"Why would I object?" he says, surprised.
"Because they suggested this was illegal."
"So what if it's illegal?" he says, a note of hostility creeping into his voice. "If they catch you, they'll immediately forgive you, as always."
"What do you mean, as always?"
"Because you're an expert at saving yourself from pain and from blame, and you also chose, as you yourself admitted, a man willing to shield you from the world."
These hard words, delivered in an accusatory tone, add venom to the smoke seeping into her. She throws the cigarette to the floor and grinds it out with her shoe and stares at the family member she has known since childhood. Yirmi remains indifferent and self-absorbed as he pulls the wool blanket over his bare legs and takes another pleasurable drag at his cigarette.
Tears of hurt well in her eyes.
How can she be accused of protecting herself from pain if she came all the way to Africa to see him? And if he feels that she also knows how to enjoy the visit, there's no contradiction in that. She is a curious woman, always fascinated by people. But her true purpose was to be with him, to listen with patience and sympathy to his every word. And even when he aroused her anger and resistance, because of his blindness in the past and stubbornness in the present, never for a moment did she forget his misery.
His bent head moves slightly.
"Anger?" he mutters, but still does not look at her directly.
That's right, anger and defiance, she reiterates, her voice choking, rising to a kind of wail. Instead of hiding his wretched obsession with that roof from her sister, and instead of humiliating himself, and indirectly her too, in a fruitless attempt to win sympathy from a suicidal pregnant young woman just to give meaning to the friendly fire, which was no more than a random stupid absurdity, he should have reconciled himself to that absence of meaning, and his obligation should have been something else entirely.
"Something else?" His face is twisted with mockery.
Yes. Because even if Shuli suppressed her womanliness after the death of her son, his duty was to fight for it, and not to use her withdrawal as an excuse to wipe away his whole biography and identity and the world he grew up in, and the history that has been and the history that will be. His duty was to fight for Shuli, for her sexuality and her desire. To console her instead of helping her extinguish herself. So she could live and not die.
Yirmi looks up in horror at the tearful, wailing woman who continues to pour out accusations as if her mind had lost control of her lips. He surely never anticipated that his tolerant and attentive guest would rise up at the moment of departure and suggest that he was to blame for her sister's death.
Now she is trembling and sobbing with fright over her brazen onslaught. He stands up, puts out the stub of his cigarette and crumbles it between his fingers, wary of getting nearer to her.
"Come on," he says heavily, "it's late, and you're tired. I'll take you back."
But Daniela refuses to budge. On the contrary, she defiantly takes off the windbreaker and also her shoes. Because just as the Palestinian roof had a magnetic effect on him, so, too, has this infirmary on her: a strange place, but not dangerous. For all his own suicidal illusions he had to know that a Palestinian woman who had brought him something to drink would let no harm come to him. Hospitality remains holier than revenge. And she trusts his hospitality and knows he will not touch her even if under cover of darkness she continues to remove before him all of her clothes, as she is now doing, item by item, until she is lying in his bed naked, covered with a blanket. Because this is how she wants to mourn the lost womanhood of her sister.
He recoils, agitated. For the first time since her arrival she thinks his self-control is about to give way. But she still trusts him even as he comes near her in the darkness and suddenly resembles a great terrifying ape, even when he lifts up the blanket and looks at her nakedness, the sheer nakedness of a weeping older woman and is perhaps reminded of what he abandoned and of his guilt about her sister. And then he closes his eyes, and as if bowing in obeisance, he flutters his lips on her bare breasts, then groans and bites her shoulder, and quickly, gently covers her up again. A moment later, he leaves the room.
YA'ARI IMMEDIATELY REMOVES his hands from the controls, to prevent any accidental shifting of the elevator. Don't move, he calls to the trapped expert, we'll get you out of there. And you be careful too, he yells angrily at the young lawyer, who looks on in horror at the little woman whose leg is caught somewhere between the counterweight and the separation bars, and don't you move either or touch anything.
Gottlieb apparently saw the flashlight tumble down the shaft, because as Ya'ari fumbles for his cell phone, the manufacturer's voice cries out from the depths, What is it, Ya'ari? Did the lawyer fall? But Ya'ari, who has found his phone, does not shout back so as not to frighten the residents. With quivering fingers he dials Gottlieb's cell and informs him that his stepdaughter is trapped in the shaft. And since he does not know her exact location, he orders that no elevator be moved and says to call the fire department. Not the fire department, Gottlieb objects immediately, they'll wake up the whole street with their sirens and cause mayhem in the building, for no reason. No, habibi, we're going to rescue the little one ourselves. My Nimer and I, and even you, have enough skill and experience to know what we can handle and what we can't. Forty years ago I myself stumbled into a shaft like this, and you can see with your own eyes that I got out safely. And so Gottlieb wants him now to be practical and logical as always, and determine his precise location so the technician won't have to climb any more stairs than necessary.
Ya'ari trains his light between the separation bars, at the counterweight pinning the leg, and sees the outline of the body and the red woolen scarf. The quiet sobbing of the woman mingled with the lamentation of the wind rattles him. What do you feel, Rachel? Tell me. He tries to get her to answer, but she only keeps murmuring, Abba'leh, Abba'leh.
Finally the outer door on the thirteenth floor is opened, and Nimer, who arrived by the stairs, out of breath, decides first thing to get the lawyer out of there. With a monkeylike agility that belies his age, he lowers himself over the elevator track, orders the attorney to grab hold of his hand, and with one strong pull drags him up the side of the shaft and hauls him onto the floor of the building. Gottlieb told me to get you out too, he says to Ya'ari. No, says Ya'ari adamantly, I'm not moving from here until we rescue her. I'm part of this.
Gottlieb, meanwhile, has reactivated the big central elevator and loaded into it the technician's toolbox, and is now sailing upward on its roof like the helmsman of a great ship, coming to a halt near the twelfth floor at a spot allowing access to the trapped woman.
Only now, in the reassuring presence of her stepfather and employer, does she end her cries of pain to respond to his questions.
"What happened, Rolaleh?" he says, attempting a joke, "you decided to take a nighttime stroll on the walls of the shaft?"
"I fell, Gottlieb, and my leg got caught."
"This is what happens, Rachel, when you take the Ya'ari family's winds too seriously."
"My leg hurts, really badly."
"We'll free it up right away and get you out of here; just don't move."
"I'm afraid my leg is gone."
"Gone where, by itself?" he continues in the same jocular tone. "It's not going anywhere without you. And you can rest easy, because I took out not one but two insurance policies on you, and any minute Nimer will get into the big elevator to take off a side panel and free up your foot. Don't worry, you'll still be able to dance at the wedding."