A. Yehoshua - A Woman in Jerusalem

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.