A Woman in Jerusalem (19 page)

Climbing back up to the ground floor, he found himself locked in a second time, the small airport having been shut down between flights. A key had to be sent for before he could exit and join the group waiting for him beneath a small canopy. A flashbulb popped as he cautiously made his way between banks of black slush. He looked up to see the grinning photographer. He was not, he thought ruefully, going to have much privacy on this trip.

The tall consul, dressed in a black fur coat, a red woollen cap, and galoshes, made him think of a fairy godmother – or of an old peasant, like her husband, magically transported from some penurious henhouse or barn to a position of state. Underneath the canopy, which stood in an icy expanse devoid of a single building or tree – or anything at all except an old, one-winged military aeroplane – she embraced him warmly, apologized for the treatment he had received, declared that the authorities’ apprehensions were nevertheless not unfounded, and introduced him to the deceased’s husband, Mr Ragayev, a tall, gaunt engineer with dull eyes in a haggard face. His obsequious bow suggested that he had been informed by the consul or her husband, or perhaps even by the weasel, of the compensation sent by the bakery from the land of horrors he had left behind. And yet even though he had since remarried he seemed in no mood to forget the grief and insult meted out to him by the woman who had abandoned him and was now returning in a metal box. Since she was deaf to his complaints, he was forced to voice them to her chaperone.

“Tell him to be quick,” the resource manager whispered to the consul, who was translating. A brightening dawn flung glittering swords at a low, leaden sky. He was only now beginning to grasp what the arctic cold of this country was like. Moreover, the consul was finding it difficult to be concise, since she felt compelled to defend the country she represented against the ex-husband’s bitter reproach that that country had irresponsibly extended the visa of a woman to
whom it would offer only poverty, solitude, and death. Once that peculiar friend of hers had fled back home in
disappointment
, the gaunt engineer complained, his ex-wife should never have been allowed to remain only to perish in a blood feud that was none of her concern. And the most absurd part of it (the consul was translating as fast as she could) was that he was now expected to take charge of the body of the woman who had two-timed him! He realized, of course, that the consul’s government was paying the costs. But this was the least it could do after causing the needless death of a foreign worker whom it had neglected to expel … and who would pay for all his time and mental anguish? He was a busy engineer and not in the best of health; truth be told, it wasn’t sorrow or compassion that he felt for his ex-wife, but anger and humiliation. Of course, he was a grown man and could cope. But what about his son? The boy was so devastated by the death of the mother who had sent him back to his native land that he had refused to bury her without the presence of his grandmother, thus forcing him, the father – as if he hadn’t got enough on his mind! — to twist the boy’s arm for the sake of a woman who had let him down …

His grievances listed, the gaunt man seemed content. The shadow of a smile flitted over his pale face as he lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew out perfect smoke rings. A moment later, however, the cigarette had flown from his mouth and lay glowing on the ice. Shutting his eyes, he turned red and doubled over in pain, racked by a fit of coughing that caused him to leave the cover of the canopy, tear open his jacket, vest, and shirt, and bare his gasping chest to the elements.

“Don’t let him fool you,” came a whisper as the paroxysm continued. It was the weasel – who, in all the excitement, had forgotten the resource manager’s warning to steer clear. “It’s just an act to make you up the ante.”

“But where is the boy?” the emissary wondered. He was the only person there without a hat and his bare, closely cropped head was pounding from the cold.

The journalist took him by the arm, turned him around,
and steered him towards a parking lot on the far side of the canopy. He now saw that the small airport was near a city: a skyline of buildings, spires, and domes gleamed through the fog. Cheered by these signs of civilization, perhaps even of culture, he followed the journalist to a van where a driver was dozing at the wheel. In the back seat, he glimpsed through a grimy window a young passenger in overalls, sitting with his head tossed back not in sleep but in a rigid gesture of defiance.

At long last, thought the resource manager. Her own flesh and blood!

The journalist’s heavy, padded boots, part of an outfit he had purchased against the polar weather, crunched the ice. Approaching the van, he rapped lightly on its window to let the boy know someone wished to meet him.

