A Woman in Jerusalem, page 8
“She isn’t on any of them. She’s in the deep-freeze room. Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” the technician asked.
The resource manager was sure. He could never pretend to identify a person he had only met in passing.
17
In the heated car, skimming the wet, empty streets of Arab Jerusalem, where streetlights were dimmer than in the Jewish half of the city, he again felt an urge to report back to the owner. Although not sure whether the concert was over, he dialled the old man’s home over the car’s speakerphone. The housekeeper told him in cultured, vaguely accented English that the master had not yet returned. The concert would be ending late because of an unusually long symphony in its second half.
“Probably something of Mahler’s,” said the resource manager, who prided himself on his musical knowledge.
The housekeeper, however, was not interested in composers, only in the length of their compositions. It was enough to know that the old man would not be home before midnight. If the resource manager wished to leave a message, she would take it down.
The resource manager decided not to. Why let the old man sleep in peace by telling him the job was done?
Crossing the invisible, yet ineradicable, line between the two halves of the city, he switched on the radio to listen to the concert. No, it wasn’t Mahler. Yet it did seem to anticipate him. The oboe and clarinet were almost Mahleresque. A sudden rhythmic tattoo of repeating notes inspired him to conduct the music with one hand as he sped through the neighbourhood of Talbieh. He passed his mother’s building and turned a corner by his old high school. Whose symphony was it? He might figure it out if only he could go on listening. Yet Jerusalem was too small a city to fit a whole symphony into, and he was already nearing the market that had been the scene of the bombing. Usha Street, where the dead woman had lived, was down the hill ahead of him. Rather than risk getting trapped in a maze of one-way streets and dead ends, he switched off the music, and parked on a main road. Then he detached his cell phone from its speaker and put it in the pocket of his overcoat.
When we heard the knock on the door we were already in our nightgowns, all except Big Sister, who was still wearing a dress. Although our parents had warned us before they set out for the rabbi’s wedding that we must never open the door after nine o’clock for anyone, not even our own grandma, we were so excited that we ran to see who it was. We were sure it was Grandma come to watch over us in our sleep. We didn’t even ask, ‘Is that you, Grandma? Have you come for the night?’ but opened the door right away. We almost fainted. A stranger was there, not even a religious Jew, a big strong man with short hair like our mother’s when she takes off her wig before going to bed. He asked if we knew where Yulia Ragayev lived, because he had looked for her everywhere, upstairs and down, and couldn’t find her. And though we should have shut the door and put on the chain and talked through the crack the way our father taught us, we all answered in a chorus: “She doesn’t live here anymore, not upstairs and not downstairs. She’s moved to the backyard, to the shack that was our neighbour’s storeroom.” Big Sister, who doesn’t like us to answer in her place, hushed us and said, “She’s not there now, because she works night shifts in a bakery. Sometimes she brings us a sweet challah for the Sabbath,” and Middle Sister, who knows everything, began to yell, “That’s not so, that’s not so, don’t listen to her! Yulia was fired, and Father thinks she must have left Jerusalem, because he’s been looking for her high and low.”
The stranger smiled and explained in a soft voice that he was the manager of the bakery and that Yulia hadn’t been fired. Did we remember the bombing in the market a week ago? She had been badly injured in it, and now she was in hospital, and he’d come with her keys to get something for her. He jangled them in the air for us to see.
We couldn’t control ourselves any longer. Every child in the building knew Yulia. She was a nice, quiet woman, even if she wasn’t religious, and we all screamed, “Oh, no, O God, what happened? What hospital is she in?” We were sure our parents would want to visit her, because it’s a commandment in the Torah.
But the stranger lifted a hand and said, “Easy does it, girls. She’s very ill and can’t be visited right now. Just tell me: Has anyone been looking for her?”
“No,” we all said. “No one. We’d have seen anyone who came.” He nodded and asked where the light switch was and how to get to the yard. We had so forgotten about being careful that Big Sister jumped up and said, “Come on, I’ll take you there. I’ll show you everything.” And to us she said, “That’s enough, girls. Now go to bed.”
But how could we go to bed when Big Sister was out in the yard with a stranger who wasn’t religious? And so all five of us, Little Three-Year-Old Sister, too, ran into the cold in our flannel nighties to be with them. It was pitch black and there was mud and puddles everywhere between the old boards and old tools. We ducked beneath the laundry lines and showed the man the shack. Yulia’s old nameplate had been ripped away by the storm and only the new one was left, the one with the Hebrew name we had given her, because we took it from the Bible and put it on her door, and she just smiled and let us do it.
18
The human resources manager watched the first key turn in the lock and felt certain the second would open something too. It’s mission accomplished, he thought. I’ve got the right woman. And she’s still ours, the personnel division’s. But why are these sweet little girls still standing around me, shivering in their long nighties? One of them must be my daughter’s age. What do they want from me? Now that I’ve opened the door, they must be waiting for me to go and look for what I promised to take to the hospital.
He beamed at them and said:
“Darlings, thank you for your help. It’s awfully wet and cold out here. And very late, too. Run along now and go to bed before you catch cold.”
