Friendly Fire: A Duet

Fourth Candle

THE CLOUDS THAT descended before dawn on the coastal plain have spread thickly over Tel Aviv, and at six A.M., when Ya'ari opens his bedroom blinds, he is surprised to discover that not only has his neighbor's house been engulfed by the milky mist but also the tree that was planted in the yard a decade ago to hide the homes from one another. He shakes dead damp leaves from the newspaper flung on his doorstep and tries to detect a breath of wind in the fog, or any trace of movement in the hidden world.

The world is bundled in silence, at ease with its air of mystery. As Amotz drinks his morning coffee, checking Ha'aretz for yesterday's rainfall, patiently waiting for the sun to free his neighbor's house from its shroud of haze, he remembers the idea floated by Gottlieb, who appeared to him in last night's dream pushing the stroller of an alert baby girl clad in a technician's jump suit and with a screwdriver dangling from her neck, who gazed at the dreamer with starry eyes. Here, this is my expert, Gottlieb grumbled, and you would send her all alone, unsupervised, into the shaft? But Ya'ari awoke before he could answer the elevator manufacturer.

The young tree in the garden emerges from the thinning fog, and beyond its branches appears the house next door, with its lights on and the owner, a famous gynecologist, marching along with religious devotion on his treadmill. The phone rings, and Ya'ari scoops it up with the certainty that at this hour it can only be Moran. But to his disappointment it's his father, who should just be getting up and being washed, which requires time and concentration. Something wrong, Abba? No, says the old man, I'm the same as always. But I wanted to ask, before you firm up your schedule for the day, that you come here earlier — in the morning, not the evening. The candles I'll light with Hilario, but you, if you can, come to me this morning. It's something urgent — no, not medically, just humanly.

"Let me guess. That woman in Jerusalem finally got hold of you."

"Not hard to guess."

"But tell me, Abba, honestly — it's not ridiculous for me, or someone else in the office, to try to repair a private elevator from fifty years ago? By the way, did you tell her you're in a wheelchair?"

"No, no, Amotz, we won't talk like this on the phone about Devorah Bennett. You try and get here soon, before work, and we'll sit and discuss quietly how we can help her. Give your father half an hour. No more."

"It's not a question of half an hour. You know how Francisco doesn't like it when I interrupt the morning routine."

"Francisco will forgive us this time. I already talked to him."

THE ANTICIPATION of hearing her husband's voice through the phone in Dar es Salaam reporting on the welfare of her loved ones rouses Daniela from bed, and she is up and about before sunrise. She opens the shutters and leans out to refresh her spirit in the dark chilly air. Then she turns to pick up the novel from the floor and leafs through it to find the place where she stopped the night before. Since her sister's death, she finds herself rereading pages, but by the time she notices, it's too late to skip ahead. Only rarely does a second reading reveal hidden aspects of the characters and events. In fact, sometimes it makes the writing seem even shallower.

She skims the final page of the chapter she finished last night. The sexual descriptions now seem to her less degrading. Is it daybreak that tempers the vulgarity of the nighttime reading, or have her fragmented dreams reconciled her to it? Either way, she has no intention of rereading that chapter, and anyway, it would be better to save the rest of the novel for the trip home, to take advantage of every free minute here for seeing nature and conversing with Yirmiyahu and the locals. So she removes from her passport the stub of her used boarding pass and marks the page.

Despite the open window, it feels stuffy in the smallish room, and after brief hesitation she puts on her African dress and wraps herself in her sister's windbreaker and walks down three flights, noting three or four doorways per floor. She needs to clarify which is Yirmiyahu's temporary bedroom. Although she feels well, and well rested, it's still a good idea for a woman whose blood pressure has gone up to know on which door she can knock at night if something weighs heavily on her heart.

She wouldn't dare to explore outside, even around the main building of the farm, until the sun climbed higher and human voices were audible in the vicinity. But she will try to fix herself a cup of coffee. The huge kitchen is silent, and because she can't find the light switch, she makes do with the glow of dawn in the windows, rummaging among the utensils hanging on the walls until she finds a little pot that resembles a Middle Eastern finjan. She fills it with water, certain that she will also find some coffee, maybe even sugar and milk.

On the day of the terrible news, in her sister's home in Jerusalem, feeling miserable about being late and annoyed that it was she who was assigned to the kitchen, she dropped a big jar of coffee, scattering shards of glass and black grounds all over the floor. The lateness hadn't even been her fault. Moran hadn't set foot in his old school building, not even to share the news of his cousin's death with the principal or the secretary. Instead, with shaking knees he had paced the empty schoolyard for more than three-quarters of an hour waiting for the bell, and only when it rang had he rushed to the teachers' lounge to stop his mother at the doorway, and without saying a word hug her tight and lead her to the exit.

By the time she reached Jerusalem, she had been preceded not only by Amotz but by relatives and friends who had already been informed, so that when she first saw her sister she found her already surrounded by the kindness of others, depriving her of the personal time and space to wrap her arms around the bereaved mother and absorb some small measure of the grief roiling inside her. In those first moments in the crowded living room, she had felt helpless in the presence of women who did not hurry to yield her the place she deserved; it even seemed that they blamed her for being late, and it was therefore she who was sent to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee that might keep her sister from fainting.

Now, in this kitchen that takes up the entire ground floor of a farmhouse, she opens cupboard after cupboard in search of coffee and sugar. But the shelves are bare of food, holding only baking pans filled with fossils. Perhaps these are remnants of extinct animals, but judging by the clutter they seem not to be rare or valuable, like those she was shown last night at the scientists' dining table, and, since they are not destined to cast new light on the origins of man, may merit one more quick look before being thrown in the trash.

An elderly African enters the kitchen soundlessly, walking with a slight limp. He nods lugubriously upon hearing the white woman's request for coffee and sugar, and opens one of the great refrigerator doors, taking out black coffee, brown sugar, and some grayish milk — but whose? From what animal? She questions the old man, who knows some English. And he pronounces the name of some beast utterly unfamiliar to her, though it might be familiar if pronounced otherwise, and she decides she can do without milk until someone more authoritative and precise can clarify its provenance.

ON HIS EVENING visits, when his father's house is clean and organized, Ya'ari typically gives one short ring and then opens the door with his key, but this morning he rings longer and waits to allow those inside to prepare for his arrival. In fact, the Filipinos send Hilario to open the door, hoping that his sweet fluent Hebrew, and maybe also his adorable turban, will help the boss's son forgive the unaccustomed mess.

The father's morning ablutions have left the apartment very warm, and its residents' identity is more pronounced now than in the evening: it is there in the pungent smells of food cooked the night before, still cooling in a corner of the living room; the infant girl clad only in a diaper and set upon the dining table; the pajamas decorated with pictures of Asian birds, strewn on unmade beds; and the baby's mother, her nakedness swathed in a silken robe of many spectacular colors.

"What is this, Hilario, no school today?"

"It's vacation, Mr. Ya'ari. The holiday of the Maccabees," announces the little student, excited as ever by the mysteries of Judaism.

On the way to his father's bedroom, Amotz peeks into his own childhood room, now occupied by Hilario and his Israeli-born sister. Amid the electronic war toys, beneath the posters of mythic figures from children's movies, he can discern a few prehistoric items, such as the Monopoly game of his youth.

His father has been returned to bed after the morning's elaborate bathing, and Ya'ari is not used to chatting with a father wrapped comfortably in two blankets with only his head visible, collared by a colorful towel and showing no sign of the tremors of his disease.

"Don't be angry with me for insisting that you come this morning," he says, "but this friend of mine, Devorah Bennett, told me she had been trying to reach me for days, and that you and others at the office were hiding my phone number from her. So listen, habibi, this woman is a dear friend, and after Imma died she helped me a great deal during a difficult period. By the way, before I forget, what about Daniela, did you hear from her?"

"Today she goes to Dar es Salaam, where Yirmi will connect her with me by phone."

"If you get the chance, give her my regards, and tell her I hope her visit with her brother-in-law will help her get herself together."

"The problem with her is guilt… she always felt guilty toward her sister, for no reason, and after she passed away the guilt only intensified."

"A little guilt, even for no reason, can still be something productive and healthy," says the elderly elevator designer, "particularly if it is toward family or friends, and it should always be listened to. This is why I want you to help me with my little guilt regarding the friend in Jerusalem. She is nine years younger than I am, meaning she should now be eighty-one years of age. What can I say, a slip of a girl, and many years ago I helped her out with a private elevator, so she could go straight from the apartment to the roof and make some use of it. A simple elevator, small, just for one floor, with a Czech mechanism from before the world war that works on oil pressure with a piston that lifts it from the side. But the construction was all mine. Gottlieb built it according to my plans. And when your mother and I visited Germany in the early fifties, we found a few spare parts in an old scrap warehouse, and I shipped them back to Israel as research materials. You'll soon see it for yourself."

"What makes you think I'll see it?"

"Because I gave my friend a lifetime warranty. She is an intellectual lady and a bit artistic, and during the British Mandate she had an English husband, one-quarter Jewish, who didn't last long here after the establishment of the State. The building is in the center of town, and after a beauty salon opened up on the ground floor, I suggested to her, so she could have a quiet corner, to put in an elevator straight from her flat to the roof, which was not being used and could be reached only by a ladder from the stairwell. So this way she made herself a nice, quiet retreat, which is also cool in the summer evenings, as you'll see."

"Why do you think I should see it?"

