Lazar jumped to his feet. “You don’t object to Turkish coffee?” His wife turned to me, as if to dare me to object; then she took out a slender cigarette and lit it. When her husband disappeared into the kitchen, her eyes flashed again with the same bright smile, and she leaned toward me and began talking intimately in her soft but very clear voice. “I feel that you’re still having doubts. That’s natural. Because really, why should anybody be ready to drop everything from one day to the next and go to India? And if you feel that we’re trying to put pressure on you and it offends you, you’re absolutely right. But try to understand that we’re upset too. We have to bring our daughter home quickly; the disease—as you know better than I do—is exhausting and debilitating. According to the girl who brought the letter, her condition has already deteriorated, and everyone who’s been consulted strongly recommends taking a qualified doctor with us. Before you arrived, Hishin phoned and warned us not to let you wriggle out of it, because in his opinion you’re the ideal candidate.”
“Ideal again.” I interrupted her with an angry laugh that welled up inside me. “Hishin’s exaggerating. In what sense ideal? Ideal for what? Maybe, as your husband said, because of my British passport.” The woman laughed in surprise. “Of course not! Naturally, it won’t hurt to have a British passport in India, but that’s not what Hishin meant, he’s really very fond of you. He spoke of your quiet manner, your friendliness, your excellent clinical perception, and especially of your deep concern for your patients.” She spoke warmly, passionately, her words clear and eloquent, but I was aware of a certain hypocrisy and exaggeration too. It was impossible to tell if Hishin had actually heaped all that praise on my head or if she was inventing compliments to seduce me. I lowered my eyes, but I didn’t know how to stop her. In the end I let my hands fall wearily to my sides and asked, “How old is she, this girl of yours?”
“Girl?” The mother laughed. “She’s not a girl. She’s twenty-five years old. She has spent two years studying at the university. Here, this is a picture she sent two months ago, before she got sick.” She picked up an envelope of coarse green paper, from which she extracted two snapshots of a young woman with a pretty, delicate face. In one of them the woman was standing alone against the background of a vast river in which naked figures were crouching, and in the second she was near the entrance of a building which looked like an Indian temple, a boy and a girl on either side of her, their arms wrapped around her.
When I got home I decided, in spite of the late hour, to phone my parents in Jerusalem and ask their opinion. To my surprise, both my mother, who was still awake, and my father, who was awakened by the ringing phone, thought that I should on no account turn down such a proposal from the head of the hospital. “He’s only the administrative director,” I kept explaining, but my father was adamant. “All the more so,” he insisted, beginning to speak English in his sleepiness. “Those are the people with the real power, because they’re permanent fixtures, and the others come and go around them. Even your Professor Hishin might disappear one fine day for one reason or another, and it won’t do you any harm to have the support of the administrative head of the hospital in the future.”
“That’s not the way things work, Dad,” I complained wearily. “It’s not so simple.” But my parents were resolute in their enthusiasm. “Just don’t be in such a hurry to refuse—the hospital’s not running away, and you’ve worked so hard this year that you deserve a vacation.”
“In India?” I said sarcastically. “What kind of a vacation can I have there?” But now my mother began praising the country. She had an uncle who had served there between the two world wars, and she remembered that he was in love with India and never stopped describing its charms. “That was a completely different India,” I said, trying to cool her ardor, but she persevered: “Nothing in the world ever becomes completely different, and it was once full of magic and beauty—something must have remained, and for such a short trip it will be quite enough.” I was surprised by my parents’ reaction. I had assumed that their constant anxiety would make them try to talk me out of the idea, and instead they were joining in the pressure to make me go. “I can’t see what kind of vacation I’ll have on a trip like this,” I grumbled into the phone, “and I don’t need a vacation now, either. My work at the hospital’s so fascinating I don’t want to miss a single day. In any case, I’ll think it over tonight. I promised to give them a final answer tomorrow morning.” I tried to put an end to the conversation. But my parents wouldn’t let me go. “Even if the idea of the trip doesn’t attract you at the moment,” argued my father, “people here are asking for your help—it’s an opportunity to do a good deed.”
