A Woman in Jerusalem (2 page)

The resource manager, his eyes still on the baby (who had reached the door leading to the corridor, and whose progress he was thinking perhaps he ought to block), replied dolefully:

“Fraudulent, shmaudulent. We have to find out who she was and why no one knows anything about her. If she left her job or was fired, why was she still on the payroll? There has to be a record of it somewhere. Let’s get to work. We have no time to waste.”

He turned to follow the baby – who, briefly stymied by the darkness in the corridor, had rapidly resumed his course and was now heading for the door of the owner’s office.

No wonder they’re ready to climb the Himalayas by the time they’re twenty, the resource manager thought as he trailed after it. Now and then the infant stopped without warning and sat up pertly, as if to reflect before continuing. The stocky man walking behind it – of average height and close to forty, with the first streaks of grey in his military crew cut – felt overcome by a deep, weary dejection. He was oddly resentful of the anonymous woman who had gone shopping without so much as an ID card for the sole purpose of making him – hungry, thirsty, and exhausted from a long day’s work – responsible for finding out who she was.

The baby reached the end of the corridor and halted in
front of the office of the owner – who, secure in the
knowledge
that his reputation was in good hands, was now enjoying a quiet dinner. The door, elegantly upholstered in black leather to guard the secrets exchanged behind it, posed a challenge; the baby, dummy still clutched in one hand, was rapping eagerly on the barrier when the secretary called out in triumph that the mystery had been solved.
I
run
a
tight
ship
after
all
,
the human resources manager reflected, scooping up the infant before it could protest and bearing it aloft like a hijacked aeroplane to its mother, on whose brightly coloured computer screen had appeared not only the personal résumé but also a blonde beaming woman, no longer young.

“Bingo!” she declared. “In a minute I’ll give you a printout. Now that I know the date on which she started work, I’ll even find your job interview with her.”

“
I
interviewed her?” The surprised manager was still
holding
the baby, whose tiny little hand was crumpling his ear.

“Who else? Your first directive on taking the job last July was that no one was to be hired or fired without your knowledge.”

“But what did she do here?” The discovery that he had had a connection to the murdered woman made the resource manager uneasy. “Where did she work? Who was in charge of her? What does your computer say?”

The computer was not outspoken about these things. Its code showed only that the woman had been attached to a cleaning team that moved among the company’s different branches. “In that case,” the manager murmured sadly, “she must have fallen between the branches when she died …”

The secretary, a long-time employee to whom the
company
owed several improvements (it was she who had changed the name
personnel
department
to
human
resources
division
and introduced the computerized scanning of faces), begged to differ. “No one disappears around here,” she told the manager, who was still rather dependent on her. “Every employee, even the lowliest cleaning woman, has someone to make sure they punch in and do their job.”

She was so preoccupied with the administrative and perhaps even moral aspects of the matter that she seemed to have forgotten all about the home she hadn’t wanted to leave, the children waiting for supper, and the raging winter storm. As if the owner’s impugned humanity had infected her too, she was now energetically engaged in her next task, extracting last summer’s job interview from a filing cabinet as unerringly as she had accessed the dead woman on her computer. Stapled to the interview was a brief medical report from the company’s doctor. She punched holes in both, did the same with the article and photographs, attached them all together with a clip, and slipped them into a yellow folder that she handed to the manager as Exhibit A – scant evidence, to be sure, but still a start.

The baby began to bawl. Taking it from the resource manager’s arms, the secretary suggested he might want to peruse the file in his office, or look away at any rate while she attended to her child. It had to be fed; otherwise it would not leave them in peace to determine who was to blame for this mess. Before she had even finished the sentence, the top button of her blouse was open, her breast halfway out.

At
least
we
now
have
a
clue
to
work
with
,
the resource manager thought with satisfaction as he entered his office and cleared his desk to make room for the folder. Although there was no need to linger over the snapshot of this forty-eight-year-old woman, her open face and light eyes gave him pause. An exotic arch, northern European or Asiatic, ran from each eyelid to the nose. The neck, exposed in all its perfection, was long and rounded. For a moment he forgot that she was no longer a living being, that nothing was left of her but a bureaucratic indifference to her fate.

He felt an urge to phone the owner and boast of his swift progress, then thought better of it as a new wave of annoyance swept over him. In his obsession with the public’s image of his
humanity, the old man had ridden roughshod over the rights of three employees. Let him stew in the juices of his maligned name a little longer! Why give him the pleasure of thinking that his request had been easy, even enjoyable, to carry out?

He glanced at a page listing the woman’s personal details and turned to her employment form, quailing slightly at the sight of her CV, which had been written not in her own hand, as was customary, but in his. He had evidently recorded her words verbatim, as though taking down a confession.

