Friendly Fire

by A. B. Yehoshua

  "Not to worry?" she whispers with disappointment.

  "No," he says firmly, "worry about each other in Israel, which is a natural place for perpetual worry. And if you are nonetheless seized by worry for me, too, then send Amotz over; for him, I won't have to prepare any speeches, because you'll have told him everything. Only he should come without newspapers or candles, and we'll tour the area."

  And he strokes her head gently and helps her get into the vehicle.

  In a quick clean break the Sudanese driver exits the farm, and since the African boy has taken from Daniela the seat to which her age entitles her, she finds herself yet again the companion of boxes. But her frustration over the backseat is not just technical. The Israeli visitor had planned to talk to Sijjin Kuang on their last ride together, to discuss the future of the Israeli administrator, whom three days ago she had called, in a blunt and startling fashion, spoiled.

  But how to talk from the backseat amid deafening engine noise? In the end, she must sit and watch the back of an African boy who has an infection spreading under his bandages. With any luck, a clinic will be found that can save his leg.

  The road winds about the forest that the two women rode through on the first night. Then the trees looked dark and bristly, but by day, washed by the rain, they are endearingly green and peaceful, and she is gripped with sadness over her silent ride and missed opportunity. She reaches for the driver's thin shoulder, leaning forward: please, may we stop here for a minute?

  Sijjin Kuang agrees reluctantly and stops near a barren patch in the forest and shuts off the engine, so that Daniela can get out and stretch after her unsettled night. The boy is also pleased, and he hops on his good leg between the trees and cuts himself a branch with a knife. Only Sijjin Kuang stays by the car. She lifts the hood and checks the oil, then adds a little water to the radiator. Suddenly Daniela is flooded with admiration for the serious young black woman, and she returns to the car and says straight out, Sijjin Kuang, I had a dream about you.

  The Sudanese nurse looks frightened. Perhaps according to her faith, a white person's dream about a black person has some evil power? But Daniela is quick to calm her. It was a good dream; I saw you with us in Jerusalem, seeking love and finding it.

  Sijjin Kuang is shocked. She shuts the hood of the car with a loud clang and wipes her hands with a towel, and with a wise smile she asks the dreaming woman, "You are sending me all the way to Jerusalem to find love?"

  "If it is love," Daniela answers softly, "then why not?"

  "And Jeremy, your brother-in-law—have you convinced him to return to Jerusalem?"

  "I don't know. What do you think?"

  "That it is good for him to stay here."

  The African boy hops back to the car with the big branch in his hand. But Sijjin Kuang doesn't let him bring it into the car, and reluctantly he throws it away.

  7.

  SINCE THE TECHNICIAN was so skillful in the rescue operation, Ya'ari stays with him until he finishes reattaching the opened side of the big elevator. But putting things together is harder than taking things apart, and Gottlieb's absence slows the process down. Ya'ari himself is not familiar with the fine details of the elevator that his firm designed and cannot offer advice. The night watchman is not much of a conversationalist. So little remains for Ya'ari to do but doze in Gottlieb's armchair near the watchman's table, exuding silent solidarity with the middle-aged technician.

  The first rays of dawn, which illuminate the oversize glass doors of the tower's lobby, also open the eyes of Ya'ari, who sees the technician replacing the last of the tools in his box and locking it. The elevator designer rises heavily from his chair to return the cab to group control, but the worker has beaten him to it. And the elevator lifts off at once to the early-rising tenant on the thirtieth floor. Come, Rafi, Ya'ari says with affection, I'll take you home. No need, the man says. I'll wait for the first bus. But Ya'ari insists and drives him along the seacoast to a neighborhood in the south of the city, a place where people get up early, not far from Abu Kabir. The technician, silent all the way there, invites Ya'ari as a gesture of gratitude to come up to his apartment for a morning cup of coffee, and Ya'ari, who can't decide whether to go home to make up for lost sleep or go on to the office, accepts, in part to examine the worker's apartment and decide whether there was anything to that word hybrid, or if it was said only in jest.

