A Woman in Jerusalem

PART ONE The Manager

1

Even though the manager of the human resources division had not sought such a mission, now, in the softly radiant morning, he grasped its unexpected significance. The minute the extraordinary request of the old woman, who stood in her monk’s robe by the dying fire, was translated and explained to him, he felt a sudden lifting of his spirits, and Jerusalem, the shabby, suffering city he had left just a week ago, was once more bathed in a glow of importance, as it had been in his childhood.

And yet the origins of his unusual mission lay in a simple clerical error brought to the company’s attention by the editor of a local Jerusalem weekly, an error that could have been dealt with by any reasonable excuse and brief apology. However, fearing that such an apology — which might indeed have laid the matter to rest — would be deemed inadequate, the stubborn eighty-seven-year-old owner of the company had demanded a more tangible expression of regret from himself and his staff, a clearly defined gesture such as the one that had resulted in this journey to a distant land.

What had upset the old man so? Where had the almost religious impulse that drove him come from? Could it have been inspired by the grim times that the country, and above all Jerusalem, were going through, which he had weathered unharmed; so that his financial success, as other businesses foundered, called for vigilance in warding off the public criticism that now, ironically, was about to be aired in newsprint of which he himself was the supplier? Not that the reporter, a political radical and eternal doctoral candidate with the restraint of a bull in this intimate china shop of a city — whose scathing feature article would break the story — was aware of all this when he wrote the piece, otherwise he would have toned it down. Yet it was the paper’s editor and publisher, loath to ruin a colleague’s weekend with an unpleasant surprise that might spoil their business relations, who had decided, after taking a look at the story and its accompanying photograph of the torn, bloodstained pay slip found in the murdered woman’s shopping bag, to let the old man respond in the same issue.

Nor was it really such a shocking exposé. Nevertheless, at a time when pedestrians were routinely exploding in the streets, troubled consciences turned up in the oddest places. And so at the end of that particular working day, when the human resources manager, having promised his ex-wife that he would leave the office on time to be with their only daughter, had tried to evade the owner’s summons, the old man’s long-serving office manager had refused to let him. Sensing her boss’s agitation, she’d hastened to advise the resource manager to put his family duties aside.

On the whole, relations between the two men were good. They had been so ever since the resource manager, then in the sales division, had unearthed several Third World markets for the company’s new line of paper and stationery products. And so, when his manager’s marriage was on the rocks, in part because of his frequent travels, the old man had reluctantly agreed to appoint him temporary head of the human resources division, a job that would allow him to sleep at home every night and try to repair the damage. Yet the hostility engendered by his absence was only distilled into a more concentrated poison by his presence, and the chasm between them — at first psychological, then intellectual, and finally sexual — continued to grow of its own accord. Now that he was divorced, all that kept him from returning to his old job, which he had liked, was his determination to stay close to his daughter.

As soon as he’d appeared in the doorway of the owner’s spacious office, where the elegantly muted light never changed with the time of day or year, the article due to appear in the local weekly was dramatically hurled at him.

“An employee of ours?” The resource manager found that hard to credit. “Impossible. I would have known about it. There must be some mistake.”

The owner did not answer. He simply held out the galleys, which the resource manager read quickly while still standing. The odious article was entitled “The Shocking Inhumanity Behind Our Daily Bread.” Its subject was a woman in her forties found critically wounded after a bombing in the Jerusalem market the week before. Her only identifying mark had been a pay slip issued by the company. For two days she had fought for her life in the hospital without any of her employers or fellow workers taking the slightest interest in her. Even after her death, she had lain in the hospital morgue abandoned and unidentified, her fate unmourned and her burial unprovided for. (There followed a brief description of the company and its large, well-known bakery, founded at the beginning of the twentieth century by the owner’s grandfather and recently augmented by the new line of paper products.) Two photographs accompanied the text. One, taken years ago, was an old studio portrait of the owner; the other was of the human resources manager. It was dark and blurry, evidently snapped recently, without his knowledge. The caption noted that he owed his position to his divorce.

“The little weasel!” the resource manager muttered. “What a nasty smear …”

But the old man wanted action, not complaints. It wasn’t the tone of the article that bothered him — yellow journalism was the fashion nowadays — but its substance. Since the editor had been kind enough to allow them to respond immediately, which might defuse charges that would only gain ground if uncontested for a week, they had better find out who the woman was and why no one knew anything about her. In fact — why not? — they should contact the weasel himself to see what he knew. It was anyone’s guess what he meant to reveal next.

In a word, the human resources manager would have to drop everything and concentrate on this. Surely he understood that his responsibility was to deal not just with vacations, sick leaves, and retirements, but with death as well. If the article were to be published without a satisfactory response from them, its accusations of inhumanity and callous greed might arouse public protests that would affect their sales. After all, theirs wasn’t just any bakery: the proud name of its founder was affixed to every loaf that left the premises. Why give their competitors an unfair edge?

“An unfair edge?” The human resources manager snorted. “Who cares about such things? And especially in times like these …”

“I care.” The owner replied irritably. “And especially in times like these.”

The resource manager bowed his head, folded the article, and stuck it matter-of-factly in his pocket, anxious to escape before the old man blamed him not only for keeping flawed records but for the bomb attack too. “Don’t worry,” he said with a reassuring smile. “I’ll make this woman my business first thing tomorrow morning.”

The tall, heavyset, expensively dressed, old man sat up, very pale, in his chair. His great pompadour of ancient hair swelled in the muted light like the plumes of a royal pheasant. His hand gripped his employee’s shoulder with the full force of his threatened reputation. “Not tomorrow morning,” he said slowly and with painstaking clarity. “Tonight. This evening. Now. No time to waste. I want all this cleared up before dawn. In the morning we’ll send the paper our response.”

“This evening? Now?” The resource manager was startled. He was sorry, but it was too late for that. He was in a hurry. His wife — his ex-wife, that is — was out of town and he had promised to look after their daughter and drive her to her dance class; what with all the bus bombings, they didn’t want her taking public transport. “What’s the hurry?” he asked. “The damn paper comes out on Fridays. It’s only Tuesday. There’s plenty of time.”

But the owner was too worried about his humanity to relent. No, there was no time at all. The paper, distributed free with the weekend editions of the national tabloids, went to press on Wednesday night. If their response wasn’t in by then, it would have to wait another week; meanwhile they would be open to all kinds of accusations. If the resource manager didn’t wish to take care of this — and thoroughly — let him say so. There was no problem finding someone else — perhaps to run the human resources division, too …

“Just a minute. I didn’t mean to …” The casually delivered ultimatum stung and bewildered him. “What am I supposed to do with my daughter? Who’ll take care of her? You’ve met her mother,” he added bitterly. “She’ll murder me …”

“That’s who’ll take care of her,” the owner interrupted, pointing to his office manager, who turned red at the thought of being entrusted with the chore.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? She’ll drive your daughter and look after her like her own child. And now let’s roll up our sleeves and prove that we’re as human as the weasel … that we care. For God’s sake, my good man, is there any choice? No, there isn’t.”

2

“Yes, sweetheart. Yes, dear, I understand. I know you don’t need to be driven. But please, do it for your mother’s sake. And for mine. It’s best to let this woman take you to your dance class and bring you back. There isn’t any choice. There simply isn’t …”

His cajoling tone over the telephone, meant to placate a disappointed daughter who wanted a father not a driver, sounded rather like his boss’s.

“You’re right,” he confessed a minute later, this time fending off his ex-wife, who, informed by his daughter of his change of plans, had called to accuse him of dereliction of duty. “I admit it. I did promise. But something awful has happened. Try to be human. An employee of ours was killed in a bombing and I have to take care of the details. You don’t want me to lose my job, do you? There isn’t any choice …”

This lack of choice first announced by the owner would echo within him like a comforting mantra — and not just on that first long, meandering night, by the end of which he was conjuring the dead. No, in the strange days following — on the funeral expedition that same weekend to the steppes of a far country, in the hardest moments of indecision, the worst junctures of crisis and uncertainty — he would rally his companions with the same phrase. It was like a banner in battle, the beacon from a lighthouse, flickering in the dark to give them courage and direction. There was no choice. They had to see it through to the end, even if this meant retracing their steps to the beginning.

With that simple phrase he rounded up and cowed his secretary, who had left work early without permission. It was useless for her to argue over the telephone that she had already sent the nanny home and had no one to look after her baby. The owner’s determination to be human had inspired him too. “There’s no choice. You can bring the baby here and I’ll look after it. We have to trace that woman with the pay slip as quickly as possible. You’re the only one who can do it.”

And to top it all, a fierce, blustery rain descended at that exact moment, an early portent of the bountiful winter that befell us that year. It was a winter on which we pinned a desperate hope: that more than all our policemen and security guards, it might cool the suicidal zeal of our enemies. The dry countryside turned green and the earth was covered with grasses and flowers whose scent we had forgotten. Not a word of protest was uttered against the torrents of fresh water that flooded our pavements and tied up traffic on our roads, for we knew that not all would be lost. Enough would find its way to hidden aquifers to comfort us when the hot, dry summer returned.

When his secretary, bundled up and dripping wet, arrived with the first brushstrokes of evening, the human resources manager thought at first that she had left the baby at home. Then she folded her umbrella, took off her yellow poncho, and slipped out of her big fur coat, he saw that strapped to her was a carrier in which, curiously scrutinizing him, sat a lusty, red-cheeked infant with a giant dummy in its mouth. “What kind of a way is that to pack a baby?” he asked in surprise. “It could have choked in there.” His secretary, her brusque tone unlike her customary nine-to-five one, retorted “Trust me,” and set the baby down on the rug with a fresh dummy. The little creature glanced around as if looking for a suitable destination, spat out its new mouthpiece, turned on its stomach, and began to crawl with surprising speed, the dummy clutched in its hand. “He’s all yours,” said the secretary still in an irritated yet intimate tone. “You said you’d look after him.”

She took the article and read it slowly. Then, examining from different angles the blurred photograph of the pay slip found in the dead woman’s possession, she asked the manager who, bemused, was watching the crawling baby, “Just when did all this happen?” Informed of the date of the bombing, she hazarded a guess that the woman had left her job at least a month earlier. Stub or no stub, she had ceased to be their employee. The whole nasty article was fraudulent.

The resource manager, his eyes still on the baby (who had reached the door leading to the corridor, and whose progress he was thinking perhaps he ought to block), replied dolefully:

“Fraudulent, shmaudulent. We have to find out who she was and why no one knows anything about her. If she left her job or was fired, why was she still on the payroll? There has to be a record of it somewhere. Let’s get to work. We have no time to waste.”

He turned to follow the baby — who, briefly stymied by the darkness in the corridor, had rapidly resumed his course and was now heading for the door of the owner’s office.

No wonder they’re ready to climb the Himalayas by the time they’re twenty, the resource manager thought as he trailed after it. Now and then the infant stopped without warning and sat up pertly, as if to reflect before continuing. The stocky man walking behind it — of average height and close to forty, with the first streaks of grey in his military crew cut — felt overcome by a deep, weary dejection. He was oddly resentful of the anonymous woman who had gone shopping without so much as an ID card for the sole purpose of making him — hungry, thirsty, and exhausted from a long day’s work — responsible for finding out who she was.

The baby reached the end of the corridor and halted in front of the office of the owner — who, secure in the knowledge that his reputation was in good hands, was now enjoying a quiet dinner. The door, elegantly upholstered in black leather to guard the secrets exchanged behind it, posed a challenge; the baby, dummy still clutched in one hand, was rapping eagerly on the barrier when the secretary called out in triumph that the mystery had been solved. I run a tight ship after all,the human resources manager reflected, scooping up the infant before it could protest and bearing it aloft like a hijacked aeroplane to its mother, on whose brightly coloured computer screen had appeared not only the personal résumé but also a blonde beaming woman, no longer young.

“Bingo!” she declared. “In a minute I’ll give you a printout. Now that I know the date on which she started work, I’ll even find your job interview with her.”

