Friendly Fire (20 page)

Beyond the bridge spanning the Alexander River flaps a small, improvised-looking formation of migratory birds that have lost their larger flock. Daylight is down to its last rays. He takes advantage of the creeping pace to have a look at the road map. Good thing: if he'd relied on instinct, he'd have turned east too early, at the Hadera junction, instead of at the big power station at Caesarea.

Now that he is sure of his route, he begins passing other cars. It's not good to arrive at an army base after dark, when the guards at the gate are more strict.

And indeed, at the entrance to the training camp, surrounded by rustling eucalyptus trees, two skinny Ethiopian recruits in full gear, armed with rifles, come forward and demand from the civilian a signed entry pass.

"I'm not even here for you," he objects. "I'm going to the adjutancy of the reserve battalion. My son is an officer at their headquarters, and he urgently needs a parcel of clothing."

And he points to the trash bag.

But there is no separate entrance for the reserve battalion, and the well-disciplined recruits have not been trained in the rules governing parents who bring urgent bundles of clothing. And because they are forbidden to leave their post, they recommend that he wait for a patrol that is soon due to pass by.

"When?"

"In about an hour."

"No," Ya'ari protests. "I am very sorry, but I have no intention of waiting here in the dark for a whole hour. Now listen, you're new recruits, but I am a bereaved father. Seven years ago my oldest son fell in a military action in the West Bank, in Tulkarm. So please, don't be hard on me now. It's already late, and the one son I have left is here with the reserves, a combat officer who needs warm clothing. Here, please, I'm opening the bag so you can see for yourselves it's only undershirts and shorts and not bombs or grenades."

D
ANIELA WILL NOT
let go of the doctor. His English is not rich with imagery, but it is generous in detail, and she drinks up her sister's final moments, reconstructing a picture of her to replace the urn of ashes that her husband had brought to Israel. After the doctor reassures the Israeli visitor that the young black man lying in her sister's bed will recover fully, she is ready to leave this place where the void in her has been filled with the pain she longed for. As they exit the infirmary and hurry toward the train station, she feels that even if her visit were to end at this moment, its true purpose would in a sense have been realized, now that she had learned where and how her sister died. If a flight home from Dar es Salaam were suddenly offered to her, so she could be with her grandchildren on Friday evening to light candles with them, sing Hanukkah songs, and eat a
jelly doughnut, she would leave her brother-in-law on the spot. He would go on his way in this summer rain, with his three porters and the grief-stricken nurse, along streets whose Africanness cannot hide the Muslim identity expressed in minarets and Koran verses on walls in curlicue script.

But because departing early is impossible, not least since it might be interpreted as an open insult, she must remain patient with this host upon whom she has imposed herself. During the remainder of her stay, she realizes, she will not discover much about her sister that she didn't know before. She can see that her brother-in-law is disinclined to dwell on shared memories. Until her departure, then, it will be up to her simply to volunteer her warmth and humanity.

The three porters, who know their destination, now break into the lead, and Yirmiyahu is forced to hurry behind them, glancing backward as he does so to be sure his sister-in-law is not lagging behind Sijjin Kuang, sailing tall at the rear of the little company like the mast of the last ship in a convoy.

The image of the bed and window at the foreign clinic stays with Daniela, and sorrow wells up within her like a hot potion, and pity too, for the bald man, her seventy-year-old brother-in-law, a constant in her life since childhood, whose long springing strides do lend him a faint resemblance to a peeled monkey.

At the station the train is waiting, already packed with passengers. Whole families, bunched like grapes in every window, peer out at them, and at first she fears they will not find seats. But the head of the local
UNESCO
delegation, who takes this train regularly, has arranged a compartment for them. At the doorway of their car they pay the porters, not merely for their labor but also for the tools of their trade, since the three big baskets are coming aboard too. And because the visit to the clinic took the time they might have spent lunching at a comfortable restaurant, Sijjin Kuang has bought food for the road. To Daniela's disappointment, the diverse bounty she produces does not include any dessert. Meanwhile, the guest has spotted a peddler bearing a well-stocked snack emporium on a tricycle and asks her brother-in-law, a little sheepishly, if she has time to add a few sweets to the meal. To her surprise he approves her going alone to the moveable kiosk, not even warning her to hurry, as if unconcerned by the possibility that she might miss the train and be left behind.

