A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

"Not hard to figure out."

"Still a little boy."

"Careful, that's what my father calls you, a little girl…"

"Which is very gratifying and sweet. You can't imagine how nice it is of him to call me a girl."

"And my mother, you knew her?" he blurts out testily.

"Of course. A strong woman. Straightforward. She, too, would come to visit me sometimes with your father. Once we even took her in the elevator."

"Strange," he mutters with quiet indignation, "they never told me about you."

"Apparently I was some sort of secret of theirs," she says, and drops her wrinkled eyelid in a wink.

Ya'ari feels dizzy. He closes his eyes for a moment and tries to revisit his moonlight epiphany. As if she can sense his inner turmoil, Devorah Bennett asks again carefully, somewhat concerned: So what do you say? Can it be fixed?

And he recovers and delivers a quick diagnosis.

"The vibration seems to come from the piston that produces the oil pressure. It will have to be dismantled and checked. But how do you take apart a weird creature like this? Perhaps my father will have an idea. Though finding spare parts will be impossible. The only way is to have them custom-made, and that is definitely not simple."

"But possible."

"Maybe."

"And the yowling?"

"Maybe there's a little cat hiding in there after all?" Now he winks.

"No," she says, smiling kindly, "there is no cat and never was."

"So there's no choice: we'll have to bring in an expert with a sensitive ear to tell us the source of this weeping and wailing. Otherwise we'll have to start dismantling old parts of the electrical system, which will crumble in our hands and we'll never be able to put them back together."

"So we have a big production here," she sighs.

"So it would seem. Meanwhile, give me a tape measure, if you own such a thing."

AND AFTERWARD THE elephant stands up and goes on its way, but without the bandage on its eye. In appreciation of the animal that has suddenly enriched him, the owner spares it the onus of the bandage, rolls up the colorful cloth, and ties it to the pack already loaded onto the elephant's back. Then, without further delay, as if afraid that someone might want to share in his newfound wealth, he puts on dark glasses, takes the chain in his hands and pulls the elephant after him. The animal, too, is clearly happy to get moving and make tracks in the open plain after being tied up for many days in a claustrophobic shed. Some local youths run after them, keeping up for a considerable distance before turning around and walking slowly back to the village.

The equatorial sun beats down on the hatless head of the Israeli; it's time to return to the farm. Witnessing the speedy departure of the animal owner and his removal of the elephant's bandage, the Africans have apparently decided that this older woman — visiting for the third time, and this time alone — must possess power and influence, and they therefore accompany her on her way back.

Thus surrounded, the English teacher feels as if she were on a class trip — at the magnetic center, on a brilliant morning, of a parade of youths, and men and women too. For a moment she is frightened, but she is careful not to speed up, lest this be interpreted as running away. She passes by the river, where some gray cows are drinking, and as she climbs the next hill, she notices the shady path that she missed, the same path she took with Yirmiyahu on that first day. The entourage is still at her heels when Yirmiyahu grabs her by the hand.

"You can't wander around here by yourself," he says angrily.

"Why?" she says, smiling with relief. "Don't tell me it's dangerous here."

"Not dangerous, and the people here aren't violent, but all the same, do not go out again by yourself."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter, and nothing will be," he snaps, "even so you are not to go wandering around by yourself."

And the youths who escorted her, and have halted a few paces back, feel the anger of the tall, bald, peeled man, and their eyes glitter with inquisitive anxiety, waiting to see if the muzungu man will raise a hand against the benevolent woman. She suddenly feels humiliated but maintains her composure.

"I'm not wandering around… I'm taking a walk."

"Then don't take a walk either."

"Why?"

"Why, why, why… because that's what I am asking of you and that's what I am saying." By now he is shouting with impatience. "You came without Amotz, and you won't go around anywhere alone. You know that Amotz would never allow you to wander around here by yourself…"

She continues to argue, though she doesn't know why.

"You are not Amotz, and you have no authority over me. And why are you so angry? Unlike Shuli, I really don't enjoy being alone. I always feel good in the company of people, and I thought you would be available most of the time, but this morning you disappeared."

"In general I don't have much work, but if sometimes I get busier, like last night, it only helps me."

Helps you how? she would like to protest, flaunting her pain at the old, bald man whose white clothes dazzle her eyes in the sunlight. To erase Shuli, and Eyali too? But she bites her tongue.

AFTER JOTTING DOWN the tiny elevator's dimensions on a slip of paper, Ya'ari bids farewell to Devorah Bennett without making any definite promises. The continuing absence of his wife increases his hunger for his children. It was only two days ago that Nofar lit Hanukkah candles with him, but the presence of the weird friend she brought precluded any chance — and perhaps by design — of a more personal conversation. Since I already ended up on a Friday in Jerusalem, Ya'ari figures as he walks past the old Knesset building, why hurry back? So before he gets into the car, he calls his daughter's cell phone, only to discover it's been turned off. In other words, she's at the hospital. When she's on duty, she always turns the device off entirely, so as not to disturb the calibrations of any sensitive electronic apparatus. But instead of giving up and simply calling to leave a message with her landlord, he decides to write her a note this time; after all, this is a rare chance to have a peek at his daughter's rented room, which he hasn't seen since he helped her move to Jerusalem, when she made the final decision to defer her army duty by doing national service at the hospital.

He is gratified that the landlords, a married couple, both medical residents at the hospital where Nofar works, remember and recognize her father, whose appearance and body language remind them of her. They welcome him warmly, while wondering how he could have forgotten that on Friday mornings Nofar is always on duty and her phone is turned off. Ya'ari assures them that he knew all that, but since he happened to be in Jerusalem today he is taking the opportunity to have a look at the room his daughter has been living in for nearly a year, and perhaps to leave her a note. Might that be possible? From the time he helped her move, he hasn't had a chance to see how she has settled in.

As he enters his daughter's rented room, he has a few misgivings. He knows that Nofar will not be happy about this invasion, even if he only leaves a little note. She would not want him to see — though it is exactly what he expected to see — the chaos of clothes, beddings, books and papers, leftover food, and wilted flowers: an elemental disorder, created almost on principle, which for some reason does not at all trouble the young landlords, who stand now in the doorway singing their tenant's praises.

Surprised and touched, Ya'ari nods in agreement. Yes, he knows the merits of his daughter, who may resemble him externally but on the inside is very much like her mother. That is to say, she is a person whose boundaries are clear and firm, which is why she can live amid total disarray. The two get a good laugh from this charming explanation, which they can now use to justify the mess in their own quarters. And Ya'ari is grateful to the young couple who've taken his daughter under their wing, and interrogates them a bit about themselves, their schedules at the hospital, the nature of their specializations, and from there moves to medicine itself, what's new and what's passé, and since the conversation is free-flowing and frank, he permits himself a question he would like them to keep confidential. Doesn't Nofar seem to them anguished and lonely? Lonely, no, definitely not, the two declare as one, for in the evenings, when she is off duty, sometimes a friend will come, different ones, it's true, to take her to a movie or a pub. But unhappy? That could be. It's as if — the landlady hesitates — as if, despite her youth, she has already lost something irreplaceable.