“I interviewed her?” The surprised manager was still holding the baby, whose tiny little hand was crumpling his ear.

“Who else? Your first directive on taking the job last July was that no one was to be hired or fired without your knowledge.”

“But what did she do here?” The discovery that he had had a connection to the murdered woman made the resource manager uneasy. “Where did she work? Who was in charge of her? What does your computer say?”

The computer was not outspoken about these things. Its code showed only that the woman had been attached to a cleaning team that moved among the company’s different branches. “In that case,” the manager murmured sadly, “she must have fallen between the branches when she died …”

The secretary, a long-time employee to whom the company owed several improvements (it was she who had changed the name personnel department to human resources division and introduced the computerized scanning of faces), begged to differ. “No one disappears around here,” she told the manager, who was still rather dependent on her. “Every employee, even the lowliest cleaning woman, has someone to make sure they punch in and do their job.”

She was so preoccupied with the administrative and perhaps even moral aspects of the matter that she seemed to have forgotten all about the home she hadn’t wanted to leave, the children waiting for supper, and the raging winter storm. As if the owner’s impugned humanity had infected her too, she was now energetically engaged in her next task, extracting last summer’s job interview from a filing cabinet as unerringly as she had accessed the dead woman on her computer. Stapled to the interview was a brief medical report from the company’s doctor. She punched holes in both, did the same with the article and photographs, attached them all together with a clip, and slipped them into a yellow folder that she handed to the manager as Exhibit A — scant evidence, to be sure, but still a start.

The baby began to bawl. Taking it from the resource manager’s arms, the secretary suggested he might want to peruse the file in his office, or look away at any rate while she attended to her child. It had to be fed; otherwise it would not leave them in peace to determine who was to blame for this mess. Before she had even finished the sentence, the top button of her blouse was open, her breast halfway out.

3

At least we now have a clue to work with, the resource manager thought with satisfaction as he entered his office and cleared his desk to make room for the folder. Although there was no need to linger over the snapshot of this forty-eight-year-old woman, her open face and light eyes gave him pause. An exotic arch, northern European or Asiatic, ran from each eyelid to the nose. The neck, exposed in all its perfection, was long and rounded. For a moment he forgot that she was no longer a living being, that nothing was left of her but a bureaucratic indifference to her fate.

He felt an urge to phone the owner and boast of his swift progress, then thought better of it as a new wave of annoyance swept over him. In his obsession with the public’s image of his humanity, the old man had ridden roughshod over the rights of three employees. Let him stew in the juices of his maligned name a little longer! Why give him the pleasure of thinking that his request had been easy, even enjoyable, to carry out?

He glanced at a page listing the woman’s personal details and turned to her employment form, quailing slightly at the sight of her CV, which had been written not in her own hand, as was customary, but in his. He had evidently recorded her words verbatim, as though taking down a confession.

My name is Ragayev. Yulia Ragayev, mechanical engineer. I have diploma. But I was not born in city, was born in small village. Far away. Far, far from big city. My mother lives in village still. I have son too, big boy now, thirteen years. His father engineer also. I am not longer with him. Good man but we separate. I leave him for other man, good too. More old than him. But not so much. Sixty years. His wife is long time dead and he come to work in our city, in our factory. There we meet. I want much he should come to Jerusalem and he say yes, so we come here, I, him, and boy. But he not find good job for important engineer. He not want stay. Why someone like him just clean street or be guard or something? He go back — not to my city, his. He has daughter and granddaughter there. I, no. I want to stay in Jerusalem. Maybe is good here. Because Jerusalem I like. Is interesting place. If I go back, I never come again. First son is here too, but then father say is too dangerous and he must leave. Okay, I say, he go back. I stay and try Jerusalem. Is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I work for who need me, even though I have engineer’s diploma. What does it matter, maybe my son come back. Is such my situation. Now mother in village want to come to Jerusalem, too. Well, we will see, maybe she come.

The next document was a signed statement by the woman, this time dictated by the human resources manager himself. I, Yulia Ragayev, holder of temporary resident card no. 836205, agree to work at any job I am assigned to, including night shifts.

Beneath this, in large letters, was her signature, followed by his comments:

This woman has temporary residence status. She has no family, looks healthy, and makes a good impression. She seems highly motivated. Although first placement should be in a service job, her professional training may enable her at some point to move to the production line at the bakery or in to the paper-and-stationery division.

Beneath this was a laconic note from the doctor: No special health problems. Cleared for all work.

At the reception desk, the secretary was losing no time. While nursing her baby, she efficiently telephoned instructions for the preparation of supper for her children and husband. Then, launching a private investigation of her own, she briskly asked the day shift supervisor over the intercom whether he was aware that a cleaning woman, one Yulia Ragayev, had been absent from work. Without mentioning the woman’s fate, she asked whether she had resigned or been dismissed and, in either case, why the human resources division hadn’t been informed.

Listening from his desk through the open door, the resource manager picked up the receiver in time to catch the day shift supervisor’s reply. Yes, he had a vague memory of the employee in question and had even noticed she was missing. But it would be better to ask the night shift supervisor, who had been her superior. Irked by the tone of this mere secretary, he advised her to have the resource manager contact the night shift supervisor directly.

The mere secretary, however, was not put off by such short shrift. Politely ending the conversation without ever mentioning the woman’s death, as if that were her trump card, she curtly summoned the resource manager. Outside her regular work hours, so it seemed, she was the one who gave orders.

He stepped out of his office to find the nursing successfully accomplished, its certificate of completion a pungent-smelling nappy. While she watched her baby, pink-cheeked and contented, thrash its legs in benediction, the secretary preened herself on her intuition. “You’ll see,” she said. “Even though we issued that woman another pay packet, she was no longer employed by us at the time of the bombing. You can tell that asshole of a reporter and his charming boss that it’s they who should apologize to us. They can take their ‘shocking in humanity’ and shove it. And while you’re at it, tell your own boss to calm down.” She threw a last glance at the cleaning woman on her screen, and said, “It’s too bad. She was an attractive woman,” then switched off the computer.

“Attractive?” The resource manager frowned and opened the folder for another look at the photograph. “I wouldn’t say that. If she were that good-looking, I’d have remembered her.”

The secretary did not reply at once. Deftly putting on a fresh nappy, she threw the old one in the bin, strapped on the carrier, placed her baby in it, slipped into her big fur coat, and threw on the crackling yellow poncho. The baby vanished from sight. With a sharp glance at the human resources manager, as if seeing him for the first time, she said, “Absolutely. More than good-looking. Beautiful. If you didn’t notice when you hired her, that’s because you live inside yourself like a snail. All you see of beauty or goodness is its shadow … But why argue about someone who’s no longer with us? What will either of us prove? I’d better go with you to the bakery to ask the night shift supervisor how an employee can disappear and no one bother to notify us.”

He regarded her affectionately, pleased with her down-to-earthness. Taking his windcheater from the hanger, he put it on and had already turned out the light when it occurred to him to ask if there was anything cold in the fridge.

“You want a cold drink now?” She opened the little refrigerator, in which there was nothing but a carton of long-life milk for coffee.

There wasn’t any choice. Fighting back nausea, he slowly sipped the cold liquid.

4

Whereas an hour ago she had argued and pleaded against having to return to the office, now, wrapped in her winter gear, with a satisfied baby snuggled close to her, she was in high spirits as she trotted beside him along the paved path leading from the administration building to the huge, windowless bakery with its pencil-thin chimneys. From the overhang of the handsome tiled roof cascaded not one storm but many, each more torrential than the last. It was as if the earth, having lost all hope of emptying the sky in a single downpour, was draining it in stages.

The human resources manager was thinking of the office manager, now parenting his daughter. He felt confident that she would be at the dance studio on time to keep her ward from taking a perilous bus home; nowadays, you couldn’t trust even the rain to deter a would-be bomber who had said his farewell prayers and set out to kill and be killed. How curious, he reflected, moved by the thought, that a foreign cleaning woman remembered by no one could cause a wave of solidarity among the company’s employees. In a gesture he was generally careful to avoid, he laid a friendly hand on his secretary’s shoulder while shouting above the wind:

“I tell you, you’ll smother that baby yet!”

“Not on your life!” the secretary shouted back with full assurance, wiping raindrops from her face. “I can feel his every breath. Right now he’s sending you his warmest regards.”

Meanwhile, as dusk fell in that rain squall, our entire night shift arrived. There were ninety of us, men and women: silo workers, millers, flour sifters, dough kneaders, lab technicians with their yeast and additives. The technicians roamed the large work spaces, checking the dials that monitored the baking cycle in the hugeovens — great sealed steel compartments beside which stood the production crews, supervising the golden loaves to make sure they stayed on their conveyor belts. And there were also the collectors, the sorters, and the packers of the products that the assembly line spewed out: whole and sliced loaves, pitas, bagels, rolls, challahs,flatbreads,croutons, bread crumbs. Ina shedoutside, the forkliftoperators were noisily joined by the lorry drivers, who would transport the goods all over the country. The late-to-arrive cleaning crews were also pressed into action, dressed like the rest of us in white smocks and net caps that would keep the least strand of hair from getting into the circulating dough. Swinging their buckets and dragging their brooms, they scrubbed the burned crusts from the day shift’s baking pans while sneaking a glance at the wall clock to make sure that Time was alive and well and would not desert them before the night was over.

It was then that we saw the two dripping wet people from personnel — a sturdy man and a stout woman in a black furcoatand a yellow poncho. Before they could say a word we stopped them at the entrance and made them put on caps.

The human resources manager donned the cap willingly and drifted towards the warmth of the steel ovens in the middle of the work floor. Through his old job he knew the paper-and-stationery branch across the street very well and preferred to meet with its workers on the premises; the employees of the bakery, on the other hand, he generally received in his office when they came to ask for a pay increase or discuss some problem. Now, as he faced the bakery’s many ovens with their long, mysterious cycles that churned out endless crates of breads and rolls, he was reminded of those times he was dispatched as a child by his mother to make some purchase in the local grocery.

Nevertheless, on this rainy evening he felt grateful for the fragrant warmth that greeted him at the end of this long workday, ahead of which stretched a dizzying night. His anger at his ex-wife and feelings of guilt towards his daughter were muted by the familiar sight of the dough rolling by at eye level on its way to the sorting and leavening stations and from there to the hidden fires. While pleasurably taking in the bakery’s sounds, smells, and sights — as though he had a share in his secretary’s lusty baby — he proudly watched its golden head emerge from the depths of her fur coat. Some workers, their curiosity piqued by the unexpected visit, hurried to get the night shift supervisor, while the secretary warned him in a stern whisper not to mention the death that had brought them here. It, too, she seemed to think, was small enough to be hidden beneath a coat.

The supervisor, a tall, lanky, swarthy man of about sixty appeared quickly. Besides his smock and cap, he had on a blue technician’s apron. There was apprehension in his fine-featured, sensitive face. A sudden visit from the personnel division at this time of day couldn’t possibly bode well.

“Does a cleaning woman named Yulia Ragayev still work here?” the secretary asked, hurrying to pose the question before the resource manager could ignore her warning and blurt out that the woman had been murdered, thus putting the supervisor on his guard. “She’s been missing from our roster for a month.”

The supervisor reddened. He seemed to sense a trap, though he could hardly guess that death was lurking in it. With a worried glance at the cleaning crew crowding around him, he signalled them to disperse. Though they took a few backward steps, like sleepwalking bears, they continued to surround him, intrigued by the situation and the mysterious baby.

“Ragayev?” The lanky man spread his hands and regarded them as if the missing worker might have been hiding there. “Actually … no. Yulia left a while ago.”