Still, he watches her every move from the train window: a middle-aged woman who despite her years has a nice figure and good legs, like her sister, although the candy she consumes freely has thickened her a bit. There she stands, eagerly picking out one treat and then another, like the young girl in her school uniform with her book bag on her back who would dawdle on the way home at the kiosk near their apartment block.

And indeed, as she returns all excited to the compartment and sets before her companions bags of chocolates and toffees imported from the Asian continent beyond this shared ocean, her brother-in-law reminds her of the kiosk of her youth, where she would take sweets without paying.

"Don't exaggerate, it was all written down."

"In an open account, which your mother would pay off on the first of every month."

"Something like that..."

"I don't get it, was there a system like that for other children in your class?"

"I don't think so."

"That's what always amazed me, that your father and mother, who were modest and almost ascetic, agreed to give a girl an open account. In your home, after all, there were almost no sweets."

"Which is why they didn't care that I hung around the kiosk."

"They weren't afraid of spoiling you?"

She smiles.

"You've known me more than forty years. Do I seem spoiled to you? Money was never important to me. When I earned money from babysitting or as a camp counselor, I would give it all to my mother and didn't care about it. No, Yirmi, my mother and father
didn't lose anything from my open account at the kiosk; they only gained smiles and a good mood."

"And your suitors?" he teases her. "They also benefited from that open account?"

"Who do you mean?"

"The boys who would walk you home after school."

"They weren't looking for candy."

"Of that I am sure." Yirmi chuckles, as if the visit to the clinic has lightened his mood. While the train toots and flexes for the journey with a little lurch forward and then back, he derives enjoyment from his sister-in-law's youth, taking the opportunity to ask why, with so many suitors, it was Amotz she had picked.

"Why not?"

"Because you had boyfriends who were more successful. At least that was what Shuli used to say."

"Successful?" Her eyes flash, as the train sets off with a screech. "Successful in what way?"

Yirmiyahu, suddenly anxious, shrugs and doesn't answer.

S
INCE THESE ARE
raw recruits—lust ten days earlier they were civilians—they are not aware that one may violate a military order out of misunderstanding, but not out of compassion, and so they open the gate for the bereaved father bringing warm clothes to his remaining son. But as for the location of the reservists' command, they do not know it.

No problem, he will find it himself. All he asks now of the guards, who have displayed such genuine humanity, is that they keep an eye on his car. Then he sets out briskly through the wintry dusk on the paths of the big military base. Above him the wind rustles softly in the eucalyptus trees, which grew to great heights after the fetid swamps were drained back in the early Zionist era.
He asks no one the way, but finds it for himself among sheds and tents, walking quietly past the evening formation of a platoon of recruits in full gear, who listen to a lecture on morality from their arrogant sergeant. Ya'ari wanders, possibly in circles, mud accumulating on his shoes as in the blackening sky two or three wayward stars appear. Just as the fast-falling darkness might have begun to undermine his confidence, he notices two civilian cars and a dusty army Land Rover parked by a shed thumping with dance music.

In the belief that the darkness will conceal his face, he creeps up to the building and peeks into window after window, verifying by the equipment and uniforms and beds that reservists are quartered here. One room is only a darkened office, but the next one is lighted, with two unmade army cots, and there on a blanket spread out on the floor beside a small heater sits Moran dressed in a civilian shirt, playing backgammon with a diminutive major sporting a mane of wild red hair. Ya'ari is in no hurry, he stands close to the pane and continues to watch his son. Suddenly Moran looks up, but he does not seem surprised to see his father's face in the window and doesn't get up or stop the game. With a friendly wave he invites his father inside, and says to his companion, don't say I didn't warn you that my father would try to rescue me from here. And the short red-haired officer looks at Ya'ari affectionately and says, welcome, Abba of Moran, just give us another minute to finish the game, so I can chalk up another victory.

