15/4/94

The Paper Chase

The Jewish Agency is too much of a mystery even for a legendary detective.  

    Osnat was stirring her tea.
    Osrat was plucking hairs from her chin.
    Sima was bustling about, filing papers in metal cabinets, indexing, relabeling, cross-indexing, stacking, co-signing, double-checking, alphabetizing the name of every citizen who received any financial benefit since 1882, and checking their bank balances to ensure they were still beneath the poverty line, routine tasks she'd been doing every morning since she began working at the Jewish Agency in 1946.
    "Tsk," Osnat clucked.
    "Teabag burst?" said Osrat.
    The phone rang. Nobody noticed.
    "Tsk-tsk." Osnat was reading the morning paper, which mildly surprised Osrat. "Why can't these newspapers just mind their own business? Look at this."
    "Ai!" yelped Osrat as she plucked a mole. She put down her pliers. "Whazzit say?"
    "'Jewish Agency to spruce up its tarnished image at a cost of $600,000.' And that's only the headline. There's more: 'A large section of the Israeli public simply does not know what the agency does.'"
    "Not possible!"
    "But wait, you haven't heard the best."
    "Nu?"
    "It says here that we employees will have to learn about the agency's activities because even we don't know what we do!"
    Osrat snorted derisively. "Such a nerve. When they wanted a Jewish country, they came to us, and we made them a Jewish country. That's what we do!"
    Osnat sniffed. "That's right. We're in the business of making Jewish countries." She jerked a thumb at the phone, which was still ringing. "Hey, maybe that's a new customer."
    Sima had just finished reorganizing 5.2 million Resident Tooth Decay Updates, which had somehow been mixed together with the LGED (Lower Galilee Eucalyptus Density Study), and got right to work on the boss's credit-card expense sheet. "Phone's ringing," she pointed out to her colleagues.
     "I'm busy," Osrat said, flossing her teeth.
    Osnat picked up the phone, trashed the call and dialed her hairdresser. "But Henri, it's urgent," she declared. As soon as she hung up, it started again. Osnat grumbled. "How can I get any work done with the damn phone ringing all the time?"
    Sima was filing Miscellaneous Missing Files into a new filing cabinet, and Osnat was filing her nails, when Osrat finally answered the phone. "What do you want?" she snarled. Her face went white. "Oh. One moment, sir. I'll try to find out." She covered the mouthpiece, swallowed hard and called over her co-workers. "It's him!"
    "Who?"
    "The chairman of the Jewish Agency!"
    Instinctively, Osnat hid her knitting in a drawer. "What does he want from us?"
    "He's making a survey. He wants to know what we do."
    "So tell him!"
    "Tell him what?!"
    "Dunno. Tell him we create Jewish countries out of swamplands."
    "Don't be silly, that was only a joke, I can't tell him that."
    "The phone. Tell him we answer the phone."
    "Can't. He says he's been calling all day and nobody answered."
    "Sima, what do you do?"
    Sima shrugged. "Paperwork."
    Osrat told the chairman. By the look on her face it seemed he wasn't highly illuminated by the answer. She covered the phone again. "He says that's what everybody says and he didn't know he was the chairman of an origami factory, whatever that means. He says the Agency is spending $600,000 to find out so could we please give him some idea."
    The office flew into a panic. Osnat raced to the door to see what the sign said they do. She came back smiling, and took the phone from Osrat's shaking hand. "Good morning, sir. In answer to your query, this is the Department of Infrastructure, Development, Organization and Coordination. What does that mean? Well, you know, uh, we're in charge of filing your credit-card expenses. Yes, sir. Thank you, glad to be of assistance, sir." And she hung up the phone. She looked puzzled.
    "Nu?"
    "He said we're doing a fine job and we shouldn't answer the phone anymore. And he put us in charge of finding out what it is the Agency does."

