Friendly Fire: A Duet

Seventh Candle

JUST LAST NIGHT, his elderly father said to him: I want you to know that I definitely do not need you tomorrow. Francisco and I have organized a whole crew to take care of the little Jerusalem elevator. You can relax and tend to business at the office and get the house ready for Daniela. But if you insist on coming along, then early in the morning, please. Before noon my shaking is not as bad.

"But morning, Abba, not dawn."

"We'll compromise on in between. The difference isn't that much."

When Ya'ari arrives at his father's home at half past seven, he finds him trembling in his wheelchair, ready to go. Washing must have been accomplished at first light, and breakfast too, and on the table, cleared of crumbs, the Filipino baby is avidly sucking her toe, surrounded by five plastic containers filled with sandwiches, cookies, and peeled vegetables.

"You don't trust your woman in Jerusalem to feed us?"

"Food there will surely be, but I know this lady very well. Given her regal manners my staff may be too intimidated to go to her table. We're taking care of them, so they won't be dependent on her refreshments."

"The staff, the staff," Ya'ari scoffs, "what staff?"

It turns out that a real delegation has been assembled, six escorts for one old man, not counting Ya'ari himself: a private ambulance driver; two Filipino friends recruited by Francisco; Hilario, in the role of interpreter; and one little surprise…

"What surprise?"

"A surprise," his father says, smiling. "When you see her, you'll understand right away that this is a surprise."

"But what sort of surprise?"

"A little patience, please. Have I ever disappointed you?"

Ya'ari looks fondly at his father, who is dressed festively for the occasion in a white shirt and black vest; a red tie lies folded in his lap. His shaking does not seem any better this morning.

"And your medicines?"

"I took a little more than the usual dose. And I have another dose in my pocket, in case the old girl tries to exceed the bounds of propriety."

"How many years since you've seen her?"

"Not since the beginning of the millennium. When my illness got worse, I understood that it would not be dignified for us elderly people to peddle illusions to ourselves."

"Illusions about what?"

The father removes his eyeglasses and brings his wristwatch close to his eyes to verify that the second hand is moving. Then he looks up at his son and grumbles, "Illusions… illusions… you know exactly what I mean, so don't pretend this morning to be somebody you're not."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning a square, naïve, limited, engineer."

The elder Ya'ari, who had no formal education, still teases his son sometimes about his degree in engineering. But the son doesn't drop the subject.

"Illusions that love can be a consolation for death?"

The father waves his hands irritably.

"If that explanation makes you feel better, then we'll agree on it. But do me a favor and save the philosophy for later, and instead tell me, should I put on the red tie, or is it too much?"

"If you don't also plan to put on makeup for the visit, then a red tie will brighten your pale face."

"But a festive necktie may give the wrong impression, that I'm coming as something more than a technician fulfilling a guarantee."

Ya'ari takes hold of his father's quivering hand.

"Lover-technician, nothing is more attractive than that."

There's a quiet knock at the door. Hilario, who is sitting by the table making sure that the baby won't spread her arms and legs and fly to the floor, runs to answer it. Two Filipino youths with sad adult faces enter awkwardly and are drawn immediately to their infant compatriot, who greets them with a friendly smile. Kinzie hurries in from the kitchen to introduce the newcomers, Marco and Pedro, good friends and fellow caregivers who got the morning off from their employers to help a friend carry his boss up four flights of stairs to his lover in Jerusalem.

EVEN AFTER FIVE nights here she still wakes up into pitch-darkness. This time she's roused by a sudden anxiety about Nofar, whose devotion to her service in the hospital could get her unwittingly infected by some rare disease. The day after tomorrow, immediately on returning to Israel, she will demand that Nofar spell out for her which injections are given to assistant nurses and explain the procedures for handling people afflicted with dubious illnesses. It has been several years since she and Amotz have grown wary of intervening in Nofar's private affairs, but illness is not a private affair.

She considers whether to turn on a light in the room or to try and cling to the tail end of the sleep that is slipping away from her. After fifteen minutes of lying still with her eyes closed, she concedes that this night's slumber has abandoned her for good, and she turns on the light, intending to replace her own worries with the material and moral losses of the heroine of the novel. But after two pages, the arbitrariness of the plot again stops her reading cold. Fictional troubles can't trump real concerns, and given no choice she lays aside the novel and picks up the King James Bible. At first she returns to the book of Jeremiah, calmly to assess the validity of the heated protest against the prophet by the man bearing his name. And indeed, the level of aggression directed by the biblical Jeremy against his countrymen, coupled with such ornate linguistic virtuosity, confirms her brother-in-law's accusation: these furious prophecies were delivered with pleasure and satisfaction rather than sorrow or pain.

She looks for the Book of Job. There, at least, she can find human suffering with a personal, not a national, dimension. She hopes, too, to find in it rare words to challenge her English.

In this version, for some reason the Book of Job is in a different place, hidden in a spot that considerably precedes Jeremiah. Once she locates it, though, she has no trouble at all collecting words indecipherable to her, such as:

froward

collops

assuaged

reins

gin

cockle

neesing

It is wondrous and pleasing to encounter in the Bible vocabulary she fails utterly to understand in a language that she loves and teaches, and she writes the words down on the last page of the novel. Perhaps she can use them to test the regional supervisor of English studies back home, an ironic bachelor from South Africa who likes her and cultivates her company. But would it be nice to embarrass a friend with a test he might well not pass?

Then she lets go of Job, which does seem to her a more estimable text, but stuffed with tedious repetitions. And in general — a lazy drowsiness flutters her eyes — one could compress the Bible a bit without losing anything significant. With the book in her hand she gets up to close the blinds against the imminent sunrise, but before laying it down and turning off the light, she decides to have a look at the Song of Songs.

Right from the sensual start—Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—the English flows melodically. Here there's not one cryptic word; each one seems right and trustworthy, with the spirit of the original Hebrew hovering over the lines. The old-fashioned English resonates with grace and grandeur, even a hint of humor. Here is love, open and generous, sometimes pleading for its life, sometimes daring and expansive, bronzed by the noon sun, or burning at night. Yes, now she understands why it was here that the bereaved father began to sob.

I am black, but comely,

O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

As the tents of Kedar,

As the curtains of Solomon.

Look not upon me because I am black—

Because the sun hath looked upon me.

In the imagination of the white woman, on her bed at night in the Dark Continent, the Sudanese Sijjin Kuang arises now from the desert, black and comely, her stature like a palm tree, and goes about the city at night sick with love, wandering through streets and markets, searching for the one that her soul has loved, and she cannot find him, and the watchmen on the walls find her and beat and wound her, and tear away her scarf, and she is as a rose among the thorns…

And the Israeli visitor is drawn to her and runs after her, skimming through the eight chapters not in tears, but with a pounding heart.

0 that thou wert as my brother,

That sucked the breasts of my mother,

When I should find thee without,

1 would kiss thee;

Yes, I should not be despised.

She closes the book and sets it aside. Turns off the light, curls up, and plummets into merciful sleep. And not one hour passes but three, as the violent morning light tries in vain to peek between the slats. At last a knock at the door wakes her; surely it is her brother-in-law calling her to breakfast, or else Sijjin Kuang who has returned, and without a second's thought she invites whoever is at the unlocked door to enter, but the door does not open, because out by the stairway stands the Ugandan archaeologist Dr. Robert Kukiriza, who very politely asks permission to enter for a private conversation.

And because she is flattered that the star intellectual of the team has seen fit to come alone to her room, she asks him to wait a moment, and she takes off her nightgown and runs barefoot to wash her face, puts on the African dress, quickly makes the bed, after closing the Israeli novel lying there face down and standing it on the shelf beside the Bible. Just before going to the door, she opens the shutters wide to let in some fresh air, and then, still barefoot, she turns the handle.

NOW FRANCISCO ENTERS with Maurice, the owner of today's private ambulance, who years ago used to transport the lady of the house to clinics and hospitals for her tests and treatments. He is an Egyptian Jew, and he was brought with him to Israel the easygoing, patient temperament of the denizens of the land of the Nile. Sometimes, with just a few words, he instills hope in his round-trip clients. In her final years, Ya'ari's mother became quite attached to him, and preferred his ambulance to a taxi even for shopping or visits to friends.

"And here's our Maurice," says Ya'ari's father, spreading his arms with affection to greet the short, solidly built man. "When we see you, we remember the one who loved you so."

Maurice leans over the wheelchair and clasps the old man to his breast carefully, as if he were made of glass, then warmly shakes young Ya'ari's hand. How happy he is to be summoned again into service by the Ya'ari family, especially for a trip not to a hospital but to visit an old love.

The old man turns crimson and wags his finger back and forth at Francisco, who talked too much. But Amotz Ya'ari laughs and says, Here's proof for you that the heart just gets younger every day.

It's raw and drizzly in Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem will presumably be worse. Ya'ari insists that Francisco wrap his father in a big coat and, over that, the black plastic poncho, with its hood like the ones on his grandchildren's jackets. And after Marco and Pedro load a toolbox, prepared ahead of time, into the ambulance, and the cooler with the plastic containers of food, they take the suitor down in the elevator and wheel him, too, into the familiar blue vehicle that has grown a bit old, like its owner. For a moment Ya'ari deliberates whether to join his father in the ambulance or preserve his freedom and drive his own car. In the end he decides to supervise his father from close by, although he will need to crouch and squeeze in among the silent Filipinos.

