Friendly Fire: A Duet

Second Candle

THIS, SAYS YA'ARI, holding his wife tight, is where we have to part, and with a pang of misgiving he hands her the passport, after checking that all the other necessary items are tucked into the plastic envelope — boarding pass for the connecting flight, return ticket to Israel, and her medical insurance certificate, to which he has taped two of her blood-pressure pills. Here, I've put everything important together in one place. All you have to do is look after your passport. And again he warns his wife not to be tempted during the long layover to leave the airport and go into the city. This time, don't forget, you're on your own, I'm not at your side, and our "ambassador" is no longer an ambassador, so if you get into trouble…

"Why get into trouble?" she protests. "I remember the city being close to the airport, and I've got more than six hours between flights."

"First of all, the city is not that close, and second, why bother? We were there three years ago and saw everything worth seeing. No, please don't scare me just as you're leaving. You haven't slept well the past few nights, and the flight is long and tiring. Set yourself up in that nice cafeteria where we parked ourselves the last time, put up your feet and give the swelling in your ankles a chance to go down, and let the time pass quietly. You can read that novel you just bought…"

"Nice cafeteria? What are you talking about? It's a depressing place. So why for your peace of mind I should be cooped up there for six hours?"

"Because it's Africa, Daniela, not Europe. Nothing is solid or clear-cut there. You could easily get lost or lose track of time."

"And I remember empty roads… not much traffic…"

"Exactly, the traffic is spotty and disorganized there. So without even realizing, you could miss your connection, and then what do we do with you? I beg of you, don't add to my worries… this whole trip is distressing and frightening as it is."

"Really, that's too much."

"Only because I love you too much."

"Love, or control? We really do need to decide at some point."

"Love in control," her husband says, smiling sadly, summarizing his life as he embraces her. In three years she'll be sixty. Since her older sister died more than a year ago, her blood pressure has gone up a bit and she has grown scattered and dreamy, but her womanliness continues to attract and fascinate him as much as she did when they first met. Yesterday, in honor of the trip, she had her hair cropped and dyed amber, and her youthful look makes him feel proud.

And so they stand, the man and his wife by the departure gate. It's Hanukkah. From the center of the glass dome, radiant in the reddish dawn, a grand menorah dangles over the terminal, and the light of its first candle flickers as if it were a real flame.

"So…," he thinks to add, "in the end you managed to avoid me… We didn't make love and I didn't get to relax before your departure."

"Shh, shh…." She presses a finger to his lips, smiling uneasily at passersby. "Careful… people can hear you, so you'd better be honest, you also didn't try too hard in the past week."

"Not so," says the husband, bitterly defending his manhood. "I wanted to, but I was no match for you. You can't escape your responsibility. And don't add insult to injury: promise me you won't go into the city. Why is six hours such a big deal to you?"

A twinkle in the traveler's pretty eyes. The connection between the lost lovemaking and the layover in Nairobi has taken her by surprise.

"All right," she hedges. "We'll see… I'll try… just stop looking for reasons to worry. If I've gone thirty-seven years without getting lost, you won't lose me this time either, and next week we'll treat ourselves to what we missed. What do you think, I'm not frustrated too? That I lack desire, the real thing?"

And before he has a chance to respond, she pulls him forcefully toward her, plants a kiss on his forehead, and disappears through the glass door. It's only for seven days, but it has been years since she left the country without him, and he is not only anxious but also amazed that she was able to get what she wanted. The two of them made a family visit to Africa three years ago, and most of today's route he knows well, but until she arrives, late at night after two flights, at her brother-in-law's in Morogoro, she will have plenty of dreamy and absent-minded hours alone.

OUTSIDE, IT'S STILL dark. The reddish dawn reflected in the terminal's glass dome was, it turns out, an optical illusion. He feels a first twinge of longing as he spots a scarf left behind on the backseat. True, he can look forward in her absence to freedom and control of his daily routine, but her surprising declaration of "real desire" revives the itch of missed opportunity.

Despite the very early hour, he knows there's no point in going home. He won't climb back into the big empty bed and get some rest but will instead be seduced by the dirty dishes left for the cleaning lady and then seek out other needless chores. For a moment he considers paying a morning visit to his father, but the Filipinos are displeased when he descends on them during the old man's ablutions. Therefore he quickly drives past his childhood home and heads for the south of the city, to the engineering design firm he inherited from his father.

The treetops tossing in the morning wind bring to mind a complaint that landed on his desk several weeks before. So he changes course and heads west toward the sea, to the recently erected Pinsker Tower. He presses the remote control to lift the parking gate and descends carefully into the belly of the building.

The thirty-story tower was completed by the end of summer, yet even at this early hour he sees very few cars parked in the gloomy cavern of the underground lot. Apartment sales must be slow; meanwhile, the building's small population of residents has already banded together to protest defects in its construction. The first winter storms brought the latest grievance: an insufferable roaring, whistling, and rumbling in the shafts of the elevators designed by Ya'ari's company, which also supervised their installation.

Indeed, as soon as he pushes open the heavy fire door separating the garage from the elevator landing, a wild wailing assaults him, as though he'd walked onto the runway of a military airfield. The previous week, one of the firm's engineers had been sent to investigate the phenomenon and had returned mystified. Are the winds being sucked in from the car park? Or are they invading from the roof? Are the anxious whistles the result of some flaw between the elevators and their counterweights, or perhaps a crack has opened in the rear stairwell and from there the shaft sucks the winds from the outside? It is conceivable that the wind came in by a less direct route, through one of the vacant apartments. A few days earlier the elevator manufacturer had seen fit to dispatch to the tower a technician specializing in the diagnosis of acoustic disturbances, but at that moment the winter retreated and folded its winds, and the silence prevented the sensitive woman from forming an opinion.

The children are afraid to ride alone in the elevators when the winds are blowing wildly, complained the head of the tenants' committee yesterday, following the resumption of the winter storms — having been provided with Ya'ari's cell phone number by the construction company and encouraged to call him directly. Babies are bursting into tears upon entering the elevator. Tears? Hard to believe, Ya'ari thinks, picturing his two little grandchildren. Can it be that bad? But he did not try to make light of the complaint nor to shirk responsibility. His professional reputation and that of his people are precious to him, and he has promised that if the noises persist, he himself will come to tilt his ear to the winds.

And so, at dawn, he keeps his word. Focused and alert, he stands silently facing the four elevators — each of which is currently stopping at a different floor of the tower — bringing his seasoned intuition to bear on the violent wailing of the winds. Finally he calls for one. The closest descends and opens its doors. He sends it one flight up, then presses the button again to see if a more distant cab responds or if the first one returns after concluding its upward mission. Yes, the control panel is properly programmed: the faraway elevators stay put and the nearest one comes back. There is no superfluous movement between floors; energy is being properly conserved.

Now he enters the car and with the master key detaches it from the group system and bends it to his will. This way he can navigate its movements from floor to floor and try to identify the point where the wind flows in. He crouches against the rear wall mirror, leaning on his own reflection, and as the elevator slowly climbs he listens to the howling outside the steel cage. Here the roaring he heard underground is muted, a growl of stifled fury that at certain floors shifts into mournful sobbing. Without question, within this shaft that was meant to be completely sealed off from the outside world swirl uninvited spirits. But are they also breaking into the cars? Have his elevators let him down? For Ya'ari, over the objections of the engineers at his firm who preferred Finnish or Chinese elevators — which might actually have proven, bottom line, to be cheaper — had for once insisted on using an Israeli model.

Before he orders the technicians to shut down the elevators and examine the shaft, there is still time to summon to the tower not only the acoustic expert with her sensitive ear, but also a fresh and creative intelligence. Ya'ari is thinking of his son, who joined the business three years ago and has demonstrated an ingenuity appreciated by his father and coworkers alike.

He rides to the top floor, and before he emerges from the elevator, he cancels his control and returns it to the main system. Here, on the thirtieth floor, all is silent. It would seem from the plastic wrapping on the door that a buyer for the deluxe penthouse has yet to be found. He enters the machine room opposite; to his surprise he hears neither growl nor whistle, only the precise, pleasant whoosh of the European cables, which now begin to stir as the earliest-rising tenants leave the building. He edges between the huge motors and walks out onto the tiny iron balcony, which the building's architect opposed but Ya'ari insisted upon, so that maintenance technicians could flee into the fresh air in the event of fire.

Slovenly, dark clouds enfold Tel Aviv. The Pinsker Tower has sprung up in the midst of a quiet, low-rise urban environment and thus commands a wide view and can even conduct a respectable dialogue with the downtown skyscrapers that sparkle in the grayish southeast.

The yellow brushstrokes now visible on the horizon are no trick of the light, and the passenger plane silently gaining altitude is also very real. No, thinks Ya'ari, checking his watch, it's not her plane yet. Even barring a delay, she won't take off for another ten minutes, and there's no point waiting for her in the freezing cold, since there is no way of knowing which plane is hers.

But his love for his wife rivets him to the little balcony. Her journey has begun and can't be stopped, but he can watch over her from afar. In principle he could have gone with her, but it wasn't his workload alone that made him stay behind. Knowing her so well, he understood that his presence would prevent her from fulfilling her desire to focus on the loss of her sister and to resurrect, with the help of the bereaved husband, the sweet sorrow of childhood memories in which he, Ya'ari, had played no part. He knew that even if he were to sit quietly with his wife and brother-in-law and not take part in the conversation, she would feel that he was insufficiently interested in the morsels of distant memory, of her sister or even of herself, that she hoped to coax from a man who had known her as a child, back when he was a young soldier soon to be discharged who came to the house as her sister's first and final suitor.

He leans with his full weight upon the iron railing. As a veteran elevator expert, he is unaffected by dizzying heights, but he does wonder what has become of the winds that ought to be stroking his face.

AS SHE DEPARTS the duty-free shop, she is surprised to hear her name called on the public-address system and is struck anew by the recognition that on this trip there's no one at her side to keep track of time. All she'd wanted to do was buy some lipstick that her housekeeper had asked for, and when she couldn't find it at the cosmetics counter she had turned to leave, but then one of the older saleswomen, sensing the disappointment of a nice lady her own age, had talked her into buying another brand in a similar shade and of equal quality.

Indeed, she is aware that since her sister died she has been increasingly drawn to older women, as if she might find in them the image of her loved one. And these women, for their part, respond to her attentiveness and slightly abashed, inviting sympathy — which is why she gets stuck in endless conversations with teachers at her school and with women met by chance, in cafés, the doctor's waiting room, the beauty parlor, and, of course, shops — such as this friendly saleslady who began to talk about her own life, managing at the same time to cajole her patient listener to add to her purchase (at a significant discount) a fancy face cream guaranteed to rejuvenate her dry skin.

