Friendly Fire: A Duet

Third Candle

IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Tel Aviv brightens for an hour or so, and the moon, freed of its gray blanket, rolls the husband from his wife's abandoned territory back to his own side of the bed and from there, after a slight hesitation, lifts him to his feet as well. Yes, Yirmiyahu cautioned him not to expect any electronic sign of life until the next day, but still he wanders, one more time, among the television channels, so that — with the collusion of a mild sleeping pill — he will be able to fall asleep again, reassured that no plane has crashed or been hijacked; and in the meantime, till his bloodstream carries the pill's chemical message to his brain, he tries, with a few quick strokes on the pad of graph paper he keeps by the bed, to work out a scheme whereby the secret fifth elevator could not only be independently controlled but also have perpendicular doors, so that it could be squeezed into the southwest corner of the shaft without stealing much space from the four elevators already designed. Just a preliminary sketch, inspired by a design flickering in his memory, maybe from some old magazine. And as he long ago taught himself to do, so as not to disturb his wife's sleep, he works under a small reading lamp that blends its light with the miserly moonbeams. Despite his excitement over the idea and his faith in the sketch that embodies it, he adds a small note to the bottom of the page: Moran, check if this is realistic!

IN THE CLEAR summer night south of the equator, the very same moon, rich and profligate, does not disturb the sleep of the woman whose natural serenity has pleasantly blended into the bed provided by her host, fitted with new linens. From many years' experience, Yirmiyahu knew that Daniela, like her sister, would not sleep well between old sheets washed in a dubious laundry. Even though he did not invite her to visit, he made sure she got new sheets and witnessed their packaging being removed. That was how the sisters would pamper each other, and the death of Shuli has not freed her husband from her obligation to the other, on top of his own obligation to let her have his room and bed.

This kind gesture of his does not trouble her. Six nights is a short time. On the other hand, she is dismayed that he threw the Israeli papers in the fire, and the destruction of the Hanukkah candles really does offend her, even though he promised with a smile that he had no intention of burning anything else. After midnight, in the big kitchen, as she smoked her very, very last cigarette — deducted from tomorrow's quota — he also told her not to misunderstand him, that his need to criticize, judge, or lodge official protest evaporated long ago, that all he wants now is disengagement and separation, at least for a while. Is she not a mature woman, who has known this man and his history since her childhood? Why, then, should his words not put her at ease?

After her teacup was washed and returned to its place, he took her suitcase and said, come, let's go upstairs, get ready for seventy steps, because here of course there's no elevator, though your Amotz would doubtless be surprised to discover that the architect who designed this place between the two world wars did not entirely rule out the possibility. There's a narrow round concrete shaft next to the stairwell. Now it's full of old furniture, probably tossed in there for years from all the floors.

And maybe there's no need for an elevator, since the broad shallow steps are easy to climb, even to the room on the top floor. This room was the one stipulation of this white man who joined the African team: a private room on a high floor, with a view of the broad landscape. The room is not large, but it is tidy and clean, and unlike his study in Jerusalem holds very few books, though on the desk is a pile of papers and ledgers, held in place by a shiny skull.

"Don't be alarmed," he told her, picking up the skull and stroking it. "It's not human. It belonged to a young ape, more than three million years ago — maybe an early ancestor of ours. And it's not real, either, but reconstructed on the basis of a single wisdom tooth. But if you think it will bother you at night, I'll take it away. Shuli would definitely not have been happy to sleep alone with it in the same room."

But Shuli's little sister has no such fears. Why should a replica of the skull of a young monkey a few million years old disturb her sleep? Doesn't he remember that as a child she would bring her parents greenish toads from the banks of the Yarkon and suggest they pet them at bedtime? Yes, Yirmi agreed, as a grin brightened his face, and he also remembered the toads jumping in her sister's bed. And maybe he would remember other things too. For a moment it seemed that he was glad his sister-in-law had come to visit. Yes, he admitted, this last mourning period was hasty, perhaps because the previous one had gone on and on. He left the country before the end of the thirty days not because he wanted to run away but for fear that if he stayed away too long, the authorities in Dar es Salaam would take advantage of his absence and shut down the diplomatic office they had long since regretted approving, because of the security costs. The great irony was that in the end it was the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem that decided to shut it down to save money, and maybe the whole economic mission had been created in the first place as some sort of compensation for the "friendly fire" that had killed his son.

She sat on his bed and listened, careful not to appear tired so as not to offend him, but he gathered himself and before leaving her to her fatigue, he showed her how to work the faucets in the shower, and with an ironic smile promised plenty of piping hot water, since the boiler on the bottom floor was still consuming the Israeli newspapers and lighting the Hanukkah candles.

After washing herself long and thoroughly, she got into bed, and to wind down from the trip and drift off without a husband by her side, she read a page from the mediocre novel. Then she turned out the light, and with her rare talent for transmuting worries and fears into memories and dreams, she put her palm to her mouth like an infant at the breast and fell asleep.

At dawn, when her brother-i n-law entered on tiptoe to close the shutters and protect her from the blazing sunrise, she simply smiled her thanks, and since she could rely on him to send, in her name, an electronic sign of life to her husband, she allowed herself many more hours of untroubled slumber.

IN THE MORNING Ya'ari is pleased to find, in his e-mail at the office, the long-expected message. Now, with his wife under his brother-i n-law's supervision, he may let go of his anxiety until her return trip begins five days hence. With his mind unencumbered, he tries to perfect on the computer his nocturnal vision of a narrow corner elevator, independently controlled, that would rob hardly any space from the four others. But he is still reluctant to enlist any of his employees, lest one of them glibly dismiss the idea out of hand. First he had better ask Moran, since his criticism, however harsh and negative, will remain between father and son.

But Moran is late. Has Nadi again deprived his parents of sleep, and, as usual, was it his father who got up to calm him, not his mother? This grandson, two years old, for all his sweetness is a stormy little scamp, and the grandfather and grandmother concur in blaming their daughter-in-law, who while assiduously trying to find herself has apparently neglected her child. But the two continually caution each other not to say a word of criticism to her or Moran. When they first met her, seven years back, she was a shy, pale girl; no one could have foreseen the beauty that would later bloom. Now, after bearing two children, her body has filled out, and her skin has a new luster. She goes about in heels that increase her height and show off her attractive legs, and her face, sculpted by cosmetic art, has been drawing attention. Yet the beauty only recently revealed, to her as well as to others, confuses her somewhat. It has helped her find jobs but also undermined her determination to stick to them. Out of cocky confidence that the world will always pay homage to her good looks, she tends to make light of her obligations, quits a situation without thinking it through, and switches jobs arbitrarily, out of caprice.

Outside it is gray and quiet. Rain and wind have stopped, yet this wintry calm does not prevent that stubborn, depressive head of the Pinsker Tower tenants' council from calling Ya'ari's cell phone once more to demand that he do something to stop the whistling noise in the elevators. Unwilling to debate the limits of his responsibility with a private individual, Ya'ari merely inquires politely whether the winds are still raging in the tower even as on the big tree outside his office window not a leaf is stirring.

"Not one leaf?" the tenant says, snickering. "Maybe for you, Mr. Ya'ari, but these elevators of yours don't need any winds from the outside, they create their own."

Ya'ari laughs, hanging up with a vague promise.

It's now nearly nine o'clock and Moran is still not in. Ya'ari calls his cell phone, but gets only the voice mail. And though he knows that his daughter-in-law is doubtless still asleep, he also calls their home phone, but that, too, goes unanswered. Given no choice, he calls his daughter-in-law's cell, and as usual a lovely disembodied voice invites him to leave a message. A few minutes later, she gets back to him, sounding confused.

"Right, I forgot. I forgot to let you know that Moran left this morning for reserve duty."

"Reserve duty? After all that? What changed?"

"I mean, he didn't exactly leave by himself, they took him."

"Who?"

"A military policeman."

"Military policeman? They still exist?"

"Apparently so."

"Damn it, I warned him. But he thought they'd forget about him."

"They didn't forget."

"You, too, Efrati, forgive me, are not totally blameless on this. You should have pressured him not to provoke them."

"Great, Amotz, now I'm to blame," she retorts, as if her beauty were a permanent guarantee of her integrity. "Why me? Why are you so sure that he involves me in his little pranks?"

"Okay, sorry. So what happens now? I need him urgently in the office."

"If you need him, you'll find a way to get to him."

"And the children, Efrati?" he says, softening, "and the children? You don't need help with them?"

"Of course I need help. I have a training class up north till late tonight. My mother promised that they could sleep at her place, but if Nadi falls asleep again at his preschool, she won't be able to cope with him at night."

"And I had planned to light candles with you this evening."

"Very good… so you two go to my mother, light candles with her, and help her out a bit. The kids will be happy, too… and if my mother's already worn out, maybe you and Daniela could take them home to sleep at your place."

"No, wait, listen, Efrati, it's just me. You forgot that Daniela flew yesterday to Africa."

"Oh, right. I'm not used to thinking about the two of you apart; I forgot all about it."

THE SHUTTERS, CLOSED at dawn, have indeed enabled the visitor to sleep till late morning, and as she becomes aware of the hour, she realizes how worn out she must have been from the emotion and anxiety of the day gone by. Yirmi has apparently not deemed a few days' visit sufficient reason for clearing a shelf in his small armoire, so her little suitcase will have to serve as a clothes closet. Only her African-patterned dress, which Amotz encouraged her to buy three years ago in the market in Dar es Salaam and which she never dared wear in Israel, she hangs at full length alongside her brother-i n-law's khaki clothing, to rid it of wrinkles before trying it on at last, here on the continent of its origin.

The old shutters open with an agreeable creak, revealing a landscape of low-lying reddish hills covered with stumpy but abundant vegetation. The thick wayside foliage that had accompanied her nocturnal trip around Mount Morogoro is gone, and the vista now before her, for all its greenness, has a flavor of the neighboring desert. Near the entrance to the farm, she recognizes the Land Rover that brought her, parked between two pickup trucks.

