her heart aches over Moran, confined by the army, who doesn't understand that the conflict that poisons his homeland also diminishes his stature and undermines his identity, and in her train of thought Nofar and Efrat and Neta and Nadav are linked with Moran, and with beloved former students, and with the youngsters she'll return to after the Hanukkah vacation. Here they are in her mind's eye, sitting in the classroom decorated with posters and newspaper clippings, and among them she can make out the heartbreaking shadow of her nephew, who has descended from Jerusalem to the coast and joined her class to claim his place in the tears now clouding her gaze.

Absalom Vilkazi senses the unhappiness that suddenly silences the white lady, older than his own mother, and he is worried that she interprets the absurd migration of the prehistoric ape to Europe as an insult to her intelligence. And he therefore takes the liberty of gently laying a pacifying hand on her shoulder, as he does with his mother, and says, I was only joking, I apologize.

"YOU'RE AT OUR house?" Moran is surprised when his father picks up the phone. "Did something happen?"

With businesslike conciseness Ya'ari informs him of his spontaneous volunteering for the post of babysitter and very considerately spares him the tale of his children's nighttime rampage.

"But which party did she go to?"

"I didn't ask and she didn't say. I only made sure she had her cell phone with her, because it always makes me nervous when she goes around without it."

"So why did you stay till the morning? You fell asleep and didn't realize she had come home, or she's still not back?"

"No, no, what's the matter with you? What a thought! She's here, but asleep. She got back after midnight and begged me not to drive home at night, then was so quick to open up the sofa that I gave in."

"You're also impressed by her aggressive pleading?"

"Why aggressive?"

"Not important."

"Why not important?"

"Forget it, Abba… it's not important… keep talking." Ya'ari senses his son's deep disappointment in himself, in his wife, maybe even in his father.

"What's going on, son?" he says softly.

He's sick of it. This inane punishment in the name of solidarity is getting on his nerves. Yes, at first he was a little glad for the enforced detachment from the world, from Efrat, the kids, the office, and, sure, a demanding father too. It was nice to be able to nap in midmorning, or before dinner, without accounting to anyone. But over the past two days his tranquillity has evaporated. Last night he kept tossing on his smelly army mattress, his mind loaded with nonsense, such as how to save his white queen from the black knights of that harebrained adjutant.

"Ah," Ya'ari says, laughing, "the redhead already drafted you to play chess with him?"

"After I started beating him at backgammon."

"Wait a second, Moran, you want to say something to the children? They're here with me in the kitchen, eating cornflakes. Looking at me."

"No, Abba, not now, there's no time, I'll see them soon anyhow. Just do me a favor, go into Efrat's room and get her out of bed. Because if she doesn't start getting organized to leave, she won't make it here to see me. We're attached to a base of recruits, and visiting hours are strict. Only till early afternoon. Tell her to hurry. The drive won't be so simple; it's been raining cats and dogs for the last few hours."

"In Tel Aviv it's actually like spring, clear blue skies. This country isn't as tiny as people think. So listen, I have an idea. I'll bring everyone to you in my car… it'll be safer in all respects."

"But will you have patience for all of us after not sleeping all night on the sofa?"

"It wasn't so bad; it even turned into a bed at three in the morning."

Despite the authorization that he received from his son, Ya'ari does not even consider entering Efrat's bedroom, but instead knocks hard on the door. When he is persuaded that she has regained consciousness, he conveys her husband's instructions in a stern no-nonsense tone.

"Oh, Amotz, it would be wonderful if you would drive us."

"And even more wonderful if you would finally get up on your feet."

The two grandchildren are glad that it won't be their mother driving them to their father, but Grandpa, in the big car, and so they don without argument the clothes chosen by their mother, and like two little bear cubs, clumsily bundled in warm coats, they agree happily to help Ya'ari move the child seats from car to car and show him how to strap them into place. Meanwhile Efrat proves that when she wants to, she can be quick and efficient even in the morning hours, and she prepares sandwiches and peels vegetables, spreads hummus inside pitas, adds oranges and little bottles of chocolate milk. And when she comes down to the car with the big cooler, pale and without makeup, wearing clunky sneakers, threadbare jeans, and an old oversize battle-dress jacket that seems intended to obscure her figure, it occurs to Ya'ari that she means to punish herself and join in her husband's confinement.

Even on this wintry Sabbath morning the coastal road is packed. There's no knowing whether it is the children dragging their parents into the nervous traffic or the guilt-ridden parents dragging their children to amusements and shopping on the day of rest. But the northerly rains reported by Moran are now compounded by a stiff wind from the east, which buffets the car with such force that Ya'ari has to hold the wheel with both hands. Since there are no tapes in his car of simple Israeli songs likely to distract the children, Efrat attempts to entertain them with a game of Opposites, and Ya'ari gathers that opposition is well entrenched in his daughter-in-law. Quickly and effortlessly she comes up with nouns and adjectives, confident that each word has an antonym her children will know.

And so the highway slips northward between day and night, hot and cold, dry and wet, summer and winter, smart and stupid, tall and short, ceiling and floor, happy and sad, clean and dirty, straight and crooked, husband and wife, sun and moon, door and wall, dead and alive. And since Neta already knows the answers, she fires them off before her little brother can even come close, and although his mother and grandfather try to make her give the toddler a chance, his sister is incapable of curbing her enthusiasm for opposites, and Efrat apparently doesn't want to deprive her of the pleasure.

In the rearview mirror Ya'ari notices his grandson's mounting fury. If he were able to free himself of the straps that bind him, he'd climb out of the chair and start kicking the car door hard.

"Enough is enough with these opposites," Ya'ari orders Efrat and Neta, "the boy's about to explode."

After the Caesarea exit the traffic gets heavier. It's the first parents' day for the new recruits, and entire families are hurrying to the camp to supplement their food and other needs. The rain has stopped, but the area in front of the base is full of puddles, among which barbecues have been set up and picnic tables unfolded and chairs positioned, and here and there shelters against the rain. And between the charcoal grills and the coolers that spot the scene with orange, green, and blue, are Israelis of every sort, veteran and rooted, immigrants recent and otherwise, Russians and Ethiopians; and the recruits in their new uniforms, sitting opposite their adoring parents, diligently downing the meats and the salads, the home-cooked chicken schnitzels, as if over the past month a great famine had afflicted the military camps.

But where is Moran?

Efrat waits in the car with Neta, and Ya'ari goes off with Nadi in his arms toward the front gate, walks by the checkpost, surveys the tall guard, stares into the camp, but among the recruits going in and out there is no sign of the confined soldier who protects his white queen from the black knights. Until finally someone grabs him from behind, pulls the boy from his arms and lifts him high in the air.

Moran is unshaven, red-eyed. In an old work uniform.

"Abba," says Nadi, fluttering in the air, overjoyed, "you are alive?"

YIRMIYAHU STUDIES DANIELA with wonder as she sits in a puddle of light opposite the dirty breakfast dishes and listens with infinite patience to the geologist, who has broken a rock just for her and out of its fragments is trying to furnish her with a short history of time.

"Very good," he praises his sister-in-law. "I see that the young ones are also making good use of your patience. It's okay if you don't understand the explanations; the main thing is the listening. Just wait, soon the others will come down and arrange a symposium for you. In the meantime, Sijjin Kuang will take the malaria patient to a clinic not far away and be back this afternoon."

"There's another clinic in the area?"

"Not exactly a clinic, more like a sanatorium."

"A real sanatorium?"

"Actual but not real," he says jokingly. "Sort of a health retreat, a rehabilitation or recuperation facility for those who want to get away from the world into the bosom of nature in Africa, at low cost and without the annoyances of modern civilization. Not a sanatorium like the Swiss Alps, but operating on the same principle."

"Is there room for me?"

"Where?"

"With you in the car."

"Why not? But as always, you'll have to sit in the back, and this time you'll need to take up less room, because the patient will be beside you. Nothing to be afraid of, malaria is not a contagious disease. The cause is not a virus or bacteria, but rather a parasite, carried by mosquitoes. And the mosquito that bit Zohara al-Ukbi — it's always female, never a male mosquito — is already gone from this world."

"If you're sure you're not endangering me, then why don't I come along, really? I'm leaving here in two days, so I should finally have some idea of the area where you've decided to hide yourself."

She apologizes to the young men for the time-out she is taking, and secretly hopes that maybe on the way to the sanatorium she'll have a chance to see another breathtaking genetic mutation. As she leaves the kitchen, Sijjin is already revving the car engine, and before Daniela takes her regular seat in the back, she greets the Sudanese driver, and seeing her sad expression she wells with deep affection for the gentle animist, bends over, and lightly touches her lips to the ebony cheek. And the nurse, surprised by this unanticipated gesture, lays a hand as delicate as a bird's wing on the youthful hair of the older woman and says, it's good that you are coming with us.

The young North African woman, by turns hot and shivering from the parasite in her blood, is also happy to see the passenger wedged alongside her, and from under the blanket that swaddles her she extends a friendly, fevered hand. Ahalan wa-sahalan, madame, she whispers to the Israeli, it is good that you, too, are with me.

The Land Rover turns south, where the dirt road is so smooth that the murmur of the tires envelops Daniela in drowsiness despite the early morning hour. Since this isn't the right moment to be interviewing the malarial paleontologist about her profession and role in the research program and expecting answers a layman might understand, the healthy passenger prefers to join the sick one in closing her eyes and basking in the pleasant warmth of the sun that keeps them company.

The ride is short, less than an hour, and when the car arrives at its destination, Daniela has the feeling that although the guilty mosquito is no longer alive, the parasite of indolence has nonetheless sneaked into her blood and jumbled her senses. When her brother-in-law opens the rear door, lifts the young Arab woman in his arms, lays her carefully on a stretcher and covers her, and he and an orderly carry her into the building, the Israeli is overtaken by a strange desire that the same be done with her; since there is no one around who can guess what she wants, she stays frozen in place and waits for the helping hand of the driver.

The sanatorium, too, was once a colonial farm, and on the outside its main building is the base camp's twin, but the interior is very different. Here they are not greeted by a huge kitchen with sinks and stoves but rather by a small lobby, with a reception desk of black wood that looks as if it once served as the cocktail bar. Armchairs of black leather sit in a semicircle with their backs to the counter, facing a large window with a view to a horizon so distant that even in the strong noon sunlight it takes on a gray penumbra.