And the passage of time must be apparent in her face if the young steward bounding toward her identifies her as the tardy passenger and nabs her without asking her name, tears the stub from her boarding pass, and insists on escorting her to the plane, as if it were in her power to escape the sealed sleeve. It's okay, he says, his arm around this woman who could be his mother, the main thing is you're on board, and he hands her over, as if she were a confused child, to the stewardess, who takes her carry-on bag, stuffs it into an overhead bin, and shows her to her seat. "I was sure you weren't going to make it," confides the young man who hesitantly rises from her window seat under the stern eye of the stewardess.

She blushes, but won't give up her window. Even though she usually naps on planes or is immersed in a book and rarely looks out at earth or sky, being by a window is important to her, and even more so this time, with no husband beside her. As the doors are locked, and the engines rumble, and the flight becomes an irreversible reality, a wrinkle of worry furrows her tranquil brow. Is this trip necessary? Will it be helpful? Will Yirmi, her brother-in-law, help her revive the pain that has dulled over the past year? She doesn't lack consolation. Her friends and loved ones still remember to say something nice now and then about her sister, and her husband and family try to lift her spirits. But it's not consolation she wants. On the contrary, she is looking for precise words, forgotten facts — or maybe new ones — that will inflame her pain and grief over her big sister, whose death has claimed a portion of her own youth. Yes, she has a clear desire to breathe life into her loss and crack open the crust of forgetfulness that has begun to envelop her. She longs to spend a few days in the company of a man she has known since childhood, whose love for and devotion to her sister, she is certain, were no less strong than her own.

At the request of the concerned-looking stewardess, she fastens her seat belt, takes the newspaper that is offered her, and adds a request. If possible, at the end of the flight, could the stewardess save her some of the Hebrew newspapers and magazines that have been left on board? For out there deep in the Syrian-African Rift is an Israeli who would surely love to have them.

YA'ARI IS STILL standing on the tiny balcony, shivering, hypnotized by the sunrise that expands the broad horizon and highlights the passenger planes that take off from the airport one after another, bound westward for the sea. His discerning eye has already picked out one deviant craft that is gracefully bending to the south. It's her, he thinks excitedly, as though his wife herself were steering it, and he narrows his gaze to follow the dot till it vanishes in the distance. Then he relaxes. Yes, his wife will arrive in peace and return in peace. And he leaves the tiny balcony, locks the engine room, and calls the elevator to take him down to the car park.

On her own? On her own? Brother-in-law Yirmiyahu had been astounded when Ya'ari had phoned with the round-trip flight times of his wife's holiday visit. On her own? he repeated. Yes, on her own, said Ya'ari, rising to defend his wife's honor, why shouldn't she? Of course she's capable, the warm, familiar voice from Dar es Salaam said with a chuckle, and if it's for seven days and not more, she might even survive here without you. But can you handle it? Can you accept the separation and not change your mind at the last minute and join her?

His brother-in-law certainly knew him well — perhaps from knowing himself. Until two weeks prior to the trip, Ya'ari had vacillated as to whether he should allow Daniela to travel alone to Africa even to see a close relative, almost an older brother, a responsible and trustworthy individual, and also a man stricken by fate more than once in recent years.

Ya'ari, unlike his family and friends, was not so ready to condemn the man who hadn't waited for the end of the thirty-day mourning period for his wife, but instead, after sitting shivah for a week, had rushed back to his post as chargé d'affaires of the Israeli economic mission in Tanzania. Half a year after Yirmi's return to East Africa, it was decided in Jerusalem, whether due to budget cuts or other considerations, to eliminate the small office and ease into retirement the widowed diplomat, who apart from a security man and two local employees had no one working with him. In truth, more than once Yirmi himself had joked to relatives and friends about the pointlessness of his little outpost, which sometimes seemed to have been invented especially for him — an overdue bonus for a veteran worker in the administrative wing of the Foreign Ministry whose retirement had been delayed, as provided by law, because he had lost a son in the army. Therefore he accepted without rancor the elimination of his position, though it came so soon after his wife's death. And it was only natural that on his final return from Africa, after giving notice to the tenants renting his Jerusalem apartment, he had allowed himself a little detour, family time with his daughter and her husband, still toiling toward their academic degrees in the United States.

But America did not appeal to the new pensioner, and the visit was cut short. Without consultation — which in any case he owed to no one — or any prior warning, he surprised his relatives and friends by extending for two years his tenants' lease in Jerusalem and returning to Africa, not to his former location but to a place two hundred kilometers southwest of Morogoro, near the Syrian-African Rift, to take a vaguely defined administrative position with an anthropological research team.

Why not? he apologized to his brother- and sister-in-law by phone from Dar es Salaam, en route to the new place. Why hurry back to Israel? Who really needs me there? Not even you. After all, I'm in Jerusalem and you're in Tel Aviv. You're busy with work, your kids, now your grandchildren too, and I'm free as a bird, without a wife or a career. You have no money worries; on the contrary, you worry how to spend your money, and I've got only the mediocre pension of a government worker, because we made over our "friendly fire" stipend to support our perennial doctoral students. Tell me honestly, why should I not take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to save a little money for my old age, before the inevitable collapse of my body or soul? Am I no less entitled than old Ya'ari to be cared for, if not by a Filipino couple, by at least one quiet and devoted Filipino to push my wheelchair in the park? Here in Africa living is cheap, and with the research team I get free room and board, and they'll pay me a decent wage for administrative duties and some minor bookkeeping. And meanwhile from Jerusalem my rent comes in every month, and the tenants even fix the place up at their own expense. Look, they replaced the stained kitchen counter, repaired cracks and ancient holes in the walls, and replastered the entire apartment. They've also promised to dust all the books and rearrange them by subject. So what's the hurry? Is there a chance or danger that the country will run away or disappear? Sometimes it seems you forget that you'll always be a few years younger than I, and you'll still find time to travel to new places, but I won't have many more opportunities to take in foreign experiences like Africa, of which, believe me, I haven't yet had my fill. So, please, to whom do I owe anything here? Would it not be pathetic for a man like me, already pushing seventy, in his first year of bereavement, to start a relationship with some new woman for whom I could have neither desire nor passion? After all, who knows better than you that my wife and I shared a love that was every bit as great as yours?

And therefore, my dears, and Daniela especially, let go of your sense of responsibility and stop worrying. I won't disappear. And if you still feel that you miss me and you can't get over your longing, come for a short visit, although you were here three years ago and nothing has changed since then and there's nothing new to see.

"It's totally his right," was Ya'ari's verdict, though Yirmi's sudden decision continued to unsettle Daniela. "None of us is entitled to judge him."

THE FULL FORCE of her fellow passenger's slumber is now directed her way. All her attempts to shrink into her seat and shake off the young head yearning to lean on her shoulder are futile. This man — maybe he partied last night, counting on a chance to sleep it off on the plane — is now avenging in his sleep the loss of his stolen window and also looking for a bed, not caring if that bed is the shoulder of a woman more than twenty years his senior, with two grandchildren, who will soon enough take out their photos to draw comfort from their sweet faces. Now she understands the weight of the responsibility she took on when electing to travel alone. Her husband's controlling, protective love has spoiled her, anesthetized her own sense of reality. Especially on trips, when he carries her travel documents and navigates unfamiliar roads and shifting conditions, so that in planes and trains and cars and hotels she coasts in a safe bubble while at her side is an alert and attentive person, who always has the correct foreign currency and the necessary information. Nor is there any reason for her to feel grateful for his devotion and concern, for she knows that by her very existence, even when she sleeps, she repays him fully for all his services.

But now she is on her way to Africa with no one to organize the world around her. And the stewardess passes by and notices the insolent sleeper, yet doesn't offer to help, as if this trespasser she'd earlier evicted from the window seat were now under her protection. So Daniela has no alternative but to wake the fellow herself and return him politely but firmly to his territory. The young man curls up a bit and mumbles an apology, though apparently only in his dream, for his eyes immediately close again, and his head droops.

She folds up the newspaper and places it for safekeeping in the bag from the duty-free shop, alongside the lipstick and the skin cream that according to the chatty saleswoman would work wonders on her face. Then she extracts from her purse the photo album of her two grandchildren, whom she still swaddles in the adoration of a new grandmother. She lingers a long time on each picture, as if deciphering an esoteric text. Her older granddaughter, age five, is the image of her mother, Daniela's pretty daughter-in-law, but the child's blue eyes radiate innocence and wonder, nothing like her mother's distant, alienated look. She dwells more on photos of her grandson, a restless, agitated two-year-old always shown gripped tight by his father or mother or harnessed into a high chair or stroller. It's too early to tell whom he'll choose to resemble. Although his round face and the slight crease in his eyelids bring vaguely to mind the features of her son, or maybe even her husband, she's not willing to leave it at that. In photo after photo she strains to make out in this grandson signs of resemblance to herself as well. And since the flight is long and she will not, despite her fatigue, let herself doze off beside the border-jumping stranger, she has more than enough time at her disposal to discover what she hopes to find.

THE ELEVATOR BEGINS its slow descent from the thirtieth floor, but stops immediately at the twenty-ninth and opens its doors. A woman clad in spandex and crowned by a headset is startled to find someone coming down from the thirtieth floor at such an early hour. At first she continues to groove on her music while sizing up her fellow traveler with a penetrating gaze, but as the elevator slows down and approaches the garage, she can't hold back and pulls off her earphones.

"Don't tell me the penthouse has been sold," she says peevishly, as if the sale of the luxury apartment, which she naturally craved but could not afford, were a small personal defeat.

"The penthouse?" Ya'ari answers, smiling. "I wouldn't know. I don't live here. I came to check out the complaints about your winds."

"Our winds?" the woman says, brightening. "Maybe you can actually explain to me what's going on here? They promised state-of-the-art construction, a luxury building, we paid a lot of money, and with the first little bit of winter, this insane orchestra starts to run wild — do you hear it?"

"Of course."

They step out onto the elevator landing. The roaring gets louder. He shrugs and turns to leave, but the athletic tenant won't let him go: "So what are you? A wind expert?"

"Not really, but I was responsible for the planning of these elevators."

"So what went wrong in your calculations?"

"Mine? Why mine? It could have been someone else's. It needs to be checked out."

And Ya'ari gets the feeling that it's not the howling wind that is now bothering the energetic woman, but his very existence. Who is he exactly? And why? So before he breaks off contact and goes looking for his car in the twilit garage, he adds, almost in passing, "Don't worry. We'll find the cause of the winds and get them under control. My engineers will get to the bottom of it." And he nods good-bye.

But the woman persists. She feels entitled to a precise definition of this well-built man of more than sixty whose modish cropped hair is flecked with white. His dark eyes radiate confidence; his windbreaker, unfashionable and threadbare, adds a simple, unaffected touch.

"'My engineers?'" she repeats, in the quarrelsome tone that seems natural to her. "How many do you have altogether?"

"Ten or twelve," he answers quietly. "Depends how you count them." Then he disappears into the shadows of the garage. He glances at his watch. His wife has not even left the territorial waters of Israel and already his free-floating love is attracting strangers.

