A Woman in Jerusalem

PART THREE The Journey

1

Tell us, you hard people: After desecrating the Holy Land and turning murder and destruction into a way of life, by what right do you now trample on our feelings? Is it because you and your enemies have learned to kill each other and yourselves with such crazy impunity, bombing and sowing endless destruction, that you think you can leave a coffin, with no explanation or permission, in the courtyard of an apartment building in someone else’s country and disappear without so much as a by-your-leave?

How could you have failed to think of our children, suddenly faced, among garbage cans and gas canisters, with an anonymous death not hallowed by flowers or prayers? Didn’t you think of the nightmares they might have? Of the questions they might ask us? Heartless though you are, you must know that only a clever neighbour with the wits to shield them kept their play from turning into horror.

And what were we supposed to do? How were we to protect ourselves? By calling some numskull of a policeman and bribing him to believe that we had nothing to do with it? How could we prove that a corpse that turned up one Saturday afternoon in our courtyard belonged to no one?

There was nothing to do but clench our teeth and look out of our windows until you returned. At dusk you came breezing back in an armoured vehicle from some ancient war. We recognized you at once: hardened foreigners, a raceof cunning wanderers who — again without explaining yourselves — loaded the coffin ontoa trailer and disappeared into the darkness. The dictators who ran our lives until recently behaved the same way.

And even afterwards, oddly enough, we felt no relief. A faint, inexplicable sorrow continued to gnaw at us. We still didn’t know whose body it was or how it had died. Where had it come from? Where was it going? Our biggest grievance against you is: Why did you make off with it so quickly?

It wasn’t easy for the two journalists to set out on such short notice from a small hotel in which they had made themselves at home. Yet in a winter like this they could never have managed to reach the grandmother’s village on their own. Moreover, they knew that a coffin’s voyage over distant steppes, undertaken at the whim of an orphaned boy, would grip their readers more than a mere grieving old woman reunited with her dead daughter.

The transportation offered them was better than they had expected, the driver having convinced the consul’s husband — now promoted by the human resources manager to full acting consul — to rent, not a minibus, but a converted army-surplus personnel carrier. Square and steel-plated, it had huge wheels that kept it well off the treacherous ground; to enter it they had to use a ladder. Though its exterior was still combat grey, great pains had been taken to refashion it comfortably within. It had been stripped of its battle stations and given wide, well-upholstered seats, baggage racks, and overhead lights. Inside, all that remained of its military past were the silent green dials on its dashboard and two tripods welded to the floor. The trailer bearing the woman’s coffin had no doubt once been used to transport a heavy mortar or ammunition crates.

The driver had been reinforced as well. The acting consul, who wore his wife’s warm red wool cap as the badge of his promotion, had acceded to the young man’s request and drawn on the emissary’s generous expense account to hire a second driver, who just happened to be the first driver’s elder brother. An expert navigator and mechanic, he urged the group to set out without delay and use the night time to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the approaching storm.

The resource manager, unfamiliar with local prices, had no idea what all this would cost. Yet the fact that the pittance he had paid the embittered ex-husband had sufficed to make the man drop all complaints encouraged him to think that in this case, too, the expense would not be great. For a reasonable sum he would restore the owner’s humanity, which had been maligned by the journalist who now joined the photographer in admiring the converted carrier.

“But where’s the child?” the resource manager asked anxiously, concerned that the handsome youngster might have vanished at the last moment.

“Child?” The new consul objected to the term. “Is that what you take him for? Wait till you see where we’re about to pick him up. You can tell me then whether you think he’s a child …”

The city’s streets were broad and deserted. There were few pedestrians and the shops were closed, because of the night or, perhaps, the storm. The high-placed headlights of the vehicle were reflected by the stairways and entrances of monumental buildings decorated with turrets and spires and guarded by bearded sentinels in sheepskin coats. A group of middle-aged, snugly wrapped women with shopping baskets stood silently on a corner, awaiting transportation back to their village.

On the outskirts of town, the party entered a parking lot. It belonged to an abandoned factory, beside which piles of unidentifiable raw materials lay rotting. A loudspeaker attached to a tall chimney blasted earsplitting disco music. The powerfully built mechanic, doubting the consul’s competence in such matters, went inside and emerged a few minutes later with the delicately built boy in tow. The young man’s face had an alcoholic flush; he carried a small backpack and was dressed in the same pilot’s hat and overalls he’d worn that morning. They seated him in the back among the bags and suitcases and told him to keep an eye on his mother’s coffin, which, though firmly connected to the trailer, might be jolted loose.

The boy glanced with wonder at the vehicle, pleased at having brought so elaborate a scheme into being. He still had the same sour smell. The weasel made a face. “Gentlemen,” he murmured, “if we don’t make this young Adonis take a bath at our first stop, we’ll have to cease breathing.” The emissary saw the boy redden. We have to be careful, he thought. He must still know some Hebrew from his time spent in Jerusalem. “Shalom,” he said, giving the youngster a friendly smile to make him feel at ease. “I’ll bet,” he added, “that’s one word you still remember.” Yet the boy only grew redder and said nothing, and cast his handsome eyes glumly downwards as if even one word from the city that had killed his mother was too much for him. Slowly he turned to look behind him, as much at the first dark signs of the storm, which was now blotting out the fading city on the horizon, as at the coffin bobbing up and down in the reddish glare of the taillights.

From the outset, the older driver took the younger one, who seemed glad to yield to his authority, under his wing. It was clear that he would decide on their route, which he did by choosing a longer one with better and more-travelled roads. Once assured that his brother had mastered the controls, he turned his attention to the decommissioned dials on the dashboard, determined to put them back in working order. The consul, having had experience with machinery as a farmer, joined in the effort and soon brought a dial back to life; although its purpose remained a mystery, its steady flicker cheered them all. Although the vehicle handled roughly and noisily, its gears letting out a double groan when shifted and its huge wheels jouncing for no apparent reason, they felt they had embarked safely on a real adventure. Not even the yellow gleam of the distant storm in the rearview mirror, which the mechanic pointed out as if he were a radiologist reading a worrisome X-ray, could dampen their spirits.

The darkness thickened. The road, though otherwise a relatively good one, was full of potholes. The emissary, turning to glance at the boy whose handsome face was now invisible, saw that the journalist had switched on his light and was making notes.

“If not for that smear job of yours,” he said without anger, “I’d be in a warm bed now instead of bouncing around in the cold.”

“In bed? So early?” The journalist smiled and shut his notebook. “That’s a bit of a stretch. It’s eight p.m. here, which means the Sabbath has just ended in Jerusalem. From what I know, that’s your bar time, not your bedtime.”

“You even trailed me to the bars?”

“I didn’t. He did.” He pointed to the photographer. “He needed a picture.”

“He should have taken a better one.”

“What’s wrong with the one he took? It’s realistic.”

“Look who’s talking about reality,” snarled the human resources manager.

“I believe in it and aim for it. Why should you care about your picture in the paper? No one will think more or less of you because of it. Only your actions will determine that. To tell the truth, I’m beginning to think more of you myself.”

“You are? I’m honoured!” The resource manager was sarcastic. “Finally, I stand a chance with you. Just what is it you think so much of, may I ask?”

“Your ability to discern the plot of this story.”

“Which is?”

“Bringing this cleaning woman to a grave in her native village. That’s the kind of humanity I feel proud of. I feel proud of my own too, of course.”

“Just a minute. What does your humanity have to do with this?”

“Whose if not mine? Don’t dismiss what I’ve done this time. Over the years I’ve written dozens of angry articles. I’ve attacked people and institutions. Until now, I never accomplished a thing. The libel suits I was threatened with may have been dropped, but those who threatened me went on looking right through me. They read what I wrote and said, ‘No comment.’”

“That’s what I told the owner to say, too.”

“It’s to his credit that he didn’t listen to you. This is the first time an article of mine, dashed off late at night, has changed anything. It led not only to an admission of guilt from a large bakery, but to action. Believe me, that’s made me an optimist again. An idea born in my brain has us all headed for the ends of the earth in an armoured vehicle. You must admit that for a weasel, that’s not bad … By the way, take a look at these tripods. You’re an ex-military man — what do you think they were for? They must be from the First World War. You’ll see, my friend! You’ll see what I make of all this! The editor has promised me a third of the issue if I bring him a story with some punch …”

“I hope you’ll at least acknowledge that it’s courtesy of the company you slandered.”

The weasel laughed good-naturedly.

“I may — and then again, I may not. So what if all this was paid for by a company that will only increase its profits as a result?”

“I thought you took pride in being objective.”

“Objectivity is a point of view. If you have it, nothing can destroy it. I’m here to report on how a businessman came to regret the callousness with which his company treated its workers and decided on a goodwill gesture of atonement. But since he also knows that if the gesture isn’t publicized it hasn’t happened, he’s saddled you with a photographer and a journalist to make sure his atonement is remembered on earth as well as in heaven. And with my help it will be, because I’ll write that there are still decent men in this depraved world who can accept legitimate criticism. You yourself are not only a private individual in my story, you’re a symbol. An aloof executive, a former army officer oblivious of the fact that a cleaning woman killed by terrorists went on collecting her pay packet, is now on his way to do penance, braving a winter storm on an expedition to a far land where he will beg forgiveness on bended knee.”

“Hey, go easy …” The human resources manager laughed. “If you don’t watch it you’ll end up on bended knee yourself, with your photographer taking a picture.”

“Now that’s an idea!” The journalist liked it. “If I can fit it into the story — why not? We’ll lift the lid of the coffin and give our readers a glimpse of death itself. An artistic one, shot with a zoom lens from a distance …”

“Don’t you dare!”

“What’s wrong now?”

“I’m warning you!” The resource manager’s amusement had turned to anger. “Don’t you dare think of opening the coffin … do you hear me?”

“But why get worked up? I beg to remind you that having that woman on your payroll doesn’t make her your personal property … Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but you’re here as an escort, just like me. If she belongs to anyone, it’s to her son. He signed for her and he’ll decide. Suppose the grandmother wants to open the coffin for a farewell look, who’ll stop her? With all due respect to your expense account, you’re not the boss here.”

Anger was now becoming feverish hatred.

“I’m warning you! Don’t you dare! Don’t print more crap in that goddamn newspaper of yours!”

“But why get worked up? What’s the paper to you? Do you ever read it?”

“Never. The first thing I do on Friday morning is toss it out without opening it.”

“There you are! So what do you care what’s in it? Not that you aren’t missing things, believe me. Precisely because we know that most of our readers aren’t interested in local news and only look at the rentals and used-car ads, we sometimes run surprising features, good investigative reporting on little-known subjects.”

“I believe I’ll go right on missing them.”

“That’s your right. Just hand me that satellite phone of yours, if you don’t mind. I want to know if my son is back from his school hike.”

“I’m not handing you anything. You’ve already drained my battery with all your talk. The consul had no outlet to recharge it. There are more important things than your son’s hike. I’ve told you: you’re here strictly as an accessory. I was generous enough to let you and your photographer tag after me, but that’s over with now. From now on you’ll keep your distance, is that clear?”