The elevator that never found a home at the headquarters of the scientific team works nicely here, with an ancient and agreeable rumble. When its grille opens, an affable-looking Indian doctor steps out to welcome the malaria patient, who has not come here to die, heaven forbid, but only to get stronger. While the doctor introduces himself to Zohara, Yirmiyahu brings to his sister-in-law's attention the fact that the senior personnel here are not Africans, but Indians who have crossed the ocean. Europeans, especially elderly middle-class Englishmen, have great faith in the ability of Indians to provide superior care, physical and spiritual, to those who wish to be braced and pampered as they prepare for death.

Through the big window a small swimming pool may be seen, and several wild animals stroll about, maintained on the premises so that their beauty and serenity will offer comfort to the patients' souls as their bodies slowly expire. And while a room is made ready for the malaria patient, she is fed clear chicken broth, routinely kept on a burner that sits among the bottles of whiskey and gin.

The Sudanese quietly speaks in Arabic with the sick woman, whose chills have been eased by the hot soup. And Yirmiyahu, settled deeply into a leather armchair, continues to lecture his sister-in-law about the uniqueness of this institution even as she imagines some sleep-inducing parasite wide awake in her own blood.

Although the building appears modest and does not have a great many rooms, it can't be called a clinic, or a simple pension either. It is a sanatorium, a treatment home, giving medical care to both body and mind. And just as the reputations of convalescent facilities in the rest of the world are measured by the beauty of their settings — snowy mountaintops, hidden lakes — here, too, nature is extraordinary, both for its primal quality and for the wild creatures who move through it without fear of human beings.

But the real test of such institutions is the nature and level of the services they offer to the patients who come and remain of their own free will. Make no mistake: this place, despite its modesty and isolation, acquits itself most honorably when it comes to efficiency and the range of services it offers; it also stands out for its low cost. For who comes here? In general, lonely old people, not affluent, who can no longer rely on the endurance of their relatives and friends. Widowers and widows whose children have grown distant, or elderly couples who never had children at all, or had them and lost them in tragic circumstances. People who are drawn to this place are most often those who spent their lives serving others. Here, they can get at a reasonable price reciprocal service to their heart's content: a young man or woman who will sit at their bedside all night long and hold their hand to ward off nightmares; not just someone to tidy up their room but also someone to sing and dance for them on request, or even an old grandmother who will sit in a corner and knit them a scarf, and a black baby crawling at her feet.

At first glance the place will seem quiet to her, Yirmi continues, or even a bit desolate, yet this, too, is one of its virtues. All in all, this is a cloistered place. But half a kilometer away is a small village filled with men and women, teenagers and children, who may be brought in for any task, so that a guest who is able and ready to submit his body and maybe his soul to the ministrations of others may enjoy services that in the past were enjoyed only by noblemen and princes. And precisely because these are servants who for the most part do not understand the guest's language, there is a limit to the intimacy. Yes, for a very modest fee, acceptable in the region, there are people here willing to provide service that would make the care Amotz's father receives from his Filipinos look meager and boring; the villagers are most eager to cater to the whims of the whites, even to be summoned in the middle of the night. It is almost, if you will, a reversion to slavery, but out of free choice.

"And this is acceptable to you?"

"What's wrong with it, if it satisfies both sides?"

She regards the big man in the faded leather chair with hostility.

"And it satisfies you too?"

"It's a possibility. After the excavation team completes its project, maybe it'll be worth my while to come here for treatment… but only on the condition that they upgrade my painkillers."

An Indian chambermaid comes to take the patient up to her room, but the latter is reluctant to go and asks that Sijjin Kuang accompany her. The two Israelis stand up, and the administrator promises Zohara that in ten days they will come back to get her.

"And you, madame?" The Arab woman turns to the Israeli visitor, "You will still be here when I get well?"

"No," says Daniela, "by then I won't be in Africa; my vacation from school ends in two days. And perhaps my students don't miss me so much, but I hope that my husband and children and grandchildren want me back."

"Then come again to Africa, madame," whispers the young woman.

EVEN FROM A distance Neta can see Nadi's triumphant expression as he sails over people's heads, and she cries out, "Abba, Abba, I'm here, too," and gets out of the car, and weaves her way, lithe and nimble, among the grills and coolers. Moran hugs and kisses her lovingly, and since she also claims a place on her father's shoulders, and her brother is unwilling to cede his perch, the confined soldier piles her on too and walks to the car, his father following. Watch it, you'll throw out your back, Ya'ari warns.

Efrat sits in the car talking on her cell phone, not budging even when Moran sets the children down and opens the door. Who are you talking to now? My sister, she answers impatiently, without looking at him. It has to be now? he asks angrily. Yes, now. You haven't talked to her enough? He's livid. But she doesn't respond and turns her back on him. And then he grabs the phone from her hand and says, enough, don't go too far.

To distract the children from their parents, the grandpa steers them to the trunk to help him take the sandwiches and vegetables and oranges out of the cooler, and to arrange them all nicely on an old oilcloth. It is Daniela who generally tries to decipher her son's marital frictions, but she's far away in Africa, and he has to maneuver alone through this outbreak of hostilities.

One evening, in the empty office, in a rare moment of soul-baring, Moran confessed that his wife's good looks were not only a source of pride for him but also a heavy burden. Her beauty makes her more vulnerable to men. She easily arouses the wild fantasies of random passersby. He doesn't always watch her every move, but it sometimes seems to him that her glamour distances them from their closest friends.

Now she sits, fuming in the car, swathed in the cumbersome old windbreaker that obscures her body completely. On her sour face, devoid of makeup, are a few unsightly blemishes, as if she has deliberately made herself ugly for her husband, to stave off any suspicion or complaint.

"No, Amotz, I'm not hungry," she says, pushing away the sandwich, "you eat."

"I'm not hungry either," Moran says, rejecting the same sandwich, "you eat it, Abba."

Moran's work uniform smells of gun oil — a fundamental Israeli aroma, an ever-present whiff of dread, the smell of one's first contact with the army, of basic training, which forty years cannot erase from one's consciousness. What's this? Ya'ari extends a hand to feel the dense black stubble covering his son's face. That redheaded officer doesn't make you shave before he sits down to play backgammon with you? Moran pulls away from his touch. What about you, he goads his father, you didn't shave this morning either. What, Imma isn't here so you're trying out a sexier style?

"Sexy?" Ya'ari is insulted.

"Sexy like Arafat," Efrat says maliciously, looking at her husband.

The little ones have not had their fill of their father, and they cling to him and climb on him. But Moran is distracted, graceless. His mind is fixed on his wife, but they are both silent now, and the poisonous silence is affecting the children, who provoke each other, wanting attention.

Nadi is drawn to the smell of meat roasting on a nearby grill, and Ya'ari has to stop him. The Israeli din gains volume. Bluish smoke pollutes the winter air. Meat- and sweets-stuffed recruits improvise a mini-soccer match at the edge of the visiting area, or walk arm-in-arm with their girlfriends within the perimeter set by their commanding officers. Fathers laugh heartily, sharing memories of their own army days, and mothers exchange phone numbers, so they will be able to keep track together of special events during the months of training.

Yes, reflects Ya'ari, there's anger and bitterness between these two, but also attraction, and in this teeming parking lot they won't be able to defuse their spite and reconcile before parting. He cannot presume to fathom the workings of his son's marital relationship, nor does he intend to try without Daniela. But even Daniela, who does venture into mind-reading, can be mistaken. Could she imagine, for example, that tucked between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach is a videotape of hard-core sex, which these young people watch to get turned on, not relying on their own desire? But he won't tell Daniela about the tape, so as not to upset her.

He offers the car keys to his son and says, Listen, it's a mob scene here, and you might want some quiet time together, so take yourselves to some nice café in the area, and I'll look after the little ones. When I visited you at the base that night, I thought I saw an old tank the children might enjoy. Is there really an old tank here, or did I just imagine it?

"I haven't run into any old tanks, but I haven't done much exploring around the camp. If you say you saw an old tank, it must be there. You, Abba, are not capable of hallucinations."

And he takes the keys from his father. Efrat hesitates, but Moran insists, yes, we deserve a little privacy.

Nadi is thrilled by the chance to climb on a real tank, but Neta is sorry to be separated from her father. We'll be right back, Moran promises, and we'll bring you something better than the cucumbers and carrots that Imma peeled. And he puts the food back into the cooler.

Ya'ari holds his grandchildren's hands tight, and they cross the road with great caution. The children urgently need the toilet, he says grimly to the soldier guarding the gate, and leads them on with determination. Parents' visiting day loosens the disciplinary leash, and many recruits walk around without their berets or weapons; some have even traded in their army boots for civilian shoes. A few assertive mothers have succeeded in penetrating the base to inspect their children's living conditions. Is there an old tank monument here? Ya'ari asks everyone he runs into, but he gets no clear answer. Still he persists. They reach the far edge of the base. Beyond the eucalyptus trees lie the houses of the neighboring town. A raindrop lands on his head, and he looks up at the sky. The clouds are crammed together, yet patches of blue show through here and there. All at once heavy drops begin to fall, and he hurries with the children into a nearby tent.

The tent is filled with meticulously made beds, which are guarded by an Ethiopian soldier sprawled on one of them. He wears a light battle vest, and the rifle between his legs rocks to the beat of unfamiliar music.

Ya'ari requests cover until the rain lets up. And Nadi draws close to the guard and fearlessly, yet with deep reverence, strokes the bolt of the rifle.

"You didn't go out to visit with your folks?"

No, says this lone recruit, he has no family in Israel. His father died right after they arrived in the country, and his mother, who was supposed to follow them here, remarried and stayed in Addis Ababa.

Ya'ari is curious to know whether he misses Africa. Mother and Africa, explains the soldier, have become one for him, and he is unable to separate them.

SIJJIN KUANG IS slow to return to the sanatorium lobby. The powerful midday sunshine that pours through the window nearly lulls the two relatives to sleep as they sink deeper into the worn leather armchairs, which resemble a pair of hippopotamuses. Behind the reception desk sits an African man, typing into an elderly computer. What amazes Daniela is that for a long time now not a single patient or employee has entered the lobby. Only the tapping of the keys chips away at the great silence. Yirmiyahu closes his eyes and drifts off, and Daniela can now study his face from up close and see what has changed in this man she has known for so many years. Is this the first time you've been here? she asks him when for a moment his eyes open, very red, and he tells her no, he has been here a number of times, bringing diggers who had been felled by malaria. And they got well here? No way of knowing; we lost contact with them. Their tribesmen were in a hurry to get them out of here and replace them with others. UNESCO doesn't insure the health of diggers.

