Perhaps Amotz could have dealt with Yirmiyahu. Not for himself, but for Shuli, and also for Elinor and Yoav, so that they might return to Israel after their studies. Only Amotz, with his straightforward intelligence, could have wrested a commitment from Yirmiyahu to keep in touch with the family, at least till his black mood died down.
But Amotz, she thinks to herself with mild disdain, is obviously taking advantage of her absence to go to bed even earlier. She can see him in her mind's eye in his red flannel pajamas, climbing into their big bed at this very hour, surrounded by the photos of the children and grandchildren on the walls as he gathers the financial pages of the newspapers from the floor and gets under the big quilt, without feeling that he ought to be not in Tel Aviv but here, on a remote African farm, awake and ready to do battle with a man bent on destruction.
True, nihilism can be a mask for terrible personal trauma. But she knows that self-hatred cannot lead to rehabilitation. Yet she herself is helpless in confronting Yirmi and refuting him with serious arguments. She is a teacher of English: she deals with the meaning of words, with grammar, and sometimes with the analysis of characters in short stories and plays. But Amotz's head is filled with facts and figures, and he can remember the number of dead and wounded on both sides not only in Israel's wars but also in the wars of other, far away nations. When he reads at all, he reads biographies and nonfiction, which is why he can come up with examples from times and places she didn't know existed, why he is able to compare Israelis with other peoples and distinguish real blame from imaginary blame. He should have been here by her side to rein in his brother-in-law, not merely for the sake of truth, but also so there would be hope for their children and his, so that Elinor and Yoav could come back to Israel, with or without their doctorates, and produce at least one grandchild to restore meaning to his life and wipe away the strange sweetness he found in the Hebrew of a young Palestinian woman filled with hatred and scorn.
In this fierce need for her husband, mixed with resentment, she fails to notice a gentle knocking on her door, until the door moves slightly and is cautiously opened. Through it, to her delight, walks in Dr. Roberto Kukiriza, with the bones of the prehistoric ape, the one who did not manage to fit into the evolutionary chain.
She blushes and says to him, "I thought you had given up on me, or that you had forgotten your bones."
"We have not given up on you," he answers in a friendly tone, "and how could we forget our discoveries? But a few colleagues were worried that we might be unfairly involving you in a strange and uncomfortable mission. The fact that you concealed it from Jeremy also caused us some concern."
"No problem there," she promises quickly. "I am willing to tell him."
"Very good. This will pacify the doubters. For we wish to be sure that Jeremy is also at peace with what we are imposing upon you. Over at Abu Kabir they are already waiting for you."
She eagerly extends her hand, and he takes from his pocket a small cloth bag, opens it, and shows her three bones, each different from the others in size and color and shape, and suggests that she pack them in her suitcase.
"Certainly."
But he is still reluctant to hand them over and inspects the suitcase lying open on the table to find the right spot.
"Perhaps we should put them in an unlikely place," he suggests. "Perhaps in your toiletry bag. A clearly female zone they will not search."
"That's a good idea," she says, and pulls the bag from his hand.
AND SO IT has come to pass, muses Ya'ari with pride, all because of my quiet authority. Between two and three in the morning the team of six "wind people" have assembled in the brightly lit lobby of the tower, and beside them, beaming, stands a seventh: Mr. Kidron, chief of the apartment owners' association, holding two emergency flashlights powered by large batteries and silently giving thanks to the winds for not betraying him by dying at the moment of truth. The heavyset night watchman has been dispatched to the gate of the car park to ensure that no resident will show up at the last minute and get trapped between floors.
The four elevators have been stopped on different floors and must be brought together and then shut down individually. Only then will it be possible to ride on the roof of one of them, traveling slowly the full height of the shaft, casting a light on its walls. Although he carries both a master key and a triangle key in his pocket, Ya'ari prefers not to use them in the presence of the manufacturer, to avoid giving the impression that maintenance is his domain. The technician brought by Gottlieb summons each elevator in turn, shuts down the group control, and then detaches, with the triangle key, the electrical connection between the shaft door and the door of the cab, and in the end all four elevators stand before them open-mouthed, awaiting their inspection of the winds.
The cell phone of the tenants' leader rings. The guard wants to know what to do about a man and a woman who have arrived at the parking garage with five heavy suitcases. They landed at the airport just an hour ago and knew nothing about any inoperative elevators. What floor do they live on? Ya'ari asks, and when he hears it is merely the eighth, he sternly rules that they should leave the bags in the lobby till morning and go up on foot. But no, the woman is pregnant, and so Ya'ari decides to go fetch them himself in the big central elevator, and orders the technician to get one of the side elevators ready to move.
"Right or left?"
Ya'ari and Gottlieb look at the expert, who turns her face upward, listening attentively.
"Left," she declares. "The defects are on the left side."
This time Ya'ari takes out his keys, despite the presence of the manufacturer, and reactivates the big elevator and goes down to collect the couple who have returned to their native land. And indeed he finds a pregnant woman and heavy luggage. So, he teases them, you came back to the suffering homeland? But he has only half hit the mark. The couple live and work in America and have even become citizens, but they want their child to be born in Israel, in the apartment they bought as a vacation home, so they can get help in the first few months from the parents on both sides. Practical Zionism, Ya'ari says, chuckling, and helps them slide the heavy bags out of the elevator.
When he gets back to the lobby, he sees that the preliminary work on the left-hand elevator is proceeding apace. Gottlieb is a professional par excellence and knows every bolt of the elevators Ya'ari designed for him. He stands alongside a dexterous and disciplined technician and instructs him what to unscrew in a shiny, apparently seamless elevator, and the car swiftly bares its hidden electromechanical apparatus before the astonished eyes of the construction company representatives.
The technician enters the elevator and lowers it a bit without closing the door of the cab, and a few seconds later the group sees him riding on its roof. He operates it using the three-button service controls — two pressed for each direction, up or down. And now, with the elevator suspended between the lobby and the car park, even the lawyer can get a sense of the dark shaft rising upward, divided by the three sets of iron bars that stabilize the movement of the elevators and the counterweights along the guide rails.
The roof of the car that has been opened up is small, unlike the roof of the big central elevator, and Ya'ari deliberates whether to send only the technician and the expert for an introductory tour of the exposed shaft or to join them. He finally decides to go along. He takes the two emergency flashlights from Mr. Kidron and says, okay, I'm going to cast a light on the ill winds. He hands one to the expert, who is already in position, keeps the other for himself, and says to the technician, Let's go, habibi, we're taking off.