A Woman in Jerusalem (3 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then why did you fire her?”

Who said she’d been fired?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t believe it …”

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

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

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

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