Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Nine

  And after they have torn to shreds and smashed to smithereens everything that bound them together, the couple makes haste to part from one another, and with the wild leap of an arrow shot from a mighty bow each of them soars into the depths of the radiant void, to retrieve the freedom stolen from them and to prove that they have always been worthy of it. And it has never been so precious as now, with cool breezes swirling around and caressing their wings, guiding the erstwhile pair gently to the place where each of them wishes to be all by itself, and to gain this end they are prepared to forgo the age-old route marked out by the flames of flying dinosaurs, to reject the safety and warmth of migrating flocks crossing oceans with the help of tried and true ancient codes, and to allow chance winds to carry them to a place where they will never meet the mate from whom they have at last succeeded in separating themselves.

  From time to time the bird lands to recover its strength, by the side of a river or in a yellow field, dipping its beak into the fresh water, and with tiny steps it circles in an imaginary ring around the mate who was and is no more, delighting in its absolute absence. But still that pale green eye—whether it is male or female is impossible to tell—calmly inspects its immediate surroundings, to make sure that no one is lurking there to take it by surprise. But there are no surprises, only a peasant plodding heavily between the plowed furrows with a long irrigation pipe on his shoulder, and a little girl in a school uniform with a heavy satchel on her back returning home along a brown footpath. Even if a tiny snake tries to surprise it in the low grass, the snake will be snatched up immediately in an agile beak and disappear.

  And so it continues to wander, landing from time to time on a roof or an electricity pole, dipping its head into a fragrant puddle to fish up a red worm or a trembling gnat, but all the time it keeps its eyes open, to see if someone who was once part of its soul is flapping its wings on the edge of the horizon. For it still does not believe that solitude has truly been restored to it, and that its dead freedom has been resurrected. And so, when the day fades, despite the heaviness it feels in its wings, it soars strongly up into the sky again, to find a west wind which will carry it to the desert, for only there, it believes, will it be able to find a real refuge. It crosses into the twilight at a low altitude, gliding slowly over the pale emptiness in the red evening light. Then, with the same willpower with which it and its mate tore the mystery that joined them, it goes on flying for hours on end over the absolute darkness, occasionally disturbed by the hot breath of a beast of prey. At midnight, tired and content, it permits itself at long last to plummet to a solitary tree or bush in the heart of the plain, there to passionately embrace the freedom which has been fully restored. But immediately it knows that the gleam which greets it in the midst of the foliage is not a firefly or a splinter of broken glass—it is the open eye of its mate, which has been trying to escape it all day long, with the mystery close behind.

  Even after the conversation with Lazar was over and the receiver had been replaced on the cradle, my sense of alarm did not fade, for I realized that I had penetrated the intimate nature not only of his wife but also of Lazar himself, who was so deeply attached to her. I also knew that what had just happened between us, even if she really succeeded in keeping it an isolated episode, would not liberate me from her but instead would only increase my attraction to her. My feet were already carrying me, half dressed, back to the bedroom, to throw myself yearningly onto the love-bed, which from this moment became my own personal bed, and to imagine my face buried once more in the powerful heat of that solid white stomach. I pulled the uncovered pink comforter which the granny had left me over my head, and in the total darkness I thought sorrowfully about how my chances for marriage, which my parents had hoped for, and which I had wanted too, were receding from me. When I woke up a few hours later and remembered what I had managed to accomplish, my heart flooded with joy. I put the two pairs of keys to the apartment in my pocket and went outside, because I couldn’t contain the sense of wonder by myself and wanted to share it with the reality outside of me, which had turned into a wet and empty night. I got onto my motorcycle and rode around the streets for a while, and then I went back to my old apartment, to spend the rest of the night there; and it was a good thing I did, because early in the morning someone from the internal medicine department phoned to summon me to an urgent meeting with Professor Levine. Was it Lazar and Hishin, I wondered, who had urged him out of guilt to lose no time in holding the interview, or was that blood transfusion of mine still bothering him, and now that he had recovered he was in a hurry to confront me with his arguments? With this in mind, I asked to put the interview off till noon and decided to spend the intervening hours in the hospital library, reading everything in the medical computer about hepatitis. I also looked up the article by Professor Levine himself, the one I was supposed to have read before leaving for India, which Hishin had forgotten to give me, but it wasn’t there—perhaps Hishin hadn’t brought it back yet. In spite of everything I read in the library that morning, I had no idea what direction Levine’s attack would come from. On a piece of paper I wrote down in clear figures the exact values of the results of the blood tests in Calcutta, which I still knew by heart. If I had wanted to I could have made the results a bit more drastic, in order to justify myself even further, but anything like that was so foreign to my nature that the thought was banished as soon as it appeared. At midday, armed with freshly honed facts, I entered Levine’s office, which looked smaller and gloomier than Hishin’s, perhaps because it was so untidy and crammed with books and papers. To my surprise he greeted me with a friendly smile and locked the door so we would not be disturbed. He rolled his chair to the front of his desk and placed it close to mine, as if he intended not just to talk to me, but to perform an internal examination on me with his own hands.

