"Despair, despair," the word sears her mouth, and the Sudanese watches her, mesmerized. "The despair of pain, the kind that killed my sister. You know exactly what I am talking about."
17.
"SO IF THAT'S the case," Ya'ari says to the adjutant, "at least let me consult with your prisoner about something urgent at work."
"What kind of work?"
"Elevators that we are designing for the Ministry of Defense."
"It can't wait till next week?"
"What's the problem? What am I asking for? For Moran to just have a glance at a sketch that I brought."
"Just a look, then. Not a full work session. Because dinner is beginning right now in the mess hall, and I promised the rabbi of the base that I would bring him some reservists for the recruits' candle-lighting."
Ya'ari pulls his son into a corner and anxiously takes his nocturnal sketch from his pocket. Don't look at the details, he warns, just get a general impression. I haven't shown this to anyone in the office yet, but I couldn't hold back and showed it to the new deputy director of the building department, who knows nothing about elevators.
Moran brings the drawing closer to the light.
"And what did the deputy say?"
"Nothing, really ... she made a joke that the rider would have to be very thin ... even though there's room here for two passengers."
Moran is immersed in the sketch. His father looks at him nervously, fearing that deep down his son is snickering at him.
"Strange. How did you get the idea for a corner elevator?"
"It came at night ... conceived in a dream ... maybe, because Imma isn't beside me now at night, I'm a bit less calm and more creative. And maybe I came across something similar in some old magazine. But why does the source matter to you, and who cares what inspired it? The main thing is, tell me frankly—does it look feasible, or did I draw something absurd? I don't want to look stupid, with a useless idea."
Moran moves the diagram from side to side. The adjutant straightens his uniform, puts on a battle jacket, sets a beret on his head, adjusts his epaulets and watches impatiently.
"I don't dismiss the idea."
"Really?" Ya'ari is flooded with joy. "It's feasible?"
"I don't know ... we have to check it out. But in principle, I don't dismiss the idea. Could be that this is the right direction. Because otherwise we'll be in trouble. You saw for yourself how the deviation in the shaft makes us already minus ten centimeters at this stage, so that when we get up to the roof and discover that they shaved half a meter in width from the shaft, we'll have another bone to pick with the contractor."
"That was exactly my reasoning," his father says with enthusiasm. "Instead of trying to squeeze together everything that's already been designed, we'll just shove the damn fifth one into the south corner."
"Has anyone at the Defense Ministry explained what it's intended for?"
"Nothing. Total secrecy. More than twenty years we've been working with them, and all of a sudden, a mystery. And over what? An elevator? In that case, we'll also be a bit mysterious in our design, and whoever insists on riding in it can please shrink and stand in the corner."
"Enough," calls the adjutant from the doorway. "Your quick glance has already turned into a full meeting, so please say goodbye now. The rabbi and the candles are waiting."
And he turns out the lights. In the sudden darkness Ya'ari hugs his son tight, and they go out into the night while the adjutant calls out to other people, officers from headquarters, female clerks, drivers, and maybe other soldiers who are confined to base.
Ya'ari, too, is drawn into the group advancing along a winding path marked by whitewashed stones. Really, why shouldn't he take part? The rabbi will be happy to show the recruits that even an old civilian has come to his candle-lighting, providing the soldiers with a feeling of brotherhood and deepening their identity and sense of belonging. Together with the group he enters a large dining hall packed with Ethiopians and Russians, blacks and whites, shaky new recruits battered by their first month of training. They sit crammed together at long tables where tin pots of tea are steaming alongside platters stacked with huge jelly doughnuts.
On a small stage stands a Hanukkah menorah fashioned of big copper shell casings from helicopter cannons. Four thick white candles stand at attention, dominated by their commandant, a giant red shammash.
The rabbi gestures for the reservists to come forward to the seats saved for them and asks them to silence their cell phones. Ya'ari prefers to remain in the doorway, where his cell begins to play its tune, compelling him to retreat outside, into the dark.