The intimacy with which he uttered the dead woman’s first name gave the human resources manager a start. The secretary persisted, stubborn as an attack dog. Left? How? Of her own accord? Orwas she laidoff? Andif so,why?Forwhat infraction? Who replaced her? None of the human resources division’s records showed a decrease in the number of cleaning personnel — and in any case, begging the night shift supervisor’s pardon, a long-serving employee like him should know that any change in the work force had to be reported and approved. This was necessary to avoid confusion and damage.

“Damage?” The swarthy man scoffed. “What damage can a temporary cleaning woman’s departure do?”

The resource manager, unprepared for the secretary’s cross-examination, was waiting to see when she would reveal that the woman had died. She was taking her time about it. She gave the supervisor, towards whom she appeared to have developed a strange antagonism, a suspicious look, as if he were her prime suspect.

“What damage?” she repeated. “Imagine our predicament if a former employee got into trouble with the law while still on our payroll, let alone our continuing to pay social security and employment taxes for someone who no longer works here …”

The man was indeed behaving oddly. Rather than giving a straight answer, he kept asking why he was being questioned. On a rainy night like this? After hours? He knew that the woman hadn’t lodged a complaint.

“What makes you so sure?” asked the secretary.

Because it wasn’t like her. She wasn’t the complaining type.

“Then why did you fire her?”

Who said she’d been fired?

“Then what happened? Why are you beating around the bush?”

Was the night shift supervisor afraid of being caught out? Instead of replying, he demanded to know, yes or no, whether they had been in touch with the woman.

“Not yet,” the secretary said, flashing the manager a conspiratorial smile. “But we may be.”

This time she’s gone too far, thought the resource manager. Yet he continued to keep silent. The golden light and shadows of the bakery playing over his net cap, made him look like an old woman.

“Look,” the supervisor said, backing down. “It doesn’t matter. I was only asking.” If they spoke to the woman, she would confirm his account. Although she hadn’t been fired, she hadn’t exactly quit either. It was more of … a termination of employment by mutual agreement. Of course, he should have filed a report, but this was only a formality. Neither the management nor the union, after all, had the right to oppose a temporary employee’s being laid off during her trial period. Not that she hadn’t been a good worker. In fact, she had performed her job flawlessly, even though it was far beneath her professional level. “You people in personnel sent her to be a cleaning woman not realizing you were looking at a trained engineer.” This was why he had counselled her to look for better work. It had pained him to see her making the rounds every night with a bucket and mop.

But while this explanation, straightforward at last, should have been enough for the delegation from personnel, it failed to satisfy the ferretlike secretary. She squared her shoulders to face the supervisor, her hair straying from her net cap and her fur coat opened to reveal her baby, its arms flailing, its legs chugging like an engine.

“So that’s it! You fired a perfectly satisfactory worker because you felt sorry for her. You might at least have asked whether we could find her a more suitable job elsewhere, perhaps in paper and stationery …”

But the supervisor had had enough. Shooing away the workers still clustered around him, he told his interrogators that he was needed on another floor. He still didn’t understand what was wanted of him. All this couldn’t be just because of some needlessly paid social security. If that was the problem, they could deduct the sum from his next pay packet and be done with it.

Why, the resource manager wondered, don’t I say something to stop this whirling dervish of a secretary from attacking a senior employee? The warmth and good smells of the bakery had so drugged his senses that he thought he must be dreaming when he heard the supervisor ask again, “What’s going on? Has she been in touch with you? Tell me the truth,” and his secretary replied, “As a matter of fact, she has. But not in the way you think.”

It was time to speak up before it was too late. “She was killed in last week’s suicide bombing,” the resource manager declared.

As if the belt of explosives detonated in the market had gone off a second time, the supervisor turned red, staggered backward, and clutched his head.

“I don’t believe it …”

“You’d better,” the secretary said, with what appeared to be genuine pleasure.

This time the resource manager cut her short. As simply as possible, he told the supervisor about the article that was to appear and the owner’s worry that it might hurt sales.

“You’ve got us into a fix with your private termination of employment,” he concluded sadly. “But at least we know now that she wasn’t working for us when she died. That means she wasn’t our responsibility.”

Although the night shift supervisor was clearly stunned, the secretary’s hostility towards him remained unabated. The resource manager once more laid a hand on her shoulder and said, gently, “That wraps it up, then. It’s late. And this rain shows no sign of slowing down. We’ve found out what we needed to know. Thanks for your help. I can take it from here. Your children are waiting for you …”

Feeling oddly emotional, he planted a kiss on the baby’s head to thank him for behaving so well.

The little boy shut his eyes blissfully and let the dummy drop from his mouth.

Having finished playing detective, the secretary buttoned her fur coat. She removed her net cap and handed it to the supervisor, who carefully folded it and put it in his pocket as if it were the last vestige of the death he had just learned of. The secretary was now engaged in watching the long spirals of the assembly lines with their slowly rising dough on its way to the hot ovens. Sobered by the immensity of it all, and by the rank of the man she had been questioning, she smiled ruefully and inquired whether, as an employee in personnel, she had the same right as the bakery workers to a free loaf of bread every day.

The supervisor smiled at his inquisitor’s request. He took a large bag, filled it with three different kinds of bread, two packages of rusks, and one each of croutons and breadcrumbs, and asked a worker to take it to the secretary’s car. Would the resource manager like some, too?

The resource manager thought it over and replied,

“Come to think of it, why not?”

5

Taking one loaf of bread, he firmly declined a second, as if this might involve a dangerous impropriety. Yet instead of leaving the bakery with his secretary, he stayed by the side of the supervisor, who hurried off to another, even larger work space with an even bigger oven. Two technicians were waiting for permission to light it, a process involving a battery of freestanding switches, dials, and lifts. The supervisor, hesitant and uncertain only a minute ago, now issued crisp, authoritative orders, to which the oven, like a trained circus animal awakened from its sleep, responded with a low growl. Enveloped in a fragrant warmth, the resource manager watched the workers harmoniously performing their tasks. He felt a pang of envy. How much better it was on a stormy night like this to work with simple matter than with fragile, vulnerable human life. Any error here could be corrected by pressing a button.

The night shift supervisor didn’t like being followed around. Exactly what, he asked the human resources manager once the oven was lit — its steady drone accompanied by a thin whine — was still bothering him? Hadn’t he, the supervisor, promised that in the morning, at the end of his shift, he would go to the owner’s office, admit his mistake, and offer to have the money deducted from his pay packet? When the human resources manager, his attention drawn to a fresh conveyor belt that had begun to clatter, replied that they should wait to see whether the weekly called off the article, the supervisor declared morosely:

“They’ll never call off anything.”

“Why not? It’s obvious that the woman had nothing to do with us at the time of her death.”

“Don’t be naïve. It doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t. That journalist isn’t going to give up his story. If we correct him on one thing, he’ll get us somewhere else. We should let him publish. Why make a fuss? People pick up local weeklies for the restaurant reviews and used-car ads, that’s all. And even if a few souls do read it, they’ll forget it before they’ve finished …”

The manager, suddenly aware of a new contradiction, asked: “If you felt so sorry for her, why didn’t you wait for her to find a new job first?”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

“Because she was broke. There was nothing in her shopping bag but rotten fruit.”

“That’s ridiculous.” The supervisor flushed. “Who can tell after a bombing what’s rotten and what isn’t? Take my advice and drop it. Don’t mess with a rotten journalist. In the end, no one will remember …”

The manager regarded the supervisor in silence. Before the night is out I’ll surprise the old man yet, he told himself, feverishly toying with a new thought. He removed his net cap and handed it to the supervisor, who stuck it in his pocket with the secretary’s. Then, waving good night, he headed back through the large, warm work space and out to the administration building. At the exit he was besieged by the cleaning women, eager to hear about their co-worker’s death. Yet what could he tell them? No more than they could tell him. It was a large bakery with many corners, and each one of them worked alone. The dead woman, a temporary who feared for her job, had worked harder than the rest of them and never stopped to chat with anyone.

Outside it was still stormy. A convoy of army trucks pulled into the bakery’s large yard and arranged themselves in a hissing row at the loading platforms. The human resources manager fought a sudden urge to ask the workers if they, too, like the secretary, had found the woman beautiful. He didn’t want to be wrongly suspected, especially concerning someone who was dead.

Lifting the collar of his thin overcoat, he ran back to the administration building.

6

He returned to his office. Once again he thought of informing the bakery’s owner of his progress. Once again he refrained. He would keep his plans to himself and let the old man fret for his humanity.

He dialled the weekly and asked to speak to the editor. The man’s secretary, sounding as efficient and energetic as his own, replied that her boss was away and would not be available for the next twenty-four hours. He was taking a badly needed break and had gone off to commune with himself, leaving even his cell phone behind. Perhaps she could help the caller?

Once again it struck the resource manager how keen some people were to step into their superiors’ shoes. Introducing himself, he inquired discreetly whether she knew anything about the article.

Indeed, she knew all about it. In fact, she considered herself a party to the affair, having been the one to suggest to the editor that he warn his friend, the owner of the bakery. Moreover, it was she who had urged the old man to submit his explanation and apology by tomorrow, when it would have the greatest impact.

“But that’s just it!” the resource manager said excitedly. “We’re not apologizing for anything. We’re only explaining.” The entire accusation was based on a mistake. A preliminary investigation had revealed that the dead woman, although she had once worked at the bakery, had not been employed there at the time of the bombing. Hence the company and its human resources division had been neither callous nor negligent. If the editor had indeed left without his cell phone, which he rather doubted, he would advise her to wield the authority vested in her by cancelling the article’s publication.

“Cancel it?” The secretary sounded as shocked as if she had been asked to cancel tomorrow’s sunrise. Absolutely not. It was out of the question. And besides, what was the resource manager so worried about? The article would appear, with the company’s response in a sidebar, and the weekly’s readers would decide for themselves.

“But that’s absurd!” the resource manager protested angrily. “Why expose your readers to more horror stories in times like these?”

The secretary stuck to her guns. With all due respect to the resource manager’s desire to acquit his company of blame, she wasn’t authorized to cancel or postpone an article without the author’s permission. If it was that crucial, the resource manager should contact the author directly and convince him to make changes. He had all night long to do it in.

“That weasel?”

“Weasel?” Her surprise was gleeful, vivacious. “Ha, ha, I like that! Does that come from knowing him personally or just from his writing?”

“From having read this single, ridiculous piece.”

“Well, you’ve captured him perfectly. He doesn’t look like a weasel — far from it — but that’s just what he is: quick, slippery, and able to crawl into any hiding place to attack you by surprise. But tell me,” the editor’s secretary went on as though declaring her credo, “who keeps us on our toes if not the weasels? Every newspaper needs at least one. Only one, though … that’s quite enough, ha, ha …”

As a token of her appreciation, she was even ready to give him the weasel’s phone number.

Seated in the dark, empty administration building, with the bantering conversation having got him nowhere, he lapsed into gloom. Why on earth was he being so stubborn? What was he fighting for? To cover up the night shift supervisor’s blunder? Or was it to show the old owner that he, his former star salesman, was still on top of things and the last person who should ever be threatened with dismissal? Or — he could feel the thought grope its way to the surface — was it to reclaim the dignity of an engineer come from afar to be a cleaning woman in Jerusalem. To let her know — her and whoever had loved her — that her suffering and death hadn’t gone unnoticed because of anyone’s callousness?

He switched on his desk lamp and slowly studied her computer image. Was she beautiful? It was hard to tell. He shut the folder and phoned home to ask about the dance lesson.

There was no answer. His daughter’s substitute parent could be reached only on her cell phone. Every bit as lively as the two secretaries, she told him in her faint British accent that the dance lesson had ended a quarter of an hour ago. They weren’t yet back in the apartment because his daughter had left her homework at a friend’s house and they had to drive there to retrieve it.

“Again? On a rainy night like this?”

“What can I do about it? The rain is indeed inconsiderate.” But there was no reason to be upset, said the office manager, tactfully defending the child’s inattentiveness. She was waiting for her in a nice café. In fact, she wasn’t even alone, because her husband was co-parenting with her. He was sitting by her side right now, having a beer. The resources manager could take his time — all night, if he wanted — to answer the scurrilous charges. She and her husband were used to teenage girls. They had a granddaughter the same age in America.