"And what about the surprise?"

"The surprise is waiting at 9 Rabin Square, next to the Book Worm."

And the driver is advised accordingly.

Beside the bookstore, still closed at this hour, cloaked by a veil of fine rain, waits a figure of indeterminate age and gender. Even as it nimbly hops into the ambulance and removes its hat to shake the rain from it, uncovering cropped hair and a slightly wrinkled face, it is still hard to tell whether this person is male or female, young or old.

But the old man solves the riddle. Say hello to Gottlieb's expert, who today will help us interpret the shakes and howls in Jerusalem. Rochele? Roleleh? Is that the name? May I introduce my son and heir, Amotz.

"I already met the heir of the heir," the small woman says, smiling as she removes her wet jacket to reveal a blue jumpsuit, "and I hoped he'd be here, too."

"He is confined by the army for shirking his reserve duty."

"That doesn't seem to fit him."

"There are facts that don't fit reality," Ya'ari says, sighing.

Marco and Pedro gaze appreciatively at the tiny expert. With her subtle mix of boyish body and mature face, despite her blond hair and blue eyes she could be taken for Filipino.

"Moran told me that you listened together to the winds in Pinsker, and that you think the problem is not with our elevators, but entirely with flaws in the shaft."

"I don't think," the expert explains patiently, "I'm certain. You have to put the building contractor on the roof of an elevator, give him a powerful searchlight, and take him straight up to his blunder so he can see it and take responsibility."

"That's exactly what I suggested to Gottlieb," Ya'ari agrees, impressed by the woman's professional confidence. "I said we should light up the shaft. But our firm has no authority to touch the elevators, which are guaranteed by your company, and unfortunately your Gottlieb is stubbornly refusing to take any action, even to prove the responsibility lies elsewhere."

"But of course," interrupts the expert vigorously. "What does he care? He's stingy over every turn of a screw that doesn't bring him any income. I've known him since childhood; he's sort of my stepfather."

"Gottlieb is your stepfather?" The elder Ya'ari trembles with astonishment and futilely attempts to edge his wheelchair closer to her. The rain clatters on the roof of the ambulance; the small windows are steamed up.

"You didn't know? He never gave a hint?"

"Nothing."

"It's just like him to conceal our family relationship. My father worked for him in the factory, and after he died, Gottlieb advised my mother to send me off to a kibbutz, to save money and also so he could get close to her. Whenever I came back on holiday, he would go into a funk and disappear from the house, to avoid any responsibilities. I was always abnormal in his opinion, for one thing because I remained short and skinny. At first he disapproved totally of my working in the regional auto repair shop. This didn't fit his view of women. He thought it was more appropriate for me to work in the kitchen or the kibbutz laundry. But when it turned out I had this talent for hearing technical flaws, and I proved it with elevators he was making, he got all excited and invited me to work for him. And yet to this day it's hard for him to admit openly that I'm also a member of the family. I think I frighten him a little."

"Why?" Ya'ari inquires.

"What do I know? I think he's a little scared of things that seem irrational to him, mystical stuff. To him it's as if I heard voices, and people like him are afraid that even if they can make good use of it, one day it'll come back to haunt them and they'll lose all their money."

Old Ya'ari bursts out laughing and squeezes her hand with affection.

"But really, how did you get to be such an expert? Moran was also impressed by you."

"It may surprise you, but my hearing was discovered by way of music."

"What kind of music, my dear?" asks the old man, apparently enchanted by this childlike woman.

"Maybe you've heard of the musical celebrations at Kfar Blum, the chamber music festival that Israel Radio puts on every year at the kibbutz? Civilized people come there from all over the country to hear performances of classical music, hoping it will turn them into classy people. The kibbutz is responsible for all the administration, operations, and housing, and it's a good business. And there're a lot of jobs, too. Ticket-takers, ushers, staff to organize the rehearsal rooms, set up chairs and music stands, move pianos, see to the lighting. The public at the festival is invited to attend rehearsals, and those who know best say that this is the peak experience. There are even connoisseurs who don't go to any concerts at all, only to the rehearsals. After the army I began to work in the support staff, and I ended up at a lot of those rehearsals, where I would hear comments about tempo and tone color, the subtleties of vibrato and half-muted crescendi, and mischievous glissandi, and also how not to screech and play out of tune. And really, since Bach fugues and Mozart sonatas have been played for a few hundred years, can anything new be added to them in the social hall of Kfar Blum, except maybe some tiny nuance of interpretation? So I would sit there, fascinated, my ears wide open, and when they showed me how music is written, I discovered that I had not only good hearing but also perfect pitch, meaning that I can not only hear the intervals between notes but also identify every note by name, and even sing music from the page in the right register."

"Perfect pitch without ever studying music?"

"Yes, apparently I was born with it. And when I learned that I had hearing like this, I started to listen to sounds at the garage too, to put my sensitive ears to use finding the connection between grating noises and other weird sounds in trucks and tractors and malfunctions in their engines, and it turned out I could hear tiny noises, and if you took care of them in time, you could avoid a whole lot of trouble later. I mean, in this country, until something actually breaks down or falls apart, nobody pays attention or takes preventive measures. Even right now I can hear the automatic transmission in this ambulance scraping when it changes gears, and our driver, when we get to Jerusalem, ought to check the oil in the gearbox so we don't get stuck in the rain on the way back."

DANIELA CANNOT REMEMBER the ages of the rock fragments that were laid out beside her dinner plate four days ago, on that unforgettable evening at the dig, but she did grasp the archaeologist's explanation of evolutionary "transmission" and believes that when the time comes she will be able to summarize it for Amotz. Her Ugandan visitor is the only member of the research team who holds a Ph.D., and from the archaeology department of the University of London, no less, and this strengthens his self-confidence and his independence, as he boldly invites himself into the chamber of a foreign lady to make a highly unusual request.

"I am sorry for the disturbance and invasion of your privacy," apologizes the slender black man, as he seats himself on the stool at the foot of the bed, "but since we know that tomorrow you are returning to your country, and we are returning this evening to our excavations, we have decided to speak with you in private even before getting Jeremy's approval. It is very important to us that you will hear our request first, so you may consider it on your own, before consulting with your brother-in-law. You see that I am not speaking only for myself but also for my friends, who are happy for your short visit and your very generous interest. But first of all I wish to ask you, is there any chance that you will return to Tanzania or to Africa within the next year?"

"Return to Africa in the next year?" She smiles. "I don't think so. More likely I will never come back. This is a private visit, sort of a visit of consolation for me and my brother-in-law, and it has fulfilled its purpose. I also don't think my husband will agree to another separation from me. We visited Tanzania together three years ago, when my sister was still alive, and together with her and her husband we went to the nature preserves. If Jeremy decides to stay with you, he will have to come to see us."

Despite the archaeologist's appreciation of her presence now, Daniela senses that he is pleased that she has no intention of making another trip, as if his request were dependent upon her leaving here forever.

"By the way, Jeremy also will not be able to stay with us a long time."

"Why?" she inquires, a bit concerned.

"Because the research team has a budget for only one more year, and after that we will return to our respective countries. But I believe Jeremy is already looking for another position."

"Where?" she asks, scowling. "He'd be better off coming back to Israel."

"But he doesn't think your country has a chance."

"Nonsense… don't listen to what he says."

Dr. Kukiriza is surprised by the sudden storminess of the Israeli woman, which is followed by a long silence. Only slowly does he overcome his hesitancy, and in a gentle voice begins in a roundabout fashion to explain his request. He starts with the plight of the African scientist, who for all his personal boldness and independence is still officially dependent upon the evaluations of the white researcher who controls the official archival record and the state-of-the-art laboratories. There are members of the team who correspond by e-mail with scholars in America and Europe who study the great apes of Africa, and who report to their colleagues what we have discovered here and hope to find in the future, but even if these whites encourage Africans, they cannot confer final scientific verification on their work until they see and feel the actual evidence, and this verification is essential not only for our confidence and feelings of self-worth but also to increase our funding.

"So why don't you send them what you found? It's so simple."

"It could be simple," the Ugandan says, "but it is not. Because there is a strict ban upon removing what we find from the country without the permission of the government."

"Why?"

"Because these fossils are considered a national treasure."

"Monkey bones?"

"Of course, madam." His face darkens and his voice becomes tense. Even the bones of apes millions of years old are a national treasure of the first order, and when a great anthropological museum is built in Tanzania or a neighboring African country, it will include a place of honor for the findings of this research team. In Africa they do not have artistic masterpieces, nor historical memories of ancient battles and wars that changed the face of the earth, nor writers and thinkers whose works have become classics, and yet, humanity originated in Africa, so why should they not take pride in what they have given to the world? If humanity still matters.

Now she feels embarrassed by what she said in haste and nods with enthusiasm.

And he continues to explain that when findings are sent outside Africa, there is a need not only for special permission but also for insurance and guarantees that everything will be returned intact, and thus the cost of such a shipment is beyond their ability to pay, not to mention having to navigate the long and complex bureaucratic procedures. There is a concern that if bones like these begin to travel the world, scientists will not come to Africa from far and wide to inspect them closely. In Ethiopia recently, the signature of the president himself was required to ship the jawbone of a chimpanzee for examination in France.

