A Woman in Jerusalem, page 4
“I don’t believe it,” the resource manager said bitterly. “If you’re in favour of science, what is this whole crusade for the dignity of the dead?”
The wild music suddenly stopped.
“The dignity of the dead?” The weasel sounded truly startled. “Do you really think that’s what I’m fighting for? You’ll have to excuse me, mister, but you’re missing the point. I thought you would have realized by now that I don’t give a damn for the dead. The line between life and death is clear to me. The dead are dead. Whatever dignity we accord them, or fear or guilt we have about them, are strictly our own. They have nothing to do with it. I’d think that a personnel director like you would understand that if I feel pain or sorrow, it’s for the anonymous living, not the undignified dead. You may think I’m a romantic or a mystic, but the ‘shocking inhumanity’ is yours. And so is the unforgivable ease with which you forget a worker who doesn’t show up for work. What with all the unemployed out there, you’ll find someone else, so why worry, eh? If I let her stay unidentified for a few days longer, it was only to shock our jaded readers.”
“But that’s just my point,” the resource manager said. “You didn’t care about her at all. You just wanted to build a case. It’s the worst kind of muckraking.”
“What else could I do?” The journalist let out a sigh. “Such are the times we live in. You can’t sell an idea, no matter how passionately you believe in it, unless you serve it cooked up with a scandal. Believe me, if the editor weren’t so squeamish I’d have sent the photographer to shoot that woman in the morgue, because the director there told me … he said she’s … I mean was … in his opinion … a good-looking woman. Or special-looking, anyway …”
The resource manager thought he would choke. “Good-looking? Special-looking? Incredible! How dare you talk that way? Such good friends you two, he gave you a peep show. Don’t deny it! You make me want to puke …”
“Calm down. Who said I saw her?”
“You’re the scandal, not us.” He was getting carried away. “You complain of our inhumanity, but you don’t mind your friend abusing his position to tell you intimate things about the dead. A good-looking woman? Who gave him permission to discuss her? Is that any way to deal with a terror victim? Unbelievable! The man is sick – and you’re his accomplice. I could file a complaint against both of you. Who are you to give victims marks for being beautiful or ugly? I felt nauseous from the moment I started reading your article. It’s not only nasty, it’s pathological …”
There was a chuckle of satisfaction at the other end of the line.
“Suppose it is. Why shouldn’t it be? When everything around us is collapsing, it’s pathological to fight it.” True, his friend’s praise for the woman’s beauty – the weasel was decent enough to admit it – was what had aroused his interest in the first place. But why was the human resources manager surprised? Now that he knew who she was, he surely remembered her.
“Remember her? Of course I don’t.” Once again something quailed in him at being linked to the dead woman. “How could I? Our firm employs, in both of its branches, 270 or 280 workers in three shifts. Who can remember every one of them?”
“Well, you might at least tell me her name. What was her job? There must be a photograph in her file that we can publish. Or are you saving it for your apology? It will pep up the story. Our readers will love it …”
“A photograph? Forget it! And you’re not getting her name from me, either. You’re not getting anything unless you promise to withdraw your article altogether, or at least to tone it down.”
“But why should I? It’s a solid piece of writing. The one thing I’m willing to do is investigate the whole matter more thoroughly. How can a company fire someone and still keep her on the payroll? I wouldn’t mind looking into that … she deserves as much …”
“For what purpose? To tell more lies and make more mistakes? Tell me: When Jerusalem is burning, does any of this matter? I’m not even talking about your photographing me in the street without permission or dragging in my divorce as though it were of public interest, although that’s one thing that at least you could have left out …”
“Why? Don’t tell me it’s fiction,” the journalist said. “I’ve already told you: a little bit of harmless gossip can make a point better than all the generalizations in the world. The public deserves to know how jobs are handed out in big companies. And why doesn’t it matter? People like to read about terror attacks. They’re not abstract. They’re close to home and could happen to them. We all put ourselves first. The next time you’re in a café, look at the customers. Apart from their depression and resentment at the situation, you can see how delighted they are, all the same, to be alive … Why are you so angry with me? I don’t deserve it. If you were to meet me in person, you would remember that we were once in the same class at university, in an introductory lecture course on Greek philosophy. That’s why it surprised me to discover that you were heading the company’s personnel division. I wouldn’t have imagined you in such a cut-and-dried job. I don’t suppose it’s coincidence that the poor woman got lost in all your paperwork. She must have been a cleaning woman or something …”
“Something.” The resource manager winced.
“Won’t you at least tell me her name?” the journalist pleaded. “You obviously know it.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“You’ll have to mention it in your apology anyway.”
Feeling the weasel’s teeth sink into his throat, the resource manager regretted having phoned him.
“No, we won’t,” he protested. “We’re not divulging any details. In the end, we may even choose not to respond. You just want to make us look terrible, to keep hitting us below the belt. Why help you? You can crawl in the dark on all fours, mister weasel, you can crawl like a blind animal and eat dirt …”
There was no surprise or anger at the other end of the line. Only a chuckle of satisfaction. The human resources manager hung up.
