Friendly Fire: A Duet

Eighth Candle

HE WAS CONVINCED he would wake up on his own, but a dream that refused to end kept him sleeping. Fortunately, he had arranged a wake-up phone call. While hunting for a warm undershirt he thinks how happy Moran would be to chase after wind in the middle of the night, but for a grandfather hounded all day by a great-grandfather, a nighttime adventure like this is a bit much. And yet, having recognized his obligation in broad daylight, he will not shirk it at night. His own father gives a lifetime guarantee for a homemade elevator and stands by it honorably even as he shudders in a wheelchair, and should he, this man's son, evade responsibility for defects appearing in an apartment tower during its first year? True, a sharp lawyer could juggle these windy complaints, tossing them from one party to the next till the complainant's spirit broke, but here we have a bereaved father, and there is strong fellowship between him and a bereaved uncle, so the uncle is taking the trouble on a stormy night to instill team spirit in all those responsible to determine who among them is the guilty party.

Tel Aviv calls itself the City that Never Rests. The epithet is more than just words, Ya'ari decides as he finds himself in a swirl of lights and traffic in the wee hours of a winter's night. Even in his youth he was never much of a night owl, and in recent years he has tried to convince Daniela to go to bed earlier. Tomorrow night, he knows, they won't hurry to get in bed. Neither will be able to fall asleep. There will be too much to tell and too much to hear. But he will not hint, even lightheartedly, at that "real desire" she promised at the airport. He knows he must prepare himself to be patient. For though she has been the traveler and he the abandoned one, she will still be angry about the separation, and anger, as it always does, will sabotage desire.

The rain has stopped, but on the street puddles glimmer in the headlights. Again he drives around the former Kings of Israel Square, now renamed for Rabin, to find waiting beside the dark window of the Book Worm the same vaguely defined individual, who has added to her attire of the previous morning only a red scarf, wrapped about her neck.

"Well," he teases her affectionately. "Now you can't complain that we overpaid you. Tonight we will all need your expertise. Let's just hope the wind will be sufficiently strong; it seems to be displaying symptoms of fatigue."

"Don't worry, Ya'ari." The expert smiles at him with her big bright eyes. "Even a weak wind will do. When it's trapped in a shaft, I can easily make it talk."

"Talk," he repeats, intrigued. Then he asks if tonight she might disclose her age.

"No," she hastens to respond, "not yet."

Once again, he and his car are swallowed up by the underground parking beneath the tower, but this time it's hard to find a spot. Can it be that even as the winds have grown worse, all the vacant apartments have found tenants? As he cruises the two floors of the garage, the gloomy voice of the tenants' spokesman blares from his car phone: Take my parking spot, Mr. Ya'ari. I left it open for you.

On the elevator landing of the lower floor the groans can be heard at full volume, and the expert's childlike face radiates satisfaction. They go up to the lobby level, where the night watchman directs them to Mr. Kidron's flat on the twenty-fourth floor. Signs lettered with an ink marker and bordered with thick black lines are posted on the walls of the lobby and the doors of the elevators. On first glance they resemble formal death notices, but a second look reveals they are merely warnings: Between two and four A.M. all the elevators will be shut down to enable the search for the winds.

The door marked kidron family is wide open, and all the lights are on inside. On the dining table, late-night snacks are laid out alongside carafes of black coffee. Gottlieb, who arrived earlier with a technician, is half-sprawled on a sofa, eating energetically while inquiring about the family connections of the lady of the house, a chubby, nervous woman clad in black and adorned with an engraved gold necklace. Her husband, too, is formally attired, in a dark suit and tie, as if dressed for battle with the representatives of the construction company, who are running late.

"Representatives?" Ya'ari says with surprise. "In the middle of the night they're sending us more than one person?"

Yes, both an engineer and a lawyer are on their way. These days no self-respecting company would come to such an investigation without an attorney, and since the country is flooded with lawyers the prices for nocturnal consultations have dropped precipitously.

Ya'ari introduces himself to Gottlieb's technician, a powerfully built man of about fifty, who sits communing with himself in a corner by the balcony, toolbox at his feet, coffee mug gripped tightly in both hands.

"Rafi." The man whispers his name with a downcast gaze.

No family warmth is evident between Gottlieb and the expert. The little woman avoids her stepfather, puts a cookie on a plate, and sits down near the technician. Tomorrow morning, Gottlieb informs Ya'ari, the work I am doing for your father will be done. But he will still need the mercy of heaven for his piston to function again in Jerusalem.

"Even if it doesn't work," Ya'ari responds coolly, "it's not the end of the world. Believe me, my father's tyranny has worn me out."

"Your father's tyranny? You're complaining? Hey, it's the same tyranny that woke me up tonight for this bit of theater."

"It's not worth it to you to get up in the middle of the night to clear yourself of blame and responsibility?"

"Not if I'm bringing two technicians getting paid at the nighttime rate."

"We're taking care of your young lady."

But the young lady, her star-bright eyes attentive to the discussion, says, leave him alone, Gottlieb, I don't need any payment. I'm happy enough just to listen for them, the father and son.

"Sure," Gottlieb waves her off sourly, "I know you both think I'm a miser, but you forget how much disability insurance I have to pay so we're covered if there's an accident. In my factory there are machines that can cut a man in half in two seconds, and then what? Who's going to pay for sewing him together? Me from my own pocket?"

"Gottlieb, my friend, there are no machines here."

"Yes, well, we're about to survey a dark shaft thirty stories high."

Ya'ari wearies of the pettiness and wants to break off the conversation, so while his host phones the tardy representatives of the construction company, he asks the wife's permission to go through their apartment to see if any drafts can be felt through its walls. Follow me, says the nervous woman, and leads him first into the couple's bedroom, the scrupulous neatness of which betrays that they have not been in bed this night. A small terrace off the room faces the southeast part of the city, and Ya'ari invites himself out for a look and again stands above the urban vista he surveyed six days before from the tiny balcony of the tower's machine room. On that long-ago morning the sky was overcast; now sharp points of light sparkle in the night. Amid the downtown skyscrapers, the looming colossi of the Azrieli project, and the proud tower at the Diamond Exchange, multicolored advertisements and the latest headlines alternate on huge digital screens; cropped-haired, leggy women touting dishwashers and clothes dryers segue into reports of the Iranian nuclear threat.

Plump, quiet Mrs. Kidron stands by his side, fondling her gold necklace and lifting her eyes toward a passenger plane that lowers its landing gear as it glides downward over the city. Ya'ari looks at his watch. Sixteen more hours until Daniela's arrival, provided that no wild beast has eaten her passport and ticket, and no arbitrary official has decided to change the flight schedule.

"Your son… the soldier," he mumbles, almost casually, his eyes still fixed on the plane, "did he get to know this new apartment?"

"No. He was killed two months before we moved here. We wanted to cancel the purchase, but it was too late."

"Why cancel it? Doesn't it make it a little easier, moving to a new place?"

"So we hoped, but in the autumn these winds started up, and they only made us more depressed."

"Depressed because of the winds? But it's purely a technical problem."

She regards him with a fearful expression.

"Is that what you believe?"

"I don't believe it; I'm certain of it."

Another passenger plane, a jumbo jet, zooms in from over the sea and prepares for landing. Ya'ari asks his hostess if he may have a look in the other rooms. She leads him through a small book-lined den into a children's room filled with toys, similar to the room Daniela set up at their house for the grandchildren. Ya'ari listens carefully. Yes, the groaning wind is only in the shaft and stairwell. The apartment itself is quiet. He feels a sudden need to see a photograph of her son, and he lightly touches the lady's hand and asks for one. But the mother refuses his request. All photos of their son are hidden deep in a closet, because the parents resolved to keep him with them not through photographs but through memory and, above all, imagination. Both of us, says the mother, agreed not to get stuck on an image fixed in time. We try to go back and connect through activity, take him to places he never saw and imagine how he would behave there. We want to keep him in perpetual motion, allow him to grow and even grow old, so he will not be forever frozen in pictures from childhood or the last photos from his military service.

Ya'ari's heart skips a beat, and he nods silently. Then he asks to be directed to the lavatory. He is quick to lock the door, and when it turns out that the switch is outside he does without light. He pulls down his pants and sits in darkness, tense, angry, perhaps in pain, lost in thought.

The wall behind him appears to be an exterior wall, and despite the late hour he can hear water flowing as well as the wailing wind. He feels a gathering sense of anxiety over Daniela's arrival. He is worried about malfunctions and delays on flights from Africa. But he still trusts the practical wisdom of his brother-in-law, who will know how to get his wife back to her homeland.

New voices are heard in the apartment, young and laughing. The representatives of the construction company have arrived to grapple with their guilt.

IN THE END they forgot to give me their bones, Daniela realizes, with disappointment, when she sees from her window that the two pickup trucks are ready to take to the road. But I won't run to remind them. Apparently it's not that important to them, or they don't trust me, or maybe this is another third world shortcoming, an inability to follow through. Yet not only was I not afraid to take the package with me, I was delighted to help them.