"It's that bad?"

"It's that bad." He rises from the stool and begins to pace about the room, lost in thought, as the moment arrives to unveil his question.

"Are you perhaps familiar with an institute in Israel called Abu Kabir?"

"Abu Kabir?" She is surprised to hear the well-known name on the lips of the black man. "Of course… it's our main pathology institute."

"An Arab institute?"

"Why, no," she corrects him, "this is an Israeli institute where all are equal, Jews and Arabs, and the Arab name is left over from some village that was maybe there once and destroyed in a war. But it's in Tel Aviv."

The Ugandan closes his eyes for a moment.

"Abu Kabir, meaning Father of the Great One: a beautiful, strong name for an institute of pathology."

"A beautiful name?" She is taken aback. "For us it's a name that arouses great fear. This is where they identify the bodies of victims of terrorist attacks."

"So it is also explained on the institute's Web site. But apparently because of the many victims you have, Abu Kabir has developed into a very advanced and sophisticated institute, which supports scientific research involving identification from the past as well."

"That could be," Daniela says, crossing her arms and hugging her shoulders, "but I wouldn't dare go near there, not even to its Web site."

"And we asked ourselves," says Dr. Kukiriza, ignoring her response, "if we might take advantage of your return tomorrow to send a few findings to Abu Kabir for analysis."

"What findings?"

"Bones. Three little bones that weigh next to nothing, no more than twelve centimeters in length."

"And you want me to bring these to Abu Kabir to pose them a riddle: Who is the deceased?"

"In our opinion, these are bones of our prehistoric ape, Australopithecus afarensis. You have already had the chance to feel them. They are clean and odorless. Dry bones, but not fragile ones, which will not take up much room in your suitcase. We have already been in e-mail contact with a researcher at Abu Kabir, Professor Perlman, and she has agreed to accept them for testing."

And now that his wish has finally been expressed, he peers with fiery eyes and heightened expectation at Daniela, who remains uncomprehending.

"But if, as you say, bones like these are national property, don't I need official approval to take them with me?"

"Yes," the archaeologist admits candidly, "approval is necessary." But as he has just explained, the process is long and convoluted, and so they were hoping, he and his friends, to circumvent it by her good graces. For who will suspect a middle-aged lady, an ordinary tourist, of smuggling important bones? And who is looking for bones anyway, at the airport? And even if they are discovered, who can tell that they are millions of years old? And who will care? These are animal bones, not human. And even if we assume that someone, in Africa or Israel, insists on a clear answer as to why she has these dry bones, she can say that she innocently picked them up in the wild as a souvenir of Africa, and thought of using them as a paperweight on her desk.

A smile lights up the woman's face. She already knows her answer, but deliberately withholds it.

"We, of course, will ask for your brother-in-law's permission, but we first want to know if such a mission is possible from your standpoint."

"Possible," she answers faintly, "if it is really important to you."

"It is very important to us."

"If so," and her voice grows stronger, "don't involve my brother-in-law. Why make him anxious?"

THE STORM, WIND and rain preceded them on their mutual journey from the coast to the capital, and made worse the boisterous traffic of downtown Jerusalem. But an ambulance, even a private blue one, is entitled to use the fast lane reserved for buses and to park anywhere it pleases, including on the sidewalk across from the old Knesset building. The old man quickly plucks the hat from his head and removes the plastic poncho, and in his wrinkled black suit, enhanced by the red tie, he wheels himself straight to the stairs, and there surprises his escorts by asking to be allowed to get out of his chair and climb to the top floor with the help of his cane alone.

This is not the first time that Ya'ari's father has rejected his wheelchair. Daniela regularly encourages him to do it, even though this unsettles Ya'ari, since it's harder to steer a trembling old man supported only by a cane. This time the old man's decision is firm. He will not appear before his friend as an invalid. The shakes of the illness will in any case be mixed up with the tremors of his excitement, but the wheelchair shames his manhood. Even a mere technician would not dream of showing up in a wheelchair. It is precisely for this purpose that he has asked Francisco to bring along his two short and powerful friends, who now support him by his armpits and from the rear, so that he seems to be floating up the stairs, floor by floor, to the door he knows so well, which still displays the old plaque: DR. DEVORAH BENNETT — PSYCHOANALYST.

Here, the father surprises his staff again, by insisting that they go back down to the next landing and wait invisibly in the stairwell, for he wants to make his entrance as a man leaning only on his cane. Amotz and Gottlieb's expert join the four Filipinos, and they all crowd into the landing half a story below, positioning themselves where the psychologist will not notice them. And the old man himself, bent over, leaning on his cane, slightly loosens his necktie and rings the doorbell three times — their signal, arranged in years past, that he is not a patient. And the door is opened by the lady of the house, who in his honor has put on a woolen dress and let down her hair, and although she looks shrunken and wrinkled in the morning light, her step is light and her voice lively.

"Here's the boy," she exclaims, "but where's the wheelchair that came between us? Are you still ashamed of it?"

The old man is shocked into silence.

"What's the matter, my dear?" she says, squeezing his shoulder. "I'm the same young woman you left years ago. No need to be alarmed. And you have such a nice cane."

The old man succumbs to his twofold trembling, and the cane slips from his hand. So as not to collapse on the doorstep, he pitches himself forward and clings for dear life to the fragile old woman, who struggles to keep her balance under the unexpected load, and begins weeping on her shoulder.

From the staircase Ya'ari hears his father sobbing, perhaps for the first time in his life. Little Hilario looks up at him with perplexed concern, as if curious to know why he doesn't run over to help. But Ya'ari freezes. He sees his father's weeping as a great volcanic blast of liberation. I will do him wrong, he says to himself, if I go up now and embarrass him. He looks at the Filipinos sitting quietly on the stairs, half-listening, perhaps pining for their homeland. Only in the big bright eyes of the expert flickers a little smile, as if in the cries and whimpers she can make out hidden melodies.

Summoning all her strength, Devorah Bennett pulls the old man into the apartment and leaves the door open, which is a sign for Ya'ari and crew to enter the apartment cautiously. His father has already been taken into her treatment room, and is apparently propped in her chair, since she is saying very loudly, as if his hearing were also impaired: See, now you're the therapist and I'm your patient.

Ya'ari seats the Filipinos around the dining table, which is elegantly arrayed with expensive refreshments. As one already familiar with the apartment, he directs the expert toward the bedroom. In the hallway he puts a hushing finger to his lips as they tiptoe past the treatment room, but his father is on the alert and notices them. For the moment I'm only letting her hear the noises; I'm not dismantling anything, Ya'ari tells him, as he leads the small woman to the miracle of the tiny elevator.

"So," he says, looking into her wide blue eyes, "I bet you've never seen a contraption like this."

She smiles with amusement. This is something impressive. He pulls open the grille and escorts her into the tiny cage, which seems made to order for a nymph like her, with her cropped hair and nearly flat chest and aroma of freshly mown grass. Show me your stuff, he challenges her, pressing the up button, and the elevator begins to groan and shake and wrestle with itself, but before the expert can voice an opinion he puts a finger to her lips, Wait, he says, there's another surprise for you. And then, during the slow ascent, the wailing of the cat in heat begins to waft into the tiny space. The expert's mouth is agape with laughter. She looks around to find the electrical connections, but the walls are blank. She then reaches over and removes the picture of Jung, revealing a primitive electrical box, and as she does so the hungry yowling grows louder. The expert has already produced a small voltage tester from her jumpsuit pocket, but Ya'ari stops her. No, he will not let her near the wiring until they disconnect the current that comes from the electric company.

"Where else would it come from?"

"You don't understand. It circumvents the regular connection to the apartment."

"Why?"

"Because the building doesn't have three-phase current, meaning that the electric company would have had to be called in to switch the hookup, and they would have started drilling problematic holes all over the walls. Back when the elevator was built, the wait for such an operation could take two years, not to mention the cost that the lady was not equipped to undertake, even though my father offered to pay for it. So he tapped straight into the electrical pole."

"By what authority?"

"His own. His was a generation that didn't always distinguish between private and public property."

"Yes," the former kibbutznik says, smiling, "I know a few of those old socialists myself."

They go out onto the roof, and the winds try to shove them off. Ya'ari steps back. In stormy weather like this they'll never find the pirate cable, and there's obviously no chance of taking his father up here in the hope he'll remember where it is. But neither cold nor wind can intimidate the expert, and like a small gazelle she skips among the potbellied water tanks, hops around satellite dishes, puts her ear against old fraying clotheslines that haven't been used for decades.

A rare creature, Ya'ari thinks as he follows her movements, wondering what Daniela would make of her. Not only is her age elusive, but her sex seems to change from hour to hour. No wonder Gottlieb is scared of her. And now, despite the deluge from above, she succeeds in finding the cable.

"Don't touch a thing," Ya'ari shouts, but his voice is muffled by the roaring winds.

She points to an insulated wire that runs innocently among the clotheslines and comes to rest surreptitiously on the roof railing, from there heading someplace unspecific to steal electricity.

She rests her belly against the railing and leans way down to trace the route of the wire, her legs in the air. Ya'ari races over in a panic and pulls her back, and she lands like a feather on the roof and rolls over.

