Friendly Fire

by A. B. Yehoshua

  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.

  5.

  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."

  6.

  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.