Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “Why shouldn’t I believe it?” she cried. “It’s high time. For his friends too.” And my father poked his head out of the blankets and chuckled. “You’re opening a battlefront in the middle of the night.” But my mother had already calmed down, and she only asked curiously about the bride. “I didn’t have a chance to hear,” I said, “but tomorrow I’m going there for lunch, and maybe I’ll even see her.”

  “So you’re staying tomorrow too,” said my mother with a certain relief. Even if I wasn’t getting married, at least I was staying with them for one more day.

  When we were both students at the hospital, I often ate at Eyal’s place, because we preferred studying in his house, which was big and quiet. His mother, who lived alone, didn’t like being by herself in the house at night, and she would cook up tasty meals to ensure that we always studied there. She was a sad woman, with some of her former beauty left, and she liked talking to me in English, since she was hoping to find work in the tourist bureau. From time to time she received visits from middle-aged men, but she refused to become involved with any of them. Now the two of them sat looking politely at the photographs of my trip. “A pretty girl, but obviously neurotic,” Eyal said, dismissing Einat. “I doubt if she’s worth investing in.” He went on to study Lazar’s broad face with evident enjoyment. “It’s obvious,” he pronounced, “that he’s a strong man, but also friendly and humane. If you’ve already become close to him and his family, it would be a shame to lose that.”

  “His wife’s very nice too,” I said suddenly, and felt myself blushing. Eyal examined the snapshots again. “Yes, she’s always smiling,” he agreed. “You can see at once that she’s pleased with herself.” I was so delighted by these perceptive words that I wanted to go on talking about her. But his sad mother, who had grown very fat lately, didn’t want to leave us alone together. “Are you glad that Eyal’s getting married?” I asked her carefully. “She’s overjoyed,” Eyal answered for her. His mother said nothing, and after a pause she asked if we were ready for lunch. Eyal suggested that we wait for his girlfriend, who was due to arrive soon.

  But his mother said the food would get cold, and in a surly tone, which I had never heard her use before, she demanded that we eat right away. And then, when we sat down opposite each other at the elegantly laid table and she disappeared into the kitchen, I lowered my eyes and said with a miserable smile, “You’re suddenly getting married, and I, I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I’ve suddenly fallen in love with a married woman.”

  “A married woman?” Eyal’s little eyes filled with a sly smile, which showed that my frank statement hadn’t taken him by surprise. “Yes, a married woman.” I nodded my head sadly. “Don’t tell me that you’re talking about the director’s wife,” Eyal said, looking at me with a pitying smile. “Lazar’s wife?” I laughed in astonishment. “What an idea!” And I immediately went on, “Can you really see me falling in love with a woman twenty years older than me?” But Eyal did not seem put out by my indignant protests. He shrugged his shoulders and went on smiling. “I didn’t mean anything—it doesn’t matter. It’s just that I saw you couldn’t stop taking pictures of her, and besides, she really does look nice. But it doesn’t matter. If not her, then who have you fallen in love with? And what’s more important, who’s she married to?” But at this point his mother returned and set two bowls of soup carefully before us, after which she sat down beside us and placed her beautiful white hands on the table. “Aren’t you eating with us?” I asked her sympathetically. “No,” she said hesitantly, “I’m not hungry,” and her face, which was turned to her son, grew very red. Eyal reached out, laid his hand gently on her shoulder, and said affectionately, “Yes, Mother has to watch her weight.”

  Toward the end of the meal, when the bride-to-be, Hadas—a vivacious, good-natured girl, with a fresh, wholesome look about her—arrived and shook the snowflakes gracefully off her hair, Eyal’s mother retired at last to her room and left us alone. I made up my mind not to say any more to Eyal, who immediately began questioning me again about the “married woman,” who had apparently sparked his imagination. Hadas, who radiated goodwill toward me, was surprisingly well informed about my trip to India. It turned out that the shaven-headed girl, Michaela, who had brought the news of the hepatitis to the Lazars and whom I had taken at first for a boy, was from the same kibbutz as Hadas. I stood up suddenly, though I had planned to leave, as if thrown off balance by the excitement caused by the discovery of this unexpected coincidence. I wondered whether I should go to Eyal’s mother’s room to say good-bye and thank her for her hospitality or leave her to rest. Eyal, maybe eager for me to leave, stood up and said, “So, Benjy, don’t say it’s too far for you to come to Ein Zohar for our wedding.”

