Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  He accompanied me to my room and obtained two sleeping pills. Then he told me with his characteristic practicality and foresight that he was determined not to let sleep slip away from him, in order to charge his batteries for the arduous journey still ahead of us. And indeed, when he knocked at my door and woke me up at ten o’clock the next morning, I noticed immediately that the limp exhaustion of the night before had been replaced by an energetic wakefulness. He apologized for waking me up, but explained that there were a few “urgent administrative matters.” At ten o’clock that night we were continuing our journey on the night train to Varanasi. A long journey of seventeen hours. And we had to vacate our rooms at noon and leave our luggage downstairs. “So we’re leaving tonight?” I asked in disappointment, even though I knew that his eagerness to reach his sick daughter quickly and get her and himself back to Israel as soon as possible would outweigh any promises made in his living room. Regrets welled up in me, for I had planned to go back to the river and see it in daylight, and also to visit a few places which had caught my interest when I walked past them in the dark. But it seemed that we had no alternative; it was impossible to get seats on a plane for the next two weeks, and even the express train, on which we had pinned our hopes in Israel, was full. It was only by the greatest ingenuity that he had succeeded in reserving us seats on a train that was slightly slower and less luxurious but reliable and reasonably comfortable, for otherwise, who knows, we might have been forced to rattle our bones in a dilapidated old bus as if we were characters in an adventure movie. “Yes, that’s the long and the short of it,” he apologized again, but actually he looked rather pleased with himself and his ability to cope with administrative difficulties, even in India. “We’ve arrived at the height of the internal tourist season in India. But we didn’t choose the timing of this trip, it chose us. At least there’s one thing in our favor—the weather’s fine, and we don’t have to worry about savage monsoons coming down on our heads.”

  His wife emerged in sunglasses, ready to go out. She had changed the blue tunic for a colorful Indian scarf, which she had purchased that morning and immediately draped round her shoulders. On her feet she wore flat walking shoes, which made her look short and clumsy. When she saw me at the door of my room, she put her hands together and bowed her head mischievously in the Indian greeting and said, “We owe you our thanks for the Red Fort. After your stories last night we ran to see it this morning, and it really is exquisite.”

  Lazar rummaged in his pockets, took out my train ticket, and said, “Here, you’d better keep it yourself.” Then he took out a pen and wrote the name of the station on the back of the ticket, and said that we should meet at the hotel at eight o’clock before leaving for the station together. “Eight o’clock?” his wife protested. “Why so early? The train leaves at ten. We’ll never get back from that place everyone says you should see at sunset. Why don’t we meet at the train station? He’s already proved himself.”

  I felt a sudden surge of resentment at the way she was calmly laying down the law. I fingered the stubble of my two-day beard and said with a provocative smile, “And if we do get separated? What happens then?”

  “But why should we get separated?” she asked in genuine surprise, this woman who was only here with us because she couldn’t bear being left alone. But Lazar immediately backed me up. “You’re right, everything’s possible, and if you really do get lost here, there isn’t even anyone to inform.” He rapidly wrote down the address of the hospital in Gaya on a piece of paper. “It’s over a thousand miles from here,” he said, smiling, “but at least it’s a clear and definite address. I’ve already given you money and paid for your room in the hotel. And tonight we’ll meet here, just as I said, at eight.” He turned to his wife with a frown. “You always think you can play with time. But not now. So we’ll all be back here by eight. And until then you’re free,” he added, turning back to me. “I see you like to roam around by yourself. Just see that you don’t get into trouble. And we won’t get on each other’s nerves.”

  But they still didn’t leave. Now they were waiting in the corridor for a dark, very delicate boy who came to take their luggage down, and I slowly closed my door on them. In spite of my tiredness, I didn’t go back to bed but immediately began to shave, and suddenly the thought flashed across my mind, Yes, those were the right words exactly. This overweight couple was really beginning to get on my nerves, though I didn’t yet know how or why. Maybe I’m too sensitive, I said to myself, but something about the strong, deep bond shining between them, slipping to and fro with sly efficiency between Lazar’s dry, practical concern and his wife’s warm, phony charm, with her sudden, superfluous smiles, was beginning to irritate me profoundly. In spite of their openness, they weren’t frank with me, and I didn’t know what was going on in their heads, which undoubtedly worked like one constantly coordinated head. I still didn’t even know something as simple and straightforward as how much they were going to pay me for the trip. It was hard to tell what their real attitude to money was, their calculations between themselves and their calculations regarding me. And wasn’t there something strange about the fact that they were both here and dragging a doctor with them? Surely one person would have been enough to bring this sick daughter home? Suddenly it struck me that they were a little afraid of the meeting with their daughter and they had brought me along as a kind of go-between. Had Lazar been telling me the truth outside his house when he said that his wife couldn’t be without him? And if so, in what sense? It was insane. I could already sense the powerful nature of this smoothly oiled conjugality, which was only a little younger than the one between my parents, but how different they were. It would never occur to my father in a million years to take my mother’s hand like that and squeeze it in order to make her stop talking. My father would never embarrass a strange young man watching them like that. But perhaps, I said to myself as I lathered my face for the third time in anticipation of the long journey beginning tonight, perhaps I really was too sensitive, without cause, perhaps because in my heart of hearts I was still lamenting this trip imposed on me by Professor Hishin, who at this early morning hour in Israel I could see stepping, fresh and cocky, into the operating room, where the nurses, together with the anesthetist and the second resident, are waiting for him. I could even imagine Hishin’s jokes, as he teases the patient lying on the stretcher, sedated, and pale with fear, ready for the “takeoff.” Perhaps he even makes a few ironic remarks to the operating team about me and the fantastic trip he has graciously bestowed on me, although he and all the rest of them know very well that all I ever wanted was to stay at his side, next to the operating table, looking and looking deep inside the human body, in the hope that one day the knife would be placed in my hand.

