Friendly Fire (30 page)

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.

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.

"W
HAT DOES
E
FRAT
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?"

W
HEN 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.

T
HAT 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.

Tonight, the head of the team, the Tanzanian Seloha Abu, and the Ugandan archaeologist, Dr. Kukiriza, are tired, silent, and lost in thought, like soldiers returning from a difficult mission or arduous training. They even had a casualty: the Tunisian woman, Zohara al-Ukbi, ill with malaria. They carefully lower her onto a stretcher. The circle of respect and concern that forms around her is soon joined by the white administrator and the Sudanese nurse, who lean in the dim light toward her suffering face, wish her well, and obtain her permission to house her in the infirmary.