Although all six sisters, from the biggest to the smallest, were startled by his strict, if fatherly, tone, they wavered for a moment, as if unsure whether an irreligious stranger need be obeyed. Then, all at once, like a flock of birds warned of danger by a single wing flap, they flew off without looking back. Stepping into the shack, he entered a cool, dark space whose smell of ancient sleep seemed never to have been aired.
He switched on the overhead light. The bulb was weak and he had trouble seeing even after lighting a small table lamp. The bed was rumpled, as if a bad dream had made the sleeper jump out on the last morning she had risen. Behind the pillow was another lamp, attached to the wall. Now there was enough light to survey the room.
For a second, he recoiled. Who had given him permission to be here? Yet he quickly collected himself. The company’s humanity was under attack; it was time for compassion, concern, and involvement, not apologies. If he were to dispose of this woman’s belongings and try to arrange compensation, he had to find a human link to her. Yes, compensation. Why not?
A doll in the form of a barefoot monk lay at the foot of the bed. It had a black robe and a beard of flax, dyed black, on its face. The resource manager held it up to see what it was made of before placing it on a shelf beside a small transistor radio, which he could not resist turning on, hoping to catch the end of the concert. Removing his gloves, he fiddled with the stations. For a while, there was a confusion of sounds; then he found the wavelength of the unknown, sonorous symphony; the wind section was now trumpeting a solemn slow movement. Carefully holding the little radio, he removed, with a twinge of emotion, a flowery blouse from a wobbly straw armchair, sat down, and shut his eyes.
Back in his days as a salesman, when he’d spent many a night in hotels and lived in constant fear of insomnia, he had made a point of never going to bed before midnight. Now, after leaving his wife and moving in with his mother, he had developed the habit of taking a short but sound nap every evening, when the TV news came on. This helped him stay fresh for a night of bar hopping in the smart new establishments in town, where he hoped to meet someone new. Tonight, though, the nap would have to be symbolic, hastily snatched in the room of the departed cleaning woman.
Although both the door and the main window were shut tight, it was bitingly cold in the shack even with his coat and scarf on. The reason, he saw when he went to look for it, was another, small, open window in the bathroom. A laundry line ran from it to a nearby fence. Visible in the light of the cloud-stalked moon, clothing flapped lightly in the breeze.
If he couldn’t find some friend or relative to take possession of this woman’s disrupted domesticity, the resource manager thought, he would have to ask his secretary to do it. He was sure she would welcome any task that took her away from the routine of her computer. Meanwhile, he decided, he would at least close the window. He put his gloves back on and – after ascertaining that the symphony would not be ending for a while – went out into the yard. Going to the rear of the little shack, which suggested a fairy-tale hut in its wintry setting of old boards and implements, he detached the laundry line from the fence and gently gathered the rain-drenched, mud-and-leaf-spattered articles, which felt light and intimate to the touch. Back inside, he put them in the sink, wondered briefly whether he had the right to rinse them, then turned on the tap, which surprised him by running hot at once. The neighbour whose storeroom this had been had connected its plumbing to his own. Wouldn’t the night shift supervisor love to be here! But he mustn’t have anything to do with this. His infatuation had caused enough problems.
The music on the other side of the thin bathroom wall was showing the first signs of resolution. He shut the tap and left the laundry in the sink, already regretting having taken it from the line. He mustn’t touch anything else: no drawers, no documents, no photographs. Suppose the sought-for friend or relative were to turn up and accuse him of theft? What would he say? “Where have you been?” “Why didn’t you take any interest in her until now?”
He sat down again in the chair, one ear on the symphony that was now slowly but surely winding down, and surveyed the dead woman’s domain. Apart from the bed, which she had perhaps intended to return to that fateful morning, everything was neatly arranged. Though poor, she had had good taste. A clean plate lay on the table beside a folded napkin, mute testimony to a never-eaten last meal. Two anemones stood in a thin vase, still fresh-looking although the water had evaporated.
The walls were bare except for a single, unframed sketch. There were no photographs – none of the son whisked away by his father; none of the boyfriend who had left her; none even, of the old mother in the village who had hoped to join her. The sketch, done by an amateur – herself? – in charcoal, depicted a small, deserted alleyway — in Jerusalem’s Old City? – that curved gently to meet the silhouette of a domed and minareted mosque.
The solemn music had become trapped in a frightful dissonance from which it was struggling to escape. As the little radio, in turn, struggled to transmit this, he guessed the composer in a flash. There’s no doubt of it, he thought, conducting with one arm. Who but that stubborn, pious old German would ever be so tedious?
He was pleased at having figured it out. When he phoned the old man, he would surprise him not only with his detective work but also with a discussion of the concert. “Believe it or not, I listened to it while on the job. I just couldn’t tell if it was the Seventh or the Eighth.”
Something about the shack, tucked away in a backyard in a semi-Orthodox neighbourhood in the centre of town, appealed to him. He wondered how much rent its owner had got away with charging. “Yulia Ragayev, Yulia Ragayev,” he declaimed to the empty room. “Yulia Ragayev, Yulia Ragayev.” The death of this beautiful woman a few years his senior, who had passed so close to him without his having noticed her magical smile, saddened him greatly.