The weasel winced in the circle of his reading light. For the first time the emissary felt that he had managed to hurt this pudgy fellow, on whose unshaven chin a thin strip of beard had appeared.

A heavy silence descended on the vehicle. From afar, its big wheels and high-set lights made it look like a hovering spaceship. The boy had disappeared among the bags and suitcases, his long limbs folded into them. The human resources manager, weary and dejected, turned his back on the journalist, spread out his legs, and hung his scarf on a tripod. The consul removed his wife’s red cap; his steel-grey curls blew in the wind. The resource manager kept his eyes on the green dials until he dozed off to the sound of the powerful engine.

2

The engine’s silence woke him. He opened his eyes and found himself deserted. The other passengers were stretching their limbs outside, at a junction with road signs. It was nearly midnight. He stepped outside, and was surprised to see that the starry sky was bright and clear despite the biting cold. They had stayed ahead of the storm, and the two brothers, conversing quietly while one lit a cigarette from the glowing tip of the other’s, had reason to feel pleased as they affectionately kicked the vehicle’s big wheels. The consul, waving hello with a snowy branch, was in a good mood, too. He was observing the photographer, who had taken advantage of the break to shoot the vehicle from every angle. The boy, blue with cold but wide awake, was copying the Cyrillic letters of the road signs into the journalist’s notebook.

It was 10 p.m. in Jerusalem. The Sabbath was long over. Now was a good time to report on his progress to the owner. Even if the old man thought their journey unnecessary, or downright dangerous, there was nothing he could do about it now. The human resources manager could without fear inform him of the latest developments. Looking for a quiet spot, he found one to the rear of the trailer, the high-set wheels of which raised the coffin to eye level. A white rime had formed a strange crust on it, like crocodile scales, the result of its rapid passage through the frigid air. He tried peeling off a scale and stopped when the cold burned his fingers.

He opened his satellite phone and extended the antenna. But all the stars in the sky, as close and friendly as they looked, could not put him through to Jerusalem. The weasel had talked the battery to death. Cursing him under his breath, the resource manager shifted his position, but to no avail. The consul, seeing his frustration, came over to offer encouragement.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find a solution for your battery.”

“If you don’t,” the resource manager said disconsolately, “we’ll be cut off from the world.”

“No chance of that!” Perched on his grey hair, the red woollen cap lent the old optimist a childlike charm. “We may even have it already. You may not have noticed, but these two daredevils managed to push this monster nearly a third of the distance while we slept. Instead of continuing fifty kilometres to a dosshouse in the next town, they’d like your permission to make a slight detour.”

“What kind of detour?”

“A minor one. They propose changing course from east to north, twenty or thirty kilometres to a small valley where there’s an army base. During the Cold War it was a top-secret installation. Now it’s a tourist site.”

The consul explained that as relations between the two superpowers had thawed, so that threats of war no longer accompanied hopes for peace, the economic situation had surprisingly — or perhaps predictably — deteriorated. Bloated military budgets had been drastically cut. Entire army units, especially in outlying areas, found themselves on the verge of starvation, forced to survive not only by selling or renting old equipment like this armoured vehicle, but also by opening country inns and restaurants on their bases. In a former nuclear command post in the valley to the north, dug out in the 1950s, there was now a museum, half historical and half technological, that showed visitors — for an entrance fee, of course — how the country’s leaders had planned to survive a nuclear war.

“And that’s worth making a detour for?”

“A minor one. Twenty or thirty kilometres in each direction. The drivers have heard of it and would like to visit it, and agreeing will ensure a pleasant continuation of our trip. Besides, they say there is good accommodation there and first-rate food. And there’s a tour of the operation rooms, complete with a simulation of all planned first strikes, counterstrikes, and counter-counterstrikes. It’s an interactive exhibition that demonstrates the catastrophe that the pressing of a single button could have loosed upon the world.”

“Computer games!”

“Yes and no. A game replayed on its original field with the original ball is more than virtual. And we’re in no hurry. The roads are better than we anticipated and the old woman may not have returned to her village yet. Why sit waiting for her in the middle of nowhere when we can enjoy The War That Never Was? Just because we’ve set out on a hard, sad winter’s journey doesn’t mean we have to be obsessive about it. Why not have some educational fun? As far as she’s concerned” — he inclined his silver curls towards the coffin — “there’s no need to worry. My private doctor has assured me on the basis of your document that we’re in no rush to bury her. You can see for yourself that she’s well-refrigerated.”

The consul’s matter-of-fact argument drew the attention of the two drivers, who now approached them with the apprehensive boy, whose wide-eyed gaze lingered on the frostcovered coffin. Now close enough to inhale his steamy breath, the human resources manager could see that he wasn’t the clone of his mother, though he felt sure the boy was the clue to her beauty, which had once eluded him.

The journalist stood off to one side, at a distance from the photographer, who was now preparing to snap a nocturnal portrait of the group around the coffin. He was finally, it seemed, taking the resource manager’s warning seriously. By the icy light of the flickering stars, the resource manager had a sudden memory. Yes, he did recall someone who had looked like the journalist, though considerably thinner, from his year at university.

“All right,” he ruled indulgently. “We’ll take the detour and have our doomsday fun — but on one condition. Twenty-four hours will be the most we spend on it, not a minute more.”

“Not a minute more,” the consul promised happily. “And I guarantee that you’ll find an outlet there for your charger.”

When the consul translated the decision into the local language, everyone was satisfied, even the motherless boy who had no reason to hasten his mother’s burial. They clambered back into the armoured vehicle, and the engine roared a hearty thank-you. The journalist and the boy exchanged the hint of a smile, and the human resources manager wondered whether some new, wordless alliance had sprung up between them that would help the weasel stage a dramatic climax to his story? Afraid that things might get out of hand, he decided on a change of tone. Turning to the seat behind him, he declared:

“You know, I now realize why I didn’t remember you. Back then, at university, you were thinner and even more weaselly …”

The surprised journalist laughed, then let out a sigh.

“Don’t remind me of how thin I was. Those days are gone forever. But you haven’t changed at all — and I don’t mean just your looks. You still carry a shell on your back, ducking into it when anything touches you … though at least you now admit what I told you over the telephone. We actually did take several philosophy courses together. Not that I remember you because of anything particularly clever or foolish that you said. It’s because of a gorgeous girl. Don’t ask me why, but she kept coming on to you.”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Who was she? What happened to her?”

“What do you care? I suppose you’d like to put her into your story, too. Maybe your photographer can follow her around at night.”

“There, there! You needn’t be so offended. I was asking as an interested citizen, not a reporter …”

“When do you ever stop being a reporter? I’ll bet you look for scoops in your dreams.”

“That’s putting it a bit strongly. But if it’s what you think, I must have really upset you. Listen, let’s make up. Honestly. I’d like to offer you an apology … an official one …”

The emissary was taken aback. For a moment he shut his eyes and bowed his head.

“But tell me,” the weasel asked, his natural curiosity again getting the better of him, “where did you disappear to? Did you drop out after your freshman year or just switch majors?”

“I re-enlisted in the army.”

“In what branch? Manpower?

“Of course not. I was second-in-command of a combat battalion.”

“With what rank?”

“Major.”

“That’s all? You should have stuck it out longer. Don’t you know that in the Israeli army you can tie any major to a tree and come back ten years later to find that he’s a colonel?”

“I guess I didn’t find the right tree.”

“Still. What made you leave the army?”

“I was too much of an individualist. Large organizations don’t suit me.”

“Then why not something more intimate … a small commando force of your own, for example?”

“What for? To be the dead hero of one of your articles?”

“We’re back to my articles! I beg you to believe that I have other things in life.”

“So I’ve heard. I’m told you’ve been working forever on a doctorate.”

“Ah!” The weasel blushed. “I see you do come out of your shell sometimes.”

“Apparently. But what’s your subject? Why has it taken you so long?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Do we have anything better to talk about?”

“I’m writing on Plato.”

“What’s left to say about him?”

“With such a complex philosopher, anyone with a little patience and common sense can always find a new angle,” the journalist said, and added dourly, “not that that’s why my dissertation is stuck. Our wretched reality simply keeps distracting me from it.”

“Reality is only an excuse.”

“You’re right.”

“What is it about?”

“You’re sure you want to know? Or are you just trying to pass the time?”

“That too. But I’m curious to know how your mind works. I don’t want to be surprised by you again.”

The journalist let out a lively laugh. “It’s you who are surprising. Like yesterday, for instance, when you suggested this trip, or just now, when you agreed to a detour.”

“Well, I suppose I can be unpredictable, too.” The human resources manager liked the idea. “But you’re avoiding my question. What is your dissertation about? A specific Platonic dialogue or something more general?”

“A specific dialogue.”

“Which?”

“You wouldn’t recognize the name. It’s one you’ve never heard of and never will.”

“Is it one of those we discussed in our course?”

“It’s Phaedo.”

“Phaedo? No, I don’t remember it … unless …”

“It’s on the immortality of the soul.”

“No, that’s not the one I’m thinking of. There was another … you know the one. The famous one, the one about love …”

“If you’re thinking of The Symposium, alias The Banquet — no, there really are no angles left there. Platonic love has been mined to exhaustion.”

But the resource manager persisted. A friendly intellectual conversation, he thought, if not too personal, would help keep the journalist on his best behaviour. He himself remembered little of the famous Platonic dialogue, only that he had been favourably impressed that love could be discussed so candidly in a philosophy course. All that remained with him of the text itself was a story or parable about a man (but who? Adam? Everyman?) who was cut or divided in two (mistakenly? accidentally? deliberately?). Hence the human desire to reunite with one’s missing half, also known as love …

The consul, listening from the front seat, doffed his red woollen cap and remarked:

“Even a peasant like myself knows that story. Whenever I slice an apple I feel its halves wanting to reunite. That’s why I keep slicing them into smaller and smaller pieces …”

The human resources manager guffawed. His inner tension easing, he listened affably to the weasel’s rebuke:

“That’s the most superficial and obvious aspect of The Symposium. It’s no wonder that people like you always remember it. But for such a simplistic metaphor there was no need for Socrates and his friends to gather in Agathon’s house. Nor would their conversation have gone on enchanting us for thousands of years. Its real point is more profound.”

“Tell us.” Both the consul and the emissary were eager to know.

“Are you really in the mood now, in the middle of the night?”

“We have nothing better to do.”

And so, while they sat in the dark cavern of the armoured vehicle with the two drivers in front bathed in the luminous green glow of its haphazardly working dials, the journalist strove to expound the essence of love, his voice rising above the roar of the engine as the vehicle laboured up a steep winding road. Had I known that this detour would involve such precipitous climbs, the human resources manager thought, I would never have agreed to it.

“Love,” declared the weasel in high Platonic style, “bears witness to our finiteness, but also to our ability to transcend it.”