Efrat has finally returned home and demands to know where he has disappeared to.
"You won't believe where I am," he proudly declares. "I'm with Moran in Karkur. I brought him undershirts and underpants. But he's not with me at the moment. They took him to the mess hall to light candles."
The army rabbi, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, lights the shammash, but instead of proceeding immediately to intone the blessings, he takes the opportunity to begin with a sermon about the wonders and miracles of the holiday, waving the huge shammash like a torch.
"I don't get it. When did you leave the children?"
"About 4:30. That girl, your babysitter, didn't tell you?"
"But I don't understand why you decided to put Nadi to bed at such an hour."
"I didn't put him to bed. He fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV, and I just moved him to the bed."
"But why our bed and not his?"
"Because Neta was drawing in the children's room, and I didn't want the light to disturb him."
"If he's already asleep, nothing will disturb him," she scolds, "but what do you care if the light bothers him? Did you want to ruin my night on purpose?"
"To ruin your night on purpose?" Ya'ari is dumbfounded but tries to construct a logical response. "You just said a moment ago that no light would bother him, so even if I had put him in his own bed, he wouldn't have woken up."
"Be that as it may," she continues in the same angry, imperious tone, "why in our bed?"
Something has gone wrong for her, has wounded her, thinks Ya'ari. Maybe the world has stopped marveling at her beauty.
"And if it's your bed, why is it a tragedy?"
"Because he wet my blankets and sheet."
"Nadi still wets the bed? I didn't know."
"I very much hope that you really didn't know," she says, with a harsh sarcasm that he never imagined she was capable of.
Ya'ari is stunned. But he heeds his wife's warnings and avoids a harsh response; instead he speaks to the young woman with warmth and tenderness.
"Efrati, what happened? Why are you so angry?"
Now her voice cracks a little.
"Nothing. I'm tired and wasted from all this Hanukkah stuff. And Moran's confinement, and also Daniela's trip. I had so much hoped she would help me during the vacation with the kids. Everything all of a sudden is on my head and making me crazy. Anyway, I'll get over it ... only please, don't forget to come over tomorrow night, as you promised, for candle-lighting. When Nadi got up, the first thing he said was where did Grandpa disappear to and when is he coming back?"
"He's a sweetheart."
"So you'll come tomorrow?"
"Of course."
In the dining hall the sermon has ended, short and sweet, and the four candles and the shammash are burning as the recruits sing. Ya'ari, meanwhile, has found his way to the front gate, where the Ethiopian guards have lit a holiday campfire of their own. Apparently they have added a foreign substance to the fire, perhaps brought from home, which turns the flame from red to purple.
18.
LOOKING OUT AT the tracks as the train pulls into Morogoro, Daniela is surprised to discover that the three porters who carried the straw baskets in Dar es Salaam have already arrived and are there to greet them. No, Yirmiyahu corrects her, it only looks that way to you because these are members of the same tr
ibe, maybe relatives of the others—though exactly how they got the news that we'd be on this train and would need assistance, that's anybody's guess.
Led by the three new porters, they walk to the gas station to pick up the trusty Land Rover. Freshly washed, its hood raised, it awaits the inspection of the Sudanese driver: the oil filter has been changed, the carburetor cleaned, and the spark plugs polished to assure quick, precise firing. As the porters empty the big baskets and organize their contents into cardboard boxes, Sijjin Kuang bends over the recesses of the engine, making sure that all her wishes have been fulfilled.
Yirmiyahu distributes bills and coins all around. The big straw baskets will change hands again, and more than once, in their serpentine journey back to the marketplace in the capital.
An airplane lands on a nearby runway. Only two days have passed since I landed here, Daniela reminds herself, and in another four I'll take off for home.
For the third time during the visit Yirmiyahu apologizes to his guest for exiling her to the backseat. Sijjin Kuang takes her place behind the wheel.