She descends unhurriedly to the ground floor, where she is surrounded by a whirlwind of human activity accompanied by the singing of women, the rush of flowing water, the clatter of dishes, and the cackle of chickens. Into the oversize sunny kitchen comes cookware and tableware, sticky and coated with dust, sent back overnight from the site of the dig — plastic containers, plates and cups, mounds of spoons, forks, and knives — all of it taken to the sink at once, for soaking and scrubbing. A cornucopia of supplies is arranged on the dining tables: fresh vegetables, brown eggs, corn bread, slabs of bloody meat, and fish still quivering. On one of the tables stands a cage full of squawking chickens, and tied to the entry door is a black goat nursing her kid, which is also destined for slaughter.

The stoves are ablaze, covered with enormous pots, kettles, and skillets; beside them, black men and women in white toques and headscarves chop the heads and tails from fish, hack up cuts of meat, boil, stir, and roast. Yirmi takes full and active part, too — not in cooking, but in commerce. Wearing a colonial pith helmet, he sits at a table with old-fashioned scales, banknotes, and coins arrayed before him and lists the details of all supplies entering the kitchen, scrutinizing each bill before paying it. His very being projects the authority of a white man, bald and old, against the abundant vitality of Africa.

"Well, you slept soundly," he says, in a tone of mild rebuke toward his sister-in-law, who has come to mourn a dead sibling but behaves as if she were on vacation. And he calls Sijjin Kuang, the nurse, who is making the rounds of the stoves, supervising the cooks — perhaps watching over their culinary hygiene — and requests that she bring the guest a selection of the day's dishes, for a combined breakfast and lunch.

Food is prepared at base camp, then packed in plastic containers and sent in insulated coolers to the dig. The scientific team there is not big: ten people, all Africans, most of them born in the region, who acquired professional experience working with European teams in Kenya and Ethiopia and South Africa and are now conducting their own excavation. The workers assisting them at the dig come from local tribes; the idea is that the ethnic and linguistic ties between the scientists and their laborers will facilitate the discovery of the fossils they seek.

Daniela is ravenous, but unaccustomed to dining alone. She invites the Sudanese nurse to keep her company, and Yirmiyahu covers up the banknotes and coins with his helmet and joins her too. When the head chef comes to clear the dishes at the end of the meal, she praises his cooking and offers to help wash up. The black man, amazed by the older white woman's friendliness, bares his teeth as if about to swallow her whole.

Yirmi bursts into laughter. "Wash the dishes? You? Here?"

"Why not?"

"Why not? Back in your parents' house, on Saturdays after lunch, you resorted to all kinds of tricks to avoid the one chore they imposed on you, till finally Shuli would get fed up and go wash them herself."

"Instead of me?" Daniela's face turns red. "That's not true… maybe she would sometimes come help me dry them."

"No, no." He insists, for some reason, on this childhood memory now more than forty years old. "You were quite the artist at shirking."

"I didn't shirk anything, I just wanted to do it at my own pace."

"At my own pace," he says, chuckling, as if speaking of something that happened yesterday, "but in the end there was no pace at all."

Daniela smiles. Yes, "at my own pace" had indeed been her avoidance tactic. She always hoped that someone whose patience had run out would do it in her place, or at least help her. Although washing the Shabbat lunch dishes had in fact been her sole housekeeping responsibility, she'd sit gloomily through the meal, and because in general she was a cheerful child, the other family members easily diagnosed her "dishwashing depression" and joked about it, yet they refused, for educational reasons, to coddle her. What's so hard about washing dishes? her mother would sympathetically ask her adorable daughter. And Daniela would struggle to describe the humiliation of being stuck in the small dreary kitchen — which actually repelled her mother as well — while everyone else was indulging in Sabbath-afternoon naps.

"At her own pace," when they were all curled up in their beds, she would enter with mild disgust that sunless room in their workers' apartment and stand beside the scratched-up, graying sink, crammed with dishes each more revolting than the next, douse the lot of them with copious quantities of soap, and then go off to leaf through the newspaper or chat awhile on the phone, hoping the soap would do the job on its own. And when the parents awoke from their nap to find a sink still full of filthy dishes and she heard the redemptive sound of a running kitchen faucet, she would hurry in, perky and smiling, and say, hey, what's the rush? Didn't I promise I'd wash them myself? How come you never have enough patience to let me do it at my own pace?

Now, as she watches the joyful collective labor in the giant kitchen, it occurs to her that it wasn't the scrubbing itself that made her suffer, but the loneliness. After all, she had always happily helped her father tend their little garden or paint a porch railing, but her spirit had rebelled against being left alone to face the grimy leftovers of her sleeping family, much as she loved them all.

And if it sometimes happened that because of "my own pace" there remained by evening not one clean glass, plate or spoon, and the household swelled with righteous anger at this immobile "pace," her sister would rise to her rescue and without complaint would placate everyone by entering the kitchen as her full partner.

"She really was never mad at me?" Daniela asks now, with wonder. "It would have been so natural for her to be angry, too…"

"Angry? No, I don't remember…"

The little sister, who in a few years will be sixty, lifts her eyes with relief and thanks and stifled tears to the blue skies and red and green hills of the African savanna.

IN TEL AVIV the winds have risen, and with them a stormy phone conversation between Gottlieb and Ya'ari.

"All the same, Ya'ari, explain to me again, this time logically, please, what exactly is driving you right now? Why do you keep obsessing over these noises when you know as well as I do that they are not the fault of your design, and certainly not of my manufacturing. You want to waste a day's work, shut down the elevators, dismantle the doors, run up expenses, and all you'll discover is what is obvious to everyone, that the construction company skimped on iron and screwed up the casting, and that they're the only ones who should be butting heads with the tenants."

"You might turn out to be right in the end, but in any case Moran met with your expert, the woman technician…"

"Rolaleh."

"And in her opinion the defects in the shaft are old and apparently existed before we installed the elevators, so that even if we are not formally responsible for them, morally…"

"Morally?" The manufacturer is taken aback. "That's a new one. Where'd that come from?"

"Listen, and don't get angry. Your technicians had a moral responsibility, and so, I admit, did our engineer who supervised the job, to make note of any defects and alert the construction company before installation."

"No, no, you're wrong. More than thirty years we've been working together, but despite the professional experience you've built up, I've been doing this longer. Between your father and me there were always agreements and understandings regarding the limits of our joint responsibility. And even after you took over, we agreed to continue in the same spirit; in other words, to coordinate our position vis-à-vis contractors and construction companies, so they can't pull a divide-and-conquer. How then does morality come into this? In the past we never used such a strange expression, and there is no need to use it in the future either. We spoke of joint legal responsibility and determined what its financial implications would be, and that way our partnership was conducted honorably, and we saved money too. So why not let sleeping dogs lie? The construction company is keeping quiet and not making any claims on us, but only trying to wear us down in a roundabout way, through the head of the tenants' committee. Even if he is a bereaved father, that's no reason to lose our heads."

"A bereaved father? How do you know that?"

"It's not only you that he's hassling, but me too, so I decided to find out just who this guy is and what gets him so riled up, and it turns out he is a bereaved father; his son fell in action a month or two before he moved into the tower. And even though one must treat such people with respect, you also have to remember that they have a different agenda in their heads. Unfortunately, over the various wars, I've had any number of bereaved workers at my plant, and I'm always careful not to get into any confrontation with them. I listen to them politely and nod sadly and promise to consider their request and try to take it into account, and afterward, carefully and delicately, I manage to get around them and do what I need to do. Because if you start to get tangled up with grieving parents, they can drag you a long way."

"You know that also… in our family…"

"Of course. I was at the military funeral."

"You were there, too? I don't remember. I was taking care of my young daughter Nofar. She fainted at the gravesite, and I was so distraught I didn't notice…"

"Yes, I also remember how alarmed your father was; even then he used a cane… How old was she?"

"Nofar? Maybe twelve. Of the four of us, she took her cousin's death the hardest, and I think even now, almost seven years later, she hasn't really got over it."

"That happens sometimes with cousins: they fall madly in love, in secret."

"Could be… who knows the hearts of his own children, even a wife can surprise you… But listen, let's get back to the complaint and agree that we'll devote one workday to it, to keep up our good name, yours and mine, and we'll split the expenses. We'll ride up on the top of the big elevator, scanning the shaft very slowly with a searchlight, and figure out once and for all where the winds are sneaking in and what they're wailing about."

"No, habibi, I strongly object. I learned long ago that a machine is like a human body. You open it up and start poking around, you discover things you'd rather not know. Yes, my technician is very sensitive to sounds and noises, but believe me, she's also a little crazy."

"Crazy?"

"Too sure of herself. And therefore you have to set limits for her. Bottom line, as long as there's no formal complaint, we sit quietly in a corner. And if this man, head of the tenants' committee, hassles you again, tell him, You're right, sir, we are looking into the matter, sir, but it will take a little time, sir, to gently get him off your back. Howling winds aren't wolves who eat people alive. As for morality, my friend, that belongs in the family."

THE CHEFS REMOVE the white hats from their heads and fan them over the cooking pots, to cool the food a bit before it is ladled into containers and placed in the big refrigerator. The meals won't be sent to the excavation site until three. In the meantime Yirmi proposes a short walk to his sister-in-law, to see a very unusual elephant.

"Elephant?" She laughs happily. "Lovely, but why unusual?"

"When you see him you'll understand."

"Why on foot? We can't drive?"

"It won't be a long walk."

"You're sure?"

"I won't take you for any hike your sister couldn't have handled."

She goes up to her room to put on gym shoes, thinks a minute, then also changes into the African dress, figuring that whatever remote corner of Africa they are headed for will be the right place to see whether its bold colors are compatible with her personality. To her surprise, her brother-i n-law recognizes the dress that she bought years ago in the market near the Israeli mission. He had tried to talk his wife into emulating her sister and buying herself such a dress, but Shuli had firmly refused.

"I didn't dare wear it in Israel, because the colors are not only loud, they also clash."

"Pity, because African women of your age know that loud clashing colors only rejuvenate them."

"So now I'll be a rejuvenated African woman," says the visitor lightly as they step outside the farmhouse and into the blinding sun.

"Just a moment," she says, "stop. I'm not prepared for a sun this strong. You forget that I come from a stormy land of rain and wind."