  The clean two-room flat is furnished in good taste. In the front room are shelves with books, mainly in Russian. There is nothing Middle Eastern about the upholstery of the sofa or the art reproductions hanging on the wall. But the coffee prepared by the host is clearly Arab in aroma and taste. A young pregnant woman, who has woken up in the other room and now brings soft ring-shaped rolls to go with the coffee made by her mate, contributes no further clue.

  Ya'ari questions the man about Gottlieb's qualities as an employer, and to his surprise finds that the technician appreciates him. Admittedly the wages he pays are mediocre compared with salaries paid by others, but because he is always present on the factory floor and circulates among the workers, he adds drama and tension to the work, and so the time passes more quickly.

  "So what is your name, really," Ya'ari wants to know before leaving, "Nimer or Rafi?"

  The technician grins. "That depends on who is asking."

  "When I asked you, you said Rafi, so what does that say about me?"

  "True," the man admits, "I said Rafi, but now that we've worked together all night, Nimer is okay too."

  His cell phone rings: the voice of Moran, who was let go half an hour ago and is on his way back to Tel Aviv. His first question: is his mother back yet? Not until the evening, his father answers matter-of-factly, but after you change clothes and kiss your wife and children, please go to the office and take the reins. I'm going home to sleep, and you've done enough loafing. And he summarizes for his son the events of the Night of the Winds.

  When he gets to his home in the suburbs, his eyes barely open enough to see the tree in the front yard, the cell phone rings again, this time Francisco, reporting that his father is running a fever.

  "How high?"

  "Thirty-eight point five."

  "Maybe take it again?"

  "I already took it twice, it was exactly the same."

  "Okay, I'm on my way."

  "Should I telephone Doctor Zaslanski?"

  "Have pity on him and wait a little while. The poor man is eighty years old, so let him sleep."

  According to Ya'ari's instructions, any rise in his father's temperature up to thirty-eight degrees Celsius the Filipinos are to attend to themselves; if it's more than that, they should call in Ya'ari and the old man's personal physician, his childhood friend Doctor Zaslanski.

  Ya'ari washes his hands and looks longingly at the bed he abandoned in the middle of the night. He feels a truly strong desire to curl up in the white down quilt.

  But the doctor has warned him that Parkinson's disease can get worse during a high fever, and the last thing Ya'ari wants today is illness complicated by rekindled love. So without shaving or changing his work clothes, he drives to his father's house to check the boundary between the physical and the mental.

  The old man's eyes glisten. The fever imparts an attractive ruddiness to his cheeks. He sits up in bed, propped by pillows, and asks right away about the winds in the tower. Ya'ari tells him about the organ holes left in the shaft by chance or on purpose.

  "This is how it ends," old Ya'ari says with resignation. "When you treat foreign construction workers poorly, they leave a little souvenir in the building before going back to their country, and now try hunting them down in Romania or China."

  "Why are you so sure it was done deliberately? Maybe it's just by accident?"

  "Accident?" the old man sneers dismissively, "accident is always the easy way out for someone too lazy to think."

  The son is too exhausted to argue with the father. Doctor Zaslanski will not arrive for another hour, and since Hilario is
already awake, Ya'ari asks Kinzie to change the sheets and make him a fresh bed in his old childhood room. A little nap of an hour wouldn't hurt. The Filipinos are happy to carry out this request. You are very tired, Mister Amotz, they chide him. Instead of your wife's trip giving you some rest, it has tired you out. What time does she land?

  "Five in the afternoon."

  "You want a clean pajama of your father?"

  "No."

  His childhood bed gives off a sweet smell, perhaps from something Southeast Asian. The room is familiar and foreign all at once. Still standing is the bookcase they bought him when he entered high school, and his old chair is still in place by the desk. But there's a mishmash of other furnishings from other rooms, such as the night table that stood next to his mother's bed, and a wicker basket from the bathroom, and there are also various accessories from the Philippines—colorful posters and lamps, and a real or fake telephone in the shape of a dragon. Ya'ari takes off his clothes and gets into bed in his undershorts and long-sleeved T-shirt, and hopes for a sound and soothing sleep that will render him fit for the reunion with his wife.