"I'm warning you," he says, extending his hand to hers, "don't touch anything here."

"But if we don't disconnect the electricity, how can we fix the connector box?"

"Let it keep yowling at her forever," he retorts, "she's not worth getting electrocuted for."

"If that's what you want," she says, her eyes wide with disappointment. "But you're giving me a day's pay for nothing."

"And if it's for nothing, what do you care?" he says, leading her by the arm back toward the elevator. "But don't worry," he adds, a new idea dawning, "your workday isn't over. When we get back to Tel Aviv, we'll go listen to the shaft in the Pinsker Tower. Strong winds like these shouldn't go to waste."

AFTER THE ARCHAEOLOGIST has left her room, Daniela reconsiders. Maybe it's not right to conceal from Yirmi the little mission she has just undertaken. She puts on shoes and makeup, and goes down to the kitchen.

In the kitchen the cooks are preparing the last meal for the research team. New provisions are also arriving, but Yirmiyahu is not at the table by the entrance to list them and pay the suppliers.

"Where's Jeremy?" she inquires of her friend the elderly groundskeeper. He tells her that her brother-in-law was there a few moments ago, but a bad headache drove him to the infirmary.

"It really is high time he tended to himself," she says offhandedly to the African, who marvels at the white visitor's morning appetite as she asks for a bite of the lamb chops emerging from the oven. But the cooks are quite pleased by her hunger and hurry to offer her also a taste of an unidentified dish already prepared for the farewell dinner. Here, madam, they say, now that you are getting used to the smell and taste of Africa, you are leaving? When will you come back to us?

She could gratify them by holding out some hope, but instead she gives a straight answer: I won't be back, and she spoons undissolved sugar from her cup to sweeten her mouth, then exits into the burning sunshine, heading for the infirmary. Recalling the vicious standoff between cat and snake that she witnessed two days ago in the grass nearby, she makes sure to walk on open ground.

On a dirt mound near the infirmary sit several young African women, two of them pregnant, apparently waiting. The door is wide open. Inside the infirmary are two rooms. In the well-lighted front room stands the cot where her blood pressure was found to be normal. In the darkened back room she can make out the bald head of her brother-in-law, who lies with his face to the wall.

She taps on the open door, and he turns and faces her, but she doesn't get up. For the first time since she arrived six days ago, she catches a flash of hostility in his eyes.

"Sijjin Kuang hasn't come back yet?"

"No."

"Can it be that Zohara won't let her leave?"

"Anything is possible."

"But what's so scary over there?"

"Why scary?"

His curt answers seem intended to put her off, so she sits on the adjacent bed, as if to announce, I'm not budging from here.

"In the kitchen they told me you had a terrible headache. Did you find anything here to make it better?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Sijjin Kuang locks up the medicine cabinet. Because sometimes women from the area sneak in and take medicines they don't need."

"And you have no key?"

"Why should I? Sijjin Kuang is always nearby."

"So what will you do now?"

"I'll wait for the pain to pass. And if you don't mind, close the door, the light makes it worse."

He shields his eyes with his hand.

A quiver of pity runs through her. "If you've decided to lie down, why not in your bed?"

"For one thing it's not my bed, and here in the infirmary I'm safe from the commotion of the researchers. Tonight they'll go back to the dig, and tomorrow, after you leave, I'll go back to my place."

She gets up and closes the door, but he doesn't remove his hand from his eyes, as if to say that even behind a closed door he is not open to conversation.

"Maybe drink something?"

He doesn't answer.

"I suggested you should drink."

"Later."

"Should I bring you something?"

"Later."

But she goes out anyway into the front room. The African women have left the dirt mound and are now at the doorstep, perhaps hoping that the white woman can also dispense medicine, murmuring at her as she fetches Yirmi a glass of water. When she offers it to him he doesn't drink, but asks her to set it on the floor, but she insists, drink, so you won't get dehydrated. He continues to refuse, and she keeps insisting, and finally he yields, lifts himself up and drinks from the glass and mutters, you always managed to get your way in the family. Everyone always went to the restaurant you wanted, drove the route you wanted. Maybe, Daniela smiles, it's because you knew deep down that what I want is good for others. And she takes the empty glass and asks, more water? But he does not reply, and this time, she gives in.

Silence. Outside, despite the heat, the wind is whistling. In the inner room the blinds are closed, but points of light glow white in the cracks. The murmur of the African women grows louder. Maybe they have entered the infirmary now and are longingly examining the lock on the medicine cabinet. For a moment she considers whether to tell him now about the mission she has accepted, but figures that in his current state of mind he is likely to object, and she has a strong desire to keep her promise. She has a strange belief that these dry bones, from an ape that gave rise to all humankind, are meaningful for Israelis as well.

"Were you thinking of showing me something else on my last day here? Doing something?" she asks her brother-in-law cautiously.

He props himself up, shoves the pillow behind his back, and looks hard at her.

"You would surely like to see another unusual animal, like the elephant with the cyclops eye."

"Definitely… happily."

"But what can I do, Daniela, I don't have another animal like that."

"If you don't, then you don't."

Beyond the door the African women babble on, like a crystal brook.

And suddenly, almost without thinking, she says, "Listen, last night I read the Song of Songs."

"In English?"

"Yes. And it's no less beautiful and moving than the original, which kept echoing for me in the translation."

He is silent, his glance wandering.

"And when I read all eight chapters I understood what you felt. A poem like this pours salt on the wounds."

Yirmiyahu gets up and begins pacing around the small room, as if trying to chase her away. And suddenly he explodes, "What's going on here? You came to Africa because of Shuli, but in the end you're forcing me to talk about Eyal."

"Forcing you?" She is shocked. "And it's not connected?"

"Everything is connected and also not connected," he says irritably, "but I should never have told you about Eyal's last night."

"What's happening to you?"

"That story makes him ridiculous."

"That's totally absurd." She objects with all her might. "His innocence was noble; he is not ridiculous."

But he persists. There is a deep substratum to this episode, which goes beyond personal psychology. Surely if an Israeli soldier takes over a strange house and intimidates its residents, in essence he only continues to dishonor them by suddenly risking his life to hand over a clean bucket.

"I can't begin to understand what you're getting at."

"Obviously you don't understand, and apparently you never will." He speaks in a low voice, yet his words resonate with inner turmoil. "For all of their brainpower, the Jews are incapable of grasping how others see them. I'm talking about real others, those who are not us and never will be us. Because only this way is it possible to begin to understand, for example, why that Palestinian, who got a considerable sum from me just to tell what happened with that friendly fire, did not seem at all impressed by what Eyal did. He just took the money and went off without a word of thanks, or a word of condolence, or any praise at all for the consideration and good manners that were supposedly displayed. And I, with idiotic obsessiveness, could not reconcile myself to such indifference. So again I turned to my Jerusalem pharmacist, and pestered him to arrange an additional meeting with this man. At night, in the heat of the intifada, with a twofold mortal threat, from our forces and the opposing ones. And this was a first glimpse into the abyss we are toppling into, or, more accurately, that you are."

Here is the genetic defect, it strikes Daniela, as she sees his red eyes flaring at her in the dark room. There is no need to go out in nature to find it.

WHEN THE TINY elevator lands with a thud, shake, and groan and the narrow grille is opened, the two passengers find its inventor waiting in an armchair beside the big bed, a glass of tea in his hand, an electric heater glowing red by his feet, and his cane on his lap. Well, little lady, he addresses the expert, did you hear the yowling of a cat, or do you think our hostess is hallucinating?

"No hallucination and no cat, grandpa," she answers emphatically. "There are all kinds of sounds in your adorable elevator, but only because of loose electrical contacts and because of phenomena that are common in an old system like this, where the commutator collects dirt and even tiny particles of metal that flake off from the piston. I've already found the connector box you hid behind the picture of Carl Gustav Jung, and on the roof I located the power cable you camouflaged among the clotheslines. But your son is terrified of electrocution. With the turn of one screw I could have disconnected the system, but he prevented me, by force. What's going on? Did you cause him some electrical trauma in his childhood that makes him such a coward?"

The old man laughs, then chides her.

"First of all, speak with respect about my son, because he's a grandfather too. He got through his childhood in my house without any traumas, but when he was a student at the Technion he was mainly taught how to predict disasters. In this case, however, I agree with him. I would also prefer that you not touch live electrical connections, because I didn't take out insurance on you."

"Nonsense. You weren't worried about electrocution when you connected the elevator straight to the electrical pole in the street."

"First of all, it wasn't me, but a bitter old pensioner from the electric company, who wore special insulated gloves and some sort of sleeves that enabled him to work with live wires and set up free electrical power for his friends. Only after he was caught in the act did they start to take care at the electric company that their retirees shouldn't be in any way embittered."

"Yes, then, too, there were robberies and indecent acts," remarks the lady of the house, "but the newspapers had only six pages and no space to cover them all. Come, my engineers, and have some tea."

"Maybe we should first check the vibrations in the piston," Ya'ari says, leaning toward his father's feet to warm his hands above the heater's white-hot coils. But the hostess insists they take a break and leads the old man into the living room. The four Filipinos sit stone-still around the refreshment table, as the old man knew they would, waiting for a clear signal allowing them to take a cookie or little sandwich.