EVEN THOUGH HER husband is not at her side to safeguard her sleep in this unfamiliar place, her eyelashes drift downward, the photo album falls to her feet, and the engine noise insulates the intimacy of her experience. Then the warm aroma of something freshly baked rouses her, she opens her eyes and sees the young man in the next seat hungrily consuming his breakfast.

"Real desire," she had tossed at her husband almost offhandedly as they were about to part, and it's still not clear to her what she'd had in mind, what compelled her to say it at the last minute. Was it to hurt him for not insisting on coming with her, even though she really had wanted to go alone, or was it to strengthen his longing for her, leaving him with hopes for her return? Yes, he's right. She was responsible for his frustration. He wanted to, he tried, but she, despite her willingness to give him the pleasure he craved, hadn't considered it quite fair for him to be satisfied while her own desire was blocked by anxiety over the trip, and in any case she had never found sex so important, either in her youth or in maturity, and certainly not now, as she ripens into the third phase of her life, yet she knows that her husband's love needs to be requited more often. It's just that she's not always able to focus her energies at the expense of her own desires and the need to be good to herself.

She looks out the window. While she was sleeping the clouds broke into soft cottony tufts, and in the light of day she sees the desert plain kissing the gulf. Is this Africa? From her visit three years before, she remembers the arresting redness of the soil and the Africans wrapped in colorful fabrics walking upon it with barefoot grace. From the window of her brother-in-law's office, adjacent to the apartment where he housed them in violation of the rules — not only to save the cost of a hotel but also so they'd be together the whole time — she once saw her sister, early in the morning, buying milk and cheese from a plump African woman wearing a headdress with a flamboyant green feather. Daniela's heart reaches out now to her sister's slender silhouette, wrapped in an old woolen shawl she remembers from their parents' home.

The photo album of her grandchildren has made its way while she slept to the feet of her neighbor, who is now unwittingly stepping on it. She politely asks him to pick it up; he apologizes, saying that he hadn't noticed. The stewardess, who is already clearing away empty trays, asks whether she would still like her breakfast, and after a moment's uncertainty she decides not to decline. But when she removes the aluminum cover from the main course and tastes the first bite, she feels a wave of nausea, like the ones she felt so many years ago at the beginnings of her pregnancies. Her husband is always ready and eager to finish off her leftovers, indeed expecting that his wife will always leave him something of hers, and so even when she wants to clean her plate, she restrains herself and leaves him something symbolic, as a concrete expression of her fidelity. But now there is no one to rescue her from this repellent meal. And she senses the gaze that lingers on her abandoned knife and fork. Would it be a gesture of friendship to offer a total stranger food she has already tasted? After all, if she were younger, perhaps a young man would try to get to know her over such a meal. She offers him the tray politely and cordially. The young man hesitates and blushes. He seems like a well-brought-up fellow who does not eat from the plate of strangers.

"Why not eat it yourself? It's excellent…"

"Please take it." And giving him no time for second thoughts, with a sure motherly hand she calmly shoves the tray his way before the stewardess can pounce and remove it to her cart.

The young passenger grins with embarrassment, but the hunger of youth gets the best of him, and with sheepish care he wipes with a napkin the fork that has lately been in her mouth and plunges the knife into the omelet. She nods encouragingly, but does not want to commit herself to a chat occasioned by the odd kindness she has forced on him, and she therefore gathers up the newspaper that blankets her feet and begins to flip from pictures to text.

THE MAIN ENTRANCE to the design firm is unlocked. Someone has arrived before him. His seventy-five-year-old accountant, who worked with his father for many years, is drinking coffee and enjoying a croissant, his face illuminated by the glow of the news he reads on the computer screen. A year ago, Ya'ari brought him out of retirement and back to active duty to assist in the expansion of the business and compliance with new tax regulations. The expensioner, unwilling to give up his afternoon nap, comes early to the office and disappears before twelve. Ya'ari is not sure that his productivity warrants the handsome salary he earns on top of his pension, but because the man remains loyal to Ya'ari's invalid father and now and then goes to play chess with him and keep him abreast of goings-on at the office, it's convenient to have him on the staff.

"What got you out of bed?" The accountant gathers the pastry crumbs from his pants and swallows them.

With nonchalant pride, Ya'ari tells of Daniela flying off that morning to her brother-in-law in Africa.

"To that consul?"

"Actually just a chargé d'affaires, and now not even that. Half a year after his wife died, they closed the mission for lack of funding and they retired him. But because living is so cheap in Africa, he decided to stay there, and now he does the bookkeeping for some research dig so he can build up his savings for old age. After all, in the Foreign Ministry they would never consider taking someone back out of retirement…"

But the pensioner is oblivious to the boss's subtle jab, so confident is he of his indispensability.

"What are they digging for?" he persists.

Ya'ari doesn't know exactly what his brother-in-law's team is digging for. When his wife gets back in a week, she will tell all.

The accountant eyes his employer a bit suspiciously. He still thinks of Ya'ari as the high school student who would come to the office after class to try out the new electric typewriter.

"You always travel together, so what happened this time? You weren't afraid to let your wife travel alone, never mind to Africa?"

Ya'ari is a little uneasy. The intimate tone bothers him, but since his father keeps his old employee up to date on family matters, he finds himself patiently explaining the reason for the rare separation. Daniela could take advantage of the Hanukkah break at her school, but for him it was hard to get away from the office, this week in particular when decisions needed to be made about changes in the Defense Ministry facility. Besides, it's not clear that Moran will be able to get out of his army reserve duty. Most important, his wife will not be alone there for a minute. Their brother-in-law will be with her and look after her the whole time.

"How old is your brother-in-law? Seventy? Older?"

"Something like that."

It turns out that Ya'ari's father talks about Yirmi now and then, with affection and sadness. But the accountant only met him once, at Ya'ari's wedding.

"At my wedding?" Ya'ari is amazed. "Thirty-seven years ago? You were there?"

Why not? The accountant was invited to the wedding along with other employees of the firm. And from that celebration he remembers the tall man who danced energetically all night with the two sisters…

"Yes, there was a natural joy in him, until the blow came…" Ya'ari mumbles, and goes into his office, which has shrunk during the firm's recent expansion — a process which involved tearing down their floor's inner walls and turning it all into one space. Only Ya'ari did not relinquish his private space, because this is where his father once sat and because he loves the view: a window on the backyard framing a big tree whose branches in recent years have intertwined with an unidentified plant that in springtime produces a riot of red flowers. He considers whether it may not be too early to phone his son and ask him to hop over to the tower on his way to the office and listen to the roaring winds. The fine line between a father's right and an employer's, which was clear between him and his own father, hasn't yet been fully defined between them, and his son has become preoccupied since the birth of the second grandchild, a moody boy who requires special attention and frequent visits to doctors. But because it seems to him that his son, too, has been unsettled by the idea of his mother heading off alone to Africa, he decides to call him now, if only to set his mind at ease.

"Hey, habibi," he says, when his sleepy son picks up, "I hope I didn't wake you. I just wanted to let you know Imma has taken off, but she promised to stay at the Nairobi airport until the connecting flight. So for the time being we can relax and hope the day will go smoothly."

SHORTLY BEFORE THEY land, the stewardess hands her a bag bulging with Israeli newspapers. "Ah," Daniela exclaims, "how nice of you not to forget, but why is the package so heavy? We only have three newspapers."

"I don't know," the stewardess apologizes. "I collected everything. Also the financial supplements and sports, want ads and real estate; I didn't know what you wanted for your Israeli and what you didn't."

"No problem… thank you… I'll find room for it."

And it is her hungry young neighbor who crams the bundle into her suitcase and helps her wheel it to the bus taking the travelers to the terminal. Here, he jokes, I've already paid you back for the meal you gave me. And with laughing eyes she says, you see, it wasn't for nothing that I strengthened you with an extra meal. Then the young man finally allows himself to express interest in the purpose of the trip of this genial older woman, and she tells him about her brother-in-law, who used to be some sort of chargé d'affaires, but doesn't get around to mentioning the death of her sister, because there is someone excitedly pushing toward her from the other end of the bus, calling out: Teacher, I don't believe it, is it you? In Africa?

This large, red-headed woman, no longer young, was her student long ago. For many years she has been living in Nairobi with her husband, a representative of a big construction company, but in all that time she has never forgotten the young teacher of English who managed so enjoyably to instill in her a knowledge of that all-important language. You won't believe it, chatters her former pupil, who looks not much younger than Daniela, I still haven't forgotten King Lear, which you taught us with patience and love. And back then English for us really was a foreign language and wasn't easy. When did you stop teaching? I haven't stopped, Daniela says, smiling wearily. I still teach in the very same school; I'm not quite as old as you think. No, God forbid, says the woman, embarrassed, I didn't mean that, they just say that teaching burns people out fast. But if you still have the energy and passion for Shakespeare, more power to you…

Daniela laughs. No, they removed Shakespeare from the curriculum a long time ago and replaced him with American short stories. But in recent years she hasn't been preparing students for the matriculation exams, but teaching in the lower grades. Lower grades? Why? There were some discipline problems with the older students. With you? Discipline problems? Her old student is amazed. We not only loved you, she says, we were afraid of you. It's true, smiles Daniela, who at times sensed her students' fear. But what can you do? Since my older sister's death I've become a bit slow and introspective, and there are students who take advantage.

Now her old student looks genuinely pained. But it's only temporary, she suggests, trying to console the teacher, who is not asking for consolation. Surely you'll go back to teaching the higher grades. Could be, Daniela replies, rolling her bag from the bus to the terminal. For the moment it suits me. It's easier and less time-consuming to correct the younger ones' exams.

When her former student, who herself has lately become a young grandmother, realizes that Daniela is headed not for passport control but rather toward the dreary transit lounge, where she is to wait more than six hours for her next flight, she urges her to go through the passport line now and spend the layover at her house. She has a nice big house, with a pleasant, quiet living room. True, the house is away from the city center, but she'll make sure her husband sends his driver to get her back to the airport in time.

Daniela hesitates. She really needs a rest, and the woman seems efficient and reliable. But the promise she made to her husband not to leave the airport silences her. If, God forbid, there should be a foul-up, some unexpected delay, how could she justify violating a promise, even one extorted from her at the last minute? Ever since her sister's death, his fears for her safety have grown more intense.

She looks at her student, now locating in her memory the flaming red hair. Really, why not go rest at her place? After all, what could happen? This is a responsible woman who's been living here a good many years and will surely take care to get her back in time for her flight. She looks down the hall leading to the transit lounge, which overflows with waiting Africans and their children, who are racing around among bundles and baskets. Spending six hours amid this multitude will not be easy. But it would be harder still to break her promise to Ya'ari. Does he know things about her that she doesn't see in herself? An increased absent-mindedness, a distracted depression that could lead her astray? The way she lost track of time in the duty-free shop still bothers her. True, she had wanted to make this trip alone, yet she had not believed that her husband would not insist at the last minute on going with her. So even if the promise she made to him now seems annoying and unnecessary, can she break it?