8
He was now not only bone-weary but hungry as well. Before calling home again to see if his daughter had arrived, he went to the men’s room to freshen up. It was being cleaned by someone new, a young blonde woman he had never seen before. Startled by his appearance after office hours, she took a step back while he graciously signalled her to carry on and then went to the ladies’ instead. There, on his secretary’s initiative, a full-length mirror had been installed. Facing it in the stillness of the evening, he saw a thirty-nine-year-old man of average height and powerful build, with hair clipped short in boot-camp style – a vestige of his many years in the army. In recent months, he had not liked the way he looked. A gloom had settled over him, narrowing his eyes in an expression of vague injury. What’s bothering you, he silently scolded the figure staring glumly back at him. Was it only the owner’s self-indulgent concern for his humanity? Or was it also the prospect of his own photograph in the local weekly, accompanied by a cynical reference to his divorce? The journalist, he now realized, was more cunning than he had thought. Barring a clear apology, he would probe some more and come up with a new accusation for next week’s instalment. Once he knew the woman’s name, it would be only a matter of time before he got to her fellow workers. Anyone who could make friends in a morgue could make them in a bakery too. Someone there had already leaked the connection between his divorce and his new job. He was quite sure it wasn’t his secretary. Not that his reputation mattered to her, but the human resources division’s did.
He splashed his face with water while considering the option of not reacting to the article at all. An aloof silence might be the best strategy. But such a strategy would make the owner say he was dodging his duty, which was the last thing he wanted. He ran a small, fine-toothed comb through his crew cut, took a tube from his pocket and rubbed Vaseline on his chapped lips, and returned to the men’s room, determined to find out who the new cleaning woman was and who had hired her. She was gone, vanished like a ghost.
The office manager knew it was him even before he said a word. “We’re all fine,” she reassured him gaily. “We’re heading back to the car with all the homework, even her assignments for the weekend. We’ll get to work on it as soon as we get home. I’ll help with the English and my husband will freshen up his maths. Would you like to say hello?”
His daughter’s habitually estranged, defensive voice had a new, hopeful note. “Yes,” she told him. “They’re very nice and they’ve promised to help with my homework. You don’t have to hurry.”
She giggled and handed the phone to the office manager, who asked whether the article had been cancelled.
“Not a chance. I should never have brought it up with that creep. He not only won’t retract a word, he’s planning a second instalment.”
“Well, take your time. You have all night. We’ll be here with your daughter. We’re not going anywhere …”
“I don’t need all night,” he said. “And I’ve begun to think of it in a different, more sensible light. Why don’t we just let the article appear and sink it by not responding? If you give me the old man’s cell phone number, I can catch him before the concert.”
The office manager, however, was not about to expose her boss to such a half-baked idea, certainly not before a concert. Why throw in the towel? “Think it over,” she said. “Don’t make any rash decisions. Remember that you have all night …”
He was about to make a cutting remark about the “all night”. but refrained out of consideration for his daughter. Lamely saying good night to her, he reached for his loaf of bread and held it up to smell its freshness. Should he return to the bakery to warn the night shift supervisor of the journalist’s plans, or could that wait until tomorrow?
Although he had intended to take the loaf home with him, he couldn’t resist tasting the bread. In the absence of a knife, he tore off a piece with his strong fingers and opened his secretary’s fridge to look for something to put on it. Tucked away in the butter compartment he found a chunk of yellow cheese, and though sure she wouldn’t mind his taking it, he shrank from the thought of having to apologize in the morning for invading her privacy. Her new, free tone towards him and the night shift supervisor was bad enough without letting a chunk of cheese further lower the barrier he had erected between them, especially in the past months, since he had been single again.
He bit into the plain, dry white bread and found it tasty. Was it the same bread he was used to eating at home? Had his former wife looked for the bakery’s label in the supermarket and bought it as a gesture of solidarity? Once all this was over, he intended to demand a free daily loaf for all the administration workers. He tore off another piece, opened the thin folder, and, chewing noisily, read for the third time the CV dictated to him by the woman, now dead.
The computer printout provided him with the date and place of her birth and her address in Jerusalem. Hoping to form a better notion of the beauty that had eluded him, he bent to take a closer look at the digital face and long, swanlike neck. Was the secretary right? Did he live inside himself like a snail while beauty and goodness passed like shadows? Even if he did, she needed to be taken down a peg. In the army he had had a reputation for keeping his female soldiers in line – until, that is, he married one.
He shut the folder, tore off a third piece of bread, and went to the cabinet to get the file of the night shift supervisor. Bulky and tattered, it contained a pre-computer age black-and-white photograph of a handsome young man, a technician wearing the uniform of the Army Ordnance Corps, his dark eyes shining at the world with hope and trust. The resource manager leafed through the folder. There were requests for pay increases and paid vacations; notices of the man’s marriage and of the births of his three daughters; occasional promotions accompanied by nagging memos that he hadn’t yet got his increase. All in all, he had had an uneventful career. Marred only by a reprimand from the owner ten years before for negligently allowing an oven to be damaged by overheating, his file told the story of a hard worker who had gradually risen through the ranks. His technician’s smock and oil-stained hands notwithstanding, he now earned twice as much as the human resources manager.