“A good deed?” I laughed. “There’s no question of a good deed here—they want to pay me a fee for the trip. It’s got nothing to do with good deeds, and anyway, why me? They’ve got the whole hospital at their disposal; they could easily find some other doctor to go with them and bring their daughter back for them.”
But of this I was not certain. When I had promised the Lazars a final answer early in the morning, they had repeated that if I refused, they wouldn’t have time to find and persuade another suitable doctor from the hospital.
“This is a chance for you to experience another world and refresh yourself,” said my mother. Recently she and my father had been worried about how absorbed I was in my work, fearing that I was in danger of becoming a slave to it.
“Another world? Perhaps,” I replied heavily, pulling the telephone onto my lap and falling exhausted onto my bed, “but will I be able to refresh myself there?” My parents were silent, as if I had finally succeeded in conveying to them across the distance that separated us the full weight of my weariness. “When would you have to leave?” my mother asked gently. “Right away.” I closed my eyes and covered myself with the blanket. “They want to fly to Rome the day after tomorrow.”
“The day after tomorrow?” repeated my astonished mother, who had not realized the urgency of the trip. “What did you think? It’s serious. There’s a very sick girl out there. Who knows what really happened to her? That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, it’s not exactly a pleasure trip.” And suddenly I felt the pressure lifting on the other end of the line. “In that case, we really should think twice. Perhaps you’re right. We’ll all sleep on it, and talk again in the morning.” Now I was sorry that I had called them. I knew that their short night’s sleep would be even shorter tonight, because of their inexhaustible appetite for discussing me and my plans. In the first place I was their only child. Now, more than ever, I’d begun to worry them as an icicle of lonely bachelorhood had begun to grow inside me. I was only twenty-nine years old, but I noted with pity their attempts to steer me toward a life outside the hospital walls, prompted in part by their guilt for having put so much pressure on me to devote myself to my studies. And sure enough, early the next morning when I called, my father said, “We stayed up all night thinking about the trip to India, and we’ve changed our minds. It will only exhaust you, and you don’t need to go.” But to their astonishment I told them that only half an hour before I had agreed to go, and asked them to find my British passport and take down a good suitcase for me.
Instead of pleasure and satisfaction, I now heard only tension and anxiety in their voices, as if all that talk the night before had referred not to an actual journey but to a theoretical one. Was it because of them that I had changed my mind? my mother wanted to know. I reassured them that I had thought it over again myself and decided that I should go. Then I gave them the unpleasant news that Hishin preferred the other resident to me. Who knew, maybe his hands really were better than mine. There was silence on the other end of the line. “Hishin prefers the other resident to you?” my father said incredulously. “How can that be possible, Benjy?” And my heart contracted painfully at their certain disappointment. “You’d be surprised at how possible it can be,” I said with deliberate lightheartedness. “Never mind, it’s not so ter
rible, and actually this might be a good time to go somewhere far away, where I can think about what to do next.” The truth was that I actually felt relieved, as if something had been liberated inside me. From the minute I had agreed to join the Lazars, at six-thirty in the morning, it was as if the excitement of the journey had swept the anger and the envy out of my heart. Lazar’s wife had answered the phone, and for a moment I failed to recognize her voice, which was younger and fresher than she had seemed the night before, and although she did not seem surprised by my decision—as if she had known that I would come around—she thanked me repeatedly, and asked me if I was quite sure. But then her husband lost patience and snatched the phone from her and began shooting out instructions with terrific efficiency. He was going to Jerusalem to meet some India expert at the Foreign Office and to get letters of recommendation and introduction, leaving his wife and me to conclude the necessary arrangements. “And what about the hospital?” I asked. “They’re still expecting me in the operating room this morning—there are operations scheduled.” But Lazar was unequivocal. As far as the hospital was concerned, I could leave it to him; it was his turf, and Hishin had given his express consent. “No,” he rebuked me firmly, “from this minute on, please stop thinking about the hospital and devote yourself exclusively to making arrangements for the trip. Time is short. This afternoon we’ll find time to sit down with the doctors and the head pharmacist and discuss the medical aspects. All that’s no problem. The main thing—I almost forgot to ask—is your Israeli passport valid?”