My
name
is
Ragayev.
Yulia
Ragayev,
mechanical
engineer.
I
have
diploma.
But
I
was
not
born
in
city,
was
born
in
small
village.
Far
away.
Far,
far
from
big
city.
My
mother
lives
in
village
still.
I
have
son
too,
big
boy
now,
thirteen
years.
His
father
engineer
also.
I
am
not
longer
with
him.
Good
man
but
we
separate.
I
leave
him
for
other
man,
good
too.
More
old
than
him.
But
not
so
much.
Sixty
years.
His
wife
is
long
time
dead
and
he
come
to
work
in
our
city,
in
our
factory.
There
we
meet.
I
want
much
he
should
come
to
Jerusalem
and
he
say
yes,
so
we
come
here,
I,
him,
and
boy.
But
he
not
find
good
job
for
important
engineer.
He
not
want
stay.
Why
someone
like
him
just
clean
street
or
be
guard
or
something?
He
go
back
–
not
to
my
city,
his.
He
has
daughter
and
granddaughter
there.
I,
no.
I
want
to
stay
in
Jerusalem.
Maybe
is
good
here.
Because
Jerusalem
I
like.
Is
interesting
place.
If
I
go
back,
I
never
come
again.
First
son
is
here
too,
but
then
father
say
is
too
dangerous
and
he
must
leave.
Okay,
I
say,
he
go
back.
I
stay
and
try
Jerusalem.
Is
sometimes
good,
sometimes
bad.
I
work
for
who
need
me,
even
though
I
have
engineer’s
diploma.
What
does
it
matter,
maybe
my
son
come
back.
Is
such
my
situation.
Now
mother
in
village
want
to
come
to
Jerusalem,
too.
Well,
we
will
see,
maybe
she
come.

The next document was a signed statement by the woman, this time dictated by the human resources manager himself.
I,
Yulia
Ragayev,
holder
of
temporary
resident
card
no.
836205,
agree
to
work
at
any
job
I
am
assigned
to,
including
night
shifts.

Beneath this, in large letters, was her signature, followed by his comments:

This
woman
has
temporary
residence
status.
She
has
no
family,
looks
healthy,
and
makes
a
good
impression.
She
seems
highly 
motivated.
Although
first
placement
should
be
in
a
service
job,
her
professional
training
may
enable
her
at
some
point
to
move
to
the
production
line
at
the
bakery
or
in
to
the
paper-and-stationery
division.

Beneath this was a laconic note from the doctor:
No
special
health
problems.
Cleared
for
all
work.

At the reception desk, the secretary was losing no time. While nursing her baby, she efficiently telephoned
instructions
for the preparation of supper for her children and husband. Then, launching a private investigation of her own, she briskly asked the day shift supervisor over the intercom whether he was aware that a cleaning woman, one Yulia Ragayev, had been absent from work. Without mentioning the woman’s fate, she asked whether she had resigned or been dismissed and, in either case, why the human resources division hadn’t been informed.

Listening from his desk through the open door, the resource manager picked up the receiver in time to catch the day shift supervisor’s reply. Yes, he had a vague memory of the employee in question and had even noticed she was missing. But it would be better to ask the night shift supervisor, who had been her superior. Irked by the tone of this mere secretary, he advised her to have the resource manager contact the night shift supervisor directly.

The mere secretary, however, was not put off by such short shrift. Politely ending the conversation without ever
mentioning
the woman’s death, as if that were her trump card, she curtly summoned the resource manager. Outside her regular work hours, so it seemed, she was the one who gave orders.

He stepped out of his office to find the nursing successfully accomplished, its certificate of completion a pungent-smelling nappy. While she watched her baby, pink-cheeked and
contented,
thrash its legs in benediction, the secretary preened herself on her intuition. “You’ll see,” she said. “Even though we issued that woman another pay packet, she was no longer employed by us at the time of the bombing. You can tell that asshole of a reporter and his charming boss that it’s they who
should apologize to us. They can take their ‘shocking
in humanity
’ and shove it. And while you’re at it, tell your own boss to calm down.” She threw a last glance at the cleaning woman on her screen, and said, “It’s too bad. She was an attractive woman,” then switched off the computer.

“Attractive?” The resource manager frowned and opened the folder for another look at the photograph. “I wouldn’t say that. If she were that good-looking, I’d have remembered her.”

The secretary did not reply at once. Deftly putting on a fresh nappy, she threw the old one in the bin, strapped on the carrier, placed her baby in it, slipped into her big fur coat, and threw on the crackling yellow poncho. The baby vanished from sight. With a sharp glance at the human resources manager, as if seeing him for the first time, she said, “
Absolutely
. More than good-looking. Beautiful. If you didn’t notice when you hired her, that’s because you live inside yourself like a snail. All you see of beauty or goodness is its shadow … But why argue about someone who’s no longer with us? What will either of us prove? I’d better go with you to the bakery to ask the night shift supervisor how an employee can disappear and no one bother to notify us.”