A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

"A complicated Arab. Bringing coffee so he won't have the urge to kill?"

"That's how she translated it. Maybe in Arabic it wasn't exactly an urge but a slightly different word. But so you don't misunderstand, this whole conversation on the roof was in a friendly spirit, everyone smiling. The officer was smiling too; only the Druze with the machine gun stayed serious."

"And then?"

"And then we really did have to get out of there, because by that time we had broken the rules completely, but I knew that this roof would continue to preoccupy me, that I would need to better understand the coffee, the bucket. Maybe that pregnant student, with her sweet lovely Hebrew, was also a factor — I mean, not she herself, but her pregnancy, or more precisely, the idea that the baby she would give birth to would also be crawling around on this rooftop. By the way, did you know that Efrat…" He hesitates.

"Efrat what?"

GRADUALLY, NETA'S LAMENT over her treacherous mother subsides. The choked-up cries are quieter, the duration between them grows longer, and the intensity of the anger and anxiety they express diminishes, though as if to preserve their honor they do not cease at once but instead die down slowly. Neta no longer has the strength to stand and hold her head theatrically, and she slowly slides down to sit on her bed. Finally, her reedy body folds up into the fetal position. The grandfather does not intervene in this process, but sits patiently, not moving, not uttering a word. From time to time he closes his eyes to lend encouragement to the girl's drowsiness. Nadi watches sternly, then suddenly gets off his bed and leaves the room, and Ya'ari motions with a finger for him to be quiet, so as not to interfere with his sister's collapse into slumber. He waits a while, until sleep has overtaken her entirely, then turns out the light and covers her with a blanket.

In the living room the candles have long since gone out. The only light comes from the kitchen. He looks for the boy but cannot find him. The exterior door is locked, and so is the door to the terrace. He looks in the bathroom, but the child isn't there. He calls, Nadi, Nadi, but there is no reply. For a moment he is seized with panic, but since his son's apartment is not large, he quickly checks the clothes closets and behind the washing machine, until he remembers the child's favorite hiding place, under his parents' bed. And there indeed lies the boy, like a gray sack. The grandfather turns on the light, but the child screams, Turn it off, turn it off, Nadi isn't here. So then Ya'ari tries to play a game in the dark and pretend to be someone who can't find his grandchild, but this time, safe under his parents' bed, the boy refuses to cooperate with the familiar game and starts screaming. Ya'ari tries to crawl under and get to him, but the child pushes him away, scratches his hand, crawls out the other side, stamps over to the locked door, and begins to kick it with his bare foot.

He doesn't want his mother or his father. His anger goes back to the fifth candle that his sister lit before him. Ya'ari therefore tries to undo the insult by cleaning the remnants of wax from the menorah and replacing all five candles. At first Nadi can hardly believe that his grandfather would go to such lengths to compensate him, but when he sees Grandpa turning on the lights, putting the kippa back on, reciting the blessings again, and placing the burning shammash in his little hand so he can light all five candles, his wrath is soothed and a little smile quivers on his tormented face.

But the smile turns out to be transitory. The spirited toddler, complicated and uncompromising, suddenly decides that a second lighting of candles on the same evening is not the real thing, that it is a ruse on his grandfather's part to pacify his jealousy of his elder sister's birthright. For a minute or two he studies with hostility the five colorful candles and the shammash burning quietly in the menorah, then suddenly blows them out like candles on a birthday cake, knocks the smoking menorah over and shoves it to the ground, then bursts into a scream and runs to the front door and kicks it hard, and calls his father's name.

Now he understands that Efrat's warning was not an exaggeration. Moran, apparently out of embarrassment, generally reports to his parents only his little boy's health problems. Ya'ari grabs the child forcefully, rips him away from the door, lifts him up and holds him tight in his arms. Nadi thrashes wildly, trying to get free, menacing his grandfather's hand with his teeth, trying to bite it. But Ya'ari, although surprised by the child's strength, won't let go his grip.

The toddler's resistance grows weaker, but when Ya'ari lays him down on the sofa and turns off the light, the boy springs up and runs to kick again at the front door, and the blow to his bare foot inspires more desperate howling. Ya'ari is again forced to grasp him in his arms. And to distract him, he puts on the Baby Mozart tape that Nadi has grown up with, which still works its magic.

And while he clasps the child in his arms in the dark, trains and ladders begin moving on the screen, and fountains and seesaws, cloth dolls of friendly animals, and the marvelously simple music of a composer who died in the prime of life reconcile a grandfather and his grandson.

The child's attention is focused on the sights and sounds so familiar to him; still, it's hard to tell whether he's still trying to break free of his grandfather or clinging to him tightly. Ya'ari remains on his feet, because when he tries to sit down on the sofa, the child bursts into a shriek of protest. And so they stand there, while delightful images flicker past them, conceived by well-meaning educators in tranquil California, and after the last note is played, and the screen goes dark, the child mumbles feebly, Again, Grandpa…

And Ya'ari has no choice but to rewind the tape.

Now, with his grandson's head on his shoulder, Ya'ari has a moment to study closely the contours of his face; he finally identifies the memory that eluded him, understanding why it escaped him before. Many years ago he also stood in the dark clutching a toddler in his arms, one who resembled this grandson. But that had been in silence, without musical accompaniment. It was on a visit to Jerusalem, before Moran was born, when he and Daniela had offered to babysit little Eyali so that Shuli and Yirmi could go out and enjoy themselves — and so he and Daniela would have a quiet hideaway for lengthy lovemaking.

The infant image of the nephew who was killed by friendly fire, flung out of the distant past and caught again in his arms, suffuses Ya'ari with a pain diluted by sweet nostalgia for his own youth. To the music of Mozart he hugs his little grandson tight, as if to inoculate him with the strong confidence he has acquired during his own life.

When the Mozart tape completes its second screening, and Nadi mumbles, half-asleep, More, Grandpa, he decides not to replay the pleasant tunes a third time but to try a fresh approach with a different video. And from the stack of tapes he grabs one from an unmarked box.

As soon as it starts to run he realizes that he has made a mistake, yet he does not stop it. This is not a tape for children, this is not even a tape for grown-ups, this is a tape that he would never have suspected his son and daughter-in-law of taking an interest in.

Although in recent years sex scenes even in mainstream films have become more brazenly explicit, they are brief — it always seems to Ya'ari that the actors are afraid they won't be up to the task when called upon to feign passion that is not their own. But this video has no story or plot, no hidden relationships among its characters: their sole purpose is to have sex, natural, open sex without impersonation or shame, accompanied by the thumping of an unseen drum.