A Woman in Jerusalem (5 page)

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

The resource manager lost his temper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t believe it,” the resource manager said bitterly. “If you’re in favour of science, what is this whole crusade for the dignity of the dead?”

The wild music suddenly stopped.

“The dignity of the dead?” The weasel sounded truly startled. “Do you really think that’s what I’m fighting for? You’ll have to excuse me, mister, but you’re missing the point. I thought you would have realized by now that I don’t give a damn for the dead. The line between life and death is
clear to me. The dead are dead. Whatever dignity we accord them, or fear or guilt we have about them, are strictly our own. They have nothing to do with it. I’d think that a personnel director like you would understand that if I feel pain or sorrow, it’s for the anonymous living, not the
undignified
dead. You may think I’m a romantic or a mystic, but the ‘shocking inhumanity’ is yours. And so is the unforgivable ease with which you forget a worker who doesn’t show up for work. What with all the unemployed out there, you’ll find someone else, so why worry, eh? If I let her stay unidentified for a few days longer, it was only to shock our jaded readers.”

“But that’s just my point,” the resource manager said. “You didn’t care about her at all. You just wanted to build a case. It’s the worst kind of muckraking.”

“What else could I do?” The journalist let out a sigh. “Such are the times we live in. You can’t sell an idea, no matter how passionately you believe in it, unless you serve it cooked up with a scandal. Believe me, if the editor weren’t so squeamish I’d have sent the photographer to shoot that woman in the morgue, because the director there told me … he said she’s … I mean was … in his opinion … a good-looking woman. Or special-looking, anyway …”

The resource manager thought he would choke. “
Good-looking?
Special-looking? Incredible! How dare you talk that way? Such good friends you two, he gave you a peep show. Don’t deny it! You make me want to puke …”

“Calm down. Who said I saw her?”

“You’re the scandal, not us.” He was getting carried away. “You complain of our inhumanity, but you don’t mind your friend abusing his position to tell you intimate things about the dead. A good-looking woman? Who gave him permission to discuss her? Is that any way to deal with a terror victim? Unbelievable! The man is sick – and you’re his accomplice. I could file a complaint against both of you. Who are you to give victims marks for being beautiful or ugly? I felt nauseous from the moment I started reading your article. It’s not only nasty, it’s pathological …”

There was a chuckle of satisfaction at the other end of the line.

“Suppose it is. Why shouldn’t it be? When everything around us is collapsing, it’s pathological to fight it.” True, his friend’s praise for the woman’s beauty – the weasel was decent enough to admit it – was what had aroused his interest in the first place. But why was the human resources manager surprised? Now that he knew who she was, he surely
remem
bered
her.

“Remember her? Of course I don’t.” Once again
something
quailed in him at being linked to the dead woman. “How could I? Our firm employs, in both of its branches, 270 or 280 workers in three shifts. Who can remember every one of them?”

“Well, you might at least tell me her name. What was her job? There must be a photograph in her file that we can publish. Or are you saving it for your apology? It will pep up the story. Our readers will love it …”

“A photograph? Forget it! And you’re not getting her name from me, either. You’re not getting anything unless you promise to withdraw your article altogether, or at least to tone it down.”

“But why should I? It’s a solid piece of writing. The one thing I’m willing to do is investigate the whole matter more thoroughly. How can a company fire someone and still keep her on the payroll? I wouldn’t mind looking into that … she deserves as much …”

“For what purpose? To tell more lies and make more mistakes? Tell me: When Jerusalem is burning, does any of this matter? I’m not even talking about your photographing me in the street without permission or dragging in my divorce as though it were of public interest, although that’s one thing that at least you could have left out …”

“Why? Don’t tell me it’s fiction,” the journalist said. “I’ve already told you: a little bit of harmless gossip can make a point better than all the generalizations in the world. The public deserves to know how jobs are handed out in big
companies. And why doesn’t it matter? People like to read about terror attacks. They’re not abstract. They’re close to home and could happen to them. We all put ourselves first. The next time you’re in a café, look at the customers. Apart from their depression and resentment at the situation, you can see how delighted they are, all the same, to be alive … Why are you so angry with me? I don’t deserve it. If you were to meet me in person, you would remember that we were once in the same class at university, in an introductory lecture course on Greek philosophy. That’s why it surprised me to discover that you were heading the company’s personnel division. I wouldn’t have imagined you in such a
cut-and-dried
job. I don’t suppose it’s coincidence that the poor woman got lost in all your paperwork. She must have been a cleaning woman or something …”

“Something.” The resource manager winced.