"Because your father is asking you to. This is a woman who helped me a great deal after Imma died. She hasn't got the means to bring in a technician, who in any case will not be familiar with such an elevator. It's a building on King George Street, opposite the old Knesset, and she apparently doesn't plan to leave it while she is alive, and therefore she needs the elevator that gives her access to the roof. When Jerusalem was divided, before '67, you could see the Old City from there. And I gather that the elevator is also still alive and only needs adjustment, and to have its seal changed. You'll check for yourself."

"But what good can I do? I'm a design engineer, not a technician."

The father shuts his eyes and falls silent.

"All right," he finally says, "if you are just a designer then don't go see her in Jerusalem. Forget my request. I'll ask Moran. He has more patience, which is why he has golden hands, even though he, like you, is an engineer and not a technician."

"As you wish, ask Moran, he is an independent being, but just so you know, he's in the army right now."

"How so? He told me he's ignoring the army."

"He ignored the army, but the army didn't ignore him."

"So what's going to happen?"

"What's going to happen? Eventually they'll let him go."

"No, I mean in Jerusalem."

"In Jerusalem the slip of a girl can wait a bit. If you gave her a lifetime guarantee, then there's no danger that the warranty will run out. Meanwhile it's winter, so she won't need to go up on the roof."

"You're talking now without an ounce of compassion. But no matter. If you refuse, and the army is holding Moran, then I will ask Francisco to get me a taxi that can handle a wheelchair and bring along two Filipino friends from the old-age home, and they'll take me to Jerusalem, at least to give her a diagnosis."

"Good God, you are really stubborn. But tell me, what's going on with that damned elevator?"

"First of all, it's not damned, and second, as I told you, it's not dead at all, it's still alive, but it has, so she says, kind of a tremor when it starts moving, and also when it stops."

"Maybe it got a little old, Abba? What do you think?"

"Of course it got old, but because it is not a person, it's possible to adjust the oil pressure and replace the seal… no?"

"Anything is possible."

"And besides which, she also says, Devorah Bennett, that there started in the elevator a wail that was never there before, as if a cat in heat were riding in it with her."

"A cat in heat?"

"Yes, that is how she describes it."

"No, Abba, for God's sake, don't talk to me about more wailing noises in elevators."

THIS IS EXACTLY the same road, traveled in the opposite direction, and in the light of a broiling summer morning it goes faster, and the visitor may take in all that was hidden on the night she landed here. This time she is not in the front seat but sitting a bit cramped in the back, behind her brother-in-law's bald head, though the driver is the same driver, quiet and precise. Sijjin Kuang this morning has her shoulders and slender arms wrapped in a sunflower-colored shawl that highlights the coal black sheen of her skin. At ten they must be in Morogoro to board a Chinese freight train carrying copper ore to the port of Dar es Salaam, where, as firmly agreed, their first order of business will be to establish a living link between the guest and her husband; only afterward will they attend to the needs of the excavation team. And even though Sijjin Kuang is plainly of different stock from the locals, Daniela is very pleased to be visiting in the company of a black African woman, whose presence affords her a quiet legitimacy.

Yesterday, visiting the excavation site, she imagined for a moment that perhaps there had developed between the elderly widower and the nurse a bond deeper than their professional one, but this morning her impression has been erased by the profound sadness she sees in this young woman, whose whole family was murdered. She observes that when her brother-in-law's hand or shoulder happen to bump into the driver's as the car rounds a bend or suddenly swerves, the Sudanese shrinks from him, as from some enemy who wished to harm her.

They drive around Mount Morogoro on a wide red-dirt road, hard as asphalt, that twists through a thick bushy forest that now and then vanishes for no reason and is replaced by a barren hilltop. She asks her brother-in-law, is the earth redder here? I remember your explaining it to Amotz and me last time, but I don't remember what you said.

"The red color comes from the iron in the soil, which also decreases its fertility."

"Iron… I remember now, that's what you told us then too."

"See, here's proof that I'm a stable person, who doesn't easily change his mind. But if you ask Sijjin Kuang, for example, why the earth of Africa is red, she will flatly tell you it's because of all the blood that has been spilled upon it."

The driver, hearing her name mentioned, glances back at Daniela.

"And maybe because of the blood she can't forget, it's also good for you to be with her, because her tragedy is greater than yours. Next to her, you can forget your own."

Yirmi does not respond at first. Maybe he didn't hear. Maybe he disagrees with what she said. But suddenly he turns around, pulls his sister-in-law's little hand toward him and puts it to his lips in a gesture of gratitude. Sometimes you amaze me with your accuracy, the way you touch, as if casually, the heart of the matter. Of course this woman's tragedy is greater than mine, and I realize that, but that's not the only reason why I like her to drive the car and go on my rounds with me. You will be surprised, but she does not know about our Eyali, because I told her nothing, nor have I told the others, so that no one here will have any emotional purchase on what I myself want to forget. This woman helps me peel off my identity.

"How?"

"With all those things you also like about her. She is a genuine animist, a pagan who believes in trees and stones and spirits, not as a confused appendage to some failed abstract religion and not as a cry for help out of weakness and despair, but as a natural act, a whole different faith. And therefore, unlike Christians or Muslims, she has no connection or commitment to Jews, for either good or ill, love or hate. We are not the source she comes from, or a cause for struggle or competition. To her we are simply not relevant, nor does she see herself as relevant to us. To me she is a place where we do not exist in any memories. Not religious, not historical, not mythological. To her I am only a man — admittedly white, but that's a minor detail, because it was blacks, after all, who murdered her family and her tribe. And therefore, without talk or effort, simply as one person to another, she helps me peel away my identity, like the white man, who has peeled off his blackness. Everything that has oppressed me begins to fall off, without argument or debate, so that even if a dear and familiar guest happens to descend on me, that person can't reverse the process."

"You mean me, of course."

"For example. But up to now I have no complaints: you are behaving courteously and keeping within bounds."

"OKAY, I SURRENDER," Amotz says to his father. "Tomorrow's Friday; I'll try to get up to Jerusalem."

"But why not go today? You have all this free time now."

"What free time?"

"Your wife's not here, and you have no one to take care of or worry about."

"Don't exaggerate. I have someone left to take care of, and there's always something to worry about. So I'll hop up to Jerusalem tomorrow, not because of the yowling of an imaginary cat in heat but purely for your peace of mind."

"My peace of mind isn't a good enough reason? So before you go, let me give you a kiss."

Ya'ari can't remember the last time his father asked to kiss him. He himself, when he comes to visit and finds his father in the wheelchair, sometimes squeezes his trembling hand and lightly kisses, out of obligation, the cheek of the man from whom he has learned so much. But he doesn't recall his father ever once initiating a kiss, not for several dozen years. Now he does, as he lies naked in bed, under two blankets, and Ya'ari has to bend over him as he offers only his forehead to his father's lips.

"If you find the cat in heat inside her shaft, bring it with you so I can see it," says the father, then closes his eyes and plants a kiss on the forehead of the man of sixty.

Judging by his father's excitement, it would seem that she was a love of his, Ya'ari muses as he heads south to his office on a gray windless day. The old father even yearned to confess, but his son wouldn't let him, lest it turn out that the woman in Jerusalem had been his lover while his mother was still alive. And even if he were told that the woman only helped his father restore his manhood after his wife's death, Ya'ari has no great desire to meet her, and certainly none to service her ancient, shaking, wailing elevator. In any case it lies beyond his power to heal its afflictions, or even diagnose them. If Moran were in town, he would certainly send him to Jerusalem to satisfy his grandpa. But Moran has sunk into the abyss of the army and has exchanged not one word with him; Ya'ari suspects that his son has begun to enjoy the freedom of his confinement.

The office is teeming. Those who took yesterday off have come early today to complete their projects. Where's Moran? ask colleagues whose work depends on him. Moran is doing reserve duty, Ya'ari says, avoiding the whole truth. But he said he would ignore the army? So he said it. Not everything he says comes true.

For a moment Ya'ari considers whether it would be right to ask one of the younger engineers to go to Jerusalem in his place. But anyone sent there would likely feel foolish and helpless when confronted with a prehistoric private elevator, and bear a grudge over the Friday needlessly stolen from him and the imposition of a technician's chore on an engineer.

He phones the lady in Jerusalem and speaks to her in practical army language: You've won, Mrs. Bennett, I will come to see your elevator tomorrow morning, but I caution you, have no illusions, I am coming only to look, not to repair. So please, don't budge from your house, starting at nine.

After that, he convenes the weekly staff meeting in his office earlier than usual, to ensure that at the appointed hour of noon both he and his telephone will be free to receive his wife's African voice.

AT THIS MOMENT Daniela is not far from Dar es Salaam. She sits in a makeshift passenger compartment in the Chinese freight train, her brother-in-law dozes on the bench beside her, and across from her sits Sijjin Kuang, whose gentle gaze indicates that she gathered — at least from the Hebrew word pagani—that the conversation between the two Israeli relatives had something to do with her. And even though the tragedy of the young Sudanese woman is greater than the disaster that befell the elderly administrator — whose head droops on his chest and appears to be nodding in agreement — the visitor would still like to give her some hint about the fire that needlessly killed the white man's son.

But Yirmiyahu does not want to tell his driver anything about himself, lest one story lead to another, and one history get tangled with another, until even an idolator could find herself identifying with him. And so, since his sister-in-law has not come here to thwart his wishes, she steers the conversation to injuries and illnesses. Perhaps she can learn from the African nurse's experience about an ancient and proven cure for some malady she has yet to contract.

Now through the window a few houses can be seen, then streets. Here is a city. And, for a tiny moment, a sliver of smooth sea with a gliding sailboat.

Yirmi, again alert and energetic, confidently leads the two women along streets he clearly knows well, between vegetable stalls and buckets of fish and sacks of coal. "If possible," Daniela says, "let's start by calling Israel. We promised Amotz, and I know he's waiting with his hand on the phone."