  “I understand, Dr. Rubin,” he began, speaking quietly and so slowly that I had wondered whether he was still under the influence of psychiatric drugs—maybe anaphranil—or whether this was his normal way of speaking, “that we have a patient in common.”

  “A patient in common?” I repeated, baffled, until I suddenly remembered. “Of course, the granny.”

  “The granny?” He looked confused. “Sorry.” I blushed hotly. “I must have been influenced by Mrs. Lazar; I just signed a contract with her yesterday to rent her mother’s apartment.” And I burst into a short, embarrassed laugh, which was evidently superfluous in his eyes, for he did not join in, or even smile, but began to examine me with curiosity and even concern, as if I had surprised him with some shrewd and practical aspect of my character for which he was not prepared. “In any case,” he continued, “I spoke to our patient about you this morning, and she appears mostly satisfied with the service you performed for her, just a little anxious about the changes you made in the medication I prescribed for her. And while I failed to understand exactly the nature of the changes you wished to make, I reassured her that it was all right. If the new regime recommended by Dr. Rubin helps you, I told her, we’ll all be happy; and if it doesn’t, it’s no tragedy either—as long as he doesn’t intend to give you a sudden blood transfusion, you have nothing to fear from him.” At last a faint smile crossed his face, though he had a somewhat suffering look. I nodded my head with a smile, ignoring the heavy hint about the transfusion, since I was eager to explain why I had wanted to change the old lady’s medication first. But I immediately understood that he wasn’t interested in hearing my thoughts on the question of the medication but wished to go straight to the matter of my candidacy for the position that had become available in his department. First of all, to my surprise, he questioned me about my medical studies in Jerusalem, especially the first year, and he even wrote down on a piece of paper details of the general courses I had taken in the natural sciences, chemistry, and physics. Then he questioned me in detail about my experience as a doctor in the army. In the end he asked about the experience I had acquired during the past year in
the hospital, both in the operating room and in the surgical ward. And he asked me a number of times why I thought Hishin had chosen the other resident instead of me. I tried to answer all his questions not only thoroughly but also openly and honestly, being careful only, despite his attempts to draw me out, not to criticize Hishin, who I knew was a friend of his in spite of the competition between them. But I said nothing about Dr. Nakash’s offer of private work as his assistant, since I didn’t want him to think that I would have anything to distract me. Finally his questions came to an end, and he crossed his hands on his chest and sank into a long and gloomy silence. For a moment he raised his big blue eyes to me as if he were about to say something, but then he changed his mind and lowered his head, pressing his fingertips to his forehead as if in some kind of conflict. I understood that he was hesitating or even embarrassed to broach the subject of the blood transfusion, perhaps because he didn’t want to spoil the good impression I had made on him up to now, especially since I had come with the recommendation of the administrative director, who turned a blind eye to his regular absences from work on psychiatric grounds. I felt a burgeoning pity for this bleak, unhappy man, who was the same age as Hishin but looked so much older and wearier. I wanted to help him unburden himself of his doubts, and if he attacked me, I would have the opportunity to defend my action, which after my visit to the library seemed to me brilliant in its simplicity. Accordingly, when he seemed about to stand up and put an end to the interview, I said in a soft but self-confident voice, “I’ve been told, Professor Levine, that you have some reservations about the blood transfusion I performed on Lazar’s daughter in India, and I would very much like, if you’re interested and if you still have a little time, to explain what I did.” I saw that I had hit a bull’s-eye. First he blushed; then he recovered, raised his head, and unfolded his hands, his eyes lit up in astonishment at my openness and courage, and he began to speak with a new excitement in his voice. “To tell you the truth, Dr. Rubin, I had decided not to mention the incident, but since you’ve brought it up, I really would like to hear how you justify the blood transfusion you performed over there, which was not only completely unnecessary but also irresponsible and perhaps even dangerous.” I had not expected such a vigorous attack, but I resolved to keep calm and continued quietly: “But why not a transfusion? There was a real danger of internal hemorrhage. In less than twenty-four hours there were three severe nosebleeds. I also got very poor results on her liver functions. Just a moment—excuse me, have you seen the data?”