It's all right, she says regretfully to the woman, who has already steered her toward passport control. Six hours is long, but not impossibly so. Best not to burden your husband. I'll find myself some quiet corner; I bought a novel this morning at the airport, so the time should pass quickly.

And to the great dismay of her old student, she heads for the transit hall, wheeling her suitcase between the baskets and bundles of other passengers, looking for the cafeteria where three years ago she waited with her husband.

It's still there, and though as unattractive as ever, it is no longer gloomy. The place has been expanded with added tables and chairs, and the walls are decorated with colorful posters advertising hotels and restaurants in the city. Even as she wonders where she'll find that quiet corner in which to pass the long hours, she catches the eye of a waiter, who opens a folding table for her. In the corner, she points, the corner please, I'll be here a very long time.

Now she regrets having passed up the airplane meal, and so she orders a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and opens the novel. She chose it with no prior knowledge, purely by its name and cover illustration. But because it was written by a woman, naturally the main character will be a woman. Admittedly, Daniela is not always comfortable with women's novels. In general, the heroines don't like themselves much, making it hard for the reader to identify with them, and without that identification, no matter how smooth the writing and well-made the plot, the time won't go quickly.

She reads the long, closely printed blurb on the back cover. The editor promises the readers of this novel a dramatic reversal. An elusive secret only implied at the outset will by the end turn everything upside down. So the reading will not be simple; it will require concentration, and that's not going to be easy with two African youths standing near her table and staring at her. On the previous visit, at a table near this one, she waited with her husband for an evening flight back to Israel. That wait had lasted only an hour and a half, and with her husband by her side, attentive to her every word, the time passed quickly. She remembers that despite the anticipation of going home, and a satisfying visit with her sister and brother-in-law to think about, sadness overcame her. Something must have told her that this separation from her sister would be a long one, but she could hardly have foreseen that less than two years later a sudden heart attack would take her sister from the world in an instant, and her brother-in-law would bring back to Israel not a coffin but only an earthenware jug filled with ashes. What's the matter? he would argue to the hushed astonishment of his relatives, none of us, after all, believes in the resurrection of the dead.

YA'ARI SHIFTS WITH finesse from the role of concerned father to the role of employer, asking whether Moran's release from army duty has been confirmed.

"It'll be fine, Abba, don't worry."

"When's it supposed to start, your reserve duty?"

"It started already. Yesterday."

"And you have a release? You've covered?"

"Nobody can give me an official release. I'm just ignoring it."

"But why don't you explain to them that this is a critical week at work, with many important decisions…"

"They don't need explanations. They've got them from everybody and his brother. Better just to keep quiet. Even if they discover I'm missing, the adjutant is a friend of mine; we were in officers' training together."

"So did you at least tell this adjutant?"

"No. If I tell him, he'll have to order me to come in. Best just to ignore the order. Like last time. I didn't show up, and nobody noticed. They have enough soldiers and officers."

"And this time, too?"

"I'm sure of it."

"We have those meetings coming up at the Defense Ministry. I'm sure that if you told them about the Defense Ministry, they'd free you up."

"The Defense Ministry impresses nobody. Every dropout has a fantastic excuse. Don't worry, it'll be fine. I'm here, with you."

"You know, because I wasn't sure you'd be free, I couldn't go on the trip with Imma."

"And I thought it was because she wanted to be there alone."

"That, too. Where's your unit going?"

"West Bank, but not too deep inside."

"Maybe you can cook up another excuse?"

"Such as?"

"A matter of conscience… conscientious objection… after all, your cousin…"

"Enough, Abba, I'm not going to masquerade as something I'm not. This army is always in flux, it's unfocused and aimless. There are surplus soldiers everywhere. Nobody'll notice that I didn't show up."

"But this adjutant, your friend…"

"Even if he notices, he won't bat an eyelash."

"I'll take your word for it. You know how crucial you're going to be to me in the coming days. So on the way over here, go down to the Pinsker Tower and listen to the wailing winds. The tenants are livid, and rightly so. I was there this morning, and the roaring is enough to drive you mad. I have a couple of theories about what exactly is going on, but I won't say a word till I get your opinion. And you haven't forgotten the noon meeting at the new site?"

"I haven't forgotten."

"Now what about Nadi, is he a little calmer at night?"

"Sometimes."

"Last night?"

"So-so. Maybe before preschool I'll take him to the clinic. Are you coming over tonight to light candles with the kids?"

"Not tonight. In the late afternoon I'll light them with Grandpa. I haven't seen him for two days. From there I'll go home. I slept maybe three hours last night. But we'll have plenty more candles to light before your mother gets back."

Through the big doorway, engineers and draftsmen, technicians and secretaries pour into the office, and their computer screens light up one by one. People warm their hands on coffee mugs and enter Ya'ari's office to say hello and show him sketches. Some years back, Ya'ari lost direct touch with the latest design technologies and the specifications of the elevators planned by his firm, but he can still suggest lines of thinking to his employees and judge the quality of their work.

The sunlight comes and goes and a soft rain continues to fall, but outside the window the branches on his tree are still. The morning's storm has quieted down, and he fears that his son will listen in vain for the moaning of the winds.

The phone rings and the secretary brings the day's mail, but Ya'ari's thoughts are with the beloved passenger. Soon the long layover in Nairobi will begin, and although he is certain she will not break her promise and go into the city, he feels sorry that she'll be sitting alone for six long hours in that crowded and unpleasant restaurant. It would be better if she could find herself a nice quiet corner near the departure gate. In his mind he strides ahead of her through the airport, recalling its layout to help her find the right spot, someplace not too isolated. And he hopes that her pleasant disposition and friendly smile will engage a fellow passenger who is waiting too. A man or a woman, Israeli or European, even a local African, someone who will watch over the internal logic of her movements.

BUT SHE HAS not sought out a small, quiet corner; instead, she has tried to improve her seating arrangement in the big cafeteria. A white-haired man helped her relocate her little table to a more remote corner, and after a waiter set down her sandwich and coffee, she wandered among the tables and found two more chairs, set her rolling suitcase and purse on one of them and put her feet up on the other, to rest them thoroughly and restore her ankles to their normal shape. When she opened her suitcase, she was tempted at first by the bundle of Israeli newspapers, but instead, with a small sigh and few expectations, took out the new novel she had bought at the airport.

And so, amid the racket of cups and dishes, the babble of unintelligible languages, and smells of coffee and roasted meat begins an encounter between an older woman, who is an experienced reader, with a fictional woman of thirty or so who from the first page is prone to self-pity. In a feverish but confusing monologue, she seeks the reader's sympathy for her unspecified plight. But what exactly am I supposed to care about or identify with, complains the traveler, if the author has no sympathy with her own character? Out of respect for the written word she keeps turning pages, while now and then glancing at her ankles, propped on the chair as if on the sofa back home. Eventually she kicks off one shoe and then the other, and contentedly rubs together the soles of her small feet.

The windows of the coffee shop are narrow and filthy, and the light that filters through is insufficient. The noise and smells also inhibit concentration, but she has got used to the small territory she has captured and is settled in for a long wait. True, she could right now be enjoying the hospitality of her former student, whose husband would surely have returned her to the airport on time, but then she'd have to listen to her hostess, thank her, smile, and act impressed. Yes, conversation comes easily to her, nor is it hard for her to accept kindness or even coddling from others. But the distress she would have felt over breaking the promise to her husband would have poisoned the pleasant interlude. When she's with him, she can easily deflect or defy his loving concern, but when she is alone it paralyzes her and makes her feel ashamed.

Never mind, she removes her glasses and wipes them clean, thinking the hours will pass. I have no choice, and neither does Time. Despite the chaos around her, she feels confident, and she is close to the departure gate. She takes out her passport to check her boarding pass, which normally her husband would carry, and after trying to decipher its details uses it to mark the page in her book, returns the passport to her purse, and puts the novel in her suitcase. Then she smiles warmly at a young couple seated nearby, a European man and an African woman playing merrily with a child who is an attractive mix of his parents' genes. After securing their agreement to guard her territory for a few moments, she puts on her shoes and heads purse in hand down a dim corridor toward a kiosk she recalls from the previous layover. It's there still, colorful and well-stocked as before, and the vendor, an older, very black man, fills for her a good-sized bag with sweet and sour hard candies and assorted bars of chocolate. After brief hesitation she also selects, from a bright glass bowl, a candy in the shape of a parrot, glittering with specks of colored sugar and perched on a little branch. She'd coveted it the last time, but Ya'ari had vetoed it as unsanitary. Now, loaded with sweetness, she returns happily to her table and after insisting that not only the boy, who is her own grandson's age, but his parents, too, partake of the candies, she opens her novel to the bookmarked page and with dignified and guilty passion begins to lick the forbidden candy.

THE HOURS PLOD along, the rain continues to fall, the wind stiffens. Francisco phones and in his gentle English requests Ya'ari's guidance. Despite the storm, his father is insisting on his morning walk.

From time to time Ya'ari is called upon to adjudicate a dispute between his father and the Filipino, and generally he decides in his father's favor, even when the old man's wishes seem eccentric. He has no reason to believe that the disease that in recent years has caused trembling in his father's hands and feet and greatly slowed his gait has also undermined his judgment. True, since the onset of his illness the old man has sunk into depression and his speech has grown halting and spare, but Ya'ari, who has always honored his father, feels that his core remains strong and that despite being cooped up at home he has kept his clear sense of reality.

"It's okay," the son assures Francisco. "Just dress him warmly, put the black poncho on him, and make sure he wears a scarf and hat."

"But Mister Ya'ari, Abba's hat is missing."

"Then find him another. Just don't take him out without one. The last time you forgot, he caught a cold. Attach the canopy I made for the wheelchair and don't walk around the streets. Take him to the playground, so if the rain gets worse you can shelter under the awning by the slides. It's okay if he gets a little wet. The smell of the rain makes him happy. He likes the wind, too."

"You want to say something to Abba?"

"Not right now. Just tell him that in the early evening I will come to light the candles with him."

"Hanukkah candles…"

"Bravo, Francisco. You've got it."

Still preoccupied by his wife's layover, Ya'ari postpones one of his meetings until midafternoon and sets out early to meet his son. But when he sees that the rain has not let up — indeed has intensified — he decides to detour to the playground near his childhood home to watch his father's excursion.

Beyond the windshield wipers, he sees the slight figure of Francisco, all bundled up, slowly pushing his father's wheelchair among the slides and seesaws of the empty playground. The caregiver has indeed wrapped the old man properly in a scarf, covered him with the black poncho, and placed on his head a red beret from Ya'ari's army days.

He waits till the wheelchair has completed its tour and begins to head in their direction. Although his old beret nearly covers his father's eyes, Ya'ari senses and savors the pleasure of this old man who is stronger than wind and rain.