"If we promised, we will deliver." Yirmi calms her with a smile. "From the time I met him, forty years ago, I knew it's dangerous to make him wait."

He guides them into a darkened shack, a public telecommunications center, filled with a jumble of wires plugged into elderly computers and antique phones, that brings to mind a spider's web. The proprietor, a beefy woman named Zaineb, greets them happily and seats the tourist by a telephone with a well-worn dial.

"I have learned from experience that from here you speak frugally and clearly," Yirmi says self-righteously, "since every month I call America to report to Elinor that I am surviving, and to hear how many words she has added to her dissertation. Write down for Zaineb the exact number, with the codes for Israel and Tel Aviv, and you will be able to put your loved one at ease. We shall wait patiently outside."

"You don't want to say a few words?"

"Only if you don't overdo your conversation. Look, don't be so sure that I don't think about him too sometimes."

The connection from the spider web is made efficiently, and is actually clear and strong. And in Tel Aviv the office receptionist is happy to hear the voice of the boss's wife in Africa, though she is a bit surprised by the early hour. There's a staff meeting going on in his office, but not to worry, she'll pull him out of there right away. Just don't hang up.

"Why do you say I'm early? We arranged to talk today at twelve."

"But it's now eleven," the secretary chides. "You seem to have an hour's difference in your favor."

"In my favor?" Daniela says, laughing, "in what sense?" But the secretary has already gone to fetch her husband.

STANDING BY THE receptionist's desk, using her telephone in front of other people and maybe being overheard, was not the way he had wanted to conduct the much anticipated conversation with his wife. But is it proper to cut short the meeting and dismiss everyone from his office, just so he can complain about his troubles without an audience? Given no choice, he grabs the receiver and retreats to a corner, stretching the phone cord as far as he can, and tries to speak confidentially. His tone comes out sounding both accusatory and defensive.

"That's right," he says, "I got the times wrong. I was sure you were on the same longitude, and all of a sudden Africa is not only southwest but also east of us. So everything I imagined you doing on your trip you had finished an hour before."

"It's only an hour's difference. But if it's hard for you to talk now, I'll try again later."

"No, absolutely not. I'll just talk quietly, because there are people here. Can you hear me?"

"Perfectly. First of all, tell me about the children."

"Just a minute, the children can wait. You tell me what's happening. First of all, how was the trip?"

"The flight to Nairobi was nice, but to spend six hours in the airport just for your peace of mind, that was cruel. And I ended up almost missing the connecting flight anyway."

"Missing it? How was that possible?"

"My boarding pass disappeared in the novel."

"Novel?"

"The book I bought at the airport."

"But I warned you beforehand to keep everything with your passport, and I put it there myself. So how did it wander into the novel?"

"Never mind, I found it."

"Watch out. You can afford to dream only when I'm with you. And how was the second flight? I worried the whole time that on an internal flight in Africa you'd have a small, shabby plane."

"It was a small plane, but clean and nice and not shabby at all, and they even served unlimited whiskey."

He laughs. "Not to you, I hope. And where is it, this farm of Yirmi's? Is it far from the airport?"

"Not very. But the road is mostly dirt and a bit complicated, part of it through a forest. Fortunately, the pagan who drove me—"

"Pagan?"

"A charming young Sudanese woman, an idol worshipper… a tragic figure, I'll tell you all about her…"

"Idol worshipper? What idols?"

"No, not now. I'll tell you everything later. How are the children?"

"Leave the children aside for a minute. Yirmi forgot you and didn't come to the airport?"

"No, no, it's a long story. I'll tell you all about it. He's the one who sent her; she's the nurse of the research team."

"And what about him?"

"Stranger than ever. But also pleased with himself. I brought him a package of Israeli papers from the plane and he burned them all."

"Burned them? Good for him. Why should he read Israeli papers in Africa? Where's the fun in that?"

"The Hanukkah candles I brought, he threw them in the fire too."

"What, he has a campfire burning there?"

"The fire of the water boiler."

"But why the candles?"

"No reason. He's looking for ways to disengage himself. From Israel. From the Jews. From everything."

"Disengage? Why not? A great idea. I wish I could do that sometimes. But why detach himself in Africa? There are nicer places in the world to get detached."

"Not now, Amotz. He's right outside. We'll talk about everything next week. But tell me what's going on with the children."

"Nofar came home yesterday with an older friend to light candles."

"Very good."

"But she only stayed a little while."

"That's not important. What's important is she came."

"But here's the big news, listen carefully: the army didn't give up on Moran. They caught him and put him in confinement."

"Actual confinement?"

"The real thing, confined to base for a week or so. But he's in Israel, not the West Bank, with the adjutant corps. I haven't got through to him yet, because they confiscated his cell phone, but he's in touch with Efrat occasionally. And yesterday I replaced you and picked up the children from preschool and waited with them at a café till Yael was able to take them. Tomorrow's Friday, and I'll light candles with them then."

"It's good that her mother always volunteers to help."

"The mother is okay, but the daughter of the mother keeps running around on empty. A training course up north, then a seminar down south. She drives me crazy."

"Go crazy quietly and keep it to yourself; be careful not to make any remarks. It's not your business to educate her. Let Moran take care of her."

"But Moran is a prisoner. An officer in the IDF. Imagine the disgrace."

"Leave him alone too. Don't reprimand him. For a long time I've had the feeling that he's afraid of his reserve duty."

"Afraid? Moran? Where'd you get that idea? Moran was never a coward, certainly not in the army. He just felt like blowing them off, and he's like you: he is sure that the whole world revolves around him."

"And I'm sure the whole world revolves around me?"

"More or less."

"Where'd you get that idea?"

"Not now. I'm not alone either. This is my secretary's phone. But where's Yirmi? Is he with you? In any case, I want to say a word to him."

"What word?"

"That he should keep an eye on you."

"Don't you dare."

YIRMIYAHU IS WAITING in an alley with Sijjin Kuang, whose tall aristocratic figure alongside the awkward old white man's has attracted the curiosity of people in the marketplace. From time to time he glances inside at his sister-in-law, who sits smiling and content in the depths of the communications hut, surrounded by young Africans riveted to computer screens, as she, in a girlish pose he finds charming, presses the worn-out phone receiver against her short-cropped head, crosses her legs, and plays with the hem of her dress, exposing her shapely calves.

Even if the phone call here is cheap compared with other places in the city, it is going on longer than he expected, and the warm chattiness of his relatives is beginning to make him impatient. They've only been apart for two days, they'll be back together in three, and they still insist on such a long conversation. He remembers that even as a girl she would tie up her parents' phone for long periods, chatting and laughing, without thinking about the cost — or other people. And the daily calls between her and her sister in the years before Eyal fell would sometimes go on for more than an hour. It was his death that cut them short, those calls. Her son's death shrank and compressed Shuli's world. She lost her patience for the stories of strangers and family members alike; even so close a sister interested her less.

Now Daniela is waving for him to come in and join her. Amotz wants to say a few words to you too, and maybe in any case we should hang up, she suggests, and let Amotz call us back from Israel. No, that's impossible, Yirmiyahu says. The owner doesn't like it when her income is undercut like that, so she doesn't give out her phone number. He takes the receiver, and without saying hello he teases his brother-in-law.

"Well? Already after two days it's hard for you to be alone?"

But Ya'ari ignores the sting and asks with heartfelt concern, "Yirmi, habibi, how's it going?"

"No complaints. So far the woman you sent us is behaving well, and we'll therefore return her to you whole and not feed any part of her to the lions."

The elevator man is in no mood to joke. "And you? What about you?"

"Things are the way things should be with me."

"When will we see you?"

"When you too come here. But first let me recover a little from your wife's visit."

"Not in Africa. I mean, when will we see you in Israel?"

"Israel? What's the rush? I spent most of my life there, and it's not going anywhere. It looks to me as if the country can't get destroyed no matter how hard it tries. Here in Africa it's quiet and comfortable, and above all cheap. I also want a nice Filipino to take care of me when I'm old. And anyway, my dear Amotz, I've developed slightly different ideas about our world."

"What kind of ideas?"

"Not now in the middle of the marketplace, on an international call. Other people are waiting to talk to the outside world, and I'm hogging the line. Daniela will tell you what she understood from me, and what you don't understand from her, you can always ask me. And maybe it's totally unimportant. The main thing is, take care of yourself, and don't forget the children."

As he is about to hang up, Daniela snatches the receiver and manages to ask her husband how his father is and what's new with the winds in the tower.

But when she goes out again into the sunny street, she realizes that this call to Israel has not brought her any relief, as if Yirmi's alienation has infected her as well. Her brother-in-law lingers in the hut, waiting to pay her bill, and at her side Sijjin Kuang stands serenely aloof from the colorful mob around her. And Daniela aches for the grief and pain still buried inside her. For it was here in this marketplace, that her sister had her fatal seizure. It was from one of these alleys that strangers rushed her to a nearby clinic, where she departed this world alone.

Where did it begin? Where was Shuli taken ill?

And where was your diplomatic office? So far she does not recognize anything from her last visit.

He will show her the place. With a little patience she will remember everything. It is all nearby, and he is willing to show her around, but first they must go to the bank, before it closes for the midday break.

So, while Sijjin Kuang goes off to replenish the camp's medical supplies, he and his Israeli guest enter a fairly decent-looking bank and go up to the second floor. He seats her in a waiting room beside a heavyset African clad in a tribal robe and disappears into the manager's office.