“All night?” Her generosity with his time annoyed him. “What for? Everything is wrapped up.” He would soon come home to release them, he said, proudly declaring that he had tracked the dead woman down. Her name was Ragayev and a short but successful interrogation in the bakery had revealed the “termination” of her job. Although the company had indeed issued the pay slip that had put the journalist on the scent, she was no longer employed there at the time of the bombing. He was going to try to have the article cancelled, which in the editor’s absence meant contacting the author.

The office manager reacted enthusiastically. Cancellation was the best solution — far better than a response on their part. It was just the thing to restore the old man’s peace of mind. “Insist on it,” she urged the resource manager. “We’re taking good care of your daughter. You promised to make this woman your business — do it. Get hold of the journalist now …”

The manager sighed. “He’s a real weasel,” he said. “Once he sinks his teeth into someone, he won’t let go. He’s liable to dig deeper and find more than just a clerical error.”

“Such as what?”

“How should I know? He’ll come up with something. Maybe involving the night shift supervisor …”

“But why assume the worst?”

“Why doesn’t he make the call? I’ll bet he has the editor’s cell phone number.”

The office manager, however, knew her boss too well to agree to this. Clerical errors were not his strong point, and he was apt to grow confused or excited and make matters worse. And time was of the essence. The weekly was going to press tomorrow, and the old man was now in a restaurant, before going on to a concert.

“The hell he is! He’s going to concerts and restaurants while we’re defending his honour?”

The office manager, a positive thinker, sought to correct him. “It’s the honour of us all. The proper functioning of your division is involved, too. Leave the old man alone. Let him have his music. How much longer will he enjoy life? You needn’t worry. My husband and I are looking after your daughter.”

Compassion for his child welled within him. Didn’t the office manager agree she was adorable?

“She’s a good girl.” As always, the office manager was being honest. “She’s just … in a world of her own. A bit disorganized. It’s hard to tell what she wants. But don’t worry. She’ll find herself in the end …”

The resource manager shut his eyes tight.

7

Vying with the smug, lazy drawl on the cell phone was the sound of pounding music. The weasel must be at a wedding or a nightclub. Yet not even the background noise could keep the journalist from swearing roundly at his editor for having shown the company owner an advance copy of his article. “The man’s a moral scoundrel and a traitor to his profession,” he said. “Now I understand why the little bastard was in such a hurry to disappear.” He had begun to fear a stab in the back the moment his photographer had pointed out that the bakery also ran a paper products division that sold newsprint to the weekly. “So what are you telling me?” he asked the resource manager. “That you deserve moral immunity for a good price on newsprint? Why can’t your response wait a week? You’re trying to kill my article. Are you really so scared of finding out how inhuman you are or are you just worried about losing business? If the latter, I can only say I’m amazed to find such innocent capitalists. I only wish someone would think of boycotting you because of me. You needn’t worry, though. No one will. Who cares about the inhumanity of a big company when staying human nowadays is too much for anyone? People are so screwed up that they’ll even admire you for being tough. And suppose some bleeding heart is upset — so what? You think he’ll go from shelf to shelf in the supermarket boycotting your products? What crap! What’s wrong with you? You must be awfully unsure of yourselves to be so sensitive about a minor accusation. Don’t make a big issue of it. Say you’re sorry; just apologize. Only please wait a week before doing it.”

“No one is sorry and no one is apologizing or waiting,” the manager answered, shouting to make himself heard above the music. “You’ve got it all wrong. The woman left her job a month ago. At the time of the bombing she was no longer in our employ, even though we kept her on the payroll by mistake. I’ve checked it all out. We had no way of knowing she was dead and no reason to know. We expect you to be fair and withdraw your article.”

The weasel’s smug drawl bespoke no such intention. “What does that have to do with it? Do you think you can salve your consciences by firing her retroactively? If she was carrying your pay slip when she was killed, she obviously thought she worked for you. What are you trying to prove with your double-talk? Of course you were responsible! You not only owe her an apology, you owe one to her friends and relatives, who might have given her a decent burial if they’d known. It’s the least you can do for a solitary employee like her, whom I’m sure you exploited all you could. If you want to be forgiven, you’ll have to promise our readers never to be such callous shits again — that’s the only way they’ll forget what I wrote …”

The resource manager lost his temper.

“Nothing ever gets forgotten in this country. And before you go judging us and giving us orders, maybe you’ll tell me how you got involved in all this. Why didn’t the hospital get in touch with us directly after the stub was found? Why did the morgue contact the press and not us?”

“In the first place,” the lazy drawl continued, “they didn’t contact the press. They contacted me. And secondly, the emergency room had no time to deal with such matters because it was too busy fighting to save her life. She was kept in the morgue when she died because nobody claimed her body — and there, as I happen to know from other cases, she got lost in the shuffle between the police and the hospital. It’s not a question of anyone deliberately shirking his duty. It’s more one of not knowing how to deal with an anonymous corpse. It took several days for the morgue’s director, who is an acquaintance of mine, to go through the shopping bag and find that stub among the rotten fruit … And by the way, before I go on, why do you issue such skimpy pay slips, with not even the name of the recipient printed on them?”

“Because every one of our employees has a different financial arrangement. We don’t want complaints or comparisons because of stubs falling into the wrong hands.”

“Just what I thought!” the weasel chuckled. “Divide and rule! Conceal and exploit! It’s typical of you people. But I’m getting off the subject … To cut a long story short, the director of the morgue, being a pathologist and not a sociologist, didn’t know what to do and asked my advice. Over the past year we’ve become friends because of some features I wrote about the hospital’s treatment of bombing victims. I’m afraid he’s become a rather uncritical believer in the power of the press …”

“But why didn’t you contact us when you saw the stub?”

“Because by then I was enraged by your callousness and decided to teach you a public lesson. This isn’t the first time a large company like yours has turned its back on a menial or temporary employee killed or injured in a terrorist attack.”

“Just listen to yourself!” the manager shouted, grasping at last how the story got started. “You accuse us of inhumanity — yet it was you who left that woman alone in the morgue to teach us a lesson we didn’t need …”

“What do you mean alone?” The weasel laughed in amusement. “She had plenty of company.”

“You know what I mean. Unidentified. So you could run a juicy story.”

“Now you listen to me!” By now the journalist had lost his temper, too. “In cases like this I always look for the general rule — and that’s the arrogance of the haves who trample the have-nots. You needn’t worry about that woman. As far as she’s concerned, she can stay in the morgue for all eternity. I’ve seen corpses wait for weeks before being identified and buried. Some never even get that far. Don’t forget that the morgue belongs to the university’s medical school and that students use it for their anatomy lessons. All for the sake of science. A year ago I wrote a feature about it, complete with photographs — tasteful ones — all you could see were the corpses’ silhouettes. The paper was afraid to publish even that.”

“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, farbe it from usto 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.”

“What do you mean, afterwards?”

“I mean even now. He thinks of her as a damsel in distress and of himself as her knight errant. You can be sure it won’t take him long to find out about your unreported termination of employment.”

“I’ve already said I’m sorry about that. I really am. I’ll pay the costs …”

The resource manager explained that feeling sorry and paying the costs were not the issue. The truth alone was. An unidentified female corpse still in a morgue a week after a bombing was an irresistible temptation for idealistic reporters.

“Temptation?” The supervisor was taken aback. Actually, he replied, there was a temptation in any helpless stranger — a live one, that is, not a dead one. The vulnerability of temporary or foreign workers was somehow …

“Tempting?” The casually uttered word had taken on a life of its own. “How so?”

“I mean …” The supervisor struggled to be exact. “It’s not just having power over them. It’s pity and sympathy too … you’re sucked into it.”

Flustered, he explained in a shaky voice that he didn’t want to be misunderstood. Nor did he owe anyone an explanation. The fact was … well, nothing had actually happened between them. Nothing physical. Yet he had to admit that he had thought of her all the time. This was why, since running the night shift wasn’t simple, he had had to ask her to leave — for her own good.

The resource manager hadn’t expected such frankness. He winced as he had done when discovering the CV he had recorded. It was as if this woman ten years older than himself, whom he still couldn’t remember, was threatening to become a temptation for him too.

He chose his words carefully. He had already begun to suspect, he said, that the problem was not just work-related. Even though he was tired, and anxious to join his waiting daughter, this was what had kept him on the case. He wanted to know exactly what had happened. Was there more to it than the supervisor was owning up to? His secretary had been deeply impressed by the dead woman’s beauty — and that damned journalist had spoken of it, too. It was unbelievable that even there, in a hospital morgue, someone had had the cheek to …

“What?” The supervisor turned pale.

Not that looks were always that important, the human resources manager continued, still, it was understandable if … besides feeling for her loneliness … that is, if she really had been that attractive … or was this putting it too strongly? He himself, after all, despite having interviewed her personally, couldn’t remember the first thing about her, not even with the aid of her photograph.

Although the drainpipes outside the window were still dripping, the storm had abated. The supervisor looked tranquil, meditative. He did not seem the least bit upset by the confession that the human resources manager was about to extract from him. The crew-cut man, twenty years younger than he was, inspired confidence.

11

And so, swallowing the last of his no longer hot tea, the supervisor gropingly told his story. The resource manager said nothing. Only once, noticing that the kitchen workers had finished setting the tables for breakfast, did he plead with a hand signal for their patience until the confession, which he did not believe would be long, was complete.

In theory, he should have been right. The man confessing was a mechanically minded fellow who had come to the bakery straight from the Ordnance Corps without continuing his education. Although he could have opened a small business of his own, he had preferred to take a low-paying job that gave him the opportunity to learn the ropes of the baking trade. From job to job and division to division, he had been promoted steadily until his appointment six years ago to night shift supervisor. This was the busiest and most important of the shifts, the only one that baked for the army, which demanded a high level of quality control …

The lights were going out in the cafeteria. One by one, the workers left for home. Only two, an old Jewish waiter and a young Arab dishwasher, stayed behind to lock up. The supervisor, still extracting a first thread from the tangle of his story, was candidly describing the fascination that the swan-necked cleaning woman had had for him. It was this fascination, he now understood, that had allowed him to dismiss her and keep her employed at the same time.

It certainly hadn’t been her looks. As one senior staff member to another, he swore again that nothing had happened between them. It was a purely emotional matter, the exact nature of which he seemed reluctant to describe, as if that might make his guilt or sorrow grow. Their first meeting, which had also been their longest, had had to do entirely with work. It had taken place in late autumn or early winter, after the woman had been transferred, at her request, to the better-paying night shift.

The supervisor had a strict rule: no matter where new workers came from or what their previous experience had been, he personally briefed them on all safety regulations. And the cleaning crew were briefed the longest, not only because they were generally the least educated and least attentive, but also because they cleaned everywhere and everything. They had to be warned of the dangers of the ovens and the milling blades, the cantankerous dough mixers and the intricate conveyors.

It was already after midnight when he’d found time for the new recruit. Although she was familiar with the bakery from her job on the day shift, he gave her the entire tour. Had he known she was an engineer, he would undoubtedly have cut the briefing short; even then he would have insisted on a tour.

The night shift supervisor had many women working under him and was accustomed to setting boundaries that prevented complications. The new cleaning woman, who followed him obediently while listening to his instructions with a bright smile, her smock and cap making her look middle-aged and bulky, had been no exception. And yet he could sense his own reluctance to finish the briefing and send her back to her mops and brooms. This woman, even just her proximity, seemed to promise something he had always known about but never dreamed of for himself. He had lectured her on the bakery’s strict hygienic standards, as he guided her through the dark, hidden corners behind the ovens (which as a rule he didn’t do), and all the while he had felt a twinge of sweetness at the sight of her smile, which somehow, after it left her lips, continued to shine in her unusual Tartar, or perhaps Mongol, eyes.

