Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “Dr. Nakash is already retiring?” my parents, who remembered him favorably from the wedding, exclaimed in surprise. I too had been surprised when I heard about his retirement. The darkness of his skin and the smooth freshness of his face had misled us about his real age. “But why did you have to bring Lazar and his wife to our room? I don’t understand.” My mother returned doggedly to the original subject of our conversation. I lowered my head slightly so she would not be able to look into my eyes and said, “Not both of them, only his wife. Lazar was busy checking out some equipment Sir Geoffrey wanted to offer our hospital, and in the meantime, so that she wouldn’t be bored, I took his wife to see Shivi in the nursery, and then I showed her around the hospital, and after that I took her for a little walk, and I thought I might as well show her this great room that Michaela found for you. Maybe they’ll want to rent it themselves one day.” At this my mother pointed out that I had been wasting my time—the house was being sold in the summer, and the new owners would doubtless want to use all the rooms themselves. “So then I misled her,” I said, trying on the green cardigan my father had brought me—for the first time in his life on his own initiative—as a souvenir from the Isle of Skye. My mother was silent. Although she was not satisfied by my explanation for Mrs. Lazar’s visit to their room, what other explanation could she possibly imagine? She was not a worldly woman, and there was certainly nothing in her experience that might prompt her to guess the impossible truth. She gave up and sat there, sad and exhausted, coughing from time to time. I didn’t like the sound of her cough, but since I had never dared to auscultate her heart or lungs with a stethoscope, I could only hope that the cough syrups my physician cousin had given her would help.

  But they didn’t, and for the last week of my parents’ stay in London she refrained from taking the baby into her arms, which I could see was a real sacrifice for her, since Shivi had obviously captured her heart, and not only because she was her granddaughter. Michaela, who could see my mother’s sadness, tried to set her fears at rest. “Take her,” she said persuasively. “You won’t infect her with anything, don’t worry. She’s as healthy as an ox.” But in spite of my mother’s longing to rock the sweet little “ox” in her arms, she was careful not to come too close to her and only gave her sometimes to my father, who looked at the baby in his arms with an expression of playful reproof. We were all sorry for my mother, whose visit to England was ending so sadly. To make up for it to her, a few days before they were due to leave Michaela insisted on inviting them to an Indian night. Stephanie volunteered to baby-sit, and I was instructed to take a day off, for our night began at twilight with a lavish meal at an excellent and far from cheap Indian restaurant, after which we were to attend a performance by traveling troupes of singers, musicians, dancers, storytellers, and acrobats who had been gathered from all over India and brought to Europe by the Parisian Cirque du Soleil, which had taken upon itself the mission of fostering the art of the Third World, in the belief that it was important and worthy of support. This belief was shared by Michaela, who was very excited about the event, not only because of the enjoyment she expected to have herself but also because she was very curious to see how the rest of us would react. Since she had presented herself from the beginning as a missionary for India in the non-Indian world, she felt responsible for the evening’s entertainment, which was quite expensive, since the tickets were priced as if it were a charity performance. But as far as the money was concerned, at least, nobody could object, since the whole evening was being paid for by Michaela.

  I joined in the general spirit of generosity and treated everyone to drinks before the meal and a bottle of wine to accompany it, which turned out to be a very good thing, for the slightly inebriated state in which we all reached the performance helped us gain a deeper appreciation of things that at first glance, and in spite of our goodwill toward Michaela, seemed completely primitive. Take the opening “act”: a half-naked fakir, his head covered with a mane of gleaming black hair which reached down to his chest, emerged from the audience, walked with slow, grave, thoughtful steps through the vast warehouse in the old port of London which had been converted into a hall for the performance, and climbed onto the huge, empty stage, which began to be suffused with the delicate shades of light of an Indian morning, just as I remembered them. He turned a little faucet, and in a profound silence began deliberately and at length to wash his hands, feet, and face. As he began to perform yoga exercises, facing the invisible sun, little troupes of performers entered one after the other, each dressed in a different color and carrying authentic folk instruments. Each group was composed of adults and children of various ages, who were referred to modestly in the program as “pupils,” and who, despite the astonishing talents that a number of them displayed, were anxiously attentive throughout the evening to the subtle signals of their adult instructors. Although each troupe was allotted its own performance time and they were grouped separately in the corners of the vast stage, which was supposed to symbolize the map of India, they kept up a special kind of dialogue throughout the evening. While singers from one troupe performed, a child acrobat from another troupe would spring without warning from his place and for two or three minutes turn daring somersaults and cartwheels until he suddenly froze into a many-limbed contortion, like the statuette next to Michaela’s bed or like some primeval animal that no longer exists in the world; then he would unravel himself and go quietly back to his place. Or in the middle of a dance by three little girls, the ancient magician would suddenly rise from the heights of his podium at the back of the stage, throw some new magic into the air, and sink back to his seat. It was evident that a Western hand had intervened in the direction of the performance, in the attempt to create a meaningful tension between all the elements, whose power and uniqueness did not easily lend themselves to collaboration.

