A few minutes more of futile searching go by, until an airline employee in an orange uniform, which goes nicely with her dark skin, gently moves her away from the lengthening queue and suggests that she look in her suitcase. It will turn up, she assures the mortified passenger. It's bound to turn up.
Daniela smiles in agreement with the amiable woman, even as she feels embarrassed and desperate, as well as furious at her husband. This was predictable. He did warn her to keep all the documents together, and now he might even be pleased that his anxiety was justified and that he cannot rely on her, and thus it is his duty and mission to paralyze her with his ministrations, anesthetize her, cushion her very being as if she were a princess.
But she does remember it well, that rectangular boarding pass. She had it, she saw it, she didn't disrespect or neglect it, she remembers what it looked like, its color, so why is it betraying her now, disappearing and leaving her bereft in a transit lounge?
Travelers pass by her, a European family with children, gaily boarding the short evening flight to the game preserve of their dreams. The bus that is to take them to the plane turns on its lights and starts its engine. Has your suitcase already been loaded onto the plane? they ask her. No, she assures them, it's only a week-long trip, to visit a relative; her wheeled carry-on is all she has. For a moment she considers adding that her host was until a few years ago a chargé d'affaires in the region; perhaps, owing to his high status, they might forgive her the boarding pass, but on second thought such credentials strike her as useless, so she says nothing.
This makes it easier for the airline staff. No need to delay the flight and hunt for a suitcase on the plane. They can simply leave the flustered passenger here and send the plane on its way. It occurs to her that if she'd had another bag, they might have had to forget about the boarding pass and let her travel with her suitcase, but no, Yirmi had advised her not to bring too many clothes; the weather is pleasant, he'd said, and if it gets cold, I still have your sister's sweater and windbreaker.
She is on the verge of tears. Suddenly the disappearance of her boarding pass merges with the death of her sister.
But she will remember where she put that damned pass. She will summon all her strengths, she will wake up. It is not just her husband who put her in this stupor, but also her sister's death. She must snap out of it, otherwise there's no point in this trip to far-off Africa that was meant to prevent the pain of her loss from diminishing. If she doesn't wake up, how will she be able to revive memories of her forgotten childhood? Her brother-in-law can't do the work for her. Deep down she knows that he has reservations about her visit, even if it's only for seven days. He doesn't understand its purpose and is also wary of her criticism, open or implicit. He fears having her dig into his affairs. And if she arrives in a scatterbrained, stupefied state, then he, like her husband, will anesthetize her, cushion her very being, and increase her dependency, just as he had done with her sister.
Which is why she must find that boarding pass. She will not degrade herself and go like a naughty schoolgirl to the transit counter and ask that her flight be rescheduled for the next day. She will pull herself together, she will not allow the love lavished upon her to demolish her independence. She needs a dash of misery, genuine anger at herself, like that masochistic heroine in the novel that so far she doesn't care for very much.
Suddenly she knows. No, the pass is not lost, it is in the book, in the suitcase, marking the place where she left off, where the heroine had exhausted her capacity for empathy.
Wait, wait, she calls to the steward, who is about to shut the door on her. She gets down on her knees and opens the suitcase, and beside the package of newspapers she finds the novel, and the boarding pass protrudes from it, safe and sound. She pulls it out, making a mental note of the page number before closing the book.
"We've been looking for someone to take care of you," the ticket taker says, tearing the stub from the card, "but I see you've taken care of yourself."
Since she is the last passenger, he rolls her bag to the bus, though now it seems to roll happily by itself. Once there, she is welcomed with enthusiasm, people getting up to offer her a seat, and she smiles and sits down, taking care to insert into her passport, as her husband had instructed, the remaining portion of the boarding pass, even though in a few minutes she will have to take it out again and present it to the stewardess at the door of the plane.
THE SUNSET, DIMLY visible between the heavy clouds, casts gray shadows in Ya'ari's office. But he does not turn on the light, tilting back instead in his comfortable desk chair, closing his eyes in a moment of contemplation before fulfilling the final obligation of a day that began before dawn. His father is eating dinner now, but because it is hard for Ya'ari to watch Francisco's wife, Kinzie, feeding him with a small spoon, he prefers to arrive at the end of the meal, when his father's bib has been removed and his face washed clean.
It's quiet in the office. Because of the holiday, the women finished their workday at lunchtime, and not all the men who went out for lunch made it back to their desks, either. A few years ago, after his father could no longer conceal the trembling in his extremities and finally retired, Ya'ari did away with the time clock, expecting that hours missed would be stamped upon the individual conscience of each employee. He was right. Sometimes at night, when he and Daniela are on their way home from a concert or a movie, he will detour past the office to show her the bright flicker of busy computers in the windows.
"Listen, Ya'ari," says Gottlieb, the elevator manufacturer, on the telephone. "I see that the wind is up again, and as I told you this morning, even if our work is not to blame, I'm willing, if only for the personal and professional peace of mind of a friend who trusted us, to send my expert there right now, but on the condition that you, or someone from your office, will go with her."
"Why?"
"Because at the site, she can better direct you how to deal with the tenants and prove to them that the noises are not caused by your design and certainly not by my elevators but exclusively by the construction company's lousy job on the shaft and maybe also a mistake of the architect's in the placement of the fire doors in the parking garage. I don't need to hear any howling myself to know that the wind is getting in from the bottom, not from the top, and my technician will diagnose for you exactly what's causing the uproar. So listen, my friend, don't be lazy; tomorrow the weather will improve and the storm will be gone and they won't hear a thing. Take yourself over there and meet her in half an hour, and don't change your mind. Or send your son. She's a rare type, a gifted person, professional, who will relieve you once and for all of the guilt you decided to take upon yourself this morning just so you could pin it on me this afternoon."
"Not guilt, responsibility."
"Then she'll free you from responsibility."
"But what's so special about her?"
"She can pinpoint, just by listening, malfunctions in motors or cables long before they cause serious problems. With such a fine-tuned ear she could conduct a philharmonic orchestra plus a big choir, instead of working with us in the service department…"
"Israeli?"
"Totally Israeli. She was sent as a child to some musical kibbutz in Galilee, where she developed perfect pitch among the tractors and combines and plows."
"How old is she?"
"Thirty, forty, maybe more. But tiny, ageless, athletic… She can slide herself into any crack… A fearless little devil."