Friendly Fire (11 page)

The hut is empty. Here and there are scattered blankets with tin plates on them. In the corner, ringed with black basalt stones, burns a purplish flame. Its smoke caresses the tufts of straw that protrude from the ceiling.

"They're not afraid the straw will catch fire and burn down the hut?"

"If a hut burns down, it's easy enough to put up a new one. That's an eternal flame, and from generation to generation they keep it burning, even in the heat of summer."

"Friendly fire," she whispers unthinkingly, as her eyes tear up from the smoke.

"Yes." He flinches in pain. "Friendly fire, indeed ... Who the hell knows how we all got infected by that revolting expression. You know who first blurted that out?"

"No."

"Guess."

"I don't know.."

"Your favorite person..."

"Moran? No. Just don't tell me that Amotz..."

"Why not? Yes, Amotz, back in Jerusalem, at the Foreign Ministry, when the army officer and doctor came into my office. It was Amotz who brought them, because when Eyali filled out the forms, back in basic training, he listed you and Amotz to be notified in case of bad news. They could not conceal the fact that a soldier had been killed by our own forces, because this had already trickled into the media, and so, while I am standing there with the poisoned lance stuck in my heart, and this angel of death, in uniform, brings me the message that the gunfire came from our soldiers and he trembles as he explains what happened in the battle, as if there really had been a battle and not simply the killing of a soldier who was mistaken for the enemy, a wanted man, it somehow seemed to your Amotz, my Amotz, our Amotz, who had come from Tel Aviv with this bearer of bad news, that I didn't comprehend the explanations—or the opposite, maybe he was actually trying to console me, to loosen the rope that was wound around my neck, since being killed by our own forces is a hundred times crueler than 'enemy fire'—and then he grabs my hand and hugs me tight, and says to me, Yirmi, what they mean is friendly fire."

"Amotz?" she whispers.

"Yes, Amotz, and not only once, but several times, he repeated that wretched expression, and at first I wanted to rip him apart, but then suddenly, amid all the shock and anger, I also understood that inside this stupid oxymoron, this
friendly fire,
there was something more, some small spark of light that would help me navigate through the great darkness that awaited me and better identify the true sickness that afflicts all of us. And from then on I fell in love with this expression, and I started to use it a lot, relevantly and also irrelevantly, and to pass it on to others ... See, even you, Little Sister, you
walk into a crappy little hut in Africa and you say, totally naturally,
friendly fire
... right?"

T
HE
M
INISTRY OF
Defense is walking distance from Ya'ari's office, but a river of parents and children milling toward Tel Aviv's Hall of Culture impedes his progress. Ya'ari inherited a security clearance from his father, who in his day also worked with the Defense Ministry, and his entry into the heavily guarded building therefore goes smoothly, with no unnecessary delays.

A few years ago they expanded the old structure, adding new floors and basements. Ya'ari's firm designed most of the elevators in the new wings, and there were periods when he participated in many meetings of the ministry's construction department to protect his plans from cost-cutting contractors. As someone familiar with the workings of the ministry, he now notices that it, too, is short many workers today. The computers are blank and the offices abandoned, including that of the division manager he is scheduled to meet. What's going on? He asks the veteran secretary, who is still at her post. Is the Defense Ministry upgrading the holiness of Hanukkah to give time off to its workers?

"Why not?" she answers, surprised that Ya'ari is unaware of the Hanukkah performance organized at the Hall of Culture for the children of ministry employees. Especially since his son, Moran, managed to cadge free tickets from her for the children of Ya'ari's firm.

"And he didn't bother to tell me, and even my daughter-in-law doesn't know. This morning he needed to go off for some clarification regarding his reserve duty, meaning that my two grandchildren are missing the show."

"How old are they?"

"The boy is two, and the girl is five."

"Then don't be upset. My grandchildren were around those ages last year, and they only suffered through the stupid play."

"How do you know it's the same play?"

"How much originality can there be in the moonlighting of unemployed actors?"

