He wakes up in time and rushes to the toilet. Through the living room window he sees a different light. It's afternoon. At the end of the corridor, near the entrance to the apartment, sits Gottlieb's piston.
"What is this?" he demands. "They delivered my father's piston here?"
"Yes, two workers brought it around noon, because Gottlieb says there's no room for it at the factory."
"Bastard," Ya'ari grumbles, "suddenly he has no room for the piston. Why didn't you wake me? I would have made them take it back."
"It would not have helped," Francisco answers evenly, "because your father agreed. The piston made him so happy."
Ya'ari sighs and leans against the wall, drained.
"How is he?"
"He is getting better. His fever is going down."
Ya'ari looks at his watch. Unbelievable, three-thirty in the afternoon.
"How could you let me sleep like that?" he scolds Francisco.
"Your father wouldn't let us wake you." Francisco says, smiling, showing all his white teeth. "But only till four," he said, "so you don't miss your wife."
THIS TIME, THE small plane lands far from the terminal in Nairobi, and a dilapidated bus is brought over to fetch the passengers. Daniela, who hoped for a direct transit to the next flight, is forced to go once more through passport control and customs. How long will you stay here? asks a policeman, who is also the customs officer. I didn't come here, she answers with a sad smile. I am just passing through, I will stay for only two hours. Nevertheless they open her suitcase and search it, and even remove the contents of her toiletry bag, but the dry bones do not arouse any interest.
And again she goes through the metal detectors, and wheels her suitcase behind her till she locates the same teeming cafeteria where she can wait for the flight home. The layover is not six hours but this time she is not the same confident woman, carving out a territory for herself. She doesn't dare pull over two extra chairs, to put her feet up on one and her bag and suitcase on the other. She makes do with an empty seat in the heart of the hubbub, crowded among other people's tables, and when she tells the waiter with a faint smile, Just coffee, she bows her head.
Fear and anxiety in anticipation of returning to Israel. Merely imagining the possibility that Amotz will discover what happened fills her with horror. That strange look of Yirmiyahu's when she left him — what did it mean? Anger? Hope? Shock? He did not say a word about what had happened that night, perhaps because he felt sorry for her. And although ordinarily she hates the idea of anyone feeling sorry for her, now it is what she wants. Leaving aside the bite on the shoulder, the mere fact that her breasts were touched by his lips means that she gave him, out of pity, a deed of ownership. Now she is in his hands, whether he returns to Israel or not. And maybe precisely because of his sense of honor, and his deep ties to her and Amotz, he will refrain from coming back. Who knows, the strange thought occurs to her, maybe this was her hidden agenda: to prevent him from coming back, so he could not poison her family, her children and grandchildren, with his friendly fire.
The waiter sets down her cup of coffee and requests immediate payment, as he is about to conclude his shift. She pays and tips him well, but is unable to lift the cup to her lips, as if it contained bitter medicine. Crowded and cramped between Africans and Europeans, she suddenly hears some Hebrew. She doesn't lift her head. In this grimy cafeteria, she wants total anonymity. God willing, time will numb her shame.
The digital display now shows a delay of half an hour in the takeoff for Tel Aviv, which pleases her. Two young Hasidic men dressed in black — obviously local emissaries of Chabad who have managed to get into the terminal — circulate among the tables scrutinizing the clientele, seeking Jewish passengers. They take a good look at her too, and she quickly averts her eyes. To avoid giving them any pretext for approaching her, she pulls out the novel she bought for the trip and opens it without enthusiasm to the final chapter.
She counts the pages remaining. Only twenty-five. Then she skims through them to check the amount of dialogue and the length of the paragraphs. Finally she starts to read, first returning to the last two pages of the previous chapter to reconstruct the context. There is a new tension in the voice of the author, who writes in the first person and identifies completely with the heroine. But it's still hard to decipher the nature of this tension. In any event, the irony and cynicism are muted, and gone are the tiresome descriptions of the landscape, which in previous chapters seemed to have been written more out of literary duty than to serve a narrative or psychological purpose. Apparently something grave is about to happen. Perhaps the author is planning the heroine's suicide. And in fact, why not? A vacuous and clueless young woman might just try to kill herself. Some sort of pain is suddenly apparent between the lines, particularly in places where the text seems most minimalist and unclear. The pages go quickly, and then, for no reason, slow down. For a moment she flips back to the beginning of the book, recalling that there was some hint there that might explain what would happen in the final pages. She feels that the young and pretentious author is gearing up for an absurd twist that readers of her own age and spiritual temperament will happily accept, but not a serious reader like Daniela, who is already rebelling against it. Nevertheless she takes a sip of the cold coffee, and as if hypnotized continues to turn the pages. She is helpless, caught in the novel's spidery web until she reads the last lines, which are blurred by a flood of tears she did not at all expect.
She closes the book and slides it into the outer pocket of her suitcase. After all the effort and the emotion she feels hungry. The length of the flight's delay holds steady on the digital display. The cafeteria becomes even more crowded, and there is no hope that the waiter rushing between tables will notice her now that she has paid him. She remembers that the candy kiosk is not far away, but she has no desire for sweets. On the contrary, they'll just make her feel sick. She remembers the sandwiches prepared by her brother-in-law, who forced her out of concerns real or imagined to miss breakfast. She returned the thermos to Sijjin Kuang but packed the food in her suitcase, and she now takes out a meat sandwich and bites into it, glancing around her.
One of the young yeshiva students has sat down at a nearby table, laid out a cloth napkin, and placed upon it a bottle of mineral water, and now he too takes a bite of a homemade sandwich. He notices her picnic and smiles, as if they have a shared family secret that will permit him soon to approach her. He chews with great deliberation. If he were aware of the animal provenance of the flesh she is consuming, he might not spring from his seat toward her beckoning finger.
The young man is not Israeli but American, and his halting Hebrew is heavily accented. She speaks to him firmly, in the tone that an impatient teacher takes with a student of whom she expects little.