"What's this? You stopped driving in Africa?" Daniela asks Yirmiyahu with some asperity. "I mean, you always loved to drive, and when you were over at our house, you never minded bringing me home at night from wherever I was."
Yirmiyahu still loves to drive, even though in Africa the roads are difficult, but when the Sudanese woman is with him he gives up the wheel because for her, control over the car helps console her grief and replaces her lost sexuality.
Daniela is astounded by his loose tongue. How vulgar. And what does he know about her sexuality?
Yirmiyahu turns his body around to speak directly to his sister-in-law, who shields her eyes with her hand. As it plows westward, the car faces the sun directly.
He knows nothing. A white man like him cannot understand the sexuality of an orphaned African woman. And it would never occur to him to spy on her to get at the truth. He appreciates her femininity and has no racial hang-ups, but he senses from within his own soul, the soul of someone whose own sexuality has faded, that the memory of a family massacred before her eyes has snuffed out her womanliness. At least this is how he feels, because this is also what happened to Daniela's sister. The friendly fire burned out what little sexuality she still had.
"No, please don't use that expression again."
"Why?"
"It sounds cynical. Drop it. For my sake."
"You're wrong, no cynicism intended. It's a realistic description, and also a poetic one..."
"You're stubborn as a mule, Yirmi..."
"The original mule wasn't me, but Shuli, your sister. And because I, in contrast to Amotz, failed abjectly to protect her from suffering, I agreed not to claim her sexuality, and rightly so, for it was there and only there that he could not join us."
"Who?"
"How can you not understand?"
"Eyal?"
"Obviously."
Now she is very frightened. To join us? What do you mean?
The sun is swallowed up by a great cloud, and Sijjin Kuang turns on the headlights and concentrates on the road. After many hours spent in close quarters with the two white people, she can sense their conversation is becoming important.
After Eyal's death he was allowed to be with them everywhere, all the time. It was possible to connect him to any subject, to talk about him any time he or Shuli wanted to remember him. They didn't always want to, but they knew they could. They could cry for him, they could cry for themselves, they could take pity or get angry and curse the soldier who had been so quick to shoot him and so quick to explain his mistake.
Yes, if a character in a film, or music at a concert, brought their son somehow to mind, either one of them was permitted to say a word in the middle of the movie or the performance, or sometimes to be content with a sigh, a touch, or a glance. They knew and agreed that he was available at every moment, and neither of them was allowed to say, Enough pain, now let him rest in peace. During a meal or on a trip, or at a party with friends, even while shopping, it was always possible to connect with him, even through a joke or a laugh.
But not during sex. Here exist only two, a man and a woman, and their son, dead or alive, has no place in their bed or their bedroom. Because if the dead son slipped into the shadow of a passing thought or became embodied in a bare leg or the movement of a hand, the sex would die down at once, or else be putrid. And perhaps to preserve Eyali, from the day of the funeral to the day she died, her sister resolutely put an end to her sexuality, and thereby his as well, for how could he impose himself on her when he knew that at any moment she might open the door of her mind and say, Come, my son, come back and I will grieve for you again. Could he have said, in the middle of lovemaking, Just a minute, son, stop, wait a bit, you arrived too soon. Just like that day at dawn, this, too, is a battleground, and if you take one more step into the soul of the naked woman I am holding in my arms, I'll spray you with friendly fire...
Raindrops slide down the front windshield, although minutes ago it was sunny. The road is gradually engulfed by hilly forest. When Yirmi sees that his sister-in-law, who has listened attentively to him, is shocked into silence, he slowly turns his face to the front, toward the road, as a sign that the confession is over and there is nothing more to be said.