This is her last night in Africa, and perhaps her final farewell to her brother-in-law. There will be no one to bring his ashes in an urn to be buried in Israel. Has she fulfilled the goal of her visit: to reconnect, with her brother-in-law's help, with old memories that in years to come will nourish the love her sister deserves? All in all, Yirmi avoided discussing his wife, preferring to toss twigs of wrath onto the pyre of friendly fire, which he will never allow to die down. And still he complains about the prophets' lust for anger. Even if he truly took pity on Shuli, hiding from her what he dared to reveal to her sister, it's impossible that Shuli was not burned by the fierce flame he stoked inside him against a world that she still loved in spite of the death of her son.

The Israeli visitor, who generally excels at sound sleep, worries that she is in for a wearying bout of sleeplessness, which will burn itself out only as morning approaches, spoiling her good-byes as she takes leave of the place and its people. She could probably put herself to sleep with the unfinished pages of the novel, hoping that its artificiality will help her eyes to spin the first threads of sleep. She is determined to stick to her decision to save it for the two-hour layover between her flights, however, and is already planning to tuck the book into the outside pocket of her rolling suitcase, for easy access in the cafeteria in Nairobi.

Yirmi quickly disappeared after the festive meal and is clearly avoiding her. He is swept up in his idea of disengagement and is probably afraid that before leaving she will make him swear, on his love for her sister, to keep in touch with the family. Maybe he also understands that she will exploit the moment of the parting to speak up and rebut his arguments. Until now she has just listened to him, and with leading questions urged him on, and has been careful not to express any disrespect, lest he fall silent. As a high school teacher she has had to learn how to listen to the immature blather of teenagers. Which may be why she is so impatient with the adolescent rebellions of the elderly.

Actually, not only should she demolish his arguments, she should also be angry over his disappearance. Because Shuli would have been disappointed had she known about her indifferent dismissal by someone who was always beloved by the family, who was thought of as a man to be relied on, and who is now losing himself in a godforsaken place and disconnecting from everything that was important and dear to her sister. But Daniela's anger is surprisingly deflected, blown sideways, and lands squarely on her husband, the weight of whose absence is especially heavy tonight. Although tomorrow evening he will again be at her side, she feels that if he had been wiser in his love, he would not have let her make this visit on her own. He was under an obligation, even if against her wishes, to drop everything and join her, to help her fight the despair of ideas that give hope only to a pregnant suicide bomber.

Perhaps Amotz could have dealt with Yirmiyahu. Not for himself, but for Shuli, and also for Elinor and Yoav, so that they might return to Israel after their studies. Only Amotz, with his straightforward intelligence, could have wrested a commitment from Yirmiyahu to keep in touch with the family, at least till his black mood died down.

But Amotz, she thinks to herself with mild disdain, is obviously taking advantage of her absence to go to bed even earlier. She can see him in her mind's eye in his red flannel pajamas, climbing into their big bed at this very hour, surrounded by the photos of the children and grandchildren on the walls as he gathers the financial pages of the newspapers from the floor and gets under the big quilt, without feeling that he ought to be not in Tel Aviv but here, on a remote African farm, awake and ready to do battle with a man bent on destruction.

True, nihilism can be a mask for terrible personal trauma. But she knows that self-hatred cannot lead to rehabilitation. Yet she herself is helpless in confronting Yirmi and refuting him with serious arguments. She is a teacher of English: she deals with the meaning of words, with grammar, and sometimes with the analysis of characters in short stories and plays. But Amotz's head is filled with facts and figures, and he can remember the number of dead and wounded on both sides not only in Israel's wars but also in the wars of other, far away nations. When he reads at all, he reads biographies and nonfiction, which is why he can come up with examples from times and places she didn't know existed, why he is able to compare Israelis with other peoples and distinguish real blame from imaginary blame. He should have been here by her side to rein in his brother-in-law, not merely for the sake of truth, but also so there would be hope for their children and his, so that Elinor and Yoav could come back to Israel, with or without their doctorates, and produce at least one grandchild to restore meaning to his life and wipe away the strange sweetness he found in the Hebrew of a young Palestinian woman filled with hatred and scorn.

In this fierce need for her husband, mixed with resentment, she fails to notice a gentle knocking on her door, until the door moves slightly and is cautiously opened. Through it, to her delight, walks in Dr. Roberto Kukiriza, with the bones of the prehistoric ape, the one who did not manage to fit into the evolutionary chain.

She blushes and says to him, "I thought you had given up on me, or that you had forgotten your bones."

"We have not given up on you," he answers in a friendly tone, "and how could we forget our discoveries? But a few colleagues were worried that we might be unfairly involving you in a strange and uncomfortable mission. The fact that you concealed it from Jeremy also caused us some concern."

"No problem there," she promises quickly. "I am willing to tell him."

"Very good. This will pacify the doubters. For we wish to be sure that Jeremy is also at peace with what we are imposing upon you. Over at Abu Kabir they are already waiting for you."

She eagerly extends her hand, and he takes from his pocket a small cloth bag, opens it, and shows her three bones, each different from the others in size and color and shape, and suggests that she pack them in her suitcase.

"Certainly."

But he is still reluctant to hand them over and inspects the suitcase lying open on the table to find the right spot.

"Perhaps we should put them in an unlikely place," he suggests. "Perhaps in your toiletry bag. A clearly female zone they will not search."

"That's a good idea," she says, and pulls the bag from his hand.

AND SO IT has come to pass, muses Ya'ari with pride, all because of my quiet authority. Between two and three in the morning the team of six "wind people" have assembled in the brightly lit lobby of the tower, and beside them, beaming, stands a seventh: Mr. Kidron, chief of the apartment owners' association, holding two emergency flashlights powered by large batteries and silently giving thanks to the winds for not betraying him by dying at the moment of truth. The heavyset night watchman has been dispatched to the gate of the car park to ensure that no resident will show up at the last minute and get trapped between floors.

The four elevators have been stopped on different floors and must be brought together and then shut down individually. Only then will it be possible to ride on the roof of one of them, traveling slowly the full height of the shaft, casting a light on its walls. Although he carries both a master key and a triangle key in his pocket, Ya'ari prefers not to use them in the presence of the manufacturer, to avoid giving the impression that maintenance is his domain. The technician brought by Gottlieb summons each elevator in turn, shuts down the group control, and then detaches, with the triangle key, the electrical connection between the shaft door and the door of the cab, and in the end all four elevators stand before them open-mouthed, awaiting their inspection of the winds.

The cell phone of the tenants' leader rings. The guard wants to know what to do about a man and a woman who have arrived at the parking garage with five heavy suitcases. They landed at the airport just an hour ago and knew nothing about any inoperative elevators. What floor do they live on? Ya'ari asks, and when he hears it is merely the eighth, he sternly rules that they should leave the bags in the lobby till morning and go up on foot. But no, the woman is pregnant, and so Ya'ari decides to go fetch them himself in the big central elevator, and orders the technician to get one of the side elevators ready to move.

"Right or left?"

Ya'ari and Gottlieb look at the expert, who turns her face upward, listening attentively.

"Left," she declares. "The defects are on the left side."

This time Ya'ari takes out his keys, despite the presence of the manufacturer, and reactivates the big elevator and goes down to collect the couple who have returned to their native land. And indeed he finds a pregnant woman and heavy luggage. So, he teases them, you came back to the suffering homeland? But he has only half hit the mark. The couple live and work in America and have even become citizens, but they want their child to be born in Israel, in the apartment they bought as a vacation home, so they can get help in the first few months from the parents on both sides. Practical Zionism, Ya'ari says, chuckling, and helps them slide the heavy bags out of the elevator.

When he gets back to the lobby, he sees that the preliminary work on the left-hand elevator is proceeding apace. Gottlieb is a professional par excellence and knows every bolt of the elevators Ya'ari designed for him. He stands alongside a dexterous and disciplined technician and instructs him what to unscrew in a shiny, apparently seamless elevator, and the car swiftly bares its hidden electromechanical apparatus before the astonished eyes of the construction company representatives.

The technician enters the elevator and lowers it a bit without closing the door of the cab, and a few seconds later the group sees him riding on its roof. He operates it using the three-button service controls — two pressed for each direction, up or down. And now, with the elevator suspended between the lobby and the car park, even the lawyer can get a sense of the dark shaft rising upward, divided by the three sets of iron bars that stabilize the movement of the elevators and the counterweights along the guide rails.

The roof of the car that has been opened up is small, unlike the roof of the big central elevator, and Ya'ari deliberates whether to send only the technician and the expert for an introductory tour of the exposed shaft or to join them. He finally decides to go along. He takes the two emergency flashlights from Mr. Kidron and says, okay, I'm going to cast a light on the ill winds. He hands one to the expert, who is already in position, keeps the other for himself, and says to the technician, Let's go, habibi, we're taking off.