But Yirmi scoffs at the ferocity of the Israeli winter. How stormy can it really be? He takes off his pith helmet and places it on her head — here, this is in honor of the equator — and leads her to a dirt track, easy to walk on. Even as she adjusts to the day's fierce light, she feels the purity of the air.

After a short and pleasant walk, they come upon a stream with black cows grazing on the bank. Yirmi addresses the tall herdsmen with a few words in their own language, and they reply at greater length.

Since her arrival last night, she has not spoken about her family. She has not mentioned Amotz, Moran, or Nofar and has taken special care not to bring up her two darling grandchildren; oddly he too has ignored their existence, hasn't asked after them or taken any interest, as if they had been swallowed by the abyss of his detachment. As they stroll now along the bank of the stream she decides to say something about them, for they have always been dear to him. And he walks at her side, indifferent and silent in his loose khaki clothes, a tall man, his bare skull reddening in the powerful light.

"Excuse me, does this interest you at all?"

"To tell you the truth, not really… but if it's important to you, talk, why not?"

She is shocked, trying not to recoil from the direct blow. True, she insisted on this visit not so she could tell him about her husband and children but rather so they could both talk about her sister, from whom he, perhaps, wants to disengage too.

Half an hour later they arrive at a broad river lined with huts and thatched sheds.

"See, that's where they keep the elephant." Yirmi points to a distant shed. Several youths gathered beside it suddenly run toward them. An elderly white-haired African, sitting by the entrance to the shed, recognizes the pale man from afar and calls out his name. It turns out that Yirmi has visited here a few times and paid an admission fee.

The elephant is not especially big, but his presence and smell fill the shed. One of his legs is tied with a long chain to a tree trunk whose boughs have been chopped off. Without paying attention to the visitors, he continues to scoop up vegetables daintily from the small feeding trough with his trunk and toss them into his pink maw. The African shouts a curt command, and the animal stops eating, raises its head and moves it closer to his guests. Now the tourist understands the reason for the visit. The elephant's left eye is narrow and normal, sunk into the black flesh of its cheek, but the right one is huge and wide open, a wise and curious cyclops eye, with a wandering blue-green iris that gazes at the world with melancholy humanity.

"What is this?" She is shaken and moved. "Is that a real eye?"

"Yes, it is. This man, who was a wildlife caretaker in one of the nature preserves, noticed this unique eye from the moment the elephant was born and also saw that because of this birth defect the mother elephant rejected her child and was even prone to attack it, so he got permission from the authorities to isolate the infant, in order to protect it and also to show its wonders to the world. Now he roams around with him from place to place, puts up a shed, and charges admission."

The African issues another command, and the animal takes a few steps toward Daniela, curtsies ceremoniously, and bows its head to give her a close view of the miraculous eye and to receive a reward in return. The visitor falters. The sharp stink of the elephant makes her dizzy. Pet him, orders her brother-i n-law, and she extends a hand toward that mesmerizing blue-green orb, then quickly pulls back. Yirmiyahu gives a strange little laugh.

Daniela looks at her brother-in-law, who seems pleased and serene. Yes, from the very start he displayed certain idiosyncrasies that bothered her parents, but his love and devotion to her sister banished all their worries. Now, without Shuli, he seems to be letting loose.

The elephant stands up again and in honor of the guests dumps his turds, which plop softly onto the straw matting. The African studies them with satisfaction and grins at Yirmiyahu, who nods in agreement.

"I see you are happy here," Daniela snaps as they leave the shed. "You've cut yourself off and left all troubles behind. You burn newspapers, you live without a radio or telephone. But do you really succeed in disconnecting, or are you just playing games? Don't tell me, for example, that you don't know that we have a new prime minister."

"I don't know," he says, lifting his hand to silence her, "and I don't want to know."

"You don't care who the new prime minister is?"

"I really don't," he shuts her up, "and don't say another word. I do not want to hear his name or those of the ministers and deputies. I don't care and I'm not interested. Please, Daniela, try to understand where I am and what's important to me now. I mean, you came to revive your grief, not to poison my disengagement."

YA'ARI TRIES UNSUCCESSFULLY to reach Moran. It's hard for him to accept the fact that his son's cell phone, ever ready for his calls, has suddenly become a mere answering machine, indifferently storing messages. So he calls his son's apartment, not in hopes of finding him, but rather to leave on a real answering machine a short, pointed message: a father's worry masquerading as an employer's demand to know exactly when his worker will be available. Afterward he again tries Efrat on her cell phone, aware that if she responds at all, it will only be a return call later on. Since Ya'ari knows that his daughter-in-law can identify his number on her screen and ignore it, he leaves her the strongest message that a father-in-law can leave the mother of his grandchildren without damaging his relationship with her. Efrat, my dear, he says in a voice tinged with desperation, if you've managed to locate your deserter, let me know right away, because I need him urgently.

In truth, today there is nothing at the office so urgent as to require Moran's presence. But the father seeks him not as an employee but as a son whom he can control with his love. Especially now, more than twenty-four hours after parting from his wife, whose absence, not physical but emotional, irritates him. His wife knows how to articulate problems that he has a hard time defining by himself and is also capable of easing them and minimizing their importance. And even though he would not degrade himself by complaining to his son the way he would to his wife, he wants him now as her reflection.

He phones his daughter in Jerusalem, but she doesn't answer either, which pleases him, since now he can leave her a message without getting into an argument. I hope, Nofar, he says, choosing his words carefully, that you haven't forgotten that Imma flew yesterday to Yirmi in Africa. Moran has gone off on reserve duty, or more precisely, he was taken, and it's not yet clear whether he'll be back tonight or tomorrow. Efrat has yet another training course, and her mother is taking the children. So this evening I'm on my own. If you're not on duty, and there's nothing keeping you in Jerusalem, maybe you could come home to spend a little time with me and light candles together.

Silence. The pleasant aroma of tobacco strikes his nostrils. He stands up, takes his jacket and goes out of his office into the main hall. Though it's well before noon, the hall is nearly empty. In a corner, isolated by a small glass divider, sits the chief engineer, Dr. Malachi, peering pensively at a diagram of a large elevator on his computer screen. Dr. Malachi has given himself license, with no one else around, to puff on a pipe. Ya'ari draws near to savor the fragrance.

"The smell of tobacco is a big part of my childhood, from the good old days when people were still allowed to smoke at the office. If I didn't have my meeting at the Defense Ministry, I'd hang around to inhale some more. But please, before you go home, make sure not to leave any burning ashes in the wastebasket…"

"And you make sure not to promise them a fifth elevator before they commit to additional payment for all the design changes we'll have to make."

"We'll see," Ya'ari mutters, putting on his jacket, "we'll see," but does not reveal the nighttime sketch tucked in his pocket, for fear of a dismissive response from the man to whom he pays the highest salary in the office.

"SO YOU'RE NOT sorry I dragged you here to see the elephant?" he inquires gently.

"No," she answers. Under the visor of the pith helmet there is a glimmer of childlike sweetness in her no longer young face, she continues, "So an elephant with a freak genetic defect is more interesting to you than the prime minister…"

"Why? He's also a freak?" Yirmi laughs, turning his gaze toward the distant hills.

The sun has climbed high in the sky, and the path is awash in blazing light; the trace of shadow that she earlier imagined was trailing them from behind has vanished. They return to the little stream and tramp among the cows and sheep, and the tall herdsmen lean on their staffs and regard them solemnly. Not far off, on the side of a hill, a plume of smoke rises from a hut she didn't notice earlier. Tell me, she asks her brother-in-law, could we have a peek inside a hut like this? Why not? he answers, you'll see how people live; you'll understand the depth of the poverty and inhale its heavy stench. And they turn and trudge up the hillside. Beside the shack a cow munches grass. A big African woman stands on a tree stump to spread fresh cow dung on the roof of the hut. Yirmiyahu says something to her, gives her a coin, and nudges his sister-in-law toward the entrance.

The hut is empty. Here and there are scattered blankets with tin plates on them. In the corner, ringed with black basalt stones, burns a purplish flame. Its smoke caresses the tufts of straw that protrude from the ceiling.

"They're not afraid the straw will catch fire and burn down the hut?"

"If a hut burns down, it's easy enough to put up a new one. That's an eternal flame, and from generation to generation they keep it burning, even in the heat of summer."

"Friendly fire," she whispers unthinkingly, as her eyes tear up from the smoke.

"Yes." He flinches in pain. "Friendly fire, indeed… Who the hell knows how we all got infected by that revolting expression. You know who first blurted that out?"

"No."

"Guess."

"I don't know.."

"Your favorite person…"

"Moran? No. Just don't tell me that Amotz…"

"Why not? Yes, Amotz, back in Jerusalem, at the Foreign Ministry, when the army officer and doctor came into my office. It was Amotz who brought them, because when Eyali filled out the forms, back in basic training, he listed you and Amotz to be notified in case of bad news. They could not conceal the fact that a soldier had been killed by our own forces, because this had already trickled into the media, and so, while I am standing there with the poisoned lance stuck in my heart, and this angel of death, in uniform, brings me the message that the gunfire came from our soldiers and he trembles as he explains what happened in the battle, as if there really had been a battle and not simply the killing of a soldier who was mistaken for the enemy, a wanted man, it somehow seemed to your Amotz, my Amotz, our Amotz, who had come from Tel Aviv with this bearer of bad news, that I didn't comprehend the explanations — or the opposite, maybe he was actually trying to console me, to loosen the rope that was wound around my neck, since being killed by our own forces is a hundred times crueler than 'enemy fire'—and then he grabs my hand and hugs me tight, and says to me, Yirmi, what they mean is friendly fire."

"Amotz?" she whispers.

"Yes, Amotz, and not only once, but several times, he repeated that wretched expression, and at first I wanted to rip him apart, but then suddenly, amid all the shock and anger, I also understood that inside this stupid oxymoron, this friendly fire, there was something more, some small spark of light that would help me navigate through the great darkness that awaited me and better identify the true sickness that afflicts all of us. And from then on I fell in love with this expression, and I started to use it a lot, relevantly and also irrelevantly, and to pass it on to others… See, even you, Little Sister, you walk into a crappy little hut in Africa and you say, totally naturally, friendly fire… right?"

