“What did he say?”
“That the money is his by right. Just imagine!”
“Perhaps it is,” the resource manager said generously. He laid a hand on the engineer’s shoulder and patted the boy’s head. “You’ll use up all of your film,” he warned the photographer.
“Don’t worry. I brought lots more.”
“He has to shoot a thousand frames,” the journalist said, “to find one he likes. And that’s always the one the editor rejects.”
The consul’s apartment, though old and small, was pleasantly domestic. Taking off her fur coat and wool cap, she went to the bedroom and returned in a colourful house robe that lent a touch of exuberance to her tall, peasantlike figure. After all the bread and cake she was still hungry, and she now went to the kitchen to prepare a late but proper breakfast for herself and her guest. Brandishing a knife as she appeared and disappeared in the kitchen doorway, she told the resource manager about the consulate as he sat sprawled on a creaky, none too steady couch. Basically, her position was honorary. When their farm in Israel failed, during the last recession, she and her husband had decided to get back on their feet by returning to their native land. To avoid the appearance of outright emigration at a time of daily terror attacks, they had proposed establishing, in exchange for the rent, an Israeli consulate that would provide services and advise the occasional tourist who came here from Israel or the even rarer local resident who wished to visit it. Now and then they also had to deal with dead bodies, which travelled in both directions.
“Dead bodies from here, sent to Israel?” The resource manager was amazed. “You mean that happens, too?”
“Of course. An Israeli mountain climber can get killed in a fall, or a hiker may freeze to death in a river. Or else someone is careless enough to be murdered in shady circumstances. This is a big, varied country. It may be poor and primitive, but it’s also fabulously beautiful, especially in summer and autumn. It’s a shame you had to come at this time of year …”
The manager snorted. So did the couch beneath him. No one had asked at what time of year he would like to visit. His own desires had been irrelevant …
“I wouldn’t say that,” the consul retorted, breaking egg after egg into a large frying pan as if she still had a henhouse next door. “It was you who convinced that boy — if you ask me, by the way, he’s not half so innocent as you think — to bury his mother in her village. If you hadn’t offered to pay the costs and go yourself, the only grandmother he would have seen this winter would have been the one in his dreams. Not that I have anything against it if you have the time and money and want to be generous. You might even cross a few frozen rivers yourself … Well, go and wash, then we’ll eat. I’d planned to go out for a good meal after the funeral, as is the custom here, but what’s done is done. You’ve made a mess of things.”
The consul’s hearty appetite infected the emissary, too. She plied him with a local aquavit, and his head spun as though he were on a ship’s ladder in a stormy sea. When his conversation began to flag, the consul offered him her bed to nap in; she wouldn’t hear of it when he suggested that he sleep on the creaky couch. Yes, she was tired, too, having hardly slept all night. But the emissary, who had had a long flight, came first. It was her consular duty to see that he got some rest. Once he’d closed the shutters, turned out the lights, and crawled under the blankets, Israel and its problems would seem far away. “Off with you to the bedroom, then! There’s no time to lose. They’ve forecast a bad storm. You’ll have to get an early start to stay ahead of it.”
Although the resource manager had a horror of other people’s double beds, he was grateful for the chance to get away from the consul’s chatter and make a few telephone calls. He just didn’t want her changing any sheets or pillowcases for him. A blanket and a small pillow were all he needed. He would kick off his shoes and sleep in his clothes.
“If that’s all it takes to put you to sleep, be my guest,” the consul said, yielding with maternal resignation. “Just take your suitcase and bag, so that I don’t end up tripping over them.”
She handed him a pillow and spread the blanket while he asked whether she was coming with them.
“Absolutely not! My consular duties ended at the airport. I confirmed that the family has taken possession of the coffin and plans to bury it. Any decision to humour that boy is your affair, not the consulate’s. I’ve done my bit. I’m just curious to know why you’ve got so involved. Is it guilt towards the mother — or something about the boy himself?”
“Then perhaps your husband might join us.” The resource manager dodged the consul’s question, feeling suddenly worried. “How will we manage with no knowledge of the language? We won’t even be able to communicate with our driver …”
“My husband is no longer a young man. He doesn’t owe the government anything.”
“The government has nothing to do with this. I’ll pay him for his time and effort.”
“You will?”
“Of course. Generously …”
“Then that’s another story.”
The consul’s spirits appeared to soar. Going briskly to the window, she drew the curtain, switched on a reading lamp above the bed, and shut the door behind her, urging the emissary to sleep well.
There was silence at last. But his satellite phone needed recharging. The journalist had drained the battery with his chatter. Moreover, the only electrical outlet in the room was antique and did not fit the plug, so he abandoned the idea of calling the old owner, who might finish off the battery completely with his objections to their planned trip, and dialled his mother instead. His conversations with her were always to the point. To his delight, his daughter was there too, having decided to spend the night at her grandmother’s in her father’s empty bed. Rather than ask her about herself, as he usually did, he told her of his experiences, describing the snow and ice and the long trip ahead of them with the orphaned boy — a nice-looking teenager, as he had expected, but highly-strung and full of anger at his mother’s death. His daughter hung on every word and wanted to know more.
The unexpected conversation cheered him. But his phone was beeping a warning, so he switched it off, disconnecting himself from the world, then turned off the reading lamp, pulled up the blanket, and tried to fall asleep. On a shelf in the darkness, the glass figurines of cows, horses, chickens, and sheep, mementos of a lost farm, shone with a reddish gleam. He thought worriedly of the coffin standing by itself in the courtyard. What a turn of events, he mused ruefully. A foreign woman tenyears older thanmyself, whomI can’t evenremember, has become my sole responsibility. National Insurance has closed her file, her ex-husband has turned his back on her, her lover disappeared long ago, and even the consul no longer wishes to represent her. That leaves me in a cold, primitive land in the company of two journalists who think I’m a story, led by a teenage boy I’m not sure I can handle. How could I have known last Tuesday, when I promised to take this woman on my back, that she would weigh as much as she does?
He threw off the blanket, walked to the window without switching on the light, and carefully opened the shutters in the hope of sighting the courtyard below. It took a while to spot the coffin, still beneath its tarpaulin. A crowd of curious children had gathered around it. Apparently aware, so it seemed, of what was in it, an elderly tenant was standing guard to ward them off. The resource manager felt grief for the woman, dumped like a nobody in the ugly courtyard of a strange building. Had he done the right thing by prolonging her last journey? Might it not have been wiser to have kept silent at the airport and let father and son work things out for themselves? Perhaps the boy would have given in; by now the woman would have been buried and it would all be over, the Jerusalem weekly would have its story and the old owner’s humanity would be restored.