“Won’t you at least tell me her name?” the journalist pleaded. “You obviously know it.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“You’ll have to mention it in your apology anyway.”

Feeling the weasel’s teeth sink into his throat, the resource manager regretted having phoned him.

“No, we won’t,” he protested. “We’re not divulging any details. In the end, we may even choose not to respond. You just want to make us look terrible, to keep hitting us below the belt. Why help you? You can crawl in the dark on all fours, mister weasel, you can crawl like a blind animal and eat dirt …”

There was no surprise or anger at the other end of the line. Only a chuckle of satisfaction. The human resources manager hung up.

He was now not only bone-weary but hungry as well. Before calling home again to see if his daughter had arrived, he went to the men’s room to freshen up. It was being cleaned by
someone new, a young blonde woman he had never seen before. Startled by his appearance after office hours, she took a step back while he graciously signalled her to carry on and then went to the ladies’ instead. There, on his secretary’s initiative, a full-length mirror had been installed. Facing it in the stillness of the evening, he saw a thirty-nine-year-old man of average height and powerful build, with hair clipped short in boot-camp style – a vestige of his many years in the army. In recent months, he had not liked the way he looked. A gloom had settled over him, narrowing his eyes in an
expression
of vague injury. What’s bothering you, he silently scolded the figure staring glumly back at him. Was it only the owner’s self-indulgent concern for his humanity? Or was it also the prospect of his own photograph in the local weekly, accompanied by a cynical reference to his divorce? The journalist, he now realized, was more cunning than he had thought. Barring a clear apology, he would probe some more and come up with a new accusation for next week’s
instalment
. Once he knew the woman’s name, it would be only a matter of time before he got to her fellow workers. Anyone who could make friends in a morgue could make them in a bakery too. Someone there had already leaked the connection between his divorce and his new job. He was quite sure it wasn’t his secretary. Not that his reputation mattered to her, but the human resources division’s did.

He splashed his face with water while considering the option of not reacting to the article at all. An aloof silence might be the best strategy. But such a strategy would make the owner say he was dodging his duty, which was the last thing he wanted. He ran a small, fine-toothed comb through his crew cut, took a tube from his pocket and rubbed Vaseline on his chapped lips, and returned to the men’s room, determined to find out who the new cleaning woman was and who had hired her. She was gone, vanished like a ghost.

The office manager knew it was him even before he said a word. “We’re all fine,” she reassured him gaily. “We’re heading back to the car with all the homework, even her
assignments for the weekend. We’ll get to work on it as soon as we get home. I’ll help with the English and my husband will freshen up his maths. Would you like to say hello?”

His daughter’s habitually estranged, defensive voice had a new, hopeful note. “Yes,” she told him. “They’re very nice and they’ve promised to help with my homework. You don’t have to hurry.”

She giggled and handed the phone to the office manager, who asked whether the article had been cancelled.

“Not a chance. I should never have brought it up with that creep. He not only won’t retract a word, he’s planning a second instalment.”

“Well, take your time. You have all night. We’ll be here with your daughter. We’re not going anywhere …”

“I don’t need all night,” he said. “And I’ve begun to think of it in a different, more sensible light. Why don’t we just let the article appear and sink it by not responding? If you give me the old man’s cell phone number, I can catch him before the concert.”

The office manager, however, was not about to expose her boss to such a half-baked idea, certainly not before a concert. Why throw in the towel? “Think it over,” she said. “Don’t make any rash decisions. Remember that you have all night …”

He was about to make a cutting remark about the “all night”. but refrained out of consideration for his daughter. Lamely saying good night to her, he reached for his loaf of bread and held it up to smell its freshness. Should he return to the bakery to warn the night shift supervisor of the journalist’s plans, or could that wait until tomorrow?

Although he had intended to take the loaf home with him, he couldn’t resist tasting the bread. In the absence of a knife, he tore off a piece with his strong fingers and opened his secretary’s fridge to look for something to put on it. Tucked away in the butter compartment he found a chunk of yellow cheese, and though sure she wouldn’t mind his taking it, he shrank from the thought of having to apologize in the morning
for invading her privacy. Her new, free tone towards him and the night shift supervisor was bad enough without letting a chunk of cheese further lower the barrier he had erected between them, especially in the past months, since he had been single again.