"What was her name?"
"She wouldn't tell me."
"You quote her as if she actually convinced you."
"She didn't convince me, but she impressed me. With her female confidence. And the pregnancy saddened me greatly. Because if Eyali were alive, I could have a daughter-in-law like that, who would give birth to a child who speaks sweet Hebrew."
"Again with the sweet lovely Hebrew? In what way sweet?"
"When Arabs speak proper Hebrew, without mistakes, even more flowery than normal, there's often a sweetness to it. The accent becomes softer, and because they are self-conscious about pronouncing p, afraid it'll come out as b, they stress it more, with a sort of anxious musicality. The verb in their sentences comes at the beginning, and the shift in word order creates a dramatic difference. And there's also a singsong phrasing that turns a statement into a question, so that instead of saying, It hurts me, she'll say, And how can I not be hurt? And instead of saying, I hate you, she says, How can people not hate you? Something like that."
"And this is sweetness?"
"To me it is."
AT MIDDAY IN an ambulance descending from the mountains to the coastal plain sits the elevator apparatus in its entirety, one of a kind, in back with the four Filipinos, who keep their distance from it. Old Ya'ari is there, too, sitting in the wheelchair, feeling satisfied that the disassembly was achieved without mishap, thinking over the next step: how to convince Gottlieb to make a new piston that will fit the fork lift.
He is still ashamed of his tearful outburst on his friend's doorstep, but he is also grateful to her for wisely recasting his weakness as a strength. In any event, it was good that he resisted her offer of lunch. Who knows, he might have cried again over the cake.
Ya'ari and the expert are crowded up front with Maurice, listening to the ambulance driver reminisce about his last trips with Ya'ari's mother. When I see your father alive and kicking in his wheelchair, I miss her. She was a real lady, and when she died she was your age, Amotz, but had no complaints or bitterness.
Ya'ari confirms that diagnosis and distills the purpose of life into one short sentence: Do everything possible to leave this world without complaints or bitterness. But his own final test has not yet arrived, and for now he has nothing to do but wonder why it's already afternoon and no one has called from his office asking a question, requesting advice, or reporting a complaint — as if his business can actually go on without him. Maybe there's another children's play today? he wonders and phones his secretary, who assures him that all his employees have come in, despite it being the tail end of the holiday, and are working diligently, and that no problem has arisen among them requiring the boss's wisdom and experience. However, there is a stranger who has been sitting in his office for several hours and insists on waiting for him.
"A stranger?" Ya'ari is baffled. "In my office?"
Yes, the tenant from the Pinsker Tower, who showed up with legal papers and is determined to serve them on Ya'ari by hand, personally.
"But why did you let him in my office? Why can't he wait outside?"
"Amotz," protests the secretary, "he's a bereaved father, his son was killed a few months ago; he told me the whole story. It's very crowded in the office with all the computers and drafting tables, and outside the weather is bad, rainy and very windy. But don't worry, he's sitting in the corner and not touching anything."
The elder Ya'ari decides to pass up Kinzie's lunch and take the machinery straight to Gottlieb's elevator factory. He'll eat lunch with the workers, which will remind him of the good old days. But his son is fed up with the whole private elevator festival and announces: You wanted to take charge of the process? Then please, finish it yourself. Let's see if you can draw a rational line from the psychologist to the manufacturer. He says good-bye to his father in front of his childhood home, gets in his car, leaving old Ya'ari and the rest of the contingent to proceed alone to the factory nestled amid orchards in the Sharon region, after warning Francisco and Hilario, "It's up to you two to make sure nothing happens to him."
Through the open door of his office, Ya'ari can see Mr. Kidron sitting stiffly in a heavy winter coat, a knitted ski cap on his knee, his eyes fixed on the swaying branches of the tree outside the window. He has not touched the tea and cookies the secretary brought him. Ya'ari, with an effort, dismisses his foul humor and enters the room cheerfully. The man stands up but does not greet the chief executive, merely hands him the legal complaint. Ya'ari takes it from him, reads it quickly, and asks with a faint smile: "So I'm the only defendant here?"
"Even if there are other defendants, they don't diminish your guilt," the tenants' leader says coldly. "All of you are one corrupt gang, who don't care about the damage you leave behind. You have a tree that makes a pleasant noise outside a closed window, but with us, when we get home and get near the elevator, we don't hear the wind but howls of pain, and there's no reason we should pay with a never ending nightmare for your sloppy calculations."
"Believe me, Mr. Kidron, our calculations are accurate. There are cracks in the shaft."
"So open up the elevators and prove to the construction company that they are to blame."
"Only the manufacturer is authorized to open the elevators. I am only the designer."
"That's what I said, you're a corrupt bunch who shift the blame from one to the other so we can't catch you. But the tenants are sick of it, the blame is now on you, Mr. Ya'ari, and if you want to be free of it, take it to court."
Ya'ari studies him. A man with innocent blue eyes, not tall, but slender under the wet coat. His hiking shoes are covered in mud. Before his son was killed he was surely a pleasant and friendly man.
"As you wish, I'll go to court. But tell me, why is the lawsuit directed only at me?"
"Because you're an approachable person. Even your secretary is nice."
Ya'ari looks over at the tree fighting the wind and places a gentle hand on the bereaved tenant's shoulder.
"Yes, I am an approachable person. It's a failing of mine, but maybe also a virtue. This is an ideal day to locate the defect that is tormenting you, so why wait for the court to acquit me while in the meantime you'll be supporting a hungry lawyer? Let's go take advantage of the storm tonight and check the shaft once and for all. Tomorrow my wife is returning from Africa, and she won't let me leave her in the middle of her first night back. That leaves us only tonight, and because we'll have to shut down all the elevators, the best time is the wee hours, say between two and three in the morning, in the hope that all the tenants will be in their apartments. Because we don't have porters to carry late-night partygoers up the stairs to the umpteenth floor."
Kidron brightens. "Okay," he says, "I'll put up notices in the building and warn the residents not to get home late tonight. How long will it take?"
"You will be surprised to learn that despite my age this is the first time I have gone hunting for winds at night. Like surgery or war, you know when you start, but not when you'll finish."
The head of the tenants' committee takes it upon himself to summon a representative of the construction company to be present also.
"Talk tough to him, the way you do to me," Ya'ari advises. "Threaten him." And he eases the man out the door.
And now, of course, just as he is about to hurry to Gottlieb's factory to make good on his promise to Kidron, his employees come to him with questions and try to show him plans and diagrams. By the time he manages to get free of these responsibilities and arrives at the elevator factory, it is dusk. And to his surprise, the blue ambulance is still there.