But the boy seemed in no mood to meet anyone or even to leave the car – and when scolded for his indifference by the man at the wheel, he merely looked away and jammed down the earflaps of the old pilot’s cap he was wearing. At this, the driver stepped outside, opened the back door, yanked his young passenger from the car, and disdainfully knocked off his cap. In silent fury, his eyes filled with tears, the boy threw himself at his assailant and pulled his hair.

The emissary’s heart went out to the youngster. So this was the young man mentioned in the job interview he had conducted. In the midst of the fracas he made out a winsome Tartar tilt to those light-coloured eyes, the harmonious product of a rare racial mixture. My secretary is right, he scolded himself. I live inside myself like a snail, beauty and goodness passing me by like shadows.

“What was that?” the weasel asked, sensing his agitation. “Did you say something?”

“No, nothing.” He shrank from the probing antennae that, instead of keeping their distance, were latching onto him more and more.

His coughing fit concluded, the boy’s father hurried over to break up the fight. Yet the boy, too enraged to acknowledge defeat, now threw himself in despair at his father. The tall
consul, confident of her powers, went over to lend a hand. The father did not need assistance, though. Dragging his son to the edge of the parking lot, he subdued him
single-handed
. The photographer, convinced, so it seemed, that nothing was real unless filmed, popped flashbulbs at them as they wrestled.

“They don’t get along,” the consul explained to the emissary. “When we came to tell the boy about his mother, he wasn’t home. Neither his father nor his stepmother knew where he was or when to expect him. Since returning from Jerusalem a few months ago, he’s been depressed. He hangs out in the streets, plays truant from school, and appears to have fallen in with criminal elements. His father didn’t want to break the news to him. Besides fearing a hysterical reaction, he didn’t think he would be believed. He wanted us to do it, and we had to wait until midnight for the boy to come home. At first, as the father predicted, he was in a state of denial. He had just received a letter from his mother; how could she be dead? He even took it from his pocket to show us. It had been written a day or two before the bombing and said she was postponing a planned visit from winter to spring because she had to look for a new job. We tried to reason with him. We showed him the postmark and swore to him she hadn’t suffered. But the more we talked, the more he clammed up; we could see that he wanted us to go away. It was only when my husband told him that the coffin was arriving in two days and that he would have to sign for it and authorize the funeral that he changed his tune. He started to cry and scream at us, to curse his own mother, and to threaten that he wouldn’t sign anything. We could bury her in the market where she died! We could burn her body and scatter the ashes in Israel! He wasn’t going to solve our problems for us. And if she did have to be buried here, his grandmother could sign the papers. She had sent his mother to Jerusalem – now let her answer for her blood.”

“
She
sent her to Jerusalem? How’s that?” asked the resource manager.

“Who knows? You can’t tell what he’s thinking. Not even his father can explain him to us. We’re stuck with him …”

“Wait a minute.” The resource manager’s eyes were still on the wrestling match, which was now coming to an end. “How old did you say he was?”

“Fourteen at most. But he’s mature for his age, mentally and physically. You’ll see for yourself. Being so isolated in Jerusalem gave him a tough skin. I’m told his mother worked the night shift.”

“That wasn’t our doing. She asked for it because it paid more.”

“Whatever. I understand. But he spent those nights roaming the streets and falling in with a bad crowd.”

“A good-looking boy like that attracts people,” remarked the journalist, who seemed to consider himself an equal partner in the conversation. “Just look at my photographer: he can’t stop shooting him. I tell you, he’ll be the lead picture in my article.”

“Wonderful!” The consul, unaware that the newspaper was only a local weekly, was impressed.

The resource manager turned and strode towards the boy, who was now gripped tightly by his father. In the icy, intensifying light, his pure, finely chiselled face and wet, wonderfully bright eyes were more pronounced. The arch in their upper corner, like a prolongation of the brows, made the emissary’s heart skip a beat.

“I still don’t get it,” he remarked to the consul, who had followed him. “Couldn’t you have found the grandmother and brought her here?”