  Three

  Is it possible to bring up the word “Mystery” yet? Or perhaps as of now it can only be thought of? For our three characters (three? for the time being) are not seeking mystery; the relative stability of their personalities, the reasonable rationality of their thinking, has set before them a well-lit goal and a clear road to reach it. And if they only remain free of the tyranny of the imagination, of its arbitrariness, they will arrive by their own powers at the simple heart of the matter and return safely to their homes, after parting from each other without acrimony or pain.

  For what will they gain from a mystery that leads nowhere? And this young doctor, a rather reflective and solitary hero, abruptly cut off three days ago from Professor Hishin’s surgical department, which has filled his life for the past year and on which he pinned his hopes for the future, is now, owing to the sudden trip to India, left without even the possibility of any other hope to cling to. He finishes shaving, washes his face, and begins packing in a mood of sullen resentment. But before he finally parts from the dim room where the colorful silk curtains are still drawn and prepares himself for a day of intensive sightseeing—so that he will not be shamed by friends and acquaintances at home for having traveled all the w
ay to New Delhi and failed to see the things you have to see there—he goes to check that the door is locked, quickly takes off all his clothes and lies down naked on the bed, and masturbates heavily and without recourse to fantasy, in order to feel freer and lighter for the long journey ahead, since he knows that the next bed offered him by his purposive companions will be very far away.

  But the young doctor had no hidden desire to imagine this bed as in any sense mysterious, even though as he emerged from the hotel, erect and slightly dizzy, straight into the heart of the rosy Indian light floating over the streets stinking with stunning, colorful humanity, a twinge of anxiety entered his soul, whereas the day before, in these very same streets, even in the darkness of night, he had felt quite relaxed. Because the English movie in which he imagined that he was taking part in order to protect himself had completely vanished during the night, and now he was exposed without any barriers to the alien and powerful reality. And this anxiety was so new and sudden to the doctor that he stopped the first available rickshaw, even though it was drawn by a bicycle and not a motorcycle, and threw himself onto the soft seat, and said, Take me first to Humayun’s Tomb. And the rider-driver, a serious Indian of about fifty who wore dark glasses and spoke better English than his passenger, turned out to be an excellent tour guide and spent the rest of the day guiding the young tourist intelligently and efficiently about the city, so that he would see not only the sights the guidebooks defined as not to be missed but also those listed as optional Thus, after they had visited Humayun’s Tomb, the Qutab Minar complex, and even the National Museum, and after the guide had noted that his tourist was not a dawdler but looked quickly and walked briskly, he suggested that the tourist pay a visit, perhaps in his capacity as a doctor, to a unique site—a hospital for birds, not far from the Red Fort. There, on the second floor, in a dimly lit room, opposite stinking cages in which lay sick and wounded birds—some of them with their legs in splints, among them crushed and mangy birds of prey who would suddenly shriek horribly—the doctor’s anxiety deepened, until his soul trembled and he asked to leave. “What a crazy idea,” he argued outside, but when he saw his guide’s disappointment, he corrected himself and said, “Maybe the idea of a birds’ hospital is original, but shouldn’t human suffering come first?”