No, my Israeli passport wasn’t valid. I had checked it the night before. Lazar gave me instructions on how to get to his wife’s office in the center of town. His wife, a lawyer by profession and a partner in a big law firm, would take care of it. I barely recognized her when she came out of her office to meet me, dressed in black, wearing high heels, her face made up. Again she thanked me for my decision, with a friendliness that struck me as artificial and exaggerated. I handed her my passport, and she immediately passed it to one of the girls sitting in the frenetic front office. Then, she took out her checkbook, signed a number of blank checks, which she gave me, and said, “Here, this is Hannah, who’s going to devote herself to you this morning and get you ready for the trip.” In the travel agency, surrounded by posters of glorious tourist sites, I sensed a sudden joyful wanderlust burgeoning inside me. Two of the travel agents put themselves at our service to speed things up. First of all, they informed Hannah and me that travelers to India had to present certificates of vaccination against cholera and malaria to obtain a visa, and told us not to forget to tell Lazar and his wife. “His wife?” I asked in surprise. “Why his wife?” But the travel agents’ records clearly showed that the previous afternoon Mrs. Lazar had asked them to book her on a flight too, with an open ticket. “She probably wasn’t sure if I’d agree to go,” I tried to explain, “and so she asked you to get a ticket for her just to be on the safe side.”
“You may be right,” they replied politely, “but don’t forget to tell her about the vaccinations anyhow.” It was then I sensed the first shadow falling on the happiness that had just begun to awaken in me. I had been imagining a vigorous, perhaps even rather adventurous expedition undertaken by two men, who in spite of an age difference of twenty years might still be able to enjoy the kind of fine friendship that grows up in a small army reserve unit. But if Lazar’s wife was going to tag along, I reflected in concern, mightn’t the whole thing turn into a tedious, leaden trip with a couple of middle-aged parents?
But could I still back out? I wondered, sitting late that morning opposite a bank clerk and waiting for the foreign currency, my now valid passport in the slim, strong hands of Hannah, who had spent the morning leading me efficiently from office to office and organizing everything for me as if I suffered from some kind of handicap. Why on earth was Lazar’s wife going? Was it really out of concern for her daughter’s health, or did the situation require the strengthening of a parental delegation for some reason? I still hoped that Mrs. Lazar would decide not to go at the last minute. I didn’t like her constant concern and warm smiles. She could only be a drag on the speed and ease of our travels, I thought as I parted with her office clerk, taking back my passport and rejecting, with some mortification, her offer to accompany me to the Health Service to receive the necessary vaccinations, and perhaps to pay for them too.
I mounted my Honda and rode to the place, where I found the door of the vaccination room sealed shut because of a nurses’ strike. As I wandered around the corridor looking for a solution, I was recognized by an old friend from medical school, who had dropped out in his fourth year because of an involvement with a girl he later married and who was now working here as the medical secretary of the district physician. He bounded gleefully toward me, and when he heard about the trip to India, he was very much in favor of it. I told him that I would be paid a fee on top of my travel expenses, and he became so excited that he slapped me on the back in congratulations and said with undisguised envy, “You’re a clever bastard, a quiet, clever bastard. And you’re a lucky bastard too—you always have been. What wouldn’t I give to change places with you?” Immediately, he rushed off to find the key, ushered me into the nurses’ room, opened a big glass cupboard, pointed at the rows of rainbow-colored vaccine bottles, and said jokingly, “Our bar is at your service, sir. You can be vaccinated here against any disease you like, the weirdest and most wonderful diseases you ever heard of.” And while I studied the exotic labels on the little bottles, he took a sterile syringe out of a drawer and offered to inject me himself; he was two-thirds a doctor, after all. “You’re not afraid of me?” he cried with incomprehensible hilarity, waving the syringe in his hand. But I suddenly drew back; the empty room filled me with an inexplicable anxiety, as if I missed the reassuring presence of reliable nurses, whose quiet and careful movements always calmed me. “No,” I said, “you’ll only hurt me. Give me the syringes and I’ll find someone to do it for