A. Yehoshua - Friendly Fire - A Duet

"Suicide bombers?" Daniela is astonished.

"Of course," Yirmi says. "If not today, then tomorrow. And at that moment I resolved to go back to Tulkarm and again go up on that roof, to prove to the Palestinian that we had not only given our son absurdly good heart and manners but courage too. So after a few days I went to Emile and told him that all his medicines would not help me calm down until I could go back to that roof to rescue my son's honor, and that such indifference over his simple human gesture was unacceptable to me. And if I had to bribe middlemen to sneak me in there, my wallet was open, on the condition that the middlemen wanted my money and not my blood. I told Shuli that I was being sent for one day to our embassy in Cyprus. On that night, she was actually staying with you in Tel Aviv, and I'm sure that she didn't suspect a thing. And although Tulkarm sits right on the border, getting there was not easy, believe me. On the way in, they didn't do much checking at the roadblocks, and because I rode in with some laborers and dressed accordingly, they couldn't tell me from the others. But on the return trip, they had to smuggle me into my own country on roundabout back roads, to protect me from enemy fire and friendly fire too."

"And all that was worth it?"

"Very much so. Because on the roof I received, in addition to a cup of strong coffee, a little lesson in Judaism."

"From whom?" she asks, laughing. "From the Palestinian or the pharmacist?"

A tap is heard on the door of the back room. Sijjin Kuang has returned.

ONCE MORE THE father tells his son: "Don't butt in. This time I'm in charge. It wasn't you who put together this elevator, and you won't take it apart."

"But on the condition you stay on the bed," the son answers. "You decided against the wheelchair, and I'm in no mood to see you fall down."

"Don't worry," his father says, "I'll give instructions by remote control. But you sit on the side and don't get involved. This elevator is guaranteed by me personally, not by the firm. Right, Mrs. Bennett?"

"A lifetime personal guarantee."

For some reason she still hasn't offered him the comfortable armchair she has claimed for herself — as if she likes seeing him propped up among the pillows on her big bed. She pulls the electric heater close, spreads a blanket on her lap, lights a cigarette, and seems ready for a long encampment. Suddenly a barrage of hail rattles the windows, and few white icy pebbles fly in through the shaft and roll on the floor, and darkness descends on Jerusalem.

Without explicit orders, the expert goes to the elevator and turns on the light. Then she takes the two reading lamps from either side of the bed, plugs them both into an extension cord, and directs their light toward the bottom of the elevator. New shadows begin to move on the walls. The old man beckons to Hilario, takes his hand and strokes his hair, and whispers at length in his ear what he should tell the Filipinos who are waiting for their orders. The lengthy Hebrew instructions are drastically condensed by the interpreter, and it now becomes clear that it was not merely so he could be spirited up the stairs that the old man mobilized Francisco's friends but also so they could hoist the little elevator by hand, making possible the detachment of the piston from the lift mechanism.

Now the expert wedges her childlike, sexually ambiguous body between the side of the elevator and the wall of the shaft where the piston is attached. Drawing on her experience in the regional auto shop of Upper Galilee, she locates the oil cap and unscrews it with a monkey wrench produced from her jumpsuit pocket. A trickle of viscous white liquid begins to flow out, instead of the completely blackened oil one would expect after so many years.

"What's that?" Amotz asks.

His father shrugs. He cannot identify the nature of this fluid, either. He found this pump in his native Czechoslovakia, in a warehouse of used elevator parts, and since he bought it for next to nothing, he didn't bother to examine its innards.

The white stuff continues to trickle. Even the expert, who now and then smells and tastes it, can't come to a conclusion regarding its nature or provenance. But she is collecting it, in a small jar brought beforehand from the kitchen, so perhaps they'll be able to identify it later on.

The lady of the house also wants to taste the liquid. She gives Hilario a small spoon, he brings her a sample, and she sticks the tip of her tongue into it. Could be machine oil, or maybe sesame, or truffle, or eucalyptus, or coconut, or kerosene or gasoline. Not bad, she says. Careful, my dear, jokes the old man, the guarantee I gave you does not include indigestion from elevator gravy. And they laugh, he on the bed, shaking on the silk pillows, and she in the armchair, the two of them relaxed and intrigued by the drama in this miniature theater, as Hilario explains to Marco and Pedro that they should prop the elevator a bit higher on their shoulders so Francisco can detach the forklift from the bottom of the cab and pull free the entire original and delicate unit.

"And the electric current?" Ya'ari suddenly wells with anger at his father. "Before Francisco starts to turn a single screw, we have to be sure he won't get electrocuted."

But the anger is unnecessary now. There is no current in any screw. The expert has already disconnected the power in secret and without permission, and is unharmed and happy.

Why does he have to worry so much over something that's not his responsibility? Why try to take control of a historic relic he is neither supposed nor obligated to know a thing about? If he joined the team in order to look after his father, he can see with his own eyes how good it is for the old man to lie on the big bed, in a warm and familiar room, beside a beloved friend, in the intimacy of a dark winter morning. And if so, why should a busy man like him, a bothersome worrier, not take advantage of this fortuitous moment of grace on the Hanukkah holiday and sit serenely in a corner? And if Daniela in Africa is bonding with her past but free of the present, he himself now has the chance to take time out from both. No secretary, draftsman, or engineer is ringing his cell phone for advice; in other words, the world is carrying on fine, even without him.

A smile of contentment lights up Ya'ari's face. Good, from this moment on, I am but a silent onlooker. He brings a wicker chair from the kitchen, stands it beside the big bed, sits down and crosses his legs and closes his eyes.

Francisco once told him and Daniela that the territory of the Philippines encompasses seven thousand islands, only about five hundred of them inhabited. In fact he and Kinzie come from two islands that are hundreds of kilometers apart. Thanks to the wide variety of dialects spoken across the whole archipelago, what unites their islands as a nation is the English language.

That lingua franca is proving effective in the bedroom of the psychoanalyst as well. Hilario, the clever first-grader, passes along in English the technical instructions he gets in Hebrew from the great-grandfather and explains to Marco and Pedro how to raise the lightweight elevator.

Although the cab is rather easily lifted upon the short men's shoulders, Francisco prefers not to rely solely on his two comrades and adds the support of a stepladder and a small bureau before crawling underneath to disconnect the lift arm.

The Filipinos speak softly among themselves, and old Ya'ari adopts their polite, respectful tone as he tells Francisco, via Hilario's translation, the correct procedure for undoing the screws. He must work slowly, with caution. The screws are rusted, and one must oil them and wait for them to yield gracefully, to exit undamaged from the place they have grown used to for so many years.