Read Online A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua - Free Book Online
Authors: A.B. Yehoshua
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her lips. How pure it was, precisely because it was meant for no one! How she needed protection, and how easily he could give it to her!
It was dangerous. Of course it was. Who would guard its boundaries? Certainly not the workers on his shift, who wanted his heart to melt with a new emotion. And how did he know she wouldn’t be overwhelmed? Would she becontent with what he could give her and understand what he could not? It had been obvious to him from the start – unless this was just wishful thinking – that he appealed to her, although he was no longer young. She was always sweeping the floor in his vicinity, wiping the oil from machines he was working on, cleaning up after him in the men’s room, tasks that were hardly required of her.
He was experienced enough to know that the night could entrap even its oldest denizens, especially in the hours before dawn, when the most nocturnal souls were prone to foolish lapses of concentration that could cause accidents and sometimes disasters. This was why, half joking and half seriously, he urged workers he encountered at that hour to take a cold drink from the fountain, splash water on their faces, or just step outside for a breath of air. It was perfectly natural for him to do this with the new employee too. Sometimes they exchanged a few words that pierced him to the quick. He tried to hide it by chatting with the other workers just as much, especially the cleaning staff.
By now he knew she sensed what was happening. It pleased her that he acted his age and was discreet, even that he had a family and grandchildren, because she wasn’t looking for a new husband or boyfriend. She was resigned to the loss of both. Nor did she need another son. All she wanted, plain and simple, was a patron, someone quiet and sympathetic, and to such a man she was quite ready to grant physical favours without jeopardizing the labour of his life.
Nevertheless, since she turned up in the night shift this smiling, lonely engineer, or whatever she was, had become more dangerous than any woman who had ever worked for him, since her loneliness was an invitation not only to having fantasies but also to acting them out. Aware of how he, a man on the verge of retirement, was being encouraged to live out an impossible dream, one that was given greater legitimacy only by the desperate times the country was going through, he’d decided to dismiss the woman, but without running the risk of someone else taking her place. He’d persuaded her toleave her job and look for a better one but had kept her on the payroll, so that if she failed to find anything, or if he missed her too much, she could always return …
“In short” – the human resources manager broke his long silence with a single laconic sentence that contrasted starkly with the supervisor’s emotional outpouring – “you thought you could make your own rules.”
12
Although the two men who rose from the table had taken longer than they’d expected, they had barely made a dent in the night. The resource manager, unaware that he, too, still had a night shift ahead of him, offered the dishwasher a ride to the bus station. The young Arab, however, was happy to have the cafeteria to himself. He preferred to get a good night’s sleep there without having to worry about the three humiliating checkpoints he had to pass through on the way back from his village every day.
The resource manager turned to go. Satisfied at having solved the case, he was eager to get home. Yet when the supervisor, raising the collar of his army jacket, followed him to the parking lot, he understood that the man still needed to talk. He had no choice but to say, after unlocking his car and cleaning the wet leaves from the windscreen:
“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry to relieve my secretary. She’s looking after my daughter this evening.”
The night shift supervisor, who had never imagined that so many staff members would have to be mobilized because of
It was dangerous. Of course it was. Who would guard its boundaries? Certainly not the workers on his shift, who wanted his heart to melt with a new emotion. And how did he know she wouldn’t be overwhelmed? Would she becontent with what he could give her and understand what he could not? It had been obvious to him from the start – unless this was just wishful thinking – that he appealed to her, although he was no longer young. She was always sweeping the floor in his vicinity, wiping the oil from machines he was working on, cleaning up after him in the men’s room, tasks that were hardly required of her.
He was experienced enough to know that the night could entrap even its oldest denizens, especially in the hours before dawn, when the most nocturnal souls were prone to foolish lapses of concentration that could cause accidents and sometimes disasters. This was why, half joking and half seriously, he urged workers he encountered at that hour to take a cold drink from the fountain, splash water on their faces, or just step outside for a breath of air. It was perfectly natural for him to do this with the new employee too. Sometimes they exchanged a few words that pierced him to the quick. He tried to hide it by chatting with the other workers just as much, especially the cleaning staff.
By now he knew she sensed what was happening. It pleased her that he acted his age and was discreet, even that he had a family and grandchildren, because she wasn’t looking for a new husband or boyfriend. She was resigned to the loss of both. Nor did she need another son. All she wanted, plain and simple, was a patron, someone quiet and sympathetic, and to such a man she was quite ready to grant physical favours without jeopardizing the labour of his life.
Nevertheless, since she turned up in the night shift this smiling, lonely engineer, or whatever she was, had become more dangerous than any woman who had ever worked for him, since her loneliness was an invitation not only to having fantasies but also to acting them out. Aware of how he, a man on the verge of retirement, was being encouraged to live out an impossible dream, one that was given greater legitimacy only by the desperate times the country was going through, he’d decided to dismiss the woman, but without running the risk of someone else taking her place. He’d persuaded her toleave her job and look for a better one but had kept her on the payroll, so that if she failed to find anything, or if he missed her too much, she could always return …
“In short” – the human resources manager broke his long silence with a single laconic sentence that contrasted starkly with the supervisor’s emotional outpouring – “you thought you could make your own rules.”
12
Although the two men who rose from the table had taken longer than they’d expected, they had barely made a dent in the night. The resource manager, unaware that he, too, still had a night shift ahead of him, offered the dishwasher a ride to the bus station. The young Arab, however, was happy to have the cafeteria to himself. He preferred to get a good night’s sleep there without having to worry about the three humiliating checkpoints he had to pass through on the way back from his village every day.
The resource manager turned to go. Satisfied at having solved the case, he was eager to get home. Yet when the supervisor, raising the collar of his army jacket, followed him to the parking lot, he understood that the man still needed to talk. He had no choice but to say, after unlocking his car and cleaning the wet leaves from the windscreen:
“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry to relieve my secretary. She’s looking after my daughter this evening.”
The night shift supervisor, who had never imagined that so many staff members would have to be mobilized because of
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