Human desire ascends by rungs like those of a ladder from love’s lowest manifestations to its highest, from its most concrete to its most abstract, from its most physical to its most spiritual. To have the world of true form revealed to one is the reward of the wise lover — who, freed of the physical object of his desire, realizes that his pursuit is of something more essential. The more he searches for it, the more he realizes that the ultimate beauty lies not in the body but in the soul …

“The soul …” The consul, perhaps reminded of his soulful wife, roused himself.

“That’s love’s secret,” the weasel continued as the vehicle slowed to take the hairpin bends. “There is no formula. Each person has to find the secret for himself. That’s why Eros is neither god nor man. He’s a daimon, thick-skinned, unwashed, barefoot, homeless, and poor — yet he links the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal …”

The vehicle came to a halt on the steep gradient. Worried that the trailer might break free on the long climb, the elder brother went to check the tow-bar. The sudden stop woke the boy who turned from his place amid the luggage to glance quickly back at the trailer, now awash in the beam of a torch held by the resourceful technician. Soft snowflakes danced in the bright light as he circled the coffin worriedly, examining its ropes and knots. Even this did not put his mind to rest; re-entering the vehicle, he took the wheel from his brother, trusting only in his own sure touch.

“That’s also why Socrates, though he did not reject the young Alcibiades’ love, also did not agree to its consummation.”

“How’s that?”

“True love requires separation. Plato specifies that the desired union of the two halves that so appeals to your imaginations must never take place. The love of beauty must remain open-ended. Therefore, it’s always in a state of disequilibrium. Its extremes can drive a man to the most shameless acts.”

3

From the first officer of the night watch to the second officer:

You’re punctual, sergeant. It’s time for the changing of the guard. But I’m not going to bed. I’ll stay up to keep you company. Half an hour ago I would have said things seemed quiet and peaceful; the hours of sentry duty had gone by in their usual drowsy haze. But suddenly I saw something new. I won’t waste words describing it. Here, take these binoculars and look out, into the darkness. Do you see that large, glowing body descending towards us through the fog? What is it? An old spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere? A UFO from a distant planet? Or am I just seeing things, as my troops always claimed? Use your fresh, young eyes, sergeant, and tell me what’s out there. Should we wake the CO or wait to get a closer look? I don’t want to end up a laughingstock.

I’ve been serving this country for over fifty years. The best years of my life have been spent right here. But the wild swings from military to civilian existence have left me depressed. I don’t know what I am any more. Who can believe that a huge, state-of-the-art installation, dug into the ground in top secrecy, one of the most closely guarded bases in our vast and powerful land, is now a tourist site run by a small, undisciplined garrison?

Do you have any idea, my young friend, just how deep the nuclear shelter beneath us is? Would you believe that once upon a time an infernal elevator burrowed ten floors into the ground before it hit a false bottom? Do you realize that underneath the command rooms and storerooms are comfortable apartments, equipped for our politicians and generals to stay in with their families? That at a depth of dozens of metres are double beds for lovers, tables set for banquets, an ultramodern kitchen with an enormous freezer filled with every delicacy — all to addvariety and spice to long months of hiding from radioactive poisons? Has anyone told you about the library of great books, the playrooms and games for children? There’s even a hospital with maternity wards and operating theatres.

They say the threat of nuclear destruction has passed. Our former enemies are now our friends and the doomsday weapons are rotting in their silos. The pinpricks of terrorists and suicide bombers don’t call for underground cities. And that, young man, has spelled the end of a career soldier’s world. I, who once served in war’s inner sanctum, have become a butler and a lackey. In the old command rooms, in which every drill made history’s heart skip a beat, I entertain the tourists with Disneywars.

You tell me, young man: Is it so? Is peace here to stay? Can we be so surethat a new threat — now, today, tonight — won’t send usback into hiding?

After all, even if we trust your twenty-twenty vision, you can’t deny there’s something worrying about an unfamiliar armoured vehicle approaching the gate with its lights raking over us, especially when it has a coffin in tow. That’s a bad omen for an ageing sergeant whom nobody needs anymore.

The “minor detour” to the newly opened tourist site in an old and still partially functioning military base turned out to be a difficult two-hour journey, climbing precipitously and then dropping just as fast. Perhaps this was why, when stopped at the gate by a beetle-browed veteran sergeant with a mouth full of gold teeth, who insisted that security regulations forbade the entry of unidentified military vehicles, the tired drivers put up no resistance and left their vehicle outside, instructing their passengers to take their personal belongings and follow the old warrior several hundred metres to their lodgings. Leaving the coffin on its trailer, they let themselves be led, not to the guesthouse, which was half a floor underground, but to the barracks room, where three soldiers lay asleep by a crackling stove. The sergeant handed them blankets, pointed to some mattresses stacked against a wall, and suggested they get some sleep; the reception officer would register them properly in the morning.

The elderly consul, by now exhausted, took a mattress, dragged it to a corner, pulled off his coat and shoes, and collapsed, taking a last rueful look at his disappointing detour before covering his head with an army blanket. The human resources manager said nothing. His military experience had taught him that a stern silence was the best tactic when his troops were aware of a blunder. Choosing a mattress, he added two blankets to the one he’d been given and lay down in the corner opposite the consul’s. The two brothers chose the third corner, where they nested side by side; the fourth corner was claimed by the journalist. In high spirits after his well-received homily on love, he invited the photographer to join him and even to take his picture in commemoration of the day’s trek before he bundled up and turned his head to the wall.

The boy alone took his time finding a place. After standing pensively in the middle of the room in his pilot’s cap, as if looking for something he had lost, he knelt by the stove and tossed a few scattered coals into the fire. He had slept most of the way and did not seem tired now. When the old sergeant arrived with a pail of hot tea, he helped pour it into cups and hand it out to the travellers.

The human resources manager, having learned the local word for thank you from the consul, murmured it when the boy bashfully offered him a carefully held cup of steaming tea. The boy smiled at him, his delicate, coal-smudged fingers grazing the manager’s own. The sweet beverage hit the spot. He would have liked a second cup, but the sergeant had already taken away the pail. There was nothing left to do but signal the boy to turn out the lights.

“What is this? Boot camp all over again?”

The giggly voice from under the blanket was the weasel’s. The resource manager, knowing that he would have trouble falling asleep and that any banter would only make it worse, shut his eyes. At once his ears were assailed by the snoring of the consul, whose saw strokes were answered by those of a sleeping soldier.

It was 2.30 a.m. As if mesmerized by the flames that illuminated his perfect features, the boy went on crouching by the stove. Now that the others were asleep, the emissary could look at him more closely. Though he knew that the boy was aware of his gaze, he could not take his eyes off him. It’s all because of his mother, he thought. I wouldn’t look at her in the morgue and now I can’t stop looking at her reflection.

He was not the only one. The old sergeant, too, could not sleep. Returning, ostensibly to add coals to the stove, he was soon questioning the youngster and listening to his version of their strange expedition. The conversation took place in low tones, and the human resources manager followed it by watching the boy’s gestures and the white-haired sergeant’s expression. Like others of his age, the sergeant inspired the resource manager’s confidence and trust; he even made him miss the grand old man himself, the company owner. Recollecting that he had been out of touch with him for nearly a day, he rose from his mattress and displayed the satellite phone and its charger to the talking pair, miming the empty battery and notching two fingers for an outlet.

The surprised sergeant took the instrument and held it in his palm while consulting the boy to make sure he had understood. Undaunted by such a challenge in the middle of the night, he seemed pleased to have found a task worthy of him. Without further ado, he stuck the phone and charger into a pocket of his greatcoat and went off.

For a moment, the human resources manager was alarmed. But before he could call the sergeant back, the boy laughingly reassured him in his own language. He smiled back, patting the blond head and returning to the blankets in his corner. The boy, too, appeared to think that it was time to sleep, for he took a mattress and stood debating where to put it. After a while, as if declaring his faith in the man who had approved his mother’s last journey, he set the mattress down beside him, pulled off his shoes, and began removing his overalls. Not only did he not mind the cold, he seemed to enjoy braving it. The resource manager, who had first noticed this at the airport, was not surprised when the boy stripped off his underwear in the heated room and knelt pale-skinned, smelling of stale sweat, to spread a blanket.

The human resources manager had a teenage daughter and had always been careful to avoid seeing her or her friends in the nude. Not since his high school days had he been in the presence of a naked adolescent, let alone one so ambiguous, half child and half adult, so masculine and yet also feminine. The boy had sloping shoulders and delicate feet, and his golden pubic hair had yet to declare itself. Even in the darkness his supple torso, extending from the bare buttocks, could not hide the signs, both recent and old, of scratches and actual bites, fingerprints of the delinquency the consul suspected him of. It was a suspicion confirmed by the look on his face, at once arrogant and desperate. The resource manager wondered if his nakedness was an extortion of payment, not only for his forgotten mother but also for the entire false promise of Jerusalem.

The boy got under the covers slowly, as if reluctant to part from his own naked form. His face was turned towards the man he had chosen to sleep beside. A breath away from him, the resource manager now had a close-up of the eyes that slanted upward from the bridge of a flattened nose. Confident that even the mother’s magic in this boy who so moved him could not shake an inner resolve that had never failed him before, he looked away to avoid misunderstanding and said “goodnight” in Hebrew.

The boy, as if he were determined to expunge from his soul every last word of the language of the country that had killed his mother, merely smiled remotely and languidly shut his eyes. I know you’re just pretending, thought the resource manager. Good night, then, and sweet dreams.

He turned to the wall, over which the flame from the stove cast its shadows until sleep snuffed them out.

For us, though, the flame goes on burning. It entices us, whirls and spins us through space and time, dream-bearers for a man in his late thirties, an ex-army officer, a divorced father of a teenage girl, a personnel manager charged with a unique mission, who now, at the first stop of his journey, in the barracks of a once-secret military base that has become a draw for tourists, lies on a thin mattress, wrapped in a foreign army blanket. Although we feel his urge to dream a dream, is it possible, in all his weariness, with the steady rasping of the sleepers around him, to give him one that willbe meaningful — one that he will remember and even describe to others?

That’s our job. We, the agents of the imagination, brokers of phantasms, are here to produce a dread and marvellous dream. Already we hover above shut eyelids, slip into the rhythms of the breath, stir forgotten childhood wishes into the remnants of yesterday, blend anxieties with fabulous desires, mix jealousies with memories and longings. Microscopic and transparently elusive, we pass, tiny dream nematodes, compactions of dissimulation, through the tough outer membranes of the soul.

And although we are all here for the same purpose, none of us knows any of the others. Incessantly we change our disguises. Two old childhood friends merge into a single youth. A conscript killed by a stray bullet returns as a company sergeant. The former foreign minister, now a next-door neighbour and possibly a cousin, is in attendance, too. And there are others, total strangers with noidentifyingmarks, like a woman our souls go out to as she passes in the street.

It’s twitching into life, this dream of ours. The eyelids flutter as the opening scene appears. A sigh is stifled. A leg shoots nervously out from under the blanket, followed by the other moving more slowly, as if someone were taking a first step, or, better yet, beginning a descent.

Good luck.

