A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

The old man succumbs to his twofold trembling, and the cane slips from his hand. So as not to collapse on the doorstep, he pitches himself forward and clings for dear life to the fragile old woman, who struggles to keep her balance under the unexpected load, and begins weeping on her shoulder.

From the staircase Ya'ari hears his father sobbing, perhaps for the first time in his life. Little Hilario looks up at him with perplexed concern, as if curious to know why he doesn't run over to help. But Ya'ari freezes. He sees his father's weeping as a great volcanic blast of liberation. I will do him wrong, he says to himself, if I go up now and embarrass him. He looks at the Filipinos sitting quietly on the stairs, half-listening, perhaps pining for their homeland. Only in the big bright eyes of the expert flickers a little smile, as if in the cries and whimpers she can make out hidden melodies.

Summoning all her strength, Devorah Bennett pulls the old man into the apartment and leaves the door open, which is a sign for Ya'ari and crew to enter the apartment cautiously. His father has already been taken into her treatment room, and is apparently propped in her chair, since she is saying very loudly, as if his hearing were also impaired: See, now you're the therapist and I'm your patient.

Ya'ari seats the Filipinos around the dining table, which is elegantly arrayed with expensive refreshments. As one already familiar with the apartment, he directs the expert toward the bedroom. In the hallway he puts a hushing finger to his lips as they tiptoe past the treatment room, but his father is on the alert and notices them. For the moment I'm only letting her hear the noises; I'm not dismantling anything, Ya'ari tells him, as he leads the small woman to the miracle of the tiny elevator.

"So," he says, looking into her wide blue eyes, "I bet you've never seen a contraption like this."

She smiles with amusement. This is something impressive. He pulls open the grille and escorts her into the tiny cage, which seems made to order for a nymph like her, with her cropped hair and nearly flat chest and aroma of freshly mown grass. Show me your stuff, he challenges her, pressing the up button, and the elevator begins to groan and shake and wrestle with itself, but before the expert can voice an opinion he puts a finger to her lips, Wait, he says, there's another surprise for you. And then, during the slow ascent, the wailing of the cat in heat begins to waft into the tiny space. The expert's mouth is agape with laughter. She looks around to find the electrical connections, but the walls are blank. She then reaches over and removes the picture of Jung, revealing a primitive electrical box, and as she does so the hungry yowling grows louder. The expert has already produced a small voltage tester from her jumpsuit pocket, but Ya'ari stops her. No, he will not let her near the wiring until they disconnect the current that comes from the electric company.

"Where else would it come from?"

"You don't understand. It circumvents the regular connection to the apartment."

"Why?"

"Because the building doesn't have three-phase current, meaning that the electric company would have had to be called in to switch the hookup, and they would have started drilling problematic holes all over the walls. Back when the elevator was built, the wait for such an operation could take two years, not to mention the cost that the lady was not equipped to undertake, even though my father offered to pay for it. So he tapped straight into the electrical pole."

"By what authority?"

"His own. His was a generation that didn't always distinguish between private and public property."

"Yes," the former kibbutznik says, smiling, "I know a few of those old socialists myself."

They go out onto the roof, and the winds try to shove them off. Ya'ari steps back. In stormy weather like this they'll never find the pirate cable, and there's obviously no chance of taking his father up here in the hope he'll remember where it is. But neither cold nor wind can intimidate the expert, and like a small gazelle she skips among the potbellied water tanks, hops around satellite dishes, puts her ear against old fraying clotheslines that haven't been used for decades.

A rare creature, Ya'ari thinks as he follows her movements, wondering what Daniela would make of her. Not only is her age elusive, but her sex seems to change from hour to hour. No wonder Gottlieb is scared of her. And now, despite the deluge from above, she succeeds in finding the cable.

"Don't touch a thing," Ya'ari shouts, but his voice is muffled by the roaring winds.

She points to an insulated wire that runs innocently among the clotheslines and comes to rest surreptitiously on the roof railing, from there heading someplace unspecific to steal electricity.

She rests her belly against the railing and leans way down to trace the route of the wire, her legs in the air. Ya'ari races over in a panic and pulls her back, and she lands like a feather on the roof and rolls over.

"I'm warning you," he says, extending his hand to hers, "don't touch anything here."

"But if we don't disconnect the electricity, how can we fix the connector box?"

"Let it keep yowling at her forever," he retorts, "she's not worth getting electrocuted for."

"If that's what you want," she says, her eyes wide with disappointment. "But you're giving me a day's pay for nothing."

"And if it's for nothing, what do you care?" he says, leading her by the arm back toward the elevator. "But don't worry," he adds, a new idea dawning, "your workday isn't over. When we get back to Tel Aviv, we'll go listen to the shaft in the Pinsker Tower. Strong winds like these shouldn't go to waste."

AFTER THE ARCHAEOLOGIST has left her room, Daniela reconsiders. Maybe it's not right to conceal from Yirmi the little mission she has just undertaken. She puts on shoes and makeup, and goes down to the kitchen.

In the kitchen the cooks are preparing the last meal for the research team. New provisions are also arriving, but Yirmiyahu is not at the table by the entrance to list them and pay the suppliers.

"Where's Jeremy?" she inquires of her friend the elderly groundskeeper. He tells her that her brother-in-law was there a few moments ago, but a bad headache drove him to the infirmary.

"It really is high time he tended to himself," she says offhandedly to the African, who marvels at the white visitor's morning appetite as she asks for a bite of the lamb chops emerging from the oven. But the cooks are quite pleased by her hunger and hurry to offer her also a taste of an unidentified dish already prepared for the farewell dinner. Here, madam, they say, now that you are getting used to the smell and taste of Africa, you are leaving? When will you come back to us?

She could gratify them by holding out some hope, but instead she gives a straight answer: I won't be back, and she spoons undissolved sugar from her cup to sweeten her mouth, then exits into the burning sunshine, heading for the infirmary. Recalling the vicious standoff between cat and snake that she witnessed two days ago in the grass nearby, she makes sure to walk on open ground.

On a dirt mound near the infirmary sit several young African women, two of them pregnant, apparently waiting. The door is wide open. Inside the infirmary are two rooms. In the well-lighted front room stands the cot where her blood pressure was found to be normal. In the darkened back room she can make out the bald head of her brother-in-law, who lies with his face to the wall.

She taps on the open door, and he turns and faces her, but she doesn't get up. For the first time since she arrived six days ago, she catches a flash of hostility in his eyes.

"Sijjin Kuang hasn't come back yet?"