He yawns and stretches, places his hand on his forehead and says, I think I also have a bit of fever. She puts one hand against his forehead and the other to her own and says, I think I'm the one with fever, not you. But tell me why is there no one here, no patients or workers? Yirmiyahu shrugs. Maybe they're eating now, maybe sleeping. Do you suppose, she asks further, that there's a cafeteria here where I can find something sweet?

An ironic smile lights the man's eyes.

"No, Daniela," he says, yawning, "I don't believe there's a kiosk here for you."

"You're sure, or you only believe?"

"I am sure that I don't believe."

The elevator whirrs and starts to rise, and when it comes back down it brings with it the aristocratic Sudanese driver, who asks the white man to help her calm down Zohara al-Ukbi, who is refusing to stay here. On the way to her room they had passed the rooms of terminal patients, and the young Arab woman had a panic attack and demanded to be returned to the farm.

Yirmiyahu sighs, rises from his chair and follows the nurse. Daniela, who guesses that reassuring Zohara will take some time, approaches the desk clerk to ask if he has anything sweet, she feels a bitter taste in her mouth. The African apologizes that he has nothing to offer the white woman, but when he finishes on the computer he will try to find something. She looks at the documents he is inputting, and asks if he has any reading material, perhaps a brochure, maybe something with pictures? No, this institution has no need for public relations, and the paperwork piled up here consists of medical reports about illnesses and treatments, now being recorded on the hard drive for future generations. Then he remembers that one of the patients who died here left behind a book in English that might possibly interest the visitor; he will go upstairs for it at once, but it might be only a prayer book.

A prayer book is not exactly what his bored guest is yearning for — but if it is in English, she will give it a chance.

Meanwhile she tries to make herself more comfortable. She turns around the hippo relinquished by Yirmiyahu and joins it to her own, takes off her shoes and socks, and sinks her bare feet in the rough cracked hide of the other herbivorous creature. She closes her eyes and allows the noonday sun to caress her through the unshaded window. The tapping on the keyboard stops, and she hears the rustle of papers and the glide of a closing drawer and the moving of a chair. Now that she is all alone, a sweet drowsiness overtakes her, as in the car at night beside her husband, when he accelerates on the highway. And when the rumble of the elevator intrudes into her twilight consciousness, she is disappointed that her brother-in-law has already returned to rouse her from her well-arranged cocoon and tell her they are heading back. But the gravelly voice speaking to her now in fluent well-enunciated English belongs neither to Yirmiyahu nor the desk clerk. As in a dream, she sees an old man approach her, clad only in a white bathrobe, and extend a cordial hand. To her astonishment she recognizes the elderly Englishman who sat beside her on the flight from Nairobi to Morogoro. He had boasted to her that he was the owner of a small estate, and here he is but one of its residents. He has just learned that a white lady had arrived from the base camp of the excavations for the prehistoric ape, and immediately guessing who it must be, has hurried down to tell her, with unabashed candor, that their brief encounter on the plane has been very much on his mind.

"BUT GRANDPA, IT'S not raining anymore," Neta says, pulling at Ya'ari's fingers while he is deep in discussion with the lone soldier about the scenery in Ethiopia. The soldier talks with joy of the landscapes of his childhood, and it is so pleasant to chat with this older man that he is willing to open the rifle bolt for his enthralled grandson and explain to him, using a live round, how the pin hits the primer to ignite the gunpowder in the cartridge, which propels the lead bullet to its target. Boom-boom they kill and then give a kiss, Nadi summarizes the shooting process with great satisfaction. And after fondling the bullet with his little hands, turning it over and over, he spirits it slyly into the pocket of his coat, but Ya'ari quickly snatches it from the "little killer." Yes, we must hurry, it's getting late, and again he grabs his grandchildren's hands, but before they leave he remembers to ask the lone recruit whether in fact there is on the base an old tank.

And indeed, Moran was right. Ya'ari is not inclined to hallucination, neither by day nor by night. Behind the sheds of the base command stands a Syrian tank from the Yom Kippur War, set up as a memorial to past heroism. The Ethiopian goes outside and explains how to get there, and then, on a sudden whim, he leans over and kisses the children. Nadi hangs on him with affection, but Neta is alarmed. Come, children, let's see this tank, says Ya'ari to the dismay of his granddaughter, who has had more than enough of this military tour and wants very much to return to her parents, having sensed the tension between them. But Nadi's manly spirit pleases Ya'ari, and he wants to satisfy the boy's military curiosity, and so, as they stand before the tank, an obsolete Soviet model whose camouflage paint was designed for the basalt terrain of the Golan Heights, he complies with his grandson's request to lift him on top of the turret.

"Just for a minute, Neta darling, we're only going to peek and see what's inside this tank, and then right away we'll go back to Imma and Abba. You don't want to see what's inside?"

But Neta, standing tiny and tense alongside the corroded caterpillar tracks, wants no contact at all with the tank, which even after rusting in place for more than thirty years is terrifying. The darkening sky compounds her distress. But Ya'ari will not give in and lifts her little brother onto the hull, then goes up to join him, and from there, carefully and with considerable effort, climbs with the child onto the bulky turret. The hatch, he is pleased to discover, can be opened.

It is dark inside, and Ya'ari, who served in the infantry, is no expert on the innards of tanks. A cursory look tells him that the Soviet army had not been greatly concerned about the comfort of the individual soldier, only about the thickness of the steel protecting him. He can make out the olive-drab color of the steering bar, two large copper artillery shell casings, and what looks like the disintegrating vest of a tank soldier — dead these thirty years, no doubt — is lying in a corner. Nadi wants very much to crawl in and touch the steering bar, but Ya'ari is afraid he'll have trouble getting him out. As a compromise, he holds him upside-down, and in a reverse childbirth motion lowers his big head into the dark hole. Lower, Grandpa, the child pleads, while his head seems to float in the darkness, I see a dead man. That's it, no more, Ya'ari says, frightened by his grandson's wild imagination. You've seen enough. Now let's get out of here fast, before an officer comes and yells at us. No, Nadi says, stiffening his body. There's no officer, you're silly.

Ya'ari has noticed that Nadi sometimes speaks disrespectfully to his father and mother, but till now has watched his tongue with his grandfather. He pulls the child up sharply and clambers down with him. Nadi, that's it. You've seen enough. And on top of that, you can say "silly" to your friends in nursery school, but not to your grandpa who loves you so much. The child falls silent, lowers his gaze, then purses his lips and looks venomously into his grandfather's face. Neta, too, is on the verge of tears, tugging impatiently at his hand, and from the sky drops begin to fall. If she starts whimpering now, her brother will immediately join in, and it will not be to his glory to return two bawling children to their parents.

He puts the teddybear hoods over their heads, and covers his own, to his grandchildren's delight, with a sheet of graph paper he finds in his pocket.

When they reach the front gate Ya'ari is amazed to discover that the chaotic civilian world has been utterly erased, as by magic, from the consciousness of the army recruits. The picnic ground is deserted; all the cars have vanished, with no trace of paper napkins or empty mineral water bottles. Also absent is the car he lent his son, and now he remembers that he left his cell phone in it, plugged into the speakerphone socket.

Greenish lightning slashes the sky, followed by shattering thunder. The terrified children cling to his body, the soaking graph paper dribbles on his head. Without thinking twice about hurting his back, he lifts both his grandchildren in his arms and dashes for the guardhouse. A tall soldier in full battle garb looks at them severely. The amiable Ethiopian has been replaced by a Russian recruit who scowls at the three civilians who have sought refuge with him. Is he too a lone soldier, whose mother has remained in Russia? Ya'ari does not ask; nor does he need to. There is a woven basket in the corner, filled with food.

"Imma, Imma'leh, where are you; Abba, Abba'leh, where are you?" Neta's lament is not a hostile, confrontational complaint but rather a thin, heartrending wail of justified anxiety. Ya'ari sweeps up his granddaughter, her wispy body feeling immeasurably lighter than that of her little brother, and holds her close to his chest. Now the keening pierces him to the marrow — Imma, Imma'leh, where are you; Abba, Abba'leh, where are you, and the more he tries to soothe her, the more he can feel the panic flowing from her into him: There really is no reason to suspect engine trouble in his new car, so the only remaining possibility is an accident.

In the rain-soaked guard post, beside the tall Russian who keeps angrily brushing away the little hand reaching for his submachine gun, his practical engineer's mind churns through the outcomes of all possible situations, from a simple flat tire to a car-mangling wreck. Damn it, he berates himself, damn it, you're standing here with two little children who are counting on you, and you have no right to show any sign of desperation. And even if Daniela is not at your side when you hear the terrible news, you will not run away to Africa or any other continent, but by your very sanity, your practicality and sense of responsibility, you will vanquish the chaos that swells all around you.

In his imagination scenes of horrible catastrophe mingle cru elly with practical considerations. How he will have to ask Daniela to quit teaching to devote herself to the grandchildren; how Moran's apartment will have to be rented out, and for how much; how his firm's lawyer will examine the life-insurance policy; and who will argue in court over the extent of the damages. He makes a mental note of which architect could best add a wing to their house for the children, and considers how he might persuade Nofar to become their legal guardian after he and Daniela have passed away.

A cold wind blows through his wet hair. His knees are shaking. Fear torments him, and the precise solutions he elaborates in his mind offer no comfort. The eyes of the Russian soldier are fastened on the pudgy little hand that keeps pretending to stroke, with consummate delicacy, the submachine gun propped on a stand. And the soft moaning drones on.

Imma, Imma'leh, where are you? Abba, Abba'leh, where are you?

"They'll be right back, Neta, you'll see, I promise. They haven't forgotten us."

And, in fact, a few minutes later, there is a flash of light and a honking sound, and Moran, who has found his family's hideout, quickly crosses the road, enters the guardhouse and sweeps up his children and hurries all three into the warm bosom of the car.

"I'm sorry, Abba, I'm sorry. We lost track of time."

Moran and Efrat's heads are both wet, and his daughter-i n-law's big jacket is spotted with mud and bits of leaves. Ya'ari fixes his eyes on the young woman sitting in the front seat next to her husband and avoiding his gaze, even refraining from touching her two children squeezed beside him in the back, as though her turbulent soul is not yet ready for them.

"Grandpa put me in a tank," the boy announces proudly.

"Well done, Nadi," his father gushes, "see what a great grandpa I gave birth to?"

The two children laugh.

