Friendly Fire

by A. B. Yehoshua

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

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

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

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

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

  "Where else would it come from?"

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

  "Why?"

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

  "By what authority?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  6.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Sijjin Kuang hasn't come back yet?"

  "No."

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

  "Anything is possible."

  "But what's so scary over there?"

  "Why scary?"

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

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

  "No."

  "Why not?"

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

  "And you have no key?"

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

  "So what will you do now?"

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

  He shields his eyes with his hand.

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

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

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

  "Maybe drink something?"

  He doesn't answer.

  "I suggested you should drink."

  "Later."

  "Should I bring you something?"

  "Later."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Definitely ... happily."

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

  "If you don't, then you don't."

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

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

  "In English?"

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

  He is silent, his glance wandering.

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

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

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

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

  "What's happening to you?"

  "That story makes him ridiculous."

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

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

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

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

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

  7.

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

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

  The old man laughs, then chides her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Naughty boy," the expert agrees.

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

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