Her smile immediately enchants her neighbor, and she does not limit herself to a mere smile, but dares, in the British fashion, to inquire about the weather. The African at once grasps the white woman's meaning, but lacks the English to answer her. Instead, he excitedly gets up and with a grand gesture of his arm invites her to come with him to the big window, where he pours out words in an utterly foreign language, pointing to the sky and the clouds, then just as suddenly falls silent and retreats humbly to his chair. But she stays by the window, as if trying to digest what he told her.

The weather has indeed changed. The day has turned gray and the first drops of rain dot the windowpane. Her conversation with her husband was in the end technical and lacking in feeling. If he was concerned about expressing feelings in front of his employees, why didn't he go back into his office and end the meeting, so he could lift her spirits with a few words confirming his love. He didn't sound loving, or as if he missed her, but rather annoyed by her absence, impatient, needing to control. The purpose of her trip is still not clear to him, so he needs at least to be reassured that African planes aren't rickety, that he hasn't risked losing her on a pointless journey.

And maybe he's right, and this trip really wasn't necessary.

At the edge of the rain-streaked sky, she can see a gray-green patch of the Indian Ocean, with bobbing fishing boats. So the beach is not far from here. On her last trip, Shuli took her along more than once for her long daily walk on the beach. Alone, without husbands by their side, they strolled with complete confidence on the fishermen's dock. Her sister had really enjoyed Yirmiyahu's posting in Tanzania. Once Elinor gave her some grandchildren, she said, maybe she'd want to be nearer to them, but in the meantime she was comfortable in these foreign surroundings, which dampened her pain over the loss of the soldier who had drawn the fire of his friends. Daniela was surprised at the time to have confirmed what she had already suspected: behind the veil of silent, noble grief, strange and difficult feelings burned in her sister regarding her son, and because she feared exposing those feelings inadvertently, she was grateful for the sojourn in an out-of-the-way country not on the map of friends or relatives. Even as she walked alongside the person who was closer to her than any other, alone together on an ocean beach, Shuli preferred to reveal nothing, instead replaying over and over long-forgotten moments from their own childhood and clinging to memories of their parents.

Later on, in her calls from Israel, Daniela took care not to dwell too much on her own children and grandchildren, and given her sister's small interest in other family members and mutual friends, and even smaller interest in political news from her home country, there was little the two sisters could do but rehash their last visit, marvel time and again at the animals in the nature preserve, and recall the naked children splashing in the waves.

The guest again focuses her gaze on the beach and asks herself whether on that terrible day when her sister began to die in the marketplace of Dar es Salaam, she had managed to walk the length of the fishermen's dock.

She turns around in a panic. No, it's not an African man touching her, but rather her brother-in-law, holding two bags in his hand, one filled with banknotes and the other with coins. Beside him is the bank manager, a young cheerful African in shirtsleeves and tie, who knew her sister well and twice even sat next to her at a meal, in the days when her brother-in-law had more significant dealings with the bank than simple transactions on the account of a remote research dig. Yes, says the bank manager, Jeremy has just told him about her visit to Tanzania, which seems to him worthy and important, for indeed one must not forget the dead, especially those whose souls have departed from them in a far-off place, for only in this way can they return to their homes.

"What? You are also a pagan?" Daniela blurts; her impertinence surprises her as much as anyone.

"I wish I could be," says the young black man, sighing. "It is too late for me. I was born a Muslim, and for me to return to paganism, the rules of the bank would also have to be changed."

And he bows slightly to her and goes to invite the dozing African into his office.

"Do you have more errands?" she asks her brother-in-law impatiently, "or can you show me now where it all began?"

"I do have a few more," he says calmly, "but they're all in the right direction."

YA'ARI DOES NOT require words of love and affection from his wife. It's enough that he has clearly heard her sane voice and his brother-in-law's jesting one. Her last-minute interest in the outcome of the Pinsker Tower controversy also warmed his heart. It's hardly a sign of absentmindedness that from so far away she remembers what troubles him in his daily work. True, she has always known how to surprise him with her unexpected interest in some office problem he happened to mention offhandedly. And because technical matters themselves are foreign to her and beyond her ken, she has made it her business to uncover the hidden sensitivities of employees and clients in order to support her husband in his deliberations and even give him a little advice. When he told her rather flippantly about the complaints regarding the building on Pinsker Street, for some reason she was intrigued and wanted to hear for herself the howling of the winds that had crept into the elevators her husband designed. But so far her free time had never coincided with a typical windstorm.

He returns to his office. The meeting has continued without him, but it has deteriorated from the technical problems of adding a fifth elevator to an argument about how much the redesign would cost. The chief engineer has just named a substantial figure, and the younger ones all object: until we figure out exactly how to squeeze it in, it's impossible to set a price. But the chief engineer is speaking from financial, not technical, experience. If you don't give a government ministry a big number up front and lock it down with their budget department, at the end of the job instead of a check they'll present you with a book of the prime minister's speeches, autographed with a warm personal message.

Ya'ari interrupts them with a geographical question:

"The African continent is west of Israel, or east?"

"The African continent? What does that mean? West, in general."

Ya'ari laughs. "What does 'in general' mean?"

Now the engineers sense that the boss wants to trip them up with a trick question, so they concentrate and try to imagine a map of the world.

"Both east and west," says one young man finally. "It's a big enough continent for both directions."

Ya'ari explains how his brief absence involved Israel lagging behind his wife in Africa. He chuckles as he admits, to the amazement of his engineers, that despite the distance he was sure that they were at the same longitude, but apparently not. Then he quickly returns the conversation to technical matters, but is careful not to drop any hints about the nighttime sketch folded in his pocket.

At noon he invites his secretary to have lunch with him to clear up a few things forgotten yesterday. The clear skies and calm air enable the waiter to ask an unseasonable question: Inside or out? Outside, decides Ya'ari, that's a fine idea. Although the secretary feels chilly and would have preferred the warmth inside, she cannot refuse the challenge of the open air, for in winter a sunny day has added value. But she has to leave on her jacket with the fake fur collar, making it hard for her to maneuver between her fork and the pen she uses to write down his instructions.

The weather is getting warmer, and with the calming of the winds his cell phone relaxes, too. The bereaved tenant in the tower is silent, the old woman in Jerusalem has fallen silent, and Gottlieb has also broken off contact. Ya'ari returns to work, looks affectionately at his employees, their faces glowing with digitized wisdom, and enters his office and opens the window. Around the beloved tree are scattered branches and twigs torn off by the recent storms, but this natural pruning has not detracted from its charm. Soon enough, the unknown vine that has colonized it will produce its spectacular red blossoms.

Can it be that Daniela is right? Did Moran actually fear his reserve duty, was his dismissive attitude meant to mask his fears? Ya'ari has never seen any sign of cowardice in his son. Moran, like his cousin Eyal, served in a combat unit, and even took on an extra year as an officer. Yet Daniela often reads their children's minds better than he does. But still, fear? Now? With the territories at the moment on a low flame? Can't a father with two children, whose family has already paid its debt to the homeland, ask for a little consideration?

He phones Efrat's cell, and to his utter astonishment it is picked up at once, but the voice is his granddaughter's.

"Neta, darling, where are you? Not at school?"

"Today's a holiday, Grandpa. Nadi also has off today."

"So where are you two now?"

"Home."

"Home? Great. That's the best place. You're playing?"

"No. On TV right now there's a show for kids."

"TV? What would you do without TV?"

"Nothing."

"Sweetie, give me Imma."

"Imma went out."

"Went out without her phone? How can that be?"

"It can be because she forgot it."

"And who's with you? Grandma?"

"No. A girl is looking after us."

"A girl? Whose girl? Which girl?"

"A girl."

"Who is this girl? What's her name?"

"She didn't say."

"Neta, sweetheart, give me this girl."

"But she's watching TV now."

"That doesn't matter. Tell her your grandpa wants to tell her something important."

The receiver is handed to the girl amid the shouting of children on television.

"Who are you, young lady?"

Her name is Michal, babysitter of the moment, all of ten years old, who lives in the next building.

"And what's going on there, Michal?"

"Nothing."

Ya'ari is furious at his daughter-in-law—

IN DAR ES SALAAM the rain is soft and languid, and upon leaving the bank Yirmiyahu buys his sister-in-law an umbrella and hires a barefoot porter with a large straw basket belted to his back to carry their purchases through the market.

"It's really so important to you to see this place?" he asks again. "It's just a place in the market, next to some stall. There's nothing special about it."

But the guest is determined to stand on the very spot where death began to grip her sister. For this is also why she made the long trip from Israel.

He holds her arm and guides her carefully between the puddles as he leads her to a tool shed, where after checking a list he loads the porter's basket with small spades, soil strainers, batteries of various sizes, flashlights, and kerosene lamps. He tops off his order with some steel knives, which are also stashed in the basket. Then they walk among fruit and vegetable stalls until they reach the meat and fish market. There, in a small square where a net, torn in places, is spread out, two Indians wait for the white administrator, who pays them for last month's shipment of fish and hands them a new order.

"On that morning, did she take her walk on the beach?"

Yirmiyahu shrugs. "Who knows? I hope so with all my heart, because she so much loved her walks on the beach, and from the time you walked there together it was also bound up with a shared memory. There were days after you returned to Israel that she didn't feel like walking there alone."

"Because I wasn't here?" Daniela's voice quavers, and this knowledge of her sister's sorrow finally awakens her own.