  “This may come as a surprise to you, Dr. Rubin, but the data are of no importance whatsoever here,” he replied immediately, in a tone that was beginning to sound threatening. “Of course I’ve seen them. Here they are,” and he whipped a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and spread it out in front of me. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of the gray Indian paper with the curly logo which I had brought from Calcutta. I wondered where it had disappeared to, and now I knew. Lazar and his wife had kept it to show to their professor friends, to check up on me behind my back and see if my panic in Varanasi was justified. “But why aren’t the data important?” I was no longer calm, and sensed that the attack was about to come from a completely unexpected direction. “If there were such high values of liver damage, if the transaminases rose to levels of a hundred and eighty and a hundred and fifty-eight, it’s clear that the clotting factors were also impaired. And I’m not even talking about the bilirubin, which reached nearly thirty. So why not strengthen the poor girl with some fresh, safe plasma, from someone as close as her mother, to help her overcome the bleeding? And the fact is, after my transfusion the bleeding stopped.”

  “It stopped on its own, not because of you.” Professor Levine flung these words at me heatedly. “The clotting factors, which you thought you were giving her in your transfusion, are enzymes, not blood cells, and they behave completely differently in a transfusion. They’re absorbed and disappear—they’re ineffective unless they’re diluted in a special serum to bind them and prevent them from dissolving. But this, my friend, not even your excellent teachers in Jerusalem could have taught you, and you simply couldn’t have known. I don’t blame you, as Professor Hishin has already confessed that he forgot to give you my article, which I prepared specially for you, because I anticipated such complications with bleeding. But, Dr. Rubin, I do blame you for so recklessly endangering the mother, whom you could have infected with the daughter’s virus. When they told me in their innocence how you put off the return flight to New Delhi in order to perform a blood transfusion in that city of the dead of theirs, whose name I’ve forgotten, I was careful not to say a word to betray my horror at what you’d done. It’s a miracle that nothing happened. Sometimes God protects people from their doctors. But still, I asked myself, is this young man simply an idiot, who never learned the ABCs of performing a blood transfusion, or did he perhaps have some hidden purpose beyond my comprehension? And then, when I was asked to consider you for a temporary residency in my department, I thought at first, no, not him, I don’t even want to hear his name. But Lazar, and his secretary too, and even your Professor Hishin began putting pressure on me, and other people, objective people, said that you were really a conscientious young man, reliable and modest, and I must say, this is my impression too. So, Dr. Rubin, if you want to join our department, even on a temporary basis, I suggest that you spend the coming week in the library boning up on a few elementary laws of physics, such as the law of equilibrium, and consulting a biology textbook about the movement of viruses and how they multiply in the bloodstream, with particular attention to viruses B and C, which are interesting in themselves, and come back to me next week or the week after. There’s no hurry—come back and we’ll discuss it, so that you’ll understand for once and for all what a catastrophe you could have brought down on a perfectly healthy woman we’re all fond of, for the sake of your pointless theatrics.”