The signal is given. The hostess passes around a big plate, and Francisco and Hilario and Pedro and Marco do not refuse a single round, until the plate is empty.

"All right," says the old man, "now let's go have a look at the piston, so it can tell us what's bothering it."

And this time he invites the Filipinos to come with him into the lady's bedroom, and all at once the intimate chamber is filled with the strong presence of members of a different race, who are naturally keen to inspect a little elevator tailored to their own small proportions. Amotz heads over to check how to detach the oil piston from the wall, but his father tugs him by the jacket and says, This time, let me lead.

Ya'ari smiles and watches his father brace himself against the squat sturdy shoulders of Marco and Pedro and make his way into the elevator he had devised, where he presses against the wall to keep his balance and tells the Filipinos to let him stand alone. With a trembling hand he closes the grille. Behind the faded gold-colored lattice, with his bald head, gaunt face, and drooping shoulders, he resembles an old monkey in a cage. He pushes the up button, but his shaky finger lacks the strength to start the elevator, so he moves back slightly and presses the button again with the tip of his cane. The elevator shakes, moans, bumps from side to side, and begins to rise, and only when he is completely out of sight does the yowling in the shaft die down.

Francisco, Marco, and Pedro grin as if they'd seen a circus stunt, but little Hilario is worried. He approaches cautiously to peek inside the open closet and see where the elevator has disappeared to. Ya'ari does not hide his pleasure at his father's accomplishment and smiles broadly at the hostess, who has sunk helplessly into her armchair.

"Insane," she declares, coming to regret the forfeit of her peace and quiet for this tumult.

"Naughty boy," the expert agrees.

For a moment Ya'ari worries that his father will go out on the roof and be blown away by the wind. But after two minutes the wailing is heard again, and the elevator lands in all its musical richness.

Ya'ari hurries to extract his father, and since the old woman does not relinquish her chair, he seats him on her bed, props him all around with silk pillows, and waits for precise technical instructions as how to begin dismantling the piston without electrocuting himself.

YIRMIYAHU GOES INTO the well-lighted room to refill his water glass. The African women, sitting now by the entryway, crowd at once into the clinic to demand the unlocking of the medicine cabinet. Slowly and with difficulty he utters a few words of refusal in their language, and they laugh and protest, till he loses patience and shouts at them angrily, and they scatter back outside. One of the young ones crumples to the floor and bursts into tears, and her friends lift her tenderly and lead her back to the dirt mound to await the return of the nurse.

Yirmiyahu leans over the sink and wets his face, then fills the glass and gulps the water, fills it again, and goes back into the inner room. He seems somehow surprised to see his sister-in-law still sitting there, poised on the second bed. For a moment he considers leaving the door open, then closes it.

A long silence.

"Don't tell me," she says suddenly, "that the malaria parasite can in fact pass from person to person, because if so, I'm next in line."

He glances at her.

"You're not in any line. This happens to me sometimes. My temperature goes up if I'm exhausted."

"Maybe it's a good defense against the prophets of Israel: you get sick before they can punish you. But you better watch out for them."

A sad smile lightens his face. "What can they do to me that they haven't done already?"

"Don't be so sure," she ventures. "I guarantee you that disasters await us that haven't yet been announced, not even in the English translation."

"Aha, I see you're beginning to get the principle. Prophecies of destruction, delivered with pleasure and lust."

"But in fact you prophesy the same way."

"I? Why me? I'm not a player or a partner. I freed myself of the leash of the forefathers. I look on from afar, indifferent and liberated, safe and sound in a place where there is not and never has been a shred of prophecy, or of fury, or of consolation. And here, even if they dig up the entire ground, they won't find a trace of a dry Jewish bone."

In two months he will be seventy, she thinks, but that doesn't stop him from reliving the rebellion of a high school student. Still, in the few hours remaining, he needs to be listened to. Because for all his bragging about detachment, it's not the arrogance of an ancient prophet that burns in his marrow, but the friendly fire. So she diverts the conversation back to its beginning. She is curious to know more details about the Jerusalem pharmacist, who at the height of the intifada managed to smuggle him safely back and forth at night.

Emile is a Christian Arab from East Jerusalem, about fifty years old, who through patient and industrious litigation won back the pharmacy that had belonged to his parents before the founding of the state. He is a flexible man, who speaks Hebrew well, and his pharmacy, in the German Colony, is clean and well-organized and open sometimes at night. Medicines that elsewhere are sold only by prescription he sells on the basis of trust alone. He is a knowledgeable pharmacist, dispensing good advice about insomnia, weight loss, nausea, and heartburn. And when word spread in the neighborhood that Eyali fell not from enemy fire, he came to pay a condolence call at the home of Yirmi and Shuli, his longtime customers, and on his own initiative brought tranquilizers that he himself had concocted. From then on, every time they entered his shop, singly or together, he would attend to them promptly, with concern and devotion, inquiring about their physical condition and emotional state, serving them with compassion.

After the first, hurried visit to Tulkarm, when the Palestinian paterfamilias had evaded his meeting with Yirmi, Emile had keenly felt the frustration that had now been added to the agony, and with the help of relatives and friends managed to find the owner of the roof and persuade him to talk with Yirmi in exchange for a fee.

The story the Palestinian told did not anger Yirmi at first. Nor was he bothered by the absurdity of the incident. On the contrary, he found his son's gesture noble. But he was surprised by the utter lack of sympathy on the part of the Palestinian. Out of either anger or hatred, he never looked Yirmi straight in the eye, and without adding a word took the money and disappeared among the hothouse flowers.

And then Yirmi said to himself, This man is a day laborer, struggling to live under occupation; what can I expect of him, anyway? But the middleman, the educated Christian pharmacist, by all appearances a moderate fellow with an Israeli identity card, had shown no sympathy, had no kindly word for the innocence of the soldier.

And as he drove back to Jerusalem that day, a desire took root in him, actually not a desire but a necessity, a compulsion, to redeem Eyal's honor, to endorse an action that appeared stupid but also embodied the gallant spirit of a young man who surely knew he was risking his life in order to return a bucket rinsed clean to suicide bombers.

"Suicide bombers?" Daniela is astonished.

"Of course," Yirmi says. "If not today, then tomorrow. And at that moment I resolved to go back to Tulkarm and again go up on that roof, to prove to the Palestinian that we had not only given our son absurdly good heart and manners but courage too. So after a few days I went to Emile and told him that all his medicines would not help me calm down until I could go back to that roof to rescue my son's honor, and that such indifference over his simple human gesture was unacceptable to me. And if I had to bribe middlemen to sneak me in there, my wallet was open, on the condition that the middlemen wanted my money and not my blood. I told Shuli that I was being sent for one day to our embassy in Cyprus. On that night, she was actually staying with you in Tel Aviv, and I'm sure that she didn't suspect a thing. And although Tulkarm sits right on the border, getting there was not easy, believe me. On the way in, they didn't do much checking at the roadblocks, and because I rode in with some laborers and dressed accordingly, they couldn't tell me from the others. But on the return trip, they had to smuggle me into my own country on roundabout back roads, to protect me from enemy fire and friendly fire too."

"And all that was worth it?"

"Very much so. Because on the roof I received, in addition to a cup of strong coffee, a little lesson in Judaism."

"From whom?" she asks, laughing. "From the Palestinian or the pharmacist?"

A tap is heard on the door of the back room. Sijjin Kuang has returned.

ONCE MORE THE father tells his son: "Don't butt in. This time I'm in charge. It wasn't you who put together this elevator, and you won't take it apart."

"But on the condition you stay on the bed," the son answers. "You decided against the wheelchair, and I'm in no mood to see you fall down."

"Don't worry," his father says, "I'll give instructions by remote control. But you sit on the side and don't get involved. This elevator is guaranteed by me personally, not by the firm. Right, Mrs. Bennett?"

"A lifetime personal guarantee."

For some reason she still hasn't offered him the comfortable armchair she has claimed for herself — as if she likes seeing him propped up among the pillows on her big bed. She pulls the electric heater close, spreads a blanket on her lap, lights a cigarette, and seems ready for a long encampment. Suddenly a barrage of hail rattles the windows, and few white icy pebbles fly in through the shaft and roll on the floor, and darkness descends on Jerusalem.

Without explicit orders, the expert goes to the elevator and turns on the light. Then she takes the two reading lamps from either side of the bed, plugs them both into an extension cord, and directs their light toward the bottom of the elevator. New shadows begin to move on the walls. The old man beckons to Hilario, takes his hand and strokes his hair, and whispers at length in his ear what he should tell the Filipinos who are waiting for their orders. The lengthy Hebrew instructions are drastically condensed by the interpreter, and it now becomes clear that it was not merely so he could be spirited up the stairs that the old man mobilized Francisco's friends but also so they could hoist the little elevator by hand, making possible the detachment of the piston from the lift mechanism.

Now the expert wedges her childlike, sexually ambiguous body between the side of the elevator and the wall of the shaft where the piston is attached. Drawing on her experience in the regional auto shop of Upper Galilee, she locates the oil cap and unscrews it with a monkey wrench produced from her jumpsuit pocket. A trickle of viscous white liquid begins to flow out, instead of the completely blackened oil one would expect after so many years.

"What's that?" Amotz asks.