"So there's nobody left here to meet with on this case?"

"The new deputy, she's here."

"Why? She has no kids?"

"Kids? No. A confirmed bachelorette. Go see her."

The deputy, a construction engineer with a Ph.D., is a woman of fifty or so, tall and cheerful. She welcomes Ya'ari with enthusiasm and locates the file, marked
SECRET
in red ink.

"This fifth elevator," Ya'ari begins, with a sigh, "which all of a sudden popped up after we finished the planning—tell me, is it really necessary?"

The deputy examines the file and sighs, too. "What can I do? We also get orders. It turns out that they need an extra elevator here, independent, which will go straight from the top floor to the lowest level of the garage without picking up any passengers in between. And in addition to an internal telephone, they want a screen and video hookup trained on the outside world. In other words, a very private elevator."

"All right, then we'll have to deal with it. But I hope you've taken into account that it will require a complete overhaul of the design of the shaft and will involve further payment."

"The redesign is only natural," the deputy admits, "but as for more money, we've already milked the ministry budget for this project down to the last penny."

"Thanks very much, but what does that mean? That I now have to subsidize the defense forces of the state of Israel?"

"Why not?" she asks, laughing. "They protect you too."

Ya'ari shrugs but doesn't argue. Budgets in any case are determined in a different department, and in that one he'll know how to
hold his own. He's not sure whether to show the deputy the idea that came to him in the middle of the night and finally decides to risk it. A gracious woman, good looking and elegant in her own way, can't take it upon herself to kill a technical idea that's outside her area of expertise. Look, he explains with a cryptic smile, he's a grass widower whose wife flew off to Africa and he can't sleep well at night, so he came up with this idea, which might placate, even satisfy, all parties. A corner elevator, with perpendicular doors, squeezed into the south corner of the shaft and operated by independent control: this would require no significant appropriation of space at the expense of the four currently planned elevators, so the finished design won't need complete redoing. The deputy takes out a scale ruler and measures the diagram.

"This elevator of yours is very narrow, Mr. Ya'ari." She smiles ironically. "Our secret rider will have to lose weight in order to ride in it."

"You're right," Ya'ari admits, "it is very narrow. But don't forget it has another corner, for another person, presumably the wife of the secret rider."

"His wife?" remarks the deputy with surprise. "Well, it wasn't really her I pictured in your spartan elevator. But if his wife insists on chaperoning her husband everywhere, then she'll have to slim down, too."

T
HE BIG KITCHEN
at the farm is clean and quiet. The cooks have disappeared. Yirmiyahu opens one of the doors of the big refrigerator for his sister-in-law. What can I heat up for you? But the strong sun, and the memory of the African woman smearing her roof with cow manure, have dulled her appetite. No hurry, she tells him. First I'll go up and rest awhile, and then, if possible...

Yes, they can postpone lunch, but they will have to finish it by
three, because then he must go out with the food to the excavation site and won't return till late at night.

"Is it far?"

"Not terribly, but the driving is very slow."

"So what about me?"

"Rest, read. After all, I didn't burn your novel."

"And who else will stay here?"

"There is always a security guard."

Suddenly she is seized with the fear of abandonment.

"Can I join you? Is there room for me?"

"Yes, but on condition that you don't wait like your sister till the last minute, but be ready down here by two-thirty, and we'll eat and hit the road. You want me to wake you?"

"No need," she says, suddenly a bit dejected. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep."

She slowly climbs the broad and easy stairs that spiral around the old elevator shaft. The room she left that morning now smells of Lysol, reminding her of the toilets at her school. In her absence the floor has been mopped, the bathroom cleaned, and her bed remade. She looks at the bluish haze of the summer sky. On a distant hill are two zebras, either fighting or copulating, not clear which. She thinks about her husband. Was Amotz in fact the source of the phrase
friendly fire,
which even during the week of mourning began to trip from Yirmi's tongue with a sarcasm that depressed and paralyzed her sister?