  Now I remembered with a chill how my friend Eyal had spontaneously reacted in exactly the same way when I told him about the blood transfusion in Jerusalem. I could hardly suspect Eyal of inventing things for the sole purpose of tripping me up. So what was the truth of the matter? Had I really been so wrong? A shiver ran down my spine at the thought that Dori might believe I had done something reckless to endanger her health, and lose confidence in me as a doctor. But I also knew that I must on no account get into an argument now with this neurotic man. I had better behave in my best “Anglo-Saxon” manner, as my father proudly called it, and avoid a dispute, and not even confront him about the mortifying expression “your pointless theatrics.” I rose to my feet, my face burning, humiliated to the depths of my soul, and parted from him with hardly a word, or a promise either. Turning by mistake into the internal medicine ward and walking down the corridor between the rooms, where most of the patients were middle-aged or old and where my eyes suddenly flooded with tears, I thought to myself, No, it’s impossible, he’s wrong, his fears are imaginary, but I’ll never be able to prove to him how absurd his arguments are, because all he wants is to depress me, like Dr. Nakash said—yes, Nakash knows him, all right. And suddenly I felt a powerful desire to see Dr. Nakash, so that he would give me, in his simple, straightforward way, a foothold in the world, because now I felt that I had been finally banished from the hospital which up to a few months ago I was sure would become my true and final place in life. I looked for Nakash in the recovery room, but there I was told that he was in the operating room. Still, I didn’t want to give up the idea of seeing him, and I slipped into the wing. Through the window in the door I saw my friends from the surgical department standing there in their green gowns, and Dr. Nakash, dark and skinny, in a short white coat, his head close to the head of the patient. He soon noticed me and sent me a friendly wave, as a sign that I should wait for him. After a few minutes he came out to me. I told him about my meeting with Levine, including the vicious remark about my “pointless theatrics.” He wasn’t surprised; he only smiled and
cursed under his breath. “I told you. He’s a difficult man—all he wants to do is depress you without giving you anything in return. Leave him alone. You don’t need him. Tomorrow night we’ve got a big private operation, and at the end of the month two more long, serious operations. I’ve recommended you to other anesthetists too. Don’t worry, Benjy, you won’t starve, you’ll specialize in anesthesiology, and you won’t regret it, because even if you go back to surgery in the end, it will give you a big advantage over your anesthetists. You’ll be able to get more out of them.”

  He returned to the operating room to sit at the patient’s head while I hurried out of the hospital, which for the first time since I had started working there had become intolerable to me. Above all, I didn’t want to bump into anyone I knew from the medical staff and have to justify myself to him. Who could have imagined two months ago, when I stood in the big office between the two strongest, most influential men at the hospital, who saw me as the “ideal man” for the job and succeeded in persuading me to go to India, that things would turn out like this, that in this whole great hospital there was no room for me now, not even a temporary post, and that of all the hopes I’d cherished in the past year, all I’d be left with was a bizarre, impossible infatuation, which would now only make me suffer more? For if it had remained an abstract fantasy, as it had been until yesterday, it might still have been possible to extricate myself gradually, but now that my body had miraculously touched hers, I had committed not only my soul but also my body, which had been seared with pleasure, to go on and prove to myself that it was no passing episode, as she had announced with such confidence while she was quickly putting on her clothes. Because if I was the one who had started, only I could stop. And I didn’t want to stop, I didn’t want to stop.