Moran, however, is not only his son but also an employee of his firm — thus will Ya'ari justify himself at times, half seriously — and as an employer, it is his right and his duty to attend to his personal business. Daniela, of course, rejects this disingenuous double dipping, which gives him, but not her, additional rights in the son they share, and if she were here now she would say, that's nonsense, for you he's only a son, and besides, how can you be so sure that you'll find him or that they'll let you see him? This trip is useless, and afterward don't complain that you're pressed for time. Thus, with her wily wisdom, would she have prevented this trip.
But at the moment her wiles and wisdom are detained in Africa, and he is master of his fate, betting that his ingenuity will save the journey from being pointless. And if he doesn't find Moran, that's not so terrible. Karkur is not far away, the snail-paced traffic allows him to admire the beauty in the winter light and the movements of the clouds, and Hanukkah lends a festiveness to the overflowing parking lots at the shopping malls of the kibbutzim near Tel Aviv: Ga'ash, Shefayim, and Yakum. The old fields, now pricey real estate, are dominated by an old-fashioned water tower crowned by a big rotating menorah, already releasing light from all nine candlesticks, though the holiday is only half over.
Ya'ari, too, feels released — a pleasant feeling. Only rarely has he the patience to drive confined to the middle lane, with no chance of passing or maneuvering. And since in the lanes to his right and left he has been escorted for the past kilometer by women whose upper bodies and profiles he finds attractive, now he lowers the window on the driver's side so that the two open windows, right and left, create a living, though silent, communion between the two of them, and to his great surprise they indeed notice each other and try to signal right past him.
Now he spots the magnet that has drawn this heavy traffic: an Ikea outlet. Once he passes the commercial strip south of Netanya, the flow of cars speeds up, creating a strong wind that forces him to raise the windows again and turn down the heater. After a bit of hesitation, he phones Nofar and gets her voicemail. Happy to be saved from a frosty, anxiety-provoking conversation, he leaves a warm but carefully worded message. Next he calls the apartment he has just left to see if the woman of the house has returned, but a new voice answers: the babysitter's older sister, come to replace her subcontractor.
"Don't worry, Grandpa," she addresses him officiously, "your grandchildren are already fast asleep. Neta also nodded off in the middle of her drawing. Everything is just fine. If anything pops up, I'll call. I've got your number right here."
Again his thoughts return to the phone conversation with his wife. Now it seems to him there was a mild tension in her voice, as if she were uncertain that her visit was really welcome. And it's true that in the course of his long friendship with his brother-in-law, he has sometimes been aware of various oddities in his behavior. If since his wife's death he has chosen to stay in a wild and remote place not just as a means of fattening his retirement funds but also as a way of detaching himself from the family, maybe he is not pleased with the sisterly visit she has imposed on him.
North of Netanya the charms of freedom wear off. The three lanes shrink to two; the traffic slows to a crawl again and sometimes stops altogether. The car in the lane to his right, sealed and dark, with tinted windows, keeps trying to cut him off. If he were to start a political party, he would run on a one-line platform: Widen the highway between Netanya and Hadera. Surely that would win a few seats in the Knesset, though it would never occur to him to run for office. Sometimes he too yearns to burn all the Israeli newspapers in a big furnace. But his wife reads them avidly. She who would teach high school must understand reality in order to explain it to her students.
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."
DANIELA 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.