A. Yehoshua: A Woman in Jerusalem

“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 something 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 …”

Feeling oddly emotional, he planted a kiss on the baby’s head to thank him for behaving so well.

The little boy shut his eyes blissfully and let the dummy drop from his mouth.

Having finished playing detective, the secretary buttoned her fur coat. She removed her net cap and handed it to the supervisor, who carefully folded it and put it in his pocket as if it were the last vestige of the death he had just learned of. The secretary was now engaged in watching the long spirals of the assembly lines with their slowly rising dough on its way to the hot ovens. Sobered by the immensity of it all, and by the rank of the man she had been questioning, she smiled ruefully and inquired whether, as an employee in personnel, she had the same right as the bakery workers to a free loaf of bread every day.

The supervisor smiled at his inquisitor’s request. He took a large bag, filled it with three different kinds of bread, two packages of rusks, and one each of croutons and breadcrumbs, and asked a worker to take it to the secretary’s car. Would the resource manager like some, too?

The resource manager thought it over and replied,

“Come to think of it, why not?”

5

Taking one loaf of bread, he firmly declined a second, as if this might involve a dangerous impropriety. Yet instead of leaving the bakery with his secretary, he stayed by the side of the supervisor, who hurried off to another, even larger work space with an even bigger oven. Two technicians were waiting for permission to light it, a process involving a battery of freestanding switches, dials, and lifts. The supervisor, hesitant and uncertain only a minute ago, now issued crisp, authoritative orders, to which the oven, like a trained circus animal awakened from its sleep, responded with a low growl. Enveloped in a fragrant warmth, the resource manager watched the workers harmoniously performing their tasks. He felt a pang of envy. How much better it was on a stormy night like this to work with simple matter than with fragile, vulnerable human life. Any error here could be corrected by pressing a button.

The night shift supervisor didn’t like being followed around. Exactly what, he asked the human resources manager once the oven was lit — its steady drone accompanied by a thin whine — was still bothering him? Hadn’t he, the supervisor, promised that in the morning, at the end of his shift, he would go to the owner’s office, admit his mistake, and offer to have the money deducted from his pay packet? When the human resources manager, his attention drawn to a fresh conveyor belt that had begun to clatter, replied that they should wait to see whether the weekly called off the article, the supervisor declared morosely:

“They’ll never call off anything.”

“Why not? It’s obvious that the woman had nothing to do with us at the time of her death.”

“Don’t be naïve. It doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t. That journalist isn’t going to give up his story. If we correct him on one thing, he’ll get us somewhere else. We should let him publish. Why make a fuss? People pick up local weeklies for the restaurant reviews and used-car ads, that’s all. And even if a few souls do read it, they’ll forget it before they’ve finished …”