  And then the guide removed his dark glasses, revealing slightly bloodshot eyes, and spoke of the reincarnation of souls, and the doctor secretly clenched his fists and bowed his head in silence, and after the guide concluded, he paid him the exact sum agreed on between them and sent him away without a tip, and instead of going down to the river again to see it in daylight, as he had planned, he turned slowly, feeling rather depressed, in the direction of the hotel. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and the softness of the fading light was suffused with unfamiliar scents. By now he was already in possession of a map of Delhi, and he could find his way without having to ask anyone directions. He sat down in a restaurant and looked at the throng streaming past, and to his astonishment, among the many tourists he suddenly recognized Lazar and his wife, who was still wrapped in the morning’s Indian scarf, walking past him at a distance of a few paces away, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and vanishing into a shop that sold textiles and rugs. How strange, he thought, to bump into them of all people in a city of millions, in this little alley of all places. How strange, he repeated to himself, quickly gulping down his tea, waiting for the moment when they would emerge and he would go up to them to dispel his gloom with her smile, and to compare what they had managed to see today with what he had seen, and to find out if there was some additional sightseeing obligation that he might fulfill in his last hours in Delhi. But they didn’t come out of the shop. The cup stood empty before him, he had already paid the waiter, and he smiled to himself at the insatiable lust for shopping displayed by this fat middle-aged couple. In the end he went to look for them in the shop. But they weren’t there, even though the shop was not a large one and there did not appear to be any other way out. Here was a riddle: suddenly they appear and then they disappear again? This story is beginning to get mysterious, he whispered to himself, not yet pronouncing the word itself but only its adjective.

  He reached the hotel at seven, a whole hour early; he figured they must have emerged from the shop and slipped out of his sight when he was paying the waiter and checking his change. He positioned himself on a soft leather sofa in a corner of the lobby not far from the reception desk, with his suitcase and knapsack next to him. Now he could survey the guests going in and out at his ease, paying special attention to the Indian women, never mind their age, in an attempt to discover the point at which a Westerner, with a rather shy sexuality, like his own, could connect with them. And then he thought of his parents, and he decided to call them, not because they would be worried, but simply in order to hear the reassuring sound of their voices, for they too were to some extent responsible for his being here. But the reception clerk was unable to put through a direct international call from the hotel phone, and told him to go to a post office some distance away. The young doctor had no desire to forfeit the sofa he had taken over and decided to postpone the phone call. It was already eight o’clock, and the dusk had deepened, but the Lazars had not yet appeared. He felt no anxiety or anger, but only a gentle wonder. The street visible through the hotel entrance did not sink into silence and darkness as it had the night before, but took on a festive appearance; many new oil lamps were brought into the hotel lobby, and people walked past in festive attire. With a strange pleasure he said to himself, those two are crazy, their daughter needs them, she’s lying sick hundreds of miles away from here, and they’re strolling around and enjoying themselves like a couple of provincial tourists, looking for bargains among the Indian shmattes. But at nine o’clock he realized that something really had gone wrong. He remembered Lazar’s slogan, “So we won’t get on each other’s nerves,” but still he felt no bitterness or anger, only a sense of profound wonder. His return ticket to Israel was in his wallet; he had all the documents he needed with him. If they really disappeared, he would be his own boss again, and he would even be at liberty to go home.

  At five past nine he picked up his luggage, left a message at the desk, and took a rickshaw to the train station. Perhaps they would make it at the last minute, even without their luggage. But from the minute he entered the heart of the storm in the old station—where the quintessence of travel fever raged in its purest, most hectic form, flooding the place in a dim yellowish light full of smoke and smells, swarming and groaning in the cars crammed with people, which belched out and sucked in bundles and mattresses from every possible opening—the doctor felt the last vestige of hope of finding the couple draining out of him. Nevertheless, he resolutely elbowed his way through the crowd, passing from platform to platform and finally reaching the right train, and the exact compartment, which turned out to be handsome and modern, with the air-conditioning lending a European chill to the air. The four seats looked comfortable, ready to be converted into narrow bunks for the night. The dark, opaque windows turned the travel fever of the station into a scene on a television screen. Was he going to wind up traveling into the depths of India on his own and against his will in order to meet a sick and unknown woman for an undefined medical purpose? he asked himself with the mild irony he had inherited from his English father. And the wonder and loneliness he had been feeling all day welled up in him with a new intensity and washed away the remnants of his anger and disappointment. Now his soul was flooded with a sweet wave of mystery.

  This is not yet the mystery itself, but only its sweetness, which has now been born not from the external reality existing outside the dark window but from the inner depths of this young doctor himself, who was introduced by Professor Hishin to his friend as the ideal person for the journey. For only the superficial eye of a tourist would seek to find mystery in the Indian train, for instance, which suddenly begins puffing and moving slightly to and fro, presumably in order t
o take on additional cars, toward which tall Tibetan monks in orange robes hurry, gently but firmly rebuffing obstreperous beggars, some of them real lepers with amputated limbs, thrusting themselves between the legs of porters carrying enormous bundles of rolled-up mattresses for a group of merry pilgrims passing along the platform. Delicate women flit among the throngs like moths, an intelligent third eye shining in the center of their foreheads and guarding them from bumping into Sikhs with wild black beards and carrying daggers, who are obliged—even they—to impatiently circumvent the solitary white cow which has innocently found its way into the station and is now nibbling the sparse grass growing next to the platform, indifferent to the savage looks of the lean, half-naked Indians clambering over the cars and struggling with the train officials, who are trying to force them down from the roof of one of the ancient trains, where they are strapping their bundles and themselves between the iron railings and settling down for the night.