A. Yehoshua: A Woman in Jerusalem

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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