A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

He phones Efrat to find out whether to buy cake on the way, or ice cream, or something else to please her and the children. No, too late, his daughter-in-law scolds him, this time it's enough to just bring yourself, but hurry, the children are losing patience and will light the candles by themselves. What happened to you? You're usually so punctual.

By now his blood is boiling. As it happens, Efrati, he mutters ironically, I actually work for a living. And he wants to persist and remind this indolent beauty of his sixty-one years, but he remembers his wife's warning to respect her pride, so he hastily hangs up, before a curse can slip from his lips. Yet to preserve his status in the eyes of his grandchildren he can't let himself show up empty-handed, so he stops in front of a brightly lit convenience store.

There, amid a throng of teenagers, the sweet-toothed spirit of his wife descends upon him, and he extravagantly scoops up candies. Especially inviting are two ornate tubes shaped like canes and stuffed with colorful toffees, and two figurines, a boy and a girl, fashioned of dark chocolate.

Neta and Nadi cling to him with love. The absence of a father automatically raises the grandfather's stock. He hugs and kisses them, then lightly hugs Efrat and brushes her cheek. He first felt free to give her a kiss only after Moran announced their engagement, and over the years, even after the two children, he has never dared show greater affection.

"The candy only after dinner," he declares didactically, but too late. The detached head of the chocolate boy is already in Nadi's mouth. "You little cannibal," he says, planting a kiss on the toddler but forbidding him to keep eating the body of the headless boy.

The menorah is ready, crowned by the shammash. Ya'ari turns over the box of candles in order to properly recite the blessings printed on the back. It would be poor form to garble the text in front of the children. But suddenly Neta insists that Grandpa say the blessings with a kippa on his head, just like her kindergarten teacher's husband.

Efrat shuffles around in a shabby bathrobe, looking tired and wilted, her pretty face pale and her hair unkempt. Moran phoned in the morning and asked her and the kids to come visit tomorrow, she tells him as she searches for a kippa. Not easy to find one in this house, not even the paper kind they hand out at funerals. But clever Neta resourcefully cuts a skullcap of sorts from a sheet of red construction paper, fastening it into shape with staples. Ya'ari puts it on with a clownish smile and is about to light the candles when Nadi observes that he is a boy and not a girl and thus requires a kippa, too, so they wait for Neta to produce another cap, which almost covers her little brother's eyes.

Now all is ready, and the excited children demand that the light be turned out so that the candles will banish the darkness, as the popular song goes. Efrat looks sad, sitting on the sofa in the dark, lost in thought. Is she pregnant again? Ya'ari wonders, excited, as he removes the shammash from its place and lights it, trying to read the first blessing by its glow and then the second. Mechanically, he starts singing "Maoz tsur," as he hands the candle to Neta, who lights the first candle and the second, then hesitantly hands the shammash over to Nadi, who is already standing on a little chair, poised to light the third and fourth. And when only the fifth is left, Ya'ari takes the shammash and turns to Efrat, Come, Efrati, you light a candle, too. She looks at him distantly and doesn't budge from her seat. I've already lit enough candles on this holiday, give it to Neta, and he gives the shammash to Neta, who lights the fifth candle; suddenly her brother goes berserk, first trying to knock over the burning menorah, and when his Grandpa stops him, he gets down on his knees like a Muslim at prayer and bangs his head against the floor, wailing furiously — why did his sister light the fifth candle and not he? And there is no way to quell his jealousy other than to extinguish the fifth candle and hand him the shammash. And he's still not satisfied: Why wasn't he the first to light the fifth candle?

Over dinner Ya'ari tells his daughter-in-law and grandchildren about the little elevator that his father built for a Mrs. Bennett in Jerusalem, describing how it rose from the closet in the bedroom directly to the roof, and which part of the Old City you could still see from there. Afterward he talks about the woman herself, and jokes about the ancient love that was awakened between the builder and his client. His daughter-in-law is interested in the story. The possibility that Moran's grandfather had an adventure in Jerusalem in the 1950s tickles her imagination. She goes back and calculates the dates and years: when the elevator was built, when old Ya'ari's wife died, when the Parkinson's set in. With methodical nosiness she wants to reconstruct the whole picture, to ascertain how long during the life of Moran's grandmother, whom she'd known only in her last two years, did Moran's grandfather keep a secret lover in Jerusalem.

Ya'ari attempts to protect his parents, with little success. Efrat cross-checks the dates and proves to him that his father is no saint. Why should he be a saint? asks Ya'ari. Because you and Daniela want to give the impression that you always do the right thing, that you're perfect people. Ya'ari chuckles. What do you mean, perfect? We have our faults. Of course, his daughter-in-law giggles, too, and her reddening face reassumes its wonderful sheen. But somehow, she insists, you manage to persuade all of us that your faults are actually virtues. Amotz laughs heartily and keeps his cool. Maybe Daniela, but not me. And he looks approvingly at the blush that has returned to his daughter-in-law's face.

Nadi eats the limbs and body of the chocolate boy and wants to eat Neta's chocolate girl too. But she succeeds in moving it to higher ground, safe from his jaws.

On television, standing beside a fighter jet, the Minister of Defense lights the Hanukkah candles and sings, in a pleasant voice, "He Who performed miracles for our forefathers." Nofar calls and chats affectionately with her sister-in-law and also asks her niece and nephew to kiss her over the phone. Ya'ari hesitantly takes the receiver, wondering with mild trepidation whether the landlords have revealed his impulsive visit to her room. It turns out they kept their promise, but Ya'ari's father did tell his granddaughter about her father's visit to an old client in Jerusalem, and she's disappointed that he didn't think to come visit her at the hospital. She would have taken him to the trauma unit, where she is now working at her own request, so he could start believing in the resurrection of the dead.

Nadi has landed on the sofa, asleep. Ya'ari helps his granddaughter put on her pajamas, covers her with a blanket and reads her a story about a family that doesn't care that a mouse is roaming freely in their house. The dishes are piled in the sink, the tablecloth is stained, the Hanukkah candles dwindle. His restless daughter-in-law paces from room to room, making call after call to find a babysitter, but it turns out that on a Friday night at the height of the holiday no young girl is willing to pass up her friends' party. Listen, Efrati, he says kindly to the desperate woman, I'll stay here this evening with the kids. You also deserve a little joy in your life. She looks up with amazement, not knowing if he's being ironic or serious. But it could be till late, she warns her father-in-law. Whatever you want, he answers graciously. I caught up on my sleep this afternoon; staying up won't be a problem.

Why stay up? his daughter-in-law says. She'll spread a sheet and blanket on the sofa and give him one of Moran's clean T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, and he can sleep peacefully here till morning. Now he is taken aback. I don't understand — you're planning to come home only in the morning? No way to know, she says with a mysterious smile. It depends how things go at the party. What things is she talking about? Ya'ari wonders to himself. Maybe he ought to set a curfew for the mother of his grandchildren and get her back here by midnight. But it's too late for that. Efrat has come alive: in an instant the depressed and worn-out housewife has been transformed into a happy young woman, a radiant beauty, her heels clicking proudly about the apartment. She puts on a dress that fashionably exposes all that may and must be exposed of a woman, barring her nipples, which still belong to her husband, and on her unblemished skin she strews some sort of sparkling stardust, meant to ease the entry of a lovely woman into tonight's banquet of the gods.