They enter an open area of clothing stalls, hung with dresses and robes and colorful shirts and stacked with rolls of Indian fabric, and as if from the center of the earth there appears beside them another porter; Yirmi loads his basket with army blankets that on cold nights will warm the bones of the scientists. The Israeli visitor, wedged between passersby of various races, is struck by a clear recognition of the place. She stood exactly here on her previous visit. Shuli took her and Amotz to this very stall. She looks up at the rope stretched lengthwise above her head and sees hanging on it a dress that is the twin of her own. This is the spot, she says to herself, this is the spot, and in her memory arises an image of Shuli, firm and decisive, rejecting Amotz's aggressive suggestion that she buy herself a dress to match Daniela's as an occasional substitute for her mourning clothes.

The administrator of the scientific team piles coins and small bills onto the African's open palms, and then takes his leave from him with a hearty embrace. But before he can go to another stall, Daniela tugs at his shirt.

"Am I right that this is the place where she stopped and first felt dizzy?"

For a moment he is amazed, and studies his sister-in-law with affection.

"More or less. Not far from here. You see that big rock? She sat down on it. And this man, the one I just bought the blankets from, noticed her distress from far away, and she managed to send him to alert me. But when I got there, she was already gone. She had lost consciousness, and four people picked her up and began to run with her to the hospital. But where did you get the idea this was the place?"

"Because we were with her here on the last visit," Daniela cries, "here is where we bought the dress I'm wearing now, and Amotz pleaded with her to buy the same one…"

And she points to the dress dangling above them.

"No," he says decisively, "don't start looking for mysticism that isn't here. That doesn't become you. This is no place in particular. This is simply a stop along the way to the diplomatic office; she passed by here every day. And don't get too worked up about your dress either. Dresses like these, if you look closely, are hanging on every corner."

The visitor shakes her head. Her heart is pounding.

"And where is the hospital they took her to?"

"They didn't make it to the hospital. Along the way they took her to an infirmary, sort of a small public clinic."

"Please, Yirmi, take me to that clinic."

"But it's already a bit late. The train leaves in an hour, and I thought we'd get something to eat."

"I don't care about food. Take me to the clinic."

"But why? It's just a clinic. Why does it matter to you?"

"Because that's why I came all the way from Israel."

NOW FUMING, YA'ARI backs up the file he was working on in a futile attempt to calm down, exits the program, and turns off the computer. He closes the window, puts on his jacket, and says to the secretary, I have to go to my grandchildren. If someone needs me, I'm on my cell. He drives to his son's building in the north of the city, and this time does not hesitate to commandeer the apartment's vacant parking spot. He doesn't bother to ring the bell; he uses his own key, enters a dark apartment, and calls out cheerfully: Children, look who's here.

On the floor in front of the television sit his grandson and granddaughter. The short, pudgy girl between them must be that ten-year-old babysitter, who does not however lack initiative and ingenuity, since she has located the electric switch that shuts the blinds, darkening the living room and enhancing, as at a movie theater, the illusory reality of the characters prancing on the screen. Neta and Nadi gape for a moment at their energetic grandpa, but they are drained and lethargic from long hours of staring at that addictive machine and do not rise to greet him.

The first thing he does is lower the volume on the TV. Then he raises the blinds and restores the daylight, and only afterward begins his interrogation of the babysitter, as if she were to blame simply for being there.

"Has their mother called?"

"No."

"And their grandma?"

"No."

"So who has called?"

"Just you."

But Nadi jumps up and says, "Not right, also Abba talked to us."

"Abba called?"

"Yes." The babysitter remembers now. "After you called."

"And what did he say?"

"He was looking for Imma," Neta says helpfully. "He said that the army is still keeping him, and Imma should send him warm clothes."

"Underpants," Nadi adds, "Abba needs underpants. And also undershirts."

"And that's it?"

"That's it," says Neta.

"No," her little brother corrects her, "he also kissed his telephone."

Now Ya'ari's anger has cooled, and he allows the babysitter to turn up the roar of some forest animals who at the moment are dancing merrily with the program's host. Then he goes to the fridge to see what's in it before asking whether anyone is hungry. They are all hungry, especially the chubby babysitter. He eagerly volunteers to remedy this, and, swiftly prepares little sandwiches, garnishing them, as he has learned from his wife, with graceful curls of cucumber, and serves them to the entranced children on the floor. Then he makes a bigger sandwich for himself and strolls with it around the apartment.

Because he sees Moran every day at the office and Daniela prefers to look after the grandchildren in her own home, he does not often visit the home of his son and daughter-in-law. Now, in their absence, he takes the opportunity to get to know it better. First he explores the living room, checking out the CDs and videos, then moves to the children's room, to have a look at their drawings and games, and from there he heads into the bedroom and finds the double bed very messy, looking as if on the previous night two people slept there, not one. He examines his son's clothing and finds that unlike the conjugal bed, the clothes in the closet have merited orderly arrangement. Trousers and shirts are hung up, sweaters are neatly folded and stacked on the shelves, and in the underwear drawers nestle carefully sorted briefs and undershirts.

What happened with the army this time? Why have they suddenly become so heavy-handed? Next to the bed a PDA is blinking. He easily locates the number of his son's army unit, and after a second's hesitation, he calls it. The young female soldier who answers knows of Lieutenant Ya'ari and even has an idea of where he may be confined. For although the soldiers have already been sent to man checkpoints in Samaria, the adjutant officers of the reserve battalion remain inside the 1967 border at the training camp near Karkur.

"Karkur?" Ya'ari closes his eyes a moment and conjures a map of Israel. "Karkur? That's not so far away."

"What can you do?" grumbles the clerk. "Everything is close by in this country."

Ya'ari returns to the living room and finds that the babysitter has again shut out the daylight, the better to bond with the TV. The jungle animals have completed their dance, and now a sharp-tongued human is conducting a heart-to-heart conversation with a group of boys and girls on the subject of proper parenting. His granddaughter, Neta, still a bit young to pass judgment on her parents, has repaired to her room to begin a drawing. Nadi, meanwhile, is sleeping soundly on the floor, and the young babysitter is not strong enough to lift him onto the sofa. Ya'ari hurries to gather the slumbering toddler in his arms, marveling at how heavy the boy is, as if something extra were hidden inside him. Wanting him to sleep soundly, he passes by the children's room and Neta's artistic activity and carries him to his parents' unmade bed. With loving compassion he removes the child's shoes and covers him with their blanket. Then, observing the high forehead and strong, almost cruel line of the child's jaw, he asks himself: This boy, who does he remind me of?

"How much do you get an hour?" he asks the young babysitter, whose eyes are still fixed on the screen, when he goes back into the living room.

He then learns that she is not the original babysitter: that's her older sister, who collects the salary and pays her a portion as subcontractor.

"Subcontractor?" says Ya'ari, laughing.

"That's what she says I am."

"What's your sister's name?"

"Yuval."

"You should know that Yuval is exploiting you."

The babysitter is stunned; glittering tears appear in her calflike eyes.

"I was only joking…" the grandfather says. "It's certainly not your fault." He feels the need to console the chubby girl but is careful not to stroke her. Enough, it's time for him to get out of here. But the menorah displayed on top of the television bothers him. It is blotched with drops of wax, and the stumps of two of last night's candles are still stuck in it, as if a natural or man-made wind had prevented their peaceable extinction. He extracts the bits of candle, takes the menorah to the sink, puts it under hot water from the tap, and then scrapes off the wax drippings with a knife. Before returning the menorah to the television he sticks in four white candles plus a blue shammash for the evening's lighting.

If Nadi were awake, it would be possible, although it's still daytime, to light candles with his grandchildren and even sing a brief song with them. He smiles at the babysitter, but the girl has not forgiven him for insulting her big sister. So what is he doing here, damn it? He takes hold of himself, and an urge to exert control snaps him into quick action. In the kitchen he finds a large clean garbage bag and tiptoes with it into the bedroom. Nadi is still sleeping soundly. He carefully opens the closet and stuffs two pairs of pants into the bag, along with a heavy sweater and a light one, adding handfuls of underpants and undershirts, as if this were not a confined soldier but a long-term prisoner. Afterward he writes on a slip of paper his cell phone number and that of Grandma Yael and gives them to the girl.

She looks at the phone numbers.

"Yael is your wife?"

"No, Yael is the other grandma. My wife is in Africa."

And when he goes to say goodbye to his granddaughter, she clings to him, why are you going? Stay, Grandpa, but he kisses her with finality. I have to bring Abba warm clothes so he won't be cold, but Imma will be back soon.

He slings the trash bag over his shoulder and leaves the apartment and doesn't ring for the elevator but rather stamps quickly down the stairs out into a twilight world and a gorgeous winter sky, blue and orange and white.

UNWILLINGLY, DRIVEN BY his sister-in-law's firm demand, Yirmi signals for the two porters to follow him, and under a colorless sky, into a cold wind and a light rain that prickles their faces marches their small and singular procession, led by a white man, old and bald though tall and fit, clutching the arm of a middle-aged white woman shielding herself with an umbrella, and a short distance behind tread two barefoot porters with baskets on their backs; as the four pass the building of the former Israeli diplomatic mission, now occupied by a Chinese tobacco company, they are suddenly joined, as out of thin air, by the stately nurse Sijjin Kuang, also attended by a barefoot porter with a straw basket affixed to his shoulders. Now all six walk together along a street of whitewashed houses and up to the door of the clinic. The entrance is clogged with patients and their companions, but Yirmiyahu, in the strength of his whiteness, leads the procession past them into the building, where without asking either doctor or nurse he confidently navigates his way to a sickroom with five beds, and points to a bed by the window: the last stop on Shuli's rapid departure from this world.