4

At first the dream descends broad, smooth steps. He is back home, visiting a new building on a street near his mother’s in which he has rented a small, attractive apartment that will soon be available. Yet it is so easy to skip down the well-lit staircase that he has missed the prominent exit on the ground floor and gone on descending, at first without noticing that the light is growing dimmer. The steps, too, have changed and are narrower. There are no more apartments. He is exploring some sort of basement. Nor is he alone on the staircase. Old men in fur hats and long, heavy winter coats stride beside him, sighing and muttering. Well, then, the dreamer thinks excitedly, I must be in the nuclear shelter and this must be the tour. But where is the tour guide to show me round?

Now, however, the dream takes a more sombre turn. The tourist site has become a frightening reality. The old men in long coats and fur hats are commissars and secret agents who have hastily launched a first strike and are hurrying to take cover from an imminent counterattack.

The steps are now narrow and steep, the walls around them crooked and constricting. In the depths of the new building stands the bell tower of an ancient church. Although he is a stranger who does not belong in this place, the dreamer wishes to be saved like all the others. Awkwardly pretending to be someone else, he is jostled into the shelter, a small, suffocating chamber filled with people casting angry, desperate glances at a transparent partition — behind which, on a small stage, bustle the leaders who have so flippantly given the dreadful order. Seen through the partition they have the silhouettes of grizzly bears oblivious to the idiocy of their actions; even so, the dreamer thinks he knows them and has run afoul of them in the past — particularly one of them, a blubbery man whose broad chest is covered with medals that look like tongues of blood and flame.

Can this be the whole secret shelter? Its entire legendary depth? Can I have agreed to make a detour here instead of proceeding straight to the village, or to take part in a war of annihilation that has nothing to do with me and that I don’t deserve? Who can survive in a pitiful shelter like this? The enemy, gnashing his teeth amid the havoc we have wreaked, is launching his revenge. It will be terrible. The forked glitter of his counterstrike, it is said, can already be seen. Why stay in an indefensible place that will only draw withering fire? My place was always in the West. Why be killed by it now?

But it is already too late. The counterstrike lands on the building in utter silence. A foul, horrid, asphyxiating smell spreads through the shelter, which is also a gymnasium. Wooden ladders hang on its walls. The panicky leaders scale them to reach a high, narrow window, through which the green tip of a cypress tree is visible. The dreamer remembers the tree from his childhood, though he has never before yearned for it as he does now.

Is it still the same dream? With no interruption other than a turning of his head, a torrid sun now melts a sky of blue. It is the eve of the holiday of Shavuot, the day of the giving of the Law, and schoolchildren with wreaths of flowers on their heads pour through an open gate, racing to show their parents the little Torah scrolls they have made in class.

For whom is he waiting? He has no wife, his daughter is unborn, and no child with a wreath is looking for him. Though grown up, he is a student himself and late for class. Easing out of the rope that ties him to a tree, he flies through the blossoming garden of his old high school, over the stone footbridge that crosses a pond, and up the stairs of the school, flight after flight, until he reaches the classroom. It is deserted.

Has she cancelled the lesson, or have his fellow students skipped the class?

There is no message on the blackboard. On the teacher’s chair is a slide rule brought from her native land. In spite of the holiday, then, she came for their trigonometry lesson, only to be let down by his classmates. He knows that his lateness has made him a traitor too, and so he takes the slide rule, which is warm from the sunshine, hoping that bringing it to her will gain him forgiveness. But the teachers’ room is empty. The foreign trigonometry teacher has been summoned to the principal’s office to be fired. Though only a student, he is certain his love and devotion can save her. And the school secretary is on his side. “Run!” she says. “They’re doing it right now.”

He runs and is seized by a sweet dread when he sees her by the large window in the dimly lit principal’s office, slumped in an executive armchair in which she has been placed to ease the shock. He now realizes he has always known she is not a cleaning woman but a teacher. Gone are her apron, broom, and cap. She is wearing a flowery, childish summer blouse like the nightgown spread out to dry by the old owner in the shack. The collar is open, revealing a long, strong neck tilted sensuously back and perfect, sloping shoulders of white marble in which there is not a drop of blood.

The dream turns sultry with a passion he has never felt before. Is the bomber on his way to the market? Has the bomb already gone off? He is reminded that he has written down the story, not only of her life, but also of her love for him, which took place long ago when he was a child or perhaps even an infant. They made love as she nursed him. How frightful that not even so ancient a passion can save her! He leans towards the armchair to make certain there is no mistake and that this is indeed the forgotten woman the night shift supervisor was smitten by. Miryam, Miryam, he says, recalling the new, secret Hebrew name on her door. Her photograph, which he displays to others to establish her beauty, excites him. Too distraught to remember that he is only a student, he brandishes the slide rule at the principal and his assistants, who are struggling to extricate the half-dead woman from the armchair and throw her away with the rubbish.

Wait, the dreamer shouts as he runs forward, spurred by the secretary’s sympathy. Give me time. A lonely but ambitious student, he embraces his teacher with a sob as though she were a fellow classmate, even though she is ten years older than he …

Is he still talking in his dream, or is this a thought that has spiralled out of it? For as he covers her with his kisses, he murmurs or thinks:

“Why give in? Why give up? Is there anywhere in the world a cross worth my dying on?”

5

The emissary’s dream sent such pleasurable shock waves through him that he sat up the moment he opened his eyes, as though to secure the vision in his consciousness and prevent further dreams from uprooting it. Having taught himself in the army to form a mental picture of his unit the instant he awoke, making certain all his men were at their posts, he was aware of the barracks at once. A professional glance informed him that the three soldiers sleeping by the stove were gone, their place taken by three others wrapped in the same blankets.

The travellers were scattered in their corners, fast asleep. The stove, to which coal must have been added, burned brightly. Although it was still dark out, he deemed it best to have a look at the coffin. Taking care not to waken the boy, who had thrown off his blanket, he rose from the mattress. For a second he debated whether he was entitled, or perhaps even obliged, to cover the sleeping youth. Yet it seemed best not to touch him even in passing.

He dressed carefully, wrapping his scarf around his neck and slipping into his heavy winter coat before tiptoeing out with his army boots in his hands. Exchanging a quick glance with the consul, who opened bloodshot eyes, he stepped into the corridor. There the old sergeant was sleeping by a makeshift barrier erected to keep the unexpected visitors from touring the site without payment.

The resource manager had experience with sleeping sentries and had disarmed and court-martialled more than one of them. Since this was not the approach he wished to take with the wrinkled old sergeant, however, he sat down beside him and put on his boots while waiting to be noticed. Indeed the sergeant soon opened his eyes and recognized him. The boots, even if issued by another army, aroused his comradely instincts. Lifting a thin blanket, which at first glance seemed designed to warm a cat or lap dog, he revealed the satellite phone standing upright in its charger, from which improvised wires ran to a large battery that had once belonged to a half-track or tank.

Deprived of words, the resource manager could only bow an appreciative head.

The sergeant carefully detached the wires, cleaned the phone with a corner of his coat, and handed it to its owner, who immediately put it to the test by dialling his office. Within seconds he heard his own voice asking, deep in the Jerusalem night, to leave a message. Graciously complying with his own request, he reported positively on the latest developments while smiling at the sergeant’s efforts to follow his conversation with himself. Yet when he took some money from his wallet and held it out, it was firmly rejected. How could an old soldier accept payment for a military duty?

Once he had assured himself that the phone was working again, the manager signalled that he wished to go outside. To allay suspicion, he mimed his intention to do no more than check the coffin. This was not easily accomplished, since the sergeant had forgotten the coffin’s existence. When a rectangular box sketched in the air failed to remind him of it, the manager tilted his body backward, shut his eyes, crossed his arms on his chest, and made believe he was about to be buried.

The sergeant, his memory refreshed, was happy to grant the visitor his wish. Opening the door, he accompanied him outside. It was the manager’s impression that he could have commanded the soldiers at the rusty iron gate, even the old sergeant himself, to carry out any order he gave them if only he had been able to speak their language. At the very outset of his military career, when given his first squad command, he was aware of exerting a sober authority that raised his troops’ morale. But although he was a natural leader, he also managed to convey to his superiors that there was nothing in the world he thought worth being killed for in battle. Little wonder he’d never got far in the army.

The scaly rime was gone from the coffin, and its metal surface was visible again. He touched it to see how cold it was. Not knowing at which ends the corpse’s head and feet were, he positioned himself between them, reached for his phone, and scanned the sky for stars. The clouds had blurred their pinpoints. Pulling out the phone’s antenna, he dialled the number of the owner from memory.

It was the middle of the night in Jerusalem. However, a man who stayed cozily at home while his personnel manager atoned for his inhumanity had to accept being wakened at odd hours.

“It’s me …”

“Well, well! At last.”

“I know this may be an intrusion, not only on your sleep, but on your dreams. Still, I thought it best to talk to you in private, with no one else around.”

“You needn’t apologize, young man. At my age, sleep is a waste of time. I’m happy to hear from you at any hour.”

“I didn’t want that weasel of a journalist you put on my tail to overhear our conversation.”

“You’re right. It’s best to keep your distance from him. I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about him, though. He’s seeking atonement for himself. The editor promised he’ll be more sympathetic this time.”

“It’s almost morning here, sir.”

“I’m aware of the difference in time. I’ve been trying to follow your strange escapade on the map …”

“I see you already know everything.”

“No one knows everything. It’s enough to know the main points. When I saw yesterday that you were keeping radio silence, I phoned our consul. She told me you had decided to turn your mission into an expedition.”

“What was your reaction?”

“I’ve known of your fondness for adventure since your days as a travelling salesman, but I had no idea that your guilt towards that woman was so great.”

“You’re wrong, sir. It’s compassion I feel, not guilt. Not just for her, but for her son. He insisted at the airport that his grandmother attend the funeral … and since we couldn’t bring her to us, I thought, as long as we’re here anyway, why not give this woman what our overburdened government can’t afford and bring her home to her native village at our expense? That’s the proper ending for this story.”

The old man sighed. “Who knows what is or isn’t proper? Or whether your ending will really be the end? But what’s done is done. The consul has described the fair-haired boy who put you up to it.”

“He didn’t put me up to anything. I felt sorry for him. He’s a lonely youngster whose father treats him like a stranger. And he has the legal right to decide where his mother will be buried.”

“Yes, I know all that. The consul isn’t sparing of words. Or of details and commentaries. I know about your armoured vehicle, too, and about the battery you couldn’t charge. Not to mention her magnificent husband whom she can’t stop praising …”

“He’s an excellent fellow.”

“Well, she misses him. I believe she’s jealous that he’s minding you instead of her. By the way, what does she look like, this consul?”

“A giraffe.”

“That’s just what I thought. She talked on and on. I can’t remember all she said.”

“Let’s stick to the point, then. We’re in the middle of a long trip and can’t back out. There’s no way of knowing how much it will cost.”

“I’ve already told you the expenses don’t concern me.”

“I am not the only one who feels guilty, sir, am I?”

“If that’s how you wish to interpret my generosity, so be it. Just don’t worry about money. You have unlimited credit.”

