The Sudanese nurse looks frightened. Perhaps according to her faith, a white person's dream about a black person has some evil power? But Daniela is quick to calm her. It was a good dream; I saw you with us in Jerusalem, seeking love and finding it.
Sijjin Kuang is shocked. She shuts the hood of the car with a loud clang and wipes her hands with a towel, and with a wise smile she asks the dreaming woman, "You are sending me all the way to Jerusalem to find love?"
"If it is love," Daniela answers softly, "then why not?"
"And Jeremy, your brother-in-law — have you convinced him to return to Jerusalem?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"That it is good for him to stay here."
The African boy hops back to the car with the big branch in his hand. But Sijjin Kuang doesn't let him bring it into the car, and reluctantly he throws it away.
SINCE THE TECHNICIAN was so skillful in the rescue operation, Ya'ari stays with him until he finishes reattaching the opened side of the big elevator. But putting things together is harder than taking things apart, and Gottlieb's absence slows the process down. Ya'ari himself is not familiar with the fine details of the elevator that his firm designed and cannot offer advice. The night watchman is not much of a conversationalist. So little remains for Ya'ari to do but doze in Gottlieb's armchair near the watchman's table, exuding silent solidarity with the middle-aged technician.
The first rays of dawn, which illuminate the oversize glass doors of the tower's lobby, also open the eyes of Ya'ari, who sees the technician replacing the last of the tools in his box and locking it. The elevator designer rises heavily from his chair to return the cab to group control, but the worker has beaten him to it. And the elevator lifts off at once to the early-rising tenant on the thirtieth floor. Come, Rafi, Ya'ari says with affection, I'll take you home. No need, the man says. I'll wait for the first bus. But Ya'ari insists and drives him along the seacoast to a neighborhood in the south of the city, a place where people get up early, not far from Abu Kabir. The technician, silent all the way there, invites Ya'ari as a gesture of gratitude to come up to his apartment for a morning cup of coffee, and Ya'ari, who can't decide whether to go home to make up for lost sleep or go on to the office, accepts, in part to examine the worker's apartment and decide whether there was anything to that word hybrid, or if it was said only in jest.
The clean two-room flat is furnished in good taste. In the front room are shelves with books, mainly in Russian. There is nothing Middle Eastern about the upholstery of the sofa or the art reproductions hanging on the wall. But the coffee prepared by the host is clearly Arab in aroma and taste. A young pregnant woman, who has woken up in the other room and now brings soft ring-shaped rolls to go with the coffee made by her mate, contributes no further clue.
Ya'ari questions the man about Gottlieb's qualities as an employer, and to his surprise finds that the technician appreciates him. Admittedly the wages he pays are mediocre compared with salaries paid by others, but because he is always present on the factory floor and circulates among the workers, he adds drama and tension to the work, and so the time passes more quickly.
"So what is your name, really," Ya'ari wants to know before leaving, "Nimer or Rafi?"
The technician grins. "That depends on who is asking."
"When I asked you, you said Rafi, so what does that say about me?"
"True," the man admits, "I said Rafi, but now that we've worked together all night, Nimer is okay too."
His cell phone rings: the voice of Moran, who was let go half an hour ago and is on his way back to Tel Aviv. His first question: is his mother back yet? Not until the evening, his father answers matter-of-factly, but after you change clothes and kiss your wife and children, please go to the office and take the reins. I'm going home to sleep, and you've done enough loafing. And he summarizes for his son the events of the Night of the Winds.
When he gets to his home in the suburbs, his eyes barely open enough to see the tree in the front yard, the cell phone rings again, this time Francisco, reporting that his father is running a fever.
"How high?"
"Thirty-eight point five."
"Maybe take it again?"
"I already took it twice, it was exactly the same."
"Okay, I'm on my way."
"Should I telephone Doctor Zaslanski?"
"Have pity on him and wait a little while. The poor man is eighty years old, so let him sleep."
According to Ya'ari's instructions, any rise in his father's temperature up to thirty-eight degrees Celsius the Filipinos are to attend to themselves; if it's more than that, they should call in Ya'ari and the old man's personal physician, his childhood friend Doctor Zaslanski.
Ya'ari washes his hands and looks longingly at the bed he abandoned in the middle of the night. He feels a truly strong desire to curl up in the white down quilt.
But the doctor has warned him that Parkinson's disease can get worse during a high fever, and the last thing Ya'ari wants today is illness complicated by rekindled love. So without shaving or changing his work clothes, he drives to his father's house to check the boundary between the physical and the mental.
The old man's eyes glisten. The fever imparts an attractive ruddiness to his cheeks. He sits up in bed, propped by pillows, and asks right away about the winds in the tower. Ya'ari tells him about the organ holes left in the shaft by chance or on purpose.
"This is how it ends," old Ya'ari says with resignation. "When you treat foreign construction workers poorly, they leave a little souvenir in the building before going back to their country, and now try hunting them down in Romania or China."
"Why are you so sure it was done deliberately? Maybe it's just by accident?"
"Accident?" the old man sneers dismissively, "accident is always the easy way out for someone too lazy to think."
The son is too exhausted to argue with the father. Doctor Zaslanski will not arrive for another hour, and since Hilario is already awake, Ya'ari asks Kinzie to change the sheets and make him a fresh bed in his old childhood room. A little nap of an hour wouldn't hurt. The Filipinos are happy to carry out this request. You are very tired, Mister Amotz, they chide him. Instead of your wife's trip giving you some rest, it has tired you out. What time does she land?
"Five in the afternoon."
"You want a clean pajama of your father?"
"No."
His childhood bed gives off a sweet smell, perhaps from something Southeast Asian. The room is familiar and foreign all at once. Still standing is the bookcase they bought him when he entered high school, and his old chair is still in place by the desk. But there's a mishmash of other furnishings from other rooms, such as the night table that stood next to his mother's bed, and a wicker basket from the bathroom, and there are also various accessories from the Philippines — colorful posters and lamps, and a real or fake telephone in the shape of a dragon. Ya'ari takes off his clothes and gets into bed in his undershorts and long-sleeved T-shirt, and hopes for a sound and soothing sleep that will render him fit for the reunion with his wife.
He drops off at once, and his sleep is heavy, though at times real voices drift through. He hears the reassuring bass voice of Doctor Zaslanski, familiar from his childhood, explaining what to give the old man for his fever, adding, Don't worry, let Amotz sleep, don't wake him. And Ya'ari clings to his blanket and silently thanks his childhood doctor, and sinks deeper into the marvelous slumber.
And he dreams. Workers carry a mass of metal and drop it with a clang on the floor and speak Romanian or Chinese. And here he is again in the shaft of the winds, but this time the shaft does not extend up high but lies flat like a tunnel, and the elevators are like cars in a coal mine, and he can walk alongside them as they move. But instead of coal they transport tenants dressed in black, wearing glittering gold chains around their necks. And Ya'ari escorts them, flashlight in hand. He walks between the fencing and the tracks and suddenly feels an urgent need to urinate. But where? Cars filled with tenants pass by incessantly, emanating from a source of light and riding into the darkness, and because the cars have no roofs, and the tenants are all looking in his direction, he has a hard time finding a hidden corner. On the side of the shaft he notices a tangled spider web, and he edges toward it and decides to wash it away with the powerful stream from his bursting bladder.