  “Have you already set a date?”

  “Of course,” they chorused, and they told me the exact date and made sure that I wrote it down in my calendar, and that no night shift in the world would prevent me from being there. Then Eyal insisted that I go in and say good-bye to his mother, who was so fond of me; why not give her a little pleasure? I followed him cautiously into the large, dim room, where we had played when we were children and where she was lying, large and very white, covered only by a sheet, which revealed how much weight she had put on in the past year. “Benjy wants to say good-bye to you,” whispered Eyal, gently waking her up. “Yes, I wanted to say good-bye to you,” I said, “and also to thank you for the meal, which was even more delicious than usual.” But she didn’t smile at me, she only nodded her head and said, “Give my regards to your parents, and don’t forget to come to Eyal’s wedding. It’s important for you to be there, not only for our sakes but also for yours.”

  “I’ll be there, I promise,” I said, and to reinforce my promise I put both my hands together over my heart in the Indian salutation.

  I had every intention of going to the wedding. Eyal had been my best friend since we had been in school, after all. But in truth, I also held out hope that the boyish Michaela, a friend of Eyal and his future bride’s, might be there, and perhaps through her I’d be able to make indirect contact with Einat, and through her with her parents, in case my connection with Lazar proved shortlived. As I strolled down the Jerusalem street, marveling at the great heaps of snow piled up along the sidewalks, the pleasant feeling did not leave me, nor did the mild envy I felt at Eyal’s approaching marriage, nor the thought that any hopes of my own in that direction would have to be postponed for the time being owing to my feelings for Lazar’s wife. Nothing could stop me from wishing to let myself go on falling into the abyss of the sweet new feeling. I got home and told my parents, who were waiting for me with their usual eagerness, that the roads were now free of snow and there was nothing to prevent me from returning to Tel Aviv; they knew very well that I had to get back to the hospital in order to fight for the continuation of my residency in the surgical department. My father suddenly burst out with uncharacteristic vehemence, “Why do they leave it up to Professor Hishin to decide by himself who to keep on in the department and who not to keep on? In these matters there are always hidden motives at work, and perhaps precisely—listen to me for a minute before you jump in with a ready retort—perhaps precisely because you’re so hardworking and dedicated he wants to push you out. Why don’t they let other people in the department decide? It’s not only nimble fingers that count, but also loyalty and dedication, like you’ve given the hospital over the past year. Why don’t they remember that?” It was hard for me to hear my father talking like this, perhaps because I felt the same smarting injustice. “But, Dad,” I said, trying to calm him down, “you’re talking as if it’s the only hospital in the world. I can find a place at another hospital in Tel Aviv.”

  “Not on the same level as the one you’re at now,” he pronounced, and he was right. “So maybe I’ll come back to Jerusalem,” I said. “To Jerusalem?” said my father in disgust. “You’re thinking of returning to Jerusalem and perhaps coming back to live at home
? Then you’ll really never get married.” I burst into strange laughter. It had never occurred to me that my father too was worried by my single state. Now my mother broke her glum silence. “Don’t keep him,” she scolded my father. “It gets dark quickly. He should leave while it’s still light.” But my father grabbed hold of my shoulder. “Listen to me, Benjy, you fight for your place. Now you’ve got allies with influence in the hospital—Lazar and his wife.”

  “What’s his wife got to do with it?” I asked in pretended surprise. “What has she got to do with the hospital?”

  “She’s got something to do with Lazar,” my father insisted, “and he might be able to provide an additional post in the surgical department for you. He saw what a good doctor you are if not for you, they would still be stuck in India with a dying girl.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, “you’re exaggerating. All I did was perform a simple blood transfusion.”