THE MINISTRY OF Defense is walking distance from Ya'ari's office, but a river of parents and children milling toward Tel Aviv's Hall of Culture impedes his progress. Ya'ari inherited a security clearance from his father, who in his day also worked with the Defense Ministry, and his entry into the heavily guarded building therefore goes smoothly, with no unnecessary delays.

A few years ago they expanded the old structure, adding new floors and basements. Ya'ari's firm designed most of the elevators in the new wings, and there were periods when he participated in many meetings of the ministry's construction department to protect his plans from cost-cutting contractors. As someone familiar with the workings of the ministry, he now notices that it, too, is short many workers today. The computers are blank and the offices abandoned, including that of the division manager he is scheduled to meet. What's going on? He asks the veteran secretary, who is still at her post. Is the Defense Ministry upgrading the holiness of Hanukkah to give time off to its workers?

"Why not?" she answers, surprised that Ya'ari is unaware of the Hanukkah performance organized at the Hall of Culture for the children of ministry employees. Especially since his son, Moran, managed to cadge free tickets from her for the children of Ya'ari's firm.

"And he didn't bother to tell me, and even my daughter-in-law doesn't know. This morning he needed to go off for some clarification regarding his reserve duty, meaning that my two grandchildren are missing the show."

"How old are they?"

"The boy is two, and the girl is five."

"Then don't be upset. My grandchildren were around those ages last year, and they only suffered through the stupid play."

"How do you know it's the same play?"

"How much originality can there be in the moonlighting of unemployed actors?"

"So there's nobody left here to meet with on this case?"

"The new deputy, she's here."

"Why? She has no kids?"

"Kids? No. A confirmed bachelorette. Go see her."

The deputy, a construction engineer with a Ph.D., is a woman of fifty or so, tall and cheerful. She welcomes Ya'ari with enthusiasm and locates the file, marked SECRET in red ink.

"This fifth elevator," Ya'ari begins, with a sigh, "which all of a sudden popped up after we finished the planning — tell me, is it really necessary?"

The deputy examines the file and sighs, too. "What can I do? We also get orders. It turns out that they need an extra elevator here, independent, which will go straight from the top floor to the lowest level of the garage without picking up any passengers in between. And in addition to an internal telephone, they want a screen and video hookup trained on the outside world. In other words, a very private elevator."

"All right, then we'll have to deal with it. But I hope you've taken into account that it will require a complete overhaul of the design of the shaft and will involve further payment."

"The redesign is only natural," the deputy admits, "but as for more money, we've already milked the ministry budget for this project down to the last penny."

"Thanks very much, but what does that mean? That I now have to subsidize the defense forces of the state of Israel?"

"Why not?" she asks, laughing. "They protect you too."

Ya'ari shrugs but doesn't argue. Budgets in any case are determined in a different department, and in that one he'll know how to hold his own. He's not sure whether to show the deputy the idea that came to him in the middle of the night and finally decides to risk it. A gracious woman, good looking and elegant in her own way, can't take it upon herself to kill a technical idea that's outside her area of expertise. Look, he explains with a cryptic smile, he's a grass widower whose wife flew off to Africa and he can't sleep well at night, so he came up with this idea, which might placate, even satisfy, all parties. A corner elevator, with perpendicular doors, squeezed into the south corner of the shaft and operated by independent control: this would require no significant appropriation of space at the expense of the four currently planned elevators, so the finished design won't need complete redoing. The deputy takes out a scale ruler and measures the diagram.

"This elevator of yours is very narrow, Mr. Ya'ari." She smiles ironically. "Our secret rider will have to lose weight in order to ride in it."

"You're right," Ya'ari admits, "it is very narrow. But don't forget it has another corner, for another person, presumably the wife of the secret rider."

"His wife?" remarks the deputy with surprise. "Well, it wasn't really her I pictured in your spartan elevator. But if his wife insists on chaperoning her husband everywhere, then she'll have to slim down, too."

THE BIG KITCHEN at the farm is clean and quiet. The cooks have disappeared. Yirmiyahu opens one of the doors of the big refrigerator for his sister-in-law. What can I heat up for you? But the strong sun, and the memory of the African woman smearing her roof with cow manure, have dulled her appetite. No hurry, she tells him. First I'll go up and rest awhile, and then, if possible…

Yes, they can postpone lunch, but they will have to finish it by three, because then he must go out with the food to the excavation site and won't return till late at night.

"Is it far?"

"Not terribly, but the driving is very slow."

"So what about me?"

"Rest, read. After all, I didn't burn your novel."

"And who else will stay here?"

"There is always a security guard."

Suddenly she is seized with the fear of abandonment.

"Can I join you? Is there room for me?"

"Yes, but on condition that you don't wait like your sister till the last minute, but be ready down here by two-thirty, and we'll eat and hit the road. You want me to wake you?"

"No need," she says, suddenly a bit dejected. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep."

She slowly climbs the broad and easy stairs that spiral around the old elevator shaft. The room she left that morning now smells of Lysol, reminding her of the toilets at her school. In her absence the floor has been mopped, the bathroom cleaned, and her bed remade. She looks at the bluish haze of the summer sky. On a distant hill are two zebras, either fighting or copulating, not clear which. She thinks about her husband. Was Amotz in fact the source of the phrase friendly fire, which even during the week of mourning began to trip from Yirmi's tongue with a sarcasm that depressed and paralyzed her sister?

She pulls the wooden shutters closed and surrounds herself with darkness. The room is pleasant, but is missing a large mirror to reflect her full image. The small scratched mirror hanging over the sink can't satisfy her curiosity. She takes off her gym shoes and her dress. Remembering the appreciative looks of the locals, she is pleased that she took Amotz's advice to try out its bold colors on their native soil. For years she has worn only trousers, convinced that dresses make her look heavier. But here she is free and not compelled to look after her figure. The dress added a light touch to the morning call on the elephant.

She stretches out on the bed in her bra and panties, then after a few minutes undoes the bra and liberates her breasts. Then she wraps herself in a lightweight robe she found in Yirmi's closet. Amotz had too easily turned down the chance to come with her. True, she was concerned that on this trip he would be in the way, but for now she is not swept up in childhood memories or in sorrow, and who knows what might happen in the short week ahead? The detachment to which her brother-in-law is so fervently addicted is damaging the simple and natural bond she always had with him. And it is implausible that he's living here merely to build up his savings. Surely his intentions are more radical. As she leafs through the three volumes of anthropology and geology that she found in the room, she realizes that they are not there simply for reading or browsing. They are a clear statement on the part of a man whose bookshelves in Jerusalem were always filled to overflowing.

She gets up to make sure that she has locked the door. If she had gone with Amotz that day to the foreign ministry to bring the horrible news, he would have chosen his words more carefully and not blurted out "friendly fire," the words Yirmi has fallen in love with and is amplifying into a new religion. But she got to her sister's side in Jerusalem too late. Moran was so anxious about the heavy blow he was about to deal her that he hung around the school for a solid hour till she finished her lesson. Everyone knew about Eyali's death before she did.

The door is locked. Despite the heat she takes one of Yirmi's woolen blankets and curls up under it. For years she has been faithful to her afternoon nap and tries not to miss it even when traveling. And since in their first year of marriage it had already become clear to Amotz that afternoon napping enhanced her sexuality, he would loyally join her. Was it because of the mysterious power of the afternoon sun? Maybe this feeling of sexual awakening in the afternoon was tied to her teenage years, when every day after school she would be surrounded by several admiring boys who would tag along on her way home and dawdle in front of the apartment block while her mother waited upstairs to serve her lunch.

However it was, years after her mother's death, with her suitors long since happily united with other women, she still retains that afternoon flame, which Amotz won't allow to go to waste, even cutting meetings short and driving the long way home to their northern suburb to try his strength in the darkened bedroom, in which a teacher has fallen asleep after her long day in class.

BUOYED BY THE fact that his nighttime sketch has been met, for now, with humor and not scorn, Ya'ari shuns his own elevator and skips down the stairs to the exit. The skies have cleared and a friendly winter sun caresses the passersby. The streets are calm, now that the Hall of Culture has swallowed up the children and their parents. But can it be that the Hanukkah show has also consumed his chief engineer and financial manager? The office is locked. The smell of tobacco is all that remains.

He phones Moran, but his son's sophisticated mobile device, paid for by the firm, is only taking messages. With low expectations he calls Efrat's cell, which his veteran bookkeeper has also managed to list as an office expense, and hears her phone's parrot recitation of its usual ingratiating but heartless recording. Everyone is shirking his duty. Is he the only one at his desk today? Taped to his computer screen is a note from the chief engineer: An elderly woman from Jerusalem, Dr. Devorah Bennett, wishes to speak with your father regarding a malfunction in the private elevator in her home. I intentionally did not take down her number, so that she won't expect us to call her back. But she will probably call again this afternoon. Should I give her your father's home number?

No, scribbles Ya'ari with a black marker, don't give her anybody's number. The tenant from Pinsker is enough for me. Just remember that we're a design firm and not a service center. And he pastes the note to the engineer's computer screen, locks up the office, and drives home. If he's not entitled to a ticket to a children's play, maybe he deserves a free dream in his double bed.

And so, desiring only to dream, he threads his car through crowded streets, marveling at the sight of the many ultra-Orthodox children who have been excused from Torah study and, lacking a show of their own to attend, are filling the playgrounds along the banks of the Yarkon River, sliding and swinging, despite the cold weather, the fringes of their ritual undershirts flapping in the breeze.

Before entering his building he clears the leaves the wind had amassed at the front door. The near perfect neatness of the apartment underscores the absence of his habitually messy wife. He restores to its place a red candle that has fallen from the menorah set up for the evening's lighting, heats his lunch, and eats it rapidly. Then he goes into his bedroom and gets undressed. Is dozing off alone, without making love, a good enough reason to disconnect from the world?