“Things are very cheap here, but they still have a way of adding up.”

“I’m relying on your judgment … on your instincts.”

“Don’t rely on them too much, sir. My intuition has taken to dreaming. Are you awake enough to listen to a wonderful dream I had?”

The old man seemed to shudder. “No! Your phone costs too much to dream over it. You were told to go on a short mission. If it turns out to be a longer one, that’s fine with me. Just don’t go off on any tangents …”

“We’re already on one.”

“How’s that?”

“A minor one. To a former army base that’s now a tourist site.”

“What kind of base?”

“A nuclear command post from the Cold War. Our drivers heard great things about it and decided to use our rest time for an educational tour.”

“You’re talking to me from a nuclear command post?”

“No. We haven’t visited it yet. We’ll do that in the morning. I’m out in the open now, next to the coffin. It’s cold, but not unbearable. I’m facing east because the dawn has planted a rosy kiss there.”

“A rosy kiss?”

“Actually, the mist makes it pink.”

“Watch out, young man, watch out! You’re leaving me more worried than I was at the beginning of this conversation. Don’t go off on any more tangents or tours at my expense. And remember, that woman won’t last forever, not even in the cold.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten her. We have a document from the Pathology Institute that says we have lots of time.”

“Listen!” The old man’s apprehension was growing by the minute. “Don’t rely on any documents. Trust your instincts. And remember that you’re an emissary, not a general. I want you to stay in close touch with me from now on. And don’t waste your battery on foolish conversations, yours or anyone else’s.”

6

At first he thought he had identified the exact point at which the sun would rise — a bare, snow-covered crag between two rounded hills — because the rosy glow was brightest there. Yet the loitering sun surprised him by appearing far away, from behind a distant mountain, flooding the wooded valley with a cloudy yellow light.

If the ground I’m standing on, thought the human resources manager, is one big nuclear shelter, there must be visible or concealed air vents. Looking for them, he noticed instead, beyond some distant trees, silhouettes and smoke. These belonged, he saw as he approached, to a group of vendors or gypsies setting up a market in a clearing. Was it for local inhabitants or tourists? Or might it be — but why not? — solely for him, the utter stranger, an emissary from afar who had risen early because he feared another dream?

Slowly, he made his way through the trees. Although the appearance of a mute foreigner caused the stall holders to pause in what they were doing, this did not keep him from inspecting the merchandise they had taken from their sacks and crates. The still-fresh memory of his dream of their countrywoman, whom he was returning to her native soil, was like a protective bubble around him. He strolled past heaps of potatoes, carrots, and winter squashes, red-rinded cheeses, pink, skinned suckling pigs, furry rabbits in their cages, freshly baked rye breads of different shapes and sizes, old household utensils, glasses, plates, embroidered tablecloths, linens, colourful dresses, icons, statuettes of saints. Smells of cooking enveloped him.

Only now did he notice, by signs glimpsed through their scarves and heavy coats, that most of the vendors were women. Now some smiled at him and softly called out their wares. Although he had no local currency, he was certain they would accept anything he offered.

But what should he buy? What was typical of the region? Perhaps he should wait for the consul’s husband to help him tell the real from the fake. Meanwhile, he would have something to eat — something hot, even scalding, to fortify him against the death that had hovered in his dream. At the far end of the clearing, steam rose from a large pot. A woman of uncertain age, wearing a tatty fur coat, stirred the pot while singing hoarsely to herself. He couldn’t be sure whether she was retarded or belonged to some exotic Arctic race. Next to her, swaddled like a gift package, a baby lay on a thick woollen blanket. What did its sweet little face, peering from beneath its bonnet, remind him of?

The emissary, lured by an excess of initiative to the ends of the earth, recalled how five days previously he had followed his secretary’s baby as it scuttled down the corridor and rapped with its dummy on the old owner’s door, so that he’d had to scoop it up in a quick embrace. If only he could touch the reality of the warm little body in front of him long enough to shake off his dream! Yet as no mother would lend her baby to a mute stranger, he took out a bill and pointed to the dark contents of the pot, which appeared to be some kind of stew.

The woman gave him a worried look. Muttering something, she refused to take the money. But Tartar stew was what he wanted and he laid the bill down insistently, reached for a metal mug by the pot, and handed it to her to fill. There was a warning buzz from the vendors around her — for her or for him, he couldn’t tell. Since she continued to hesitate, he dipped the mug in the pot himself and slowly downed the thick liquid. Although he knew from the first sip that he was drinking an unusual brew, he went on draining it for its warmth. I needn’t worry, he told himself. I ate all kinds of swill in the army and was none the worse for it.

Peasants and stall holders had surrounded him, gawking as he emptied the mug. Some were scolding the woman and trying to overturn her pot. Yet she did not seem intimidated. Brandishing an iron ladle, she kept them at bay while laughing heartily and breaking into a little song. The human resources manager, regarding her more closely, decided that she suffered from Down’s syndrome.

Well, he thought, comfortingly, even if she fed me carrion, I’ll puke it up in the end. But the baby is a lost cause. I can’t play with it in front of all these anxious women. It’s time to move on.

Several women followed close behind him. Although he could feel their fear on the back of his neck, he made no sense of it. Quickening his pace, he hammered on the iron gate. The soldiers recognized him and let him in, shutting the gate behind him.

He swallowed it before we understood what he wanted. There was no way to warn him because he couldn’t speak our language. That’s why we followed him, to tell the soldiers he had to throw up. The problem is that they don’t open the gate any more unless you have a ticket. What an army! Our parents worked themselves to the bone digging a shelter for the imbeciles who ranthis country, and now we have to payto visit it!

What will happen to him now? He doesn’t know what he’s eaten or who made it. In the end they’ll accuse us of poisoning him and shut down the market. We were too kind to that madwoman, all because of her baby. No more! You’ve made a mockery of us long enough, you lunatic! Say goodbye to your pot and your fire and take your baby that doesn’t know its father and go sing to it by the lake. And watch out that some wolf or fox doesn’t eat it by mistake.

At first he thought the stew had a fishy saltiness. Then it was a cloying sweetness. Furtively, so as not to offend the guards, he spat on a rock. His spittle, though tasting like blood, was green.

I should have swallowed it more slowly, he scolded himself. Nevertheless, he had faith in his digestive system. When all the cooks in the army had failed to poison him, how could a market vendor succeed?

The old sergeant was still at his post outside the barracks, making tea on a kerosene burner. The human resources manager, grateful for the charging of his battery, nodded hello. Although he would have liked to wash the nauseating taste from his mouth with some hot tea, he thought it best to rejoin the sleeping travellers.

Either their sleep was dreamless or their dreams were very quiet. The manager put a finger to his lips to warn the consul not to disturb them. “Everything’s fine,” he whispered reassuringly, though the consul did not look in need of reassurance. Drawing a curtain on the window to keep out the morning light, he went to his corner, covered the bare feet of the boy with an unthinking movement, lay down on his mattress, bundled up in two blankets, and hoped for a dreamless sleep himself.

In fact, he had no dreams. He had only a terrible, stabbing pain, as if someone were hacking at his intestines. Three hours later he awoke, jumped to his feet, and doubled over. Fortunately — it was late and the daylight was bright — there was no one else there, because the needs of his body had overcome its inhibitions and he had fouled his pants and bedding. He was barely able to stagger to the bathroom. It was a dismal WC without a toilet seat or window, its only toilet paper strips of old newspapers, and once there he had an attack of chills. Filthy and shivering, he writhed on the cold concrete floor, not caring that the door was unlocked.

As though the woman he had fallen in love with in his dream had passed on her condition to him, he felt more dead than alive. Yet despite his agony, he could still laugh at himself. I’m obviously not a general, he thought, because even a squad leader would know enough to lock the door before deciding what to do about this mess. Still, I’m in a foreign country and will never meet anyone from it again, so what do I care? Let the journalist and the photographer see the state I’m in, too. Take a good look, you weasel. It’s the Eros of your Symposium, a thick-skinned, unwashed daimon linking the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal …

He didn’t even try to reach the sink. It was as if getting to his feet would make him responsible for himself when all he wanted was to be a helpless baby whose mother would change his soiled clothes.

As an officer, he had seen enough cases of food poisoning in his troops to know that this one had only just begun. The blithely swallowed stew had not yet had its last word. He mustn’t leave the bathroom before he was sure he could control his bodily functions. Exhausted and in shock, he stripped off his pants and underpants and lay shaking and half-naked, waiting to see what his body would do next.

A long while passed before he heard the door handle rattle. Not knowing which was worse, being found by a stranger or by someone he knew, he looked up to see, in a patch of light framed by the doorway, the Tartar boy. The light eyes beneath the pilot’s cap observed him with a maturity beyond their years. Although he knew the young man had wiped all knowledge of Hebrew from his mind, he addressed him in it firmly to explain that, as bizarre as it seemed, he was looking at a case not of insanity but only of food poisoning, for which a doctor had to be summoned at once.

7

The boy did not, as might have been expected, run to the consul, who was enjoying a hearty breakfast in the hotel dining room. Rather, he went to get the old sergeant. A quick look at the half-naked emissary on the bathroom floor was all the sergeant needed. Leaving at once, he came back a few minutes later with three soldiers and a stretcher. They rolled the sick man onto it, where he lay like a wet, filthy rag; covered him with blankets; and carried him to a service elevator that slowly descended to the hospital deep in the ground.

The sergeant’s quick response, taken without consulting his commanding officer, was not just the consequence of his natural sympathy for the emissary, whose paratrooper’s boots bespoke a military past. The opportunity to perform an emergency manoeuvre in a base degraded by tourists appealed to him equally. True, the underground hospital was no longer what it had been. Less military activity meant fewer medical problems, and those who suffered from them nowadays preferred the civilian hospital in a nearby town. Why take one’s chances with a questionable army medic in the bowels of the earth?

Hence, the hospital’s burned-out light bulbs had not been replaced, its leaky taps continued to leak, and its central heating had been despaired of long ago. Yet its emergency lights still functioned, a legacy of the Cold War, and the sergeant was able to find his way around. Knowing that food poisoning needed no antidotes, only time to purge the system, he ordered his men to place a bed, equipped with two large chamber pots for sudden exigencies, near the toilet. Then he removed the blankets, took off the last of the emissary’s clothes, and cleaned him carefully with wet washcloths. The boy, the emissary rejoiced to see, did not shrink from lending a helping hand and even wiped his feet with a cloth. What an irony, he thought. We all said he would have to bathe at our first stop, and now he’s bathing me.

But what was the emissary to wear? His dirty clothes needed to be laundered and there was little point in wasting fresh ones on a man in his condition. At each new attack he jumped to his feet, determined to reach the toilet in time, only to leave telltale traces on the floor. The old sergeant, well aware of the danger, put his troops on full sanitary alert, took a torch and followed its beam to the maternity ward, and came back with some towelling nappies, faded but clean, that had been meant for Cold War infants born in a nuclear heat wave.