  The primitiveness of these troupes was evident in the simple movements of the dancers and in the musical instruments, which consisted, for example, of two plain boards of wood banged together astonishingly fast, or chains of little bells tied around the ankles and tinkling with the movements of the feet, or even of a broken clay jar whose spout could be sucked to produce a sound resembling the rumble of approaching thunder. It was precisely this primitiveness that aroused a storm of emotion in Michaela. She had expected something more stylish, adapted to the “limitations” of the Western mentality, and here she was suddenly confronted, in the middle of gray London, with absolute authenticity, of the kind she remembered so vividly from the dark alleys of Calcutta or the train station of Bombay. Her cheeks burned, and tears shone in her great eyes, as if she had discovered something precious and intimate that had been lost to her and that she no longer believed she would find again, although in her heart of hearts she had not given up hoping. I noticed that in her excitement she kept losing her concentration, and her eyes would stray from the stage to us, as if to test our reactions and see if in us too the right soul was coming to life. And I think that we passed the test; not only I, to whom the Indian dancers and singers seemed to be reenacting the gradual and imperceptible process by which I had fallen in love the previous winter, but even my father—who my mother and I suspected would not have the patience for a performance without a plot—appeared tense and moved by the silent but clear and touching dialogue taking place between the “pupils” and the “teachers,” which began with acrobatic exercises agilely performed by a hefty Indian countrywoman and emulated by a little girl and boy, who were not daunted by the most amazing and dangerous tricks, and ended with a tall, gorgeous Indian woman wrapped in a glittering sari, who told with growing vehemence a long, impassioned story, which according to the program notes concerned the struggles between the gods. When the performance came to an end, the children in the audience were invited to join the Indian artists dancing and singing on the stage, and the stage was suddenly filled with rosy-cheeked, blond English children, who began to imitate the Indians’ movements with such astonishing s
kill that it seemed as if they must be possessed by wandering Indian souls.

  The audience rose to its feet in a storm of applause, including my shy father, who clapped enthusiastically while Michaela actually wept with joy and triumph at the success of her efforts to open closed hearts such as mine and my parents’ to the Indian experience. She was still determined to return to India, and she was afraid that since it “seemed to me” that I had already been there, and it “seemed to me” that I had grasped the principle of India, I would have no motive to return. She would repeat this formula with utter seriousness, as if my trip to India hadn’t been real, as if I hadn’t sailed down the Ganges River in the evening to see the burning of the bodies next to the ghats of Varanasi, as if I hadn’t gone into the temples of Bodhgaya and sat in the dark, rotting cinema in Calcutta. No, none of this counted with her, because it had all been secondary to the external aim of taking care of Einat and finding favor in the eyes of her parents. As long as I hadn’t been to India for my own sake, to try to purify my soul, which was in need, like all souls, of purification, it was as if I had never been there at all. Although I had given her my promise, after proposing to her in the roadside diner next to Lydda airport, that I would not stop her from going back to India, she now feared the opposition of my parents, whom she had grown very fond of during their visit to London. She knew they would be scandalized if she took off alone for India, with the baby or without her, and it was therefore important to her for me to accompany her, for part of the time at least, perhaps in the context of observing the sidewalk doctors of Calcutta—or the “doctors of the forgotten,” as the French called them—and thus take responsibility for her trip vis-à-vis my parents. On the face of things, it seemed strange that a woman as free and independent as Michaela, whose relations with her own parents were tenuous in the extreme, should worry about upsetting mine, but I was already aware that a bond had formed between my wife and my parents—especially my mother, who had apparently decided to take her daughter-in-law under her wing in the wake of my coldness, which she sensed in spite of my efforts to appear smiling and attentive and to fulfill all my obligations, real or imaginary, toward Michaela.