The elevator floats upward. The technician carefully controls the service buttons so that the car's movement is slow, almost imperceptible. The listener from Kfar Blum is sure that the winds are breaking in at the fourteenth floor, but Ya'ari insists on checking every floor thoroughly. Strong beams from the two flashlights scour the walls of the shaft, revealed in their nakedness as pocked and wrinkled. Here and there sprigs of iron wire sprout from the concrete — once even an old scrap of newspaper. Now and then what looks like a human face or animal form drawn on the wall, and sometimes a sentence carved in an unknown language. This is no simple job, Ya'ari says to the technician, who looks tensely up into the dark expanse of the shaft as though fearful of colliding with an unexpected object. Floor by floor they glide past iron elevator doors numbered in sloppy and varied handwriting. By the beams of light they scan the walls meticulously, and Ya'ari never asks the technician to halt the gradual climb. But when they reach the thirteenth floor, Rachel says: This is it, Nimer, stop here.

And indeed, as soon as the elevator falls silent there is no doubt that here is the entry point of the menacing, aggressively groaning wind, as the tiny woman, her flashlight beam licking the wall methodically, points out to Ya'ari something in the shaft resembling open lips or perhaps nostrils, the consequence of faulty casting, or even malice. Like the pipes of a giant church organ, these nostrils produce a surprising variety of resonant — or dissonant — sounds.

"This is the spot you were thinking of?" Ya'ari asks the expert, who is standing up now, smiling sadly.

"This is the place. When I came a few days ago to listen to the winds with your Moran, I thought the problem was at the fourteenth floor, so I was only slightly off."

"Believe me," Ya'ari says, patting her fondly, "God makes bigger mistakes. If your Gottlieb and I were to spend a whole night riding up and down the shaft, we would never come upon this pipe organ. So let's bring the engineer up here and even his lawyer, so they'll see where the wailing comes from and then go back down with the blame and responsibility, and let the rest of us sleep at night."

He instructs the technician to take the elevator back to the lobby. And when he gets down from its roof, he first of all praises the manufacturer, who has been dozing in the cozy armchair next to the night watchman's table. "A good thing you didn't leave your perfect pitch in Upper Galilee, otherwise you and I would be traveling up and down in that shaft forever." And to the engineer he says, "Why waste words, you won't believe it till you see for yourself. So come on, don't be scared, take a flashlight and sit on the roof of the elevator. The young lady will bring you safe and sound straight to the failures of your construction company."

The engineer hesitates for a moment, then takes the flashlight from Ya'ari and climbs onto the elevator, and is lifted off into the dark shaft with the little woman and the technician, beaming light in hand.

Ya'ari sits down in the watchman's chair and interrogates Gottlieb about the technician he brought along with him. Who is he really? Rafi? Nimer? A Jew? An Arab? A hybrid, a mixture, mumbles Gottlieb, half asleep. In what sense? Ya'ari asks. A mixture of all the good things still left in this country, Gottlieb mutters, and closes his eyes.

The lawyer paces restlessly. From time to time he goes to the elevator shaft and peers upward, as if wondering whether his engineer has been swallowed by the void.

"Careful," Ya'ari says. "Even falling only two floors down to the parking lot is a bad idea. But if you'd like us to take you up to the defect as well, so you can see why you'll be totally unable to defend it — no problem."

The lawyer is lost in thought. The head of the residents' association stands to the side, pleased at getting the inspection he had hoped for, but wary of its results. He would have preferred the discovery of a technical flaw in the elevators. A flaw in construction will require repairs that will interfere with normal life in the tower.

"Maybe you, too, would like to go up and see how the winds make their music?"

"No," Kidron says nervously. "It's enough to hear it, I don't need to see it."

The elevator returns to the lobby. The expression on the engineer's face as he gets down from its roof is that of a man who has seen an apparition. He whispers with the attorney, who gathers that he can't justify his fee if he doesn't see the defect with his own eyes. It might be possible to cleverly shift the damages to the insurance company. The hybrid technician sits somberly on the roof, bent over the control box, but the expert's big eyes shine as she invites Ya'ari to rejoin her and take another ride up to see the wondrous natural organ.

Why not? And this time he won't stop at the thirteenth floor but will soar all the way to the thirtieth. Maybe there he will discover new acoustics.

"You come, too, and see the organ," Ya'ari says, prodding the lawyer. "I'll take you there myself."

And the lawyer, a handsome young man, accepts Ya'ari's challenge and prepares to climb up as the latter tells the technician to make way. I also know how to press three buttons, he jokes, and very carefully he heads on high with the lawyer and the expert.

First he ascends to the top of the shaft, the thirtieth floor, to hear from there the full lung power of the abyss. Far below them they can still see the glowing white light of the lobby. Then he cautiously takes them down to the thirteenth floor, and the expert casts her beam on the lips, or nostrils, of the pipe organ — the handiwork of Romanian laborers, or Thai, or local Arabs, and perhaps intended to lend a spice of life to the innards of the building. But the anxiety of the attorney, who has never before ridden bareback on the roof of an elevator through a dark shaft, has apparently compromised his powers of understanding. Where? Where? he keeps asking insistently. I don't see a thing. Faced with such lawyerly obtuseness, the expert, still flashing the beam of light, stretches her body out to the side of the shaft, to point with her hand at the strange flaws bathed in water stains or mold — and the end of the red scarf wound about her neck catches in the iron track of the counterweight, she stumbles, and the flashlight falls from her hand, plunging like a meteor into the pit below, as she grabs the iron bars that separate the elevators, letting out a yelp of pain that staggers Ya'ari.

A FEW MINUTES after the departure of the handsome archaeologist, the visitor hears the engine of the vehicle that waited for him and hurries to her window, just in time to see how the beams of its headlights, piercing the fine rain, stripe the dirt road like a golden whip.

The bones sit among her toiletries, wrapped in their cloth bag, and for a moment she considers wrapping them in something more to insulate them from the odors of makeup and perfume, but he decides not to. If everything that has clung to these bones deep in the ground for millions of years hasn't impaired their identity, they won't be compromised by the scent of her toiletries.

In spite of her promise to inform her brother-in-law about her little mission, she would be in no hurry to see him, if she didn't also feel compelled to tell him a few pointed things that might get lost in the swirl of her departure in the morning. She puts on her gym shoes and — although the night is warm — her sister's old windbreaker, and goes down to his temporary quarters. But the door that opens at her touch reveals an empty room and bare bed. Disappointed, she continues on to the dining room. The high table is still on its lofty perch by the west window, and to her amazement it is still covered with the remains of the festive dinner, as are the other tables, and the sinks are filled with unwashed pots and pans. Yet despite the disorder and grime, she feels at home in this place and is not afraid to be alone in the cluttered darkness. And because she thinks Yirmiyahu will pass by en route to his room, she finds a seat by one of the tables and waits for him.

The silence is absolute. She thinks about the prehistoric bones that have settled in with her makeup and again feels bad about her loyal housekeeper, who will not be getting the lipstick she requested. Should she add pain to disappointment and tell her why and where this special and expensive lipstick was thrown away?

She brushes the crumbs off a section of the table and lays her head down and closes her eyes. She'll wait for him a little longer, but if he takes his headache as license to closet himself in the infirmary — perhaps with the added confidence that she wouldn't dare go there in the dark — she'll have to give up tonight and postpone her planned speech till the hour of parting.

As she rests her head on the big table, eyes closed, sleep flutters over her like a little bird, and for a few minutes she drifts off. And when she lifts her head heavily and opens her eyes in the dark, for a moment she doesn't know where she is, and in the faint light of the windowpane she sees the silhouette of a little elephant, its trunk lifted silently skyward and its wondrous eye floating alongside — an independent creature, flickering in all its blueness.

But the mirage quickly fades and again becomes the silhouette of the high table, the blackened skeleton of the giant branch that burned during the festive speech, left leaning there, and the glowing embers in the belly of the stove, whose door was left ajar.

Now, at last, her whole being is broken open by the pain of longing that she came to find in Africa; the loss of her sister finally batters her, here in the big kitchen, with a force she has never yet experienced. She gets up and lightly kicks shut the door of the stove to hide the dying fire, and lets her tears find release in a long, lingering sob that convulses her entire body.

Yes, perhaps her excessive devotion to her two grandchildren in the past year was also intended to muffle that longing, which is why she had to come alone to Africa to join in her brother-in-law's grief. But Yirmi, shackled by his attempt to find meaning in the fire that killed his son instead launched friendly fire at his wife and her family. Oh, Amotz, maybe your intentions were good, but you could not imagine the falsehood bound up in the phrase you blurted out when you brought the terrible news.

Tonight, following the monologue about separation and disengagement that Yirmiyahu subjected her to, it's natural and understandable that he would try to avoid her. He knows her well, and knows she can respond harshly and judgmentally even when she seems to be a cheerful and receptive listener. Therefore tomorrow morning he will be quick to send her on her way. You have to rush, he'll say, the rain overnight mucked up the dirt roads; Sijjin Kuang is a stickler for timetables and hates to be late.

But she is reluctant to leave the protected space of the main building and head in total darkness for the infirmary. She vividly remembers the afternoon when the snake sprang from the grass near the infirmary and recoiled in fear before the jaws of the catlike beast.

