“Tell me,” the resource manager inquired. “Have you by any chance found a good snapshot of her for our memorial corner?”
They hadn’t. There was only a small album with several old photographs, which he decided to take in his hand luggage. Mounted on heavy paper and looking like old postcards, these were snapshots of a young woman: in some, she stood on a porch, looking out at a distant field; in others, she sat in a room, holding a half-naked baby. She did not resemble the computer image etched in his memory.
“These photos look old,” he said. “Her ex-husband can tell us if they’re of her. She might be the baby and this could be her mother. The tilt of the eyes is more pronounced in the baby …”
He blushed, and added with a slight stammer, “After all, I … I don’t suppose it matters. It’s all absurd anyway. In two days’ time, we’ll bury her and be done with it.”
The husband’s look of compassion turned to one of concern, as if there might be gaps in the resource manager too. What measures, he asked practically, had been taken to ensure efficient communication when he was abroad? He advised taking a satellite phone. “If the old man has given you a blank cheque,” he said, “don’t scrimp. A satellite phone costs more to use, but you can count on getting through. Anyone travelling to a strange and unreliable country in midwinter, especially with a corpse in a coffin, ought to be in touch with more than just the netherworld.”
When we saw that God had made a miracle and brought back the man, who was now carrying a suitcase, we all shouted, “Abba, Abba, come quick! The man’s in the yard, go and see what he wants.” Father put a bookmark in his Talmud and ran to ask when he could visit Yulia at the hospital. But the man was annoyed and said, “What kind of a neighbour are you not to know that she was killed in the market bombing ten days ago?” He had told us she was only injured, he said, because he didn’t want to frighten us.
Every one of us six sisters (we’re all for one and one for all!) saw our father turn pale and start to tremble. He took the death of our lonely neighbour very hard, as if she had been his best friend. Oy vey, we thought — noneof ussaid it out loud — it’s worse thanwe imagined. If our father is so sad, he must have been in love with that foreign woman. And though now we pray to God to avenge her blood, the sooner the better, it’s a good thing for mother, who is always so sad, that our nice, beautiful neighbour is dead.
7
On Friday morning he awoke earlier than usual and full of foreboding. Although he’d been determined to throw out the weekly without looking at it, his anger and curiosity got the better of him.
Not a word in the article had been changed. It was the same nasty piece he had read originally. Beneath a blurry photograph of him, like a knife in his heart, was the caption: He oweshis jobto his divorce. Yougoddamn weasel,he whispered. You and your goddamn editor.
The owner’s response, in a black-bordered sidebar, was the same ninety-nine words he had seen over the office manager’s shoulder. Do not suppose, my dear and obedient lady, the resource manager thought, that all your English compositions and solved maths problems will keep me from making you pay for this …
He was about to throw the paper away when he noticed that there was indeed something new, a note from the editor expressing satisfaction with the owner of the company’s admission of guilt and promise to make amends. The editor wished to praise his very accomplished and courageous old friend by publicly disclosing that he had for years been supplying the weekly with newsprint at a favourable price. Although it was common to accuse the paper of sensationalism, what better proof could there be of the pure professionalism of its motives? What better defence of his own integrity than his willingness to criticize a company he depended on? The weekly would follow up on the bakery’s apology and generous pledge in its next issue.
This encomium for the old owner only heightened the resource manager’s resentment. The next issue? No, thank you. Count him out. He wasn’t giving any follow-ups. They could print their filth without him.
He crumpled the article, along with the rest of the newspaper, into a big ball and tossed it into the large wastepaper basket he had bought for the apartment on moving into it. “Don’t worry,” he told his startled mother. “It’s not your regular paper. It’s the weekly with that idiotic piece I showed you on Tuesday. I didn’t think you’d want to read it again.”
A seasoned traveller like him didn’t need to prepare extensively for this trip, so he had time to drop by the office. As the administration wing was mostly deserted on Fridays, he found no one there to tell about his mission. The old man’s office was empty, too, except for a young typist taking down voice mail messages.
Before returning to the parking lot, he decided to see what was new in the bakery. Perhaps the night shift supervisor had been moved to the day shift to chill his ardour. Without having to be told, he asked for and put on his white cap and smock. Yet except for one, all the ovens were cold and empty and the production lines mostly silent. But the cleaning staff were out in force. Friday was the day when, besides tidying up as usual, they also scrubbed the machinery, in preparation for the full resumption of work on Saturday night. If that old puppy hadn’t fallen in love, the resource manager thought, there would be one more cleaning person here now, an earnest, lonely woman in her prime, with stunning Tartar eyes. No one on the work floor now lived up to her image.
Before leaving he took two warm loaves of hallah from a crate, remembering the special taste of the bread the night shift supervisor had given him. He would charge those to the owner too.
He returned home, ate lunch, put on his track suit, turned out the lights in his room, and lay down for a nap, even though he would be forgoing his weekend bar-hopping tonight. He had a 4 a.m. flight to catch to a cold, foreign land, and though he had a gift for dozing on aeroplanes, a few extra hours’ sleep wouldn’t hurt.
Indeed, he slept soundly, without disturbing dreams. The presence of his mother, asleep in the next room, made his slumbers even calmer. Rising, he packed his old carry-on bag, a small suitcase that could be taken as hand luggage, like an extension of himself, though it also had a secret compartment for extra capacity. He considered packing his overcoat in the suitcase with the woman’s belongings; but decided against blurring the line between the living and the dead (besides, if he forgot his coat and left it in there, it would become part of her estate). Then he drank a cup of English tea with his mother, eating a slice of the bakery’s bread instead of his usual cake; and went off to a downtown café for his weekly meeting with two married friends of his. This meeting was their way of reliving their bachelor days before taking up the family obligations of the Sabbath.
The winter was back. An overcast sky sprayed thin rain. He returned to his mother’s and put on his army boots, thinking, I’ll consider this one more stint of reserve duty, then went to see the owner of the company. It was eight o’clock and the house was full of guests: grey-haired sons and daughters, fat grandchildren, and tall, stringy great-grandchildren. News of his mission must have preceded him, for he was received with warmth when introduced to a representative selection of the owner’s offspring. Then the two of them closeted themselves in a small library with a desk and couch, over which copies of the weekly were shamelessly scattered. The praise lavished by the editor on his newsprint supplier had banished all the accusations of inhumanity from the owner’s mind.