  “I don’t interfere in matters I’m not an expert in,” said my father, “but listen to me. They haven’t paid you anything yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said apologetically. “They didn’t have a chance; we said good-bye at the airport.”

  “Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” explained my father. “They don’t have to pay you. All they have to do is keep in touch and help you stay on at the hospital, so that you can stay in Tel Aviv, a town with a bit of life in it, at least.” And he turned a wonderful, tired smile on me, illuminated by the bright blue of his eyes, trying to soften his words, because he knew very well that all his anger stemmed from his dream of returning, when he retired, from his Jerusalem exile to live near me in Tel Aviv.

  My mother looked out the window and raised her eyes worriedly to the sky, as if to keep the blue expanse from clouding up. “If you’ve made up your mind to go back today, then you should start now,” she urged me, using her common sense. I went into my room and saw that my bags were ready, crammed with freshly laundered clothes and underclothes, and peeping out of one of them I saw a tin of the Scottish shortbread I had loved as a child, which my mother continued to ply me with even though I had lost my taste for it long ago. I hadn’t brought a single thing back from India for myself, apart from the accursed infatuation which continued to preoccupy me even here, in the shadowy room of my childhood. I put it on, and although my parents didn’t like me to wear my crash helmet in the house, I put on the black helmet and fastened the strap, pulled on my old leather gloves, and went to start my Honda, it started with the first kick, emitted a spurt of bluish smoke, and was ready to go, as if my prolonged absence, the cold, and the snow made no difference to it and its clean white streamlined body were unaffected by external circumstances. I strapped the knapsacks to the pillion and covered them with canvas. My father stood by my side in a light flannel shirt, admiring the motorcycle. My mother stood behind him, shivering under her shawl. “Call us when you arrive,” she said before I lowered the transparent visor over my eyes and revved the engine, and she went inside—but my father stayed where he was, unwilling to miss a single detail of the maneuvers that led me slowly along the sidewalk, against the direction of the traffic in the one-way street, and took me quickly and efficiently onto the main road.

  You’d better drive carefully, I admonished myself at the first turn on the descent from Jerusalem, as the Honda went into a serious skid on an invisible layer of ice on the road. I immediately reined in the fast, powerful engine, shifted to second gear, and with a muffled roaring sound rode slowly down the middle of the road, slowing the cars behind me, whose drivers felt confident on the snow-free road and even had the nerve to honk at me. But I had no intention of picking up speed, and raised my visor so I had a better view of the slippery black pavement. As I proceeded at this leisurely pace, I noticed the coppery Jerusalem light, which the white snow had shot through with noble shades of purple. At first I thought that this light was given off by the snow-covered rocks at the side of the road, but when I raised my eyes and saw that the horizon of the white mountains all around was full of the same strange light, I felt as if the heavy snowfall had penetrated the very soul of the city, and for a moment I was seized by anxiety and I slowed down even more, as if this new light had it in its power to rob me of control over my bike. In the next lane the drivers passing me were looking at me uncomprehendingly and even angrily, as if the fear I was betraying by my slow driving were not only incompatible with my heavy black crash helmet but also objectively unjustified. Even on the broad, majestic three-lane ascent to the Castel, which was entirely mantled in snow, I did not increase my speed much and only went into third gear, although the Honda was easily capable of flying up the hill in fifth and devouring the distance in a single roar. The strange light suffusing the familiar coppery pink of Jerusalem with such a sad, mysterious hue was still preoccupying me so much that I did not want to hasten its inevitable loss in the abundant stream of clear, cheerful light that would come pouring in from the open western horizon when I passed the summit.