The dark, earnest notes of the German symphony, which had reached its final coda, were interrupted by the jingly melody of his cell phone. Fortunately, the caller had patience, since it wasn’t easy to find the tiny instrument in the many pockets of his overcoat. “Hang on,” he shouted as he turned down the music. Yet when he returned to the phone, it was only his mother. Unable to sleep, she was calling to ask if he had been to the hospital and found someone to deal with the dead woman.
“Yes,” he replied with a sigh. “I was in the morgue on Mount Scopus. On top of everything, they wanted me to look at the corpse.”
“And you agreed?” she asked in consternation.
“Of course not. I’m not that naïve. You tell me: how can I identify someone I don’t remember?”
For once, she was pleased with him. “You were right to put your foot down. It’s none of your business. At last you showed some sense. Where are you, in a bar?”
He debated whether to tell her, then did.
“At her place? Why?”
He explained as briefly as possible.
“And you were able to open the door?”
“Of course.”
“What did you hope to find there?”
“Nothing. I’m just having a look around. I’ve been thinking. Maybe the company should be a bit more generous. Someone has to pay for shipping her belongings to her family …”
“Be careful. Don’t touch anything.”
“Why would I touch anything? What’s there to touch? Hang on a minute, mother, hang on …”
The final bars of the symphony seemed to have taken the audience by surprise. The polite, weary applause from the transistor sounded at first like an idling engine. Only gradually, as if the listeners wished to spare the musicians’ feelings, did it pick up. The resource manager hoped that the concert had not exhausted the old man. He wanted to give him a full report tonight. Cautiously he turned up the volume, waiting for the name of the work to be announced. Yet all he heard was the applause, still rising and falling softly. Although a kind soul tried cheering the orchestra, or perhaps himself, with a long cry of “Bravo,” his remained a voice in the wilderness. It was late, and everyone wanted to go home.
“Just a minute, mother … hang on …” He reluctantly returned to the phone before she could get too indignant.
“What’s wrong? Is anyone with you?”
“No. Who could be with me? I was just waiting to hear the name of a symphony played on the radio.”
“Is there anything else you want from me?”
“Anything I want from you?” He was startled. “Not that I can think of.”
“Well, then, good night.”
“I won’t be late.”
“You’ll come when you come.”
Before his hunch could be confirmed, the musical broadcast was interrupted by the hourly news. The human resources manager switched off the radio.
The rain was beating down again on the roof of the shack. He was tired. Still, he thought to brace himself, if I’ve gone to such lengths not to disappoint the old man, I can’t let him down now. His car and driver are waiting for him at the concert hall, and he’ll be home soon. If I were a bit kinkier, I might be tempted to take a nap in this bed and cover myself with the blanket. But I am who I am. I’m not a lover, or in love, or a beloved. I’ll just fold the blanket neatly and move on.
19
Half an hour later, he phoned the owner and found him at home. “After Bruckner’s Eighth,” he inquired, “are you up to listening to me?”
“Why the Eighth?” the old man marvelled. “It was the Ninth.”
“Ah,” the manager said, hastening to correct himself while displaying his knowledge. “The unfinished one.”
“Unfinished?” The old man had apparently not bothered to read the programme notes. “How unfinished can anything be that lasts over an hour?”
“Think carefully,” the resource manager said. “You heard only three movements. If that constipated man, with all his spiritual doubts and struggles, had finished the fourth movement before he died you’d have had to sit through another hour … What do you say, then? Do you have the patience for the report you’ve been waiting for? Or are you desperate to go to sleep?”
“I already slept at the concert,” the old man joked. “And at my age, there’s no need for sleep anyway. If you’re still on your feet, come on over. Just give me a few minutes to get organized. Meanwhile, I’d like a yes or no answer: are we guilty or not?”
“Responsible is more like it.”
“Responsible for what?”
“I’ll tell you later,” he said dryly, cutting short the conversation.
It was nearly one o’clock when he arrived at the large luxury apartment. He had been there only once, many years before, during the old man’s week of mourning for his elderly wife whom the resource manager had never met and who may not even have been old. The living room had been filled with condolence callers, and the human resources manager, after mumbling a few obligatory words, had retreated to a corner and sat by an illuminated glass cabinet filled with vivid clay and plaster models of the many kinds of bread and baked goods produced by the company during its long history.
Tonight, when he was the only guest, he found himself drawn to the same cabinet. The housekeeper, a small, dark-skinned, white-haired Indian, took his hat, scarf, and gloves and went to call the old man. Did the owner’s choice of this woman, the human resources manager wondered, indicate that he considered himself too old for sex?
It took a while for the owner to appear. For the first time since the resource manager had known him, he really did look old. His bath had clearly done nothing to revive him. His tall figure was stooped. The royal pompadour was damp and limp. Dark rings circled his eyes and his face was pale. His feet, clad in old slippers, were dry and veiny. For a moment, the resource manager had the unsettling thought that his boss might be naked beneath his bathrobe. The symphony must have left him feeling drained. Besides wanting to know what his manager had discovered, he seemed anxious to recharge his batteries with the younger man’s energy. He filled two glasses with red wine.