  He drops off at once, and his sleep is heavy, though at times real voices drift through. He hears the reassuring bass voice of Doctor Zaslanski, familiar from his childhood, explaining what to give the old man for his fever, adding, Don't worry, let Amotz sleep, don't wake him. And Ya'ari clings to his blanket and silently thanks his childhood doctor, and sinks deeper into the marvelous slumber.

  And he dreams. Workers carry a mass of metal and drop it with a clang on the floor and speak Romanian or Chinese. And here he is again in the shaft of the winds, but this time the shaft does not extend up high but lies flat like a tunnel, and the elevators are like cars in a coal mine, and he can walk alongside them as they move. But instead of coal they transport tenants dressed in black, wearing glittering gold chains around their necks. And Ya'ari escorts them, flashlight in hand. He walks between the fencing and the tracks and suddenly feels an urgent need to urinate. But where? Cars filled with tenants pass by incessantly, emanating from a source of light and riding into the darkness, and because the cars have no roofs, and the tenants are all looking in his direction, he has a hard time finding a hidden corner. On the side of the shaft he notices a tangled spider web, and he edges toward it and decides to wash it away with the powerful stream from his bursting bladder.

  He wakes up in time and rushes to the toilet. Through the living room window he sees a different light. It's afternoon. At the end of the corridor, near the entrance to the apartment, sits Gottlieb's piston.

  "What is this?" he demands. "They delivered my father's piston here?"

  "Yes, two workers brought it around noon, because Gottlieb says there's no room for it at the factory."

  "Bastard," Ya'ari grumbles, "suddenly he has no room for the piston. Why didn't you wake me? I would have made them take it back."

  "It would not have helped," Francisco answers evenly, "because your father agreed. The piston made him so happy."

  Ya'ari sighs and leans against the wall, drained.

  "How is he?"

  "He is getting better. His fever is going down."

  Ya'ari looks at his watch. Unbelievable, three-thirty in the afternoon.

  "How could you let me sleep like that?" he scolds Francisco.

  "Your father wouldn't let us wake you." Francisco says, smiling, showing all his white teeth. "But only till four," he said, "so you don't miss your wife."

  8.

  THIS TIME, THE small plane lands far from the terminal in Nairobi, and a dilapidated bus is brought over to fetch the passengers. Daniela, who hoped for a direct transit to the next flight, is forced to go once more through passport control and customs. How long will you stay here? asks a policeman, who is also the customs officer. I didn't come here, she answers with a sad smile. I am just passing through, I will stay for only two hours. Nevertheless they open her suitcase and search it, and even remove the contents of her toiletry bag, but the dry bones do not arouse any interest.

  And again she goes through the metal detectors, and wheels her suitcase behind her till she locates the same teeming cafeteria where she can wait for the flight home. The layover is not six hours but this time she is not the same confident woman, carving out a territory for herself. She doesn't dare pull over two extra chairs, to put her feet up on one and her bag and suitcase on the other. She makes do with an empty seat in the heart of the hubbub, crowded among other people's tables, and when she tells the waiter with a faint smile, Just coffee, she bows her head.

  Fear and anxiety in anticipation of returning to Israel. Merely imagining the possibility that Amotz will discover what happened fills her with horror. That strange look of Yirmiyahu's when she left him—what did it mean? Anger? Hope? Shock? He did not say a word about what had happened that night, perhaps because he felt sorry for her. And although ordinarily she hates the idea of anyone feeling sorry for her, now it is what she wants. Leaving aside the bite on the shoulder, the mere fact that her breasts were touched by his lips means that she gave him, out of pity, a deed of ownership. Now she is in his hands, whether he returns to Israel or not. And maybe precisely because of his sense of honor, and his deep ties to her and Amotz, he will refrain from coming back. Who knows, the strange thought occurs to her, maybe this was her hidden agenda: to prevent him from coming back, so he could not poison her family, her children and grandchildren, with his friendly fire.

