Friendly Fire

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Ya'ari is pleased with the idea. It's been a while since he took the highway, and the new section is unfamiliar to him. But Moran is finding it hard to part from his wife and children, and at the last moment he remembers to talk about the office. Go and bravely defend your white queen, his father interrupts him, waving at the barracks. The elevators won't run away.

  At the Ihron interchange they merge smoothly into the highway. A beep signals that the cameras have identified the car's owner as a registered toll-payer, and Ya'ari picks up speed on the well-designed road that traverses the heart of Israel. Efrat has hidden away in the trunk her wet army jacket muddied by the love-making and sits now at her father-in-law's side in a lightweight turquoise sweater that exquisitely matches her eyes. Diligently, she leafs through the road atlas she found in the glove compartment, not out of a deep interest in the geography of her homeland but evidently to escape the curious glances of the driver, ostensibly a family member but essentially a stranger.

  Deep sleep has spirited the children away. The tour of the army camp, and especially the frightening wait for their parents, have dissipated in the warmth of the car, and the humming of its tires on the road. The girl's head is the first to droop, and her hand reaches forward in a gesture of saintly supplication. For a while longer, Nadi seems to wrestle with the shadow of the dead Syrian soldier he saw in the old tank, and then sleep tips his head backward too.

  Ya'ari smiles into the rearview mirror at his sleeping grandchildren. You know, he says to his daughter-in-law, yesterday, when I spent time with the children, I thought I saw a new resemblance between Nadi and Daniela.

  "Daniela?" Efrat turns around and peers at her son for a moment.

  "Maybe not Daniela herself," he backtracks a bit, "but via Daniela to Shuli and to Eyal when he was little. You, of course, can't see that similarity, but I knew Eyal when he was Nadi's age. And last night—it was amazing—when you went to the party, and Nadi cried and carried on, suddenly this new resemblance surfaced."

  Efrat again turns her head toward the backseat. The possible resemblance to Moran's cousin excites her but is also confusing. She hesitates a moment before reacting, but finally has the courage to tell her father-in-law something that even her husband does not know. In her fifth month, when it was already known that the unborn child was a boy and not another girl, without consulting Moran she wrote to Yirmi and Shuli and asked for permission to name the baby after their son. But they refused. Politely, sympathetically, but firmly. She thought she was making a gesture of consolation, then realized she was only adding to their pain.

  Her pale face grows very red from the thrill of telling the father something she concealed from his son. As a gesture of support Ya'ari removes a hand from the wheel and rests it on the young woman's shoulder, not far from the little hidden tattoo. It was good that you made the gesture, and good that you understood why it was refused. Although, in their place....He does not continue, and even resists thinking what he had intended to say.

  Traffic on the highway is light, and although it moves at high speed, calm nerves and good manners prevail. On the east and west sides of the multilane road two identical gas stations come into view, flanked by shops and cafés. He glances at Efrat, to see if she wants to buy something for the children, who have had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast, but now her head is flopped backward just like her son's, and her eyes are closed, as if her brief confession exhausted her. Is she really sleeping, or has she closed her eyes to break off contact? A short while ago, in the bosom of nature, did she take the liberty of shouting her joy out loud, or sigh discreetly, murmuring her pleasure? He says not a word more, but turns down the heater and picks up speed.

  His daughter-in-law, like his wife, surrenders trustingly to his driving and sinks deeper into sleep. This gives him an opportunity to examine from close up just what her beauty is made of. But when her radiant eyes are closed and her dimple disappears, the Madonna-like face seems a bit gaunt, her cheekbones sharp and oversized. Only her unblemished swanlike neck, adorned by a delicate gold chain, remains alluring. Is all that beauty actually something precarious and fragile, hanging by the thread of her forceful personality?

  As they head south, the skies grow bluer and clearer. Ya'ari pays attention to the road signs, especially those pointing east of the highway. Only when one gets to the heart of the country does one see how sturdy and deeply rooted are the Arab settlements, small villages that have turned into crowded towns, the minarets of their new mosques jutting upward. And as a security barrier, not very high, suddenly begins to wind alongside the road to the east, he slowly pries the road atlas from the fingers of the sleeping beauty and turns the pages to see if he is right. Yes, this is Tulkarm, old and stubborn enemy, but pastoral too.