Where, now, is the wizened African who assisted her in the mornings? She would follow him, eyes closed, through the wet grass while raindrops tapped her shoulders. But after he extinguished the burning branch and set it by the high table, he disappeared. Does he live at the farm, or does he come here from a hut in a neighboring village? She forgot to ask these things about him, just as for six days she never asked the way to Sijjin Kuang's room, another person she would follow anywhere with complete confidence. Although it's not yet midnight, she won't sully her reputation on the eve of her departure by knocking on unfamiliar doors.

A simple flashlight might have increased her self-assurance. Even a big candle would be fine. She remembers where matches are kept in the kitchen. Had not Yirmi destroyed her Hanukkah candles on the first night, she might have been able to combine the little candles into a sturdy source of fire and light whose flame would banish her fears. She opens the door and looks out at the dark universe. Out of the clouds emerges a sliver of moon, a Muslim crescent, that may illuminate the path somewhat. She zips up her sister's old windbreaker, covers her head with its furry hood, and without letting herself think twice walks out of the farmhouse to the path she knows, then begins to run, as if dodging the warm raindrops, in the belief that her quick movements will confuse any animal even if she steps on it by mistake.

If her grandchildren were to see her running like this in the middle of the night in Africa, they would surely laugh, but their laughter would not last long, because the distance to the infirmary is short. The front door is closed but unlocked, and she silently enters the treatment room, which is dimly lighted by a table lamp. Beside the stethoscope someone has left a tourist brochure of Tanzania. On the cover is a photograph of the Ngorongoro nature preserve, a huge, deep crater with walls the height of a two-hundred story tower. The wildlife trapped in it, unable to climb out, have retained their prehistoric uniqueness. When she and Amotz visited three years ago, Yirmi and Shuli took them there, and the two couples went down to the bottom of the crater for a long tour. She hesitates for a moment, then turns off the lamp, and in the deepened darkness she goes to the door of the inner room, taps on it softly, her heart pounding, then opens it without waiting for an answer. And Yirmiyahu, waking with a start while she is still in the doorway, says, Have you lost your mind?

But it isn't madness that has brought her here, but rather a jolt of pity for the young soldier, who asks her to free him from the fierce grip of his father and let him rest. And so she enters the inner room and sits down not on the empty bed opposite, but right beside the man she has known since she was young, who flinches now as if in self-defense.

"What's going on?"

"I can't fall asleep, and I'm worried I won't be ready in the morning when Sijjin Kuang comes to take me to the flight."

"Why worry? If you don't wake up on your own, she'll come and get you up."

"Why her? Won't you be up early?"

"I'll be up. And if not, she'll wake me too."

"Be that as it may, perhaps it would make more sense for me to sleep here at the infirmary. It will make me feel calmer, more secure, and this way she can wake both of us. No, don't be alarmed. You remember how when my parents were away at night I would sometimes climb in bed with Shuli? She was always happy to have me."

"Not always." He grins. "You once showed up in the middle of the night when I was also in the bed, and we had to chase you away."

"But now, with Shuli gone, there's no need to get rid of me."

And she cannot believe that she has said such a thing, just like that, so naturally. It seems to her that even in the dark she can see his astonishment. Perhaps to protect himself from her he grabs his trousers from the chair, takes out matches and a crushed packet of cigarettes, lights one, and the room fills with its strange smell.

"You started smoking again?"

"No. But sometimes at night it's good to see a little glowing ember between my eyes."

"Then give me one too."

"Better you should smoke your own. This is a plain African cigarette, very strong, that has some sort of wild grass in it along with the tobacco."

"Just what I need right now."

She pulls the pack from his fingers and lights herself a cigarette, takes a deep draw of the odd-smelling smoke, and tells Yirmi about the promise she made to get his consent to the transport of the bones already hidden among her cosmetics, adding that even if he objects, she is determined to take them with her. She feels the need to repay these scientists for their friendliness.

"Why would I object?" he says, surprised.

"Because they suggested this was illegal."

"So what if it's illegal?" he says, a note of hostility creeping into his voice. "If they catch you, they'll immediately forgive you, as always."

"What do you mean, as always?"

"Because you're an expert at saving yourself from pain and from blame, and you also chose, as you yourself admitted, a man willing to shield you from the world."

These hard words, delivered in an accusatory tone, add venom to the smoke seeping into her. She throws the cigarette to the floor and grinds it out with her shoe and stares at the family member she has known since childhood. Yirmi remains indifferent and self-absorbed as he pulls the wool blanket over his bare legs and takes another pleasurable drag at his cigarette.

Tears of hurt well in her eyes.

How can she be accused of protecting herself from pain if she came all the way to Africa to see him? And if he feels that she also knows how to enjoy the visit, there's no contradiction in that. She is a curious woman, always fascinated by people. But her true purpose was to be with him, to listen with patience and sympathy to his every word. And even when he aroused her anger and resistance, because of his blindness in the past and stubbornness in the present, never for a moment did she forget his misery.

His bent head moves slightly.

"Anger?" he mutters, but still does not look at her directly.

That's right, anger and defiance, she reiterates, her voice choking, rising to a kind of wail. Instead of hiding his wretched obsession with that roof from her sister, and instead of humiliating himself, and indirectly her too, in a fruitless attempt to win sympathy from a suicidal pregnant young woman just to give meaning to the friendly fire, which was no more than a random stupid absurdity, he should have reconciled himself to that absence of meaning, and his obligation should have been something else entirely.

"Something else?" His face is twisted with mockery.

Yes. Because even if Shuli suppressed her womanliness after the death of her son, his duty was to fight for it, and not to use her withdrawal as an excuse to wipe away his whole biography and identity and the world he grew up in, and the history that has been and the history that will be. His duty was to fight for Shuli, for her sexuality and her desire. To console her instead of helping her extinguish herself. So she could live and not die.

Yirmi looks up in horror at the tearful, wailing woman who continues to pour out accusations as if her mind had lost control of her lips. He surely never anticipated that his tolerant and attentive guest would rise up at the moment of departure and suggest that he was to blame for her sister's death.

Now she is trembling and sobbing with fright over her brazen onslaught. He stands up, puts out the stub of his cigarette and crumbles it between his fingers, wary of getting nearer to her.

"Come on," he says heavily, "it's late, and you're tired. I'll take you back."

But Daniela refuses to budge. On the contrary, she defiantly takes off the windbreaker and also her shoes. Because just as the Palestinian roof had a magnetic effect on him, so, too, has this infirmary on her: a strange place, but not dangerous. For all his own suicidal illusions he had to know that a Palestinian woman who had brought him something to drink would let no harm come to him. Hospitality remains holier than revenge. And she trusts his hospitality and knows he will not touch her even if under cover of darkness she continues to remove before him all of her clothes, as she is now doing, item by item, until she is lying in his bed naked, covered with a blanket. Because this is how she wants to mourn the lost womanhood of her sister.

He recoils, agitated. For the first time since her arrival she thinks his self-control is about to give way. But she still trusts him even as he comes near her in the darkness and suddenly resembles a great terrifying ape, even when he lifts up the blanket and looks at her nakedness, the sheer nakedness of a weeping older woman and is perhaps reminded of what he abandoned and of his guilt about her sister. And then he closes his eyes, and as if bowing in obeisance, he flutters his lips on her bare breasts, then groans and bites her shoulder, and quickly, gently covers her up again. A moment later, he leaves the room.

YA'ARI IMMEDIATELY REMOVES his hands from the controls, to prevent any accidental shifting of the elevator. Don't move, he calls to the trapped expert, we'll get you out of there. And you be careful too, he yells angrily at the young lawyer, who looks on in horror at the little woman whose leg is caught somewhere between the counterweight and the separation bars, and don't you move either or touch anything.

Gottlieb apparently saw the flashlight tumble down the shaft, because as Ya'ari fumbles for his cell phone, the manufacturer's voice cries out from the depths, What is it, Ya'ari? Did the lawyer fall? But Ya'ari, who has found his phone, does not shout back so as not to frighten the residents. With quivering fingers he dials Gottlieb's cell and informs him that his stepdaughter is trapped in the shaft. And since he does not know her exact location, he orders that no elevator be moved and says to call the fire department. Not the fire department, Gottlieb objects immediately, they'll wake up the whole street with their sirens and cause mayhem in the building, for no reason. No, habibi, we're going to rescue the little one ourselves. My Nimer and I, and even you, have enough skill and experience to know what we can handle and what we can't. Forty years ago I myself stumbled into a shaft like this, and you can see with your own eyes that I got out safely. And so Gottlieb wants him now to be practical and logical as always, and determine his precise location so the technician won't have to climb any more stairs than necessary.

Ya'ari trains his light between the separation bars, at the counterweight pinning the leg, and sees the outline of the body and the red woolen scarf. The quiet sobbing of the woman mingled with the lamentation of the wind rattles him. What do you feel, Rachel? Tell me. He tries to get her to answer, but she only keeps murmuring, Abba'leh, Abba'leh.