NEITHER THE AUTHOR of the novel nor the character she has invented succeeds in arousing Daniela's sympathies. She reads conscientiously, never skipping a line, but still has no sense of the heroine's inner life, not even when, on [>], she pays a belligerent visit to her parents' home, intending to bolster her self-pity by reviving a childhood grudge. Daniela finds the nasty fight artificial and unconvincing. The author doesn't seem to understand that at the heart of family animosities there is a warm intimacy that does not exist among warring strangers. She props her legs up on the suitcase that stands on the floor, since the waiter has swiped one of her chairs for a group of tourists who came flooding in, but when he returns to claim the chair holding her big purse — implying that the old white lady's mere coffee and sandwich do not justify her taking root — she puts on her shoes and wheels her bag toward the departure gate.

The gate is at the end of the corridor. The door to the runway is locked, and there is no fellow traveler in the small, desolate waiting area. The three hours remaining until takeoff are a dreary and demoralizing prospect. For the first time since she decided to make the long trip to her brother-in-law in Africa, she is annoyed with her husband for not insisting on joining her. True, she knew that his presence would not always fit in with the memorial she planned for her late sister. But now, in the empty room with the locked door, she needs him. She has depended on his presence for so many years that now it is like a soothing drug in her bloodstream. He should never have allowed her to go off alone. Yes, in a few hours she will be welcomed by her brother-in-law, who calls her Little Sister, but on the phone he seemed unclear as to the purpose of the visit she is imposing on him, and she sensed that he may even fear it a little. For her part, she finds his reasons for returning to the continent where his diplomatic job had been eliminated equally vague. Was it really just to save money for his old age? And what exactly does he do there? He is already past seventy, and she knows that her sister, who loved and trusted him, would be happy to know that someone from the family was watching over him.

Out of hunger and fatigue, but even more out of boredom, she eats a whole bar of chocolate, which leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth. She should never have given her airplane breakfast to that young man as if he were her husband. The next flight is not a long one, and they won't be serving a real meal, so she had better return soon to the cafeteria and satisfy her hunger with something hot. Meanwhile she can stretch out on one of the benches facing the locked departure gate. Of course it's not fitting for a mature bourgeois woman to stretch out like a vagrant on an airport bench, but she's alone here, and if her lying down bothers anybody, she'll sense it and sit up.

The bench is hard, and she has nothing to cushion it with. She returns to her novel. Having failed to convey the heroine's internal anguish, the author resorts, predictably, to her external woes, and begins to complicate the plot. A former secret agent appears suddenly as a standoffish lover, a device that does nothing to revive the reader's flagging interest. Daniela's eyes grow heavy, and she quickly marks her place with the boarding pass and sticks the book in her suitcase, lest it tumble open to the floor as drowsiness overcomes her.

Fatigue ripples through the solitary woman who lounges near the locked gate. Despite the uncomfortable conditions, her sleep is deep and soothing, and the passengers who arrive for the flight preceding hers do not demand that she cut it short. From time to time she hears fragments of warm and pleasant voices speaking European languages and also strange African tongues, but does not open her eyes to ascertain whether the people beside her are white or black. They all wish her well. A soft smile glides over her face. The missing husband is replaced in her sleep by many husbands, utter strangers, but lovable all the same.

FROM AFAR YA'ARI sees his son waiting for him by the closed gate of the construction site, wearing a short military-style jacket similar in color and cut to his own, but made of fabric instead of leather. Knowing that his son has not brought a helmet, he takes two from the trunk of his car, yellow ones, places one on his own head and gives his son the other, teasing him, here you go, it's instead of a reserve-duty helmet. They open the gate and enter the main site, where the frame of the building is still unfinished. The foreman, who has been charged to keep secret the building's ultimate purpose, shakes their hands cordially and steers them into a wobbly yellow cage, operated by a dour Chinese man; it rises slow and screeching toward the gray girders at the top, while they peer through the bars like monkeys at the fine rain that streaks the horizon. You won't be cold up there? the supervisor asks Moran. If my father's not cold, neither am I, says the son, smiling. Ya'ari protests: I'm me and you're you. Then, without warning, the cage stops with a shudder, and they walk out onto a pitted surface covered with building materials and peek into the gray abyss of the elevator shaft, from which sprout iron cables and scraps of scaffolding.

Ya'ari kneels down and inspects the shaft, warning the supervisor about cracks and holes. I've already got my share of trouble from shoddy work on a shaft in an apartment building in the western part of town, and even though I'm responsible for the elevator, not the shaft, the tenants, as you can well imagine, are on my back to deal with every stray wind that happens to get sucked inside.

Moran takes out a metal tape measure and extends it along the top of the shaft. Be careful there, his father calls out, don't get too close to the edge. A flash of sweet memory takes him back thirty years, to the night of passion when he sired this boy. What was that "real passion" line she tossed his way when they parted at the airport? Was it just the delusion of a woman no longer young, or a veiled challenge to the man who had not fought hard enough for love in the days before her trip?

Moran pulls out more of the tape. He is checking to make sure that the shaft's actual dimensions match those that were planned in the office, before they begin to deal with the new request that occasioned this visit: to add a fifth elevator, a private one for top-level agents whose identities cannot be exposed.

Ya'ari warns the foreman: "Even if we succeed in installing an extra elevator at the expense of the other four, it'll be very cramped, with room for only one person, preferably not a fat one."

But the size of the fifth elevator is unimportant to the supervisor as long as it works.

A tear in the clouds sends a shaft of light onto the shaved head of Moran, who is not happy with the measurements. You've already clipped four centimeters from the width we requested, he tells the foreman, and if you keep building the shaft at the same angle, in the end we'll be fifteen centimeters short. So how can you demand an additional elevator?

He loudly zips the metal tape back into its case, replaces it in his pocket, and shakes the construction dust from his hands. The missing centimeters do not worry Ya'ari. We'll manage, he reassures his son, and signals to the Chinese, who is mesmerized by the sea, to open the yellow cage and take them down to ground level. And as he looks around at the ever-growing city, he thinks of the distant traveler. Yes, she is surely exhausted and irritable from the long wait in the transit area that he has imposed on her, but he has no doubt that her smiling eyes will enchant everyone who comes near her.

AND INDEED, as the swift equatorial dusk darkens the narrow windows, she is cheered by the new passengers who are gathering for her flight. A steward writes the name of the airline and the flight number and destination in chalk on a small blackboard and hangs it by the exit door. Daniela evaluates the human qualities of her fellow passengers, black and white, making note of who might be approachable for support should anything go wrong en route, or should her brother-in-law be late picking her up in Morogoro.

She goes to the rest room and methodically applies her makeup, looking with approval at her reflection in the less than clean mirror. When boarding is announced she does not wait, as she usually does, till the line shortens or disappears, but rather gets up quickly to be among the first. And when the steward asks to see her passport, she presents it readily. But her boarding pass is missing.

The line is held up while everyone waits patiently for the smiling woman to find the pass in her bag; when she doesn't, she is asked courteously to step aside and hunt more thoroughly. Is it really necessary? she inquires in her precise English. Can't one do without it? After all, the return ticket is proof enough. But it turns out that the actual piece of paper is required, for even though this gate has no machine that swallows the passes and then ejects them — but only a human hand, soft and delicate — the pass is still the sole guarantee that she has in fact boarded the flight and not disappeared.

A few minutes more of futile searching go by, until an airline employee in an orange uniform, which goes nicely with her dark skin, gently moves her away from the lengthening queue and suggests that she look in her suitcase. It will turn up, she assures the mortified passenger. It's bound to turn up.

Daniela smiles in agreement with the amiable woman, even as she feels embarrassed and desperate, as well as furious at her husband. This was predictable. He did warn her to keep all the documents together, and now he might even be pleased that his anxiety was justified and that he cannot rely on her, and thus it is his duty and mission to paralyze her with his ministrations, anesthetize her, cushion her very being as if she were a princess.

But she does remember it well, that rectangular boarding pass. She had it, she saw it, she didn't disrespect or neglect it, she remembers what it looked like, its color, so why is it betraying her now, disappearing and leaving her bereft in a transit lounge?

Travelers pass by her, a European family with children, gaily boarding the short evening flight to the game preserve of their dreams. The bus that is to take them to the plane turns on its lights and starts its engine. Has your suitcase already been loaded onto the plane? they ask her. No, she assures them, it's only a week-long trip, to visit a relative; her wheeled carry-on is all she has. For a moment she considers adding that her host was until a few years ago a chargé d'affaires in the region; perhaps, owing to his high status, they might forgive her the boarding pass, but on second thought such credentials strike her as useless, so she says nothing.

This makes it easier for the airline staff. No need to delay the flight and hunt for a suitcase on the plane. They can simply leave the flustered passenger here and send the plane on its way. It occurs to her that if she'd had another bag, they might have had to forget about the boarding pass and let her travel with her suitcase, but no, Yirmi had advised her not to bring too many clothes; the weather is pleasant, he'd said, and if it gets cold, I still have your sister's sweater and windbreaker.

She is on the verge of tears. Suddenly the disappearance of her boarding pass merges with the death of her sister.

But she will remember where she put that damned pass. She will summon all her strengths, she will wake up. It is not just her husband who put her in this stupor, but also her sister's death. She must snap out of it, otherwise there's no point in this trip to far-off Africa that was meant to prevent the pain of her loss from diminishing. If she doesn't wake up, how will she be able to revive memories of her forgotten childhood? Her brother-in-law can't do the work for her. Deep down she knows that he has reservations about her visit, even if it's only for seven days. He doesn't understand its purpose and is also wary of her criticism, open or implicit. He fears having her dig into his affairs. And if she arrives in a scatterbrained, stupefied state, then he, like her husband, will anesthetize her, cushion her very being, and increase her dependency, just as he had done with her sister.

Which is why she must find that boarding pass. She will not degrade herself and go like a naughty schoolgirl to the transit counter and ask that her flight be rescheduled for the next day. She will pull herself together, she will not allow the love lavished upon her to demolish her independence. She needs a dash of misery, genuine anger at herself, like that masochistic heroine in the novel that so far she doesn't care for very much.

Suddenly she knows. No, the pass is not lost, it is in the book, in the suitcase, marking the place where she left off, where the heroine had exhausted her capacity for empathy.

Wait, wait, she calls to the steward, who is about to shut the door on her. She gets down on her knees and opens the suitcase, and beside the package of newspapers she finds the novel, and the boarding pass protrudes from it, safe and sound. She pulls it out, making a mental note of the page number before closing the book.

"We've been looking for someone to take care of you," the ticket taker says, tearing the stub from the card, "but I see you've taken care of yourself."

Since she is the last passenger, he rolls her bag to the bus, though now it seems to roll happily by itself. Once there, she is welcomed with enthusiasm, people getting up to offer her a seat, and she smiles and sits down, taking care to insert into her passport, as her husband had instructed, the remaining portion of the boarding pass, even though in a few minutes she will have to take it out again and present it to the stewardess at the door of the plane.

