Friendly Fire (34 page)

"Just for a minute, Neta darling, we're only going to peek and see what's inside this tank, and then right away we'll go back to Imma and Abba. You don't want to see what's inside?"

But Neta, standing tiny and tense alongside the corroded caterpillar tracks, wants no contact at all with the tank, which even after rusting in place for more than thirty years is terrifying. The darkening sky compounds her distress. But Ya'ari will not give in and lifts her little brother onto the hull, then goes up to join him, and from there, carefully and with considerable effort, climbs with the child onto the bulky turret. The hatch, he is pleased to discover, can be opened.

It is dark inside, and Ya'ari, who served in the infantry, is no expert on the innards of tanks. A cursory look tells him that the Soviet army had not been greatly concerned about the comfort of the individual soldier, only about the thickness of the steel protecting him. He can make out the olive-drab color of the steering bar, two large copper artillery shell casings, and what looks like the disintegrating vest of a tank soldier—dead these thirty years, no doubt—is lying in a corner. Nadi wants very much to crawl in and touch the steering bar, but Ya'ari is afraid he'll have trouble getting him out. As a compromise, he holds him upside-down, and in a reverse childbirth motion lowers his big head into the dark hole. Lower, Grandpa, the child pleads, while his head seems to float in the darkness, I see a dead man. That's it, no more, Ya'ari says, frightened by his grandson's wild imagination. You've seen enough. Now let's get out of here fast, before an officer comes and yells at us. No, Nadi says, stiffening his body. There's no officer, you're silly.

Ya'ari has noticed that Nadi sometimes speaks disrespectfully to his father and mother, but till now has watched his tongue with his grandfather. He pulls the child up sharply and clambers down with him. Nadi, that's it. You've seen enough. And on top of that, you can say "silly" to your friends in nursery school, but not to your grandpa who loves you so much. The child falls silent, lowers his gaze, then purses his lips and looks venomously into his grandfather's face. Neta, too, is on the verge of tears, tugging impatiently at his hand, and from the sky drops begin to fall. If she starts whimpering now, her brother will immediately join in, and it will not be to his glory to return two bawling children to their parents.

He puts the teddybear hoods over their heads, and covers his own, to his grandchildren's delight, with a sheet of graph paper he finds in his pocket.

When they reach the front gate Ya'ari is amazed to discover that the chaotic civilian world has been utterly erased, as by magic, from the consciousness of the army recruits. The picnic ground is deserted; all the cars have vanished, with no trace of paper napkins or empty mineral water bottles. Also absent is the car he lent his son, and now he remembers that he left his cell phone in it, plugged into the speakerphone socket.

Greenish lightning slashes the sky, followed by shattering thunder. The terrified children cling to his body, the soaking graph paper dribbles on his head. Without thinking twice about hurting his back, he lifts both his grandchildren in his arms and dashes for the guardhouse. A tall soldier in full battle garb looks at them severely. The amiable Ethiopian has been replaced by a Russian recruit who scowls at the three civilians who have sought refuge with him. Is he too a lone soldier, whose mother has remained in Russia? Ya'ari does not ask; nor does he need to. There is a woven basket in the corner, filled with food.

"Imma, Imma'leh, where are you; Abba, Abba'leh, where are you?" Neta's lament is not a hostile, confrontational complaint but rather a thin, heartrending wail of justified anxiety. Ya'ari sweeps up his granddaughter, her wispy body feeling immeasurably lighter than that of her little brother, and holds her close to his chest. Now the keening pierces him to the marrow—Imma, Imma'leh, where are you; Abba, Abba'leh, where are you, and the more he tries to soothe her, the more he can feel the panic flowing from her into him: There really is no reason to suspect engine trouble in his new car, so the only remaining possibility is an accident.

In the rain-soaked guard post, beside the tall Russian who keeps angrily brushing away the little hand reaching for his submachine gun, his practical engineer's mind churns through the outcomes of all possible situations, from a simple flat tire to a car-mangling wreck. Damn it, he berates himself, damn it, you're standing here with two little children who are counting on you, and you have no right to show any sign of desperation. And even if Daniela is not at your side when you hear the terrible news, you will not run away to Africa or any other continent, but by your very sanity, your practicality and sense of responsibility, you will vanquish the chaos that swells all around you.