His father shrugs. He cannot identify the nature of this fluid, either. He found this pump in his native Czechoslovakia, in a warehouse of used elevator parts, and since he bought it for next to nothing, he didn't bother to examine its innards.

The white stuff continues to trickle. Even the expert, who now and then smells and tastes it, can't come to a conclusion regarding its nature or provenance. But she is collecting it, in a small jar brought beforehand from the kitchen, so perhaps they'll be able to identify it later on.

The lady of the house also wants to taste the liquid. She gives Hilario a small spoon, he brings her a sample, and she sticks the tip of her tongue into it. Could be machine oil, or maybe sesame, or truffle, or eucalyptus, or coconut, or kerosene or gasoline. Not bad, she says. Careful, my dear, jokes the old man, the guarantee I gave you does not include indigestion from elevator gravy. And they laugh, he on the bed, shaking on the silk pillows, and she in the armchair, the two of them relaxed and intrigued by the drama in this miniature theater, as Hilario explains to Marco and Pedro that they should prop the elevator a bit higher on their shoulders so Francisco can detach the forklift from the bottom of the cab and pull free the entire original and delicate unit.

"And the electric current?" Ya'ari suddenly wells with anger at his father. "Before Francisco starts to turn a single screw, we have to be sure he won't get electrocuted."

But the anger is unnecessary now. There is no current in any screw. The expert has already disconnected the power in secret and without permission, and is unharmed and happy.

Why does he have to worry so much over something that's not his responsibility? Why try to take control of a historic relic he is neither supposed nor obligated to know a thing about? If he joined the team in order to look after his father, he can see with his own eyes how good it is for the old man to lie on the big bed, in a warm and familiar room, beside a beloved friend, in the intimacy of a dark winter morning. And if so, why should a busy man like him, a bothersome worrier, not take advantage of this fortuitous moment of grace on the Hanukkah holiday and sit serenely in a corner? And if Daniela in Africa is bonding with her past but free of the present, he himself now has the chance to take time out from both. No secretary, draftsman, or engineer is ringing his cell phone for advice; in other words, the world is carrying on fine, even without him.

A smile of contentment lights up Ya'ari's face. Good, from this moment on, I am but a silent onlooker. He brings a wicker chair from the kitchen, stands it beside the big bed, sits down and crosses his legs and closes his eyes.

Francisco once told him and Daniela that the territory of the Philippines encompasses seven thousand islands, only about five hundred of them inhabited. In fact he and Kinzie come from two islands that are hundreds of kilometers apart. Thanks to the wide variety of dialects spoken across the whole archipelago, what unites their islands as a nation is the English language.

That lingua franca is proving effective in the bedroom of the psychoanalyst as well. Hilario, the clever first-grader, passes along in English the technical instructions he gets in Hebrew from the great-grandfather and explains to Marco and Pedro how to raise the lightweight elevator.

Although the cab is rather easily lifted upon the short men's shoulders, Francisco prefers not to rely solely on his two comrades and adds the support of a stepladder and a small bureau before crawling underneath to disconnect the lift arm.

The Filipinos speak softly among themselves, and old Ya'ari adopts their polite, respectful tone as he tells Francisco, via Hilario's translation, the correct procedure for undoing the screws. He must work slowly, with caution. The screws are rusted, and one must oil them and wait for them to yield gracefully, to exit undamaged from the place they have grown used to for so many years.

The Filipinos seem to enjoy the unusual task they have happened into. Instead of washing and feeding paralyzed old men, or taking walks with grouchy old ladies, they are dismantling a unique invention and carrying an elderly elevator on their shoulders. The hostess sighs with relief, relaxes, and falls asleep in her chair. Ya'ari's eyelids also droop, and his vision grows blurry. He listens to the quiet voices, rests his hand on the bed and imagines his father lying upon it years ago, among the pillows. He recollects the pleasured panic of the young woman in the tape tucked between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach in Moran's apartment.

Should he tell Daniela, or spare her the distress?

He opens his eyes and realizes he must have dozed off for a few minutes, for the elevator has vanished behind the doors of the clothes closet, and on the floor by the bed rests an ancient creature, with one forked leg like the devil Ashmedai, a greenish cylindrical piston like a the long tail of a lizard, and a control mechanism that resembles the head of a small cat, sprouting severed nerve endings in a rainbow of colors.

The lady of the house is still deep in dreamland, and his father, looking with affectionate pride upon the original machinery that stayed intact for so many years, smiles at Ya'ari and says to him, See what happens in old age? At the height of emotion you run out of stamina and fall asleep, and wake up when it's over and feel guilt and regret. And he directs Francisco, who has been washing his hands in the bathroom, to help his colleagues take the dismantled apparatus down to the ambulance that waits on the street with Maurice, and to bring up the wheelchair.

"My dear," he says, waking his lady friend, "we took apart the machinery for you. There will be no more humming and wailing. But whether it will also be possible to resurrect the elevator, so you can go strolling on the roof — this depends now not only on me but also on an old friend, who is in love only with money."

The psychologist opens her eyes and smiles a knowing smile. "And I thought you would stay for lunch."

"Lunch?" old Ya'ari says with surprise. "Why? So you can tie a bib on me and feed me with a spoon? When love crosses into degradation, I retreat."

THE PATIENCE OF the African women has paid off. Sijjin Kuang opens the medicine cabinet and distributes pills, and also gives two aspirins to the white man. "Please, give me some, too," Daniela says.

"I'm going to bed after a sleepless night," Sijjin Kuang announces, "and you should also," she adds firmly, standing tall over the Israeli visitor. "Early tomorrow morning I will bring you to Morogoro. The plane is small, and you must get there early so they don't give your seat away."

"That can happen here?" The visitor is alarmed.

"Yes, here too," her brother-in-law says.

"And you won't come with me to the airport?" she asks, turning to her brother-in-law in Hebrew.

"What do you need me for? You've already heard more than I wanted to tell you, and even more than I thought I knew. So much that you won't remember what to tell Amotz."

"You're so sure I tell him everything?"

"Has anything changed?"

She studies him sourly and does not answer. Yirmiyahu turns to Sijjin Kuang and surprisingly, in his limited English, summarizes the last few sentences spoken in Hebrew. The Sudanese woman regards the two of them with puzzlement, and before locking the medicine cabinet asks if anything else is needed of her. A sleeping pill, requests Daniela, you've got me worried about getting up early and I'm afraid I won't be able to fall asleep. But sleeping pills are not popular among Africans and are not to be found in the medicine cabinet. Like a magician the Sudanese produces another white aspirin between her long black fingers and gives it to the woman who is fearful for her sleep.

"Maybe you should really go now and get some rest instead of hanging around here," says Yirmi to his sister-in-law, in the patronizing tone of an older brother. "On Sunday nights, before returning to the dig, the team has a custom of holding a fancy dinner in the style of a 'high table,' and they'll surely insist that you be there."

"High table?" She laughs. "What is this? Oxford and Cambridge?"

"If they feel like honoring themselves in such a fashion, what's wrong with that? So go on, take a nap, so later you won't yawn in their faces."

Again she senses his clear desire to keep his distance from her, maybe because he feels he has already got carried away and doesn't want to be dragged any farther. But she says to herself that if she gives up and doesn't hear the end of the story, she'll be guilty of disloyalty to her sister, who was kept in the dark about her husband's desperate adventure. So she takes off her shoes and plants herself on the bed and directs a penetrating gaze at her brother-in-law, who stands at the threshold of the inner room, half in the light and half in darkness. "Yirmi, what do you mean, a lesson in Judaism?"

"In Jews."

"And who, may I ask, was the teacher — the Palestinian landlord, or your pharmacist?"

"Neither one. The pharmacist was afraid to come to the meeting that he himself had arranged. Someone warned him at the last minute that despite his blue Israeli ID card, he might be prevented from getting back into Jerusalem from the West Bank if he was caught. His absence worried me at first and even frightened me, because I had put my security in his hands. Although he was a Christian and not a Muslim, he was held in respect as a medical man. But I realized he would not be coming only when I was already sitting on the rooftop waiting for him, and by then there was no retreat. It was a winter night, very cold but dry, and this time there was no laundry flapping on the clothesline, just a few old armchairs, and the middleman, an Israeli Arab with two wives, one in Israel and the other in the territories, sat me down and said, Coffee will arrive right away, sir, and in the meantime enjoy the air, which is cleaner here than where you live, and disappeared. I sat and listened to the sounds of the city, which were different from the sounds of an Israeli city, and I tried to absorb what Eyali heard in his last hours. I sat alone and waited, and no one came up, and then I knew that if they were to kill me now, or kidnap me, I absolutely deserved it, because I was tempting fate and provoking a humiliated enemy."

"At least you were aware of this."

"Apparently I was slightly infected by their suicidal impulses."

"And how did it end?"

He has finally understood that his sister-in-law, like a hunting dog, will not let him go, and he brings a chair from the other room and places it beside her bed.

"All right. So when the landlord saw that the pharmacist wasn't coming, he didn't know what to do with me and sent me his daughter — the young and pregnant one I met when I came with the army officer."

"The student of history with the mellifluous Hebrew."

"You don't forget a single word."

"A single word of yours. So don't worry about Amotz, he'll hear it all from me."

