Free A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua Page A

like to have her opinion.
    She had no choice but to listen to the tale about the cleaning woman, whose death in the latest bombing had led to a vicious article being scheduled in the local weekly where his photograph was to appear as well as mention of his divorce. It couldn’t be stopped. That’s what the press was like these days: it always went for the jugular. And yet, he said with a smile, proudly relating his discovery of the supervisor’s strange infatuation, he had already managed to get to the bottom of it. Placing the folder on the table, he showed his mother the picture and asked whether she, too, found the woman alluring or attractive.
    She listened to him absentmindedly, her eyes on the table, as if doubting whether anything in his account could possibly justify the loss of her beauty sleep. Nor did she want to look at the picture. “What difference does it make?” she asked crossly.
    “But it does!” There had been an emotional entanglement. Why not try to understand whether it had to do with real beauty or the mere illusion of it? He himself, for example, though he had interviewed the woman for her job, had not been impressed.
    “You interviewed her?”
    “Of course. Every new employee has to be vetted by the human resources division.”
    “But if you weren’t impressed by her, what does my opinion matter?”
    “I didn’t say it did. I’m just curious. Why are you so stubborn? How much trouble is it to look at a photograph?”
    His mother made no reply. Her divorced son’s fascination with the picture of a dead woman struck her as unnecessarily morbid. Since it seemed important to him, however, she asked him to fetch her glasses and cigarettes and cautiously opened the folder. She first read the newspaper article, then turned to the résumé in her son’s handwriting, passed from that to the computer printout, and glanced briefly at the face of the blonde woman. She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and asked how old the woman had been.
    “I can tell you exactly. Forty-eight.”
    “Have you told the morgue what you know?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Why not?”
    “Right now it’s for internal use. We have to decide how to formulate our response. Until we do I’m keeping it under wraps.”
    “Under wraps?” His mother gave a start. “From whom?”
    “From that vile journalist who plans to write another instalment, for one.”
    “But the morgue needs to know who she is. Why not tell them?”
    “It’s only for a day or two. Even then, I’ll talk only to authorized parties. And before I do, I’ll need to double-check my sources. The last thing we want is an exposé of the supervisor’s private life. With weasels like that journalist, you have to watch out … By the way, the owner doesn’t know a thing yet. He went to a concert and let me run myself ragged.”
    His mother, enveloped in cigarette smoke, did not like his procrastination one bit. Surely the dead woman must have friends or family who were looking for her.
    “I don’t believe anyone is looking for her. But to be honest, who knows?”
    He brought her an ashtray.
    “Not you, that’s for sure.” There was disdain, even anger, in her voice. “I’m warning you, though. Once you’ve discovered who she is, she’s yours.”
    “How come?”
    “She’s your responsibility. Keeping it to yourself is not only disrespectful, it’s criminal. Tell me” – she was raising her voice now as if he were once again a small boy – “what’s your problem? Why can’t you phone the hospital? What are you afraid of?”
    He removed the dishes from the table, scraping the waste into the bin, placed them in the sink, and rinsed them. “It’s the middle of the night,” he said gently. “A morgue isn’t an emergency room. No one is sitting there waiting to hear from me. Divulging details over the telephone that can end up in the wrong place is worse than doing nothing. If she’s been lying unidentified for a week, she can wait one more night.