Finally the outer door on the thirteenth floor is opened, and Nimer, who arrived by the stairs, out of breath, decides first thing to get the lawyer out of there. With a monkeylike agility that belies his age, he lowers himself over the elevator track, orders the attorney to grab hold of his hand, and with one strong pull drags him up the side of the shaft and hauls him onto the floor of the building. Gottlieb told me to get you out too, he says to Ya'ari. No, says Ya'ari adamantly, I'm not moving from here until we rescue her. I'm part of this.

Gottlieb, meanwhile, has reactivated the big central elevator and loaded into it the technician's toolbox, and is now sailing upward on its roof like the helmsman of a great ship, coming to a halt near the twelfth floor at a spot allowing access to the trapped woman.

Only now, in the reassuring presence of her stepfather and employer, does she end her cries of pain to respond to his questions.

"What happened, Rolaleh?" he says, attempting a joke, "you decided to take a nighttime stroll on the walls of the shaft?"

"I fell, Gottlieb, and my leg got caught."

"This is what happens, Rachel, when you take the Ya'ari family's winds too seriously."

"My leg hurts, really badly."

"We'll free it up right away and get you out of here; just don't move."

"I'm afraid my leg is gone."

"Gone where, by itself?" he continues in the same jocular tone. "It's not going anywhere without you. And you can rest easy, because I took out not one but two insurance policies on you, and any minute Nimer will get into the big elevator to take off a side panel and free up your foot. Don't worry, you'll still be able to dance at the wedding."

"Whose wedding, Gottlieb, what are you talking about?"

"Yours, of course."

"There won't be any wedding."

"Yes, there will, and even I'll dance."

"So you are suddenly a dancer?"

"Only at your wedding."

Nimer in the meantime has walked down two flights of stairs, opened the door of the cab and slid into the big elevator with Gottlieb waiting on the roof. Acting on instructions shouted by his employer, he swiftly opens up the side to get to the trapped expert. From above, lit by the beam of Ya'ari's flashlight, the technician emerging from the elevator looks like a prehistoric man at the entrance to his cave, as he signals to Ya'ari to inch his elevator up a bit to free the counterweight, then pulls in the delicate creature still wrapped in her red wool scarf. And the manufacturer brings the elevator down safely.

In the lobby, anxious and agitated, wait not only the engineer of the construction company and the lawyer and the head of the residents' committee and the night watchman but also a few curious tenants, who woke from the noise and came to witness the excitement. The expert, her foot bleeding, is laid down on a blanket provided by the guard. Ya'ari has meanwhile come down in the left-hand elevator and returned it to automatic control, and within minutes three of the four elevators are again functioning, and the groaning of the winds returns in full force.

Since Gottlieb has no faith in the efficiency of public rescue services, he declines to call an ambulance, and carries the childlike figure of the wounded woman in his arms to his big car, to drive her to a nearby emergency room.

"Just don't tell me I'm to blame for her fall," the lawyer says defensively to Ya'ari.

"You're not to blame for her fall," Ya'ari answers with disdain, "but you are to blame for not believing what was shown to you."

"So what happens now?" Kidron asks Ya'ari, his face pale.

"What happens is what I told you. The design and manufacture are in order, but the construction company is at fault, so now you can finally leave me alone."

A FEW SECONDS after being snatched from her sleep, Daniela realizes that she is hearing the actual voices of two Africans, a boy and a woman, who have entered the adjoining room. She is wearing her brassiere and blouse; she remembers putting them on again moments after her brother-in-law fled the room in panic. Only the windbreaker still lies on the floor, and she shakes it out and wraps it around her before cautiously opening the door between the two rooms. An African boy is lying on the treatment table, and an older woman stands by his side, apparently his mother.

She smiles her silent thanks at the pair for waking her up. Now she can slip back into her room, so that Sijjin Kuang can wake her there.

But when she leaves the infirmary into bright morning light and steps onto the wet glistening grass, she sees from a distance the stately figure of the Sudanese, who is coming to rouse her after not finding her in her room.

"They are waiting for you there," Daniela says, red-faced, to the nurse, who is too discreet to interrogate her as to how and why she spent the night at the infirmary, and simply reminds her that they are short of time.

With a pang of conscience she enters the kitchen. Morning activity is at full tilt, and all signs of the festive meal have been removed. Yirmi is sitting in his shabby khaki suit at one of the small tables, bargaining in sign language with a tall Masai warrior in a red robe who has brought him a sheep and a lamb. He waves warmly at his sister-in-law. You have to hurry, Daniela, he calls to her, the rain last night damaged the dirt road.

She quickly climbs the stairs to the room she left the night before, and viewing the disorderly sheets she gets the feeling that some stranger was in the room and even in her bed, but she has no time now for fantasies and delusions. She must depart properly from a room that was after all quite adequate, return it in good order to its regular occupant. After washing her face and closing her suitcase, she folds the bedding, taking care to do so meticulously. Then she scrubs the sink and toilet, so as not to leave any unpleasantness behind. For a moment she considers getting someone to carry her bag down, but knows she is capable of wheeling it down the stairs herself.

You are late, Yirmi tells her as he rushes her as though she were a schoolgirl. In his look, in the tone of his voice, there are no signs that he is troubled or bears her any grudge. Instead, there's a new friendliness, mixed with compassion for the visitor who is returning to a dangerous place. She is surprised to discover that the hurried pace he firmly imposes on her leaves her no time to eat breakfast calmly in her usual spot nor even to say a proper goodbye to the old African groundskeeper. Yirmiyahu has prepared for her trip — just as on the night she arrived — a bag of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. This is for you, he says, handing them over with a smile, just don't be late, and don't get lost on the way back. I promised Amotz I'd get you home on time. And he carries her small suitcase to the Land Rover.

Sijjin Kuang is already seated at the wheel, and in the seat beside her is the African boy from the infirmary, who needs the space for his bandaged leg. Yirmi sets the suitcase in the backseat and gestures for her to sit where she has been accustomed. For a moment she feels insulted by the speed at which she is being dispatched and by the backseat allotted her.

But all of a sudden her brother-in-law hugs her tight. All things considered, thank you for the visit. You didn't only torment me, you also made me happy. And if I at least convinced you that you two don't have to worry about me, then your visit accomplished something positive.

"Not to worry?" she whispers with disappointment.

"No," he says firmly, "worry about each other in Israel, which is a natural place for perpetual worry. And if you are nonetheless seized by worry for me, too, then send Amotz over; for him, I won't have to prepare any speeches, because you'll have told him everything. Only he should come without newspapers or candles, and we'll tour the area."

And he strokes her head gently and helps her get into the vehicle.

In a quick clean break the Sudanese driver exits the farm, and since the African boy has taken from Daniela the seat to which her age entitles her, she finds herself yet again the companion of boxes. But her frustration over the backseat is not just technical. The Israeli visitor had planned to talk to Sijjin Kuang on their last ride together, to discuss the future of the Israeli administrator, whom three days ago she had called, in a blunt and startling fashion, spoiled.

But how to talk from the backseat amid deafening engine noise? In the end, she must sit and watch the back of an African boy who has an infection spreading under his bandages. With any luck, a clinic will be found that can save his leg.

The road winds about the forest that the two women rode through on the first night. Then the trees looked dark and bristly, but by day, washed by the rain, they are endearingly green and peaceful, and she is gripped with sadness over her silent ride and missed opportunity. She reaches for the driver's thin shoulder, leaning forward: please, may we stop here for a minute?

Sijjin Kuang agrees reluctantly and stops near a barren patch in the forest and shuts off the engine, so that Daniela can get out and stretch after her unsettled night. The boy is also pleased, and he hops on his good leg between the trees and cuts himself a branch with a knife. Only Sijjin Kuang stays by the car. She lifts the hood and checks the oil, then adds a little water to the radiator. Suddenly Daniela is flooded with admiration for the serious young black woman, and she returns to the car and says straight out, Sijjin Kuang, I had a dream about you.

The Sudanese nurse looks frightened. Perhaps according to her faith, a white person's dream about a black person has some evil power? But Daniela is quick to calm her. It was a good dream; I saw you with us in Jerusalem, seeking love and finding it.

Sijjin Kuang is shocked. She shuts the hood of the car with a loud clang and wipes her hands with a towel, and with a wise smile she asks the dreaming woman, "You are sending me all the way to Jerusalem to find love?"

"If it is love," Daniela answers softly, "then why not?"

"And Jeremy, your brother-in-law — have you convinced him to return to Jerusalem?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"That it is good for him to stay here."

The African boy hops back to the car with the big branch in his hand. But Sijjin Kuang doesn't let him bring it into the car, and reluctantly he throws it away.

SINCE THE TECHNICIAN was so skillful in the rescue operation, Ya'ari stays with him until he finishes reattaching the opened side of the big elevator. But putting things together is harder than taking things apart, and Gottlieb's absence slows the process down. Ya'ari himself is not familiar with the fine details of the elevator that his firm designed and cannot offer advice. The night watchman is not much of a conversationalist. So little remains for Ya'ari to do but doze in Gottlieb's armchair near the watchman's table, exuding silent solidarity with the middle-aged technician.