Her brother-in-law falls silent, as if upset that his words will not remain between the two of them in Africa but will be reported in Israel. But he recovers quickly and continues.

"So this young woman, the student, arrives on the roof, followed by her mother, fat and jolly as ever, presumably there to protect her. The student is now huge, almost ready to give birth, but her face is fresh from all the rest she gets under curfew and closure, glowing with imminent motherhood, and her black hair spread on her shoulders. And the mother brings coffee on a tray."

"So they won't be tempted to kill you if you fall asleep," she jokes.

"An unarmed old man like me they could slaughter even if I am awake; even a woman could do it. No, they brought me the sweet coffee so I could sit and explain with a clear head what I really wanted from them. Why I kept coming back there. And when I saw that pregnant student — whose studies at the Ruppin college had been interrupted by the intifada and would not likely be resumed, and whose husband, so I gathered from her, had run off to one of the Gulf states to look for work and would not soon return — who knows, maybe he was the wanted man they were staking out — when I saw her coming to sit down quietly beside me, I had this revelation, that it was in fact she who had drawn me to risk my life and return back here. Yes, it was her sympathy I was looking for. I wanted to hear from a well-educated young woman, in her gentle Hebrew, that even if, like the others, she saw us as enemies, she was still capable of sympathy for a naïve and stupid soldier, who risked his life so as not to leave filth for his enemies."

"She knew what had happened?"

"Of course."

"And you got from her the sympathy you wanted?"

"No. On the contrary. It was the student who was the toughest of them all. She began with a rebuke based on the history she had learned at an Israeli college. Why is it you Jews can penetrate all sorts of foreign places and settle into other people's souls? Why is it so easy for you to wander from place to place without forming bonds of friendship with any other people, even if you live among them for a thousand years? Because you have a special god who is yours alone, and even when you don't believe in him, you are certain that because of him you have the right to be everywhere. In that case, who will love you? Who will want you? How will you survive?"

"This is all familiar stuff."

"Yes, but there on the roof in Tulkarm, through the bottomless bitterness of this pregnant young woman, it took on a new coloration. Maybe because she was soon to give birth, maybe because her husband wouldn't be there at the delivery, maybe because of her studies that had been cut short, she felt she had nothing to lose with me, that I was laid bare before her, a stubborn old Jew. What are you doing here again, she asked, what can a man be looking for at night among his enemies? Why are you bothering and frightening my father? What do you want from me? That I'll offer you compassion for your soldier? Why should I feel sorry for a soldier who invades a space that does not belong to him and doesn't care about us, who we are and what we are? Who takes over a family's roof in order to kill one of us, and thinks that if he does us a favor and leaves us a clean bucket, washing away the evidence of his fear, we'll forgive him for the insult and humiliation? But how can we forgive? Can we be bought with a clean bucket?"

"That's how she explained it to you? As an added insult? That's crazy."

"No, Daniela, don't make life easy for yourself. She's not crazy. She's strange, but not crazy. Idiosyncratic, but not crazy. She spoke with clarity and logic. We are sick and tired of you, she said. You took land, you took water, and you control our every move, so at least give us a chance to join you. Otherwise we'll all commit suicide together. But you, for all of your ability to bore your way into other people, you are closed up within yourselves, not blending in or letting others blend with you. So what's left for us? Only to hate you and pray for the moment that you will move away from here, because this will never be a homeland for you if you don't know how to blend into everything that's in it. So go on, she says, pick up your walking stick again and get out of here. Even the baby in my belly is waiting for it."

"What was her name?"

"She wouldn't tell me."

"You quote her as if she actually convinced you."

"She didn't convince me, but she impressed me. With her female confidence. And the pregnancy saddened me greatly. Because if Eyali were alive, I could have a daughter-in-law like that, who would give birth to a child who speaks sweet Hebrew."

"Again with the sweet lovely Hebrew? In what way sweet?"

"When Arabs speak proper Hebrew, without mistakes, even more flowery than normal, there's often a sweetness to it. The accent becomes softer, and because they are self-conscious about pronouncing p, afraid it'll come out as b, they stress it more, with a sort of anxious musicality. The verb in their sentences comes at the beginning, and the shift in word order creates a dramatic difference. And there's also a singsong phrasing that turns a statement into a question, so that instead of saying, It hurts me, she'll say, And how can I not be hurt? And instead of saying, I hate you, she says, How can people not hate you? Something like that."

"And this is sweetness?"

"To me it is."

AT MIDDAY IN an ambulance descending from the mountains to the coastal plain sits the elevator apparatus in its entirety, one of a kind, in back with the four Filipinos, who keep their distance from it. Old Ya'ari is there, too, sitting in the wheelchair, feeling satisfied that the disassembly was achieved without mishap, thinking over the next step: how to convince Gottlieb to make a new piston that will fit the fork lift.

He is still ashamed of his tearful outburst on his friend's doorstep, but he is also grateful to her for wisely recasting his weakness as a strength. In any event, it was good that he resisted her offer of lunch. Who knows, he might have cried again over the cake.

Ya'ari and the expert are crowded up front with Maurice, listening to the ambulance driver reminisce about his last trips with Ya'ari's mother. When I see your father alive and kicking in his wheelchair, I miss her. She was a real lady, and when she died she was your age, Amotz, but had no complaints or bitterness.

Ya'ari confirms that diagnosis and distills the purpose of life into one short sentence: Do everything possible to leave this world without complaints or bitterness. But his own final test has not yet arrived, and for now he has nothing to do but wonder why it's already afternoon and no one has called from his office asking a question, requesting advice, or reporting a complaint — as if his business can actually go on without him. Maybe there's another children's play today? he wonders and phones his secretary, who assures him that all his employees have come in, despite it being the tail end of the holiday, and are working diligently, and that no problem has arisen among them requiring the boss's wisdom and experience. However, there is a stranger who has been sitting in his office for several hours and insists on waiting for him.

"A stranger?" Ya'ari is baffled. "In my office?"

Yes, the tenant from the Pinsker Tower, who showed up with legal papers and is determined to serve them on Ya'ari by hand, personally.

"But why did you let him in my office? Why can't he wait outside?"

"Amotz," protests the secretary, "he's a bereaved father, his son was killed a few months ago; he told me the whole story. It's very crowded in the office with all the computers and drafting tables, and outside the weather is bad, rainy and very windy. But don't worry, he's sitting in the corner and not touching anything."

The elder Ya'ari decides to pass up Kinzie's lunch and take the machinery straight to Gottlieb's elevator factory. He'll eat lunch with the workers, which will remind him of the good old days. But his son is fed up with the whole private elevator festival and announces: You wanted to take charge of the process? Then please, finish it yourself. Let's see if you can draw a rational line from the psychologist to the manufacturer. He says good-bye to his father in front of his childhood home, gets in his car, leaving old Ya'ari and the rest of the contingent to proceed alone to the factory nestled amid orchards in the Sharon region, after warning Francisco and Hilario, "It's up to you two to make sure nothing happens to him."

Through the open door of his office, Ya'ari can see Mr. Kidron sitting stiffly in a heavy winter coat, a knitted ski cap on his knee, his eyes fixed on the swaying branches of the tree outside the window. He has not touched the tea and cookies the secretary brought him. Ya'ari, with an effort, dismisses his foul humor and enters the room cheerfully. The man stands up but does not greet the chief executive, merely hands him the legal complaint. Ya'ari takes it from him, reads it quickly, and asks with a faint smile: "So I'm the only defendant here?"

"Even if there are other defendants, they don't diminish your guilt," the tenants' leader says coldly. "All of you are one corrupt gang, who don't care about the damage you leave behind. You have a tree that makes a pleasant noise outside a closed window, but with us, when we get home and get near the elevator, we don't hear the wind but howls of pain, and there's no reason we should pay with a never ending nightmare for your sloppy calculations."

"Believe me, Mr. Kidron, our calculations are accurate. There are cracks in the shaft."

"So open up the elevators and prove to the construction company that they are to blame."

"Only the manufacturer is authorized to open the elevators. I am only the designer."

"That's what I said, you're a corrupt bunch who shift the blame from one to the other so we can't catch you. But the tenants are sick of it, the blame is now on you, Mr. Ya'ari, and if you want to be free of it, take it to court."

Ya'ari studies him. A man with innocent blue eyes, not tall, but slender under the wet coat. His hiking shoes are covered in mud. Before his son was killed he was surely a pleasant and friendly man.

"As you wish, I'll go to court. But tell me, why is the lawsuit directed only at me?"

"Because you're an approachable person. Even your secretary is nice."

Ya'ari looks over at the tree fighting the wind and places a gentle hand on the bereaved tenant's shoulder.

"Yes, I am an approachable person. It's a failing of mine, but maybe also a virtue. This is an ideal day to locate the defect that is tormenting you, so why wait for the court to acquit me while in the meantime you'll be supporting a hungry lawyer? Let's go take advantage of the storm tonight and check the shaft once and for all. Tomorrow my wife is returning from Africa, and she won't let me leave her in the middle of her first night back. That leaves us only tonight, and because we'll have to shut down all the elevators, the best time is the wee hours, say between two and three in the morning, in the hope that all the tenants will be in their apartments. Because we don't have porters to carry late-night partygoers up the stairs to the umpteenth floor."

