The elevator floats upward. The technician carefully controls the service buttons so that the car's movement is slow, almost imperceptible. The listener from Kfar Blum is sure that the winds are breaking in at the fourteenth floor, but Ya'ari insists on checking every floor thoroughly. Strong beams from the two flashlights scour the walls of the shaft, revealed in their nakedness as pocked and wrinkled. Here and there sprigs of iron wire sprout from the concrete — once even an old scrap of newspaper. Now and then what looks like a human face or animal form drawn on the wall, and sometimes a sentence carved in an unknown language. This is no simple job, Ya'ari says to the technician, who looks tensely up into the dark expanse of the shaft as though fearful of colliding with an unexpected object. Floor by floor they glide past iron elevator doors numbered in sloppy and varied handwriting. By the beams of light they scan the walls meticulously, and Ya'ari never asks the technician to halt the gradual climb. But when they reach the thirteenth floor, Rachel says: This is it, Nimer, stop here.
And indeed, as soon as the elevator falls silent there is no doubt that here is the entry point of the menacing, aggressively groaning wind, as the tiny woman, her flashlight beam licking the wall methodically, points out to Ya'ari something in the shaft resembling open lips or perhaps nostrils, the consequence of faulty casting, or even malice. Like the pipes of a giant church organ, these nostrils produce a surprising variety of resonant — or dissonant — sounds.
"This is the spot you were thinking of?" Ya'ari asks the expert, who is standing up now, smiling sadly.
"This is the place. When I came a few days ago to listen to the winds with your Moran, I thought the problem was at the fourteenth floor, so I was only slightly off."
"Believe me," Ya'ari says, patting her fondly, "God makes bigger mistakes. If your Gottlieb and I were to spend a whole night riding up and down the shaft, we would never come upon this pipe organ. So let's bring the engineer up here and even his lawyer, so they'll see where the wailing comes from and then go back down with the blame and responsibility, and let the rest of us sleep at night."
He instructs the technician to take the elevator back to the lobby. And when he gets down from its roof, he first of all praises the manufacturer, who has been dozing in the cozy armchair next to the night watchman's table. "A good thing you didn't leave your perfect pitch in Upper Galilee, otherwise you and I would be traveling up and down in that shaft forever." And to the engineer he says, "Why waste words, you won't believe it till you see for yourself. So come on, don't be scared, take a flashlight and sit on the roof of the elevator. The young lady will bring you safe and sound straight to the failures of your construction company."
The engineer hesitates for a moment, then takes the flashlight from Ya'ari and climbs onto the elevator, and is lifted off into the dark shaft with the little woman and the technician, beaming light in hand.
Ya'ari sits down in the watchman's chair and interrogates Gottlieb about the technician he brought along with him. Who is he really? Rafi? Nimer? A Jew? An Arab? A hybrid, a mixture, mumbles Gottlieb, half asleep. In what sense? Ya'ari asks. A mixture of all the good things still left in this country, Gottlieb mutters, and closes his eyes.
The lawyer paces restlessly. From time to time he goes to the elevator shaft and peers upward, as if wondering whether his engineer has been swallowed by the void.
"Careful," Ya'ari says. "Even falling only two floors down to the parking lot is a bad idea. But if you'd like us to take you up to the defect as well, so you can see why you'll be totally unable to defend it — no problem."
The lawyer is lost in thought. The head of the residents' association stands to the side, pleased at getting the inspection he had hoped for, but wary of its results. He would have preferred the discovery of a technical flaw in the elevators. A flaw in construction will require repairs that will interfere with normal life in the tower.
"Maybe you, too, would like to go up and see how the winds make their music?"
"No," Kidron says nervously. "It's enough to hear it, I don't need to see it."
The elevator returns to the lobby. The expression on the engineer's face as he gets down from its roof is that of a man who has seen an apparition. He whispers with the attorney, who gathers that he can't justify his fee if he doesn't see the defect with his own eyes. It might be possible to cleverly shift the damages to the insurance company. The hybrid technician sits somberly on the roof, bent over the control box, but the expert's big eyes shine as she invites Ya'ari to rejoin her and take another ride up to see the wondrous natural organ.
Why not? And this time he won't stop at the thirteenth floor but will soar all the way to the thirtieth. Maybe there he will discover new acoustics.
"You come, too, and see the organ," Ya'ari says, prodding the lawyer. "I'll take you there myself."
And the lawyer, a handsome young man, accepts Ya'ari's challenge and prepares to climb up as the latter tells the technician to make way. I also know how to press three buttons, he jokes, and very carefully he heads on high with the lawyer and the expert.
First he ascends to the top of the shaft, the thirtieth floor, to hear from there the full lung power of the abyss. Far below them they can still see the glowing white light of the lobby. Then he cautiously takes them down to the thirteenth floor, and the expert casts her beam on the lips, or nostrils, of the pipe organ — the handiwork of Romanian laborers, or Thai, or local Arabs, and perhaps intended to lend a spice of life to the innards of the building. But the anxiety of the attorney, who has never before ridden bareback on the roof of an elevator through a dark shaft, has apparently compromised his powers of understanding. Where? Where? he keeps asking insistently. I don't see a thing. Faced with such lawyerly obtuseness, the expert, still flashing the beam of light, stretches her body out to the side of the shaft, to point with her hand at the strange flaws bathed in water stains or mold — and the end of the red scarf wound about her neck catches in the iron track of the counterweight, she stumbles, and the flashlight falls from her hand, plunging like a meteor into the pit below, as she grabs the iron bars that separate the elevators, letting out a yelp of pain that staggers Ya'ari.
A FEW MINUTES after the departure of the handsome archaeologist, the visitor hears the engine of the vehicle that waited for him and hurries to her window, just in time to see how the beams of its headlights, piercing the fine rain, stripe the dirt road like a golden whip.
The bones sit among her toiletries, wrapped in their cloth bag, and for a moment she considers wrapping them in something more to insulate them from the odors of makeup and perfume, but he decides not to. If everything that has clung to these bones deep in the ground for millions of years hasn't impaired their identity, they won't be compromised by the scent of her toiletries.
In spite of her promise to inform her brother-in-law about her little mission, she would be in no hurry to see him, if she didn't also feel compelled to tell him a few pointed things that might get lost in the swirl of her departure in the morning. She puts on her gym shoes and — although the night is warm — her sister's old windbreaker, and goes down to his temporary quarters. But the door that opens at her touch reveals an empty room and bare bed. Disappointed, she continues on to the dining room. The high table is still on its lofty perch by the west window, and to her amazement it is still covered with the remains of the festive dinner, as are the other tables, and the sinks are filled with unwashed pots and pans. Yet despite the disorder and grime, she feels at home in this place and is not afraid to be alone in the cluttered darkness. And because she thinks Yirmiyahu will pass by en route to his room, she finds a seat by one of the tables and waits for him.