  The weight of passengers' sleep can make a driver drowsy, particularly one who did not spend the night in his own bed. So he gingerly turns on the radio, looking for some soft music. Efrat opens her eyes for a moment and closes them again. If grinding rock doesn't keep her awake at night, why should mellower music during the day?

  The scenery along the Trans-Israel Highway is monotonous. Herds of bulldozers have sliced through hills, obliterated farmland, uprooted humble groves, and made the crooked straight so that the drive will be smooth, without significant rises or dips or unexpected curves. But the sun, already heading west, compensates for the bland practicality of the road. Golden winter light inflames the fringes of the clouds.

  In spite of the music, Ya'ari does not feel sufficiently alert to be driving at the high speed limit, and so, though the Kesem exit toward Tel Aviv is not far off, he plucks his cell phone from its cradle and calls Nofar. To his surprise, she answers, and her voice sounds soft and friendly.

  "Imma is already home?"

  "No, you don't remember she's due back Monday?"

  "I don't get why she needs to be in Africa for such a long time."

  "What are you talking about, Nofar, it hasn't even been five days."

  "Five days? Is that all? So why are you talking in such a pathetic tone of voice?"

  "Because I'm calling you from a car that seems more like a dormitory. Efrat and the kids are sacked out all around me. It was family day at the army base where your brother is confined, so we saw him there, and now we're going home via the Trans-Israel."

  "So I have an idea. If you're already on the fast road, why don't you keep on going to Jerusalem and hop over to see me? I'm on duty now, and I also deserve a little family day."

  "To Jerusalem? Right now?"

  "I mean, they told me that yesterday you looked for me in my room, so today you can find me at the hospital. Come on, Abba, don't be lazy, the road will lead you to me all by itself. Less than forty minutes and you're at Sha'arei Tzedek hospital. I miss the kids. Give me Efrati, I'll talk her into it."

  "I told you, she's asleep."

  "So let her sleep, and when she wakes up and asks where you took her, tell her Nofar also exists. Don't tell me you're afraid of her the way you are of Imma."

  "Enough, Nofar, enough with this nonsense."

  But Nofar is right. Since Efrat is still atoning for her sins in dreamy slumber, there is no need to ask her consent for the detour. Jerusalem is not far away, and although the winter day is short, there'll still be time to get back to Tel Aviv.

  And so, at his daughter's command, he kidnaps his daughter-in-law and grandchildren and takes them, unconscious captives, to Jerusalem. The excitements and conflicts and loves and fears of the past twenty-four hours have so exhausted all of them that they do not sense the change in the sound of the car when it leaves the plain and begins climbing into the hills. But when they stop at the first traffic light, the boy's eyes open first, then the girl's, and finally Efrat's. You slept like the dead, he says, but does not reveal where he has brought them, leaving it to his daughter-in-law to regain her bearings. Oddly, she doesn't quickly recognize the city; only as they turn toward Mount Herzl does she look at him with amazement, as if s
he were still fluttering in the remnant of a dream. Before she can ask, he says yes, Jerusalem. Nofar begged to see the children, but you were asleep and I couldn't ask your approval.

  Her eyes gleam with ironic amusement.

  "Jerusalem? Why not."

  At the entrance to Sha'arei Tzedek, Nofar is waiting, dressed in a white uniform, her dark hair pulled back in an old-fashioned coil. She is elated by the sight of her niece and nephew, and hugs and kisses them, and as usual picks up Nadi in her arms as if he were a baby. They head for the large cafeteria, and find it locked up tight. Nofar says, how could I forget that they close it on Shabbat? So Ya'ari hurries to the car and returns wobbling under the weight of the loaded cooler. Digging into it, they discover that in the morning Efrat indeed filled it with many goodies. They set up their picnic near a big window. The children intently chomp the hummus-filled pitas, and Efrat warms her hands with a mug of coffee poured from a large thermos. Nofar is content with a peeled cucumber, and Ya'ari tucks heartily into the very sandwich that at noon had been shamed in the round of no, you eat it, and tries, without much success, to get his grandchildren to talk about their military outing. To most of his leading questions, he is forced to supply his own answers, getting only vague nods when he asks, at the end, right? Then Nofar asks permission from her sister-in-law to show her father something in her new department.