Kidron brightens. "Okay," he says, "I'll put up notices in the building and warn the residents not to get home late tonight. How long will it take?"

"You will be surprised to learn that despite my age this is the first time I have gone hunting for winds at night. Like surgery or war, you know when you start, but not when you'll finish."

The head of the tenants' committee takes it upon himself to summon a representative of the construction company to be present also.

"Talk tough to him, the way you do to me," Ya'ari advises. "Threaten him." And he eases the man out the door.

And now, of course, just as he is about to hurry to Gottlieb's factory to make good on his promise to Kidron, his employees come to him with questions and try to show him plans and diagrams. By the time he manages to get free of these responsibilities and arrives at the elevator factory, it is dusk. And to his surprise, the blue ambulance is still there.

"Not only did I feed your father lunch with a spoon myself, and wipe away the crumbs," Gottlieb informs him, "we're also cutting him a new piston. Learn from this, young man, the power of old friendship. And it's best that a man have only one such dear friend, because two will break him."

"True," Ya'ari says, laughing. "But what about the dear son of the dear friend?"

And he tells him about his promise to hold a Night of the Winds. A skilled technician is needed, someone who can remove the roof of the elevator, then reassemble it.

"In the middle of the night? You know what that's gonna cost me?"

"It won't break you. Because we already paid that relative of yours in advance."

Gottlieb shoots Ya'ari an icy look.

In the past few years, Ya'ari has paid few visits to this factory. These days orders are placed online, and besides, the younger engineers in his firm are not enthusiastic about Gottlieb's elevators and fight for more up-to-date models that operate without machine rooms. Now he is amazed by how the factory has expanded. Big impressive cutting machines slice sheets of steel with high precision. Drill punches produce control panels. Remote-control robots assemble electric motors. The high-ceilinged halls are clean and orderly, if a bit dim, and skilled workers circulate among the machines, seeming slightly tense at the approach of the factory owner.

Gottlieb, far from letting himself be cowed by the Chinese elevators that Ya'ari's engineers have been recommending to the construction companies, has opened new markets for himself and now exports elevators to Turkey and Greece. He even gets orders from England. From the corner of his eye Ya'ari sees a new design wing, filled with engineers, technicians, and draftsmen, hired to compete with his own. And yet deep inside the thriving factory there is a small hall where merrily hums an ancient metal lathe, and here Ya'ari finds his father in his wheelchair, fascinated by the work and vibrating to its rhythms. In the corner sit Francisco and Hilario, silent and exhausted.

"Abba," he leans over and hugs his father, "are you convinced the lathe won't work if you don't stare at it?"

"That's what I tell him, too," Gottlieb says, "but your father apparently enjoys the chirping noises. His Filipinos are too quiet for him. Come, Amotz, let's take your father to our candle-lighting. You're about to see a Hanukkah menorah no less unusual than the elevator he built in Jerusalem."

The old man does not answer, merely looks with puzzlement at his friend and his son. Ya'ari wheels his father's chair after Gottlieb as the manufacturer leads the way to the cafeteria, where workers on the shift are assembling for the lighting of the candles. In the center of the hall stands a menorah fit for the factory, composed of nine tiny models of elevators, with a small bulb installed in each.

At the entrance is a basket of kippas, and on the tables are arrayed trays of small but still warm jelly doughnuts. The workers put on the skullcaps and crowd together silently. They know this menorah well and are no longer impressed. How many candles today? Gottlieb asks an Orthodox worker who stands ready to chant the blessings. Seven, says the man, and waits for a signal from the boss.

Gottlieb goes to a panel of numbered buttons and presses the red emergency switch, which lights up the shammash, a replica of the latest-model elevator produced at the factory; and the worker bursts into sacred melody, his Sephardic voice sweet and clear. As the blessings end, Gottlieb presses the seventh-floor button, and slowly, one at a time, seven more miniature elevators light up.

"Well, what do you say?" He turns proudly to the father and son. "A miracle like this would have astonished even the Maccabees."

Ya'ari chuckles and thinks good-naturedly, It's all right, there's this side to Gottlieb, too. But tomorrow night we'll finally light real candles with Daniela.

AFTER THE ISRAELI visitor's headache has been dissolved by a long, deep sleep, she showers and returns refreshed to the ground floor, where she finds the tables rearranged for the farewell dinner. The big table has been moved to the edge of the hall and placed upon a small wooden stage, then covered with an embroidered map of Africa. The remaining tables are positioned in three rows, as in a theater, with benches on one side only, so that diners will face the stage. In the open lot outside the building, the scientists are loading the pickup trucks with food coolers and duffel bags and new digging tools, and Daniela can also see a group of Africans in colorful clothes decorated with ribbons; some of them are leaning on long sharpened sticks. Yirmiyahu arrives from the infirmary, moving slowly, and on his way to take a shower and change his clothes he cautions his sister-in-law not to make light of the ceremonial dinner: For some reason they attach greater importance to you than you deserve.

"You know it's impossible to make me more important than I am," she teases him, "and what about you? How's your headache?"

He regards her soberly. Patience, he says. Tomorrow, when you're gone, the pain will pass. And without waiting for a reply or a protest he touches her shoulder in a gentle gesture of reconciliation, then hurries to his room.

Out of nowhere appears the wrinkled old groundskeeper, adorned with a sash, waving a huge branch. He grandly leads the Africans inside and instructs them to take seats at the three rows of tables. Who are these people? Daniela asks Sijjin Kuang, who with stately authority is assisting the old man in seating each guest in his proper place.

On Sunday nights, she tells the visitor, before departing for the new week of excavation, the members of the research team invite the tribal chiefs and heads of local clans to join in the farewell dinner, so they will feel they have a stake in the scientific work.

Sijjin Kuang seats the Israeli woman in the first row of tables, leaving empty places to her right and left for Yirmiyahu and herself. The cooks, in white toques, place ceramic pots on the tables and distribute pitchers of a yellowish drink. Yirmiyahu enters, his bald pate shiny and his clothing fresh, and sits down beside her and says, Europe becomes important to them even as they sense its growing alienation.

The old black man waves the branch, and the assembled rise to their feet. The scientists enter in a row, clad in black university gowns with sashes attached in the colors of their native countries' flags. Minus the North African paleontologist, the marchers are nine in number, led by the Tanzanian Seloha Abu, who assigns each member his place at the high table. And since the guests are very hungry and the food is piping hot, speeches are postponed till the meal's end and the eating begins, to be accompanied, in keeping with the British tradition that Dr. Kukiriza has brought with him from London, by small talk alone.

"Tell me," Daniela says suddenly to her brother-in-law in Hebrew, "you're sure you won't come back to Israel slightly delirious from all this?"

He puts down his fork.

"And who told you I'm coming back? You've been here for six days, and you still insist on not understanding where I stand. Nothing will draw me back to a country that has turned into a recycling plant."

"That's a novel definition."

"Here there are no ancient graves and no floor tiles from a destroyed synagogue; no museum with a fragment of a burnt Torah; no testimonies about pogroms and the Holocaust. There's no exile here, no Diaspora. There was no Golden Age here, no community that contributed to global culture. They don't fuss about assimilation or extinction, self-hatred or pride, uniqueness or chosenness; no old grandmas pop up suddenly aware of their identity. There's no orthodoxy here or secularism or self-indulgent religiosity, and most of all no nostalgia for anything at all. There's no struggle between tradition and revolution. No rebellion against the forefathers and no new interpretations. No one feels compelled to decide if he is a Jew or an Israeli or maybe a Canaanite, or if the state is more democratic or more Jewish, if there's hope for it or if it's done for. The people around me are free and clear of that whole exhausting and confusing tangle. But life goes on. I am seventy years old, Daniela, and I am permitted to let go."

And he takes up the fork and plunges it into the meat.

Daniela wants to strike back indignantly, but stops herself. The flow of his words suggests that even if he has never performed this monologue for others, he has doubtless muttered it many times to himself.

The old African sets fire to the big branch and waves it, and the Tanzanian team leader rises to deliver the traditional address. Yirmiyahu whispers to his sister-in-law that although the man speaks in the local vernacular, all the members know this speech and can understand the meaning of every sentence. He is speaking on a favorite topic: man's dominance over fire and his ability to understand it, and even Yirmiyahu is able to comprehend part of the speech and to fill in the rest:

Fire is conceived of as a living thing. It moves about incessantly, changes its shape and color, eats, makes noises, provides heat. Man can create it or extinguish it, can blow on it to revive it or blow on it to put it out. Fire is the only thing in the world that man can kill and then bring back to life. Most of what man creates or produces depends on fire, and most destruction and ruin are connected with fire. Fire is a friend that brings life, that cleanses and purifies, and it is also a terrifying foe. Perhaps in the knowledge of fire is a key to the knowledge of death.

Of all creatures in the world, only man is conscious of the phenomenon of death. It is strange, since all animals see death all around them, and some cause it every day. Nevertheless, recognition of death is unique to humans, and is expressed, for example, in the custom of burial, which first appeared about 100,000 years ago.

The consciousness of humans differs from that of the animals in two main ways, knowing fire and knowing death. There is a connection between these two knowledges, one gives rise to the other. Fire made man into the being who controls the world but also into the miserable human who knows that his death is inevitable.

The old African waves the burning branch during the entire speech.