  On the day of my sexual disgrace on the green floral bedspread, in the light of the pale sunbeam piercing through the half-open curtain, when I came home with Shivi in my arms, depressed and upset by my failure and worried by the incident with Lazar’s heart, I felt that I had to compensate Michaela for my unfaithfulness to her. After telling her about the events of my day as she sat serenely breast-feeding the baby, who had calmed down at last, I suddenly knelt at her feet and put my head between her strong, smooth legs and began kissing not only the inside of her thighs but also the delicate, slightly parted lips of her vagina, which I had not touched since I had sewed up the tears of the birth over six weeks before. My lips and tongue now felt my skillful stitches. Michaela was so surprised by this sudden two-pronged attack on her privates, with me between her legs and Shivi at her breast, that she began moaning deeply and uttering loud cries of pleasure, which would no doubt have put my mother’s mind at rest if she had heard them, and allayed her suspicions about the weakness of my love for my wife.

  When we said good-bye to my parents in an uncharacteristically emotional parting at Heathrow airport, my mother agreed, in spite of her lingering cough, to kiss the baby, whom we had brought along to soften the sadness of their departure from England. My mother also found a momentary lull in the excitement to take me aside and praise her beloved daughter-in-law, and warn me not to let her roam around London by herself too much, since leaving her to her own devices in this way would only accustom her to a kind of freedom that would be hard for her to find on our return to Israel. “I’ve got no objections to your going back to India at some future date, especially now that Michaela has increased our appreciation for the country,” she added in her clear way, “but to go there now would be irresponsible and dangerous for the baby, who’s too small even to be inoculated against all the dreadful diseases they’ve got there, some of which you’ve already seen for yourself. Wait a few years, until Shivi grows up, and after you’ve got full tenure at the hospital you can take an unpaid leave and go to India not just as a tourist but as a doctor, and do some good. And who knows, maybe your father and I will come and visit you there too.”

  On the way back from the airport, with Michaela driving and me hugging Shivi to my chest, we both felt an unexpected sadness at my parents’ departure, as we would find it difficult now to manage without them. But while I was sure we would see them in four months’ time in Israel, Michaela was cherishing hopes of extending our stay in London by at least one more year, not only because all the Indians she had discovered in various London suburbs helped alleviate her longings for the place itself but also because of the fact that dropping out of high school did not carry the same stigma in London as she felt it did in Israel. In London nobody made any demands on her. Just the opposite: her status had only been strengthened here. Friends of her youth from Israel who came to spend a week in London would call her up from the airport to get instructions about finding things in the city that ordinary tourists didn’t even know existed. Sometimes the shoestring travelers among them would be invited to stay with us for a night or two, until they found a suitable place to live. Since I worked nights, it did not bother me to find sleeping figures curled up in the living room when I came home at dawn, because I knew that when I woke up in the middle of the day they would be gone. On one of these occasions Michaela told me, to my astonishment, that one of the sleeping figures I had encountered in the night was none other than Einat Lazar, who was on a one day stopover in London on her way to the United States. “How come you didn’t wake me up before she left, so that I could say hello to her at least?” I exclaimed in angry surprise. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I never thought that you were interested in Einat, or that you made any real contact with her when you were together in India. Besides, it seemed to me that the way you waited on her parents when they were here would be more than enough to promote your career interests in Israel.” Naturally I sulked and protested at this cynical remark, but at the same time I was relieved to see that Michaela had no suspicions about my feelings for Lazar’s wife, even though the sexual norms of the circles she moved in were broad-minded enough to encompass even the impossible passion that was still filling her husband’s heart. But no, Michaela dismissed the Lazars as she now dismissed everything connected with the possibility of our return home. “What’s the hurry?” she would repeatedly ask me. Israel wasn’t running away, and if we stayed for one more year I would be able to accumulate a wealth of surgical experience, which if it didn’t convince Hishin might convince the head of surgery in some other hospital to hire me. “We’re happy here,” she repeated, her great eyes shining imploringly. “There’s nobody waiting for us in Israel except your parents, and to a certain extent mine, and we can go and visit them all next Christmas.” But there was somebody else, and I was determined to make up for my failure with her.