Without hesitation he unplugs the phone. Tomorrow afternoon Yirmiyahu will take Daniela to Dar es Salaam, as agreed, and place a call to Israel. So for now he can let things go. The Filipinos are looking after his father; the army has taken Moran, whose mother-in-law is supposed to deal with the children; and Efrat's good looks will excuse her failings. Nofar in any case is out of his control, even if she does show up this evening. He draws down the blinds, turns on the heater, gets into bed, and pulls the blanket over him. It's nice, this unaccustomed silence, undisturbed even by the rustling of newspapers by his side. Yes, out of love he should have offered to go with her, but the wiser love was not to insist on it. And he did make sure to warn Yirmiyahu to be extra vigilant in the face of her absent-mindedness and dreamy confusion, which have lately grown worse.

He knows that his brother-in-law would have preferred him to accompany her. But had he made the trip, he would have weighed down the visit with his polite silence, which would have been interpreted as ironic. Nor was another visit to Tanzania worth the expense and aggravation of travel. It was only three years ago that they were there. He remembers exploring a huge crater with Shuli and Yirmi, an enclosed nature preserve filled with predatory animals and rare plant life. Yes, sometimes he has pangs of longing for the soothing expanse of the savanna or the swirling colors of the sunsets, but just to indulge in nostalgia, would it have been worth neglecting his business for a whole week and instead sit mutely between his wife and brother-in-law? After Yirmi jumped on that "friendly fire," which he haplessly uttered at a terrible moment, and began to cling to it so absurdly, Ya'ari realized he should be wary of spontaneous conversation with him. Gottlieb is right. Bereaved fathers have a different agenda in their heads.

He gets up to draw the curtain and darken the room, and notices that his cell phone is on the bureau, live and breathing. Should he turn it off completely, or set it on silent vibration? He finally decides on vibration but also stuffs it under his pillow.

SOON, ON THE African farm, it will be three P.M. From outside the locked door of his bedroom, Yirmiyahu calls to the sleeping woman: We're leaving! Why did you think I didn't need to wake you?

Daniela apologizes, even though she does not feel she is to blame. On trips abroad she always keeps her watch set on Israeli time, to stay in sync with her children and grandchildren. Amotz takes care of local time.

"But Amotz isn't here," her brother-in-law points out with mild annoyance and tells her to hurry up; otherwise he'll leave her here to finish her novel.

Though this is a woman who adheres to "her own pace," the threat of being left alone at the farm with an elderly African watchman gets her moving faster. Besides, there's no fussing over what to wear. Deftly she slips back into her African dress, not only because of its comfortable fabric but also out of the knowledge that only here, in Africa, can she get away with wearing anything so colorful.

In front of the farmhouse the vehicles stand ready for the journey. The food coolers are stacked one upon the other, and next to them are jugs of milk and water and small bags of flour and potatoes and white beans for individual cooking, a few big kettles of soup, and the freshly washed cooking pots and dinnerware. The goat, its slaughter apparently postponed, surveys the scene with interest. The cooks, who have removed their white uniforms and put on short gray sheepskins, finish the last bits of preparation for the trip, oiling the hunting rifles and poking around under the hoods of the old pickup trucks.

There is no one in the kitchen, except for Sijjin Kuang, wearing a greenish smock. She places a plate and cup for the visitor on one of the long tables.

"We'll heat up something for you," Yirmi tells Daniela, "but only on condition that you eat fast."

But the hungry guest will not degrade herself and eat alone before the eyes of strangers, and certainly not at a pace to which she is unaccustomed. No, she says, she'll hold out until it's time to have dinner with the diggers. That way their journey can begin right away. But the Sudanese nurse is not pleased by the guest's forgoing of food and expertly fixes her two sandwiches for the road. Nor does she stop at that; even as the pickups' engines sputter into activity, she vanishes into the building and returns with a windbreaker. Your dress is pretty, but at night you'll need something more against the cold, she tells Daniela, before taking her place behind the wheel of the Land Rover.

Yirmi has long legs, and therefore, apologizes to his sister-in-law, who has been relegated to the backseat, amid the luxury items designated for the researchers — bottles of whisky and cognac, packets of cigarettes and chocolate — and medical supplies for everyone. She places Sijjin Kuang's windbreaker on her lap and looks around her and nibbles at a sandwich. The Land Rover travels between the two pickup trucks, and in the lead truck ride the Africans with their hunting rifles.

"Why rifles?" wonders the visitor, and they tell her that sometimes animals and birds of prey are attracted by the traveling feast and need to be chased away.

The convoy first heads toward the small village they visited in the morning, where children are still congregating by the shed housing the elephant with the cyclops eye. From there, the road slopes gently down to the vast, silent savanna, where the air and the dry grass, patchy and scorched, shine golden in the western sun. The vehicles drive slowly, keeping their distance from one another to avoid the clouds of dust kicked up by the tires. Now and again they are stopped by a herd of plodding gnus or unhurried zebus, who take their time before deigning to move on and clear the road.

The great expanse before them stirs a feeling of respect in the visitor. Yirmiyahu directs her attention to a giant baobab with a trunk wider than his room at the farm and branches that look like thick roots shooting skyward, as if the tree were growing upside down. On one branch crouches a golden beast of prey.

On this plain, the dead, animal and human, are not buried, says the Sudanese nurse, but rather left exposed in the wild, to be eaten by animals and birds, reabsorbed into the natural world that gave them life. Their bodies will not be resurrected, but a good soul may hope to find a strong wind that will agree to carry it.

Two hills stand out on the horizon: this might be their destination. For as soon as the hills appear, the convoy shifts its formation from single file to side by side with the brotherly freedom — or rivalry — of those whose goal is clear to them and who have no need for a defined pathway or any rules of the road. They advance under the sheltering sky, whose palette of colors deepens toward evening, and a dizzying swirl of ravening birds swoops toward the traveling food stores, undeterred by occasional gunfire. The Africans gaily wave from the pickup trucks at the Land Rover, especially at the Israeli visitor, who only yesterday morning took off from her homeland and whose country and husband and children and grandchildren already appear strangely distant to her. Yes, she muses, maybe it would have been a bit much to light Hanukkah candles in a place where one is seeking the primal ape who never anticipated that Jews, too, would spring from his loins.

The Sudanese and her brother-in-law exchange now and then a few words, muffled by the engine noise. She pulls the windbreaker lent her by Sijjin Kuang tightly across her lap and rubs it with her fingers, then lifts it to her face and inhales its smell. She gasps. As the Africans fire with cries of joy at a stubborn hawk and bring it down, she quietly taps Yirmi's broad back and holds up the wind-breaker. Before she can ask, he answers:

"Of course. It was Shuli's. Didn't I tell you that I'd have a warm coat for you here?"

IN ISRAEL, IT'S still three o'clock. The pillow beneath the husband's head has stifled not one vibration but five, thanks either to the quality of the feathers or the soundness of his sleep. But each vibration has left in its wake a message, and now Ya'ari is on his feet, listening to all of them.

The first, to his surprise, is from Nofar. Okay, Abba, if Imma isn't there, I'll come around seven. A friend whom you don't know will come with me and also won't stay long. So okay, we'll light candles. But that's it. Please don't sit this friend down for an interrogation and don't ask him what his parents do. He's just a friend. Here today, gone tomorrow. As for the candles, my condition is no 'Maoz tsur' or any of the other songs I loath. Do a short blessing, if you must, and that's it. And if you're dying to sing, sing to yourself after we go. Not a tragedy. Because if you want your daughter's love, obey her. Sorry.

The second message is in a feeble voice. This is Doctor Devorah Bennett speaking from Jerusalem. If this is in fact your number, Amotz Ya'ari, then please don't hang up on me now in the middle, and call back at zero two six seven five four double zero and six at the end. I repeat: zero two is Jerusalem, and then six seven five four double zero and at the end again six. I urgently need your father. If you tell him my name, Devorah Bennett, he will certainly remember me. Because we were great friends. I know he has been ill, but at my apartment there is a private elevator that your father built many years ago, and he gave it, gave me, a lifetime guarantee, the lifetime of the elevator I mean, or more correctly my lifetime. I know that your firm doesn't do repairs but only design, but mine is a special case. All I ask of you is your father's telephone number. That is all I ask. Please, Ya'ari, if you would be so kind…

The third message is from Efrat. Well, that's that. Moran for starters has been sentenced to a week's confinement to his base, and they also took away his cell phone battery. He said that he would try to reach you tomorrow morning to explain what exactly happened. He is still awaiting a trial for his previous absences. In the meantime I've arranged with my mother for her to take the kids from preschool and day care — Hanukkah vacation for them starts tomorrow — but if you could help her out at least in the beginning, that would be great. I'm still up north and won't be back till late…

The fourth message is from the tenant in the Pinsker Tower. I've been waiting in vain for an answer. Therefore we have no alternative but to be more explicit with you. We consulted with people from the construction company, and they claim that those who designed and manufactured the elevators are responsible for the winds. Therefore you and the manufacturer are obligated to at least determine the source of the problem prior to a meeting at which we will all figure out how to deal with it. If you continue to ignore us, we will be forced to take legal action. We know that such a lawsuit could drag on for years, but as you know, the court would compensate us for damages incurred in the meantime.

The fifth message is from Yael, Efrat's mother, a high-strung and good-hearted divorcee, whose wry locutions Ya'ari always finds entertaining. You have doubtless already heard from Efrat that your son was socked with a week's confinement to base for his arrogant flippancy. But also Efrat for her part insists on staying today at her terribly important training course. With two problematic parents such as these there is no choice for grandpa and grandma from both sides but to join hands so that the grandchildren will not be abandoned. So please, Amotz, get back to me immediately; I am, as we speak, in the dentist's chair as he plots to extract one of my teeth, but my cell phone is always close to my heart, ever-ready to inform you of your role in the current mess."

Without delay he calls his son's mother-in-law, who asks him through semi-anesthetized lips and a mouth full of cotton rolls to fetch the children from preschool at four and wait for her at the Roladin Café across from her house.

"A café?"

"Why not? They know the children there. Order each of them a scoop of vanilla, and remind the waiter not to put chocolate sprinkles on Nadi's, because he thinks they're flies. It's a nice place, and as soon as my tooth is pulled I'll dash over and relieve you. Sorry, but what can I do? Today in any case is Daniela's turn, but she told me that she's going all the way to Africa to console her brother-in-law who's stuck out there, and who could begrudge her such a noble gesture?"