In his imagination scenes of horrible catastrophe mingle cru
elly with practical considerations. How he will have to ask Daniela to quit teaching to devote herself to the grandchildren; how Moran's apartment will have to be rented out, and for how much; how his firm's lawyer will examine the life-insurance policy; and who will argue in court over the extent of the damages. He makes a mental note of which architect could best add a wing to their house for the children, and considers how he might persuade Nofar to become their legal guardian after he and Daniela have passed away.

A cold wind blows through his wet hair. His knees are shaking. Fear torments him, and the precise solutions he elaborates in his mind offer no comfort. The eyes of the Russian soldier are fastened on the pudgy little hand that keeps pretending to stroke, with consummate delicacy, the submachine gun propped on a stand. And the soft moaning drones on.

Imma, Imma'leh, where are you? Abba, Abba'leh, where are you?

"They'll be right back, Neta, you'll see, I promise. They haven't forgotten us."

And, in fact, a few minutes later, there is a flash of light and a honking sound, and Moran, who has found his family's hideout, quickly crosses the road, enters the guardhouse and sweeps up his children and hurries all three into the warm bosom of the car.

"I'm sorry, Abba, I'm sorry. We lost track of time."

Moran and Efrat's heads are both wet, and his daughter-i n-law's big jacket is spotted with mud and bits of leaves. Ya'ari fixes his eyes on the young woman sitting in the front seat next to her husband and avoiding his gaze, even refraining from touching her two children squeezed beside him in the back, as though her turbulent soul is not yet ready for them.

"Grandpa put me in a tank," the boy announces proudly.

"Well done, Nadi," his father gushes, "see what a great grandpa I gave birth to?"

The two children laugh.

"Not true, you didn't give birth to Grandpa, he wasn't in your belly," Neta declares.

"Grandma Daniela gave birth to Grandpa," Nadi says, chortling.

Moran hugs them and kisses their heads. And Efrat's eyes, their sandy blue color deepened by the rain clouds above, melt for her children, and she extends a caressing hand.

They've made up, Ya'ari concludes in a flash, judging by the confined soldier's effusiveness. And really, why sit in some unfamiliar café and waste the limited time together with gripes and recriminations, when you can go out into nature, and in the cold and rain of winter salve your wounded relationship with a quick coupling? There will come a time to remember well this Hanukkah holiday, the car's owner smiles inside, as he warms himself in the back, cramped between the children's safety seats; maybe a third grandchild will be born of it. Yes, a bright bloom is returning to Efrat's face, and her calm look, lingering on her husband, is not merely free of disdain but even appreciative of a man who knows how to make the most of a short interlude, and how to recognize, under his wife's rain-drenched battledress, the yearning of her flesh.

And really, why not? Disaster, as we have seen, sometimes lies in wait only a footstep away, so why bicker with your beloved, when you could take pleasure in him? In two days Daniela will return from Africa, and he knows she will want, as always, on her first night home, to know what happened to her husband day by day and hour by hour while she was away. And although she does not like him to speculate about their children's sex lives, this time he will insist on telling her how he stood with the grandchildren at the gate of the camp, exposed to thunder and lightning, while her son and daughter-in-law were out making love in the fields. Yes, he will withhold nothing from her. And therefore, on second thought, he will not spare her the blue video hidden between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach, lest she stumble upon it as he did. But really, why shouldn't she know? In three years she will be sixty, and she is mature enough to understand that there is wilder libido in the world than she has previously imagined. After all, she herself, before she disappeared through the departure gate at the airport, was the one who spoke the words
real desire.

D
IDN'T FORGET HER
? Daniela laughs, astonished, and removes her feet from the opposite armchair, a movement that tilts her a bit backward. But how so? We exchanged at most a few words at the end of the flight.

