Excerpt of A Woman in Jerusalem by A B. Yehoshua
(Page 2 of 3)
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“An employee of ours?” The resource manager found that hard to credit.
“Impossible. I would have known about it. There must be some mistake.”
The owner did not answer. He simply held out the galleys, which the resource
manager read quickly while still standing. The odious article was entitled “The
Shocking Inhumanity Behind Our Daily Bread.” Its subject was a forty-year-old
woman found critically wounded after a bombing in the Jerusalem market the week
before. Her only identifying mark had been a pay stub issued by the company. For
two days she had fought for her life in the hospital without any of her
employers or fellow workers taking the slightest interest in her. Even after her
death, she had lain in the hospital morgue abandoned and unidentified, her fate
unmourned and her burial unprovided for. (There followed a brief description of
the company and its large, well-known bakery, founded at the beginning of the
last century by the owner’s grandfather and recently augmented by the new line
of paper products.) Two photographs accompanied the text. One, taken years ago,
was an old studio portrait of the owner; the other was of the human resources
manager. It was dark and blurry, evidently snapped recently, without his
knowledge. The caption noted that he owed his position to his divorce.
“The little weasel!” the resource manager muttered. “What a flimsy smear job . .
.”
But the old man wanted action, not complaints. It wasn’t the tone of the article
that bothered him— yellow journalism was the fashion nowadays— but its
substance. Since the editor had been kind enough to allow them to respond
immediately, which might defuse charges that would gain ground if uncontested
for a week, they had better find out who the woman was and why no one knew
anything about her. In fact— why not?— they should contact the weasel himself to
see what he knew. It was anyone’s guess what he meant to pull next.
In a word, the human resources manager would have to drop everything and
concentrate on this. Surely he understood that his responsibility was to deal
not just with vacations, sick leaves, and retirements, but with death as well.
If the article were to be published without a satisfactory response from them,
its accusations of inhumanity and callous greed might arouse public protests
that would affect their sales. After all, theirs wasn’t just any bakery: the
proud name of its founder was affixed to every loaf that left the premises. Why
give their competitors an unfair edge?
“An unfair edge?” The human resources manager snorted. “Who cares about such
things? And especially in times like these...”
“I care.” The owner’s replied irritably. “And especially in times like these.”
The resource manager bowed his head, folded the article, and stuck it
matter-of-factly in his pocket, anxious to escape before the old man blamed him
not only for keeping flawed records but for the bomb attack, too. “Don’t worry,”
he said with a reassuring smile. “I’ll make this woman my business first thing
tomorrow morning.”
The tall, heavyset, expensively dressed old man sat up, very pale, in his chair.
His great pompadour of ancient hair swelled in the muted light like the plumes
of a royal pheasant. His hand gripped his employee’s shoulder with the full
force of his threatened reputation. “Not tomorrow morning,” he said slowly and
with painstaking clarity. “Tonight. This evening. Now. No time to waste. I want
all this cleared up before dawn. In the morning we’ll send the paper our
response.”
“This evening? Now?” The resource manager was startled. He was sorry, but it was
too late for that. He was in a hurry. His wife— his ex-wife, that is— was out of
town and he had promised to look after their daughter and drive her to her dance
class; what with all the bus bombings, they didn’t want her taking public
transportation. “What’s the hurry?” he asked. “The damn paper comes out on
Fridays. It’s only Tuesday. There’s plenty of time.”
© 2004 Abraham B. Yehoshua
English translation © 2006 by Hillel Halkin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
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