The first rays of dawn, which illuminate the oversize glass doors of the tower's lobby, also open the eyes of Ya'ari, who sees the technician replacing the last of the tools in his box and locking it. The elevator designer rises heavily from his chair to return the cab to group control, but the worker has beaten him to it. And the elevator lifts off at once to the early-rising tenant on the thirtieth floor. Come, Rafi, Ya'ari says with affection, I'll take you home. No need, the man says. I'll wait for the first bus. But Ya'ari insists and drives him along the seacoast to a neighborhood in the south of the city, a place where people get up early, not far from Abu Kabir. The technician, silent all the way there, invites Ya'ari as a gesture of gratitude to come up to his apartment for a morning cup of coffee, and Ya'ari, who can't decide whether to go home to make up for lost sleep or go on to the office, accepts, in part to examine the worker's apartment and decide whether there was anything to that word hybrid, or if it was said only in jest.

The clean two-room flat is furnished in good taste. In the front room are shelves with books, mainly in Russian. There is nothing Middle Eastern about the upholstery of the sofa or the art reproductions hanging on the wall. But the coffee prepared by the host is clearly Arab in aroma and taste. A young pregnant woman, who has woken up in the other room and now brings soft ring-shaped rolls to go with the coffee made by her mate, contributes no further clue.

Ya'ari questions the man about Gottlieb's qualities as an employer, and to his surprise finds that the technician appreciates him. Admittedly the wages he pays are mediocre compared with salaries paid by others, but because he is always present on the factory floor and circulates among the workers, he adds drama and tension to the work, and so the time passes more quickly.

"So what is your name, really," Ya'ari wants to know before leaving, "Nimer or Rafi?"

The technician grins. "That depends on who is asking."

"When I asked you, you said Rafi, so what does that say about me?"

"True," the man admits, "I said Rafi, but now that we've worked together all night, Nimer is okay too."

His cell phone rings: the voice of Moran, who was let go half an hour ago and is on his way back to Tel Aviv. His first question: is his mother back yet? Not until the evening, his father answers matter-of-factly, but after you change clothes and kiss your wife and children, please go to the office and take the reins. I'm going home to sleep, and you've done enough loafing. And he summarizes for his son the events of the Night of the Winds.

When he gets to his home in the suburbs, his eyes barely open enough to see the tree in the front yard, the cell phone rings again, this time Francisco, reporting that his father is running a fever.

"How high?"

"Thirty-eight point five."

"Maybe take it again?"

"I already took it twice, it was exactly the same."

"Okay, I'm on my way."

"Should I telephone Doctor Zaslanski?"

"Have pity on him and wait a little while. The poor man is eighty years old, so let him sleep."

According to Ya'ari's instructions, any rise in his father's temperature up to thirty-eight degrees Celsius the Filipinos are to attend to themselves; if it's more than that, they should call in Ya'ari and the old man's personal physician, his childhood friend Doctor Zaslanski.

Ya'ari washes his hands and looks longingly at the bed he abandoned in the middle of the night. He feels a truly strong desire to curl up in the white down quilt.

But the doctor has warned him that Parkinson's disease can get worse during a high fever, and the last thing Ya'ari wants today is illness complicated by rekindled love. So without shaving or changing his work clothes, he drives to his father's house to check the boundary between the physical and the mental.

The old man's eyes glisten. The fever imparts an attractive ruddiness to his cheeks. He sits up in bed, propped by pillows, and asks right away about the winds in the tower. Ya'ari tells him about the organ holes left in the shaft by chance or on purpose.

"This is how it ends," old Ya'ari says with resignation. "When you treat foreign construction workers poorly, they leave a little souvenir in the building before going back to their country, and now try hunting them down in Romania or China."

"Why are you so sure it was done deliberately? Maybe it's just by accident?"

"Accident?" the old man sneers dismissively, "accident is always the easy way out for someone too lazy to think."

The son is too exhausted to argue with the father. Doctor Zaslanski will not arrive for another hour, and since Hilario is already awake, Ya'ari asks Kinzie to change the sheets and make him a fresh bed in his old childhood room. A little nap of an hour wouldn't hurt. The Filipinos are happy to carry out this request. You are very tired, Mister Amotz, they chide him. Instead of your wife's trip giving you some rest, it has tired you out. What time does she land?

"Five in the afternoon."

"You want a clean pajama of your father?"

"No."

His childhood bed gives off a sweet smell, perhaps from something Southeast Asian. The room is familiar and foreign all at once. Still standing is the bookcase they bought him when he entered high school, and his old chair is still in place by the desk. But there's a mishmash of other furnishings from other rooms, such as the night table that stood next to his mother's bed, and a wicker basket from the bathroom, and there are also various accessories from the Philippines — colorful posters and lamps, and a real or fake telephone in the shape of a dragon. Ya'ari takes off his clothes and gets into bed in his undershorts and long-sleeved T-shirt, and hopes for a sound and soothing sleep that will render him fit for the reunion with his wife.

He drops off at once, and his sleep is heavy, though at times real voices drift through. He hears the reassuring bass voice of Doctor Zaslanski, familiar from his childhood, explaining what to give the old man for his fever, adding, Don't worry, let Amotz sleep, don't wake him. And Ya'ari clings to his blanket and silently thanks his childhood doctor, and sinks deeper into the marvelous slumber.

And he dreams. Workers carry a mass of metal and drop it with a clang on the floor and speak Romanian or Chinese. And here he is again in the shaft of the winds, but this time the shaft does not extend up high but lies flat like a tunnel, and the elevators are like cars in a coal mine, and he can walk alongside them as they move. But instead of coal they transport tenants dressed in black, wearing glittering gold chains around their necks. And Ya'ari escorts them, flashlight in hand. He walks between the fencing and the tracks and suddenly feels an urgent need to urinate. But where? Cars filled with tenants pass by incessantly, emanating from a source of light and riding into the darkness, and because the cars have no roofs, and the tenants are all looking in his direction, he has a hard time finding a hidden corner. On the side of the shaft he notices a tangled spider web, and he edges toward it and decides to wash it away with the powerful stream from his bursting bladder.

He wakes up in time and rushes to the toilet. Through the living room window he sees a different light. It's afternoon. At the end of the corridor, near the entrance to the apartment, sits Gottlieb's piston.

"What is this?" he demands. "They delivered my father's piston here?"

"Yes, two workers brought it around noon, because Gottlieb says there's no room for it at the factory."

"Bastard," Ya'ari grumbles, "suddenly he has no room for the piston. Why didn't you wake me? I would have made them take it back."

"It would not have helped," Francisco answers evenly, "because your father agreed. The piston made him so happy."

Ya'ari sighs and leans against the wall, drained.

"How is he?"

"He is getting better. His fever is going down."

Ya'ari looks at his watch. Unbelievable, three-thirty in the afternoon.

"How could you let me sleep like that?" he scolds Francisco.

"Your father wouldn't let us wake you." Francisco says, smiling, showing all his white teeth. "But only till four," he said, "so you don't miss your wife."

THIS TIME, THE small plane lands far from the terminal in Nairobi, and a dilapidated bus is brought over to fetch the passengers. Daniela, who hoped for a direct transit to the next flight, is forced to go once more through passport control and customs. How long will you stay here? asks a policeman, who is also the customs officer. I didn't come here, she answers with a sad smile. I am just passing through, I will stay for only two hours. Nevertheless they open her suitcase and search it, and even remove the contents of her toiletry bag, but the dry bones do not arouse any interest.

And again she goes through the metal detectors, and wheels her suitcase behind her till she locates the same teeming cafeteria where she can wait for the flight home. The layover is not six hours but this time she is not the same confident woman, carving out a territory for herself. She doesn't dare pull over two extra chairs, to put her feet up on one and her bag and suitcase on the other. She makes do with an empty seat in the heart of the hubbub, crowded among other people's tables, and when she tells the waiter with a faint smile, Just coffee, she bows her head.

Fear and anxiety in anticipation of returning to Israel. Merely imagining the possibility that Amotz will discover what happened fills her with horror. That strange look of Yirmiyahu's when she left him — what did it mean? Anger? Hope? Shock? He did not say a word about what had happened that night, perhaps because he felt sorry for her. And although ordinarily she hates the idea of anyone feeling sorry for her, now it is what she wants. Leaving aside the bite on the shoulder, the mere fact that her breasts were touched by his lips means that she gave him, out of pity, a deed of ownership. Now she is in his hands, whether he returns to Israel or not. And maybe precisely because of his sense of honor, and his deep ties to her and Amotz, he will refrain from coming back. Who knows, the strange thought occurs to her, maybe this was her hidden agenda: to prevent him from coming back, so he could not poison her family, her children and grandchildren, with his friendly fire.

The waiter sets down her cup of coffee and requests immediate payment, as he is about to conclude his shift. She pays and tips him well, but is unable to lift the cup to her lips, as if it contained bitter medicine. Crowded and cramped between Africans and Europeans, she suddenly hears some Hebrew. She doesn't lift her head. In this grimy cafeteria, she wants total anonymity. God willing, time will numb her shame.