The mortified emissary fought with the soldiers in silence. The sergeant and his men were still swaddling him when the boy, who did not seem daunted by the sight of the struggling adult, laid a white hand on his forehead and said in Hebrew:

“No worry … is all nothing.”

The words calmed him enough to let the soldiers finish knotting the loose ends. He even smiled back without correcting the boy’s grammar.

Now that the nappy was in place, the emissary was made to drink some stale underground water to prevent dehydration. The blankets were then piled back on top of him until they formed a small mountain.

The situation was under control. The troops were dismissed and the boy was sent to inform the travellers. The sergeant appeared to regard the sick man as his personal responsibility. Drawing up a chair by the bed, he filled a humpbacked little pipe and sat awaiting the next eruption.

It was not long in coming — and it came with unanticipated ferocity. The sergeant kept calm. He changed the nappy and cleaned the patient, by now too exhausted to offer any resistance. The emissary’s head weighed a ton and his eyes shut of their own accord.

It was in this position that the consul, who had interrupted his breakfast, found him. Listening in astonishment to the story of the stew, he was soon joined by the two journalists. The human resources manager lay so passively that he would not even have protested had they photographed him in his nappy for the weekly.

Yet nothing could have been further from their minds, which were elsewhere, dwelling on the immense underground shelter the travellers had just visited. Had fortifications like these, they argued between themselves, allowed the old regime to be brutal and aggressive — or had they been, on the contrary, demonstrations of weakness and fear? Room after dark room and row upon row of hospital beds lay beyond a door that the old sergeant had left open. As obsolete and rusty as the medical equipment was now, it had been sophisticated in its day, designed for every eventuality. The photographer could hardly be blamed for snapping pictures with abandon until the sergeant lunged at him, snatched the camera from his hands, removed its lens, and stuck it in his pocket.

The day passed slowly. The educational detour was taking longer than anticipated. The sick man was allowed only clear liquids. The general opinion was that anyone who had swallowed poison with such alacrity deserved to go on lying underground, wearing a nappy, flanked by two chamber pots. In any case, he wasn’t alone. The old sergeant sat by him and took care of him.

8

Watched over by the sergeant, the emissary surrendered to the chills and spasms that wracked his body. If I’ve actually poisoned myself out of love for a dead woman, the feverish thought passed through his mind, it’s time to take a break and let others look after me.

Since military permission was needed to descend to the underground hospital, a schedule of shifts was set up. Satisfied that the nappies were doing their job, the sergeant let the consul relieve him and went off to rest. The human resources manager, having grown so fond of the ex-farmer that he felt like his lost cousin, gave his tiredness free rein and sank into a profound stupor intensified by the subterranean depths.

Two hours later, his innards torn by a savage new pain that sent him running in a daze to the bathroom, he noticed that the shifts had changed again. The consul was gone, his place taken by the photographer — who, sitting in the shadows by a coal brazier that had been brought to give heat, regarded the emissary’s writhings with disinterest. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked perfunctorily, after the sick man had cleaned himself, changed his own nappy, and crawled back under his blankets.

“No, thanks, I can manage. Actually, you could bring me some water. I don’t want to dehydrate.”

The photographer rose slowly and filled a glass with stale water. Instead of handing it to the sick man, he placed it on a table by the bed as if afraid of catching his poisoning.

“Would you mind feeling my forehead to see if I have a temperature?”

The photographer shrank back. “I wouldn’t rely on me. You should ask for a thermometer.”

In their day and a half of travelling together, this was the first time the two of them had been alone. The human resources manager noticed that the photographer was older than he had thought, perhaps even as old as himself.

“I’m sorry they took your lens away,” he said, trying his best to break the ice. “You could have photographed me in a nappy, surrounded by chamber pots. It would have made a better cover picture than the boy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It would have shown your readers what you put me through.”

“What you’ve been through is of no interest to our readers,” the photographer declared dryly. “You’d have to croak to make the front cover.”

“Well, well! I see it’s no accident that you teamed up with a weasel.”

“It’s he who teamed up with me.”

“What does the boy have that I don’t? His good looks?”

“His mother. It’s she who should be on the cover. We simply don’t have a decent shot of her.”

The human resources manager shivered under his blankets. “I’m warning you too. Don’t you dare open the coffin.”

“Calm down. No one is opening anything. You shouldn’t aggravate yourself when you’re sick.”

“I’d like to ask you something. You’re a professional photographer with a practised eye … what’s so special about her face … or for that matter, about his? Why are we attracted to them? There’s something about the eyes … an arch of some kind … do you think it’s a racial feature?”

“No, it’s not that,” the photographer said with confidence, as if he had already considered the matter. “It bothered me, too. That’s why I kept shooting the boy until I figured it out. It’s an epithelial fold in the corner of the eye. And the high cheekbones add to the illusion …”

“Interesting,” the sick man murmured. “I can see that you’ve thought about it.”

The photographer rose to warm his hands at the brazier. “You didn’t really think our readers would prefer the smell of your nappy to such a face, did you?”

The manager blushed. With a friendly smile the photographer said:

“I hope you’re not offended.”

“Offended? Of course not. Just pray that the sergeant gives you back your lens in time for the funeral.”

“Don’t worry. I have a backup camera. The main thing is for you to get better so that we can move on.”

The sergeant arrived with a pitcher of tea. The shifts changed again. Now it was the turn of the elder brother, who arrived with the emissary’s carry-on bag and the leather suitcase.

“You didn’t have to bring them,” groaned the resource manager, who was in too much pain to make himself understood. “The suitcase isn’t mine anyway.”

This is totally absurd, he thought. Here I am hospitalized in an obsolete nuclear shelter, wearing nothing but a nappy, looked after by people I can’t speak to, lying in light that’s toodarkto readbyand toobright to sleep in. He rose rebelliously, went to his bag, and took out a track suit and a sleeping pill. Donning the track suit over the nappy, he swallowed the pill. In case of another attack, the cramps, he hoped, would wake him in time. Helped by the elder brother, he detached the emergency light by his bed, added another blanket to the pile, and tried falling asleep again.

He awoke too late. Once more he was soiled and soaking wet. Not even the soldier on duty, fast asleep by the brazier, could help him. Time, which had congealed in these depths during the Cold War, turning to a grey sludge between the concrete walls, had now also ceased to flow for the sick man. Had he imagined it or had he really been given a glass of tea by the consul and promised that he would be as good as new in twenty-four hours, as happened with cows, horses, sheep, and goats? And had the weasel, coming to discuss his dissertation in the middle of the night, actually spoken of the daimon, whose love was more than any woman would want to endure?

Once their journey resumed, he would perhaps find out who had sat by his bed and who had been an hallucination. One way or another, when the sleeping pill wore off and he woke again, weak and drenched in sweat, the ghostly light in the windowless, timeless room heralding no known hour of the day, he knew he was over it. He was purged not only of the poisonous stew from the market but also of many older, forgotten toxins too, going back to his school years and the army.

He undid the last nappy and tossed it into the bag by his bed. Then he cleaned himself one last time and added his track suit to the bag. All out of fresh clothes, he opened a package brought by the sergeant. In it was an assortment of army trousers, shirts, and underwear, bequeathed by unknown soldiers discharged long ago. Picking items that looked his size, he slipped snugly into them. When the soldier sleeping by the bed opened his eyes, he was astonished to see the sick tourist transformed into a private in the Maintenance Corps.

The emissary, who had a normal human talent for displaying pain and misery, now deliberated how best to convey his return to health. In the end, he raised both arms high with a triumphant grin. The soldier understood at once. Since he was forbidden to free the patient without permission, however, he had to go and ask the sergeant.

Thoroughly clean and totally void, the human resources manager asked to go on a tour of the shelter before leaving it. With his satellite phone in the deep pocket of his fatigue pants he strolled through the huge rooms of the hospital. In the spectral light he saw unused blankets lying folded on virgin mattresses piled on rusting iron beds. He entered an operating theatre in which no operation had ever been performed and opened and closed drawers of medicines until, in one of them, he found an astonished little mouse staring at him.

If such a tiny creature going about its business could penetrate the hidden fastness of a nuclear shelter, he thought, could not an ethereal sound wave do the same? Taking the phone from his pocket, he decided to put it to the test.

He had no idea whether it was day or night in this place, much less in Jerusalem. Who could he call there? Certainly not the old owner. Nor the office manager. Nor his own secretary. Not even his mother, whom the story of his illness would only frighten. That left his daughter. Surely he had the right to wake her if her young voice was what the doctor ordered.

The call went through amazingly quickly. The voice at the other end was as clear beneath the ground as it would have been from a mountaintop. It was not his daughter’s, however, but his ex-wife’s. Wide awake and relaxed, she spoke softly. To his surprise, she did not hang up on him.

“It’s me …”

“Yes, I can hear that. What’s wrong? You don’t sound so well.”

“I’m not.” He was touched by how intimately she still knew him. “Not entirely …”

“What’s the matter?”

“I had food poisoning. But I’m better now.”

“Who poisoned you?”

He laughed. “No one. I poisoned myself. I’m better.”

“You always thought you had a cast-iron stomach. It’s time you learned you have your limits.”

“You’re right. It is time.”

“You’re better?”

“Yes. I’m getting over it. I had a rough day. I was a wreck. But I’m better.”

“It takes time. Watch what you eat. It’s best just to drink. A lot.”

“I’m drinking. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For worrying about me.”

“I’m not worrying about you. I’m feeling sorry for you.”

“That’s something, too. Thank you for feeling sorry, then.”

“I don’t feel as sorry as all that. You don’t deserve it.”

“Thank you anyway. It’s nice to hear you being patient. Could I ask you to do me a favour and wake our daughter? I need to hear her voice.”

“You’ve forgotten that it’s Monday. She starts school early today. She’s already left.”

“She has? What time is it?”

“Seven. What happened to you? I’ve known you to lose track of many things before, but never of time.”

“You’re right. The soldiers who took care of me after I collapsed took my watch and haven’t returned it yet. And there’s not a ray of sunlight where I am.”

“Where are you?”

“Buried underground. I’m in a nuclear shelter that’s also a tourist site.”

“You’re buried underground? I thought you went to bury a woman.”

“Yulia Ragayev? She’s still above ground. We’re taking her to her mother.”

“While doing some sightseeing. I thought you were in a big rush …”

“Because of the … corpse? We have time. There’s no need to worry. There are medical procedures nowadays. It’s not what you imagine.”

“I’m not worrying or imagining anything. I couldn’t care less. I simply don’t understand why you had to travel so far because of some dumb newspaper article. You could have buried her in Jerusalem. It’s probably what she would have wanted.”

“So now you know what she would have wanted. Perhaps you do care after all …”

“I do not! Let’s drop it. I’ve had enough of your wisecracks. I’m sorry I ever mentioned her … Wake up! Who is she to me? Who are you? What do you want? Poisoned or not, go away. Do what you want. Go touring with corpses. Just leave me in peace.”