THE SUNSET, DIMLY visible between the heavy clouds, casts gray shadows in Ya'ari's office. But he does not turn on the light, tilting back instead in his comfortable desk chair, closing his eyes in a moment of contemplation before fulfilling the final obligation of a day that began before dawn. His father is eating dinner now, but because it is hard for Ya'ari to watch Francisco's wife, Kinzie, feeding him with a small spoon, he prefers to arrive at the end of the meal, when his father's bib has been removed and his face washed clean.

It's quiet in the office. Because of the holiday, the women finished their workday at lunchtime, and not all the men who went out for lunch made it back to their desks, either. A few years ago, after his father could no longer conceal the trembling in his extremities and finally retired, Ya'ari did away with the time clock, expecting that hours missed would be stamped upon the individual conscience of each employee. He was right. Sometimes at night, when he and Daniela are on their way home from a concert or a movie, he will detour past the office to show her the bright flicker of busy computers in the windows.

"Listen, Ya'ari," says Gottlieb, the elevator manufacturer, on the telephone. "I see that the wind is up again, and as I told you this morning, even if our work is not to blame, I'm willing, if only for the personal and professional peace of mind of a friend who trusted us, to send my expert there right now, but on the condition that you, or someone from your office, will go with her."

"Why?"

"Because at the site, she can better direct you how to deal with the tenants and prove to them that the noises are not caused by your design and certainly not by my elevators but exclusively by the construction company's lousy job on the shaft and maybe also a mistake of the architect's in the placement of the fire doors in the parking garage. I don't need to hear any howling myself to know that the wind is getting in from the bottom, not from the top, and my technician will diagnose for you exactly what's causing the uproar. So listen, my friend, don't be lazy; tomorrow the weather will improve and the storm will be gone and they won't hear a thing. Take yourself over there and meet her in half an hour, and don't change your mind. Or send your son. She's a rare type, a gifted person, professional, who will relieve you once and for all of the guilt you decided to take upon yourself this morning just so you could pin it on me this afternoon."

"Not guilt, responsibility."

"Then she'll free you from responsibility."

"But what's so special about her?"

"She can pinpoint, just by listening, malfunctions in motors or cables long before they cause serious problems. With such a fine-tuned ear she could conduct a philharmonic orchestra plus a big choir, instead of working with us in the service department…"

"Israeli?"

"Totally Israeli. She was sent as a child to some musical kibbutz in Galilee, where she developed perfect pitch among the tractors and combines and plows."

"How old is she?"

"Thirty, forty, maybe more. But tiny, ageless, athletic… She can slide herself into any crack… A fearless little devil."

"All right, I'll find someone to meet her in the parking lot."

"Better if you go yourself…"

"Can't do it. My father's Filipinos are waiting for me with the Hanukkah candles."

"What's going on with your old man?"

"Stable."

"Give him my regards. You know how much I respected and loved him."

"So keep on respecting and loving him, because he's alive and well."

"Obviously, no question… but still, my dear Ya'ari, on your way, hop over to the winds, and we'll be done with this whole affair."

"No. My workday is over. I got up at three in the morning to take my wife to the airport."

"Where she'd go off to in the middle of winter?"

"To Africa."

"An organized tour?"

"No, she went alone."

"To Africa? By herself? You never told me you had such an adventurous wife."

Ya'ari would like to explain to the elevator manufacturer that his wife would not be there alone. But he holds off. Adventurous? So be it. This lends his wife an aura she never aspired to, and that suddenly appeals to him.

THIS TIME SHE leans her head against the window, as if it were a spouse's shoulder, and keenly watches the moving world below. The aircraft is a propeller plane, new, not large, that cruises with a steady and pleasant hum through the clear evening sky at low altitude, so that she can see not only the bend of a river and the contour of a small lake but also the lights of houses, and here and there even a campfire. Her pride over not missing the flight has made her uncharacteristically alert and aware. She takes out her passport, checks the accompanying travel documents, and then turns its pages, one after the next, as if it were a small prayer book.

In the adjoining seat is an elderly Englishman, blue-skinned, white-haired and heavyset, already accepting from the stewardess his third glass of Scotch. But he doesn't worry Daniela. The flight will not be long, and the man seems solid and essentially sober, and appears to be looking at her with secret appreciation. Yes, despite her age, she is well aware that she has not lost her feminine charm. If she were to turn to the British gentleman with specific questions in her excellent English, encouraging him to talk about himself, he might well fall in love with her by the time they landed. But instead she turns toward the window, because the expanse of Africa, lighted by the moon, is what now engages her.

THE WIND IS back, says Ya'ari, detaching his son from the computer. Gottlieb is sending his acoustic technician to the Pinsker Tower to figure out the source of the winds and to free us — and mainly him — from responsibility to the tenants. But he insists on one of us joining her and hearing her explanations. I'm in no mood for any more wind, and I'm rushing to light candles with Grandpa, so do me a favor, habibi, go meet her in the parking garage, and we'll put an end to the complaints. It's unacceptable that individual tenants are pestering me on my cell phone.

In the ample living room of his childhood home, positioned in front of the Channel One news, his father sits trembling in a wheelchair; by his side is six-year-old Hilario, the Filipinos' son, whose Hebrew is fluent and accent-free. Hilario has his own little hanukkiah, the eight-branched holiday menorah, made of yellow clay and set with three candles of different colors, which await Ya'ari's arrival along with the three candles in the big, old menorah.

When his father's illness worsened, Daniela insisted that they bring in not one Filipino caretaker but two, a married couple who would add to caregiving the stable and secure embrace of a small family. It's a big house, she said, there's room for everyone, and for a little extra money we'll buy peace of mind for all of us.

Is the house actually big? Ya'ari has been asking himself lately, when he comes to visit his father and sees how the living area has shrunk, what with the stroller and playpen, the bassinet in the kitchen, and the rack for drying laundry. The couple, Francisco and Kinzie, who themselves look like teenagers, a few months ago became the parents of a daughter, who requires her own substantial space, and then there's little Hilario, born in Southeast Asia, who occupies Ya'ari's childhood room and who, having graduated from the local kindergarten that Ya'ari himself attended as a boy, is a pupil in the first grade, devoted and studious. He sits now at the ready beside the trembling grandfather, an unlit candle in his hand and a kippa on his head, waiting for Ya'ari to give him permission to recite the blessings and light the menorah.

"Don't overdo it…" says Ya'ari, reaching to remove the skullcap from the little Filipino's head.

But Ya'ari's father stops him, what do you care? He's not hurting anybody with his kippa. He has a new teacher now, who came over from a religious school, and she gives the kids a little religion, more than the zero you got.

Ya'ari has already grown accustomed to his father knowing every detail of Hilario's life, more than he ever knew about Ya'ari or his brother when they were children. And no wonder: his father's English is minimal, so he speaks with his two caregivers through their firstborn son and along the way learns about the world of his young translator.

"Fine," sighs Ya'ari in English. "I'm exhausted, so first of all let's finish with the candles."

The old man motions to Francisco to turn off the lights so the flickering flames will delight the boy. And then Hilario lights the shammash, the candle in his hand that lends its fire to all the others, and in a whisper, but without a single mistake, he chants the two traditional blessings, while touching the friendly fire to the candles in his little clay hanukkiah. When he is done, he offers the shammash to Ya'ari, but Ya'ari gestures for him to continue, and the child, his face aglow with excitement, stands on tiptoe and repeats the blessings, while with an unsteady hand he ignites the shammash and candles in the grandfather's menorah. Afterward he turns to his mother, who sits in a corner with her infant in her arms, and gets her permission to sing a Hanukkah song. To Ya'ari's relief it is not "Maoz Tsur," which he loathes, but rather an old Hanukkah song whose melody is modest and pleasing to the ear, and since Francisco and Kinzie do not know the words nor even the tune, Ya'ari has no choice but to back the boy up with some humming of his own.

When the ceremony is over, the father wants to know if Daniela has arrived safely at Yirmiyahu's place. Two days ago she came to say good-bye and told him at length about the purpose of her trip, and although the father listened intently and kept nodding his head, not merely from his illness but in approval of her wish to return and recover the grief and pain that had begun to fade, he was uneasy for his beloved daughter-in-law traveling to East Africa alone.

Ya'ari looks at his watch. As far as he knows, there is no time difference between Israel and East Africa, so if everything is all right she is in midair and due to land in one hour.

"But Yirmiyahu is no longer an ambassador there…" the father recalls.

"He never was an ambassador, just a chargé d'affaires in a small economic mission, which closed down after Shuli died."

By the soft light of the six flames Ya'ari can see that his father's eyes are blazing. A flush spreads over his cheeks, the tremor in his body worsens, and his hands shake uncontrollably. His gaze drifts away from his son and into a corner of the room. Ya'ari turns his head and sees that the Filipino woman is taking advantage of the darkness to nurse the baby. Despite the natural duskiness of her skin, the darkness of the room does not conceal her naked bosom; the flickering fire of the Hanukkah candles reveals the sweet shapely splendor of a young woman's breast, which apparently stirs the soul of the old man.

Francisco should be warned, thinks Ya'ari, not to let his wife expose herself like that in front of his father. Because she dresses him and feeds him, it would be bad to afflict him unduly with a longing for her flesh.

But the moment is unsuitable for warnings, especially in front of the boy, who is fascinated by the flames, so Ya'ari shifts the wheelchair slightly, depriving his father of the sight of his caregiver's bare breast, and also casually attempts to distract him with a description of the winds whistling in the elevator shaft of the Pinsker Tower, which sucks them in from the outside world in a way that remains mysterious.

THE MOMENT OF arrival is announced, and the stewardess rises to distribute candies to the passengers. But the Englishman, gulping the last of his Scotch, declines to ruin the taste of good whiskey with the sourball he is offered, so with sheepish generosity he offers his to the silent lady traveler beside him. And in the few minutes remaining before they land, she is willing not only to accept the candy but also to ask him about the climate and scenery awaiting her on the ground.

It turns out that the elderly Englishman adores the Morogoro nature preserve and even owns a small farm there. Because of his fondness for the wildlife, he returns here every year, as it is absolutely clear to him that the animals miss him, too; but he has never heard of an anthropological dig in the area. To tell the truth, he has no interest in such excavations; indeed, it seems to him a bit strange that such a pleasant and elegant woman as herself is about to join up with bone-hunters searching for prehistoric monkey men, given that the spectacular natural world of the here and now veritably teems with mystery. Therefore, as the wheels of the aircraft touch down on the runway, she feels compelled to correct the misguided impression he has formed of the nature of her journey and to reveal its true purpose. And the Englishman, whose melancholy grew after the empty glass was taken from him, empathizes greatly with her tale of loss and wishes to add a tear of his own over the dear, dead sister and the soldier who was so needlessly killed. He even seems prepared, time permitting, to fall in love with her, and before unbuckling his seat belt he hands the Israeli woman a business card with the name and address of his estate: perhaps she might like to come and visit. Daniela accepts the card, as she did the candy, and faithful to her husband's order to keep everything together, she tucks it in beside the medical insurance papers in the passport envelope, because now, as she descends in darkness the gangway of the plane, she is conscious not only of the time and distance she has covered but also of the erosion of her capacity to carry on alone, so she wheels her suitcase in the faltering footsteps of the inebriated Englishman, who is swiftly installed in a wheelchair by two brawny Africans so he may make a more dignified exit from the tiny airport.

