Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “Why not?” replied Michaela almost in a whisper, and she began delicately stroking Shivi’s forehead in the area between her eyes in a caress she had evidently perfected during the two weeks she had spent alone with the baby in London, which Shivi appeared to enjoy as if she were a cat. “If you succeeded in incorporating the midwife’s soul on the night of the birth, why shouldn’t you incorporate Lazar’s soul too?” She was treading a fine line between irony and profound seriousness, as always when trying out an idea that held a hidden educational intention. “The midwife’s soul?” I laughed. “Who said so?”

  “She did,” replied Michaela. “Don’t you remember? When we were all admiring the way you delivered Shivi so perfectly?” I was silent. It gave me a kick to hear her call my delivery of the baby perfect, but I didn’t want to go on discussing Lazar, who in any case couldn’t rise from his grave to betray me.

  The next day I took Michaela to pay a condolence call on the Lazars. I insisted that she come with me to console Einat, who had almost been an eyewitness to her father’s death. We didn’t know if it was proper to take a baby to a house of mourning, but we took Shivi with us anyway, since we did not yet have a babysitter and I didn’t want Michaela to go without me to the apartment I visited so often in my imagination. Again I found the living room full of people, many of them familiar faces from the hospital, who had put off their condolence calls to the last days of the week of mourning. They could not possibly have all been in daily contact with Lazar, but they had all felt themselves to be under the shelter of his eagle eye, and now that the shelter was gone, they wanted to examine the extent of the gap yawning over their heads. I found Hishin there too, sitting in the same place as before, at Dori’s right hand. The shabby black cap that he had worn to the funeral was perched on his head again, like a symbol of his private mourning. His young companion, whom he had brought back with him from one of his trips to Europe, had been replaced by a short man, rather sloppily dressed in sportswear, who from a distance seemed familiar. When I went closer, it turned out, to my surprise, to be Professor Adler, the Jerusalem master surgeon. Although it was not the usual thing for a surgeon to pay a condolence call on a family mourning the death of his patient, Hishin had insisted on bringing him here, in order to prove to everyone that in spite of the unfortunate outcome, he was convinced that his friend had performed the surgery successfully. He had brought him directly from the airport, on his way home to Jerusalem. With the baby hanging on Michaela’s stomach in her sling, we hesitantly approached Einat and Dori, who, free of her husband’s reprimanding eye, was smoking one slender cigarette after another as she listened, without concentrating and without smiling, to Professor Adler’s patient and methodical exposition of his guiltless role in her catastrophe. Einat, whose face was very pale, rose immediately to greet Michaela, and she hugged and kissed her so warmly and lovingly that Shivi was almost crushed between them. Dori stopped listening and transferred her attention to her daughter, who was weeping around Michaela’s neck. I was alarmed to see a silent tear rolling down her cheek and the ash of her cigarette almost falling onto the carpet, and I instinctively bent down to move the ashtray closer. Now Professor Adler recognized me and smiled at me encouragingly. Would he also remember the ventricular tachycardia? I wouldn’t be surprised, for judging by the direct, intelligent look in his eye, it seemed that if he had not been in a hurry to get back to Jerusalem then, he would have listened with patience and respect even to the words of an insignificant junior physician like me. Accordingly, when Einat took Michaela and Shivi into her room, I sat down boldly in the place she had vacated, next to the two professors and Dori. As if my presence had the power to soothe Dori’s pain and distress, I saw the old, involuntary smile flashing dimly in her eyes again—a smile she may have felt the need to justify, for she immediately told Hishin and his Jerusalem friend how fond Lazar had been of me, while I, who felt not only his fondness but also his love like a leaden weight inside me, bowed my head like a young boy listening proudly but also impatiently to his mother praising him in front of strangers. Then, unable to restrain myself, I turned to Professor Adler and asked him how he explained what had happened to Lazar’s heart after the surgery, which I myself could humbly testify had succeeded. But although he tried to explain, and even sketched the heart that had failed and died on a large sheet of paper, it seemed that the expert surgeon who had so briskly and firmly sawed Lazar’s chest open was not capable of producing even one convincing reason for his sudden death, but only of piling one lengthy explanation on another in an attempt to disguise their essential weakness. Dori tried to listen to him, but the arrival of a delegation of her colleagues, judges and lawyers in black gowns, distracted her. And who could blame her? Even if the real cause of her husband’s death was discovered, it would not bring him back to life.

