Now the expert wedges her childlike, sexually ambiguous body between the side of the elevator and the wall of the shaft where the piston is attached. Drawing on her experience in the regional auto shop of Upper Galilee, she locates the oil cap and unscrews it with a monkey wrench produced from her jumpsuit pocket. A trickle of viscous white liquid begins to flow out, instead of the completely blackened oil one would expect after so many years.
"What's that?" Amotz asks.
His father shrugs. He cannot identify the nature of this fluid, either. He found this pump in his native Czechoslovakia, in a warehouse of used elevator parts, and since he bought it for next to nothing, he didn't bother to examine its innards.
The white stuff continues to trickle. Even the expert, who now and then smells and tastes it, can't come to a conclusion regarding its nature or provenance. But she is collecting it, in a small jar brought beforehand from the kitchen, so perhaps they'll be able to identify it later on.
The lady of the house also wants to taste the liquid. She gives Hilario a small spoon, he brings her a sample, and she sticks the tip of her tongue into it. Could be machine oil, or maybe sesame, or truffle, or eucalyptus, or coconut, or kerosene or gasoline. Not bad, she says. Careful, my dear, jokes the old man, the guarantee I gave you does not include indigestion from elevator gravy. And they laugh, he on the bed, shaking on the silk pillows, and she in the armchair, the two of them relaxed and intrigued by the drama in this miniature theater, as Hilario explains to Marco and Pedro that they should prop the elevator a bit higher on their shoulders so Francisco can detach the forklift from the bottom of the cab and pull free the entire original and delicate unit.
"And the electric current?" Ya'ari suddenly wells with anger at his father. "Before Francisco starts to turn a single screw, we have to be sure he won't get electrocuted."
But the anger is unnecessary now. There is no current in any screw. The expert has already disconnected the power in secret and without permission, and is unharmed and happy.
Why does he have to worry so much over something that's not his responsibility? Why try to take control of a historic relic he is neither supposed nor obligated to know a thing about? If he joined the team in order to look after his father, he can see with his own eyes how good it is for the old man to lie on the big bed, in a warm and familiar room, beside a beloved friend, in the intimacy of a dark winter morning. And if so, why should a busy man like him, a bothersome worrier, not take advantage of this fortuitous moment of grace on the Hanukkah holiday and sit serenely in a corner? And if Daniela in Africa is bonding with her past but free of the present, he himself now has the chance to take time out from both. No secretary, draftsman, or engineer is ringing his cell phone for advice; in other words, the world is carrying on fine, even without him.
A smile of contentment lights up Ya'ari's face. Good, from this moment on, I am but a silent onlooker. He brings a wicker chair from the kitchen, stands it beside the big bed, sits down and crosses his legs and closes his eyes.
Francisco once told him and Daniela that the territory of the Philippines encompasses seven thousand islands, only about five hundred of them inhabited. In fact he and Kinzie come from two islands that are hundreds of kilometers apart. Thanks to the wide variety of dialects spoken across the whole archipelago, what unites their islands as a nation is the English language.
That lingua franca is proving effective in the bedroom of the psychoanalyst as well. Hilario, the clever first-grader, passes along in English the technical instructions he gets in Hebrew from the great-grandfather and explains to Marco and Pedro how to raise the lightweight elevator.
Although the cab is rather easily lifted upon the short men's shoulders, Francisco prefers not to rely solely on his two comrades and adds the support of a stepladder and a small bureau before crawling underneath to disconnect the lift arm.
The Filipinos speak softly among themselves, and old Ya'ari adopts their polite, respectful tone as he tells Francisco, via Hilario's translation, the correct procedure for undoing the screws. He must work slowly, with caution. The screws are rusted, and one must oil them and wait for them to yield gracefully, to exit undamaged from the place they have grown used to for so many years.
The Filipinos seem to enjoy the unusual task they have happened into. Instead of washing and feeding paralyzed old men, or taking walks with grouchy old ladies, they are dismantling a unique invention and carrying an elderly elevator on their shoulders. The hostess sighs with relief, relaxes, and falls asleep in her chair. Ya'ari's eyelids also droop, and his vision grows blurry. He listens to the quiet voices, rests his hand on the bed and imagines his father lying upon it years ago, among the pillows. He recollects the pleasured panic of the young woman in the tape tucked between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach in Moran's apartment.
Should he tell Daniela, or spare her the distress?
He opens his eyes and realizes he must have dozed off for a few minutes, for the elevator has vanished behind the doors of the clothes closet, and on the floor by the bed rests an ancient creature, with one forked leg like the devil Ashmedai, a greenish cylindrical piston like a the long tail of a lizard, and a control mechanism that resembles the head of a small cat, sprouting severed nerve endings in a rainbow of colors.
The lady of the house is still deep in dreamland, and his father, looking with affectionate pride upon the original machinery that stayed intact for so many years, smiles at Ya'ari and says to him, See what happens in old age? At the height of emotion you run out of stamina and fall asleep, and wake up when it's over and feel guilt and regret. And he directs Francisco, who has been washing his hands in the bathroom, to help his colleagues take the dismantled apparatus down to the ambulance that waits on the street with Maurice, and to bring up the wheelchair.
"My dear," he says, waking his lady friend, "we took apart the machinery for you. There will be no more humming and wailing. But whether it will also be possible to resurrect the elevator, so you can go strolling on the roof — this depends now not only on me but also on an old friend, who is in love only with money."
The psychologist opens her eyes and smiles a knowing smile. "And I thought you would stay for lunch."
"Lunch?" old Ya'ari says with surprise. "Why? So you can tie a bib on me and feed me with a spoon? When love crosses into degradation, I retreat."
THE PATIENCE OF the African women has paid off. Sijjin Kuang opens the medicine cabinet and distributes pills, and also gives two aspirins to the white man. "Please, give me some, too," Daniela says.
"I'm going to bed after a sleepless night," Sijjin Kuang announces, "and you should also," she adds firmly, standing tall over the Israeli visitor. "Early tomorrow morning I will bring you to Morogoro. The plane is small, and you must get there early so they don't give your seat away."
"That can happen here?" The visitor is alarmed.
"Yes, here too," her brother-in-law says.
"And you won't come with me to the airport?" she asks, turning to her brother-in-law in Hebrew.
"What do you need me for? You've already heard more than I wanted to tell you, and even more than I thought I knew. So much that you won't remember what to tell Amotz."