Even after she exits passport control and is surrounded by porters and greeters, Daniela keeps her eye on the wheelchair, since at first glance she notices that among the dozens of black faces crowding behind the fence and in front of it too, there is no familiar-looking white one. But a sense of her own worth protects her from any worry or fear; only a strange smile alights on her lips. She is entirely certain that even if the visit she has imposed on her brother-in-law is not much to his liking, he would never think of not coming to welcome the woman who in her childhood had been integral to his courtship of her sister and had championed their love with her whole young heart. And he, for his part, would always call her Little Sister and help her with her homework in arithmetic and geometry, and would be dispatched late at night to fetch her in her father's car from youth-group activities or school parties.

Even as her strange smile begins to compete with a look of mild panic, there arises from the middle of the crowd a little sign, with her name and flight number in a familiar hand.

It is not Yirmiyahu waving the sign, however, but a noble emissary, black as night, very tall and erect. A red scarf is wrapped about her neck, and she wears the white gown of a doctor or nurse. And when Daniela signals that she is the sought-after passenger, the emissary hurries toward her through the throng of greeters, who judging by their great number must be mainly curious onlookers who come each evening to this rural airport in case the plane might need their assistance in taking off or landing.

The thin, very tall woman bends toward Mrs. Ya'ari and in simple, correct English, albeit of indeterminate accent, introduces herself: Sijjin Kuang, Sudanese, a nurse attached to the anthropological research team. That afternoon, she brought a patient to the local hospital, and was asked to stay around till evening to pick up a guest from Israel. Naturally, after such a long wait, she is in a hurry to get back. The distance to the base camp of the excavations is not great, thirty miles, but half of that is on dirt roads. She is pleased to learn that the visitor has no luggage apart from her small suitcase, and advises her to use the rest room, since the road ahead will not offer proper facilities. But Daniela, eager to get going, says without a second thought, thank you, I'm all set.

In the parking lot a dust-covered vehicle is waiting, with shovels and hoes and earth-strainers strewn inside. The nurse is also the driver. Before she starts the engine, she hands the visitor a bag, containing a thermos and a large sandwich, food for the journey sent by the brother-in-law, whose absence remains unexplained.

Daniela wearily removes the thick wrapper (which appears to be a page torn from an old encyclopedia), revealing a sort of giant pita, brown and thick, with sliced egg inside, layered with strips of eggplant fried with onion.

Sijjin Kuang maneuvers deftly between the cars scattered in the parking lot, at the same time studying the passenger, who gazes with amazement at the enormous sandwich.

"Jeremy said you would love it…"

Daniela's eyes sparkle. Yes, he's right. She and her sister always loved eggplant, maybe because this was the first vegetable that their mother, a finicky immigrant, had learned to cook in the Land of Israel. Despite the hunger rumbling inside her since she skipped the meal on her first flight, and which the sandwich and sweets at the airport had failed to quiet, she offers to share her pita with the Sudanese woman, who declines, no, this is meant only for you — a peace offering from a person who was afraid to come to the airport himself.

"Afraid?"

"That there would be with you other passengers from your country."

"Israelis?"

"Yes, Israelis."

"What is there to fear from them?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I am mistaken," the nurse corrects herself, "but I think he does not want to meet anyone from his country right now, not to see them, not to feel them, not even from afar."

"Not even from afar?" Daniela repeats with astonishment and pain the words of the Sudanese woman, who for all her thinness and delicacy displays great expertise in speeding the heavy vehicle down the dark road. "In what sense? By the way, on my plane there was not a single other Israeli."

"He could not know that in advance," the driver says with a smile, while her upright head threatens to bang into the roof of the car.

The guest nods slowly in agreement and adds not a word. In truth, she has come from so far away not merely to summon pain and memory but also to understand what is going on with her brother-in-law. And now this messenger may offer a first clue. She unscrews the cap of the thermos, carefully pours in the warm tea, and offers it to the nurse, who repeats and explains in good English, it is all for you, Mrs. Ya'ari, I have eaten and had something to drink, it is best for me to concentrate on driving, since the roads here are sometimes misleading.

The sweet tea refreshes Daniela, who pours herself a second cup and a third. Afterward she begins to bite carefully into the fragrant sandwich, and after swallowing the last crumb with great contentment, she receives permission and indeed encouragement from the Sudanese to enhance the good taste with a soothing cigarette, the last of the five or six she smokes every day. Only then, as the tobacco ash flickers in the darkness, does she turn to Sijjin Kuang and begins a polite and cautious interrogation.

ON HIS WAY home in the wind and rain, gray-faced from an exhausting day, the father phones his son to hear the technician's diagnosis of the winds in the tower. And who is this expert, anyway, whom Gottlieb showers with praise?

Moran sounds amused and excited. "No, Gottlieb's not exaggerating. You missed out on a magician and juggler. Right out of the circus."

"How old is she, anyway?"

"Hard to tell. She's a kind of child-woman, who at first glance looks twenty, but by the time I left she seemed over forty. The face of a child, huge eyes, nimble and a bit hyper. She worked for years in the regional auto garage at Kfar Blum, up north…"

"Whatever," Ya'ari says with a yawn. "What's the verdict with the winds?"

"Wait a minute. Listen, she has incredible hearing. First, imagine this, as soon as we start going up in the middle elevator, she can already tell that we replaced the original seal with a different one. You remember?"

"Moran, I remember nothing. I got up at three A.M. and lit candles with Grandpa, and I'm wiped out. Give me the bottom line. How are the winds getting in?"

"She claims that the shaft is cracked and pocked with holes in more than one place, which produces an unusual acoustic effect, like the sound from the holes of a flute or clarinet. She recommends that at three in the morning we shut down all the elevators and ride on top of one of them to locate the exact spot of the penetration."

"Forget it. Flute or clarinet, what does it have to do with us? The defect, just as I thought, is in the shaft, so we're not responsible. The tenants need to go to the construction company."

"I'm not sure you're entirely right, Abba. Gottlieb was obligated to check the shaft carefully before installing anything and so were we as the designers."

"Now listen, Moran. The shaft is not our responsibility. Period. Cracks and holes can develop even after the installation is finished."

"She claims, according to the sounds, that these are old defects."

"She claims… she says… habibi, calm down. This little girl is not God around here. Anyway, we'll talk tomorrow at the office."

"And Imma, did you hear from her?"

"According to my calculations, she's still in the air, unless I'm wrong."

HE IS WRONG. It's remarkable that a practical man like him is unaware that East Africa is one hour ahead of Israel, meaning that the beloved traveler is no longer in the air, but on the ground, on a dark and desolate mountain road — though her fate is in the capable hands of an intelligent driver, whom she is briskly quizzing about her life story.

In the bloody civil war of southern Sudan, Sijjin Kuang's relatives and many other members of her tribe were slaughtered because their skin color was blacker than that of their murderers. She, alone among her entire family, was saved. Her rescuer was a United Nations observer, a Norwegian, tall like her, who arranged for her rehabilitation and education in his country on the condition that when she received her nursing degree she would return to serve in a field hospital on the Sudan-Kenya border, where she could take care of the wounded of her tribe. But the hospital was never established, and while going around Nairobi looking for other work, she learned that UNESCO was funding an anthropological expedition made up solely of African scientists, whose goal was to discover, using their own research methods, the missing link between ape and man. She applied to the director of the mission, a Tanzanian named Seloha Abu, offering her services as nurse to the team.

"You are a Christian, of course," says Daniela, who is highly impressed by her personality and the details of her story. But Sijjin Kuang is neither Christian nor Muslim but rather an animist, as supporters call them, or mushrikun, as their opponents call them, or, in cultural-scientific terms, simply pagan.

"Pagan?" The Israeli is overwhelmed by such intimate contact, in the dark, with an idol worshipper. "Really? In what sense? This is so interesting… because for us, pagans are only in legends…"

And the Sudanese, with a slightly embarrassed smile, explains very briefly the principles of her ancient tribal faith.

"Spirits? Winds?"

"Yes. Sacred spirits in trees and stones."

"And this kind of belief," Daniela inquires cautiously, "does not interfere with the rationality of the medical science that you studied?"

"No belief can interfere with care for the sick," the Sudanese declares. "Least of all animism, since any person may approach the spirits individually and according to his understanding, without any pope or ayatollah to do it for him."

"Marvelous…"

Daniela now wonders how a white person such as her brother-in-law was accepted to join a scientific mission composed only of Africans, all the more because he is neither a scientist nor a doctor and also is a citizen of a country not generally well-liked. But the Sudanese has a simple explanation. To prevent conflicts on sensitive matters among Africans who have joined the mission from all over the continent, it was decided that financial management and supervision of expenses would be placed in the hands of a white man, a foreigner yet an experienced person, someone familiar with the region and its ways. When a white widowed pensioner, a former diplomat in Africa, offered them his experience in administration and finance, and struck the members of the team as a reliable and objective person, immune to outside temptation.

"Temptation? In what sense?"

"Temptation that might prevent him from handling the accounts with honesty and precision. But soon he will explain this to you himself."

A warm summer wind streams through the open window of the car, scented by the thick flora. This is hill country, and the car climbs and descends the lower slopes surrounding Mount Morogoro, which appears periodically and then vanishes from view. The moon that accompanied her flight has disappeared behind the clouds, but its light is reflected by the lush roadside foliage that brushes the sides of the car. Not long ago, following a small road sign, the driver turned off the asphalt onto a dirt road. Although narrow, the road is tightly packed and free of potholes, and the engine maintains its powerful rhythm. But Daniela now has a bit of a problem. The huge sandwich she consumed and the great quantity of tea that accompanied it demand relief. Had she known about those in advance, she would not so blithely have passed up the chance to use the toilet at the airport. No choice now but to ask the kind driver to stop at a spot appropriate for both car and passenger and inquire as to whether there might be some paper handy; otherwise, she will have to open her suitcase.

"You will have to open your suitcase," Sijjin Kuang says, laughing, and slows to a halt.

She cautions the traveler not to try to seek privacy in the bush, where she is likely to arouse the interest of some small creature. You can simply stay on the road; you can see there is no traffic here, and even if a car should happen to pass by, no one will remember you.

But Daniela is uncomfortable being exposed in the moonlight, even in front of this licensed nurse, who in the meantime has shut down the engine and got out to stretch her legs and light up some sort of long pipe, thin and black like its owner. So she goes off to a bend in the road. Even there, despite Sijjin Kuang's warning, she is reluctant to crouch on the road, and blazes herself a trail a few steps into the bush.