SIMA decided to use her lunch hour to get to the bottom of this. She'd worked hard for the Agency for 48 years (she even won Employee of the Year in 1954, and got an all expenses-paid tour of the northern Negev kibbutzim) but if anyone asked, she still couldn't guess what she did. Mind you, until this dark day, no one had ever asked.
    She knew exactly what to do next. She pulled out the thick, musty file marked "Private." Under the letter "I"  she found one yellowed page, a long-forgotten contract with someone named Dick J. Delaney, Private Eye.
    She calmed herself, and dialed.
    Delaney answered on the first ring. "Is that the prime minister?"
    "No. Sima."
    Delaney sighed. "I see. So let's get down to business. What's the mystery, ma'am?"
    "I work for the Jewish Agency."
    "What's that you said? The Jewish Vagrancy?"
    "No, I said 'Agency.'"
    "Oh, sure, the Jewish Agency, I heard of it. Always wondered what you folks do."
    "Actually, that's what I'm hiring you to find out."
    Sima gave him the full poop: the PR blitz on the Agency's image, the chairman's phone call, even a recent speech the head honcho gave to major contributors detailing the Agency's activities, which didn't give Delaney a clue.
    The supersnoop decided the best way to crack this nut was to hit the road at the end of the tunnel, put his best foot on the line, leave no rolling stone unturned, literally.   
    Delaney flagged down a cab. "The Jewish Agency, please," he commanded.
    The driver gave him the once-over in the mirror. "You a new immigrant?" he accused.
    Aha, thought Delaney; his first lead. "You bet. Brand new here. And I'm going to see what they can do for me."
    The cabbie laughed. "Ferget it. You stand in line all day and for what?"
    What indeed. "But they must do something."
    "Possibly," he grunted. Then, after a pause, he threw Delaney a strike. "Mahfouz. My neighbor's nephew. He's the only guy I know who gets anything done there."
    "Step on it," Delaney said tersely.
    He found the Jewish Agency teeming with activity. Men and women scurrying this way and that, racing for appointments, carrying important papers, making vital deliveries. He joined a long line of people at the Information booth. When finally his turn came he said: "Mahfouz, please."
    "Third, fourth and fifth floors. Next?"
    It did not tax his wiliest powers to deduce that a fellow whose office is spread out over three floors is the sort who could wrap up this case in no time. He got to the third. "I gotta talk to Mahfouz, this is an emergency."
    "Up the stairs."
    On the fourth they told him: "down the stairs." Then it dawned on him. Between the third and fourth he found Mahfouz, mopping the stairs.
    "Dunno nuthin'," he explained to Delaney.
    "But I just want to know one tiny thing," the gumshoe pleaded, "what do the people here do?"
    "Everybody busy. Busy makin' floors dusty. Mendel empty garbage cans on the sixth floor. Mendel collect dirt on everybody. Mendel tell you."
    Mendel did indeed. "Mrs. Yichus is working on a promotion. Ben-Ziskeit steals pens. Bat-Shimush is trying to marry off her daughter but she's not for me. Yaffa wants to get fired, Flora wants to quit smoking, Dorit just got pregnant yesterday and Ori works the office pool. But Sima runs the place."
    It was like a spit in the eye for Delaney. He'd been had. This dame was making like nisht vissendik, like she don't know from nothing, and all along she's the clog in the wheel that greases the squeaky axle of the Jewish Agency. It was time to pay the old bird a visit.
    The sleuth burst into the office. Everyone was very busy. Osrat was photocopying recipes. Osnat was knitting a lifesize Boeing for her nephew. Sima was poring over a file titled "Egg Ledger 1948-1958," checking fresh allegations that a South African kibbutznik had cheated on his ration quota in July 1952.
    Osnat welcomed him with a dirty look. "Closed to the public. Come back Monday."
    Delaney marched up to her desk, leaned in on her real close and hissed menacingly into her cakey face: "I ain't the public." He pushed past her into the suspiciously inconspicuous office, and loomed over Sima. "So," he said, cracking his knuckles, "you have me running around like a chicken with its legs cut off and for what? Fess up, old girl, or I set my flamethrower on your precious archive."
    Sima sighed Jewishly. "Then you didn't --"
    "-- No, but I have my hunches."
    "Nu?"
    "You're working for the other side."
    "Oh, God, not the Likud!"
    "No. The Palestinians. They're paying the Jewish Agency to build them a homeland, you know, greening the desert, milking the diaspora, that kind of stuff."
    "That's insane. For this you waste my time?"
    "That's Hunch Number One. Hunch Number Two: the settlers are paying the Jewish Agency to build them a homeland."
     Sima glared at Delaney. "Tell me, mister, have you had many satisfied customers lately?"
    "Huh," he snorted, "have you?"
    Sima realized that the Jewish Agency was too much of a mystery even for this legendary old detective. She glanced at her watch, then at the pile of work on her desk. "We may never know what the Jewish Agency does," she said. "But really, I can't worry about it right now, I have too much to do. Like the Daily Fundraising Register. And the Who's Who of New Immigrants. I've got a shopping list of housing and employment for six digits of newcomers. There's my Youth Aliya Success Report, the New Rural Settlements Springing Up From Nothing Directory; I have to open a new file on Project Renewal and close the book on slums. And I haven't had lunch yet."
    Delaney's trail began and ended right here, with an old girl too busy to help crack the case. What does the Jewish Agency do? He didn't think anybody would ever find out.
    Though Delaney did know one thing for sure. If not for the Agency, he'd probably still be in bed, sleeping late.