"True," says the elderly Englishman as he elegantly gathers the skirts of his white bathrobe and sits down carefully in the vacant chair. They exchanged only a few words, but he remembers every one of them and regrets that he had not begun to converse with her at the start of the flight, to hear more about the late sister and the soldier killed by his comrades' friendly fire, and especially about herself, who she is and what she was smiling about the whole time with such tranquillity. But since during most of the flight she preferred to look out the window, as if deliberately avoiding him, it would not have been polite to interrupt her. Was the view really so fascinating, or did she think him not sober enough for conversation?

"Both."

But does the lady really believe that such a veteran drinker as he could become intoxicated during a flight of less than one hour? How many drinks did the stewardess bring him? Two? Three?

"At least five," she says, and smiles at the purplish, white-haired Briton, who sits before her naked under his bathrobe, gazing at her with admiration.

Five? Really? She counted them? Nevertheless, he did not depart the aircraft drunk.

"There was no way of knowing, since two stewards came quickly and took you in a wheelchair. Now I gather they were from
this farm of yours. But what matters is that now you are completely sober, and you can apologize to me..."

To apologize to a pretty woman is a singular pleasure ... but, all the same, for what?

"For giving me a calling card from this farm and telling me it was yours, although you are just a patient here."

Correct, says the Englishman, laughing heartily, he is just a patient, but a senior patient, a perennial patient, who returns here every year of his own free will for treatment, and he may thus be considered a bit of a shareholder too. But if she demands an apology, he will readily supply one. Yes, he is sorry that he misled her. He is sorry. There is nothing easier for an Englishman than to utter those words. From the moment he saw her maintain her aristocratic composure when she was detained at the departure gate, he found her attractive, and even more so during their short conversation at the end of the flight. And so, although he knew that the chances they would meet again were exceedingly slim, as she had told him that her visit to her brother-in-law would be brief, he had the notion of planting a little lure, like a hunter seeking to trap a rare animal. And in the end it succeeded, for here she is.

Daniela blushes, but smiles forgivingly.

"You are mistaken. I did not know that you were here. I did not notice that this place is the farm on the calling card you gave me. I simply came along with my brother-in-law, who was bringing a malaria patient, a young woman from the excavation team. But it is true that I did not forget you. I have been a teacher for many years, and I have trained myself to remember my students, and therefore people I meet by chance I remember as well. And when my husband isn't with me and does not demand all my attention, a unique person like you may be engraved in my memory."

To be engraved in the memory of such a lady is a great honor.

"If you want you may call it an honor..." Daniela tries to dampen the slightly sweaty excitement of the bathrobed Englishman, who is beginning to resemble a dirty old man. "But anyway, what are you doing here? You don't seem particularly ill."

That is correct, he is not actually ill, but he will be one day, and he plans to end his life with dignity. As a bachelor without children, living on a modest government pension, in England he has no chance to receive honorable care. In the municipal old-age homes, the old Englishwomen pester the elderly bachelors like him.

"What kind of work did you do?"

In more recent years he worked for British Rail, but his true career was with His Majesty's armed forces. He was too young for the world war, but when he joined up just afterward he asked to be sent to places where there was some hope of active duty, to colonies in Asia and Africa. But after India and Palestine were lost, the other colonies began to demand independence, and by the time he reached the rank of major, not a colony remained where the British Empire might rule honorably and justly without encountering much terrorism. Thus at the age of fifty, if she can imagine it, he became a train engineer for British Rail, and fifteen years ago, when he retired, he decided to return to East Africa not as a colonialist but as a patient.

"And you chose Africa over all the other places you served?"

Yes, of all the peoples of the former Empire he prefers Africans as caregivers. They are more genuine and honest than the Pakistanis or Burmese, and when they care for one's body, they do not try, as do the Indians, to steal your soul. They are modest and not suspicious, like the Arabs, or afraid that perhaps they will be afflicted by European diseases. They are introverted people, and they care for you without too much talking, like veterinarians caring for pets. It is true that the scenery here is less impressive than elsewhere on the continent, but he feels that a monotonous semiarid expanse enables one to depart from life with less anguish and more hope.