Friendly Fire

by A. B. Yehoshua

  "At least you were aware of this."

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

  "And how did it end?"

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

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

  "The student of history with the mellifluous Hebrew."

  "You don't forget a single word."

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

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

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

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

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

  "She knew what had happened?"

  "Of course."

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

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

  "This is all familiar stuff."

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

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

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

  "What was her name?"

  "She wouldn't tell me."

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

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

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

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

  "And this is sweetness?"

  "To me it is."

  11.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Gottlieb shoots Ya'ari an icy look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  12.

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

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

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

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