But for Daniela the conversation is not over. Without trying to raise her voice over the engine noise, she leans forward and brings her lips close to her brother-in-law's bald crown, and says in a near whisper:
"This confession of yours is so painful and understandable and natural. For weeks after he died, when we were thinking about you, we also couldn't touch each other. And Amotz, who always wants it—in that period he was careful not to try to persuade me. Without a word of explanation, he just went celibate. Then something strange happened, which sometimes happens to him even now. He started crying in movies, in the dark, sometimes over silly things ... and when I look over at him, he's self-conscious and ashamed..."
Yirmiyahu's skull freezes. Then slowly he turns around.
"Crying in the dark? Amotz? I don't believe it..."
"Maybe now you can understand why he was the one I chose."
Fifth Candle
1.
ON FRIDAY MORNING Ya'ari stands by the trash bin weeding Ha'aretz of unnecessary supplements—national and local, real estate sections, inserts of big retail chains—and while so doing he pictures the furnace where his brother-in-law burned all the Israeli papers. If the newspapers get any fatter, we'll have to install an African furnace here too, so as not to overload the trash bin. His newspaper reading is quick and selective, though he makes sure not to miss the millimeters of rainfall, the level of the Sea of Galilee, and the synoptic weather map. When the radio chimes in with a report of dry but strong easterly winds, replacing the humid westerlies, he wonders whether a new type of wind will produce a different sort of roaring and howling at the tower or whether the wind-sucking shaft doesn't discriminate between east and west.
He washes the breakfast dishes in the sink, it being only fair that in the absence of the mistress of the house the electric dishwasher also get a rest. But the silence around him feels oppressive, especially as he looks ahead to a long, slow Saturday. Although he told the owner of the Jerusalem elevator to expect him by nine A.M., he knows from experience that it's impolitic to barge in on an older woman before she gets properly organized. His mood is good. He pleasantly replays in his mind Moran's favorable reaction to his nocturnal sketch. So on his way to Jerusalem he is willing to go listen again to those whining winds before agreeing with the manufacturer on where to hold firm and where to give in. Until candle-lighting time with the grandchildren there is no important person on the horizon he can or should arrange to meet. For many years now he and his wife have made all of their visits together, and if he should invite himself someplace two days after Daniela left on her trip, it might seem suspicious, as if he were taking advantage of her absence to tell his friends somethi
ng new about himself.
Once again he transmits the electronic signal to the iron gate and descends into the underground garage. He is careful to wait for the car that has followed him inside to claim its parking spot, and only then he steers his own to one of the empty spaces, which are fewer now than on his last visit. As he opens the fire door that separates the parking from the elevators, it seems to him that the easterly winds have worsened the roaring—perhaps because of their dryness. No doubt about it, this noise is a major nuisance and ought to prompt some soul-searching on the part of the architect and the construction company—though the elevator factory and his own design firm are not exempt from scrutiny either. Ya'ari does not call for an elevator right away but instead stands still and listens, and when the tenant who has just parked his car walks up, the stranger standing stupidly before the elevator doors understandably arouses his suspicion.
The tenant is an older man with a melancholy face and sunken cheeks. He wears old khaki pants, and his shoes are covered with fresh mud, as if he were returning from a tramp through the fields. Although his apartment keys already dangle from his hand, at the sight of the visitor standing as if in silent prayer opposite the motionless elevators, he, too, refrains from calling one, merely tilting his head and listening with a grave expression. Each man steals a sidelong glance at the other; already they are forming suspicions. Finally the tenant steps to the side and takes his cell phone from his pocket, and just as Ya'ari, who has had enough of the wailing winds, is about to open the fire door and return to his car, a melody tinkles in his pocket and stops him short.
The voice of the tenant talking in the corner merges with the one on Ya'ari's phone.
"Yes, Kidron, it's me."
"Now do you believe that the winds are real and not a hallucination?" The tenant continues to talk from mobile to mobile at a few meters' distance.
But Ya'ari, who prefers face-to-face conversations with real voices, hangs up.
"Real, obviously. I never accused you of hallucinating. But I doubt, or rather, I deny, the responsibility of my firm for this condition."
Friendly Fire Page 17