"Not true, you didn't give birth to Grandpa, he wasn't in your belly," Neta declares.

"Grandma Daniela gave birth to Grandpa," Nadi says, chortling.

Moran hugs them and kisses their heads. And Efrat's eyes, their sandy blue color deepened by the rain clouds above, melt for her children, and she extends a caressing hand.

They've made up, Ya'ari concludes in a flash, judging by the confined soldier's effusiveness. And really, why sit in some unfamiliar café and waste the limited time together with gripes and recriminations, when you can go out into nature, and in the cold and rain of winter salve your wounded relationship with a quick coupling? There will come a time to remember well this Hanukkah holiday, the car's owner smiles inside, as he warms himself in the back, cramped between the children's safety seats; maybe a third grandchild will be born of it. Yes, a bright bloom is returning to Efrat's face, and her calm look, lingering on her husband, is not merely free of disdain but even appreciative of a man who knows how to make the most of a short interlude, and how to recognize, under his wife's rain-drenched battledress, the yearning of her flesh.

And really, why not? Disaster, as we have seen, sometimes lies in wait only a footstep away, so why bicker with your beloved, when you could take pleasure in him? In two days Daniela will return from Africa, and he knows she will want, as always, on her first night home, to know what happened to her husband day by day and hour by hour while she was away. And although she does not like him to speculate about their children's sex lives, this time he will insist on telling her how he stood with the grandchildren at the gate of the camp, exposed to thunder and lightning, while her son and daughter-in-law were out making love in the fields. Yes, he will withhold nothing from her. And therefore, on second thought, he will not spare her the blue video hidden between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach, lest she stumble upon it as he did. But really, why shouldn't she know? In three years she will be sixty, and she is mature enough to understand that there is wilder libido in the world than she has previously imagined. After all, she herself, before she disappeared through the departure gate at the airport, was the one who spoke the words real desire.

DIDN'T FORGET HER? Daniela laughs, astonished, and removes her feet from the opposite armchair, a movement that tilts her a bit backward. But how so? We exchanged at most a few words at the end of the flight.

"True," says the elderly Englishman as he elegantly gathers the skirts of his white bathrobe and sits down carefully in the vacant chair. They exchanged only a few words, but he remembers every one of them and regrets that he had not begun to converse with her at the start of the flight, to hear more about the late sister and the soldier killed by his comrades' friendly fire, and especially about herself, who she is and what she was smiling about the whole time with such tranquillity. But since during most of the flight she preferred to look out the window, as if deliberately avoiding him, it would not have been polite to interrupt her. Was the view really so fascinating, or did she think him not sober enough for conversation?

"Both."

But does the lady really believe that such a veteran drinker as he could become intoxicated during a flight of less than one hour? How many drinks did the stewardess bring him? Two? Three?

"At least five," she says, and smiles at the purplish, white-haired Briton, who sits before her naked under his bathrobe, gazing at her with admiration.

Five? Really? She counted them? Nevertheless, he did not depart the aircraft drunk.

"There was no way of knowing, since two stewards came quickly and took you in a wheelchair. Now I gather they were from this farm of yours. But what matters is that now you are completely sober, and you can apologize to me…"

To apologize to a pretty woman is a singular pleasure… but, all the same, for what?

"For giving me a calling card from this farm and telling me it was yours, although you are just a patient here."

Correct, says the Englishman, laughing heartily, he is just a patient, but a senior patient, a perennial patient, who returns here every year of his own free will for treatment, and he may thus be considered a bit of a shareholder too. But if she demands an apology, he will readily supply one. Yes, he is sorry that he misled her. He is sorry. There is nothing easier for an Englishman than to utter those words. From the moment he saw her maintain her aristocratic composure when she was detained at the departure gate, he found her attractive, and even more so during their short conversation at the end of the flight. And so, although he knew that the chances they would meet again were exceedingly slim, as she had told him that her visit to her brother-in-law would be brief, he had the notion of planting a little lure, like a hunter seeking to trap a rare animal. And in the end it succeeded, for here she is.

Daniela blushes, but smiles forgivingly.

"You are mistaken. I did not know that you were here. I did not notice that this place is the farm on the calling card you gave me. I simply came along with my brother-in-law, who was bringing a malaria patient, a young woman from the excavation team. But it is true that I did not forget you. I have been a teacher for many years, and I have trained myself to remember my students, and therefore people I meet by chance I remember as well. And when my husband isn't with me and does not demand all my attention, a unique person like you may be engraved in my memory."

To be engraved in the memory of such a lady is a great honor.

"If you want you may call it an honor…" Daniela tries to dampen the slightly sweaty excitement of the bathrobed Englishman, who is beginning to resemble a dirty old man. "But anyway, what are you doing here? You don't seem particularly ill."

That is correct, he is not actually ill, but he will be one day, and he plans to end his life with dignity. As a bachelor without children, living on a modest government pension, in England he has no chance to receive honorable care. In the municipal old-age homes, the old Englishwomen pester the elderly bachelors like him.

"What kind of work did you do?"

In more recent years he worked for British Rail, but his true career was with His Majesty's armed forces. He was too young for the world war, but when he joined up just afterward he asked to be sent to places where there was some hope of active duty, to colonies in Asia and Africa. But after India and Palestine were lost, the other colonies began to demand independence, and by the time he reached the rank of major, not a colony remained where the British Empire might rule honorably and justly without encountering much terrorism. Thus at the age of fifty, if she can imagine it, he became a train engineer for British Rail, and fifteen years ago, when he retired, he decided to return to East Africa not as a colonialist but as a patient.

"And you chose Africa over all the other places you served?"

Yes, of all the peoples of the former Empire he prefers Africans as caregivers. They are more genuine and honest than the Pakistanis or Burmese, and when they care for one's body, they do not try, as do the Indians, to steal your soul. They are modest and not suspicious, like the Arabs, or afraid that perhaps they will be afflicted by European diseases. They are introverted people, and they care for you without too much talking, like veterinarians caring for pets. It is true that the scenery here is less impressive than elsewhere on the continent, but he feels that a monotonous semiarid expanse enables one to depart from life with less anguish and more hope.

"Hope for what?"

Hope that one is not really losing anything by dying. This hope enables one to be indifferent to death, like an animal.

He speaks intimately, but with fluency, as if acting on stage. She finds it odd to be speaking so openly with a stranger, a man old enough to be her father who is nevertheless sitting in front of her wearing only a bathrobe.

"This is your standard of comparison? Animals?"

"Don't underestimate them."

"Of course not. Three years ago, when my sister was still alive, and my brother-in-law was an official chargé d'affaires, we came, my husband and I, for a visit of a few days, and the four of us went out to a nature preserve, and it was fascinating to see how they conduct themselves."

Those preserves are filled with tourists, and the animals there have begun to adapt their behavior for our gaze. But here it's a different story. Here they're in the heart of authentic nature, a place where once there was a great salt lake, and if you were to stay overnight, you would see an extraordinary spectacle. Around midnight, animals of all kinds gather here, dozens of animals large and small, who come from the far reaches of the wild to lick the salt from the dried lake bed. And they do so in silence and solidarity, neither bothering nor intimidating one another, each one licking its required dose of salt and going on its way. For this reason alone, it is worth staying here.

She shrugs. Here in Africa she is at her brother-in-law's disposal, and he determines her daily schedule. But if sugar were embedded in the basin of this lake, she too would go down for a taste; and she wouldn't wait till nightfall, but do it now, in the middle of the yellow afternoon.

"Would you?" The old Briton is astounded by such a passion for sweets in a woman who seems so levelheaded. Alas, he has no sweets to offer her. It is forbidden for the patients to keep food in their rooms. But perhaps the bottle of local liqueur stashed in his room might be considered a sweet.

Daniela is ready and eager to taste this liqueur and at the same time to have a peek at his room, since the small lobby, where she has been sitting for more than an hour, has told her nothing about what the rest of this place is like and what exactly goes on here.

But to her great surprise, the man recoils from the idea of letting her go up to his room. No, his room is no sight for a stranger's eyes, and it is also strictly forbidden to invite to one's room guests who are not mentally prepared for the visit. If she would kindly wait, he will bring the liqueur here.

Once again she is alone. In another forty-eight hours she will be in the air, and Africa will fade into memory. In Israel it is Shabbat, and if Moran is still in confinement, she hopes that Amotz is making things easier for Efrat by taking Neta and Nadi to the playground. Her mind springs into alertness and the feel of the worn-out black leather chair suddenly repels her. She puts on her shoes and goes to look out of the window. She can indeed make out a gleaming white area that might be the lake bed. Obviously it would be an incredible spectacle, seeing the animals gathered by moonlight to lick the salt they need to stay alive. But for her the spectacle is over. She'll never come back to Africa, not even if Amotz wants them to go. There are other places in the world. And if Yirmiyahu insists on ending his days here, he can arrange the shipment of the urn of his ashes to Israel himself. That is, if he even wants to be buried beside her sister.

The elevator begins to move. It halts, then moves again — whether up or down is not clear. Finally it arrives, bearing the desk clerk, who has not found her anything sweet, doubtless because he didn't try, but has brought her, as she asked, a book in English: The Holy Bible, the Old and New Testaments in one volume.

So many years have passed since she last opened a Bible. At school ceremonies selected passages from the Prophets are invariably read aloud with great feeling, mainly by girls for some reason, but she can't even remember on which shelf her Bible rests at home. Now here in this desolate plain in Tanzania, of all places, she takes the book she has known since childhood, in this edition joined altogether naturally to the Gospels and Epistles, which she has never read.

Before the desk clerk sits down to resume his archival assignment, she asks him what is taking her brother-in-law and the nurse so long. The rebellious malaria patient is still doggedly refusing to remain, he says. Maybe I should go up to convince her, Daniela suggests helpfully and turns toward the elevator. But the desk clerk springs up in a panic and blocks her path. Visitors who are not prepared may not go upstairs.

If so, perhaps there really is something here that they are afraid to expose, she thinks. She drags a chair over to the window. She has never before read the Bible in a foreign language. No translator or date are listed in the book, but from the lofty English phrases she gathers that this old-fashioned translation is the King James Version. As she starts turning its pages she immediately comes up against words like aloes and myrrh, of whose Hebrew meanings she has not a clue.