  I therefore insisted on returning on the original date, at the beginning of autumn, in spite of all Michaela’s arguments, which actually made a lot of sense and which were seconded by Sir Geoffrey, who tried to change my mind and persuade me to stay another year. Sir Geoffrey had become fast friends with Michaela and often found time to drop in to the chapel when she was working there. He would sit next to the altar, on which Shivi reposed in her portable crib, and chat to Michaela as she swept and mopped the floor, about Israel, India, and the world at large. Although Michaela’s English lacked even the rudiments of grammar, she had a great facility in picking up idioms, which she adroitly inserted into her uninhibited chatter, and she was universally praised for the richness of her vocabulary. It sometimes crossed my mind to wonder whether her relations with Sir Geoffrey were strictly platonic—a bizarre suspicion that was apparently founded on nothing more solid than my wish to balance my unfaithfulness to her in the past and the unfait
hfulness I was contemplating in the future. Thus, when I came home from the hospital, I would sometimes imagine that I could detect Sir Geoffrey’s smell in the house. But what exactly this smell was, I couldn’t say, except that it was the smell of the hospital, which I myself carried on my body and in my soul. In any case, after Sir Geoffrey gave up trying to persuade me to stay for another year, he wrote to Lazar and asked him to send another doctor to replace me. When there was no reply, he phoned his office, but Lazar was never there. In the end Lazar returned his call, agreed to his request, and told him by the way that he was going in for a catheterization soon. He mentioned this not to complain or arouse Sir Geoffrey’s pity, which would not have been at all in character, but simply to let him know that the accidental EKG reading in London was evidently not an aberration. In fact, Lazar wanted to tell Sir Geoffrey that the old machines he had offered were in good working condition, and that as a result of the discovery of the asymptomatic arrhythmia he had undergone a stress test in Israel, as well as a stress heart scan, whose poor results had led the doctors to recommend a catheterization, even though he did not complain of chest pains.

  But Sir Geoffrey was not happy to hear that his hospital’s old EKG machine had been right. He would have preferred it to be wrong. He told me about Lazar’s impending catheterization with a grave face, which immediately caused me new anxiety. Even though catheterizations and coronary bypass surgery had by now become such daily occurrences that Hishin, who was not a cardiac surgeon, dismissed them with contempt, the fact that coronary heart disease was apparently associated with arrhythmias in London made the whole case more complicated. I tried to remember if Dr. Arnold had mentioned whether Lazar’s was a ventricular or supraventricular arrhythmia, the ventricular being the more dangerous. Who did I think I was, I rebuked myself, trying to diagnose the heart disease of a person thousands of miles away, the director of a hospital who was surrounded by experts in their field and who certainly didn’t need the help of a young resident like me with practically no experience in cardiology? But perhaps it was the thought that the incriminating EKG had taken place exactly at the time when one or two miles away I had been committing adultery with his wife that which gave rise to my anxiety and guilt, as if in some mysterious way my actions had caused his heart to fibrillate while at the same time he had made me fail. All these thoughts may have been legitimate in a young man embarking on the kind of adventures you read about in novels, but in my case they prompted me to take action. I went to a pay phone and put through a call to Lazar’s office to ask how he was feeling and how the catheterization had gone. Lazar’s loyal and devoted secretary was very moved by my interest, and she tried to answer as briefly and economically as possible in order to save me money. It appeared that the doctors thought that it was not a case of simple coronary disease, although they could not be sure until they had the results of the catheterization. The trouble was, complained the secretary, that too many doctors, friends and acquaintances, were interfering and giving advice, so it was a good thing that Professor Hishin was going to take charge. “But how come?” I cried in protest. “He’s not a cardiac surgeon!”