"By all means, beat him as much as you want; he deserves it," Ya'ari replies facetiously. "Just so you know, I did not come here as a father, but as an employer."

Moran smiles and groans, "Sure, an employer," and vigorously throws the dice.

Within a minute or two the game is over, and the two slowly stand up and stretch. Now Moran hugs his father warmly and without embarrassment presents his cheek for a kiss, as the major introduces himself to the visitor with a cordial handshake: Hezi,
maybe you remember me, I was with Moran in officers' training school.

"And you're also locked up here? I see that the two of you are having a good time in confinement."

"No, Abba, Hezi is not a prisoner, he's on the side of the jailers. Hezi is the adjutant of the battalion. He had nobody to play backgammon with, so he decided to attach me to himself for ten days."

Ya'ari is amused.

"So you're the adjutant? You should know that I kept warning your friend here to request a release from duty in the proper formal manner and not to count on people just forgetting about him."

"And he was right not to," says the adjutant. "He knew very well that he wouldn't get any release from me."

"Even if he's in the midst of an important project for the Ministry of Defense?"

"I have soldiers whose wives are eight and nine months pregnant, I have soldiers with a father or mother in the hospital, I have soldiers for whom every day of reserve duty hurts their business; why should I care about the Ministry of Defense? From his standpoint Moran was right to decide to just ignore us and hope that we'd forget about him."

"But..."

"But unfortunately it's not so easy to forget someone like Moran, so I sent a military policeman to go get him, and believe me, Abba of Moran, it was purely out of mercy that we didn't send him to jail and instead kept him here attached to the adjutancy—also so I would have someone to play backgammon with, although he is a mediocre player without much luck."

Moran laughs. "Don't believe him; he's just ragging on me."

"But..."

"But what?"

"But..." Ya'ari says, hesitating, "why didn't you send him to serve with the rest of them?"

"There they don't really need him. We assigned another officer to his platoon. And I have an iron law: an extra soldier is a vulnerable soldier. Overall, too many reservists showed up this time—there are many unemployed workers in Israel."

"So why not let him off?"

"Why let him off? He damaged the solidarity and thumbed his nose at the camaraderie, so he'll sit here confined to base till the end of his reserve duty and take stock of himself, and in the meantime improve his backgammon."

Moran laughs, and it seems he also enjoys his friend's rebuke. But his father studies the officer to determine if he's being serious.

"How did you get to be a major and Moran stayed only a lieutenant?"

"Because I don't have a rich father like Moran, so I stayed on a few more years as a career officer to save money for my studies."

"And what did you study?"

"In the end, I didn't study."

"So how do you make a living?"

"This and that."

"In any case I think I remember your face from somewhere."

"Maybe you saw his mug on television," Moran says.

"On television?"

"Because just as you see him here, adjutant of reservists, distinguished major, bursting with patriotic values, on television he's on a satirical show rattling off bad jokes, and lucky for him there's a laugh track so he won't fall flat."

The officer-comedian punches Moran in the ribs with an affectionate fist.

"So what do you say, Hezi,"—Ya'ari turns to the adjutant, man to man—"I came to bring the detainee warm clothes, but better still why don't I free you of him? So he can do something useful for the world instead of wasting away here."

But the officer-comedian puts on a grave face and answers firmly: It is all right to give the clothes to Moran, but it is not all
right to give Moran to his father. He is sentenced till the end of his unit's reserve duty, and will be released when the others are. And as for usefulness to the world, his cell phone has been confiscated, but he is allowed one call a day to his wife, and if she's not home or her cell is turned off, that's not the army's problem. And anyway, how did you get permission to enter the camp?