And now in her sister's bed there lies a young man, a Tanzanian who looks with alarm at the white man and woman who stand before him staring, and at the Sudanese woman who towers behind them, and Daniela, unable to contain the emotions that emerge as powerfully and gloriously as she had hoped, approaches the bed and takes the hand of the young patient and squeezes it in friendship, adding a few words of encouragement in English. And the African, although he may not comprehend their meaning, understands their kind and consoling tone, for he takes the liberty, this young man, of stroking that friendly white hand. And the caress of the delicate black fingers of a sick young man, beside the window through which her sister's soul left this world, justifies absolutely the long journey she has made from Israel to this place.

Now the three porters, who with their baskets still on their backs also followed the imperious white man into the room, make way for the doctor and nurse, arrived in haste to demand the reason for this unprecedented invasion. Yirmiyahu introduces himself, and his sister-in-law and explains. They nod with understanding and sympathy, and because they are new to the infirmary, they call for a veteran doctor, who remembers well the white woman who died here the year before. And although he has nothing to say about the treatment they never had a chance to begin or the respirator that was late to arrive, he can at least testify that she passed away quickly and without undue suffering, lying in the bed by the window.

WITHOUT CHECKING THE map for the Karkur exit, Ya'ari heads north on the coastal highway, working his way into a three-lane crawl of thick end-of-day traffic. The air has grown milder, and Ya'ari does not hesitate to roll down the passenger window, hoping to inhale the aroma of well-watered fields and maybe a hint of distant orchards. At this hour the light is at its best, and in the Israeli sky, so boring and monotonous most days of the year, a small drama is unfolding. The setting sun, blazing itself a westward path through the crest of puffy clouds moving in from the sea, sculpts snowy peaks and antediluvian beasts, and ignites the fiery beard of a hoary giant.

In a hundred hours, more or less, he will pick up his wife at the airport. Some of these hours will melt away while he sleeps or works, but at times he will be gripped by longing, mainly for her attentive ear. If his love could take control of time, she would return home sooner. At this moment, however, her absence is an advantage. Ya'ari has no doubt that his wife would have sternly forbidden this sort of expedition. Moran is nearly thirty years old, and his father does not need to show up in his quarters to humiliate him with a bundle of undershirts and jockey shorts. His wife, that Efrat, should be attending to his underwear, instead of her endless training courses.

Moran, however, is not only his son but also an employee of his firm — thus will Ya'ari justify himself at times, half seriously — and as an employer, it is his right and his duty to attend to his personal business. Daniela, of course, rejects this disingenuous double dipping, which gives him, but not her, additional rights in the son they share, and if she were here now she would say, that's nonsense, for you he's only a son, and besides, how can you be so sure that you'll find him or that they'll let you see him? This trip is useless, and afterward don't complain that you're pressed for time. Thus, with her wily wisdom, would she have prevented this trip.

But at the moment her wiles and wisdom are detained in Africa, and he is master of his fate, betting that his ingenuity will save the journey from being pointless. And if he doesn't find Moran, that's not so terrible. Karkur is not far away, the snail-paced traffic allows him to admire the beauty in the winter light and the movements of the clouds, and Hanukkah lends a festiveness to the overflowing parking lots at the shopping malls of the kibbutzim near Tel Aviv: Ga'ash, Shefayim, and Yakum. The old fields, now pricey real estate, are dominated by an old-fashioned water tower crowned by a big rotating menorah, already releasing light from all nine candlesticks, though the holiday is only half over.

Ya'ari, too, feels released — a pleasant feeling. Only rarely has he the patience to drive confined to the middle lane, with no chance of passing or maneuvering. And since in the lanes to his right and left he has been escorted for the past kilometer by women whose upper bodies and profiles he finds attractive, now he lowers the window on the driver's side so that the two open windows, right and left, create a living, though silent, communion between the two of them, and to his great surprise they indeed notice each other and try to signal right past him.

Now he spots the magnet that has drawn this heavy traffic: an Ikea outlet. Once he passes the commercial strip south of Netanya, the flow of cars speeds up, creating a strong wind that forces him to raise the windows again and turn down the heater. After a bit of hesitation, he phones Nofar and gets her voicemail. Happy to be saved from a frosty, anxiety-provoking conversation, he leaves a warm but carefully worded message. Next he calls the apartment he has just left to see if the woman of the house has returned, but a new voice answers: the babysitter's older sister, come to replace her subcontractor.

"Don't worry, Grandpa," she addresses him officiously, "your grandchildren are already fast asleep. Neta also nodded off in the middle of her drawing. Everything is just fine. If anything pops up, I'll call. I've got your number right here."

Again his thoughts return to the phone conversation with his wife. Now it seems to him there was a mild tension in her voice, as if she were uncertain that her visit was really welcome. And it's true that in the course of his long friendship with his brother-in-law, he has sometimes been aware of various oddities in his behavior. If since his wife's death he has chosen to stay in a wild and remote place not just as a means of fattening his retirement funds but also as a way of detaching himself from the family, maybe he is not pleased with the sisterly visit she has imposed on him.

North of Netanya the charms of freedom wear off. The three lanes shrink to two; the traffic slows to a crawl again and sometimes stops altogether. The car in the lane to his right, sealed and dark, with tinted windows, keeps trying to cut him off. If he were to start a political party, he would run on a one-line platform: Widen the highway between Netanya and Hadera. Surely that would win a few seats in the Knesset, though it would never occur to him to run for office. Sometimes he too yearns to burn all the Israeli newspapers in a big furnace. But his wife reads them avidly. She who would teach high school must understand reality in order to explain it to her students.

Beyond the bridge spanning the Alexander River flaps a small, improvised-looking formation of migratory birds that have lost their larger flock. Daylight is down to its last rays. He takes advantage of the creeping pace to have a look at the road map. Good thing: if he'd relied on instinct, he'd have turned east too early, at the Hadera junction, instead of at the big power station at Caesarea.

Now that he is sure of his route, he begins passing other cars. It's not good to arrive at an army base after dark, when the guards at the gate are more strict.

And indeed, at the entrance to the training camp, surrounded by rustling eucalyptus trees, two skinny Ethiopian recruits in full gear, armed with rifles, come forward and demand from the civilian a signed entry pass.

"I'm not even here for you," he objects. "I'm going to the adjutancy of the reserve battalion. My son is an officer at their headquarters, and he urgently needs a parcel of clothing."

And he points to the trash bag.

But there is no separate entrance for the reserve battalion, and the well-disciplined recruits have not been trained in the rules governing parents who bring urgent bundles of clothing. And because they are forbidden to leave their post, they recommend that he wait for a patrol that is soon due to pass by.

"When?"

"In about an hour."

"No," Ya'ari protests. "I am very sorry, but I have no intention of waiting here in the dark for a whole hour. Now listen, you're new recruits, but I am a bereaved father. Seven years ago my oldest son fell in a military action in the West Bank, in Tulkarm. So please, don't be hard on me now. It's already late, and the one son I have left is here with the reserves, a combat officer who needs warm clothing. Here, please, I'm opening the bag so you can see for yourselves it's only undershirts and shorts and not bombs or grenades."

DANIELA WILL NOT let go of the doctor. His English is not rich with imagery, but it is generous in detail, and she drinks up her sister's final moments, reconstructing a picture of her to replace the urn of ashes that her husband had brought to Israel. After the doctor reassures the Israeli visitor that the young black man lying in her sister's bed will recover fully, she is ready to leave this place where the void in her has been filled with the pain she longed for. As they exit the infirmary and hurry toward the train station, she feels that even if her visit were to end at this moment, its true purpose would in a sense have been realized, now that she had learned where and how her sister died. If a flight home from Dar es Salaam were suddenly offered to her, so she could be with her grandchildren on Friday evening to light candles with them, sing Hanukkah songs, and eat a jelly doughnut, she would leave her brother-in-law on the spot. He would go on his way in this summer rain, with his three porters and the grief-stricken nurse, along streets whose Africanness cannot hide the Muslim identity expressed in minarets and Koran verses on walls in curlicue script.

But because departing early is impossible, not least since it might be interpreted as an open insult, she must remain patient with this host upon whom she has imposed herself. During the remainder of her stay, she realizes, she will not discover much about her sister that she didn't know before. She can see that her brother-in-law is disinclined to dwell on shared memories. Until her departure, then, it will be up to her simply to volunteer her warmth and humanity.

The three porters, who know their destination, now break into the lead, and Yirmiyahu is forced to hurry behind them, glancing backward as he does so to be sure his sister-in-law is not lagging behind Sijjin Kuang, sailing tall at the rear of the little company like the mast of the last ship in a convoy.

The image of the bed and window at the foreign clinic stays with Daniela, and sorrow wells up within her like a hot potion, and pity too, for the bald man, her seventy-year-old brother-in-law, a constant in her life since childhood, whose long springing strides do lend him a faint resemblance to a peeled monkey.

At the station the train is waiting, already packed with passengers. Whole families, bunched like grapes in every window, peer out at them, and at first she fears they will not find seats. But the head of the local UNESCO delegation, who takes this train regularly, has arranged a compartment for them. At the doorway of their car they pay the porters, not merely for their labor but also for the tools of their trade, since the three big baskets are coming aboard too. And because the visit to the clinic took the time they might have spent lunching at a comfortable restaurant, Sijjin Kuang has bought food for the road. To Daniela's disappointment, the diverse bounty she produces does not include any dessert. Meanwhile, the guest has spotted a peddler bearing a well-stocked snack emporium on a tricycle and asks her brother-in-law, a little sheepishly, if she has time to add a few sweets to the meal. To her surprise he approves her going alone to the moveable kiosk, not even warning her to hurry, as if unconcerned by the possibility that she might miss the train and be left behind.