“Tartar or Mongol?” The human resources manager thought this was overstating it. The tilt of her eyes, which he recalled from the computer image, was actually quite delicate and subtle.

But the supervisor, though he had never known a Tartar or a Mongol, repeated the comparison. He was now working his way deeper into his confession. What captivated him most had not been the woman’s smile or even her charm, but the contradictions of a fair-complexioned Asiatic, with whom he had suddenly fallen — passively and with no hope of consummation — in love.

The waiter, who had been waiting impatiently with his coat and boots on, came to bid them good night while assuring them that they could stay as long as they wished, since the dishwasher had decided to sleep in the cafeteria and would make them coffee to get them through the rest of the night.

“The night?” Once again the human resources manager was having whole nights thrust on him. “We don’t need it. We’re almost finished …”

And yet, like the resource manager’s secretary — who after resisting returning to the office had plunged into the case to the detriment of her home and family — the supervisor had apparently forgotten all about his shift and even about the screeching oven. What had happened to him, he wanted his younger colleague to understand, had been complicated, even dangerous. The Tartar woman had got under his skin …

Worse than that. Even had he sought to stamp out the flames by returning quickly to the work floor, his own employees — the technicians, the storeroom chiefs, the bakers — would have prevented it. Over the years they had learned to respect not only his wishes but his feelings, and they now conveyed to him that they were well aware of his inner state. Refraining from badgering him with the usual pressing matters, they had let him take his time with the smiling woman who walked, gently nodding, past their assembly lines. Their unspoken complicity surprised him. All he could imagine was that they desired to assist him — a sombre, domesticated man with three grandchildren — to live out a kind of infatuation that he had no longer deemed himself capable of.

The next morning, in the quiet of his bedroom, at an hour generally devoted to sleep, he had awakened with a delicious discomfort and anxious thoughts about the night ahead and his second encounter with the new employee now under his wing.

He was talking unprompted now, encouraged by the silence of the human resources manager, who realized that this story, which had seemed simple enough that afternoon in the old owner’s office, was getting more involved as the night wore on. Not even the aromatic Turkish coffee brought by the Arab dishwasher could hasten its denouement. Indeed, it only prolonged it.

On the whole, the supervisor continued, he had no direct dealings with the cleaning staff, whose requests and complaints were handled by the floor foremen. In the bakery’s open work space, constantly crossed by dozens of employees, there was no way to exchange even a few words with the new woman without being immediately noticed. The knowledge that he was being watched disconcerted him. Yet it was flattering that his workers cared for him not only as their superior but also as a person in his own right, however grey and ordinary. Although at first he’d thought their concern merely served as a distraction from the tedium of work, he soon realized that they hoped his falling in love would soften his hard edges, which they had learned to fear.

The resource manager stole a glance at his watch. Although the fine-featured man in the stained work garb was baring his soul with an unnecessary thoroughness, the death he was leading up to made it inadvisable to interrupt him. It still remained to be seen where the slip-up — the unterminating termination of employment — had occurred …

The thought, real or imaginary, that the entire night shift wished him to be in love had only made the supervisor’s position even more difficult, more untenable. He knew well that his attraction to the new worker, even if its painful intensity remained unexpressed, might end tragically.

“Tragically?” The resource manager was troubled by so fraught a word. What exactly did the mechanically minded supervisor, the former Ordnance Corps soldier, mean by it?

By the second night, the supervisor went on, he was aware that he could locate the new woman by a single glance at the dozens of workers around him. And the more he tried to conceal it, the more he kept track of her movements with a second, inward glance, physical and incorporeal at once, even when he was inside an oven or bent over a mixer. He demanded nothing of her — only to know that her bright smile, which kept renewing itself for no reason as she scrubbed the burned crusts of dough from the day shift’s bread pans, was still there.

Yet this, too, did not escape those workers who knew him best and cared the most for him. Nonchalantly, casually, in the early hours of the morning, when the minds of night shift workers sometimes wander, they let slip details about her. Despite her vivaciousness and charm, she was a lonely woman. An elderly friend had accompanied her to Israel; then, however, disappointed at not having found a decent job, he had returned to Russia, as had her only child, an adolescent boy whose father, her ex-husband, did not want him living in a dangerous city. She alone, for some reason, had insisted on staying, which made it necessary for her to look for a new male protector …

The resource manager was momentarily tempted to tell the supervisor that all this information existed in his own handwriting in the dead woman’s file. It was unfortunate, he thought, that someone of the supervisor’s standing was forced to depend on work floor gossip, when he could consult the file of any worker on his shift.

Or could he? Glad he had said nothing, the resource manager made a note to ask his secretary or, better still, the old owner — who was by now enjoying the opening bars of the concert and had no idea with what determination his staff was defending his humanity …

And that, the supervisor said, the words now tumbling out of him, was what he had been waiting for. Her radiant solitude made him want to protect it. He wasn’t looking for a love affair. He was too old for that, besides being too busy and set in his ways. All he asked for was the right to serve as the new worker’s invisible custodian until she could stand on her own two feet. His children were independent and no longer needed him, and his quick glances at the Russian cleaning woman told him that, as cheerful as she tried to be, life was hard for her in the depths of the night. She never joined the other workers. Leaning on her broomstick with her head on her hands, she would stand exhausted in a corner, her eternal smile playing on her lips. How pure it was, precisely because it was meant for no one! How she needed protection, and how easily he could give it to her!

It was dangerous. Of course it was. Who would guard its boundaries? Certainly not the workers on his shift, who wanted his heart to melt with a new emotion. And how did he know she wouldn’t be overwhelmed? Would she be content with what he could give her and understand what he could not? It had been obvious to him from the start — unless this was just wishful thinking — that he appealed to her, although he was no longer young. She was always sweeping the floor in his vicinity, wiping the oil from machines he was working on, cleaning up after him in the men’s room, tasks that were hardly required of her.

He was experienced enough to know that the night could entrap even its oldest denizens, especially in the hours before dawn, when the most nocturnal souls were prone to foolish lapses of concentration that could cause accidents and sometimes disasters. This was why, half joking and half seriously, he urged workers he encountered at that hour to take a cold drink from the fountain, splash water on their faces, or just step outside for a breath of air. It was perfectly natural for him to do this with the new employee too. Sometimes they exchanged a few words that pierced him to the quick. He tried to hide it by chatting with the other workers just as much, especially the cleaning staff.

By now he knew she sensed what was happening. It pleased her that he acted his age and was discreet, even that he had a family and grandchildren, because she wasn’t looking for a new husband or boyfriend. She was resigned to the loss of both. Nor did she need another son. All she wanted, plain and simple, was a patron, someone quiet and sympathetic, and to such a man she was quite ready to grant physical favours without jeopardizing the labour of his life.

Nevertheless, since she turned up in the night shift this smiling, lonely engineer, or whatever she was, had become more dangerous than any woman who had ever worked for him, since her loneliness was an invitation not only to having fantasies but also to acting them out. Aware of how he, a man on the verge of retirement, was being encouraged to live out an impossible dream, one that was given greater legitimacy only by the desperate times the country was going through, he’d decided to dismiss the woman, but without running the risk of someone else taking her place. He’d persuaded her to leave her job and look for a better one but had kept her on the payroll, so that if she failed to find anything, or if he missed her too much, she could always return …

“In short” — the human resources manager broke his long silence with a single laconic sentence that contrasted starkly with the supervisor’s emotional outpouring — “you thought you could make your own rules.”

12

Although the two men who rose from the table had taken longer than they’d expected, they had barely made a dent in the night. The resource manager, unaware that he, too, still had a night shift ahead of him, offered the dishwasher a ride to the bus station. The young Arab, however, was happy to have the cafeteria to himself. He preferred to get a good night’s sleep there without having to worry about the three humiliating checkpoints he had to pass through on the way back from his village every day.

The resource manager turned to go. Satisfied at having solved the case, he was eager to get home. Yet when the supervisor, raising the collar of his army jacket, followed him to the parking lot, he understood that the man still needed to talk. He had no choice but to say, after unlocking his car and cleaning the wet leaves from the windscreen:

“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry to relieve my secretary. She’s looking after my daughter this evening.”

The night shift supervisor, who had never imagined that so many staff members would have to be mobilized because of his falling in love, asked in distress:

“So now she has to know everything, too?”

“No,” the resource manager said. “She doesn’t and she won’t. And I’ll see to it that he won’t, either.” As if the old man were floating in the sky, he pointed to the spark-flecked smoke rising from the bakery’s chimneys. “Your story stays with me — with the personnel division, or the human resources division, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Well,” murmured the supervisor, reluctant to part with his confessor, now a partner in his love, “if you need anyone … I mean to identify the corpse … I’m always available … that is, if there’s no one else …”

The resource manager felt a slight wave of revulsion. No, he did not need anyone. The case was closed. So was the option of responding in the local weekly. “The less we dwell on this story, the better. Our biggest mistake would be to make it bigger than it is.”

Arriving at his former home, he was surprised to find it so warm and brightly lit. A fresh smell of wet umbrellas and coats filled the hallway. The living room smelled of pizza. The apartment, which had been a grim place through the past year, now had an air of merry practicality. His twelve-year-old daughter sat on a pillow in a chair at the head of the large dining table, flushed and wide awake. Scattered on the table among slices of pizza, knishes, empty bottles, and coffee cups were textbooks and notebooks, a ruler, and a compass. The office manager had been as good as her word — twice as good, in fact, since her husband, whose long, flattened bald head resembled a rugby ball, was sitting beside her happily solving maths problems.

“Back so soon?” his daughter asked, with a hint of disappointment even though she was happy to see him. “We still have lots of homework to do.”

For the first time since his summons to the owner’s office that afternoon, he let out a laugh. “You can see which of us has the real talent for human resources,” he told the office manager. “I’m sorry I’m late. The night shift supervisor wouldn’t stop talking.”

But the office manager was so thoroughly enjoying her new role that she was prepared to continue it. If the resource manager needed more time, she said, or wished to get to work on his response to the weekly, she and her husband were prepared to stay and help his daughter finish her homework.

“More time again!” he grumbled. “The night is over. The case is closed. Everything is clear now. I’m just too tired to explain it all.”

“Of course,” the office manager agreed, slightly miffed. She would wait until the morning, when she would in any case have to type the response. Her husband was now solving the last maths problem, after which she would check the English vocabulary assignment. In the meantime, the resource manager might as well sit down and warm up. He looked cold and must be starving. There was food on the table and she would make him a hot drink. Why not be a guest in his own home?

“My ex-home,” he replied with a bitter smile. Slipping out of his wet coat, he removed his damp shoes and switched on the solar heater’s electrical backup for some extra hot water.

It had been agreed that in his ex-wife’s absence he would spend the nights here with his daughter rather than have her come to his mother’s, where he was staying until his newly rented apartment became available. Naturally, he didn’t use the double bed he had been banished from; he slept on the living room couch. Two shelves in the bathroom were reserved for his toilet articles and pyjamas, with additional space for underwear, a fresh shirt, and a pair of clean trousers.

He passed his wife’s darkened bedroom, which not long ago had also been his. Shutting its half-open door against the ever present temptation to peek, he locked himself in the gleaming bathroom. He had presided over its renovation just a year ago, choosing the tiles and taps and ingeniously relocating the sink and toilet, without dreaming how soon he would be brutally expelled. Yet he still regarded this room as his own. Uncertain how quickly the electricity would do the job of the sun that had hidden all day long, he took off his rumpled clothes and sat naked on the edge of the tub to test the warmth of the water.

He was still thinking about the night shift supervisor’s confession. He would have to decide how much to tell the old man and how much to suppress out of respect for that clandestine and abruptly ended infatuation. It saddened him that he would never meet the woman whose identity he had deciphered. A quick glance from afar was all he would have needed to get a sense of her. Like all of the company’s employees — even the old man himself, who drew a monthly pay packet in addition to his dividends — she had been the responsibility of his division. What had gone through her head when she realized that although she had lost her job she was still being paid for it? Had she assumed it was the supervisor’s continued declaration of love for her, or did she take it to be a clerical error that she could not afford to correct?