By now the loaf of bread looked as if it had been gnawed at by a mouse. Throwing its remains into the wastepaper basket, he put on his coat, still wet from the rain, and headed back to the bakery, now nearly invisible behind a pall of fog and chimney smoke.
9
As Tuesday was the night on which the bakery fulfilled its orders from the army, the ovens and conveyor belts were still going full-blast. He asked a cleaning woman for a smock and cap and went to warn the night shift supervisor not to talk to the journalist. It took a while to find him; he was with two technicians, the three of them peering into the empty bowels of an oven, trying to determine why it was making a screeching noise.
Once again the human resources manager felt envious of the bakery workers for having to deal only with dough and machinery. The supervisor, flushed from the heat and wearing a smock and apron, was deep in conversation with the technicians. In his aging, troubled face the resource manager could still make out the dark-eyed soldier in the Ordnance Corps who had been so full of vitality.
Their glances met. The supervisor did not seem surprised to see him. Perhaps he realized that aggressive yet scattershot investigation by the secretary had not closed the dead woman’s case. The resource manager, anxious to spare him embarrassment in front of the technicians, waved a friendly hello and asked:
“Can I have a few minutes of your time?”
The supervisor threw the oven a last glance. Still concerned about the noise it was making, he ordered the technicians to bank the fires.
“Take her down a few degrees,” he said.
10
Sighing with relief at the departure of the cafeteria’s last diners, we finished placing the chairs on the tables before mopping encrusted red mud from the floor which resembled that of a slaughterhouse after the day’s torrential rain, when the two of them entered out of the dark. Exhausted though we were by the customers who had flocked here all day to get out of the rain, how could we refuse them? One was the young personnel manager, whose secretary we knew, because it was she who arranged for us to cater the parties given for retiring staff. The other was a regular customer, the night shift supervisor. If our cafeteria was the only warm, quiet place two senior staff members could find in the entire bakery complex, far be it from us to disappoint them. We warned them, though, that the kitchen was closed and that a pot of tea was the most they could expect.
That was fine with the personnel manager. Without bothering to ask the supervisor, who looked preoccupied, he took a table by the window. We went on mopping and scrubbing while listening with one ear to their conversation in the hope of learning how long they would take.
At first the young personnel manager did the talking and the supervisor listened. Still in his overalls, covered by an old army jacket, he propped his chin on one hand. After a while the two fell silent, as if they had used up every last word. But then a response came, at first in a low, hesitant voice. And when the floor was spotless and dry and the chairs were lowered again from the tables, and the violet light of a clearing sky shone through the window, we were shocked to see the older man bury his face in his hands as if hiding something painful or shameful, as if he had finally understood why an empty cafeteria had been chosen for his confession.
Although the human resources manager began by apologizing for his secretary’s rudeness, which had been inexcusable if only because of the presence of other workers, the night shift supervisor did not appear to be concentrating. Far from owing him an apology, the secretary, he seemed to believe, had been within her rights. Only when the manager described the old owner’s agitation, which made it necessary to get at the truth, did the supervisor begin to focus, as if grasping at last that the problem wasn’t a clerical one.
The resource manager hastened to reassure him. As important as it was to ascertain the facts, he had been through the supervisor’s file and knew about his loyalty and devotion to the company. Whatever was said tonight would remain between them. He did not intend to file another reprimand, like the one the supervisor had received for the damaged oven.
The supervisor was taken aback to learn that the owner’s handwritten rebuke was still on his record.
“All such documents come in duplicate. Their natural and final resting place is the filing cabinet in my office.”
Gently, the resource manager explained his intentions. Having taken this unpleasant business on himself, he was determined to get to the bottom of it and report back to the owner after the concert.
“The concert?”
“Yes. Just imagine: he couldn’t miss his concert! While we’re running around in the wind and rain to save his reputation, he’s having a musical evening. Well, why not? We all need inspiration. Who can object these days to some good music?”
In short, the younger man was proposing to cover for the older man, who outranked him by two levels and earned nearly twice as much. To do so efficiently, however, even in a trivial matter like this, he had to know the whole truth. The weasel meant to strike again. From his point of view, why shouldn’t he?
“The weasel?”
The human resources manager laughed. “That journalist. It’s my name for him.” They had just had a nasty phone conversation and exchanged insults; frankly, even “weasel” was too kind a description. “We have to be careful. I don’t want you talking to journalists, even if their questions seem perfectly innocent.”
“But what does he want?”
“A personal apology from the owner. A clear admission of guilt. No mere explanation can exonerate us of what he calls our callousness. He’ll keep trying to prove that that woman was still employed by us – not only at the time of her death, but afterwards too.”
