"Absurd…"
"That's right, absurd. But that's how it was, then. What can I say? It's also normal and natural. The first months of mourning are a whirlwind of absurdity. On the outside you keep your cool, and inside you lurch from fantasy to madness, and until I came to a final, philosophical flash of recognition, at night on the rooftop of that house in Tulkarm, I was unable to get free of all that absurdity and begin the process of forgetting.
"For you have to understand. His friends didn't abandon us. We aren't the Americans or Japanese, who send telegrams of condolence to parents in distant cities and say, Bye-bye and we won't be seeing you. With us there are established customs of bereavement, rules by which you don't abandon the soldier's family but instead maintain a connection. An institutional connection and a personal one. The soldiers from his company come to visit now and then and become a bit like relatives, inviting you to their family functions, talking about themselves, sharing their experiences. At first they come as a whole group, awkward strapping boys who barely fit into the living room and keep an eye on one another lest a careless word slip out. But after they have studied the nature of the bereaved parents and confirmed that these remain civilized people and that death has not eradicated the essence of their humanity, they let themselves come for more intimate visits — in threes, in pairs, even alone, and in this way they pass your suspicions from one to the next, back and forth, like a volleyball, and some of them are discharged and continue to visit you as civilians, and your presumptuous, pathetic, and pointless attempt to identify the shooter becomes harder and more complicated every day. The individual friendly fire is absorbed into the 'fire of our own forces,' a collective fire, and then slowly, slowly is transformed from army fire to civilian fire, and civilian fire to undefined fire, until the shooter himself is no longer sure whether one night he got up and shot his friend by mistake. And then I said to myself, if so, I need to shift direction, and instead of chasing after shadows to offer forgiveness to someone who doesn't need it or ask for it, let's demand that the army show me the place; let me go to the roof of this house in Tulkarm to understand what misled my son. But this is a story for another time. Now I want to sleep. What did you want to say?"
"Please, Yirmi, don't say again that Nofar only seemed as if she wanted to throw herself… because it was very real, Yirmi, believe me, the girl was in total despair at the funeral, and it still lingers."
"Forgive me, Daniela," he says, distressed, "I didn't mean… of course it was all real… Nofar is a wonderful girl… and her love for Eyal was wonderful too."
IF INDEED HE intends to threaten Gottlieb, Amotz Ya'ari decides, it should be done carefully and politely, and not in the presence of his father, who out of romantic enthusiasm might just yank the phone from his hand in the middle of the call and wreck the subtlety of the threat with the indignant impatience of an old man who knows his time is up. He clears the taste of the seafood from his mouth with a Filipino cookie, pats Hilario on the head, and drives to the office.
A drizzly Friday. Two in the afternoon. Throughout the neighborhood offices are already closed, but in the big room at Ya'ari's firm, a man and a woman are engaged in spirited conversation in front of a computer. The two young engineers each took a healthy chunk of time off during the week for their children's Hanukkah diversions, and now, on a free day, have abandoned their spouses to make up for lost time. Ya'ari is proud of the sense of duty he has instilled in his workers but does not join their discussion, lest they detain him with a question requiring a complicated answer. He smiles and waves, and without further ado sequesters himself in his office.
Although he did not expect a second call from his wife, whose actual self he will embrace in another seventy-five hours, he is slightly disappointed by the silence. He dials Gottlieb's cell.
It's urgent? It can't wait? grumbles the manufacturer. He's in a café, enjoying the company of fellow manufacturers; it's hard for him to talk and harder to hear. What is this? Because your wife isn't back yet from Africa, you have to bother me even on a Friday?
"Very impressive of you to remember her schedule," Ya'ari says. "I see that over the years you've become one of the family."
The maker of elevators lowers his defenses and is prepared to listen to a short speech, provided it is spoken loud and clearly. Ya'ari conveys the essence of his father's request: Gottlieb is to make new parts for a one-of-a-kind piston that grew old in a tiny ancient Jerusalem elevator. Why make them? Gottlieb wants to know. Why not replace the whole elevator, and at the same time widen it a little? It can't be widened, it's the narrow elevator of an old lady; it goes from a bedroom closet straight up to the roof. It's impossible to make it wider or to replace it. That's the situation.
Gottlieb is in a hurry to rejoin his friends, whose gales of laughter are impeding the phone conversation, and so he promises that on Sunday he'll check out the capabilities of his old metal lathe, which for quite some years has been out of commission. You should know, he scolds Ya'ari, this is not for you, because you are a difficult person, but only because your old man is asking. What can I do, sighs the manufacturer. I have been attached to him for fifty years.
Ya'ari now also requests the services of the woman technician who specializes in noises, to locate the source of the humming in the electrical system of this same elevator.
"If you want to hire the musical ear of my expert," Gottlieb informs him with satisfaction, "you'll have to pay her separately. Not on my tab. She can take a formal day off, and you can play with her all you like."
"But wait a minute, we also need her for the wind problem in the tower, and that's not on my account."
"The wind complaint? Why does that keep coming back? We took that one off the docket. We agreed that we have no responsibility for anything that wails due to the failures of the construction company."
"No, Gottlieb, listen, it's not that simple. I visited there this morning, and the wailing and roaring are really insufferable. And I also ran into that head of the committee, the bereaved tenant…"
"What made you go there?" Gottlieb interrupts him angrily, "after I warned you not to go near the tower or that guy, who automatically makes you feel guilty over everything. They want us to incur major expenses, without our being at fault for anything. If they want to open up the elevators and examine the shaft, by all means — but on the condition that they pay for every minute of the technicians' time. Listen, Ya'ari, I'm warning you, if you're looking for trouble, go get mixed up in this by yourself. These winds do not interest me in any shape or form. I'm out of the whole deal."
"You're not out of anything," Ya'ari answers evenly, "you have no choice. I promised this tenant, head of the committee, that the two of us, together with the architect and the construction company, will find the source of the problem. You can't let yourself off and just disappear. Because if you damage my credibility, in the future I'll cut you out of things that matter to you."
"Like what, for example?"
"For example, the new elevators for the Defense Ministry. Believe me, Gottlieb, if we order them from the Chinese, we'll save the state money."