me at the hospital. Just stamp the certificate.” And he gave in unwillingly. He found a yellow vaccination certificate, stamped it, and began dragging out a long, boring conversation, trying to recall the names of erstwhile fellow-students, wallowing in nostalgia for his wasted student days, inviting me to go and have a cup of coffee. When we got to the dreary little cafeteria and sat among the indolent government clerks, next to a big window which raindrops were beginning to streak, I thought about the exhausting day ahead of me and how I was going to find time to say good-bye to my parents. I listened absent-mindedly, with uncharacteristic passivity, to my companion justifying his academic failures with all kinds of tortuous arguments and complaining about the unfairness of his teachers. Finally I pulled myself together, cut the conversation short, and stood up, saying, “Listen, I really have to run. Let’s go back to your ‘bar’ for a minute.” We returned to the vaccination room, where I opened the cupboard myself and collected additional bottles of vaccine against cholera and malaria and also against hepatitis. I added a few syringes in sterile wrappings and asked my companions to stamp two more vaccination certificates without filling in the names. He agreed generously to all my requests, but in the end he couldn’t resist saying somewhat sourly, “I see the travel bug has really bitten you hard.”
Indeed, I was already burning with travel fever, a dull, somewhat sullen fever, and when I reached the hospital on my motorcycle, wet from the rain, I felt alienated from the place that I had served so lovingly and faithfully for the past year. In spite of the nurses’ strike, which had been declared that morning, everything seemed to be functioning normally, and I hurried to the ward only to find no doctors present—just the usual shift of nurses, who seemed surprised to see me. “You?” They giggled archly. “Hishin’s been telling everybody that you’re already winging your way to India.” I put on my white coat, with the name “Benjamin Rubin” embroidered in red on the pocket, and went to look for Hishin, but he, it appeared, had been urgently summoned to the operating room. The young
woman he had operated on the day before had developed complications. My first impulse was to hurry there after him, but I knew that the other resident, my rival-friend, would be there too and I might have to face rejection or be painfully ignored again before saying good-bye. Accordingly, I decided to let it go and to pay a little private visit to the patients in the ward instead. However, the senior nurse, a noble-spirited woman of about sixty, who was sitting in her corner dressed in ordinary clothes in order to express her solidarity with the strike without actually striking herself, stood up and stopped me: “What do you need to make rounds for, Dr. Rubin? You’ve got a long, difficult journey—you should go home and get ready. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything for you here.” What she said made sense, and I was so touched by her sympathetic tone that I couldn’t resist putting my arm around her and giving her a little hug before I slipped off my coat. Without another word, I took two little bottles of vaccine out of my pocket and asked her to give me the shots, which she did with such a light touch that I didn’t even feel the prick. I threw my coat in the laundry bin and set off for administration to look for Lazar. In the office the girls recognized me immediately, even without my coat, and greeted me in a friendly, respectful manner, saying, “Here’s Dr. Rubin, the volunteer doctor.” They called the head secretary, Miss Kolby, who said that Lazar had phoned a number of times from Jerusalem to ask about me. “He’s still in the Foreign Office, looking for India experts?” I exclaimed in surprise. But it turned out that he was in the Treasury, not about the trip to India, but about the nurses’ strike. However, he had still found time to instruct the head pharmacist of the hospital to put together a kit with the appropriate medical equipment, and also to remind Hishin to prepare a medical brief for me. In the meantime his wife’s office had left the message that my ticket was ready. So there was nothing to worry about. “Is his wife really coming with us?” I asked the secretary in a tone of annoyance, and I saw her hesitate, as if taking refuge in uncertainty, perhaps for fear of antagonizing me and giving rise to some new resistance. For a moment it crossed my mind that because of the nurses’ strike Lazar might have to stay behind, and his wife was getting ready to go in his place, and instead of having a male traveling companion I would have to negotiate the complicated routes of India with two women, one of them middle-aged and the other very sick.
Open Heart Page 3