She randomly opens to 2 Samuel and reads about Amnon the malingerer, who invited Tamar to his chamber so that she might prepare two ugot—"a couple of cakes," by this translation — and she finds the prose clear and engaging. The English meter of Jeremiah's poetry seems to her stately and beautiful, and she is very pleased by the little English vocabulary test she gives herself. Now she'll try her skill with the speeches made by the friends of Job, the man who cursed the day he was born, and see if they explain the failings of the world better in English than in the difficult Hebrew she recalls from her youth.

The British patient lightly taps her on the shoulder. Now dressed in a shirt and suit, he flashes her a criminal wink and triumphantly waves a bottle containing a golden liquid. What have you found here? he asks his new friend, and she shows him the book and asks boldly which he likes better, the Old Testament or the New. He is taken aback. In two months he will be eighty, and no one has ever asked him to prefer one text over the other. Not even his priest. Christianity has taught us that the Bible is one organic whole, whose elements complement each other and flow from one to another — as in Shakespeare's plays, where King Lear fleshes out and amplifies the madness of Hamlet, and the great love of Juliet for Romeo is transmuted into the devotion of Lady Macbeth to her murderer husband.

His answer surprises her, like an extraordinary answer from a mediocre student of whom she expected little. And the colonial officer, pleased by the effect of his words, hands her a glass and carefully doles out a few experimental drops, and as these are drops, she can only lick them, and their taste is strange and definitely unfamiliar to her, but clearly sweet. She hands him back the glass and says, Let us drink, sir, I am ready.

And very slowly she drains two glasses, and after hesitating requests a third, but the Englishman, who was not prepared for such enthusiasm, which might well empty his bottle, suggests deferring the third glass; the lethal influence of the local alcohol becomes apparent only gradually, he warns her, and it's best to take a break. Meanwhile he gently takes the book from her, as if to renew his old acquaintance with it.

At this moment, Yirmiyahu appears, without Sijjin Kuang, and he is amazed to see that even in such a remote and isolated place his sister-in-law has succeeded in landing an elderly British admirer, who now introduces himself and offers a friendly drink.

But Yirmiyahu, who looks worried, declines the drink. They must take to the road. Sijjin Kuang will stay the night to help the sick woman adjust to the place, and he will now be driving. Although the distance is not great, he had best remain sharp.

"I don't understand," Daniela confronts her brother-in-law in English. "What has one to get used to here? Are there painful sights that require mental preparation? Is it because of the caregivers, or the patients? They even prevent me, a mature woman, from going upstairs, as if I were a schoolgirl."

The Englishman smiles and places a friendly hand on her shoulder. Calm down, Daniela, my dear, he says, with the familiarity of a close friend. There are too many young people here, boys and girls, and it would be imprudent and unfair to expose them.

Yirmiyahu says nothing, and when he sees that his sister-i n-law, still waiting for a clear answer, remains seated in her chair, he grabs her hand, just as if she were her sister, and pulls her to her feet. But Daniela hangs back. She takes the Bible from the Englishman and presses it to her chest.

"What book is this?"

"I asked the desk clerk for something to read, and he found me, you'll never guess, a Bible, in English, with the New Testament too."

"So what? You can leave it on the table."

"No, I want to read it a bit in the remaining days. You see things in the English that you can't in Hebrew. In the meantime nobody here will miss it, and you can return it when you come to pick up your patient. On the condition that you not burn it."

Yirmi's eyes sparkle.

"Why not burn it? Why should the source of all troubles be more immune than the newspapers? This book is where all the confusion and curses begin. This especially must be destroyed."

Daniela regards him quizzically, but still warmly.

"Here it's in English, not Hebrew."

Yirmiyahu looks affectionately at his sister-in-law.

"If it's in English, we'll give it a pardon."

"THIS IS ISRAEL," declares Moran, handing his father the keys. "Thunder and lightning and commotion, then out jumps the sun to calm everyone down. Too bad that nature isn't more cruel in this country, to force the people to fight against it instead of one another. This is winter?" He continues to embellish his observation, perhaps in order to distract them all from the fact that he arrived late and exposed his father and children to the raging thunderstorm. "In global terms, this is just a pleasant autumn."

He and Efrat are standing beside the car, and as Moran leans into the back to buckle his children into their car seats, the redheaded adjutant pops out of nowhere looking for his confined soldier and is surprised by the beauty of his wife. That's it, I have to confiscate your husband, says the adjutant to the woman studying him with mild contempt. Believe me, I could have sent him to the West Bank, to stand at roadblocks and chase wanted men, but I felt sorry for him and preferred to adjust his attitude here. What can I do, I'm a man who doesn't give up even on lost causes. And he suggests to Ya'ari to change his route and take the trans-Israel highway back to Tel Aviv. You won't be sorry; you can now get onto it near here, and even though it's a longer way around, and he had also objected to its construction because of the damage to the landscape, it really is quick and not crowded, and it's silly to keep boycotting it.

Ya'ari is pleased with the idea. It's been a while since he took the highway, and the new section is unfamiliar to him. But Moran is finding it hard to part from his wife and children, and at the last moment he remembers to talk about the office. Go and bravely defend your white queen, his father interrupts him, waving at the barracks. The elevators won't run away.

At the Ihron interchange they merge smoothly into the highway. A beep signals that the cameras have identified the car's owner as a registered toll-payer, and Ya'ari picks up speed on the well-designed road that traverses the heart of Israel. Efrat has hidden away in the trunk her wet army jacket muddied by the love-making and sits now at her father-in-law's side in a lightweight turquoise sweater that exquisitely matches her eyes. Diligently, she leafs through the road atlas she found in the glove compartment, not out of a deep interest in the geography of her homeland but evidently to escape the curious glances of the driver, ostensibly a family member but essentially a stranger.

Deep sleep has spirited the children away. The tour of the army camp, and especially the frightening wait for their parents, have dissipated in the warmth of the car, and the humming of its tires on the road. The girl's head is the first to droop, and her hand reaches forward in a gesture of saintly supplication. For a while longer, Nadi seems to wrestle with the shadow of the dead Syrian soldier he saw in the old tank, and then sleep tips his head backward too.

Ya'ari smiles into the rearview mirror at his sleeping grandchildren. You know, he says to his daughter-in-law, yesterday, when I spent time with the children, I thought I saw a new resemblance between Nadi and Daniela.

"Daniela?" Efrat turns around and peers at her son for a moment.

"Maybe not Daniela herself," he backtracks a bit, "but via Daniela to Shuli and to Eyal when he was little. You, of course, can't see that similarity, but I knew Eyal when he was Nadi's age. And last night — it was amazing — when you went to the party, and Nadi cried and carried on, suddenly this new resemblance surfaced."

Efrat again turns her head toward the backseat. The possible resemblance to Moran's cousin excites her but is also confusing. She hesitates a moment before reacting, but finally has the courage to tell her father-in-law something that even her husband does not know. In her fifth month, when it was already known that the unborn child was a boy and not another girl, without consulting Moran she wrote to Yirmi and Shuli and asked for permission to name the baby after their son. But they refused. Politely, sympathetically, but firmly. She thought she was making a gesture of consolation, then realized she was only adding to their pain.

Her pale face grows very red from the thrill of telling the father something she concealed from his son. As a gesture of support Ya'ari removes a hand from the wheel and rests it on the young woman's shoulder, not far from the little hidden tattoo. It was good that you made the gesture, and good that you understood why it was refused. Although, in their place….He does not continue, and even resists thinking what he had intended to say.

Traffic on the highway is light, and although it moves at high speed, calm nerves and good manners prevail. On the east and west sides of the multilane road two identical gas stations come into view, flanked by shops and cafés. He glances at Efrat, to see if she wants to buy something for the children, who have had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast, but now her head is flopped backward just like her son's, and her eyes are closed, as if her brief confession exhausted her. Is she really sleeping, or has she closed her eyes to break off contact? A short while ago, in the bosom of nature, did she take the liberty of shouting her joy out loud, or sigh discreetly, murmuring her pleasure? He says not a word more, but turns down the heater and picks up speed.

His daughter-in-law, like his wife, surrenders trustingly to his driving and sinks deeper into sleep. This gives him an opportunity to examine from close up just what her beauty is made of. But when her radiant eyes are closed and her dimple disappears, the Madonna-like face seems a bit gaunt, her cheekbones sharp and oversized. Only her unblemished swanlike neck, adorned by a delicate gold chain, remains alluring. Is all that beauty actually something precarious and fragile, hanging by the thread of her forceful personality?

As they head south, the skies grow bluer and clearer. Ya'ari pays attention to the road signs, especially those pointing east of the highway. Only when one gets to the heart of the country does one see how sturdy and deeply rooted are the Arab settlements, small villages that have turned into crowded towns, the minarets of their new mosques jutting upward. And as a security barrier, not very high, suddenly begins to wind alongside the road to the east, he slowly pries the road atlas from the fingers of the sleeping beauty and turns the pages to see if he is right. Yes, this is Tulkarm, old and stubborn enemy, but pastoral too.

The weight of passengers' sleep can make a driver drowsy, particularly one who did not spend the night in his own bed. So he gingerly turns on the radio, looking for some soft music. Efrat opens her eyes for a moment and closes them again. If grinding rock doesn't keep her awake at night, why should mellower music during the day?

The scenery along the Trans-Israel Highway is monotonous. Herds of bulldozers have sliced through hills, obliterated farmland, uprooted humble groves, and made the crooked straight so that the drive will be smooth, without significant rises or dips or unexpected curves. But the sun, already heading west, compensates for the bland practicality of the road. Golden winter light inflames the fringes of the clouds.

In spite of the music, Ya'ari does not feel sufficiently alert to be driving at the high speed limit, and so, though the Kesem exit toward Tel Aviv is not far off, he plucks his cell phone from its cradle and calls Nofar. To his surprise, she answers, and her voice sounds soft and friendly.

"Imma is already home?"

"No, you don't remember she's due back Monday?"

"I don't get why she needs to be in Africa for such a long time."

"What are you talking about, Nofar, it hasn't even been five days."

"Five days? Is that all? So why are you talking in such a pathetic tone of voice?"

"Because I'm calling you from a car that seems more like a dormitory. Efrat and the kids are sacked out all around me. It was family day at the army base where your brother is confined, so we saw him there, and now we're going home via the Trans-Israel."

"So I have an idea. If you're already on the fast road, why don't you keep on going to Jerusalem and hop over to see me? I'm on duty now, and I also deserve a little family day."

"To Jerusalem? Right now?"