  En route to the trauma unit Nofar equips him with a green-colored gown and helps him put it on, and leads her father into an isolated dark room, very warm, with only one bed, where lies a young half-naked man, connected by a thicket of tubes to hanging bags and machines. His head is swathed completely in white, his two eyes blazing in the center. Nofar draws close and loudly speaks his name, and the young man slowly turns his head. Here, Nofar says gaily, meet my father. He wants to be amazed by your resurrection.

  With a welter of medical detail, she spins her father the tale of this young construction worker who fell from a scaffold and was brought in actually dead, and yet has been restored to life. Right? she says in a challenging tone to her immobile patient. You wanted to fly away from the world, didn't you, but we didn't let you, right? We caught you in midflight. And the young man, his admiring eyes fixed on the girl, who teases him with great fondness, nods his bandaged head, but Nofar is not content with his confirmation. Her eyes fill with deep emotion, and she persists with the little scolding. Tell me, is it nice to run away without asking permission? In the white skull glint sunken, suffering eyes, and a broken voice emits the faint keening of a small animal. But Nofar doesn't let up, and as if the man lying here were not suspended between heaven and earth, she keeps talking to him in the tone of a veteran teacher: You have to live! You were not born so you could escape from us in the middle of life.

  And she straightens the sheet covering the young man, plants a kiss on his eyelids, adjusts his urine tubes, and gestures to the visitor that they should leave the room.

  In the entry hall Nadi and Neta are gleefully rolling a worn-out wheelchair and drinking chocolate milk from plastic bottles. Efrat, who has already poured herself a second cup of coffee, is methodically applying makeup to her face, mirrored in a graying window with a view of Jerusalem.

  "Listen, Amotz," she says firmly to Ya'ari, as he removes the green gown and returns it to Nofar, "since you've already tricked me into coming to Jerusalem, then at least, while we're here, why don't we meet your father's Jerusalem lover."

  "The lover?" Ya'ari is stunned. "Why would you want to do that?"

  "Why not?" Efrat answers coolly. "I want to see what makes your family cheat."

  12.

  YIRMIYAHU STARTS THE ignition, and immediately the carburetor floods. They wait a few minutes, and he tries again. Sijjin Kuang is always so eager to take the wheel and gallop through the wide open spaces, he says apologetically to his sister-in-law seated at his side, that I've lost my feel for this engine. Anyway, she has good intuitions, but believe me, she also makes mistakes.

  "You know the way back from here?" asks Daniela, rather anxiously.

  "In theory it's not complicated."

  "And not in theory?"

  "Don't worry. How far did we drive from the farm to here? Thirty or forty kilometers, on an easy road. And since you're armed with the Old Testament and even the New, you have nothing to worry about."

  Again the engine balks, but Yirmiyahu persists, and after some wheezing and throat-clearing the car regains its equilibrium and moves out into the dirt road. Yirmiyahu leans forward, the better to navigate precisely, and asks his sister-in-law not to distract him with talk till they get to the first crucial intersection. Daniela shrugs, slightly insulted, and begins leafing through the Bible, and few minutes later an unanticipated fork appears in the road. Yirmiyahu turns to his sister-in-law and points left, asking for confirmation: You remember? This is the right way, yes? Daniela is flustered. You're asking me? I get lost in Tel Aviv, you want me to take responsibility in Africa? Please, you decide.

  So he does and chooses the left fork and soon recognizes bits of landscape from the morning. Relieved, he starts humming a tune and picks up speed. Then he glances at the woman whose short stay in Africa has added color to her face.

  "During your career did you ever teach the Bible?"

  Yes, years ago she substituted for a Bible teacher who was ill, and for a week read the story of Joseph and his brothers with her class. It was easy enough.