The digital display now shows a delay of half an hour in the takeoff for Tel Aviv, which pleases her. Two young Hasidic men dressed in black — obviously local emissaries of Chabad who have managed to get into the terminal — circulate among the tables scrutinizing the clientele, seeking Jewish passengers. They take a good look at her too, and she quickly averts her eyes. To avoid giving them any pretext for approaching her, she pulls out the novel she bought for the trip and opens it without enthusiasm to the final chapter.

She counts the pages remaining. Only twenty-five. Then she skims through them to check the amount of dialogue and the length of the paragraphs. Finally she starts to read, first returning to the last two pages of the previous chapter to reconstruct the context. There is a new tension in the voice of the author, who writes in the first person and identifies completely with the heroine. But it's still hard to decipher the nature of this tension. In any event, the irony and cynicism are muted, and gone are the tiresome descriptions of the landscape, which in previous chapters seemed to have been written more out of literary duty than to serve a narrative or psychological purpose. Apparently something grave is about to happen. Perhaps the author is planning the heroine's suicide. And in fact, why not? A vacuous and clueless young woman might just try to kill herself. Some sort of pain is suddenly apparent between the lines, particularly in places where the text seems most minimalist and unclear. The pages go quickly, and then, for no reason, slow down. For a moment she flips back to the beginning of the book, recalling that there was some hint there that might explain what would happen in the final pages. She feels that the young and pretentious author is gearing up for an absurd twist that readers of her own age and spiritual temperament will happily accept, but not a serious reader like Daniela, who is already rebelling against it. Nevertheless she takes a sip of the cold coffee, and as if hypnotized continues to turn the pages. She is helpless, caught in the novel's spidery web until she reads the last lines, which are blurred by a flood of tears she did not at all expect.

She closes the book and slides it into the outer pocket of her suitcase. After all the effort and the emotion she feels hungry. The length of the flight's delay holds steady on the digital display. The cafeteria becomes even more crowded, and there is no hope that the waiter rushing between tables will notice her now that she has paid him. She remembers that the candy kiosk is not far away, but she has no desire for sweets. On the contrary, they'll just make her feel sick. She remembers the sandwiches prepared by her brother-in-law, who forced her out of concerns real or imagined to miss breakfast. She returned the thermos to Sijjin Kuang but packed the food in her suitcase, and she now takes out a meat sandwich and bites into it, glancing around her.

One of the young yeshiva students has sat down at a nearby table, laid out a cloth napkin, and placed upon it a bottle of mineral water, and now he too takes a bite of a homemade sandwich. He notices her picnic and smiles, as if they have a shared family secret that will permit him soon to approach her. He chews with great deliberation. If he were aware of the animal provenance of the flesh she is consuming, he might not spring from his seat toward her beckoning finger.

The young man is not Israeli but American, and his halting Hebrew is heavily accented. She speaks to him firmly, in the tone that an impatient teacher takes with a student of whom she expects little.

"Do you by chance have a Bible with you?"

"A Bible?" he is shocked. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" she says, laughing. "If you have a Bible in your bag, I'd like to look up something quickly and then give it right back to you."

"A whole Bible?"

"Yes, but in Hebrew."

"The whole Bible I don't have. But maybe you want to see Psalms? I have Psalms."

"Not Tehillim," she says, imitating his pronunciation. "A complete Bible."

"What exactly are you looking for?"

"It doesn't matter. Do you have one or not?"

"I don't have a complete Bible," he admits in defeat.

"If you don't, well, it's no tragedy."

"But I can give you a prayer book, which has many chapters from the Bible in it."

"No prayer book or chapters," she answers impatiently, because she realizes that she will not easily get rid of the young man whose thin, soulful face is adorned with the first signs of blond beard, and who intends ardently to pursue the religious obligation he has happened to incur in an airport on an African afternoon.

"Okay," he says, after considering a moment. "Wait for me a minute and I'll find you a complete Bible. There's time before the flight to Tel Aviv."

He quickly disappears into the big crowd, perhaps to seek the help of his friend, and about ten minutes later returns and presents her with a big new Bible, apparently purchased just for her — a dual-language Bible, Hebrew and English.

The English version is not the King James, but the Hebrew is the same antique Hebrew she has been looking for. She remembered it as Jeremiah Chapter 42, but she finds what she wanted in Chapter 44. And she reads it silently, her insides ringing, as the American yeshiva boy, his face translucent with piety, stands beside her, fascinated and nervous.

Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will set My face against you for evil, even to cut off all of Judah. And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have turned their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed, in the land of Egypt shall they fall. They shall fall by the sword, and shall be consumed by famine, they shall die, from the smallest even unto the greatest, by the sword and by famine, and they shall be an execration, and a desolation, and a curse, and a mockery. For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem: by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. And of the remnant of Judah that have come into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, none shall escape or remain to return to the land of Judah, to which they have a desire to return, and dwell there. For none shall return, except a few survivors.

Then all the men who knew that their wives made offerings unto other gods, and all the women who were present, a great assembly, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to thee. But we will certainly perform every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to make offerings unto the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then had we plenty of bread, and were well, and suffered no misfortune. But ever since we stopped making offerings unto the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink-offerings unto her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.

AMOTZ ALREADY SEES his wife from afar, but Daniela can't yet spot him among the crush of welcomers. Out of habit she heads toward the right-hand exit at that slow, even pace he likes, pulling her little wheeled suitcase behind her. He backs away and circumnavigates the crowd, and for some reason there is a new heaviness in his step. So rare is it for her to be the one away and he the one left behind, that he has an urge to delay their reunion, perhaps so she'll sense that he's not always on call when she wants him.

Surprisingly, she, too, does not stop to wait for him, but keeps walking, apparently absentmindedly, and when he intercepts her from behind, as Moran did to him at the army base, his experienced hands, gripping her hips, can sense the sadness and exhaustion of both her body and her mind. And so, as he brings her head close to him, his lips brush not her mouth but her forehead, just the way she kissed him at the moment of parting, seven days ago.

"Done?" he half asks, half declares.

"Done," she confirms, and her eyes, which gleam at the sight of him, are already surprised. "What's this? In my honor you didn't shave today?"

"Not in your honor, I just didn't have time. At night we dealt with the winds in the tower, and in the morning Francisco needed me because my father ran a high fever, and while waiting for Doctor Zaslanski I fell asleep in Hilario's room, and then I had to rush to the airport."

"And you didn't shower?"

"I can't shower there, with all of Abba's stuff in the tub."

"You can only sleep there."

"Sleep and dream."

"And what about your father?"

"His fever went down."

"And you didn't go to the office today?"

"They let Moran out of his confinement this morning, and I sent him to the office to replace me."

"So, in short," she says, gently touching his stubble, "you had a wild time."

"If that's what you call a wild time."

"You know, in work clothes and unshaven you actually look young and cute."

"So I'll stay like this."

"And the winds?"

"Just as I thought, the fault is in the shaft. There were lips and holes in the wall, left there by accident or maybe on purpose, that have the effect of a church organ."

"A church?" she says, laughing, "so what will the tenants do? Cross themselves and pray?"

"The construction company should pray for mercy from the insurance company. Gottlieb and I are off the hook. But wait a second, Daniela, we have to call Moran and tell him you landed. This time, maybe since he was sitting in the army camp with nothing to do, he worried about you even more than I did."

"More than you?" she says, slightly stung.

"After hearing your voice and Yirmi's from Dar es Salaam, I calmed down completely."

"And did you miss me?"

"I didn't have time to miss you." He smiles, knowing this hurts her, attempting to prick this thin crust of estrangement that he did not anticipate. He unlocks the car with the remote control, and instead of putting the suitcase in the trunk, he seats it like a passenger in the back.

"As it happens I did have time to miss you," she says seriously as she buckles her seat belt, "and also to be angry."

"Angry? About what?"

"That you didn't come with me."

He is surprised and not surprised.

"And I thought that's what you really wanted. Quiet time for yourself. To revive childhood memories, undisturbed by someone who doesn't belong."

"After thirty-seven years of marriage," she bursts out, "it's high time you understood that my sister is not only mine but yours, and Yirmi, who is stuck out there, is your affair too. You should have insisted, not let me go alone."

"But how?" he says dumbfounded, "it was you… you…"

"You… you…" she mimics him, "yes, but I'm also allowed to be wrong sometimes, and you could have understood and prevented the mistake."

He grins at this. "How could I understand that you were mistaken, if for thirty-seven years you've made sure to convince me that you always know what's right and what's not when it comes to the family?"

She falls silent, only looking at him with a pained expression.

"But what happened there? Why was it a mistake to go there alone?"

"Later."

"At least give me a hint."

"Soon. First you. Tell me about the children, and what happened with Moran and the army."

"He blew off his reserve duty again, but this time they caught him. It was the adjutant of the battalion, an old friend of his from officers' training, who made sure he was confined, and they're going to put him on trial for his previous absences. In the end they'll probably strip him of his rank. That's it, Daniela, no more officers in the family."

