A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

His sleep-heavy grandson is straining his arms, and he extends a finger to stop the cassette, but the expression on the face of a young cropped-haired woman as an older man undresses her arrests him. Something in her embarrassed smile and her instinctive attempt to hide her breasts and shield her nakedness indicates that this pretty young woman is not accustomed to making love in front of the camera. It might well be the debut of a hard-up American student looking to finance her education.

The young woman closes her eyes, throws back her head, and opens her mouth wide, but her body keeps wrestling with the man who will soon demand everything from her, and this panic mixed with pleasure fascinates the viewer in the dark. Distant memories of his young wife in the days following the wedding stir his desire.

And then he hurries to shut off the video; he snatches it from the player and returns it to its box, then sticks it into the middle of the stack of tapes. He carries the sleeping toddler to his bed, changes his diaper for the night, and covers him with a blanket.

"WHAT DOES EFRAT have to do with this?" She again demands an answer.

Beyond the open window, at the horizon of the plain, the moon has shed the diaphanous haze and gleams sharp and bright.

"Efrat herself obviously has nothing to do with this," Yirmiyahu says finally. "By the way, when exactly was Nadi born? Do you know you almost didn't tell us about him?

"Nadi was born after I was here with Amotz, and at that point I didn't think Shuli was much interested in relatives."

Yirmi falls silent. He gets up from the chair and again walks around the room. Once more he distractedly picks up the novel, reads a few sentences, then puts it down. Daniela says nothing, waits.

"And still, her pregnancy turned out to be relevant. Because not long after your visit here, we got a letter from her, telling us that she was expecting."

"A letter from Efrat? Why did she write you? What did she want from you?"

"She asked our permission to call the boy she was expecting Eyal."

"Really?" Daniela is astounded. "I had no idea… she didn't say a thing. She wrote in her own name, or Moran's too?"

"Only her own. She wrote that Moran didn't know of her wish. What surprised us was that at the end of the fourth or fifth month, she was already talking so confidently about her son and planning his name."

"Yirmi, nowadays, not like in our time, the scanning they do of the embryo is so comprehensive and precise that you can know not only its sex but also the condition of every organ in its body. You can even predict if the developing child will be nice or not."

"And if he won't be nice, what then?"

"That depends on the parents." Her eyes smile, but a bit sadly, and her heart suddenly goes out to her daughter-in-law.

"So how was the birth?"

"Difficult. They had to get him out by Caesarian, he became tangled up and turned upside down. But how did you respond to her? I hope you didn't hurt her."

"I don't know exactly what went through Shuli's mind when we got the letter, because I didn't even give her a chance to think it over. That very minute I wrote Efrat my absolute refusal. I thanked her warmly for her touching intentions, yes, definitely touching, but unthinkable. You think about it, too, Daniela: Why put the burden of the dead on a child not yet born? And if I was already starting to detach, the last thing I needed was to get entangled with a new human being. By the way, what kind of child did he turn into? Nice or not?"

WHEN SHE GETS home she is careful not to turn on any lights, so as not to call attention to the lateness of the hour, but when she sees her babysitter lying curled on the couch in his clothes and shoes, she nudges him gently. For a moment Ya'ari imagines that his wife has returned from Africa, and the thought of the end of the journey showers joy on his sleeping soul. But the voice of his daughter-in-law, imploring him to take off his shoes and put on Moran's T-shirt and sweatpants, dissolves his dream in a flash. The Hanukkah party has redoubled Efrat's radiance; luckily, her flimsy shawl is still draped around her shoulders, so he won't have to deal again in the dark with the perfumed cleavage of the young woman who is leaning over him at 2:15 in the morning and wondering why he didn't get himself better organized for bed.

"Your children wore me out so much, that even your hard sofa managed to put me to sleep."

Efrat is surprised that a technical expert like him didn't realize that this sofa can be folded out. She left him a sheet and blanket, after all, plus clean sweatpants, so why didn't he make himself a bed and go to sleep? Get up, get up, I'll teach you how the sofa opens… it's really simple.

"No, forget it, Efrati, I'm going home."

But pangs of conscience over the delightful party that ran so late harden her in her refusal to accept the nighttime departure of the grandfather who executed his duty so faithfully. No, she will not let him drive on a holiday weekend night, when the drunks have begun to take to the road. Moran would not forgive her if something should happen to him. And she tugs his arm and stands him on his feet, and with uncharacteristic quickness opens the sofa, to prove to him that comfortable sleep is also possible at her house. She fits the sheet and spreads the blanket, and hands him the folded T-shirt and sweatpants. No, says her stern gaze, you are not as young and strong as you think. Lie down, and I'll close the blinds so the sun won't wake you. And in the morning I'll make sure the kids don't bother you.

"Please, Amotz," she says, "do it for me, wait till it gets light."

He cannot remember this beauty ever pleading, to him or to others. Maybe she is trying through him to expiate some guilt that's weighing on her.

"The sun is unimportant," he mumbles as he sees her flipping the switch and lowering all the blinds. "In any case I get up before it does."

And although it seems so easy and natural to go home, he surrenders to his daughter-in-law, who apparently turns into an efficient homemaker only in the dead of night. She drops the shawl from her shoulders and brings him another pillow, then bare-armed she slaps it again and again, as if it were the source of sin in her home, and gives him a clean towel and quickly departs, to enable him to change from his wrinkled clothes into his son's sleeping outfit.

Although the sweatpants belong to the fruit of his own loins, he is reluctant to slip into them, not least for fear they'll be tight on him. He puts on only the T-shirt, and lifts the blinds a bit so the sun will not forget him. Then he lies down on his back on the wide sofa bed and covers himself with the blanket.

In fact, he has never before spent a whole night at his son's home. In the early days after Nadi's Caesarian birth, when Daniela stayed to help Moran out, sometimes remaining all night, he would always go home to sleep. And now, for no reason, even though his own bed is only a few kilometers from here, he has agreed to stay with his grandchildren, lying close to where his daughter-in-law readies herself for sleep. She takes an endless shower, and even after the slit of light under her closed door has gone out, music is still playing in her room, soft and annoying.

If he were to leave now, she couldn't stop him. But his fear that she will sleep through the morning while the children wander around the house neglected gets him to his feet only to knock on her door and whisper irritably: Efrati, if you want me to stay here, at least turn down that weird music.

THAT SAME ANTICIPATED sun will rise too late to wake his wife in East Africa. Well before dawn, she is roused by the engine noise of the two pickup trucks delivering the scientific team to the base camp for their weekend break. From her high window, under a sky still swirling with stars, she can make out the silhouettes of a few of them as they alight from the vehicles, dragging knapsacks and duffels.