  But the horizon of the plain, which first appears as a solemn promise at the summit of the Castel, then it gradually disappears again on the steep descent separating the new stone houses of Abu Gosh from the springs of Aqua Bella, was now stained not only by the big round sun going down in the west but by the blue lights of police cars surrounding a huge, showy motorcycle that had crashed on the road and the large white helmet lying next to it. Drivers slowed down and turned their heads, trying to figure out from the exact position of the helmet what was left of the life of the wretched rider, who was already being borne toward the awesome Jerusalem light. And now the cars behind me and next to me expected me to slow down even more on the dangerous multilane descent. But I stayed in third gear as I sailed down to the little valley of Abu Gosh, thinking not of the motorcyclist but of myself. If it had been me, would Lazar’s wife—whom I still hesitated to call Dori to myself—remember me and my name, let’s say in one or two years’ time, when the trip to India was already forgotten?

  But could a journey like that be forgotten? I wondered, as the Honda began eagerly devouring the short, straight ascent that divided the blue-branched pomegranate orchards of Abu Gosh from the white houses of an Arab village whose name I had never succeeded in learning, and which still looked to me like a Jewish settlement onto which the minaret of a mosque had been grafted. After all, India wasn’t Europe or America, buried in identical airports and brightly lit avenues of churches and giant department stores. Could the golden Varanasi, with the sweetish smoke of its dead, or the temples of Bodhgaya, with their statues of animals and birds, be forgotten just like that? And was this woman, whose nickname I tried to whisper against the wind, doomed to go on remembering the journey to India even when she was an old woman in her nursing-home bed? What a pity that she would not be able to add to this memory, which from now on would become absolute, the strange passion that the young doctor accompanying them had conceived for her, a passion which gave an unexpected sexual value to a woman approaching her fiftieth year. Strange, I thought to myself as the motorcycle began picking up speed on the pleasant curves of the Sha’ar-Hagai road and I had to lower the plastic visor against the stinging, pine-scented wind, strange that I still didn’t know the date of her birth, even though her passport had lain open more than once before my eyes.

  And thus, full of tender thoughts of love in spite of the savage roaring of my motorcycle behind my back, I emerged in fifth gear from Sha’ar-Hagai into the Ayalon Valley, crossing the last border of Jerusalem, which had steeped me in rest but also in enforced idleness, with a feeling of relief. Before I could enjoy the orchards and broad fields, and the large water reservoir which had recently been built here, a first quiet flash of lightning appeared on the horizon, which was the greenish color of a computer screen, signaling a warning that the big cloud floating merrily toward me like a dirigible, ignited by the rosy glow of the setting sun, was already preparing to burst not into fire but with water. I had to hurry, I said to myself, and increased my spee
d to over sixty-five miles an hour, noticing too late the police car parked on the other side, which caught me in its radar trap. The blue light began to blink and the car started to move, which forced me, even before the policeman decided on his policy, to shoot up to a hundred and sixty and disabuse him of even the glimmer of a hope of catching up with me. And at a really wild speed, foreign to my nature and also to my values, I ate up in a few minutes the twelve miles separating the Trappist monastery from the interchange leading to the airport, the thought of the passenger terminal filling me with intense longings, and by side roads and detours I entered the heart of Tel Aviv, which seemed to me, in spite of the nagging, miserable rain, full of a secret new promise.

  Once home, with my bags crouching in the middle of the room like a couple of wild, wet animals, I phoned Lazar’s house immediately. It wasn’t only my right, I thought, but also my duty to check up on my patient, who to my surprise answered the phone herself and sounded more confused and lost in her own home than she had in India. But perhaps thanks to the trust I had inspired in her on our first meeting, when she was lying on a sleeping bag in the Bodhgaya monastery, she soon bucked up and shed her listlessness, and gave me a few details about her physical condition, at least insofar as she understood it. The head of internal medicine at the hospital, Professor Levine, had come to see her the previous morning and had wanted to hospitalize her immediately in his ward, but her parents had decided to wait for their friend Hishin, who had returned from Paris this morning. Hishin had come straight from the airport, given her a long examination, and recommended that she remain at home, even though her temperature had gone up again. Her temperature had gone up? I was profoundly disappointed, because I had presumed that the blood transfusion would also eliminate the liver infection, which was apparently the cause of the ongoing dysfunction in the immune system. “Did you tell Hishin about what happened in India?” I asked. “Of course,” replied Einat. “My mother and father told him everything.”