“What are you talking about?” The consul was
flabbergasted
. “This is a big, backward country and communications are rudimentary. It was all we could do to get word to her via someone from a nearby village. She’s gone on a pilgrimage for her New Year and won’t return for several days.”

“Well, then,” the resource manager said briskly, “we’ll wait until she does and then fly her here.”

“How will you do that?” The consul’s astonishment was
growing. “Do you have any idea where you are? There’s no airport anywhere near her.”

“How about a helicopter?”

“A helicopter?” The consul let out a groan. “I can see you’re in dreamland. What helicopter? Just think of the distance. Who’ll pay for it?”

“We’ll do our share,” the emissary said cautiously. He had an urge to meet the dead woman’s old mother. “A few months ago, I read about a helicopter being dispatched to an oil rig in the open sea, to bring the father of a soldier killed in action to his funeral.”

The consul was growing exasperated. “There’s no
comparison
! She wasn’t a soldier killed in action. She was a temporary resident of doubtful legal status. I’m warning you for the last time: Don’t expect the world you’re in now to resemble the one you’ve come from. Conditions are different here. They’re tough, and in winter they’re downright
primitive.
Things you think should be possible aren’t. Forget it!”

“What do you mean, forget it?” The resource manager was losing patience, too. “We’re talking about the legitimate request of a boy who’s lost his mother. Being a temporary resident didn’t keep her from dying in Jerusalem. Like it or not, we’re responsible. It’s our job to let her family attend her funeral. There’s no choice. Why should I apologize for sympathizing with the boy?”

“We all sympathize. But sympathy won’t bring the old woman here, especially in the middle of the winter. Don’t even think of it!”

“But why not?” He flushed at the consul’s bluntness. “You’ll excuse me, but I didn’t come all this way not to think of our government’s incompetence. On the contrary. I’m here to see to it that competence prevails. I’m a human resources manager and I know what a mother’s death means to a boy, even if he pretends not to care. Why shouldn’t we bring his grandmother to mourn with him? If not by air, then by land …”

“You can forget about that, too. The trip from her village
takes several days and you can’t count on transportation. She could never manage it by herself even if she wanted to. I don’t understand why you’re so obstinate about not burying a coffin you brought yourself.”

The emissary rebuked her sharply. “First of all,
I
did not bring it. It was sent by your government and mine. I accompanied it as a gesture of goodwill. And second, the funeral can be postponed. That’s not a problem. I have a document from the Central Pathology Institute. Even if I can’t read it, I’m quite sure it’s satisfactory.”

“I swear, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“What am I getting at?” It was a question he was asking himself as well. Yet the cold that was shrivelling him couldn’t chill his inner zeal. “It isn’t so complicated. Even if it’s only a matter of making up for a clerical error, one depicted by this journalist as a nasty case of inhumanity for which I’m here to compensate this young man” – he pointed to the boy, who could tell that he was being talked about – “that’s no reason to ignore his psychological distress. It’s based on the genuine, and to my mind legitimate, desire that his grandmother be with him at the funeral. Why shouldn’t we agree?”

“Why not, indeed? But unfortunately, this grandmother exists only in theory. Not only hasn’t she heard the news yet, she’s too far away to do anything about it when she does.”

The resource manager felt all eyes on him – the handsome boy’s and distrustful ex-husband’s too. The driver had joined them as well. Even though the three of them couldn’t follow the Hebrew conversation, they sensed that the emissary from a distant land was struggling with a new idea. Breath steaming from their silent mouths, the photographer and the journalist looked at the manager benevolently, curious to see how far he could push their story against the consul’s practical objections.

“First of all,” he said, addressing the consul with an imperious dryness, “suppose you tell me what we’re talking about. How far is it to the village?”

“Do you think I know? My husband can tell you exactly. I’d say there are at least five hundred kilometres of difficult
terrain between us and this boy’s grandmother.”

“Five hundred kilometres? That’s not so bad …”

“Possibly more. Don’t hold me to it. It could be
six.
”