I’ll never know …

And yet what does it matter?

I’ve already wasted enough energy on this mess.

It’s time to call it a day.

The water flowing from the tap showed no sign of warming up, evidence of how little sunshine there had been that day and how slim the hope for a hot shower was. He sat shivering on the edge of the tub, naked in his former home, while the two substitute parents gave a last flurry of attention to his daughter, who was being worn down by the growing tensions between him and his ex-wife. As far as he was concerned, he thought, switching on the electric heater while gently massaging his body, they could help her with her homework as much as they liked. Perhaps before going to sleep he would find a quiet time to tell her about his evening. Hearing about the pretty woman with the smile who had spent a week in the morgue as a nameless corpse might make her realize that there were other people to feel sorry for besides herself.

There was a sharp knock on the bathroom door, followed by his daughter’s strained voice:

“Abba, if you haven’t showered yet, don’t! Ima just called to say she’s coming home because of what you got yourself into. You have to let her have her parking place. So please, Abba, if you haven’t begun to shower, there’s no time …”

He knew how she suffered from the savage rift between her parents and did not wish to make things worse for her — and so, overcoming his repugnance at having to get back into his dirty clothes, he turned off the tap and rejoined the office manager and her husband. They were already in their overcoats, holding their folded umbrellas. A khaki stocking cap, the kind worn in simpler times by Israeli soldiers, was pulled jauntily down over the husband’s rugby-ball head. Here was a couple who felt good about themselves and about their contribution to the world.

“You didn’t have to say goodbye,” the office manager said. “You’ll see me in the morning.”

“But not your husband,” he replied. He shook the hand of this jaunty man, who whispered a gentle scolding:

“You should have more patience with her maths. She has too many gaps in her education.”

The human resources manager reddened and laid a hand on his heart. Then, slipping into his windcheater, he accompanied the two to the street. When, he asked the office manager, did she think the concert would be over?

“You don’t intend to call him tonight!”

“Why not? After all the fuss he’s made, he deserves some kind of report.”

“And you’ve really cleared everything up?”

“I think so.”

She regarded him sympathetically. “In that case, you can call until midnight. Don’t worry if he sounds half asleep. He dozes off and wakes up all the time. He’ll sleep better tonight if you calm him.”

“I’m not sure I will,” said the resource manager. He parted from them warmly, as if they were newly discovered relatives; moved his car from the building’s parking lot to the far pavement; and returned to the apartment, where he devoured the remains of the pizza and told his daughter the story of the cleaning woman. He even showed her the woman’s photograph in the folder, curious to see how it struck her. Yet she did not seem to have an opinion or even to be listening. Gripping his arm, she pleaded:

“Abba! Ima will be here any minute. You’re both tired. Why fight again now?”

“Who says we’re going to fight?”

She bit her lip and said nothing, while he stroked her curly head to still her fears. In his heart, he cursed the old owner for spoiling their evening. Slipping back into his damp windcheater, he borrowed an umbrella and went out into the rain. Standing in the dark entrance of the house next door, he waited to make sure that his wife arrived.

The rain was now a fine drizzle. You couldn’t tell whether it was falling or rising, or whether the strange red glow in the sky, appearing behind a large antenna, was natural or man-made. Shivering from cold and fatigue, he stood waiting patiently for the large car that was still registered in his name to swing into the street and pull violently into the vacated parking space. Its driver, apparently unconvinced that the man she hated had departed, left the headlights beaming and stepped out to glance at the apartment, as if to judge from the glow in the windows, or perhaps some other sign, whether he was still there. They hadn’t met face-to-face for weeks. From her silhouette he could tell that despite the weather she was wearing high heels. No doubt she had on an elegant dress beneath her winter coat. And yet, he thought sadly, finding a new man wasn’t easy for her. Whoever she had gone out of town to meet that day must have left her feeling disappointed.

Well, that wasn’t his problem.

He needn’t feel guilt for her bottomless anger.

Or for her sexual frustration …

Assured at last that he had left, she switched off the car lights and took out a small suitcase. Then, before pressing the remote control, she glanced up once more.

Even though there were only a few metres between them, she did not notice him standing in the darkness. Yet had she sniffed a familiar scent? Whatever it was, she suddenly stopped and looked suspiciously around before hurrying up the stairs.

13

Although it was only nine o’clock, the human resources manager assumed that his mother, who was not expecting him that night, would already have gone to bed. He had noticed that she was sleeping a great deal lately, and since she claimed that her first hours of sleep were her best, he was determined to enter quietly and not disturb her. He had forgotten, however, that in his absence she always put the chain on the door. Locked out, he had to call her on his cell phone and explain what he was doing there.

She was in no hurry to let him in. As if he were a lodger rather than her only son, she slowly put on a robe and paused to comb her hair before unchaining the door with painstaking reluctance. He had turned her apartment into a transit camp, burdening her not only with his clutter but also with his divorce, which she had done all she could to prevent. For the first time since his childhood, she did not look at him when they spoke.

Now she took his unexpected arrival as evidence that he had caused yet another family mishap. Instead of helping to put his supper on the table, she went to her bedroom, gathered the still-warm sections of the day’s newspaper from her sheets and blankets, dumped them on the kitchen table for him, and excused herself to return to her interrupted sleep.

He felt almost insulted. What was the hurry? he asked. The night was young. And he had a story to tell her, something from the office that he wanted to discuss, something on which he would like to have her opinion.

She had no choice but to listen to the tale about the cleaning woman, whose death in the latest bombing had led to a vicious article being scheduled in the local weekly where his photograph was to appear as well as mention of his divorce. It couldn’t be stopped. That’s what the press was like these days: it always went for the jugular. And yet, he said with a smile, proudly relating his discovery of the supervisor’s strange infatuation, he had already managed to get to the bottom of it. Placing the folder on the table, he showed his mother the picture and asked whether she, too, found the woman alluring or attractive.

She listened to him absentmindedly, her eyes on the table, as if doubting whether anything in his account could possibly justify the loss of her beauty sleep. Nor did she want to look at the picture. “What difference does it make?” she asked crossly.

“But it does!” There had been an emotional entanglement. Why not try to understand whether it had to do with real beauty or the mere illusion of it? He himself, for example, though he had interviewed the woman for her job, had not been impressed.

“You interviewed her?”

“Of course. Every new employee has to be vetted by the human resources division.”

“But if you weren’t impressed by her, what does my opinion matter?”

“I didn’t say it did. I’m just curious. Why are you so stubborn? How much trouble is it to look at a photograph?”

His mother made no reply. Her divorced son’s fascination with the picture of a dead woman struck her as unnecessarily morbid. Since it seemed important to him, however, she asked him to fetch her glasses and cigarettes and cautiously opened the folder. She first read the newspaper article, then turned to the résumé in her son’s handwriting, passed from that to the computer printout, and glanced briefly at the face of the blonde woman. She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and asked how old the woman had been.

“I can tell you exactly. Forty-eight.”

“Have you told the morgue what you know?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Right now it’s for internal use. We have to decide how to formulate our response. Until we do I’m keeping it under wraps.”

“Under wraps?” His mother gave a start. “From whom?”

“From that vile journalist who plans to write another instalment, for one.”

“But the morgue needs to know who she is. Why not tell them?”

“It’s only for a day or two. Even then, I’ll talk only to authorized parties. And before I do, I’ll need to double-check my sources. The last thing we want is an exposé of the supervisor’s private life. With weasels like that journalist, you have to watch out … By the way, the owner doesn’t know a thing yet. He went to a concert and let me run myself ragged.”

His mother, enveloped in cigarette smoke, did not like his procrastination one bit. Surely the dead woman must have friends or family who were looking for her.

“I don’t believe anyone is looking for her. But to be honest, who knows?”

He brought her an ashtray.

“Not you, that’s for sure.” There was disdain, even anger, in her voice. “I’m warning you, though. Once you’ve discovered who she is, she’s yours.”

“How come?”

“She’s your responsibility. Keeping it to yourself is not only disrespectful, it’s criminal. Tell me” — she was raising her voice now as if he were once again a small boy — “what’s your problem? Why can’t you phone the hospital? What are you afraid of?”

He removed the dishes from the table, scraping the waste into the bin, placed them in the sink, and rinsed them. “It’s the middle of the night,” he said gently. “A morgue isn’t an emergency room. No one is sitting there waiting to hear from me. Divulging details over the telephone that can end up in the wrong place is worse than doing nothing. If she’s been lying unidentified for a week, she can wait one more night. Believe me, her ordeal is over.”

His mother said nothing. She took off her glasses, stubbed out her cigarette, reached for the review section of the newspaper, and headed for her bedroom. Going into the bathroom to check the water, he discovered it was cold here, too. Well, his mother had not known he was coming. He switched on the old boiler, put some water on for tea, and glanced at the front section of the newspaper. Then, before his mother could turn her light out, he went to ask for the sports section. Had she already thrown it away? He addressed her timidly; even now, their eyes did not make contact.

“You must think something. I mean about that picture.”

She preferred not to answer. “It’s hard to say. It’s so small …”

“Even so.”

She hesitated, weighing her words. “Your boss’s office manager may be right. There’s something about her … especially the eyes … or maybe it’s her smile. It’s like sunshine.”

A wave of chagrin swept over him. For some reason, it grieved him to be told that the woman was beautiful. His mother, who seemed to know this without looking at him, tried retracting her remark, then gave up.

“Should I leave the light on for you in the hallway?”

“Why? Are you going out again tonight?”

“Yes. There’s no hot water for a shower.”

“How was I supposed to know you were coming?”

“You weren’t. I’m not blaming you.” He shifted his weight to his other leg. “While the water is heating, I’ll run over to the morgue. Maybe I can find someone there to take her off my hands.”

“At this hour?” She sat up in bed. “Don’t you think it’s rather late?”

“Not really. It’s just a little after nine.”

“What hospital is she in?”

“Mount Scopus.”

“There’s a morgue there?”

“You’re asking me? So I’ve been told …”

She was beginning to feel sorry for him.

“Perhaps you’re right about putting it off until tomorrow. That wouldn’t be so terrible.”

“Now you tell me that?” he snapped. “After first making me feel all that guilt?”

He turned out the light.

14

Sometime before 10 p.m. he appeared at our security hut, a stocky man with a hard, weary face. Although the storm had subsided, in his winter overcoat, galoshes, gloves, and yellow woollen scarf he seemed prepared for more bad weather. And yet he was bareheaded. Before he could say a word, we searched him for guns and explosives. “You want the morgue? At this hour?”He said he was looking for our director, assuming there was such a person.

That gave us a fright. Had there been a new bombing we didn’t know about? But no, he had come, so it seemed, in connection with last week’s bombing, which no one remembered any more. He waved a thin folder and said that he had discovered the identity of a woman killed in that bombing.

“We’re sorry, sir,” we answered, “but it’s after visiting hours. You need special permission to be admitted at night.” Yet after he showed us his ID card and told us he managed the personnel department of a bakery that supplied half the country with bread, we said, “More power to someone like you, who with hundreds of people working under him, still comes to ask about a temporary cleaning woman — a deadone, in fact.” He liked that. Thenhe asked again how to get to the morgue.

How could we tell a personnel manager where it was when we ourselves, in all our years of working here, had never been there? We had to call the emergency room and ask for directions.

Although the directions did not seem complicated, he was soon wandering up and down hallways and stopping interns and nurses, who had only the vaguest idea of where the dead were kept. Finally, hoping to find someone who was better informed, he went to the main office. The woman at the desk already knew about him. Not being authorized to receive his report, however, she drew him a map to help him reach the morgue and promised that somebody would be there to receive him.

