The grandson was bewildered by this unexpected appeal. He bent to pull the old woman to her feet, only to be pushed angrily away. Sprawling in bitter grief in the dirt by the campfire, she all but rolled on its coals. Several villagers had to seize her and bring her back to her cottage. Her feet barely touched the ground as they carried her; she seemed to skim through the air.
The human resources manager felt devastated at having been the bearer of doubly disappointing tidings. All his good intentions — all his daring generosity — had led to a completely unintended result. Perhaps, he suggested, the consul might come with him to the cottage to help explain that he wasn’t to blame.
For the first time since he had made his acquaintance, however, the manager could feel that the ex-farmer was hostile. Adamantly, almost insultingly, the consul rejected the request.
“That will do! We’ve had enough of your guilt. You’ve gone much too far with it. You can’t involve the whole world in your obsession with a dead cleaning woman.”
Coming from someone so friendly and considerate until now, this rebuke left the emissary too stunned to speak. Deeply hurt, he turned and retraced his steps towards the sleeping travellers in the schoolroom.
Near a pile of chairs and tables, not far from the blackboard, the journalist and the photographer lay wrapped in their blankets. As usual, the human resources manager thought, they’ve missed the critical, excruciatingly human moment. When they wake, they’ll make up for it by staging some tear-jerking scene.
He looked balefully at the consul, who was spreading a blanket before crawling under it. You’ve forgotten that I hired you, he wanted to say. You’re under contract. But thinking better of it, he took the leather suitcase and left the schoolroom.
The long northern winter night showed no sign of ending. The death having been announced and all unanswered questions answered, the peasants had dowsed the fire and gone to bed. In the morning they would prepare the church for the funeral service.
He walked along snow-covered paths, among darkened cottages. For the first time since setting out from Jerusalem, he felt the weight of his own solitude. Yet he was sure that he could find the old woman’s cottage and let her know that he alone found nothing strange in her request.
A light shone in a window. That’s hers, he guessed, reminded of Yulia Ragayev’s little shack in Jerusalem. Coming closer, he could see through the fogged window that the old woman was not by herself. Her grandson was at her side, and she was surrounded by friends. Although he had no way of making himself understood, he could no longer depend on the consul. He entered the cottage silently and handed the old woman the suitcase as if he and she were family and no words were necessary between them.
12
At noon he joined the consul and the two drivers in the line of villagers waiting to pass before the coffin. Something in him, however, balked. I have seen her, he thought, in my dreams — in torment, faint from weariness, but alive. I have even been tempted to love her. What need have I to see her corpse?
He silently signalled the consul and the drivers to step ahead of him. The journalist and the photographer were already inside the church and had seized the best vantage points. Although he had forbidden him to take pictures, the human resources manager was sure that the photographer would strike silently, without his flashbulb, to fill the pages between the rentals and the used-car ads. The weasel and the rattlesnake hadn’t made this journey together in order to miss their true subject: the alluring face of Death.
The last villagers disappeared through the large wooden door of the church. The human resources manager did not follow them. He turned and walked down a narrow path to the little village graveyard. At its end was an ice-covered wall that seemed to mark the limits of the universe.
There wasn’t a sound. He wandered past new and old tombstones, looking for a fresh grave. None was visible. The old woman must be insisting on the coffin’s return to Jerusalem. Perhaps the villagers, afraid of her wrath, were planning to bury it secretly, at night.
A sound of voices reached him from the church, along with a thin, stifled wail. Then came the deep baritone of the village priest. It began with words and changed to music, to a slow, ancient, ecstatically chanted dirge. The villagers joined in, piercing the emissary to the quick. Although he knew a place of honour had been prepared for him and he would have liked to express his condolences, he was determined to remain outside. He did not want to see her, not even from a distance.
It’s time to say goodbye, the human resources manager whispered, wiping away a cold, unexpected tear. He paced back and forth by the icy wall, touching it warily, while the old woman’s complaint went on pursuing him. Did we make a mistake? Were we too hasty? An engineer like that doesn’t come to Jerusalem just for work. She comes because she feels that the shabby city is hers too. Her Jewish lover gave up and left, and she stuck it out. If the night shift supervisor hadn’t fired her out of love, she would still be working in our bakery.
He was too distraught to tell whether he was trembling from cold or excitement. If it was noon in this place, it was 10 a.m. in Jerusalem. He took out his satellite phone and dialled the company owner.
The office manager was delighted to hear the human resources manager’s voice. She had been thinking of him, she said. Had he reached his destination? Was he already on his way back? Everybody was asking when he would return.
“Soon,” he said softly, astonished once again by how close the phone made her sound. Right now, he needed to talk to the old man.
“Have you forgotten that it’s Wednesday?” She was surprised that he hadn’t remembered. “He’s on his weekly tour of the bakery.”
“In that case,” the manager said, “put me through to him there.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait until he returns to his office?”
“There’s no time,” he said firmly. “We have to make some decisions.”
She transferred the call to the bakery. Above the old man’s gnarled voice, he could hear the purring of ovens and the rattle of production lines.
“I have something urgent to discuss with you.”
“Ah, my dear fellow! I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. But I’m in the middle of making the rounds with the shift supervisors. Can’t it wait?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s hard to concentrate with all this noise.”
“Yes, sir, I can hear it. It doesn’t bother me, because there’s not a sound where I am. I’m standing by an icy wall with nothing beyond it. It feels like the end of the world. It’s comforting to know that the bakery is still running. But perhaps you can’t hear me.”
“Don’t worry about that, young man. I’m used to the sounds of the bakery. I’ve been hearing them since I was an infant at my parents’ knees. It’s like the sound of waves to a fisherman.”
“Well, then, I’ll get to the point. It’s complicated. We have some decisions to make. The grandmother returned to the village this morning. Right now she’s looking at the open coffin and confirming it’s her daughter.”
“I thought that might be necessary. I should have warned you that you might have to look, too.”
“I didn’t look at anything, sir. Nor do I intend to. There’s no need. That woman is inside me by now. I even dream about her.”
“As you wish, my friend. You know that I trust your intuition. When will the funeral take place?”
“That’s just it. We’ve got to the painful part, but not to the end. You were right to worry about that. It turns out that the end hasn’t ended. The old woman doesn’t want to bury her daughter in the village. She’s upset that we didn’t bury her in Jerusalem. She says it’s her city, too.”