9

Without waiting for their lunch, the seven travellers boarded the armoured vehicle, which coughed and shook vigorously before emitting a puff of blue exhaust and lurching from its place with a happy growl. The coffin, its ropes reinforced by a metal cable, bumped along behind it. It was the human resources manager himself who had given the order to depart. Although he’d emerged pale and weak from the depths, a long look at his folded mattress in the empty barracks room from which his two disturbing dreams had vanished — leaving him fancy-free — had convinced him to continue his mission. The consul moved the boy to the front seat, cleared a space amid the luggage for the emissary to lie in, and even coaxed him to wear his wife’s red woollen cap as a head-warmer and general restorative.

Since the army base had no laundry service, the emissary had to go on wearing the second-hand army uniform in place of his own clothes. It was added to the moderate bill he received for their lodging, meals, and tour, which he augmented with a tip for all the nappies, hot tea, and sympathy. As before, the sergeant did not want to take the money. His military pride, he told the consul, would not allow it. But when his troops assailed him for his stubbornness, he flushed, gave the emissary a military salute, shut his eyes tight, and let the money be placed in his hand. The photographer, his lens restored, could not resist popping a flashbulb.

As they climbed slowly back out of the valley, now splendidly lit by a radiant noonday sky, the travellers were better able to appreciate the unique spot they had been in. Hidden in darkness on their arrival, the nuclear shelter’s illusion of pastoral beauty was now visible through the vehicle’s windows. The woods, the simulated quarry, the artificial lake, and the rows of red-roofed houses below them were all camouflage.

The elder brother could read the landscape as closely as a bedouin reads the desert. Once they reached the top of the mountains encircling the valley and started down the other side, towards the junction at which they had left the main road, he pointed out the stroke of luck their detour had been, despite the emissary’s illness. Apart from providing them with rest and good food, it had enabled them to escape the storm that had pursued them to this very junction. Uprooted trees and fallen road signs testified to the ferocity of the assault that had blown itself out in the expanse still ahead of them.

It was this expanse, with its forests and rivers, that they now had to cross. Neither of the two brothers was familiar with it. Although they had consulted the soldiers and been given a good military map, there was no knowing if they would be able to cover ground as quickly as they had done in their journey’s first stage.

Night fell. The darkness didn’t matter; the real problem was the frequent crossroads, whose signs had vanished in the storm or quite simply been turned around. Still, they had no choice but to press on. Their detour had taken longer than they had planned. The old grandmother could well have returned to her village by now and heard about her daughter’s death, the details of which she had a right to know as soon as possible.

As they drove farther into the night, they were surprised to discover that they were in a populated area. On the first leg of their journey, they had met no other traffic. Now, however, they occasionally passed a slow-moving truck or had to pull onto a shoulder to let a speeding car flash drunkenly by. Once, they stopped for two horses whose harness had become entangled in a wagon shaft. Another time, a large cow blocked the road. To their astonishment they even encountered another vehicle exactly like their own. It might have come from the same assembly line or even the same armoured brigade, the only difference being that this one had been turned into a mobile home and its trailer into a kitchen.

From time to time they drove through a town or village. Despite the late hour, the inhabitants were awake and friendly and ready to give and even draw directions. The news that the coffin had come from Jerusalem and was now on its way to the birthplace of a woman killed in someone else’s war caused a stir. More than one local resident doffed his cap and crossed himself as if in the presence of a sacred relic. Their warm reception encouraged the elder brother to listen to the advice of a gas station attendant to take a shortcut through a forest. By following it, he was told, they would reach the river crossing early in the morning in time to make the first ferry, an icebreaker that did not run at night.

It was nearly dawn when the driver, with the help of the attendant’s drawing, found the beginning of the shortcut. As exhausted as they were, they decided after a brief debate to set out on it. It was a dirt road strewn with twigs and branches, over which the vehicle crunched pleasantly.

It was still crunching when the sleeping travellers awoke to find themselves in milky daylight, in a forest whose branches were matted with a parasitical growth that hung in long, dull beards; snarled and tangled, these sickly curtains made it hard to see what lay ahead. The drivers were in constant danger of getting lost. Far from a shortcut, the forest now seemed like a huge creature that threatened to strangle them. The road, clearly marked at the outset, forked every several hundred metres, forcing them to choose.

The younger brother drove. The elder brother sat beside him. The travellers had never seen him so pale and tense. He held the map in one hand and a compass in the other, and both hands shook each time he said “left” or “right”. The route indicated by the compass did not always look correct; often it was the narrower or more rutted of the choices and caused the coffin to jounce wildly. Although the vehicle performed well, its big chassis, springs, and powerful engine a tribute to the engineer who designed it, their navigator’s growing anxiety that they might be on a wrong course, a course that would leave them stranded among the trees like another parasite, infected them all.

Each retreated into his own heavy silence: that of the consul, who until now had never lacked words and had served as a bridge between the locals and the foreigners, was the hardest to cope with. Yet the emissary was determined to respect it. Feeling hunger for the first time since his poisoning, he rose from his litter, found a baked potato, and gnawed at it with a steady appetite. He was facing backwards, looking out at the profuse matted clusters that brushed the woman’s coffin. How had he ever been foolish enough to agree to make her his business?

Several nerve-racking hours went by. At last, the lackadaisical sun, after blinking on and off through the trees, shone for an instant on a broad band of clear horizon. At once they set the vehicle on a course for it.

The attendant’s advice had been correct after all. The shortcut not only existed but had brought them to their destination — not a moment too soon, since the frozen river’s banks, between which the ferry plied a channel, were already crowded with people. Men, animals, cars, and wagons were waiting to cross to the opposite side, on which another multitude was waiting to cross back.

This was the river that had been mentioned to him by the consul — whether as a challenge, an obstacle, or a memorable experience — on his first day in the provincial capital. Frozen into a white glaze, it was solid enough to walk or play on. The elder brother, after parking their vehicle in line, was overcome with relief at being rescued from circling endlessly in the forest. A shy man unaccustomed to displaying emotion, he left the group and strode out onto the ice. By the time he reached the middle of it, he was no more than a dot on the white surface. There, as if suddenly hit by lightning, he fell to his knees and struck his head on the ice in thankful exaltation.

Once more a market had sprung up, a small one in the middle of all the people, vehicles, wagons, horses, cows, and pigs. If nothing else, it helped everyone to bargain away the time while waiting for the ferry. The consul, however, his red cap back on his head, feared a repeat of the emissary’s illness. Nothing that he did not personally authorize, he told the travellers, was to be eaten by them.

The daylight was fading. The coffin, it seemed, would not cross before morning; they would be marooned by the river for the night. The consul decided to throw himself on the mercy of the crowd. Taking the young boy with him, he circulated through it, stopping repeatedly to tell the tragic story of the dead woman going home to her old mother. The simple narrative had its effect, as did the boy’s handsome looks. The unyielding line relented and gave way, letting the coffin and its armoured escort proceed.

They boarded the ferry at dusk, on its last crossing of the day. A glorious sunset lit their way. Over the objections of the consul, who had lost his easygoing attitude since the poisoning, the human resources manager decided to cross the ice on foot and asked the photographer to record the event for his daughter. The journalist, unwilling to be bested, decided to join him. They walked cautiously, doing their best to keep their footing, while the photographer climbed on the coffin to get a better shot.

“If the ice breaks now,” grinned the pudgy journalist as they heard a suspicious crack beneath them, “our story will lose its hero and its author in one fell swoop. Nothing will be left but a back-page item about two adventurers who looked for trouble and found it.”

“That might be just as well.” The emissary’s deep sorrow surprised him. “With a reputation for devotion to corpses, no living woman will want to touch me.”

“I’m not so sure,” the weasel said with a smile, laying a consoling hand on the shoulder he had promised to steer clear of. “You’ll see that your devotion will win you many admirers. You won’t have to look for them in out-of-the-way bars any more. They’ll come looking for you … and who knows, perhaps for me too …”

10

Since hearing the bitter news from Jerusalem, which we had imagined existed only in the Bible, we couldn’t stop tormenting ourselves. Holy Mother, give us the heartfelt wisdom not to err!

At once we sent a messenger to tell the old woman to come home from the monastery. We made her promise to say nothing about the tragedy. Fournights and fivedays went bywithout a wordfrom her. Although the storm had washed away roads and knocked down bridges, we lit a bonfire every night to make sure she could find her way back.

Ah, what would we do if the dead daughter arrived before the mother was here to mourn for her? Should we bury her or wait? And if we waited, where was the most dignified place to keep her? Should we break into the old woman’s cottage and put her daughter in the bed she was born in? Or should we place the coffin, as we always do for funerals, by the altar in the church? But dear Jesus, how long could we pray with a corpse lying beside the holy icons? And how could we, who are usedto the deadfaces of agedpeasants, look into a coffin with a mangled bodyfrom Jerusalem?

And who would speak at the funeral? We hadn’t seen her for years and knewnothing about her. Allwe had were distant memories of a quiet, delicate child who went everywhere with her mother — to the fields, to the market, to the church — until some man fellin love with her and carried her off to the big city. Atfirst her mother usedto travel all the way there to see her. She said her daughter was an engineer and had a beautiful baby. Butoncewe were connected to the telephone lines, she stopped going. Could the poor woman have been in touch with her daughter in Jerusalem without telling us?

For five nights we knew no peace. And then came the news that the coffin had crossed the river on the ferry, with an armoured vehicle and a big escort — and still no signof the mother. What were we to do? What were we to tell the delegation that was bringing usan engineer who had died as a cleaning woman in someone else’s war?

Holy Mother, we asked and asked and got no answers.

And so, when the big wheels came to a halt by our fire, we didn’t know what to believe. We even hoped that the coffin might be empty and that your silence had foretold a miraculous resurrection. For a second, but no more, we actually thought that was her climbing down from the vehicle, as young and beautiful as ever. But as we approached in joy and trembling, we saw that it was only her son, a tall boy who had brought his mother home to his grandmother for her to turn despair and anger into sorrow and pity.

It was a distinguished delegation. Its armoured vehicle was so big and old that it needed two drivers, and its story was so long that it needed two journalists, and even its leader needed someone to interpret what he said.

At first we didn’t know that the white-faced man in the old army uniform was the leader. But he was a man without guile and we understood as soon as he spoke, Holy Mother, that he was the answer to all our questions.

This is what he said:

Villagers do not fear the passing of time. The body of your fellow villager has returned to you embalmed like an Egyptian princess. Therefore, be in no hurry to bury her. Time will stop and wait patiently for her mother to return and bid her farewell. If you are afraid to lay her in her childhood bed, or in the church, and to pray next to a corpse which is neither a statue nor an icon, put her in the school in which she studied as a young girl, because that is where we all waited for our own mothers. And when it is time for her funeral, know that she has been brought back to you as whole and unblemished as a sleeping angel and do not fear to lift the lid of her coffin.

As for me, I am not a messenger who comes and goes. I am a human resources manager whose duty it is to remain with you until the last clod of earth has fallen on my employee’s grave, before returning to the city which is for me only a bitter reality.

