"Your children wore me out so much, that even your hard sofa managed to put me to sleep."
Efrat is surprised that a technical expert like him didn't realize that this sofa can be folded out. She left him a sheet and blanket, after all, plus clean sweatpants, so why didn't he make himself a bed and go to sleep? Get up, get up, I'll teach you how the sofa opens… it's really simple.
"No, forget it, Efrati, I'm going home."
But pangs of conscience over the delightful party that ran so late harden her in her refusal to accept the nighttime departure of the grandfather who executed his duty so faithfully. No, she will not let him drive on a holiday weekend night, when the drunks have begun to take to the road. Moran would not forgive her if something should happen to him. And she tugs his arm and stands him on his feet, and with uncharacteristic quickness opens the sofa, to prove to him that comfortable sleep is also possible at her house. She fits the sheet and spreads the blanket, and hands him the folded T-shirt and sweatpants. No, says her stern gaze, you are not as young and strong as you think. Lie down, and I'll close the blinds so the sun won't wake you. And in the morning I'll make sure the kids don't bother you.
"Please, Amotz," she says, "do it for me, wait till it gets light."
He cannot remember this beauty ever pleading, to him or to others. Maybe she is trying through him to expiate some guilt that's weighing on her.
"The sun is unimportant," he mumbles as he sees her flipping the switch and lowering all the blinds. "In any case I get up before it does."
And although it seems so easy and natural to go home, he surrenders to his daughter-in-law, who apparently turns into an efficient homemaker only in the dead of night. She drops the shawl from her shoulders and brings him another pillow, then bare-armed she slaps it again and again, as if it were the source of sin in her home, and gives him a clean towel and quickly departs, to enable him to change from his wrinkled clothes into his son's sleeping outfit.
Although the sweatpants belong to the fruit of his own loins, he is reluctant to slip into them, not least for fear they'll be tight on him. He puts on only the T-shirt, and lifts the blinds a bit so the sun will not forget him. Then he lies down on his back on the wide sofa bed and covers himself with the blanket.
In fact, he has never before spent a whole night at his son's home. In the early days after Nadi's Caesarian birth, when Daniela stayed to help Moran out, sometimes remaining all night, he would always go home to sleep. And now, for no reason, even though his own bed is only a few kilometers from here, he has agreed to stay with his grandchildren, lying close to where his daughter-in-law readies herself for sleep. She takes an endless shower, and even after the slit of light under her closed door has gone out, music is still playing in her room, soft and annoying.
If he were to leave now, she couldn't stop him. But his fear that she will sleep through the morning while the children wander around the house neglected gets him to his feet only to knock on her door and whisper irritably: Efrati, if you want me to stay here, at least turn down that weird music.
THAT SAME ANTICIPATED sun will rise too late to wake his wife in East Africa. Well before dawn, she is roused by the engine noise of the two pickup trucks delivering the scientific team to the base camp for their weekend break. From her high window, under a sky still swirling with stars, she can make out the silhouettes of a few of them as they alight from the vehicles, dragging knapsacks and duffels.
Tonight, the head of the team, the Tanzanian Seloha Abu, and the Ugandan archaeologist, Dr. Kukiriza, are tired, silent, and lost in thought, like soldiers returning from a difficult mission or arduous training. They even had a casualty: the Tunisian woman, Zohara al-Ukbi, ill with malaria. They carefully lower her onto a stretcher. The circle of respect and concern that forms around her is soon joined by the white administrator and the Sudanese nurse, who lean in the dim light toward her suffering face, wish her well, and obtain her permission to house her in the infirmary.
One after another the scientists disappear through the main doorway en route to their rooms on the first and second floors, leaving behind them cardboard boxes filled with fossils and fragments of rock. And the elderly groundskeeper, as Daniela's loyal friend and devoted chaperone, takes all these into the kitchen.
Perhaps because of the old elevator shaft that never housed an elevator, echoes of the scientists' voices filter into her room, and the sound of a lively flow in the water pipes testifies that it's not sleep the exhausted diggers want most, but a quick return to a civilized condition.
Although it is not yet four A.M., and she is entitled to go back to bed, Daniela realizes that the presence of the team will make it impossible for her to recover her interrupted sleep. And so when the first rays of light begin to pierce the big kitchen windows, the Israeli guest appears, washed and smiling and properly made up, and is greeted convivially by the two South African geologists, who have decided on a big breakfast before they shower or sleep. Because they still appreciatively remember the tourist's rapt attention to the comments of their colleague Kukiriza and have not forgotten their own silence on that occasion, they invite the white woman to join in their meal, so they can expand her understanding of the scientific purpose of the dig, this time from a geological standpoint.
"We wanted to tell you," one of them says, "that Jeremy surprised us when he brought you along three days ago, and the interest you showed in the work of the team made us very happy. It is clear to us, of course, that this interest is only out of politeness, yet the way in which you asked and listened left a good taste with all of us, and when we heard you were still here, and we would meet you again, we had another reason to be glad about our weekend. Am I exaggerating?" He suddenly turns with concern to his friend, who has been nodding in spirited agreement while scrambling egg after egg and mixing in chopped vegetables and bits of sausage.
"You see," the first geologist continues, "we work in total isolation. Our excavation site does not appear on any tourist route, and so visitors do not happen by, not even black people, so that we may explain to them what we aim to achieve. The only two whites we've seen came to us one year ago, and they were representatives of UNESCO in Paris, financial people who were not here to take an interest and to learn but only to make sure that we were not needlessly wasting money. Our connection with universities and research institutes is only by correspondence, and before we get an answer so much time passes that we almost forget what the question was. Therefore all interest, even what comes by chance, we greatly appreciate. Your brother-in-law is an honest and efficient man, but he finds it hard to understand our intentions. The more we try to explain to him what we are looking for, the more he gets confused about periods, not by thousands of years but by millions. But of course dating is the heart of the matter, the main struggle we face. This is what gives importance to the stones that capture or encase the fossils; here is manifested the contribution of the geologist, without which no evolutionary conclusion may be drawn to explain who survived and why they survived, who became extinct and why, and what price was paid by the survivor, and who benefited from the extinction."