The map did not, as he had imagined it would, instruct him to descend to the ground floor and look there for stairs to a hidden basement. Rather, it guided him outside to a small cluster of pine trees in which stood an old, stone building, one wing of which, according to a sign, was a stockroom for medical supplies. A second wing housed the department of forensic medicine, while a third, unidentified, was no doubt the one he was looking for. He had to stumble down a dark lane to reach it. Twinkling lights in the distance, which came not from stars but from far-off houses, hinted at a panoramic view by day.

It was remarkable, reflected the human resources manager, who did not consider himself easily frightened, that no effort had been made to conceal the place. On the contrary: it stood in the open by the pine trees, untended and unguarded, as though it were just another office you could walk into and out of without fearing the dead any more than they feared you. Although a light was shining in a small window, he wasn’t sure anyone was there. What will be, will be, he told himself. At least now I’m dressed for the weather. Even if I’m on a wild-goose chase, it will save me time tomorrow. Meanwhile, the water is heating in the boiler and I’ll be rid of the real or unreal guilt my mother is trying to pin on me.

He knocked on the locked door. No answer. Circling the building, he came to a back door that opened when he pushed it. Without warning, he found himself in a cold, dimly lit space; an air conditioner was humming softly. A dozen or so stretchers with corpses on them were arranged in two parallel lines. Some of the bodies were well wrapped. Others, apparently intended for research or the classroom, were covered with transparent sheets of plastic.

The human resources manager froze. With all due respect for the rational belief that death was the end of all things, it was irresponsible to leave the door unlocked. Suppose he were unbalanced or given to morbid fantasies? He could easily panic and file a lawsuit.

Standing still, he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and prayed that there would be no bad or strange smell. Allowing himself a furtive glance, very much like his mother’s in recent months, he noticed a corpse the colour of yellow clay. The plastic sheet that enveloped it was too thick for him to tell if the body was a man’s or a woman’s. Even though he felt sufficiently composed to examine the stretchers for the cleaning woman’s identifying tag, his uninvited presence in the room struck him as a breach of etiquette. Reluctantly, he backed out, then shut the door with a click.

And yet, nevertheless … I’ve made it to the last stop, he thought. I was here. It’s not my job to identify a woman I don’t know. I’ve come to report, not to investigate. Tomorrow I’ll wrap things up with a telephone call. If the worse comes to the worst, I’ll come back. It’s not something I can ask the old man or my secretary to do, let alone the night shift supervisor, who might be tempted to take too passionate a farewell look. He’s in no state for it. I promised to spare him a reprimand, not to arrange a last rendezvous with his beloved — who, legally, until the authorities find her next-of-kin,is still my or my division’s responsibility.

In his mind’s eye he was transported to the vast work floor of the bakery, with its rattling production lines twisting in doughy arabesques. Although this dough after reaching the ovens would become tomorrow’s bread, its yellow-clay colour bore an eerie resemblance to that of the corpse he had just seen.

He circled the building, wondering how far it was to the distant lights. Snug in his layers of clothing, he felt ready for any adventure. But the lights had vanished in a dark mist. The night, which had seemed about to clear, now grew so dense that the smock of an approaching lab technician looked like the flapping wings of an angel.

15

The woman at the office had kept her word and found someone at the pathology lab who knew the ins and outs of the morgue.

He was a stout man of about fifty, wearing a French beret that could have been a token of bohemianism, a kind of Orthodox skullcap, or both. Full of curiosity and energy, he hailed the resource manager standing in the darkness with a barrage of words. “It’s good you came tonight, because she would have been gone by tomorrow. You would have had to chase after her to the Central Pathology Institute, where all the unsolved cases are sent. The doctors and nurses from intensive care managed to keep her body here until now because they were hoping that a friend, relative, or fellow worker of hers would turn up. They wanted someone to know how hard they had fought to save her life and why they couldn’t. We’re a small hospital here, far from the centre of town, and we don’t generally get the critical or even the severe cases. Perhaps the police and emergency teams don’t think we’re well enough equipped. Still, it’s a blow to our professional pride. I suppose she was brought here because she didn’t seem in serious condition at first, even though she was unconscious. The only visible damage was a few small puncture wounds in her hands and feet and a scratch on her skull. These certainly didn’t look fatal. Only afterwards did it turn out that she had an infection of the brain, perhaps from a bacterial source in the market.”

“The brain?” said the manager wonderingly. “I didn’t know it could get infected, too.”

“Of course it can. Why not? She lay for two days until nothing more could be done. She was so silent and anonymous that everyone was touched by her. The staff did all they could. They wanted so badly for her to regain consciousness, if only to find out who she was. That’s why she was kept in the morgue longer than usual. We hoped there would be someone to hear how we had tried … that she wouldn’t just be forgotten. It’s your luck you didn’t wait until morning. Even if you’re only a personnel manager, we’re counting on you for an identifying clue. Let’s first go to the office and fill out a National Insurance form. No one understood why her place of work didn’t come looking for her.”

The stout lab technician pulled out a key ring and unlocked the front room of the morgue. Although the human resources manager considered saying something about the open back door, he refrained. Let’s see what this fellow has to tell me, he thought. Affably offering him a seat by a stretcher, the technician took out a tattered blue shopping bag from a metal cabinet. Attached to it was a manila envelope with the cleaning woman’s death certificate, a medical report, and the torn, bloodstained pay slip. The technician, who had no doubt been through its contents before, turned it over and shook out two yellow keys tied with a string.

“That’s it,” he declared. “Apart from a few rotten cheeses and vegetables, which we couldn’t keep because of the smell. Let’s get what you know about her down on paper. I hope” — he smiled pleasantly — “that you’re not too squeamish to identify her. If you’re worried about it, let me assure you that you’re fortunate. She’s in perfect condition. Believe me, she looks like a sleeping angel.”

The resource manager turned red and gave the technician, who looked pleased with his metaphor, a hostile glance. He felt sure that this was the “inside source” who had tipped off the newspapers. It’s all because of him, he thought, that I’m still on the job at this hour. Coldly, he set him straight. He wasn’t squeamish in the least. He was quite capable of looking reality in the face, no matter how ugly it was — provided it needed to be looked at. But he was only here to supply the dead woman’s name, address, and ID number, all traced from the pay slip — the existence of which had been irresponsibly divulged to an unreliable journalist instead of being passed on to him, the company’s personnel manager. Although he had to his surprise discovered that he had interviewed the woman and even taken down her CV, this didn’t qualify him to identify her corpse. The company employed three shifts with 270 or 280 employees — 300, if you included the management. Was he supposed to recognize each one of them?

Opening the top button of his overcoat, the resource manager took out the folder, extracted the computerized image, and laid both on an empty stretcher. “Here. All that we know is in this folder. Sleeping angel or not, I have no intention of looking at her. If you think you’re authorized, you do it. Here’s a photograph to help you.”

The lab technician, flustered, studied the image. “It’s awfully small and blurry,” he grumbled. “But yes, it does look like her. What was her name, Yulia? Well, it all adds up. We thought we might be dealing with a foreigner. Could she really have been forty-eight? We took her to be younger … but yes, it’s definitely her. Look at the Asiatic tilt of the eyes … was she a Tartar? Where was she from? Believe me, the doctors and nurses in intensive care were smitten by her, even though she was unconscious … It’s her for sure. Look, why stand on ceremony? Who’s going to challenge your signature? Let’s have a quick look at her and get it over with. If you ask me, she’d like to leave this place too. Just sign the form and National Insurance will track down her next-of-kin so that we can get her ready for the funeral, whether it’s here or overseas.”

“Why don’t you sign?”

“I’m not allowed to. An identification by a hospital staff member having no previous acquaintance with the deceased is inadmissible. It would only get me into trouble. I’m not even supposed to have looked at her. But you’re a different case. She worked for you. If you came all the way out here on a night like this, what’s stopping you now? If you don’t sign, we’ll have to find an employee of yours to do it, and by then she’ll be at Central Path. That means a whole new bureaucratic procedure … maybe more newspaper articles too.”

The resource manager reacted sharply. “Newspapers? I thought so!”

“What’s wrong with them?” The lab technician smiled shrewdly. “The dead make good copy. We’ve already had one journalist here … how else would you have heard about it?”

This was going too far. “You might at least admit that you yourself were the source. Leaking private information about the dead … don’t tell me that’s legal!”

The technician was unfazed. “Nothing is illegal when there isn’t any choice. The only hope of identifying her was by publicizing her case. But I swear I had nothing to do with the article itself. That was entirely the reporter’s doing. I heard you called him a weasel. Did you actually do that to his face?”

“I did not. Where did you get that from?”

“Well, perhaps you told the weekly’s secretary and she passed it on. Don’t be upset. ‘Weasel’ is too good for him. If I know him, he took it as a compliment. It’s all water off a duck’s back. Weasel, eh? Not bad! But the useful kind. He’s neither dumb nor lazy.”

“Damn it! When did you last talk to him?”

“Right after you did. An hour or an hour and a half ago. That’s why I’m working overtime. I was expecting you.”

“You were?”

“Does it surprise you that we’d like to be rid of her as much as you would? Don’t think that just because we’re used to corpses we enjoy having her stay on here … Well, what do you say? Why not sign for her? Here’s the form.”

The technician’s garrulousness, however, only strengthened the resource manager’s resolve. All that was missing was another article, one accusing him of identifying a woman he didn’t remember.

He made another effort to explain himself. Death didn’t frighten him. Just a few minutes ago, because of a carelessly open door, he had walked into the morgue and stayed calm despite the shock. But sign an official form? Absolutely not! What right did he have to do so?

Aware that he was causing a problem, he wondered at himself. After all, what difference did it make? Everything was perfectly clear. Whom was he punishing? The night shift supervisor? The journalist? The man facing him, who had got him into this predicament? What harm would it do to look at the woman’s face? Was he afraid that he, too, would be smitten? As if he could fall in love with a corpse …

He cautiously reached for the keys and asked if they were definitely hers. The technician shrugged. “In the pandemonium after a bombing, you never know. But they were found in her bag, next to the pay slip, so who else’s could they be? All the other dead have been identified. No missing keys were reported …”

The resource manager nodded and glanced around. Only now did he notice that the room had no windows. The ceiling was high, the kind that made you feel there was too much space above you. A naked, high-wattage bulb shed a cold light. They must need a tall ladder to change it when it burns out,he thought. With a slight smile he turned to the technician. “Why insist on a visual identification? We know her address. We can go to her apartment and see if the keys fit. That’s indirect proof, but it’s worth more than the foibles of memory.”

The technician’s eyes gleamed. “And if they do fit?”

“Then I’ll sign the form as if I had done a visual.”

The man took off his beret and tossed it excitedly onto the empty stretcher. Bohemian or Orthodox, he was quite bald.

“Excellent. But who’ll go there?”

“I will,” the resource manager surprised himself by saying softly, as if in a dream.

“You?”

“Yes, me. On condition that you don’t inform the press you think so highly of … What time is it? Not even ten. The address isn’t far from here and should be easy to find. I know my way about Jerusalem. She’s our responsibility until she’s buried, and if nobody else wants to take it on themselves, then we — I mean the company management — have to do it. Perhaps we even have some insurance or compensation fund for dependents like her son … because she does have a son, or at least she said so. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll sign for the keys. You can see that I’m doing my duty — and you can report that to the weasel on my behalf. And just so you don’t think I’m scared of corpses, I’ll allow myself another look at … the back room. I’ll be happy to have you as my guide. You can even explain why nothing smells. That would be good of you.”

16

The lab technician was only too pleased to open the inner door. He turned on the light in the refrigerated room, dimly illuminating the dozen stretchers the human resources manager had seen before. Each had a corpse on it. The manager shivered, from excitement or cold. His first question was more philosophical than anatomical. At what point, he wanted to know, did a dead body become a corpse? Was it a matter of science or simply of semantics?

The lab technician was startled by the question. Such a conundrum had never occurred to him. After a moment’s thought, he answered categorically: “It’s a matter of time. There are exceptions, though.”