"And in your opinion this is a tragedy?"

"Not a tragedy, just a small painful disgrace."

"Not in my opinion. I don't need any more military glory. You should know that Yirmi out there is not just grieving for Shuli, and she wasn't the one we talked about most of the time. He's bogged down in pain and rage over the Eyal story, with ramifications and private investigations we didn't know anything about. The 'friendly fire' you planted in his brain won't let him go."

"I planted in his brain? Me? What is this, you came home ready for combat? Excuse me, I didn't plant any fire, nor could I. He planted it himself. I just tried to soften 'shot by his own forces' with something that's maybe also slightly ironic…"

"Okay, don't get upset, maybe I was wrong."

"Your mistakes are coming at me so fast, I'm not used to it. What's going on?"

"Enough, let it go, I didn't mean to cast blame, just to express regret that you didn't come with me and help me deal with a difficult and miserable man. But not now. I'll try to explain later. Meanwhile, say a word about the grandchildren."

"Sweet."

"And Nofar?"

"Friendly for a change."

"You kept in touch?"

"Kept in touch?" he says, taking offense. "I personally took care of every family member. First Efrati, I made it possible for her to go to a party on Friday, and all night I babysat the kids who screamed and cried. And on Saturday I drove her and the children to Moran's base, and wandered around in the pouring rain with the kids to give her and Moran — I will elaborate later on — quality time. As for Nofar, I was with her in Jerusalem not once but twice. And on top of all this I had my father, who after you left turned into a lion in love and lassoed me into taking care of a private elevator belonging to an old flame of his, an amazing old lady in Jerusalem. You should have seen the way my father schlepped me back and forth. I was not just a devoted father and grandfather to them all but a good son too."

"So you really did have a wild time," she says with a smile.

"Too wild. Life overwhelmed me from every direction. But what's going on there, in Africa? When does Yirmi intend to come back?"

"He's not coming back. He doesn't even think about returning. Africa, he says, enables him to disengage from everything."

"What's that mean, disengage, and what's everything?" Ya'ari says dismissively. "Is there such a thing as everything? And even if there were, how is it possible to disengage from it? Forget it; Daniela, I know Yirmi no less well than you do. He has no choice, he'll come back in the end."

WHY DOES SHE suddenly find so oppressive the glaring urban milieu that surrounds her? The elephantine towers scattered about the Tel Aviv megalopolis, the giant advertisements morphing one into the next, the aggressive drivers to the right and left, entering and exiting the highways? Even the luxurious front seat in the big car flusters her, as if she still yearned for the backseat of a sputtering Land Rover driven by a sad woman from Sudan.

Her husband talks and she listens, but her attention wavers. Because he is used to her fascination with little details, he tries to convey moods and tones of voice, and weather and colors and smells, happy to recount his activities to her to prove his effectiveness and skill. So he loads his wife with every minutia, not even sparing her his discovery of an erotic video between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach.

"So what'd you do with it?"

"I put it back where it was. What am I going to do with a tape like that?"

"Nonetheless, you watched it."

"Only the beginning."

"And what was in the beginning?"

"What else? Some young woman, a little scared."

"So you really did live a wild life when I wasn't here," she says, sticking to her theme.

"And what about you?" he says in jest. "A wild death?"

"I fought against death," she says, seriously.

"What do you mean by that?"

"First finish your story."

"I've already covered the main points. But first let's get organized."

Their house is dark and cold, and she asks him to turn on the heat. Exhausted and sad, she doesn't linger in the kitchen with him but goes straight up to the bedroom, takes off her shoes, and plops down fully dressed on the unmade double bed that her husband abandoned in the middle of the night. The blanket brushes the floor, and his pajamas are in a heap near the pillow. But instead of feeling at home in the most familiar place in the world, she is unsettled by the many possessions around her. After her spartan lodgings in Africa, her bedroom seems stuffed with extraneous objects. Unnecessary closets and shelves, baskets filled with empty perfume bottles and dried-out compacts. Even the family photos on the walls — she and her husband, children and grandchildren, and the last picture of her nephew — seem excessive in number.

Amotz carries up the suitcase and sets it in a corner, sits down by her feet, and strokes and massages them.

Her eyes close.

"You're not hungry?"

"No. Is the water hot yet?"

"Almost. I turned on the electric boiler, in case the solar heater isn't enough."

"You wash up, too, please."

"Why?" he says disingenuously, "you told me that like this, dirty and in work clothes, I'm younger and cuter."

"Young and cute, but wash up anyway."

He leans over her and kisses her face and neck, stepping up the tempo of his caresses. She is soft, passive, but when he reaches to unbutton her blouse, hoping to bury his face between her breasts, she grabs the masculine hand and stops it short.

"And what happened to that real desire?"

"It exists, it'll come."

"Why not now? What's wrong with now?"

"Now I'm not all here yet. Wait for me."

Disappointed, he continues to kiss her face, her neck, his stubble scratching the bare smoothness of her skin. She closes her eyes in pain and pushes him away.

"Either shave now, or forget the kisses till tomorrow."

"For just kisses it's not worth shaving," he says sullenly, gets up and paces the room restlessly.

"Tell me, what's this excavation team about? What are they digging for?"

She tells him about the team and its scientists, about the evening visit to the dig, about the eating machine that didn't fit into the evolutionary process, and also about Dr. Roberto Kukiriza, who asked her to smuggle prehistoric bones for inspection at Abu Kabir.

"In violation of the law?"

"What could happen?"

"Where are they?"

"In my toiletry bag. But there's nothing to see. Just three dry bones of an extremely early monkey."

But he insists, and quickly finds the bag in her suitcase, extracts the three bones, feels and smells them, holds them close to his eyes.

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"And if they had caught you and arrested you? Prisons in primitive dictatorships are worse than cemeteries."

"You would have found yourself a new wife, a better one," she says, smiling, aching with remorse.

"There is such a person?"

"Of course. There's always someone better."

He now notices the dual-language Bible in her open suitcase.

"What's this? You took a Bible with you on the trip?"

She tells him about the American yeshiva boy, and why she asked for a Hebrew Bible at the airport. He listens with amazement.

"The Book of Jeremiah? I don't understand. What does Yirmi want with that? Is he for him or against him?"

"Against him, totally against him."

"That is to say, against himself a little too."

She wants to drop the subject. The water is hot, she says, go take a shower downstairs, and I'll bathe here. But dim the lights a bit.

And only when she hears the water flowing on the first floor does she enter her shower to check the bite on her shoulder. The teeth marks have already grown indistinct, and all that remains is a reddish crescent, explainable in any number of ways. Nevertheless, she does not want her husband, who knows every inch of her body, to examine it. And she soaps up for a long time, till her flesh grows red.

She puts on a nightgown and gets into bed. Picks up a copy of Ha'aretz and recalls the burning of the newspapers and lets the paper drop.

Her husband ascends to the bedroom, wearing not pajamas but running shorts. His face is still unshaven.

When she wakes up at midnight, she does not find her husband beside her in bed. She goes down to the living room and sees him sitting in total darkness watching a movie on television.

"What, you're not sleeping?"

"No, I slept all day, and now I'm awake as the devil."

He is a devil, she thinks, and in the darkness the shining screen lends his face a mysterious aura. The devil can still discover, she thinks with dismay and goes to the dining table, where the Hanukkah menorah sits alone, bereft of candles. "What's this? The holiday is over?"

"Not over," he says, "tonight is the last candle. But you fell asleep so quickly."

"So how many candles do we light?"

"Eight. Eight."

"Let's light them, then. I didn't light a single one in Africa."

"In the end he really did burn all the candles you brought?"

"Not in the end, at the beginning." And she takes the box and wonders, "how is it there are so many candles left? Didn't you light any at home? After all, you like playing with fire."

"I lit them here only once — the third candle, with Nofar. The rest burned in other homes. At my father's, and with Efrati and the kids, and at the army dining hall when I visited Moran, and even at Gottlieb's factory. I didn't need to go home and light them by myself."

"So come now." She brightens suddenly. "It's not too late." And she sticks eight candles of various colors into the menorah, adding a red shammash.

"You do it," he says, not budging from his chair. "Because you didn't light a single candle, I'm letting you light all eight."

"All right, but turn down the TV, we can't make the blessing like this."

"You want us also to do the blessings?"

"Why not? As always."

"Then you do them. We live in feminist times, you're not exempt. There are women rabbis out there who go around in prayer shawls and phylacteries."

"But where are the blessings?"

"They're printed on the box."

"So simple and handy."

He lowers the sound on the television, but he leaves the picture on. She lights the shammash with a match, shares its flame with all the other candles, and reads the blessings by their light. Come, she orders him, now we'll sing. He rises reluctantly from the armchair. But please, he insists, just not "Maoz Tsur." It's a song Nofar also hates.

"What's to hate in a song like that?" she protests. "You sound like Yirmi."

"Like Yirmi or not like Yirmi, I don't like that song."

"But it won't do you any harm to sing it along with me, a duet."

— Haifa, 2004–2007