"I mean, they told me that yesterday you looked for me in my room, so today you can find me at the hospital. Come on, Abba, don't be lazy, the road will lead you to me all by itself. Less than forty minutes and you're at Sha'arei Tzedek hospital. I miss the kids. Give me Efrati, I'll talk her into it."

"I told you, she's asleep."

"So let her sleep, and when she wakes up and asks where you took her, tell her Nofar also exists. Don't tell me you're afraid of her the way you are of Imma."

"Enough, Nofar, enough with this nonsense."

But Nofar is right. Since Efrat is still atoning for her sins in dreamy slumber, there is no need to ask her consent for the detour. Jerusalem is not far away, and although the winter day is short, there'll still be time to get back to Tel Aviv.

And so, at his daughter's command, he kidnaps his daughter-in-law and grandchildren and takes them, unconscious captives, to Jerusalem. The excitements and conflicts and loves and fears of the past twenty-four hours have so exhausted all of them that they do not sense the change in the sound of the car when it leaves the plain and begins climbing into the hills. But when they stop at the first traffic light, the boy's eyes open first, then the girl's, and finally Efrat's. You slept like the dead, he says, but does not reveal where he has brought them, leaving it to his daughter-in-law to regain her bearings. Oddly, she doesn't quickly recognize the city; only as they turn toward Mount Herzl does she look at him with amazement, as if she were still fluttering in the remnant of a dream. Before she can ask, he says yes, Jerusalem. Nofar begged to see the children, but you were asleep and I couldn't ask your approval.

Her eyes gleam with ironic amusement.

"Jerusalem? Why not."

At the entrance to Sha'arei Tzedek, Nofar is waiting, dressed in a white uniform, her dark hair pulled back in an old-fashioned coil. She is elated by the sight of her niece and nephew, and hugs and kisses them, and as usual picks up Nadi in her arms as if he were a baby. They head for the large cafeteria, and find it locked up tight. Nofar says, how could I forget that they close it on Shabbat? So Ya'ari hurries to the car and returns wobbling under the weight of the loaded cooler. Digging into it, they discover that in the morning Efrat indeed filled it with many goodies. They set up their picnic near a big window. The children intently chomp the hummus-filled pitas, and Efrat warms her hands with a mug of coffee poured from a large thermos. Nofar is content with a peeled cucumber, and Ya'ari tucks heartily into the very sandwich that at noon had been shamed in the round of no, you eat it, and tries, without much success, to get his grandchildren to talk about their military outing. To most of his leading questions, he is forced to supply his own answers, getting only vague nods when he asks, at the end, right? Then Nofar asks permission from her sister-in-law to show her father something in her new department.

En route to the trauma unit Nofar equips him with a green-colored gown and helps him put it on, and leads her father into an isolated dark room, very warm, with only one bed, where lies a young half-naked man, connected by a thicket of tubes to hanging bags and machines. His head is swathed completely in white, his two eyes blazing in the center. Nofar draws close and loudly speaks his name, and the young man slowly turns his head. Here, Nofar says gaily, meet my father. He wants to be amazed by your resurrection.

With a welter of medical detail, she spins her father the tale of this young construction worker who fell from a scaffold and was brought in actually dead, and yet has been restored to life. Right? she says in a challenging tone to her immobile patient. You wanted to fly away from the world, didn't you, but we didn't let you, right? We caught you in midflight. And the young man, his admiring eyes fixed on the girl, who teases him with great fondness, nods his bandaged head, but Nofar is not content with his confirmation. Her eyes fill with deep emotion, and she persists with the little scolding. Tell me, is it nice to run away without asking permission? In the white skull glint sunken, suffering eyes, and a broken voice emits the faint keening of a small animal. But Nofar doesn't let up, and as if the man lying here were not suspended between heaven and earth, she keeps talking to him in the tone of a veteran teacher: You have to live! You were not born so you could escape from us in the middle of life.

And she straightens the sheet covering the young man, plants a kiss on his eyelids, adjusts his urine tubes, and gestures to the visitor that they should leave the room.

In the entry hall Nadi and Neta are gleefully rolling a worn-out wheelchair and drinking chocolate milk from plastic bottles. Efrat, who has already poured herself a second cup of coffee, is methodically applying makeup to her face, mirrored in a graying window with a view of Jerusalem.

"Listen, Amotz," she says firmly to Ya'ari, as he removes the green gown and returns it to Nofar, "since you've already tricked me into coming to Jerusalem, then at least, while we're here, why don't we meet your father's Jerusalem lover."

"The lover?" Ya'ari is stunned. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Why not?" Efrat answers coolly. "I want to see what makes your family cheat."

YIRMIYAHU STARTS THE ignition, and immediately the carburetor floods. They wait a few minutes, and he tries again. Sijjin Kuang is always so eager to take the wheel and gallop through the wide open spaces, he says apologetically to his sister-in-law seated at his side, that I've lost my feel for this engine. Anyway, she has good intuitions, but believe me, she also makes mistakes.

"You know the way back from here?" asks Daniela, rather anxiously.

"In theory it's not complicated."

"And not in theory?"

"Don't worry. How far did we drive from the farm to here? Thirty or forty kilometers, on an easy road. And since you're armed with the Old Testament and even the New, you have nothing to worry about."

Again the engine balks, but Yirmiyahu persists, and after some wheezing and throat-clearing the car regains its equilibrium and moves out into the dirt road. Yirmiyahu leans forward, the better to navigate precisely, and asks his sister-in-law not to distract him with talk till they get to the first crucial intersection. Daniela shrugs, slightly insulted, and begins leafing through the Bible, and few minutes later an unanticipated fork appears in the road. Yirmiyahu turns to his sister-in-law and points left, asking for confirmation: You remember? This is the right way, yes? Daniela is flustered. You're asking me? I get lost in Tel Aviv, you want me to take responsibility in Africa? Please, you decide.

So he does and chooses the left fork and soon recognizes bits of landscape from the morning. Relieved, he starts humming a tune and picks up speed. Then he glances at the woman whose short stay in Africa has added color to her face.

"During your career did you ever teach the Bible?"

Yes, years ago she substituted for a Bible teacher who was ill, and for a week read the story of Joseph and his brothers with her class. It was easy enough.

"Joseph and his brothers? A charming tale of a whole family that settled in Africa following one brother, the administrator. The texts in Genesis are miniature stories that can be interpreted any which way. They tell of a family that is not yet a people, and in this family, the great obsession of the patriarchs is to produce as many descendants as possible, so there'll be someone to graze the sheep, but over and over they discover to their dismay that they have married women who have a serious problem getting pregnant. Once Shuli and I went to a memorial service for the father of friends of ours, and instead of talking about the father who had died they brought some sort of lecturer, an author or poet, who rebound the binding of Isaac, and then I saw how it's possible to find new ore in texts that have been mined over and over. This lecturer tried to describe what the whole story of the captive son and the big knife looked like from down below, from the point of view of the two youths who were guarding Abraham's donkey at the foot of the mountain."

It's three o'clock already, and a wind starts up across the plain, yet the air remains hazy. Sunlight strikes the windshield, revealing spatters of dead bugs.

"You have to clean this windshield once in a while," Daniela comments.

"I also noticed," says her brother-in-law, ignoring her, "that all those public lectures about the Bible are generally about nice, clear-cut subjects. Jacob and Esau, the Song of Songs, Jephthah's daughter, Samuel and Saul, David and Absalom, Jacob's love for Rachel, Cain and Abel, Samson and Delilah. They all take the easy road, avoiding the really hard stuff, the violent texts where the prophets rant and rave."

"The prophets? I don't think I ever looked at them after my matriculation exams."

"Me neither, until Eyal was killed. And then I reread them, prophet after prophet, and suddenly one day I saw the profound curse that has penetrated the genes of this people."

"After Eyal was killed you studied the prophets?"

"Only for a little while, but intensively. It all started with the Foreign Ministry's assistant director-general, a religious and cultured man, who delicately proposed to organize a minyan in our home during the seven-day shivah mourning. And because he was my superior, and I knew I'd need him if I wanted another foreign assignment, I couldn't say no. And I didn't really mind, because Shabbat fell in the middle of the shivah, which left only four mornings for prayer. And since he also agreed not to ask me to strap on phylacteries, I said, Why not? You two were staying in a hotel in Jerusalem, and Amotz, when he would come for the prayers, also got a little friendly with this man."

"His name wasn't by any chance Michaeli, or Rafaeli?"

"Rafaeli, that's right. Amazing how you remember unimportant names."

"It comes from teaching. From faculty meetings where they would seal the fate of students I had never even seen. Amotz rather liked him."

"Yes, he is a good man. Even after the shivah ended, he kept on going with the religious instruction. Very tactfully, without pressure, and most important, without the usual sentimental schmaltz. Only now are you setting forth on the journey of grief, he said to me, so allow me to suggest a few texts you aren't familiar with, perhaps you may find some insight in them.

"I mainly got from him various reprints and photocopies of articles from Modern Orthodox journals, and I would even discuss these with him, but soon enough I realized that this was not for me. The bridge between the nonbeliever and the make-believe believer is sticky and rickety. So I said to him, Listen, my friend, maybe for starters I'll just read a little Bible, and we'll take it from there.

"So that's how I started reading the Bible, from the beginning. The Book of Genesis is very nice. Forefathers, mothers, sons and their brides, brothers and sisters, rivalries and jealousies. Except it didn't seem to me that the fathers took much interest in their sons, except for Jacob and your Joseph; if they're not going to slaughter them, they banish them from their homes, or just stop caring.

"Afterward I read a little more of the Torah, the five books of Moses — how the struggles and conflicts begin between Moses and the mob that came out of Egypt with him and now long for meat with garlic and onions, instead of which they get a severe religion. These poor souls seem to sense what will soon befall them and begin to rebel against this cosmic faith, this authoritarian and demanding creed, which got pinned on this one little people. Interesting that this Rafaeli, for all his religiosity, told me that there's an audacious theory that claims that Moses didn't die a natural death but that the Israelites murdered him. I wanted to tell him, If that's so, it's too bad they didn't kill him thirty or forty years sooner, but I didn't say anything. One good thing you can say about these stories in the Torah is that their prose is clear, not overwritten or rambling. There's no deceptive double-talk as with the prophets. The Torah does have rebukes and curses, but they're concentrated in one place, and the hopes and consolations in another place. There's order in the world.

"And then I read a little of Joshua and mainly Judges. Those little wars are quite amusing, breaking out all the time in all sorts of places in the land of Israel, just like today; and accordingly in some remote town there will pop up a homegrown judge — Ehud, Gideon, Deborah, Jephthah, Samson — to do battle for a while and then disappear. True democratic rotation."