Still, he watches her every move from the train window: a middle-aged woman who despite her years has a nice figure and good legs, like her sister, although the candy she consumes freely has thickened her a bit. There she stands, eagerly picking out one treat and then another, like the young girl in her school uniform with her book bag on her back who would dawdle on the way home at the kiosk near their apartment block.

And indeed, as she returns all excited to the compartment and sets before her companions bags of chocolates and toffees imported from the Asian continent beyond this shared ocean, her brother-in-law reminds her of the kiosk of her youth, where she would take sweets without paying.

"Don't exaggerate, it was all written down."

"In an open account, which your mother would pay off on the first of every month."

"Something like that…"

"I don't get it, was there a system like that for other children in your class?"

"I don't think so."

"That's what always amazed me, that your father and mother, who were modest and almost ascetic, agreed to give a girl an open account. In your home, after all, there were almost no sweets."

"Which is why they didn't care that I hung around the kiosk."

"They weren't afraid of spoiling you?"

She smiles.

"You've known me more than forty years. Do I seem spoiled to you? Money was never important to me. When I earned money from babysitting or as a camp counselor, I would give it all to my mother and didn't care about it. No, Yirmi, my mother and father didn't lose anything from my open account at the kiosk; they only gained smiles and a good mood."

"And your suitors?" he teases her. "They also benefited from that open account?"

"Who do you mean?"

"The boys who would walk you home after school."

"They weren't looking for candy."

"Of that I am sure." Yirmi chuckles, as if the visit to the clinic has lightened his mood. While the train toots and flexes for the journey with a little lurch forward and then back, he derives enjoyment from his sister-in-law's youth, taking the opportunity to ask why, with so many suitors, it was Amotz she had picked.

"Why not?"

"Because you had boyfriends who were more successful. At least that was what Shuli used to say."

"Successful?" Her eyes flash, as the train sets off with a screech. "Successful in what way?"

Yirmiyahu, suddenly anxious, shrugs and doesn't answer.

SINCE THESE ARE raw recruits — lust ten days earlier they were civilians — they are not aware that one may violate a military order out of misunderstanding, but not out of compassion, and so they open the gate for the bereaved father bringing warm clothes to his remaining son. But as for the location of the reservists' command, they do not know it.

No problem, he will find it himself. All he asks now of the guards, who have displayed such genuine humanity, is that they keep an eye on his car. Then he sets out briskly through the wintry dusk on the paths of the big military base. Above him the wind rustles softly in the eucalyptus trees, which grew to great heights after the fetid swamps were drained back in the early Zionist era. He asks no one the way, but finds it for himself among sheds and tents, walking quietly past the evening formation of a platoon of recruits in full gear, who listen to a lecture on morality from their arrogant sergeant. Ya'ari wanders, possibly in circles, mud accumulating on his shoes as in the blackening sky two or three wayward stars appear. Just as the fast-falling darkness might have begun to undermine his confidence, he notices two civilian cars and a dusty army Land Rover parked by a shed thumping with dance music.

In the belief that the darkness will conceal his face, he creeps up to the building and peeks into window after window, verifying by the equipment and uniforms and beds that reservists are quartered here. One room is only a darkened office, but the next one is lighted, with two unmade army cots, and there on a blanket spread out on the floor beside a small heater sits Moran dressed in a civilian shirt, playing backgammon with a diminutive major sporting a mane of wild red hair. Ya'ari is in no hurry, he stands close to the pane and continues to watch his son. Suddenly Moran looks up, but he does not seem surprised to see his father's face in the window and doesn't get up or stop the game. With a friendly wave he invites his father inside, and says to his companion, don't say I didn't warn you that my father would try to rescue me from here. And the short red-haired officer looks at Ya'ari affectionately and says, welcome, Abba of Moran, just give us another minute to finish the game, so I can chalk up another victory.

"By all means, beat him as much as you want; he deserves it," Ya'ari replies facetiously. "Just so you know, I did not come here as a father, but as an employer."

Moran smiles and groans, "Sure, an employer," and vigorously throws the dice.

Within a minute or two the game is over, and the two slowly stand up and stretch. Now Moran hugs his father warmly and without embarrassment presents his cheek for a kiss, as the major introduces himself to the visitor with a cordial handshake: Hezi, maybe you remember me, I was with Moran in officers' training school.

"And you're also locked up here? I see that the two of you are having a good time in confinement."

"No, Abba, Hezi is not a prisoner, he's on the side of the jailers. Hezi is the adjutant of the battalion. He had nobody to play backgammon with, so he decided to attach me to himself for ten days."

Ya'ari is amused.

"So you're the adjutant? You should know that I kept warning your friend here to request a release from duty in the proper formal manner and not to count on people just forgetting about him."

"And he was right not to," says the adjutant. "He knew very well that he wouldn't get any release from me."

"Even if he's in the midst of an important project for the Ministry of Defense?"

"I have soldiers whose wives are eight and nine months pregnant, I have soldiers with a father or mother in the hospital, I have soldiers for whom every day of reserve duty hurts their business; why should I care about the Ministry of Defense? From his standpoint Moran was right to decide to just ignore us and hope that we'd forget about him."

"But…"

"But unfortunately it's not so easy to forget someone like Moran, so I sent a military policeman to go get him, and believe me, Abba of Moran, it was purely out of mercy that we didn't send him to jail and instead kept him here attached to the adjutancy — also so I would have someone to play backgammon with, although he is a mediocre player without much luck."

Moran laughs. "Don't believe him; he's just ragging on me."

"But…"

"But what?"

"But…" Ya'ari says, hesitating, "why didn't you send him to serve with the rest of them?"

"There they don't really need him. We assigned another officer to his platoon. And I have an iron law: an extra soldier is a vulnerable soldier. Overall, too many reservists showed up this time — there are many unemployed workers in Israel."

"So why not let him off?"

"Why let him off? He damaged the solidarity and thumbed his nose at the camaraderie, so he'll sit here confined to base till the end of his reserve duty and take stock of himself, and in the meantime improve his backgammon."

Moran laughs, and it seems he also enjoys his friend's rebuke. But his father studies the officer to determine if he's being serious.

"How did you get to be a major and Moran stayed only a lieutenant?"

"Because I don't have a rich father like Moran, so I stayed on a few more years as a career officer to save money for my studies."

"And what did you study?"

"In the end, I didn't study."

"So how do you make a living?"

"This and that."

"In any case I think I remember your face from somewhere."

"Maybe you saw his mug on television," Moran says.

"On television?"

"Because just as you see him here, adjutant of reservists, distinguished major, bursting with patriotic values, on television he's on a satirical show rattling off bad jokes, and lucky for him there's a laugh track so he won't fall flat."

The officer-comedian punches Moran in the ribs with an affectionate fist.

"So what do you say, Hezi," — Ya'ari turns to the adjutant, man to man—"I came to bring the detainee warm clothes, but better still why don't I free you of him? So he can do something useful for the world instead of wasting away here."

But the officer-comedian puts on a grave face and answers firmly: It is all right to give the clothes to Moran, but it is not all right to give Moran to his father. He is sentenced till the end of his unit's reserve duty, and will be released when the others are. And as for usefulness to the world, his cell phone has been confiscated, but he is allowed one call a day to his wife, and if she's not home or her cell is turned off, that's not the army's problem. And anyway, how did you get permission to enter the camp?

"I told the recruits at the gate that I am a bereaved uncle."

"Bereaved uncle?" the adjutant says, marveling. "What on earth is a bereaved uncle?"

Moran, surprised by his father's words, reminds his friend about his cousin who was killed seven years before.

"By friendly fire," Ya'ari quietly adds.

THE TRAIN ACCELERATES, the cars emit a metallic rumble, and the three straw baskets, left in the corridor, embark on little independent journeys and need to be reined in. Sijjin Kuang rises from her seat, pulls them into the compartment, ties them together, and shoves them against the door, blocking the entry of any curious passengers strolling through the train. Then she takes a newspaper from one of the bags of food she bought at the station, gets down on her knees, and spreads the paper on the floor. Then she lays out the feast: brown eggs, smoked sardines, fried calamari, a wedge of hard white cheese veined with red, a few greenish bananas, moist dates, and a hairy coconut. With her long delicate fingers she takes a large smoked sardine and begins to gnaw at its flattened head.

Daniela watches with admiration as the tall and graceful Sudanese flexibly folds her legs to allow room for others on the floor of the compartment, and after hesitating a moment she gathers up the hem of her skirt and also assumes a kneeling position. Avoiding the smoked fish and seafood, she cuts herself a slice of the cheese with the blade of a penknife that Sijjin Kuang opens and offers her. Yirmiyahu, without leaving his seat, fashions himself a cone out of newspaper and fills it with sardines and squid, and tears off a generous piece of pita bread. They lunch together in silence, as at a mourners' meal, but with a warm sense of conviviality in this compartment set apart by its wall of big baskets, which glow golden in the afternoon light.

Sijjin Kuang does not eat sweets and is content to offset her salty, spicy lunch with some coconut. Yirmiyahu happily tops off his meal with the Indian toffee procured by his sister-in-law, then tilts his head back next to the window and closes his eyes. Daniela finds that the candies she bought are too sweet and have an unfamiliar aftertaste, and makes do instead with a few dates. Since long silences are generally difficult for her, she tries to draw out Sijjin Kuang on the subject of rituals of fire and winds and trees and animals, and from the pagan's short answers gathers that among idolaters as well as monotheists, materiality carries less weight than metaphors and symbols. Indeed the Sudanese woman thought that when Yirmiyahu threw the candles in the fire, he was performing a religious rite.