Under the whispering branches of an African tree she pulls down her trousers with great emotion. The senior schoolteacher at ease with herself — the wife, veteran mother and grandmother — is visited by the memory of a mortified little girl who at a family outing at the Yarkon River, while basking in the love of aunts and uncles and cousins, suddenly lost control, and whose soaked panties threatened to destroy her happy world. But neither her mother nor her father had been aware of her distress, and her older sister had rushed to shield the crying child and discreetly take her to the riverbank, to a clump of bushes not unlike the one where she squats now, and with kind words wiped away her shame, soothed and consoled her, until she smiled again.

And now, with her pants at her ankles, by the light of a hidden moon whose movement in the sky speckles the surrounding foliage, free of the controlling love of her husband, who could not begin to imagine how far the arrow has flown from the bow drawn at the airport at dawn, she surrenders to the agony of losing a beloved sister, who always knew how to comfort her but had not succeeded in comforting herself. She lingers in her crouch, drinking deeply the grief that floods her, and slowly, slowly consoles herself, stands up, and straightens her clothing, but does not leave the place until she gathers a few stones to hide what she has left behind.

Total silence. As she returns to the dirt road, the Israeli briefly loses her way to the car that holds her suitcase and her travel documents, but she does not lose her nerve, and loudly calls the full name of the nurse: Sijjin Kuang! Sijjin Kuang! Sijjin Kuang! Three times she repeats the name of the tall idol-worshipper. And the animist, who is probably at this very moment seeking the blessing of the wind and trees and stones for the successful continuation of the journey, switches on the headlights and honks, to show the white woman the way back.

LATE IN THE evening, Ya'ari collects the newspaper that was flung onto his doorstep at dawn and turns on the lights in the clean and polished apartment. With amused curiosity he looks for innovations made in his absence. Their veteran housekeeper, whom Daniela respects and even admires, has carte blanche to run their home as she sees fit, which is truly a great liberty, since besides cleaning and cooking she often whimsically rearranges furniture, closets, and bureaus so that the owners, returning home after an evening out, may discover that an armchair has moved to the other side of the living room, underwear and socks have migrated to foreign drawers, and a plant that has forever dwelt peacefully on the porch is now a centerpiece on the dining room table. Some relocations are happily accepted, others rejected and reversed, but out of respect for the housekeeper, never a comment is made.

Today there are no changes at home. Only in the Hanukkah menorah, cleansed of last night's wax, the housekeeper before leaving work has stuck two new candles and the shammash, for tonight's lighting. But Ya'ari has no intention this evening of reciting the blessing alone over more flames, so he adds a fourth candle, for tomorrow night, and moves the menorah to a corner of the kitchen.

From the quantity of food sitting still warm on the kitchen counter, he guesses that the housekeeper has not quite grasped that in the coming week only one person will be eating here. As he samples each dish with his fork, he flips through the TV channels to make sure that no plane has crashed today. His brother-in-law warned him that communication between the base camp of the dig and the wider world had to run first through Dar es Salaam, but Ya'ari was adamant: That may be so, but since I'm sending you a woman who for many years has not traveled abroad by herself and who, since her sister's death, has become even more dreamy and scattered, I must receive a sign of life within twenty-four hours. If not her voice, then yours, and if not yours, at least an e-mail to the office.

JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT, they arrive at the base camp of the scientific mission, set upon a colonial farm built at the beginning of the last century. Following Tanzanian independence, the property was confiscated from its European owners and turned into an elite training camp for army officers and public officials favored by the government. But tribal conflicts and violent coups d'etat made it impossible for officers and officials to maintain domestic tranquillity within a single locale, and the place was abandoned and forgotten for many years until two African anthropologists discovered it and approached UNESCO with a request for help in renovating it as a service facility for new excavations.

In the darkness, the outline of the farmhouse seems a ghost of the colonial past. But a light is burning on the ground floor. That is the kitchen, where he is no doubt waiting for you, says Sijjin Kuang to her passenger, who suddenly feels too exhausted to lift her small suitcase. After the Sudanese woman collects a package from the backseat, she leads the visitor toward the light.

If Shuli only knew how far Daniela has traveled, alone, to rekindle her memory, she would be pleased, perhaps even proud of her, but surely also apprehensive — as Daniela is now — about her encounter with the widower left behind.

"Here he is." The nurse points to a tall silhouette in the doorway.

Instead of running to his sister-in-law, to embrace her and help wheel her suitcase, Yirmiyahu waits at the entrance for the two women to come to him. Only then does he hug Daniela tight, and fondly pat the shoulder of the black nurse who brought her.

"What happened?" he asks in English, "I thought that you maybe changed your mind and canceled at the last minute."

"Why? Did you want me to change my mind?"

"No, I did not want anything."

He insists on continuing the conversation in English on account of Sijjin Kuang, who stands still as a statue beside him, holding the package in her arms like someone offering a sacrifice. Then, as if feeling sorry for his sister-in-law, who has made this long journey all by herself, he hugs her again and takes the handle of her rolling suitcase. At that moment she senses that his body has a new, pungent smell.

"The water is heated," he says, still in English, though he sounds a bit rusty. "But if you wish to drink a glass of tea before bed, let's go into the kitchen."

The three enter a large hall containing an enormous refrigerator and stoves for cooking and baking, and also what looks like an ancient boiler, the kind used to heat water for washing. The huge pots and frying pans, the ladles and spoons, graters and knives, testify to generous cooking for a good many people. A pile of firewood stands in the corner and dozens of empty plastic boxes are arranged on tables. While the newcomer looks around wonderingly, her host relieves the Sudanese nurse of the bundle in her arms, thanks her for her trouble, and bids her good night.

"I asked her to buy you new sheets, so you'll feel safe and sound in your bed."

Daniela blushes. She ought to say "Why? Really, no need," but she can't deny his display of sensitivity. He knows well that in strange lodgings she requires, as her sister did, a pristine bed.

As he sets a kettle on the fire, she studies him. The white hair that she remembers from their last meeting has fallen out, and his bald skull, resembling the fashionably shaved heads of young men, arouses in her a slight anxiety.

"I brought you a bunch of newspapers from Israel."

"Newspapers?"

"Also magazines and supplements. The stewardess collected them on the plane and filled a whole bag, so you can pick what interests you."

An ironic smile crosses his face. His eyes flash with a sudden spark.

"Where are they?"

Despite her fatigue, she bends over the suitcase and extracts the bulging bag. For a moment he seems loath to touch it, as if she were handing him a slimy reptile. Then he grabs it and rushes to the boiler, opens a small door revealing tongues of bluish flame, and without delay shoves the entire bag into the fire and quickly shuts the door.

"Wait," she cries, "stop…"

"This is where they belong," he smiles darkly at the visitor, with a measure of satisfaction.

Her face turns pale. But she keeps her composure, as always.

"Perhaps for you it's where they belong. But before you start burning things, you could warn me."

"Why?"

"Because there was lipstick in there too, which I bought at the airport for my housekeeper."

"Too late," he says quietly, without remorse. "The fire is very hot."

Now she regards him with hostility and resentment. In her parents' house, he was the one who had devoured every old newspaper. But he returns her look with affection.

"Don't be angry. No big deal, just newspapers, which get thrown out anyway. So instead of the trash, I threw them in the fire. You'll compensate your housekeeper with something else. I hope you don't have any more gifts like these in store for me."

"Not a thing," she winces, "that was it. Nothing else. Maybe only… candles…"

"Candles? Why candles?"

"It's Hanukkah now, did you forget? I was thinking, maybe we could light them this week, together… It's one of my favorite holidays…"

"It's Hanukkah? I really didn't know. For some time now I've been cut off from the Jewish calendar. Tonight, for instance, how many candles?"

"It started yesterday, so tonight is the second candle."

"Second candle?" he seems amused that his sister-in-law thought to bring Hanukkah candles to Africa. "Where are they? Let's see them."

For a moment she hesitates, but then takes out the box of candles and hands it to him in the odd hope that he might agree to light them here, in the middle of the night, and ease her sudden longing for her husband and children. But again, with the same quick, slightly maniacal movement, he opens the little door and adds the Hanukkah candles to the smoldering Israeli newspapers.

"What's the matter with you?" She stands up angrily, but still maintains her calm, as with a student in her class who has done something idiotic.

"Nothing. Don't get angry, Daniela. I've simply decided to take a rest here from all of that."

"A rest from what?"

"From the whole messy stew, Jewish and Israeli… Please, don't spoil my rest. After all, you've come to grieve."

"In what way spoil it?" She speaks quietly, without rancor, feeling pity for this big man with the pink bald head.

"You'll find out soon enough what I mean. I want quiet. I don't want to know anything, I want to be disconnected, I don't even want to know the name of the prime minister."

"But you do know."

"I don't, and don't tell me. I don't want to know, just as you don't know the name of the prime minister here in Tanzania, or in China. Spare me all that. Come to think of it, maybe it's too bad I didn't insist that Amotz come with you. I'm afraid you'll get bored here with me on such a long visit."

Now, for the first time, she is offended.

"I won't be bored, don't worry about me. And the visit isn't long, and if it gets hard for you having me here, I'll cut it short and leave earlier. Do what you need to do. I brought a book with me too, and don't you dare throw it in any fire."

"If the book is for you, I won't touch it."

"The nurse you sent to get me warned me… By the way, is she really still a pagan?"

"Why still?"

"You mean, she believes in spirits?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing wrong. A very impressive young woman… aristocratic…"

"You can't remember, but before the state was established, on street corners in Jerusalem there stood Sudanese like her, very tall and black, wrapped in robes, roasting these wonderful, delicious peanuts on little burners, and selling them in cones made of newspaper. But that was before you were born."

"Before I was born…"

"Her whole family was murdered in the civil war in southern Sudan, and she grew up to be a woman of great tenderness and humanity."

"Yes. And she said that you didn't come to meet me because you were afraid to run into Israelis. Why would there be Israelis on the plane?"

"On every plane between two points in the world there is at least one Israeli."

"I was the only one on the plane that brought me here."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"And a Jew?"

"A Jew?"

"Maybe there was a Jew on the plane?"

"How would I know?"

"Then imagine that I didn't want to run into him either."

"That bad?"

"That bad."

"Why? You're angry at—"

"No, not angry at all, but I am asking for a rest. I'm seventy years old, and I'm allowed to disconnect a bit, and if it's not a final break, then it's a temporary one, or let's call it a time out. Simply a time out from my people, Jews in general and Israelis in particular."

"And from me too?"

"From you?" He regards his sister-in-law with fondness, pours boiling water into her teacup, puts a flaming match to the cigarette she clenches between her lips, absolutely her last one of the day. "With you I have no choice, you'll always be my Little Sister, as I told you when you were ten. And if you came all the way to Africa to remember Shuli and mourn her with me, it's your right, since I know better than anyone how much you loved her and how much she loved you. That's all. I am warning you, grieve, but do not preach."