THE EVER SHIFTING African sky now promises an imminent sunset, and the purple hills on the horizon assume the shape of an prehistoric snail. The ground beneath the tires is cruder and bumpier now, rife with stubborn scrub and hidden potholes. The drivers no longer have the freedom to choose their own path, and they resume their small caravan formation, feeling out the best way to go. In the distance, bands of zebras flicker at times into view, disappear, then return. Foxes or hyenas peek out amid the scattered trees, having smelled the soup from afar, and try to join the crawling food convoy. One of the Africans, who has donned his chef's hat in honor of the approaching meal, gets on top of his truck's tarpaulin and opens fire over the heads of the wild animals — not to do harm, just to warn them off.

Since dusk falls rapidly in the region, it is already dark when the caravan arrives at the large encampment of the excavators, pitched on the slope of a bare volcanic canyon. In the depths of the canyon, one can just glimpse a bluish sparkle of water. Closer by, the UNESCO flag flaps on a tall pole, and small flags in a variety of colors are planted all around it to mark the locations of fossils. A crowd of diggers, men and women, are already unloading the contents of the vehicles, including the live goat, with cries of joy. Sijjin Kuang rushes with a medical kit to one of the big tents, while the white administrator stays with the liquor bottles, the cigarettes, and the chocolate, awaiting the arrival of the scientists.

Now they draw near, climbing up from the canyon, young and dusty and most of them naked to the waist, Africans differing one from the next in appearance and hue but all of them astonished to find a middle-aged white woman clad in a colorful African dress and an old windbreaker. "Who is this?" they inquire in English, in a variety of accents.

And Yirmiyahu presents the sister of his late wife, who has left her husband and family and country and come for only a few days to try to connect with the spirit of her beloved Shuli.

The black researchers greet her heartily, impressed by the boldness of this older woman who has come all the way to their excavations of the origins of the prehistoric man who split off from the chimpanzee millions of years ago, in order to grieve for her sister. Daniela is beside herself with excitement, and with the natural assertiveness of a longtime teacher wants to know the names of the half-naked people standing before her, their countries of origin, and the professional expertise of each and every one. Yirmiyahu did not exaggerate in describing the multinational nature of this group that has gathered from all over the continent. Here is an archaeologist from Uganda, and with him a botanist from Chad, and two tall South African geologists, and a Tanzanian anthropologist as black as coal who is the leader of the mission. Behind them stand a physicist from Ghana and an American zoologist from Kansas City who has not forgotten his ancestors and has come from the New World to help verify that humanity began right here.

And as they introduce themselves with their musical-sounding names and their professional titles and energetically shake the hand of the older woman whose English is so fine and precise, she wonders with slight concern if her daughter-in-law has remembered that today she won't be able to pick up the grandchildren from nursery school and day care, even though it's her turn to do so.

THE MILD CONCERN of the woman in East Africa coincides with panic in Tel Aviv, as Amotz arrives to pick up his grandson from day care and discovers to his amazement that this is not one small nursery but an entire network of them sharing a single schoolyard; in the bustling crowd of toddlers in motion, he has a hard time picking out his own.

From the moment he agreed to collect the grandchildren, he has been under pressure. First he tried to move the safety seats from his wife's smaller car to his own, but after getting tangled up with straps and buckles and losing valuable time, he gave up on his car and took hers — which, besides being slower, was almost out of gas. On the few occasions he accompanied his wife to this narrow, crowded Tel Aviv street, he would wait for her double-parked or in a handicapped-parking spot till she returned with the precious cargo. Sometimes he would wonder how it was possible that from the gate of a yard that looked so small emerged so many little children. Only today, entering the yard himself, does he realize how expansive it is. His inability to locate his grandson's group fills him with alarm, especially when he discovers that because he is a bit late, or perhaps because of Hanukkah, some of the rooms are already empty. And because he is not known here as a grandparent, he cannot simply loiter in the yard and wait, but must dash around till he finds the right child, dressed and buttoned up properly, clutching a little backpack, wearing on his head a paper crown with a Hanukkah candle, staring distantly at the grandfather who joyously falls to his knees before him.

"What happened to your wife today?" the young nursery-school teachers wonder.

For a moment Ya'ari considers whether this is the right moment to list the reasons for her absence, but in the end he gives them an abridged version.

"All the way to Africa?" they marvel, and urge him to warn Nadav's parents that during the holiday jelly-doughnut free-for-all, their son managed to sneak off and join some other kids in an afternoon nap. On normal days they never forget to prevent him from doing so, and make sure they tire him out in the playground, so he won't wear down his parents till midnight.

Ya'ari nods his head and grins. It won't be a problem for his parents, but for his other grandma; he'll be sleeping at her house tonight along with his sister. Right, Nadi?

But the child is listening in suspicious, unfriendly silence, and there's no knowing what he has in store for anyone.

Then the two of them go to pick up Nadi's sister, Neta, a sweet and friendly child, who rushes toward them with a small clay menorah. She instructs her grandfather how to buckle her brother into his car seat.

In the little café across from his son's mother-in-law's house, they know the children well. There's no need for long explanations to get scoops of vanilla ice cream in colorful bowls, one scoop with chocolate sprinkles and the other plain.

"Grandma always takes off Nadi's coat, because he gets it dirty," Neta remarks to Ya'ari.

Ya'ari complies with his granddaughter's instructions and removes the Italian coat from its gloomy owner. Unlike his spouse, he is incapable of recalling in which European city the children's clothes were purchased on various visits, but this particular store in Rome he remembers well because of the coat's ridiculous price.

He tries to help his grandson work at his ice cream, but Nadi doesn't need any assistance. With his little spoon he digs and burrows intently into the depths of the white ball, till the spoon taps the bottom of the dish.

"Another scoop," he firmly demands, but Ya'ari refuses. "In the summertime you can eat two scoops of ice cream, but in the winter one is enough. When I was your age," he tells his grandchildren, "my father would never think of giving me ice cream in the wintertime."

"Is your father still alive?" Neta asks.

"Of course. You don't remember you visited him on Rosh Hashanah?"

Neta remembers her great-grandfather's shaking, which made her scared, but what impressed Nadi was his wheelchair.

Outside, a drumbeat of rain begins. Whether because of the weather or because of Hanukkah, so many people are packed into the café that Ya'ari feels mild pressure to give up the table. But where to go? Daniela knows how to chat with the grandchildren, because she knows the names of their teachers and also their friends. But Ya'ari knows no names, and his attempts to draw the kids out with general questions about the world elicit a neutral yes or no from the girl, while the tough little toddler doesn't even turn his head. Fewer than forty-eight hours have passed since his wife left, and already he longs for her to be seated by his side and in her wisdom to help him engage his grandchildren. He offers to order them jelly doughnuts and hot chocolate, but they're sick of jelly doughnuts, and he has no choice but to violate what he just decreed and order them another ice cream.

Ya'ari is fascinated by the little boy as he expertly sculpts away layer after layer. He has always reminded his grandfather of someone — but who could it be? This question lacks a clear answer. Day by day Neta grows to resemble her mother, but the genetic inspiration for her little brother's features, the color of his eyes, is less easy to divine. Moran sometimes jokes that thanks to all of Efrat's screaming in the delivery room they didn't notice that their darling newborn had been switched with a bad baby.

Daniela always objects strenuously to that: Bad? How dare you? He's just an active child, full of imagination and turmoil, which is why he is afraid to fall asleep by himself. But he is also a thinker, and in the preschool there are children who admire him.

Only after the thinker's spoon has rapped the empty dish over and over does Grandma Yael merrily arrive, wrapped in a fox stole, or possibly wolf, her cheeks red from the cold, a lollypop in either hand. The two kids cling to her with great affection and an obvious sense of relief: she has rescued them from the supervision of a grandfather who asks stupid questions. "Where's the tooth?" Nadi demands.

It seems that Grandma Yael told her grandchildren about the aching tooth and promised to show it to them after it had entered the wider world.

"This kid is fantastic," she says, giving the boy a mighty kiss, "he remembers everything," and she quickly removes from her purse a handkerchief in which a large wisdom tooth, with its little root, has been respectfully wrapped.

Neta recoils. "Yuck," she says. But the little one does not fear his grandma's tooth and even strokes it gently with his finger.

"Does it still hurt if I touch it?"

This is a straightforward woman, without any so-called repression mechanism. So concluded Daniela when she and Ya'ari first got to know their in-law. Yael's lack of inhibitions made it easy for Daniela to weave a warm telephone relationship with the other grandma, but Ya'ari is wary of her. At the last minute, without asking beforehand, she invited to Efrat and Moran's wedding, which the Ya'aris financed, fifty more guests than the number allotted her, and only the caterer's ingenuity prevented anyone from going home hungry. She is an emotional and unpredictable woman, yet all in all a happy one. Even her ex-husband, a bitter, cynical playboy, danced with her at the wedding till after midnight, breaking the heart of his young date.

Ya'ari gets up and puts on his jacket.

"That's it, Grandpa's going," he announces, then suddenly remembers that the teacher asked him to report that Nadi again succeeded in stealing an illicit nap.

"Oy," sighs the grandmother, clasping her hands with dismay, "what's going to happen, sweetie? Another white night for Grandma without sleep?"

"Black," the child corrects her. "Abba says, Nadi made me a black night."

A BLACK, VELVET night softly blankets the other grandmother at the edge of the basalt canyon. Above her, unfamiliar African stars spin the Milky Way of her childhood into a torrential river of light bursting into the depths of the universe. Somewhere down the slope an unseen generator putters, shattering the stillness, powering the strings of grimy electric bulbs that line the paths between the tents. Closer by, flames dance bashfully under big pots propped on stones and filled with good food.

The Tanzanian team leader, Saloha Abu, invites the guest to the researchers' table, where the cooks are already dishing out generous portions.

"Ask them about their excavations," Yirmi whispers. "Take an interest in their work, they need attention and appreciation."

Daniela nods.

"With your fluent English you'll be able to communicate with them and understand their anthropological explanations, which I can't make head or tail of. Maybe also because my hearing is bad."

"Hearing or concentration?"

"Maybe also concentration… like any other solitary person."

"Don't worry, I'll show great interest," says the guest, her eyes sparkling as they near the fire, "and not merely out of politeness but also habit. A teacher knows how to engage young people."