She pulls the wooden shutters closed and surrounds herself with darkness. The room is pleasant, but is missing a large mirror to reflect her full image. The small scratched mirror hanging over the sink can't satisfy her curiosity. She takes off her gym shoes and her dress. Remembering the appreciative looks of the locals, she is pleased that she took Amotz's advice to try out its bold colors on their native soil. For years she has worn only trousers, convinced that dresses make her look heavier. But here she is free and not compelled to look after her figure. The dress added a light touch to the morning call on the elephant.

She stretches out on the bed in her bra and panties, then after a few minutes undoes the bra and liberates her breasts. Then she wraps herself in a lightweight robe she found in Yirmi's closet. Amotz had too easily turned down the chance to come with her. True, she was concerned that on this trip he would be in the way, but for now she is not swept up in childhood memories or in sorrow, and who knows what might happen in the short week ahead? The detachment to which her brother-in-law is so fervently addicted is damaging the simple and natural bond she always had with him. And it is implausible that he's living here merely to build up his savings. Surely his intentions are more radical. As she leafs through the three volumes of anthropology and geology that she found in the room, she realizes that they are not there simply for reading or browsing. They are a clear statement on the part of a man whose bookshelves in Jerusalem were always filled to overflowing.

She gets up to make sure that she has locked the door. If she had gone with Amotz that day to the foreign ministry to bring the horrible news, he would have chosen his words more carefully and not blurted out "friendly fire," the words Yirmi has fallen in love with and is amplifying into a new religion. But she got to her sister's side in Jerusalem too late. Moran was so anxious about the heavy blow he was about to deal her that he hung around the school for a solid hour till she finished her lesson. Everyone knew about Eyali's death before she did.

The door is locked. Despite the heat she takes one of Yirmi's woolen blankets and curls up under it. For years she has been faithful to her afternoon nap and tries not to miss it even when traveling. And since in their first year of marriage it had already become clear to Amotz that afternoon napping enhanced her sexuality, he would loyally join her. Was it because of the mysterious power of the afternoon sun? Maybe this feeling of sexual awakening in the
afternoon was tied to her teenage years, when every day after school she would be surrounded by several admiring boys who would tag along on her way home and dawdle in front of the apartment block while her mother waited upstairs to serve her lunch.

However it was, years after her mother's death, with her suitors long since happily united with other women, she still retains that afternoon flame, which Amotz won't allow to go to waste, even cutting meetings short and driving the long way home to their northern suburb to try his strength in the darkened bedroom, in which a teacher has fallen asleep after her long day in class.

B
UOYED BY THE
fact that his nighttime sketch has been met, for now, with humor and not scorn, Ya'ari shuns his own elevator and skips down the stairs to the exit. The skies have cleared and a friendly winter sun caresses the passersby. The streets are calm, now that the Hall of Culture has swallowed up the children and their parents. But can it be that the Hanukkah show has also consumed his chief engineer and financial manager? The office is locked. The smell of tobacco is all that remains.

He phones Moran, but his son's sophisticated mobile device, paid for by the firm, is only taking messages. With low expectations he calls Efrat's cell, which his veteran bookkeeper has also managed to list as an office expense, and hears her phone's parrot recitation of its usual ingratiating but heartless recording. Everyone is shirking his duty. Is he the only one at his desk today? Taped to his computer screen is a note from the chief engineer:
An elderly woman from Jerusalem, Dr. Devorah Bennett, wishes to speak with your father regarding a malfunction in the private elevator in her home. I intentionally did not take down her number, so that she won't expect us to call her back. But she will probably call again this afternoon. Should I give her your father's home number?

No,
scribbles Ya'ari with a black marker,
don't give her anybody's number. The tenant from Pinsker is enough for me. Just remember that we're a design firm and not a service center.
And he pastes the note to the engineer's computer screen, locks up the office, and drives home. If he's not entitled to a ticket to a children's play, maybe he deserves a free dream in his double bed.