11

The peasants, though reluctant at first to put a coffin in a schoolhouse, quickly came to the conclusion that it was the most logical and reasonable place. One way or another, the delegation needed a place to sleep, and so the villagers decided to give the children a few days off school. Anything to avoid leaving an untended coffin in their midst.

The ropes were untied and the coffin was moved from the trailer to the teachers’ room, the door of which was firmly locked. The tables and chairs were pushed together in the classrooms, the floors were covered with fresh straw, from the houses came mattresses, blankets, and pillows, and the delegation was soon ensconced in the little schoolhouse. Calm returned to the village. A few peasants remained by the bonfire, so they could greet the returning pilgrim, who they feared might by now have an inkling of what awaited her.

Yet the messenger managed to bring the old woman back without arousing her suspicion. In fact, so uplifted was she by her visit to the monastery, with all its prayers and masses for the New Year, that she returned wearing clerical robes and a monk’s hood. When the human resources manager, the consul, and her grandson were hurriedly brought to her late at night, they were startled to be confronted by a round little monk with kind eyes and a gentle voice.

The villagers, it seemed, had lacked the fortitude to inform her of her daughter’s cruel death and had left it to the emissary to break the news, with the full authority of the company — indeed, of the entire city of Jerusalem — behind him. First, though, they had tactfully presented the old woman with her grandson. Although she had not seen him for years, she recognized him at once and understood that something grave must have happened to have brought him from afar. At once she tore off her hood, revealing in full the original face from which such a captivating pair of copies had been made.

The frightened boy was already regretting the journey he had insisted on. Pointing to the schoolhouse in which his mother lay, in a stammering voice he told his grandmother of the Jerusalem bombing. The shocked old woman grasped it all immediately. Yet it was not just the grandson’s story that shocked her. She was also aghast at the idea that the body of her daughter had been transported all this way for no good reason. Why, she asked angrily, had the dead woman not been given a funeral in the city she had chosen to live in, in Jerusalem? It was her city. It was everyone’s.

“Everyone’s?” The emissary whispered the word wonderingly to the consul. “In what way?”

“In no way,” the consul snapped, baring a temper he had kept concealed until now. Without asking for the opinion of the human resources manager, he sternly explained that Jerusalem was out of the question.

The old woman reacted like a wounded animal. Sensing that the delegation’s true captain was not the elderly man with the silver curls but the younger one in the uniform with the pallid face and weary eyes, she threw herself heartrendingly at his feet, pleading that her daughter be returned to the city that had taken her life. That way, she, too, the victim’s mother, would have a right to it.

The grandson was bewildered by this unexpected appeal. He bent to pull the old woman to her feet, only to be pushed angrily away. Sprawling in bitter grief in the dirt by the campfire, she all but rolled on its coals. Several villagers had to seize her and bring her back to her cottage. Her feet barely touched the ground as they carried her; she seemed to skim through the air.

The human resources manager felt devastated at having been the bearer of doubly disappointing tidings. All his good intentions — all his daring generosity — had led to a completely unintended result. Perhaps, he suggested, the consul might come with him to the cottage to help explain that he wasn’t to blame.

For the first time since he had made his acquaintance, however, the manager could feel that the ex-farmer was hostile. Adamantly, almost insultingly, the consul rejected the request.

“That will do! We’ve had enough of your guilt. You’ve gone much too far with it. You can’t involve the whole world in your obsession with a dead cleaning woman.”

Coming from someone so friendly and considerate until now, this rebuke left the emissary too stunned to speak. Deeply hurt, he turned and retraced his steps towards the sleeping travellers in the schoolroom.

Near a pile of chairs and tables, not far from the blackboard, the journalist and the photographer lay wrapped in their blankets. As usual, the human resources manager thought, they’ve missed the critical, excruciatingly human moment. When they wake, they’ll make up for it by staging some tear-jerking scene.

He looked balefully at the consul, who was spreading a blanket before crawling under it. You’ve forgotten that I hired you, he wanted to say. You’re under contract. But thinking better of it, he took the leather suitcase and left the schoolroom.

The long northern winter night showed no sign of ending. The death having been announced and all unanswered questions answered, the peasants had dowsed the fire and gone to bed. In the morning they would prepare the church for the funeral service.

He walked along snow-covered paths, among darkened cottages. For the first time since setting out from Jerusalem, he felt the weight of his own solitude. Yet he was sure that he could find the old woman’s cottage and let her know that he alone found nothing strange in her request.

A light shone in a window. That’s hers, he guessed, reminded of Yulia Ragayev’s little shack in Jerusalem. Coming closer, he could see through the fogged window that the old woman was not by herself. Her grandson was at her side, and she was surrounded by friends. Although he had no way of making himself understood, he could no longer depend on the consul. He entered the cottage silently and handed the old woman the suitcase as if he and she were family and no words were necessary between them.

12

At noon he joined the consul and the two drivers in the line of villagers waiting to pass before the coffin. Something in him, however, balked. I have seen her, he thought, in my dreams — in torment, faint from weariness, but alive. I have even been tempted to love her. What need have I to see her corpse?

He silently signalled the consul and the drivers to step ahead of him. The journalist and the photographer were already inside the church and had seized the best vantage points. Although he had forbidden him to take pictures, the human resources manager was sure that the photographer would strike silently, without his flashbulb, to fill the pages between the rentals and the used-car ads. The weasel and the rattlesnake hadn’t made this journey together in order to miss their true subject: the alluring face of Death.

The last villagers disappeared through the large wooden door of the church. The human resources manager did not follow them. He turned and walked down a narrow path to the little village graveyard. At its end was an ice-covered wall that seemed to mark the limits of the universe.

There wasn’t a sound. He wandered past new and old tombstones, looking for a fresh grave. None was visible. The old woman must be insisting on the coffin’s return to Jerusalem. Perhaps the villagers, afraid of her wrath, were planning to bury it secretly, at night.

A sound of voices reached him from the church, along with a thin, stifled wail. Then came the deep baritone of the village priest. It began with words and changed to music, to a slow, ancient, ecstatically chanted dirge. The villagers joined in, piercing the emissary to the quick. Although he knew a place of honour had been prepared for him and he would have liked to express his condolences, he was determined to remain outside. He did not want to see her, not even from a distance.

It’s time to say goodbye, the human resources manager whispered, wiping away a cold, unexpected tear. He paced back and forth by the icy wall, touching it warily, while the old woman’s complaint went on pursuing him. Did we make a mistake? Were we too hasty? An engineer like that doesn’t come to Jerusalem just for work. She comes because she feels that the shabby city is hers too. Her Jewish lover gave up and left, and she stuck it out. If the night shift supervisor hadn’t fired her out of love, she would still be working in our bakery.

He was too distraught to tell whether he was trembling from cold or excitement. If it was noon in this place, it was 10 a.m. in Jerusalem. He took out his satellite phone and dialled the company owner.

The office manager was delighted to hear the human resources manager’s voice. She had been thinking of him, she said. Had he reached his destination? Was he already on his way back? Everybody was asking when he would return.

“Soon,” he said softly, astonished once again by how close the phone made her sound. Right now, he needed to talk to the old man.

“Have you forgotten that it’s Wednesday?” She was surprised that he hadn’t remembered. “He’s on his weekly tour of the bakery.”

“In that case,” the manager said, “put me through to him there.”

“Wouldn’t you rather wait until he returns to his office?”

“There’s no time,” he said firmly. “We have to make some decisions.”

She transferred the call to the bakery. Above the old man’s gnarled voice, he could hear the purring of ovens and the rattle of production lines.

“I have something urgent to discuss with you.”

“Ah, my dear fellow! I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. But I’m in the middle of making the rounds with the shift supervisors. Can’t it wait?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s hard to concentrate with all this noise.”

“Yes, sir, I can hear it. It doesn’t bother me, because there’s not a sound where I am. I’m standing by an icy wall with nothing beyond it. It feels like the end of the world. It’s comforting to know that the bakery is still running. But perhaps you can’t hear me.”

“Don’t worry about that, young man. I’m used to the sounds of the bakery. I’ve been hearing them since I was an infant at my parents’ knees. It’s like the sound of waves to a fisherman.”

“Well, then, I’ll get to the point. It’s complicated. We have some decisions to make. The grandmother returned to the village this morning. Right now she’s looking at the open coffin and confirming it’s her daughter.”

“I thought that might be necessary. I should have warned you that you might have to look, too.”

“I didn’t look at anything, sir. Nor do I intend to. There’s no need. That woman is inside me by now. I even dream about her.”

“As you wish, my friend. You know that I trust your intuition. When will the funeral take place?”

“That’s just it. We’ve got to the painful part, but not to the end. You were right to worry about that. It turns out that the end hasn’t ended. The old woman doesn’t want to bury her daughter in the village. She’s upset that we didn’t bury her in Jerusalem. She says it’s her city, too.”

“Hers? How?”

“That’s a good question. We’ll have to think about it.”

“But who the devil is she, this grandmother?”

“An old woman. I’d say about your age. And she’s strong and stubborn like you. This morning she came back from a pilgrimage dressed as a monk. It was a sight for sore eyes.”

“But what is it you want from me now?”

“I want your agreement to our bringing the cleaning woman back to Jerusalem.”

“Back to Jerusalem! How can we?”

“We can and we will. There’s no choice.”

“Excuse me. We have no jurisdiction. It’s up to the government and National Insurance.”

“The government has washed its hands of the matter. Even if we could pressure it, there is no way they can now make arrangements for the return of a dead temporary resident who believed in Jerusalem more than Jerusalem believes in itself. The two of us — you, the owner of a large company, and I, your loyal employee — may be private individuals, but with our vision and initiative …”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, sir. Not at all. It takes more than that to drive an old hand like me out of his mind. My mind couldn’t be clearer. It’s as clear as blue skies and a wall of ice.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Maybe this noise is affecting my hearing after all. Please stick to the point. Are you proposing to return to Jerusalem with the coffin? How can you?”

“Why not? We have to bring the car and trailer back anyway. The aeroplane that flew us here also flies the other way. And if you’re concerned about time running out — for the woman, that is — you needn’t be. Time isn’t running in the coffin at all. We’ve been assured it’s been brought to a stop.”

“But suppose I say no. What will you do then?”

“I’ll bring her back at my own expense. I’m not a wealthy man, but I’ll manage. As your human resources manager, I’m authorized to grant myself a small company loan. The question, sir, is rather: what will happen to your precious humanity? Who will restore it? Do you want the weasel to write that you backed out at the last minute?”

“Now you’re threatening me.”

“Threatening? Oh, no, sir. I’m your loyal employee. I’m just surprised that a man of your wisdom and experience didn’t realize that a journey like this could benefit a city we’ve despaired of.”

“Benefit how, you absurd man? With another grave?”

“Another grave and two new residents, an old woman and a handsome young man.”

“You’re proposing to bring them too?”

“Why not? Isn’t it their right?”

“Right? Right?” The old owner’s shouts drowned out the sound of the ovens. “What right are you talking about?”

“That, sir, is something we’ll figure out. As always, I am at your service.”

Haifa, 2002–3