“Such as?”

“Such as battlefield casualties. Time passes more quickly then. It’s condensed.”

He removed the plastic sheet from a stretcher, revealing a woman’s brownish corpse and featureless face.

“I take it these are being kept for anatomy lessons,” the human resources manager said, to reassure himself. Stepping up to the stretcher, he took a long, hard look, to show his guide, but most of all himself, how undaunted he was.

“Exactly.”

“They won’t be used for research?”

“No.”

“And now do tell me” — the question kept nagging him — “why isn’t there any smell here? That’s the worst part of death, far worse than how it looks …”

“Actually,” the technician said, with a slight smile, “there is a smell. You just don’t notice it because it’s so faint. But it does rub off on whoever spends enough time here. You can literally sniff such people out.”

“Still,” the manager begged to know — as if it were a life-and-death matter — “how do you neutralize it?”

“Do you want to know the chemical formula?”

“If it’s not too complicated …”

“Complicated? Not especially.”

The technician ticked off the mixture of alcohol, formalin, phenol, and distilled water with which the bodies were injected, four hours after death, after their natural fluids had been drained from them. It was simple and efficient.

The resource manager debated whether to call it a night or to continue his tour. Deciding to press on, he circled the room with small, museum-sized steps. Each stretcher had a number. For some reason, the swaddled corpses repelled him more than did the plastic-sheeted ones. Casting a last, impersonal look at them, he prepared to depart with a final question. How long had they been lying in this place?

“A year, at most.”

“A year?”

“That’s the longest you’re allowed to keep a corpse. After that it has to be buried.”

“That’s the maximum?”

“According to the law.”

“Interesting … very interesting. Suppose you show me your oldest corpse. I’d like to see its state of preservation.”

The technician led him down the row of stretchers, from one of which the plastic sheet had fallen of its own accord. The shrivelled but still bearded human figure beneath it was ancient-looking. Its features were distinct. The ecstatically shut eyes still revealed the passionate struggle with death that had taken place nearly a year before. Long forgotten by his survivors, the agony of this struggle lived on in the dead man. A shiver ran down the sturdy manager’s spine. Sticking his gloved hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat, he mused:

“There’s no question about it. A visit here is a must. It gives you a sense of what’s important.”

The lab technician nodded. “And of what isn’t,” he added.

The resource manager noted that the shrivelled man’s skin was the colour of yellowed parchment. It almost looked like the pages of a sacred book.

“Interesting,” he murmured again. “All of this is so very interesting …”

With a glance at the technician, who seemed pleased with him, he asked if he was a believing Jew. No, the man replied. Yet there were times when anyone working here had to believe in something. Otherwise you could lose your humanity, watching so much life drain away.

A large clock ticked on the wall. After a visit like this, the manager thought, no one could accuse him of being finicky. He turned to go, then asked weakly which stretcher the cleaning woman was on. “You know,” he added, for no apparent reason, “she was a mechanical engineer.”

“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 usin our sleep. Wedidn’t evenask, ‘Isthat 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 leftJerusalem,because he’s been lookingfor 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 suchlengths 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.

“Well?” He raised his glass in a toast. “Is everything clear now? You’ve identified her? She really did work for us? Tell me what you know.”

The resource manager took a sip of the excellent wine and silently handed the owner the thin and by now somewhat dog-eared folder. “Before I tell you anything,” he said, “have a look.”

The owner reread the newspaper article with an expressionless face; carefully followed the lines of the computer printout with a long, wrinkled finger; and turned to the CV written in the resource manager’s hand. Picking up the photograph, he rose, switched on a standing lamp, and went to peer nearsightedly at the cleaning woman, as if seeking to bring her back to life.

The resource manager poured himself some more wine. “Would you say she was an attractive woman?” he softly probed, as he moved to return the folder.

The unexpected question made the owner snatch the folder back for another look. “Attractive? It’s hard to say. Perhaps … but what makes you ask? She has breeding, wouldn’t you say?”

Once again the resource manager felt a pang, as if something had been stolen from him forever.

“Breeding?” The word somehow offended him. “What do you mean? What do you see?”

The owner chuckled at the question. “I’m not sure. There’s something foreign about her, something … Asiatic, even though she’s fair.”

The resource manager had to tell everything. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through,” he blurted. “I’ve been to the morgue on Mount Scopus. In fact, I’ve just come from there. They wanted me to identify the corpse. I refused. Tell me: Am I responsible for someone I’ve seen only once in my life? But I found a better solution. Would you like to hear about it?”

The owner sank deeper into his chair and touched the younger man’s knee as if to calm him. “Come,” he said, moving the bottle of wine out of reach. “It’s late. Let’s start from the beginning. One thing at a time.”

The resource manager was reluctant to forgo the wine. A new thought was forming in his brain. Just look at this old man, he reflected. As wealthy as he is, he insists on being employed by his own company so that he can draw a salary on top of all his profits — none of which will keep him from dying sometime soon. Who knows if he’ll be succeeded by a human being like himself or by a faceless board of directors?

He had a feeling of warm intimacy, as if he were in the company of an elderly cousin who, because he had reached the last stage of his life, could be told everything. And so, after praising the wine and wheedling a third glass, he launched into his story, starting with the owner’s half-scolding declaration “No choice” and ending with switching off the lights in the dead woman’s threadbare shack.

He told it like a detective story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, knowing that it would be impossible to reveal the whole truth. The night shift supervisor’s motives, which had set the plot in motion, would have to remain obscure. Feeling the marvellous wine settle inside him, he was careful to avoid both too much confusing detail and too much oversimplifying generalization. When at last he reached the heart of the matter, he defended the supervisor as though pleading for his own self.

The owner listened patiently, benevolently, letting the resource manager tell the story as he wished. His bathrobe was as ancient as he was. A missing button afforded a glimpse of a dry, waxy body whose thin skin was crisscrossed by blue veins.

The resource manager plunged ahead. He described the corpses he hadn’t flinched from looking at, especially the bearded homunculus, and went on to speak of the woman’s rumpled bed. With a smile, he apologized for having made it. It was something he’d felt he had to do.

“My compliments,” the owner said with an approving glance. “You didn’t cut any corners tonight. It’s beyond anything I had expected. I must have frightened you this afternoon when I threatened to find someone else if you refused to carry out this task …”

“That wasn’t your only threat,” the resource manager said reproachfully. “You also hinted I’d be out of a job.”

“Did I?” There was no knowing if the old man’s surprise was feigned or if he had merely forgotten. “That article must have upset me greatly.”

“I wonder who you had in mind. To replace me with, I mean?”

The old man’s eyes twinkled. “There’s no shortage of candidates. But why should I replace you when you’ve demonstrated once again how resourceful you are — especially when you don’t want to disappoint me.”

The human resources manager agreed with this description. “That’s true. It’s just as you say. I hate to disappoint. That should help you to understand why I didn’t want to let my daughter down tonight. It’s enough to have let down her mother.”

“She wasn’t let down at all,” the old man crowed. “She was delighted with the substitutes I found for her. My office manager phoned me before the concert to let me know what a good time she and her husband had.”

“She did?” The resource manager felt cheated. “Then you already knew what I’ve told you …”

“Some of it. While you were following the progress of my concert, I was following yours. I even phoned the hospital during the interval, but no one could tell me if you’d been there.”

“No one could have. But what made you do it?”

“I wanted to see if you were making headway. You still don’t realize how upsetting it is to be called inhuman. What is left to us if we lose our humanity?”

“Who else phoned you?”

“The night shift supervisor.”

The resource manager was startled. “He did? But when, during the concert?”

“No. Just now, before you came. That’s why you had to wait. He couldn’t get over his talk with you. He felt the need to confess to me, too. He wasn’t sure what you thought of him.”

“But why not? Wasn’t I fair to him?”

“Too fair. He was much harder on himself than you were on him. But I know him from way back. I’m the last person to be taken in by his sentimentality. He’s been with us for over forty years. He was hired by my father when he was a young technical sergeant just out of the army — a good-looking fellow who attracted not only the girls he worked with but older women too. We were constantly bailing him out of trouble. He caused scandals even after he was married and took a long while to settle down. That’s why we put him on the night shift: it’s quieter there and the workers are tired and have no time for escapades. A few years ago he became a grandfather. He even asked me to be the godfather to one of his grandchildren. And now he falls head-over-heels for some poor Tartar, so much so that he has to fire her to protect himself! While leaving her on the payroll, of course …”

The resource manager felt weak from exhaustion. He needed to end this, to return to his mother’s, shower, and go to sleep.

“So what line shall we take?” he asked, with the last of his strength. “What should our response be?”

“No line at all.” The old man was pale with emotion. “We won’t put up any defence. We’ll accept the blame, apologize, and offer compensation.”

“For what?”

“For the indignity we caused. For firing someone without reason. For our personnel division’s ignorance. That’s how we’ll end all this. Not with some left-handed apology that will just make that son of a bitch dig deeper. We won’t offer any version of our own. We’ll simply say: ‘It’s all true. It’s our fault. We ask forgiveness and wish to atone.’”

“Atone?”

“Yes. Fully. That’s what’s called for. I suppose we’ll either have to ship her overseas for burial or bring her relatives to a funeral here. We should consider helping her son, too. Her belongings need to be disposed of. Above all, the compensation must be generous.”

“But what business is it of ours?” the resource manager protested. “It’s the responsibility of the government. We’re not to blame for the bombing. Let the government take care of it.”

“The government will do what it has to. And we’ll stand in for her family and make sure that it does. Of course, the article is nasty. But nasty isn’t always wrong. I could cry thinking of that woman fighting for her life without a single one of us even knowing. And then lying unidentified in the morgue, because even our night shift supervisor doesn’t notice she’s missing! Listen, my friend. I don’t want to apologize. I want to do penance. I’m eighty-seven years old and I have no time for polemics. I won’t let my or my ancestors’ reputation be tarnished.”

“You feel that strongly about it?”

“That strongly.” The old man raised his voice fiercely, pleased to see the little Indian peer worriedly out from the kitchen.

“But why?” The resource manager no longer knew what he was objecting to. “That woman got an extra pay packet and you treat it as a sin calling for religious expiation.”

“Let it be religious expiation. So what? What’s wrong with that?”

The resource manager tried to make light of it. “I believe Bruckner’s music has left you wallowing in Christian guilt.”

“Don’t. I slept through most of it.”

“That’s when our subconscious is most easily affected.”

“If it’s my subconscious you’re worried about,” the owner replied, reaching into his robe to scratch his chest, “don’t expect it to rely on the government.” He was clearly enjoying the conversation. “Yes, I want expiation. I can afford it. And I have just the person for it …”

“Meaning me?”

“Naturally. Who else? Wasn’t it you who asked to change the name of the personnel division to human resources division? Your humanity matters to you, too. That’s it in a nutshell, my friend. You promised me today to make that woman … what did you say her name was?”

“Yulia Ragayev,” the resource manager whispered, exhausted, suddenly aware of where things were heading.

“Right. So just make Yulia Ragayev your business a while longer until you can give her a proper funeral. You’ve put hard work and good judgment into this, and there’s no reason for you not to continue. We’ll show this city that we’re not ducking anything and that we deserve forgiveness, even from that journalist. Mark my words: the weasel will faint when he sees how contrite we are. Take the long view, my friend. We have no choice but to see this through. And don’t worry about expenses. You’ll have all the money you need. I’ll be at your disposal day and night, just as I am now …”

When the human resources manager stepped back out into the empty street, he felt enveloped by a white blur. In the car, before switching on the ignition and merging with the traffic, he opened a window to let in the cold, and searched for good music on the radio to keep him awake. The only music he could find, however, was too insipid to move him. He put his head down on the steering wheel and waited. The flakes drifting through the window made him realize that the white blur had not come from the wine. A light snow was falling softly on Jerusalem. And just as in his childhood, it gave his spirits a lift.