They sit down with the researchers in a square of collapsible tables, at whose center, ringed by stones, a bluish fire hovers on its coals like a hen on a nest full of eggs. The aroma of the hot food on Daniela's plate is giving her a huge appetite. She has eaten nothing since Sijjin Kuang's sandwiches. Even so, she doesn't dig in before asking the scientists to explain to her the nature of their project.

The Tanzanian team leader chooses Dr. Roberto Saboleda Kukiriza, an archaeologist from Uganda, to explain the essence to the white woman.

Dr. Kukiriza is a handsome man of about thirty-five. His studies in London polished the English he learned as a child, and he is eager to explain and demonstrate their work. He immediately abandons his plateful of delicacies and hurries to fetch a folding wooden board that has glued to it a colorful map of Africa, indicating anthropological sites both established and potential.

He sets up the map for the guest, adjusting its position to catch the firelight, then turns to this woman who is at least twenty years his senior and says, "I will explain it to you, Madam, but only on the condition that you eat."

The scientific lecture has a political prologue: Dr. Kukiriza begins by deploring the violated honor of Africa and the developed world's loss of faith in its future. Famine, disease, and especially vicious conflicts and wars, have sown this despair. Indeed, one cannot bend the bitter truth that under colonial rule the extent of famine and disease and killing on the continent was less than after independence. Worst of all, the disdainful attitude of the first world, the second, and even the third — which calls Africa the last world — is being absorbed more and more deeply into the African soul itself: depression threatens to dry up the wellsprings of the people's joy. That is why this group of scientists has decided to transcend tribal and national rivalries and try to raise Africa's stature through original and independent research. Without state-of-the-art laboratories and sophisticated equipment, but only simple and inexpensive tools, they are digging and probing the earth to find the source of all of humanity, the evolutionary link between the chimpanzee and Homo sapiens, in order to put Africa back on the map of the world as the cradle of civilization.

Yes, although fossils of a human nature, prehistoric hominids, have been discovered in various places around the world, there is consensus in the scientific community that the original human, per se, came from the great apes of Africa. It is only when the chimpanzee branches into Australopithecus afarensis that the evolution that leads us to ourselves begins in earnest. In these times, when the developed world is giving up on this continent and may yet abandon it, it is perhaps proper for Africa to remind humankind, if not of where it is headed, then at least of where it has come from.

This, of course, is an ideological goal and not a scientific one, admits the eloquent speaker to the white visitor, yet in the end a modest goal, not a revolution, for in any case we remain obligated to evolutionary science, and ideology is merely a frosting that can be scraped off. Indeed, evolution itself is not a revolution but rather a process of transmission, like a relay race. Chimpanzees are still running around the world with no intention of turning into humans, but five to seven million years ago one chimp was born who handed down something new to its descendants. And one of those descendants passed this same something, with a minor addition, to its own offspring. And what is this "something"? One may call it a new trait, physical or mental. Trait of course is an imprecise literary word, but there is none better to explain the whole matter. Because what it describes might be an extra wisdom tooth, or a twisted one, or a more rounded design of the hip joint, or a keener, subtler sense of smell that increases the animal's curiosity about its environment.

The various transmitters of this trait, continues the Ugandan archaeologist in his superb English, were not aware of what they passed along of themselves, nor what this transmission would lead to. They remained bound and loyal to their own kind, to their existence as apes of various species, most of which became extinct over time. But what they handed down continued under its own power, to develop or alter from transmission to transmission, now getting stronger and now weaker, sometimes clear and sometimes blurred — until through countless transmissions there gradually arose our primal direct ancestor, the first Homo sapiens, who was human in every regard.

And this development from the chimpanzee was not a highway but rather a road that branched into many byways, and there were relatives who strayed or were expelled from the main road and got stuck in dead-end streets. For example, three and a half million years ago, our family members known as the robust australopithecines, who included Australopithecus boisei, which was discovered right here in East Africa, were cut off from human evolution. They were, to put it bluntly, eating machines, or as they are more fondly known, nut-crackers. A million years ago they became extinct owing to their small and limited brains, which inhibited their culinary flexibility.

"Eating machines?" Yirmiyahu loves the expression.

"Yes, they had faces the size of dinner plates and huge jawbones, but they were vegetarians nonetheless."

Here the team leader interrupts the flow of his colleague's lecture before it strays farther still from the main path. The food is growing cold, and this communal meal must be concluded honorably. Later on we will be able to show our guest some of the fossils we have found.

The food suits the Israeli woman's palate, and she heaps warm praise upon the chefs and does not decline a second helping.

And at the meal's end, after the remains have been cleared away, the truths unearthed in this remote volcanic canyon can finally be made tangible for the visitor. On the table are arrayed not sweets but a dessert of highly significant fossils: A fragment of a huge lower jawbone, with two big teeth still planted in it. Two great eye sockets in a section of skull. A twisted hipbone from which a world of knowledge might be derived.

Now the Ugandan is joined by the Kenyan and Ghanian, who assist him in explaining the dramatic importance of the bones. Daniela senses, with pleasure, not only their desire to share this chance to show off their accomplishments to a stranger willing to express interest for an hour or so but also their hunger for mature, womanly, motherly protection. She therefore takes pains not to miss a single word and to encourage the speakers with nods of agreement. And even as millions of years of anthropology are jumbled between the jaws of an eating machine, with the empty eyes of a prehistoric ape looking on in wide amazement, she steals a glance at her brother-in-law to see if he is working as hard as she is to follow the explanations. But the newly exposed skull of the old man is facing the fire, his eyes fixed on the flame, and his illuminated face wears an expression of sorrow.

Again the Tanzanian team leader is compelled to exert his authority. That's enough for now, he tells his friends. If we want our guest to remember anything, let us not burden her with too many dates and fossils. Although she is here for only a short visit, perhaps we will be fortunate enough to see her again. Daniela can sense the disappointment of the speakers, whose opportunity to impress a woman has been cut short, and therefore, before departing, she turns to them with a challenging question, but one surely in keeping with the spirit of the times: Here you are a purely African group, a team of black men, and this is an honorable scientific accomplishment; but why have you not thought to include a woman?

"We do have a woman among us," they protest, "an Arab paleontologist. Please, come and meet her."

They lead her to the infirmary tent, where Sijjin Kuang sits beside a cot on which lies a light-skinned young woman with delicate features. She is introduced as Zohara al-Ukbi, a North African Arab, and she smiles through her pain at the unexpected visitor, extending to her a fevered hand.

THE OFFICE IS dark and locked, and when he enters, only the rich scent of tobacco lingers in the empty hall. He turns on all the lights and discovers that none of the employees has thought to return to work after lunch. This is something new, grouses Ya'ari to himself, upgrading dubious ancient history into a holy vacation. But it was he who decided to do away with the time clock and rely on the individual consciences of his employees, and he remains quite certain that the work will not suffer. Therefore, he's not going to stick around either. He checks his e-mail and finds no new signs of life from either his wife or his son. But tomorrow, according to plan, Yirmiyahu will take Daniela to Dar es Salaam, and there will finally be a real conversation.

The office is located one flight up in a quiet residential building, in the heart of Tel Aviv. Outside the streetlights are on, and the lovely windless evening carries the bright chatter of passersby in through the window. Hanukkah is a holiday beloved by all. If Daniela were here, they'd go see a movie at one of the shopping malls or would be invited to the homes of friends. For a moment he considers calling his father, but decides he should limit his presence over there. Best not to encourage the Filipinos to depend on him too much.

If his son were by his side, it would be easier to bear the absence of his wife. He turns off all the office lights, and as he is about to lock the door the cell phone suddenly sounds its melody, and he pounces on it in the darkness without first identifying the caller. No, it's not the soldier confined to his base. It's the old lady in Jerusalem, Dr. Bennett, whose voice quivers at him in the darkness. Finally she has caught him and will not let him go until he reveals how she can reach the original Mr. Ya'ari who installed the elevator in her home and promised her a guarantee for a lifetime — the elevator's and hers.

Yes, she knows that his father has long since retired from the business, and that he is unwell, but she considers herself a special case. An old friend, for whom, she is certain, the real Ya'ari will rise from his sickbed and come to her with all that is required, with spare parts and technicians.

"No," Ya'ari patiently explains, "we are a design firm and not a service center, we have no parts and no technicians, we only sit in front of computers and think. Have you heard perhaps of the Yellow Pages? There you will find the help you need."

She is familiar with the Yellow Pages and also how to use them. But his father made her swear to call only him should anything go wrong. For this is an internal elevator, personal, his own original invention, and only he knows how to maintain it.

"And when was the last malfunction?"

Not for many years has there been any serious problem. That's because the elevator always received regular care and maintenance. Whenever his father was in Jerusalem, he would come over and tend it.

"Strange, he never told me about either you or your elevator."

Perhaps there were other things he never told him.

"Could be," Ya'ari softens, "but my father, Mrs. Bennett, for all his good intentions, can no longer come and see you. He is ill now. He has Parkinson's."

So what?

"What do you mean, so what? His hands and legs are shaking and he can't repair anything."

So he should at least come and give a diagnosis. She has good friends who also have Parkinson's, but their minds still work.

"Yes, his mind still works, but not for your elevator."

Now the woman from Jerusalem stands up to this man who is behaving so unfairly. Why does he speak for his father and not allow his father to decide for himself? How dare he infantilize his father to her — she remembers him, Amotz Ya'ari, as a child.

"Me? As a child?"

Yes, at her own house, in 1954, not so long after the State was established, when they installed the elevator. His father brought him along, to show his son to her. She thinks he was seven then.

"Eight."

And she gave him a whole ice cream. Maybe that will help him remember.

"A whole ice cream? I don't remember, but I believe you," Ya'ari says, laughing and surrenders. "If I got a whole ice cream from you at the age of eight, then tell me, what exactly do you want from me now? I don't think I'll be able to fix the malfunction."

But she has already told him what she wants. She needs his father's telephone number. There are several Yoel Ya'aris in the Tel Aviv — Jaffa phone book, and she is an old lady who cannot begin calling them all.

"But I warn you that speaking is not easy for my father either, so please make it brief."