  The waiter sets down her cup of coffee and requests immediate payment, as he is about to conclude his shift. She pays and tips him well, but is unable to lift the cup to her lips, as if it contained bitter medicine. Crowded and cramped between Africans and Europeans, she suddenly hears some Hebrew. She doesn't lift her head. In this grimy cafeteria, she wants total anonymity. God willing, time will numb her shame.

  The digital display now shows a delay of half an hour in the takeoff for Tel Aviv, which pleases her. Two young Hasidic men dressed in black—obviously local emissaries of Chabad who have managed to get into the terminal—circulate among the tables scrutinizing the clientele, seeking Jewish passengers. They take a good look at her too, and she quickly averts her eyes. To avoid giving them any pretext for approaching her, she pulls out the novel she bought for the trip and opens it without enthusiasm to the final chapter.

  She counts the pages remaining. Only twenty-five. Then she skims through them to check the amount of dialogue and the length of the paragraphs. Finally she starts to read, first returning to the last two pages of the previous chapter to reconstruct the context. There is a new tension in the voice of the author, who writes in the first person and identifies completely with the heroine. But it's still hard to decipher the nature of this tension. In any event, the irony and cynicism are muted, and gone are the tiresome descriptions of the landscape, which in previous chapters seemed to have been written more out of literary duty than to serve a narrative or psychological purpose. Apparently something grave is about to happen. Perhaps the author is planning the heroine's suicide. And in fact, why not? A vacuous and clueless young woman might just try to kill herself. Some sort of pain is suddenly apparent between the lines, particularly in places where the text seems most minimalist and unclear. The pages go quickly, and then, for no reason, slow down. For a moment she flips back to the beginning of the book, recalling that there was some hint there that might explain what would happen in the final pages. She feels that the young and pretentious author is gearing up for an absurd twist that readers of her own age and spiritual temperament will happily accept, but not a serious reader like Daniela, who is already rebelling against it. Nevertheless she takes a sip of the cold coffee, and as if hypnotized continues to turn the pages. She is helpless, caught in the novel's spidery web until she reads the last lines, which are blurred by a flood of tears she did not at all expect.

  She closes the book and slides it into the outer pocket of her suitcase. After all the effort and the emotion she feels hungry. The length of
the flight's delay holds steady on the digital display. The cafeteria becomes even more crowded, and there is no hope that the waiter rushing between tables will notice her now that she has paid him. She remembers that the candy kiosk is not far away, but she has no desire for sweets. On the contrary, they'll just make her feel sick. She remembers the sandwiches prepared by her brother-in-law, who forced her out of concerns real or imagined to miss breakfast. She returned the thermos to Sijjin Kuang but packed the food in her suitcase, and she now takes out a meat sandwich and bites into it, glancing around her.

  One of the young yeshiva students has sat down at a nearby table, laid out a cloth napkin, and placed upon it a bottle of mineral water, and now he too takes a bite of a homemade sandwich. He notices her picnic and smiles, as if they have a shared family secret that will permit him soon to approach her. He chews with great deliberation. If he were aware of the animal provenance of the flesh she is consuming, he might not spring from his seat toward her beckoning finger.

  The young man is not Israeli but American, and his halting Hebrew is heavily accented. She speaks to him firmly, in the tone that an impatient teacher takes with a student of whom she expects little.

  "Do you by chance have a Bible with you?"

  "A Bible?" he is shocked. "What do you mean?"

  "What do you mean, what do I mean?" she says, laughing. "If you have a Bible in your bag, I'd like to look up something quickly and then give it right back to you."

  "A whole Bible?"

  "Yes, but in Hebrew."

  "The whole Bible I don't have. But maybe you want to see Psalms? I have Psalms."

  "Not Tehillim," she says, imitating his pronunciation. "A complete Bible."

  "What exactly are you looking for?"

  "It doesn't matter. Do you have one or not?"

  "I don't have a complete Bible," he admits in defeat.

  "If you don't, well, it's no tragedy."

  "But I can give you a prayer book, which has many chapters from the Bible in it."