The car arrives at a new fork and stops. What's this? The driver interrupts the stream of his lecture. Where did this come from? And he shields his eyes with his hand and peers toward the horizon.

"You can't see a thing through this filthy windshield," Daniela says, and asks the driver for some water and a cloth. He removes a dirty rag from under his seat and hands her an army canteen, and she pours water on the windshield and starts scraping off the dead bugs. Yirmiyahu gets out and starts to walk down the road to the left, looking for tracks from the Land Rover from the morning, then does the same for the right fork.

"If we go the wrong way, remember this is where it started," he warns Daniela as he turns the car to the left, out of mere faith that this is the right direction. Sijjin Kuang was so involved in struggling to convince her Arab patient to stay at the sanatorium that she forgot to provide the Jews with detailed directions home.

"Nevertheless," Daniela says, smiling ironically, "it makes me happy to hear that you still think of yourself as a Jew."

"But I am peeling it off. Soon enough I will be a muzungu to the Jews."

She gives him one of her radiant looks, guaranteed to inspire trust. Over many years she has trained herself to listen calmly to the idiosyncratic opinions, some of them childish, of this man. But the ideas he has formulated in recent times have gone over the limit. Daniela is certain that if he were to find, even at his age, a new partner, her sister, too, would have been pleased.

"Yirmi, look closely, you sure you're on the right road?"

"Not certain, but I believe so. Despite those two huge trees tangled up in each other, which I don't remember from the morning."

"I actually think I do remember them."

"If so, Little Sister," he says, tapping on the wheel with self-satisfaction, "we're on the right track, and for the duration you have no choice but to listen to a synopsis of what I think of the prophets, and you'll see why supposedly awesome poetic passages make my blood boil. Because people like us, lazy secular people, who wave the flag of the ethical teachings of the prophets, don't actually read them. They remember one lovely verse, some lines that have been set to music, swords beaten into plowshares. They attack the Orthodox in the name of prophetic morality, they speak about universal justice, about courage and nonconformity — without examining too closely what this courage was for and where the nonconformity leads. Because if you look at them, you find that all of these teachings keep hammering the same nail. Who owns the justice? By what authority is it maintained? Is it universal justice, or only the justice of the God of Israel, in a package deal of loyalty? Yes, it turns out that this justice is tied to loyalty to God, and the rage is not about the welfare of widows and orphans but about unfaithfulness to God, who is basically a kind of crazed husband, jealous of his one and only wife whom he latched onto in the desert and has tormented ever since with his commandments. The great social drama is simple jealousy. And because the language is so majestic, and the rhetoric so hypnotic, we don't pay attention to what's said between the lines."

"And what is said between the lines?" Daniela takes off her shoes, pushes back the seat, and puts up her bare feet, which reach almost to the windshield.

"Between the lines and in the lines. Death, destruction, exile, punishment, more punishment, devastation, plague, and famine. Starving people eating their babies. It's true that sometimes, amid those horrible passages of rebuke phrased in such flowery language, an implausible snatch of consolation will creep in, something utopian and grandiose. Conditional consolation, annoying consolation, because it all comes down to the fire normally aimed at the people of Israel being redirected toward other nations. As if there can never be in this world a minute of genuine peace, and the axe always falls on someone.

"And this we have drunk in with our mother's milk, we've been fed it like baby food. So it's no wonder that we're all set for the next destruction that will come, yes, speedily in our own time, maybe even yearning for it, look, it's already right here, we've been hearing about it, we've read it word for word in wonderful language."

The dirt road is well packed. The Land Rover's tires ride as smoothly as if it were asphalt. The haze blurs the sunlight. The visitor takes off her sunglasses and studies the large man who so enjoys having an attentive audience for his fervid obsessions.

"You would also lecture my poor sister about all these theories?"

"Not much, because I didn't want to burden her with more gloom and doom. And soon enough reading the Bible began to nauseate me. But before I finally abandoned the book to gather dust on the shelf, I shared my thoughts with Rafaeli, the deputy director-general, and to his credit I must say he listened with great patience, like a therapist with his client, and didn't try to argue with me, but merely recommended that I drop the prophets and move on to Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, and I said to myself, Fine, let's give the Bible one more chance. So I went to the Scrolls, and it was actually in the Song of Songs that Eyal's death suddenly overwhelmed me, and I read this poetry drowning in tears."

"Death in the Song of Songs?" his sister-in-law asks with a gasp.

"Because the beauty overwhelmed me. The love… the wondrous eroticism, the descriptions of nature. And then it hit me hard what Eyal would never be able to enjoy."

"And you never returned to the Bible?"

"Never touched it again. I cut myself off from it along with all the other useless texts."

Instinctively she presses the book to her chest and looks up at a vulture perched on a treetop, spreading its broad wings.

"Did you also read Jeremiah?"

"Of course. After all, I am his namesake, tied to him from birth. And I quickly caught on that he was the sickest and most dangerous of all the prophets. An unstable man. Exasperating. Jumping from topic to topic. A professional grouch. A low-rent strategist. Don't be misled by the beautiful language, the pretty words, the metaphors and similes, the rhythm of the sentences. All these only interfere with hearing what actually lies behind them. Now, with the English translation in your hand, you can uncover all the violence and despair. And indeed if you translate it back into Hebrew, into real everyday language, the hatred and extremism will appear from behind the feathers of the peacock's tail. Try it… why not? Here's an exercise for a teacher of English. You wanted to test your vocabulary? By all means, give yourself an exam."

How strange and special, thinks Daniela. Two grown people dealing with the Bible in the middle of the African plain. I came all the way from Israel to Tanzania to translate the Bible back into Hebrew.

She opens the book, finds Jeremiah, and says, maybe I'll read it first in English. No, he says, the English will get fancy and lure you with linguistic decorations. Translate it spontaneously, a page at random, but into simple Hebrew, please, Hebrew that your children can understand.

She translates slowly, pressing her finger to the page, attempting to make herself heard over the wind that has started to howl.

"Therefore said God, the Lord of the regiments, Lord of Hosts… God of Armies. Because you say this word, then see, I'm going to turn my words in your mouth into fire, and this people into wood, and it will gobble them up. You'll see, I'll bring a nation against you from far away, O House of Israel, says God, and it's a strong nation, an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, and you won't understand what they say. Their quiver of arrows is like an open grave, they are all violent men. And they will eat up your harvest and your bread, and eat your sons and daughters, and eat your sheep and cattle, and eat up your grapes and fig trees, and with their sword they will ruin your fortified cities, which you depend on for safety. And yet, at this time, God says, I will not put an end to you. And if they ask, Why does our God do all these things to us? Then you tell them, just as you left me and served strange gods in your own land, so you will also serve foreigners in a land that is not yours."

"Oof, enough." She closes the book and puts it in the glove compartment. But Yirmiyahu is delighted by her translation.

"You see? Just a random passage, and the violence is immediately revealed. A prophecy of destruction, with relish. Disaster and death and cannibalism, and suddenly, this is typical, he panics at his own prophecy, and says, Wait, for all that, it won't be the end. But why shouldn't it be? If their sins are so great, why not finish them off once and for all? Very simple, because then there won't be anyone to prophesy to; he'll have no one to torture with his curses. He will be unemployed. And why is the foreign nation entitled to such a great victory? The simple answer: jealousy and control. Not justice, only betrayal. You worshipped other gods, so you deserve that your sons and your daughters be eaten."

Daniela feels drained. The journey is not over, and Yirmi's driving has become slow and distracted. The haze in the air is turning into a yellow fog. The ancient prophet is wearing her out with his hatreds, and the philosophizing driver with his complaints.

"But there is one marvelous passage there," Yirmi goes on, riding the crest of his speech, "in chapter forty-something there's a section in the prophecies of Jeremiah that the editor needed a lot of courage to include. The exiles in Egypt rise in protest against the prophet, who has also ended up there, and they dare to tell him to his face: 'Enough, we've heard everything you said, and we have no intention of obeying you. It's good and pleasant for us to burn incense to the goddess — who is called by a unique name, the Queen of Heaven.' The men and husbands suddenly come to the defense of their wives who burn the incense, and say to the infuriating prophet plain and simple, 'Enough, that's it, we will keep doing the pagan ritual, because when we and our wives served this Queen in Jerusalem, we were happy, we had plenty of food.' The main thing — and this is the line I find so touching — they say to Jeremiah, listen to this: 'In Jerusalem, without all your admonitions, we were good, we felt we were good, but as soon as we started listening to you and stopped burning incense for the Queen of Heaven, we lost everything, and then came the sword and the famine.' Do you hear me? You hear?"

"Of course I do, you're yelling."

"I came upon that passage simply by chance — two or three months after we buried Eyal — and I was so moved I wanted to hug those exiles in Egypt from a distance of twenty-five hundred years. People who stood up bravely against the cursing crybaby, the professional killjoy, who also inflicted his name on me."

The road has become bumpy and is suddenly blocked. The driver goes out to inspect the wheels and finds them tangled in some thick vegetation with small purple flowers. Well, he says to his sister-in-law, with all this talk about the Queen of Heaven I neglected the earth, and didn't notice that we should have arrived at the farm a while ago. But not to worry. Don't panic. We'll find the right road, we're not far away. There's a walkie-talkie in the car, and also an old pistol.

NOFAR NOW HEARS for the first time about the old man's girlfriend, and listens with great interest to her sister-in-law's description. Ya'ari is astounded how from a few random details that he dropped last night at dinner Efrat has been able to concoct a whole story of long-standing infidelity. Wonderful, says Nofar to her father. How encouraging to know that we have such a romantic and sophisticated grandfather, and really, why not go have a peek at her? Given her age, tomorrow may be too late, and we'll all be sorry for missing a good story.

"Even if we're dying to peek at her," Ya'ari says, surrendering to his daughter and daughter-in-law, "that still doesn't mean she can or wants to peek at us at this very moment."

"If she really loved Grandpa," Efrat declares confidently, "she'll also be interested in meeting his granddaughter and great-grandchildren and their mother. Tell her this is only a short visit. No more than fifteen minutes. Just to see Yoel's unique elevator. And she shouldn't put herself out."

Devorah Bennett is surprised to hear Ya'ari's voice on the phone, after all they had scheduled their meeting for tomorrow.

Then it is Ya'ari's turn to be surprised; secretly, without saying a word to him, his father promised to come to her in person, to feel the vibrations of the elevator with his very own body, and to listen to the cat.

