"It's good that her mother always volunteers to help."
"The mother is okay, but the daughter of the mother keeps running around on empty. A training course up north, then a seminar down south. She drives me crazy."
"Go crazy quietly and keep it to yourself; be careful not to make any remarks. It's not your business to educate her. Let Moran take care of her."
"But Moran is a prisoner. An officer in the IDF. Imagine the disgrace."
"Leave him alone too. Don't reprimand him. For a long time I've had the feeling that he's afraid of his reserve duty."
"Afraid? Moran? Where'd you get that idea? Moran was never a coward, certainly not in the army. He just felt like blowing them off, and he's like you: he is sure that the whole world revolves around him."
"And I'm sure the whole world revolves around me?"
"More or less."
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"Not now. I'm not alone either. This is my secretary's phone. But where's Yirmi? Is he with you? In any case, I want to say a word to him."
"What word?"
"That he should keep an eye on you."
"Don't you dare."
YIRMIYAHU IS WAITING in an alley with Sijjin Kuang, whose tall aristocratic figure alongside the awkward old white man's has attracted the curiosity of people in the marketplace. From time to time he glances inside at his sister-in-law, who sits smiling and content in the depths of the communications hut, surrounded by young Africans riveted to computer screens, as she, in a girlish pose he finds charming, presses the worn-out phone receiver against her short-cropped head, crosses her legs, and plays with the hem of her dress, exposing her shapely calves.
Even if the phone call here is cheap compared with other places in the city, it is going on longer than he expected, and the warm chattiness of his relatives is beginning to make him impatient. They've only been apart for two days, they'll be back together in three, and they still insist on such a long conversation. He remembers that even as a girl she would tie up her parents' phone for long periods, chatting and laughing, without thinking about the cost — or other people. And the daily calls between her and her sister in the years before Eyal fell would sometimes go on for more than an hour. It was his death that cut them short, those calls. Her son's death shrank and compressed Shuli's world. She lost her patience for the stories of strangers and family members alike; even so close a sister interested her less.
Now Daniela is waving for him to come in and join her. Amotz wants to say a few words to you too, and maybe in any case we should hang up, she suggests, and let Amotz call us back from Israel. No, that's impossible, Yirmiyahu says. The owner doesn't like it when her income is undercut like that, so she doesn't give out her phone number. He takes the receiver, and without saying hello he teases his brother-in-law.
"Well? Already after two days it's hard for you to be alone?"
But Ya'ari ignores the sting and asks with heartfelt concern, "Yirmi, habibi, how's it going?"
"No complaints. So far the woman you sent us is behaving well, and we'll therefore return her to you whole and not feed any part of her to the lions."
The elevator man is in no mood to joke. "And you? What about you?"
"Things are the way things should be with me."
"When will we see you?"
"When you too come here. But first let me recover a little from your wife's visit."
"Not in Africa. I mean, when will we see you in Israel?"
"Israel? What's the rush? I spent most of my life there, and it's not going anywhere. It looks to me as if the country can't get destroyed no matter how hard it tries. Here in Africa it's quiet and comfortable, and above all cheap. I also want a nice Filipino to take care of me when I'm old. And anyway, my dear Amotz, I've developed slightly different ideas about our world."
"What kind of ideas?"
"Not now in the middle of the marketplace, on an international call. Other people are waiting to talk to the outside world, and I'm hogging the line. Daniela will tell you what she understood from me, and what you don't understand from her, you can always ask me. And maybe it's totally unimportant. The main thing is, take care of yourself, and don't forget the children."
As he is about to hang up, Daniela snatches the receiver and manages to ask her husband how his father is and what's new with the winds in the tower.
But when she goes out again into the sunny street, she realizes that this call to Israel has not brought her any relief, as if Yirmi's alienation has infected her as well. Her brother-in-law lingers in the hut, waiting to pay her bill, and at her side Sijjin Kuang stands serenely aloof from the colorful mob around her. And Daniela aches for the grief and pain still buried inside her. For it was here in this marketplace, that her sister had her fatal seizure. It was from one of these alleys that strangers rushed her to a nearby clinic, where she departed this world alone.
Where did it begin? Where was Shuli taken ill?
And where was your diplomatic office? So far she does not recognize anything from her last visit.
He will show her the place. With a little patience she will remember everything. It is all nearby, and he is willing to show her around, but first they must go to the bank, before it closes for the midday break.
So, while Sijjin Kuang goes off to replenish the camp's medical supplies, he and his Israeli guest enter a fairly decent-looking bank and go up to the second floor. He seats her in a waiting room beside a heavyset African clad in a tribal robe and disappears into the manager's office.
Her smile immediately enchants her neighbor, and she does not limit herself to a mere smile, but dares, in the British fashion, to inquire about the weather. The African at once grasps the white woman's meaning, but lacks the English to answer her. Instead, he excitedly gets up and with a grand gesture of his arm invites her to come with him to the big window, where he pours out words in an utterly foreign language, pointing to the sky and the clouds, then just as suddenly falls silent and retreats humbly to his chair. But she stays by the window, as if trying to digest what he told her.
The weather has indeed changed. The day has turned gray and the first drops of rain dot the windowpane. Her conversation with her husband was in the end technical and lacking in feeling. If he was concerned about expressing feelings in front of his employees, why didn't he go back into his office and end the meeting, so he could lift her spirits with a few words confirming his love. He didn't sound loving, or as if he missed her, but rather annoyed by her absence, impatient, needing to control. The purpose of her trip is still not clear to him, so he needs at least to be reassured that African planes aren't rickety, that he hasn't risked losing her on a pointless journey.
And maybe he's right, and this trip really wasn't necessary.
At the edge of the rain-streaked sky, she can see a gray-green patch of the Indian Ocean, with bobbing fishing boats. So the beach is not far from here. On her last trip, Shuli took her along more than once for her long daily walk on the beach. Alone, without husbands by their side, they strolled with complete confidence on the fishermen's dock. Her sister had really enjoyed Yirmiyahu's posting in Tanzania. Once Elinor gave her some grandchildren, she said, maybe she'd want to be nearer to them, but in the meantime she was comfortable in these foreign surroundings, which dampened her pain over the loss of the soldier who had drawn the fire of his friends. Daniela was surprised at the time to have confirmed what she had already suspected: behind the veil of silent, noble grief, strange and difficult feelings burned in her sister regarding her son, and because she feared exposing those feelings inadvertently, she was grateful for the sojourn in an out-of-the-way country not on the map of friends or relatives. Even as she walked alongside the person who was closer to her than any other, alone together on an ocean beach, Shuli preferred to reveal nothing, instead replaying over and over long-forgotten moments from their own childhood and clinging to memories of their parents.