"When was this exactly?"
"In the autumn. Three months after he was killed. The weather was getting cooler. That mute soldier, with the machine gun, was a Druze, and they picked him in particular so he could translate into Arabic who I was and what I wanted. But there was no need for an interpreter, because among the locals there is always someone who knows Hebrew. For example, a pregnant woman, a lovely young lady studying history at Ruppin College, near Netanya. The soldier who was killed, no, she doesn't remember him, but her father will be home soon from the orchard, and he perhaps knows more about the 'work accident.'"
"Work accident?"
"That's the expression we use when they get killed by their own mistakes — for instance, while preparing a bomb — so they pay us back with the same language; why not? Okay, we're now on the roof, and the Druze soldier leans his machine gun on the railing, and the officer describes the sector for me, and I'm walking around from one side to the other; maybe I'll find some clue, some sign of whatever caused Eyal to come down from the roof in a suspicious manner. And evening starts falling with sort of a blue mist, and the pregnant student, who came up after us, asks if she should take down any laundry, and the officer says there's no need, and he points out to the west, where Israeli lights are going on in the coastal plain, so close, close enough to touch."
"You could see the sea from there?"
"Apparently at one time you could, but today, the new tall buildings block the view. That's what the officer told me. And in his opinion, it's a good thing."
"Why good?"
"So they wouldn't desire the sea as well."
"That's what he said? Disgraceful…"
"It was maybe because his patience was running out. The father, who was supposed to arrive any minute from the orchard, never showed up. Someone apparently told him that Jews were waiting for him on the roof of his house, so he preferred to visit some sick uncle and not undergo another interrogation, where he'd have to repeat everything he already told the army, that is, nothing of importance. Does this old story interest you at all?"
"Every word."
He gets up and takes a long look out the window. Then he paces the room for a moment, picks up her novel, has a look inside, and replaces it facedown, the way it was.
"What's it about?"
"Not now. If you want, I'll try to finish it before I go home and I'll leave it for you."
"God forbid… you insist on not understanding. Don't you dare leave behind one letter of Hebrew."
She gives him a piercing look.
"So the father didn't come. And this pregnant student, who spoke Hebrew quite elegantly and gently, saw that we were getting impatient, so she called in her mother, a woman in traditional Arab dress, chubby, knowing not a word of Hebrew, and with a mischievous spirit. The mother did remember the soldier. She didn't see him, but she had heard something from her husband. In the middle of the night, on his own initiative, he brought Eyali some strong coffee, and also a pail, which the soldier had asked him for."
"On his own he brought him coffee?"
"So he would stay awake. That's the way the daughter explained it. And when I asked her, what did your father care if he was asleep, he wasn't protecting you, but the other way around, the mother looked at me with her warm eyes, and even though she knew I was the father of the soldier who was killed, she said to me unabashedly that her husband was afraid that if the Israeli soldier fell asleep, he would have the urge to kill him. But a soldier who was awake would be able to defend himself. So he brought him strong coffee. And the pregnant student translated all this in her delicate accent, while exchanging mischievous smiles with her mother."
"A complicated Arab. Bringing coffee so he won't have the urge to kill?"
"That's how she translated it. Maybe in Arabic it wasn't exactly an urge but a slightly different word. But so you don't misunderstand, this whole conversation on the roof was in a friendly spirit, everyone smiling. The officer was smiling too; only the Druze with the machine gun stayed serious."
"And then?"
"And then we really did have to get out of there, because by that time we had broken the rules completely, but I knew that this roof would continue to preoccupy me, that I would need to better understand the coffee, the bucket. Maybe that pregnant student, with her sweet lovely Hebrew, was also a factor — I mean, not she herself, but her pregnancy, or more precisely, the idea that the baby she would give birth to would also be crawling around on this rooftop. By the way, did you know that Efrat…" He hesitates.
"Efrat what?"
GRADUALLY, NETA'S LAMENT over her treacherous mother subsides. The choked-up cries are quieter, the duration between them grows longer, and the intensity of the anger and anxiety they express diminishes, though as if to preserve their honor they do not cease at once but instead die down slowly. Neta no longer has the strength to stand and hold her head theatrically, and she slowly slides down to sit on her bed. Finally, her reedy body folds up into the fetal position. The grandfather does not intervene in this process, but sits patiently, not moving, not uttering a word. From time to time he closes his eyes to lend encouragement to the girl's drowsiness. Nadi watches sternly, then suddenly gets off his bed and leaves the room, and Ya'ari motions with a finger for him to be quiet, so as not to interfere with his sister's collapse into slumber. He waits a while, until sleep has overtaken her entirely, then turns out the light and covers her with a blanket.
In the living room the candles have long since gone out. The only light comes from the kitchen. He looks for the boy but cannot find him. The exterior door is locked, and so is the door to the terrace. He looks in the bathroom, but the child isn't there. He calls, Nadi, Nadi, but there is no reply. For a moment he is seized with panic, but since his son's apartment is not large, he quickly checks the clothes closets and behind the washing machine, until he remembers the child's favorite hiding place, under his parents' bed. And there indeed lies the boy, like a gray sack. The grandfather turns on the light, but the child screams, Turn it off, turn it off, Nadi isn't here. So then Ya'ari tries to play a game in the dark and pretend to be someone who can't find his grandchild, but this time, safe under his parents' bed, the boy refuses to cooperate with the familiar game and starts screaming. Ya'ari tries to crawl under and get to him, but the child pushes him away, scratches his hand, crawls out the other side, stamps over to the locked door, and begins to kick it with his bare foot.
He doesn't want his mother or his father. His anger goes back to the fifth candle that his sister lit before him. Ya'ari therefore tries to undo the insult by cleaning the remnants of wax from the menorah and replacing all five candles. At first Nadi can hardly believe that his grandfather would go to such lengths to compensate him, but when he sees Grandpa turning on the lights, putting the kippa back on, reciting the blessings again, and placing the burning shammash in his little hand so he can light all five candles, his wrath is soothed and a little smile quivers on his tormented face.
But the smile turns out to be transitory. The spirited toddler, complicated and uncompromising, suddenly decides that a second lighting of candles on the same evening is not the real thing, that it is a ruse on his grandfather's part to pacify his jealousy of his elder sister's birthright. For a minute or two he studies with hostility the five colorful candles and the shammash burning quietly in the menorah, then suddenly blows them out like candles on a birthday cake, knocks the smoking menorah over and shoves it to the ground, then bursts into a scream and runs to the front door and kicks it hard, and calls his father's name.