A. Yehoshua - A Woman in Jerusalem

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.

He bit into the plain, dry white bread and found it tasty. Was it the same bread he was used to eating at home? Had his former wife looked for the bakery’s label in the supermarket and bought it as a gesture of solidarity? Once all this was over, he intended to demand a free daily loaf for all the administration workers. He tore off another piece, opened the thin folder, and, chewing noisily, read for the third time the CV dictated to him by the woman, now dead.

The computer printout provided him with the date and place of her birth and her address in Jerusalem. Hoping to form a better notion of the beauty that had eluded him, he bent to take a closer look at the digital face and long, swanlike neck. Was the secretary right? Did he live inside himself like a snail while beauty and goodness passed like shadows? Even if he did, she needed to be taken down a peg. In the army he had had a reputation for keeping his female soldiers in line — until, that is, he married one.

He shut the folder, tore off a third piece of bread, and went to the cabinet to get the file of the night shift supervisor. Bulky and tattered, it contained a pre-computer age black-and-white photograph of a handsome young man, a technician wearing the uniform of the Army Ordnance Corps, his dark eyes shining at the world with hope and trust. The resource manager leafed through the folder. There were requests for pay increases and paid vacations; notices of the man’s marriage and of the births of his three daughters; occasional promotions accompanied by nagging memos that he hadn’t yet got his increase. All in all, he had had an uneventful career. Marred only by a reprimand from the owner ten years before for negligently allowing an oven to be damaged by overheating, his file told the story of a hard worker who had gradually risen through the ranks. His technician’s smock and oil-stained hands notwithstanding, he now earned twice as much as the human resources manager.

By now the loaf of bread looked as if it had been gnawed at by a mouse. Throwing its remains into the wastepaper basket, he put on his coat, still wet from the rain, and headed back to the bakery, now nearly invisible behind a pall of fog and chimney smoke.

9

As Tuesday was the night on which the bakery fulfilled its orders from the army, the ovens and conveyor belts were still going full-blast. He asked a cleaning woman for a smock and cap and went to warn the night shift supervisor not to talk to the journalist. It took a while to find him; he was with two technicians, the three of them peering into the empty bowels of an oven, trying to determine why it was making a screeching noise.

Once again the human resources manager felt envious of the bakery workers for having to deal only with dough and machinery. The supervisor, flushed from the heat and wearing a smock and apron, was deep in conversation with the technicians. In his aging, troubled face the resource manager could still make out the dark-eyed soldier in the Ordnance Corps who had been so full of vitality.

Their glances met. The supervisor did not seem surprised to see him. Perhaps he realized that aggressive yet scattershot investigation by the secretary had not closed the dead woman’s case. The resource manager, anxious to spare him embarrassment in front of the technicians, waved a friendly hello and asked:

“Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

The supervisor threw the oven a last glance. Still concerned about the noise it was making, he ordered the technicians to bank the fires.

“Take her down a few degrees,” he said.

10

Sighing with relief at the departure of the cafeteria’s last diners, we finished placing the chairs on the tables before mopping encrusted red mud from the floor which resembled that of a slaughterhouse after the day’s torrential rain, when the two of them entered out of the dark. Exhausted though we were by the customers who had flocked here all day to get out of the rain, how could we refuse them? One was the young personnel manager, whose secretary we knew, because it was she who arranged for us to cater the parties given for retiring staff. The other was a regular customer, the night shift supervisor. If our cafeteria was the only warm, quiet place two senior staff members could find in the entire bakery complex, farbe it from usto disappoint them. We warned them, though, that the kitchen was closed and that a pot of tea was the most they could expect.

That was fine with the personnel manager. Without bothering to ask the supervisor, who looked preoccupied, he took a table by the window. We went on mopping and scrubbing while listening with one ear to their conversation in the hope of learning how long they would take.

At first the young personnel manager did the talking and the supervisor listened. Still in his overalls, covered by an old army jacket, he propped his chin on one hand. After a while the two fell silent, as if they had used up every last word. But then a response came, at first in a low, hesitant voice. And when the floor was spotless and dry and the chairs were lowered again from the tables, and the violet light of a clearing sky shone through the window, we were shocked to see the older man bury his face in his hands as if hiding something painful or shameful, as if he had finally understood why an empty cafeteria had been chosen for his confession.