  "Joseph and his brothers? A charming tale of a whole family that settled in Africa following one brother, the administrator. The texts in Genesis are miniature stories that can be interpreted any which way. They tell of a family that is not yet a people, and in this family, the great obsession of the patriarchs is to produce as many descendants as possible, so there'll be someone to graze the sheep, but over and over they discover to their dismay that they have married women who have a serious problem getting pregnant. Once Shuli and I went to a memorial service for the father of friends of ours, and instead of talking about the father who had died they brought some sort of lecturer, an author or poet, who rebound the binding of Isaac, and then I saw how it's possible to find new ore in texts that have been mined over and over. This lecturer tried to describe what the whole story of the captive son and the big knife looked like from down below, from the point of view of the two youths who were guarding Abraham's donkey at the foot of the mountain."

  It's three o'clock already, and a wind starts up across the plain, yet the air remains hazy. Sunlight strikes the windshield, revealing spatters of dead bugs.

  "You have to clean this windshield once in a while," Daniela comments.

  "I also noticed," says her brother-in-law, ignoring her, "that all those public lectures about the Bible are generally about nice, clear-cut subjects. Jacob and Esau, the Song of Songs, Jephthah's daughter, Samuel and Saul, David and Absalom, Jacob's love for Rachel, Cain and Abel, Samson and Delilah. They all take the easy road, avoiding the really hard stuff, the violent texts where the prophets rant and rave."

  "The prophets? I don't think I ever looked at them after my matriculation exams."

  "Me neither, until Eyal was killed. And then I reread them, prophet after prophet, and suddenly one day I saw the profound curse that has penetrated the genes of this people."

  "After Eyal was killed you studied the prophets?"

  "Only for a little while, but intensively. It all started with the Foreign Ministry's assistant director-general, a religious and cultured man, who delicately proposed to organize a minyan in our home during the seven-day shivah mourning. And because he was my superior, and I knew I'd need him if I wanted another foreign assignment, I couldn't say no. And I didn't really mind, because Shabbat fell in the middle of the shivah, which left only four mornings for prayer. And since he also agreed not to ask me to strap on phylacteries, I said, Why not? You two were staying in a hotel in Jerusalem, and Amotz, when he would come for the prayers, also got a little friendly with this man."

  "His name wasn't
by any chance Michaeli, or Rafaeli?"

  "Rafaeli, that's right. Amazing how you remember unimportant names."

  "It comes from teaching. From faculty meetings where they would seal the fate of students I had never even seen. Amotz rather liked him."

  "Yes, he is a good man. Even after the shivah ended, he kept on going with the religious instruction. Very tactfully, without pressure, and most important, without the usual sentimental schmaltz. Only now are you setting forth on the journey of grief, he said to me, so allow me to suggest a few texts you aren't familiar with, perhaps you may find some insight in them.

  "I mainly got from him various reprints and photocopies of articles from Modern Orthodox journals, and I would even discuss these with him, but soon enough I realized that this was not for me. The bridge between the nonbeliever and the make-believe believer is sticky and rickety. So I said to him, Listen, my friend, maybe for starters I'll just read a little Bible, and we'll take it from there.

  "So that's how I started reading the Bible, from the beginning. The Book of Genesis is very nice. Forefathers, mothers, sons and their brides, brothers and sisters, rivalries and jealousies. Except it didn't seem to me that the fathers took much interest in their sons, except for Jacob and your Joseph; if they're not going to slaughter them, they banish them from their homes, or just stop caring.

  "Afterward I read a little more of the Torah, the five books of Moses—how the struggles and conflicts begin between Moses and the mob that came out of Egypt with him and now long for meat with garlic and onions, instead of which they get a severe religion. These poor souls seem to sense what will soon befall them and begin to rebel against this cosmic faith, this authoritarian and demanding creed, which got pinned on this one little people. Interesting that this Rafaeli, for all his religiosity, told me that there's an audacious theory that claims that Moses didn't die a natural death but that the Israelites murdered him. I wanted to tell him, If that's so, it's too bad they didn't kill him thirty or forty years sooner, but I didn't say anything. One good thing you can say about these stories in the Torah is that their prose is clear, not overwritten or rambling. There's no deceptive double-talk as with the prophets. The Torah does have rebukes and curses, but they're concentrated in one place, and the hopes and consolations in another place. There's order in the world.