Of course, very brief. She belongs to a generation that prizes actions and not words.

IT IS THE Land Rover that leads the small supply convoy home. Sijjin Kuang tracks their way across the desert plain, the two pickup trucks following closely. Now that the food containers are empty, the off-duty cooks, no longer on guard, can curl up contentedly, but the aroma of food still clings to them, and gleaming eyes still follow the convoy in the darkness.

In the front seat, Yirmiyahu's head bobs as if freed from the will of its owner, and sinks on its own as he falls asleep. But in the backseat his sister-in-law is wide awake.

"How can you manage to navigate in this darkness?" she asks the silent driver.

"From the bends in the road, but the stars also help."

And Daniela lifts her eyes and sees skies such as she has never known anywhere. There are stars she has never seen and will likely not see again. This pure emerald glow, when has she ever experienced it before? When has she ever contemplated nature alone? Even in the distant past, in the summer camps of her youth movement or during military service, her contact with nature was accompanied by human chatter. And after that Amotz was with her. She married him at a very young age; she had barely finished her army service. He trapped her with his love and quickly furnished her with a comfortable nest.

The young black scientists here have moved her. Not for some time has she felt so needed, desirable in this way. Maybe it's the dearth of women, along with her foreignness and the whiteness of her skin, that drew them to a woman more than twenty years older than they.

Despite the twists in the road engraved in her memory, and despite the helpful stars, the Sudanese woman is not always sure of her way across the monotonous plain. Now she stops and waits for the other two drivers to stop also and get out of their trucks to consult with her about the right direction. The three speak quietly, in tones of mutual respect. One of the men bends to sniff the ground, and his friend stretches out his arm and points to the sky. Yirmiyahu straightens up and yawns, glances indifferently at the drivers' conference, in which he takes no part, and says to his sister-in-law that it is always in this exact spot that they deliberate about the remainder of the drive.

And the guest sits behind this standoffish man thinking that she has not yet come anywhere near the ultimate purpose of her trip. On the contrary, in the two days since she set out on her journey, she has only grown more serene. Tomorrow, in Dar es Salaam, she will hear the live voice of her husband, and she expects no special news from him. She trusts him to watch over the family.

Yirmiyahu looks behind him and yawns again, apologizing. Yes, sometimes they exhaust him with their stones and monkey bones, but all in all these blacks are very gentle people.

"Just a minute, tell me, so I won't be confused… they don't get insulted when you call them blacks?"

"Why should they be insulted? They know that beyond the first millimeter of black skin they're exactly the same as us. The whole difference is that we're muzungu, and they're not."

"What?"

"We are muzungu, white people. Not actually white but peeled. Our black skin has been peeled from us."

"Peeled? This is the difference?"

"So I hear."

A bicycle rider who suddenly emerges from the darkness settles once and for all the quiet debate among the drivers, and the caravan makes a full U-turn and follows him until the moon bursts into view beyond the hills and illuminates the wilderness.

Yirmiyahu goes back to sleep. The air is cold, and Daniela zips up her sister's windbreaker. She hugs herself with both arms, and her thoughts wander to Tel Aviv. Did Amotz go tonight to light candles with the grandchildren again, or did he manage to cajole Nofar to come home? Now here again are the stream and the huts; the caravan picks up speed. The elephant shed is surrounded by torches and a sizeable crowd. Daniela has an urge to go back and look again, alone, at the miracle of the giant eye. She taps Sijjin Kuang on the shoulder and asks her to stop for a few minutes.

Unescorted and fearless she hurriedly makes her way through the African crowd. When she reaches the entrance to the shed, the elephant's owner has already recognized the white woman and sees the return visit as a sign of respect for the elephant and for himself. He therefore does not ask for an admission fee, but she takes a few dollars from her purse and sets them on his table.

And at this late evening hour, she sees the same sad wisdom revealed in that enormous eye. Daniela asks herself if this genetic defect will remain an oddity and eventually be lost, or if perhaps by some pathway not at all understood something of it will be transmitted into a new human evolution.

AS HE OPENS the door Ya'ari hears water running in the shower. If so, Nofar is already home, he thinks, and that pleases him, though he is nervous about meeting her new friend.

Yes, the friend is here. Not a lover or a boyfriend, just a friend, who nonetheless is not sitting and politely waiting but rather taking the liberty of sauntering around the living room as if he belonged there. This time, a new twist, it's not someone young like her, but rather older. His cheeks are unshaven and his temples are flecked with gray. A man who has met the request of a young friend to come with her, just as a friend, to light candles at the home of her father, who has been left alone on the Hanukkah holiday.

Ya'ari heeds his daughter's warning to curb his usual curiosity regarding her friends' education and training, and does not pry into the visitor's activities to get an inkling of his purpose in life. To avoid an interrogation that will anger Nofar, he talks about the weather, applauds the rain and deplores the strong winds, which sometimes sneak into apartment towers. He adds a gripe about the holiday, which in the past amounted to jelly doughnuts and spinning dreidels and has now been upgraded into a holy respite from work. For example, all the engineers in his firm left at noon for a children's play at the Hall of Culture and never returned.

The friend drifts around the room, his expression pained and suspicious, voicing neither sympathy nor agreement with Ya'ari's remarks. His small deep-set eyes keep reverting to the family photos that Daniela has planted everywhere, on walls and bookshelves. Not like a passing acquaintance, here today and gone tomorrow, but like someone with a stake in the matter, he studies each picture carefully, as if trying to decipher the structure of the family. And when he gets to the photograph, framed in black, of Eyal, he asks in a fevered whisper, "This is the cousin Nofar never stops talking about?" Fear makes the host's heart beat faster. "I wonder how old he would be if he were alive."

"About your age, thirty-two. He was only three years older than Nofar's brother."

But the curious friend doesn't let up. Perhaps he agreed to attend a candle-lighting in a strange home only so that he could learn more details about the soldier who was killed by his comrades' fire.

"Nofar told me that you had to break the news to his parents."

"To his father. I wasn't alone; an officer and a doctor were with me."

"And he really was killed accidentally, by our own forces?"

"Yes, by friendly fire, something like that…," Ya'ari whispers.

"And they had to tell that to the family?"

Ya'ari's face darkens at the stranger who has the nerve to burrow into his intimate life, but for his daughter's sake he controls himself.

"Of course. The media in any case would have made the truth public. But they call it 'our own forces,' and I put it slightly differently, to soften it."

"And did it really soften it?"

Ya'ari does not answer, because at that very moment Nofar enters the living room with her hair wet from the shower. She is wearing black, and her almond eyes, her mother's eyes, shoot him an arrow of warning.

"So, at last we get to see you," he kisses and hugs her tight.

"So come on, Abba, let's light the candles, because we're going to a party. But remember what I asked, only the basic blessings."

He nods and goes to the big silver menorah, already prepared with its four candles, removes the shammash and lights it with a match. Printed on the blue package of candles are the two blessings, which he reads while applying the flame to the first candle. Then he hands the burning shammash to the friend, who uses it to light the second candle, then passes it to the young woman. Nofar heats the tip of the third candle to expose its wick, and when the bluish flame intensifies to yellow-red, she returns the shammash still lit to her father, who restores it to its place.

AND IN EAST Africa, on the top floor of the farmhouse, Daniela turns over on her bed in the dark and has a hard time finding the point of fatigue from which she can confidently slip into sleep. It is almost midnight, and even if in her homeland it's an hour earlier, the candles have surely gone out long ago at her house, and her son and daughter-in-law's too. As for Nofar, she is probably boycotting all lights of happiness till she exhausts the grief in her heart.

Yirmiyahu's detachment could become contagious; she had better be careful. He seems content with his primitive surroundings, and the memory of his wife is growing dimmer. If Daniela can't find a way of arousing memories in him of Shuli, and of her too, he won't do it for her.

She gets up from the bed and opens the shutters wide and looks out on an expanse with no artificial light. Right now she very much needs the touch of her husband's hand. His attentive eye. How easily she could have made him come along.

She turns on a light and examines the skull of the young monkey that sits on the desk. A relative who went extinct a few million years ago and has returned as a replica. She pries his mouth open with her fingers to study his jaws. There's only one real tooth here — which one she can't tell. No, she strokes the smooth skull, you were not an eating machine.

Sleep continues to elude her. If Yirmiyahu hadn't been so quick to burn the Israeli papers instead of just handing them back, she could have lulled herself with old news from home. But there is not a letter of Hebrew in sight, apart from the novel. Last night she read two more pages, and they bored her.

Given no choice, she opens the book where she left off yesterday and moves the lamp closer. The heroine has found herself a new love, or a boyfriend, or merely a friend. Someone involved in shady business. To the author's credit, it may be said that she does not raise false expectations in the alert reader. It's obvious that the relationship will not last till the end of the novel, but attraction and lust will do for now.

Okay, the reader squints, let's see how and why they get sick of each other. On [>] the heroine travels with her friend to Europe. They arrive at a hotel in a capital city, and the author begins without much ado an elaborate depiction of their lovemaking. Daniela is quite tolerant of sexual descriptions in novels; they seldom last for more than two or three paragraphs — a page at most. But this author has decided to go into detail and continue the episode until the end of the chapter: eight full pages dense with foreplay and intercourse. Is the passion that erupts between these characters realistic, that is, equal to the capacities of the heroine as portrayed up to now, or has the author decided to inflame her artificially to satisfy her readers' expectations? The descriptions are very physical, and, as usual with such episodes, repetitive. The language is precise and for that very reason also revolting. This author is shameless; no word is off-limits to her. Daniela feels cheated. Previously the characters, in spite of their weaknesses, have manifested a certain spiritual longing; now all of a sudden, this crude naturalism. She examines the back cover to see if the editor's summary contains any hint to prepare the reader for this vulgarity. But it would appear that although the editor could have attracted more customers, he preferred to keep quiet and protect his reputation for fine literary taste.

Should she skip over this chapter and go to the next? The reader considers this as her breathing grows heavier. But since she is not in the habit of skimming, she soldiers on, page after page, till the light goes out in the room of the lovers, who have reached supreme satisfaction.

And the furious reader drops the novel to the floor, turns off the light, and waits patiently for merciful slumber.