The army rabbi, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, lights the shammash, but instead of proceeding immediately to intone the blessings, he takes the opportunity to begin with a sermon about the wonders and miracles of the holiday, waving the huge shammash like a torch.
"I don't get it. When did you leave the children?"
"About 4:30. That girl, your babysitter, didn't tell you?"
"But I don't understand why you decided to put Nadi to bed at such an hour."
"I didn't put him to bed. He fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV, and I just moved him to the bed."
"But why our bed and not his?"
"Because Neta was drawing in the children's room, and I didn't want the light to disturb him."
"If he's already asleep, nothing will disturb him," she scolds, "but what do you care if the light bothers him? Did you want to ruin my night on purpose?"
"To ruin your night on purpose?" Ya'ari is dumbfounded but tries to construct a logical response. "You just said a moment ago that no light would bother him, so even if I had put him in his own bed, he wouldn't have woken up."
"Be that as it may," she continues in the same angry, imperious tone, "why in our bed?"
Something has gone wrong for her, has wounded her, thinks Ya'ari. Maybe the world has stopped marveling at her beauty.
"And if it's your bed, why is it a tragedy?"
"Because he wet my blankets and sheet."
"Nadi still wets the bed? I didn't know."
"I very much hope that you really didn't know," she says, with a harsh sarcasm that he never imagined she was capable of.
Ya'ari is stunned. But he heeds his wife's warnings and avoids a harsh response; instead he speaks to the young woman with warmth and tenderness.
"Efrati, what happened? Why are you so angry?"
Now her voice cracks a little.
"Nothing. I'm tired and wasted from all this Hanukkah stuff. And Moran's confinement, and also Daniela's trip. I had so much hoped she would help me during the vacation with the kids. Everything all of a sudden is on my head and making me crazy. Anyway, I'll get over it… only please, don't forget to come over tomorrow night, as you promised, for candle-lighting. When Nadi got up, the first thing he said was where did Grandpa disappear to and when is he coming back?"
"He's a sweetheart."
"So you'll come tomorrow?"
"Of course."
In the dining hall the sermon has ended, short and sweet, and the four candles and the shammash are burning as the recruits sing. Ya'ari, meanwhile, has found his way to the front gate, where the Ethiopian guards have lit a holiday campfire of their own. Apparently they have added a foreign substance to the fire, perhaps brought from home, which turns the flame from red to purple.
LOOKING OUT AT the tracks as the train pulls into Morogoro, Daniela is surprised to discover that the three porters who carried the straw baskets in Dar es Salaam have already arrived and are there to greet them. No, Yirmiyahu corrects her, it only looks that way to you because these are members of the same tribe, maybe relatives of the others — though exactly how they got the news that we'd be on this train and would need assistance, that's anybody's guess.
Led by the three new porters, they walk to the gas station to pick up the trusty Land Rover. Freshly washed, its hood raised, it awaits the inspection of the Sudanese driver: the oil filter has been changed, the carburetor cleaned, and the spark plugs polished to assure quick, precise firing. As the porters empty the big baskets and organize their contents into cardboard boxes, Sijjin Kuang bends over the recesses of the engine, making sure that all her wishes have been fulfilled.
Yirmiyahu distributes bills and coins all around. The big straw baskets will change hands again, and more than once, in their serpentine journey back to the marketplace in the capital.
An airplane lands on a nearby runway. Only two days have passed since I landed here, Daniela reminds herself, and in another four I'll take off for home.
For the third time during the visit Yirmiyahu apologizes to his guest for exiling her to the backseat. Sijjin Kuang takes her place behind the wheel.
"What's this? You stopped driving in Africa?" Daniela asks Yirmiyahu with some asperity. "I mean, you always loved to drive, and when you were over at our house, you never minded bringing me home at night from wherever I was."
Yirmiyahu still loves to drive, even though in Africa the roads are difficult, but when the Sudanese woman is with him he gives up the wheel because for her, control over the car helps console her grief and replaces her lost sexuality.
Daniela is astounded by his loose tongue. How vulgar. And what does he know about her sexuality?
Yirmiyahu turns his body around to speak directly to his sister-in-law, who shields her eyes with her hand. As it plows westward, the car faces the sun directly.
He knows nothing. A white man like him cannot understand the sexuality of an orphaned African woman. And it would never occur to him to spy on her to get at the truth. He appreciates her femininity and has no racial hang-ups, but he senses from within his own soul, the soul of someone whose own sexuality has faded, that the memory of a family massacred before her eyes has snuffed out her womanliness. At least this is how he feels, because this is also what happened to Daniela's sister. The friendly fire burned out what little sexuality she still had.
"No, please don't use that expression again."
"Why?"
"It sounds cynical. Drop it. For my sake."
"You're wrong, no cynicism intended. It's a realistic description, and also a poetic one…"
"You're stubborn as a mule, Yirmi…"
"The original mule wasn't me, but Shuli, your sister. And because I, in contrast to Amotz, failed abjectly to protect her from suffering, I agreed not to claim her sexuality, and rightly so, for it was there and only there that he could not join us."
"Who?"
"How can you not understand?"
"Eyal?"
"Obviously."
Now she is very frightened. To join us? What do you mean?
The sun is swallowed up by a great cloud, and Sijjin Kuang turns on the headlights and concentrates on the road. After many hours spent in close quarters with the two white people, she can sense their conversation is becoming important.
After Eyal's death he was allowed to be with them everywhere, all the time. It was possible to connect him to any subject, to talk about him any time he or Shuli wanted to remember him. They didn't always want to, but they knew they could. They could cry for him, they could cry for themselves, they could take pity or get angry and curse the soldier who had been so quick to shoot him and so quick to explain his mistake.
Yes, if a character in a film, or music at a concert, brought their son somehow to mind, either one of them was permitted to say a word in the middle of the movie or the performance, or sometimes to be content with a sigh, a touch, or a glance. They knew and agreed that he was available at every moment, and neither of them was allowed to say, Enough pain, now let him rest in peace. During a meal or on a trip, or at a party with friends, even while shopping, it was always possible to connect with him, even through a joke or a laugh.
But not during sex. Here exist only two, a man and a woman, and their son, dead or alive, has no place in their bed or their bedroom. Because if the dead son slipped into the shadow of a passing thought or became embodied in a bare leg or the movement of a hand, the sex would die down at once, or else be putrid. And perhaps to preserve Eyali, from the day of the funeral to the day she died, her sister resolutely put an end to her sexuality, and thereby his as well, for how could he impose himself on her when he knew that at any moment she might open the door of her mind and say, Come, my son, come back and I will grieve for you again. Could he have said, in the middle of lovemaking, Just a minute, son, stop, wait a bit, you arrived too soon. Just like that day at dawn, this, too, is a battleground, and if you take one more step into the soul of the naked woman I am holding in my arms, I'll spray you with friendly fire…