There's no telling whether he is asleep or listening to their conversation with his eyes closed. Daniela helps the nurse gather up the food-stained newspapers, and when Sijjin Kuang slips out of the compartment, stepping over the baskets, to dispose of the bags of trash, Daniela resumes her seat by the window, opposite her brother-in-law. Yirmiyahu opens his eyes and smiles. Well, this is surely not how you imagined the visit, being hurried from place to place. But it's not so bad — in the remaining days you'll have a chance to rest.

"It's absolutely fine, this traveling. Resting I can do at home."

He nods.

"All in all, it's good that Amotz didn't come with you. He always wants to accomplish something clear and practical, and a trip like today's, back and forth just to see a window and a bed, would have driven him crazy."

His mildly critical tone makes her uneasy. The train suddenly speeds up and blows its whistle repeatedly. Yirmiyahu sticks his head out the window to see what the noise is about. They are riding through a sea of short yellow grass. Had her sister really told him about more successful suitors in her youth, or was that his own idea? When she was in high school, Yirmi and Shuli were already married and living in Jerusalem, only on Saturdays would they visit Tel Aviv. And who talked then about "more successful" anyway? Certainly not her parents. They never characterized her friends that way, but would only express an opinion about who seemed nice, and who less so. From the first, they found Amotz likeable and, most important, trustworthy.

Suddenly she has the desire to confront her brother-in-law and defend her husband. "It's strange," she turns to him with a serious look when the train's whistle blasts die down. "Strange that you mention boyfriends from more than forty years ago, as if you had actually known them."

"That's true, I didn't know a single one of them, but sometimes, years later, Shuli would recognize someone's name in the newspaper, someone who went far."

"Far where?"

"Do I know?" he says, uncomfortably. "For example, that guy who ended up becoming the attorney general."

"Why do you think I should have married the attorney general? I was never involved in any crime."

He laughs. "How about medical problems?"

"What's the connection?"

"I'm thinking about that chubby professor we ran into at a concert in Jerusalem a few years back, the famous heart surgeon, who was so excited to see you… no regrets?"

"About what?"

"Don't get upset, I'm just making conversation. That you didn't pick him over Amotz?"

"He was a rather limited and boring man. Anyway, you're funny — what do you know about him?"

He places his hand on her shoulder. "Little Sister, don't mind my jabbering away here, at the end of the world, the end of life, about suitors you had forty years ago. I'm just curious. I would also ask Shuli sometimes, what is it about your sister that attracts the boys? I mean, you were never especially beautiful."

"Certainly not. There were always prettier girls around."

"But the men were drawn to you anyway, like bears to honey. Especially the intellectuals."

"You're exaggerating…"

"And in the end, out of all of them, you picked a technician…"

"He's not just a technician."

"And you picked him out so early, you were maybe twenty."

"What's this about?" she says indignantly. "What do you have against Amotz?"

"Who said I had anything against him? Why are you putting words in my mouth? When all those many years we've been not just brothers-in-law but also friends."

"So why does he suddenly make you uncomfortable?"

"Who said uncomfortable? What's the matter? Why can't we just chat about your youth? It's so rare that we're alone together, without Shuli or Amotz. So tell me why you picked him over everyone else?"

"He lived in our neighborhood but didn't go to our school. In his second to last year, he switched to a vocational high school."

"Why?"

"Because his father wanted to prepare him better for the technical side of his business. But afterward, you know, he became a certified engineer."

"Of course. I never doubted his abilities. Only…"

"Only what?"

From behind the straw baskets guarding the compartment appears the beautifully sculpted ebony figure of Sijjin Kuang. She enters and remains standing in the middle of the floor, gazing out the window. All at once she turns with a big smile to Daniela, gesturing with her long arm for the white woman to look outside. From within the railway car shouts of joy can be heard, and the train seems to be slowing down.

Not far from the track, in the branches of a lone baobab tree in the open plain, perch lions and cubs, blinking peaceably at the passengers in the train.

But Daniela, unwilling to be distracted, is trying not to lose the thread of conversation.

"Why was Amotz in my eyes the best of all? Because from the start I not only felt but knew that this was the man who would be able to protect me from unnecessary suffering. He wasn't a doctor or a lawyer, and not an especially talented engineer either, and maybe he can be a little oppressive and tedious at times, but he is a person who has love and loyalty stamped in his soul, which is why he won't let despair near me."

"Despair?" Yirmiyahu says, recoiling. "What are you talking about?"

"Despair, despair," the word sears her mouth, and the Sudanese watches her, mesmerized. "The despair of pain, the kind that killed my sister. You know exactly what I am talking about."

"SO IF THAT'S the case," Ya'ari says to the adjutant, "at least let me consult with your prisoner about something urgent at work."

"What kind of work?"

"Elevators that we are designing for the Ministry of Defense."

"It can't wait till next week?"

"What's the problem? What am I asking for? For Moran to just have a glance at a sketch that I brought."

"Just a look, then. Not a full work session. Because dinner is beginning right now in the mess hall, and I promised the rabbi of the base that I would bring him some reservists for the recruits' candle-lighting."

Ya'ari pulls his son into a corner and anxiously takes his nocturnal sketch from his pocket. Don't look at the details, he warns, just get a general impression. I haven't shown this to anyone in the office yet, but I couldn't hold back and showed it to the new deputy director of the building department, who knows nothing about elevators.

Moran brings the drawing closer to the light.

"And what did the deputy say?"

"Nothing, really… she made a joke that the rider would have to be very thin… even though there's room here for two passengers."

Moran is immersed in the sketch. His father looks at him nervously, fearing that deep down his son is snickering at him.

"Strange. How did you get the idea for a corner elevator?"

"It came at night… conceived in a dream… maybe, because Imma isn't beside me now at night, I'm a bit less calm and more creative. And maybe I came across something similar in some old magazine. But why does the source matter to you, and who cares what inspired it? The main thing is, tell me frankly — does it look feasible, or did I draw something absurd? I don't want to look stupid, with a useless idea."

Moran moves the diagram from side to side. The adjutant straightens his uniform, puts on a battle jacket, sets a beret on his head, adjusts his epaulets and watches impatiently.

"I don't dismiss the idea."

"Really?" Ya'ari is flooded with joy. "It's feasible?"

"I don't know… we have to check it out. But in principle, I don't dismiss the idea. Could be that this is the right direction. Because otherwise we'll be in trouble. You saw for yourself how the deviation in the shaft makes us already minus ten centimeters at this stage, so that when we get up to the roof and discover that they shaved half a meter in width from the shaft, we'll have another bone to pick with the contractor."

"That was exactly my reasoning," his father says with enthusiasm. "Instead of trying to squeeze together everything that's already been designed, we'll just shove the damn fifth one into the south corner."

"Has anyone at the Defense Ministry explained what it's intended for?"

"Nothing. Total secrecy. More than twenty years we've been working with them, and all of a sudden, a mystery. And over what? An elevator? In that case, we'll also be a bit mysterious in our design, and whoever insists on riding in it can please shrink and stand in the corner."

"Enough," calls the adjutant from the doorway. "Your quick glance has already turned into a full meeting, so please say goodbye now. The rabbi and the candles are waiting."

And he turns out the lights. In the sudden darkness Ya'ari hugs his son tight, and they go out into the night while the adjutant calls out to other people, officers from headquarters, female clerks, drivers, and maybe other soldiers who are confined to base.

Ya'ari, too, is drawn into the group advancing along a winding path marked by whitewashed stones. Really, why shouldn't he take part? The rabbi will be happy to show the recruits that even an old civilian has come to his candle-lighting, providing the soldiers with a feeling of brotherhood and deepening their identity and sense of belonging. Together with the group he enters a large dining hall packed with Ethiopians and Russians, blacks and whites, shaky new recruits battered by their first month of training. They sit crammed together at long tables where tin pots of tea are steaming alongside platters stacked with huge jelly doughnuts.

On a small stage stands a Hanukkah menorah fashioned of big copper shell casings from helicopter cannons. Four thick white candles stand at attention, dominated by their commandant, a giant red shammash.

The rabbi gestures for the reservists to come forward to the seats saved for them and asks them to silence their cell phones. Ya'ari prefers to remain in the doorway, where his cell begins to play its tune, compelling him to retreat outside, into the dark.

Efrat has finally returned home and demands to know where he has disappeared to.

"You won't believe where I am," he proudly declares. "I'm with Moran in Karkur. I brought him undershirts and underpants. But he's not with me at the moment. They took him to the mess hall to light candles."

The army rabbi, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, lights the shammash, but instead of proceeding immediately to intone the blessings, he takes the opportunity to begin with a sermon about the wonders and miracles of the holiday, waving the huge shammash like a torch.

"I don't get it. When did you leave the children?"

"About 4:30. That girl, your babysitter, didn't tell you?"

"But I don't understand why you decided to put Nadi to bed at such an hour."

"I didn't put him to bed. He fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV, and I just moved him to the bed."

"But why our bed and not his?"

"Because Neta was drawing in the children's room, and I didn't want the light to disturb him."

"If he's already asleep, nothing will disturb him," she scolds, "but what do you care if the light bothers him? Did you want to ruin my night on purpose?"

"To ruin your night on purpose?" Ya'ari is dumbfounded but tries to construct a logical response. "You just said a moment ago that no light would bother him, so even if I had put him in his own bed, he wouldn't have woken up."

"Be that as it may," she continues in the same angry, imperious tone, "why in our bed?"

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

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

"Because he wet my blankets and sheet."

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

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

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

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

Now her voice cracks a little.

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

"He's a sweetheart."

"So you'll come tomorrow?"

"Of course."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

"You're stubborn as a mule, Yirmi…"

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

"Who?"

"How can you not understand?"

"Eyal?"

"Obviously."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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