"You didn't know about your father's visit tomorrow?" The old woman is astonished.

"Not even a hint."

"Because your father is probably afraid you won't let him make the trip. So listen to me, young man, and permit me to call you a young man even if you are a grandfather, I insist that you come along so he won't roll down my stairs."

"Don't worry, I won't leave him, not even for a minute."

And of course, it would give Devorah Bennett great pleasure to show them his father's elevator, and get a glimpse of his family.

Nofar runs to her department head for permission to be released a teeny bit early from her shift. When she returns without her nurse's gown, she looks thin and pale, but squeezes with youthful joy between the car seats of her niece and nephew. It's nearly four o'clock, and wintry Jerusalem, soon to be deprived of its Sabbath, seems to be blending religiosity and secularism into one gray experience. Ya'ari parks the car right in front of the Old Knesset, drawing on his own faith that an Orthodox mayor will not countenance violating the Sabbath by the writing of a parking ticket. Nofar and Efrat unfasten the drowsy children from their seats and zip up their coats. And Nofar, who is especially attached to her little nephew, smothers him with hugs and kisses before picking him up and carrying him across King George Street.

"Why are you carrying him?" Ya'ari scolds his daughter. "He's very heavy."

"To me he's cute and light, and he enjoys being in my arms. Right, Nadi?"

The child says nothing, but hugs his young aunt tightly.

With considerable clamor Ya'ari leads his family up the stairs of the old Jerusalem building. Nadi insists on being carried up the stairs as well. You're spoiling him, grumbles Efrat. No problem, mutters Nofar, staggering under the weight of her favorite boy.

Devorah Bennett is pleased to have a gang of young people visiting her apartment at this gray Jerusalem hour. How did you arrange to get yourself such sweet grandchildren? she teases Ya'ari, as if sweetness has never been the strong suit in his family. The children are drawn to the sprightly old lady, who gives them squares of chocolate and leads them with the rest of the group to her bedroom, to show all of them the tiny elevator that their great-grandfather invented. In the corridor between the living room and bedroom they pass the consultation room; its open door reveals a dignified, heavy-set woman sitting inside, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. The hostess introduces her to the guests: This is Mrs. Karidi, a longtime patient who has become a friend, and now instead of my taking care of her, she takes care of me. The lady exhales a big smoke ring and with the throaty laugh of a veteran smoker waves it away.

In the bedroom the doors of the closet are also open, and a small grille is pulled back, and there is the tiny home elevator, now containing a small armchair. Come, children, let's go up to the roof, the grandfather says brightly to his grandchildren, and along the way maybe you'll hear the wailing of a starving cat. Neta is afraid to go in without her mother, but Nadi has faith in his grandpa and enters the elevator with him. Ya'ari closes the grille and presses the right button. And again it starts with a strong knock, and the vibration is accompanied by the hidden wailing the whole slow way to the roof.

The frightened grandson scratches his grandfather's hand, and Ya'ari draws closer to the toddler, and the child hugs his leg. Then, still clinging to each other, they go out on the roof to see the darkening city. A cold wind blows between the old water tanks, and Ya'ari lifts the child, so he won't trip over the black cables of the satellite dishes. There's the Old Knesset, he explains, pointing at the dark building. From down in the apartment they call out to Grandpa to shut the grille, so they can bring down the elevator. Then the whole group quickly gathers on the roof, led by the old girl, wrapped in a colorful blanket. Nofar and Efrat are thrilled, as if they were standing on the roof of the world, and Nofar is sorry because new construction has blocked the view of the Old City walls, where at night they light huge Hanukkah candles on David's Citadel. How many candles tonight? asks Efrat. Tonight, Neta reminds her, we light the sixth candle. So let's light them at home, says her mother. We need to be getting back.

Night falls rapidly. The first scattered stars appear through shreds of clouds, and lights go on in the streets. The Jerusalem air is chilly but dry, and a light wind is blowing, and everyone except Nofar is dressed appropriately. Again she sweeps her nephew into her loving grip and waves him in the air, not far from the railing. Enough, really, scowls her father, this child is heavy, you'll end up spraining your back.

And suddenly the veteran patient, Mrs. Karidi, also appears on the roof with a fresh cigarette burning in her holder. Like a round boat with a lone headlight shining on its prow, she glides her full bulk between the water tanks and satellite dishes, making for the edge of the roof to get a fine view of the world. Indeed, soon her smoker's raspy voice is heard, and a hand waves from afar. Children, she calls, come see the fire. And in fact the dignified lady has discovered a breach in the curtain of new construction that hides the Old City walls, that gives them a glimpse of six splendid torches that celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah.

DANIELA GETS OUT to guide her brother-in-law as he turns the car around. We'll backtrack a bit, he says, and if we can't find the fork where we went astray, we'll wait till they get in touch with us from the farm and guide us home. Don't worry, this has also happened when Sijjin Kuang was driving, and they always found us. Anyway, I'm sure I recognize that hill across from us, I can see it from my bed. You should recognize it, too, since you've been sleeping there for four nights.

The car retraces its path, but after two kilometers or so they reach an indistinct four-way intersection where they have never been before, and Yirmi brakes, turns off the engine, and says, that's it. We'll wait here, so we don't pile one mistake on another.

And from the tool chest he takes out a rag and unwraps a large pistol, saying, I always forget how to undo the safety catch, so I don't use this very often, but if an impressive enough animal comes near us, we'll try to scare him off. He then takes out a two-way field radio and turns on its red flare. Like the gun, it is a souvenir of British times, or maybe even German, but miraculously enough, it still works.

Suddenly the radio emits a screech of chatter, and Yirmiyahu flips a switch and identifies himself with a few words of English. It's too early for them to get worried about us, he explains to his sister-in-law, but soon, when it gets dark and they see we haven't returned, somebody will be sure to make contact. Don't worry, we're really not far, and there's no danger.

"I'm not worried," his sister-in-law answers calmly, "I'm convinced that Shuli, like me, chose a reliable husband."

They sit silently in the car, as the sky grows purple. Daniela senses that her brother-in-law is in a good mood, perhaps because of the rage he vented at the prophet who gave him his name. And so she dares to turn to him softly and ask, Tell me, but only if it's not hard for you, do you know now what happened there that night with Eyali?

"Yes, I understand the whole thing," he answers simply. "That Palestinian, who gave Eyali coffee to keep him awake, knew exactly why Eyal came down from the roof, but he didn't tell anyone, mainly because it didn't occur to anyone to ask him. I knew that Eyal was always precise about time, and the watch they returned to us had also stopped at about the right time, so I was forced to sidestep the army to find out why the soldiers mistook him for their wanted man. I approached a Christian pharmacist, an Arab named Emile from East Jerusalem, an intelligent man who managed to reclaim his father's pharmacy in the western part of the city. I was one of his customers, and we became friendly, and he knew that Eyali had been killed, and I also told him about the friendly fire. So I went to him, and asked if he could help put me in touch with the Palestinian from Tulkarm, who had dodged the meeting with me and the officer.

"And about two weeks later, in exchange for a considerable sum — not for the pharmacist, who acted purely out of goodwill, but for the Palestinian, a man of about sixty, cold and suspicious, who was wary of revealing his name — we met in a greenhouse at Moshav Nitzanei Oz, where he worked as a day laborer, so he could explain to me what he saw on the roof from his vantage down below. And what happened was so simple in its stupidity, so human but also so embarrassing, that I took pity on Shuli and told her nothing. As for me, I could have banged my head against the wall from despair."

Daniela stares at him.

"My precious innocent son, dumb, civilized, the soldier who commandeers the roof of a conquered family and fills the residents with dread — is ashamed to leave behind the bucket they gave him, filled with what it was filled with, because he was afraid…"

"Afraid?"

"Afraid for his good name, his dignity in the eyes of the Palestinian family, and so he doesn't leave the bucket on the roof, and doesn't spill it from the roof, but a few minutes ahead of time he goes down with it, and not to get rid of it in some corner, but to rinse it thoroughly, to rinse it, you hear? So he can return it to the family as clean as he got it. Innocence? Consideration? Respect? Mainly stupidity. Abysmal lack of understanding about what to take risks for and what not. And so, a minute before the shooting, the Arab hears the water in the courtyard. And the soldiers lying in ambush saw not their friend coming down from the roof but rather a figure slipping into the building; why wouldn't they think this was the wanted man they've been waiting for all night?"

"And the Arab saw all this with his own eyes?"

"He didn't see a thing. He was inside the house. But the turning on of the faucet and the sound of rinsing woke him — he was sleeping lightly that night in any case — and right after that, he heard the shots, and in the morning, when the soldiers had already taken Eyali and got out of there, he found his bucket in the doorway, rinsed and clean. Here was a soldier who was ready to disobey explicit instructions so he could say, 'I too am a human being, and I am giving you back a clean bucket. I may have conquered you, but I did not contaminate you.'"

"And the Arab — was he at least touched by what Eyali did?"

"I asked myself exactly that, not at that moment, but later, when I had digested the story. Because the man told it all with a blank expression, without feeling, just the facts, and took the money and hurried back to Tulkarm, as it would soon be curfew."

"But why didn't you tell Shuli?"

"Don't you know your sister? She would have immediately blamed herself, because of the way she had brought him up, all that insane order and cleanliness of hers."

Daniela falls silent. She knows exactly what he means.

The hill that serves as their reference point gradually loses its outline and turns into a murky silhouette. A large flock of birds flaps through the soft air. Yirmiyahu takes the stretcher from the vehicle, places it on the ground and lies down. Daniela looks at the big bald man, whose eyes are closed. She wants to say something to him, but decides against it. She gets out of the car and walks a short distance away, finds a spot concealed by taller grass, takes down her pants, crouches and relieves herself slowly. And as the last drops fall she raises her eyes to the heavens and discovers the first cluster of stars shining overhead.

A sharp chirping pierces the African emptiness and quickly fades into a sob. And then a crackling, metallic voice speaking excellent English calls out, Jeremy, Jeremy, where are you? Yirmi leaps up from the stretcher to seize the connection.

"Come, Daniela," he calls to his sister-in-law as he starts the engine, "get in and see the surprise that's waiting for you."

And as they slowly make their way along the dirt road toward the murky hill, a flare shoots into the sky and spreads a canopy of yellow light. Slowly, slowly sinks the flame, and the trail of light dies down, and then another candle shoots through the darkness, and following that, a third.