  From her point of view she was right, of course, but not from the point of view of a doctor, especially a young one, for whom an unexplained death is intolerable. Therefore I kept on at Professor Adler, trying to make him clarify, not only to me but to himself, what had really happened. And he seemed ready to respond patiently to my challenge and to saw through Lazar’s chest in order to open again the book on the heart which had failed, and to probe Koch’s triangle, the place where the real threat lay hidden. But here Hishin interrupted his friend, who in his zeal to prove his point had forgotten the fact that he had just arrived back in the country a few hours before, and reminded him that it was getting dark and that his wife was expecting him in Jerusalem; a new wave of visitors had arrived too, and we all felt that it was time to get up and vacate our places. Professor Adler stood up and said good-bye to me in a very friendly way, and also invited me to come to Jerusalem and continue our conversation there. “That would be great,” I said immediately. “My parents live there, you know,” and I escorted the two professors to the door as if I too had moved in for the duration of the mourning period, like Einat and like the granny, who was standing in the kitchen in a clean apron making tea for the visitors. She seemed delighted to see me again.

  Clearly my beloved, who could not bear to be alone at the best of times, could not be expected to rely solely on the presence of her soldier son—from whose room the sounds of a lively adolescent conversation could be heard, accompanied, if my ears did not deceive me, by rock music played very softly—but required her mother and her daughter as well. They had both come to stay with her, at least for the week of mourning. But what would happen in the future? I thought anxiously, as if it were up to me to find a solution, and I gave the bedroom door a little push and saw, to my relief, that the chaos raging here two days before had disappeared, as if the troubled spirit of Lazar had returned to establish order. Was it really my responsibility now to see that she wasn’t left alone? I asked myself. Although I had spent two weeks traveling with her and gone to bed with her twice, I still knew very little about her. Seeing her now surrounded by friends and well-wishers, hugged and kissed until her bun came loose and her hair fell around her face, hiding not only her tears but also her wonderful smile, which not even profound sorrow and grief could extinguish, I asked myself, had the time really come to take this burden upon myself, simply in order to go on devoting myself to the impossible love which had suddenly become possible?

  But was it really possible? I thought excitedly as I entered Einat’s room, my face burning, to take Michaela and Shivi home. As soon as I saw the curious but anxious look in Einat’s eyes, I suspected that Michaela had said something to her about the transmigration of a certain soul, for Einat was strongly drawn to India in her own right, and during the weeks that she had spent lying helplessly in the monastery in Bodhgaya she may have been exposed to the beliefs of the people taking care of her, and she might be very willing to believe in all kinds of extreme ideas. I quickly smiled at her and touched her arm reassuringly, as I had touched her when I was her doctor and she was my patient. But this time a shiver seemed to pass through her at my touch. Has Michaela got
so much influence over you, it was on the tip of my tongue to say in protest, that you’re prepared to believe that an alien entity could invade the boundaries of my personality? But I said nothing, and I sat down silently on the bed and quickly stretched out my arms for Shivi, whose body arched in tension, as if a stranger had picked her up and not her father. Einat looked drained. She had witnessed her father’s death throes for only a few minutes, until Professor Levine had sent her out of the room, but those minutes had left their scar. “A real scar that she won’t give up easily,” said Michaela on the way home, “a scar she can show to people who love looking at scars, or to anyone who just loves her. A more spiritual scar than the one left by the hepatitis, in spite of the dramatic blood transfusion you gave her in Varanasi.” It was impossible to tell by her tone if she was being sarcastic or not. I had already noted that things I thought Michaela said in malicious sarcasm turned out later to have been said in all seriousness and innocence. I therefore hesitated to reply. The memory of the blood transfusion in Varanasi now seemed, after Lazar’s death, to have taken place in a dream and not in the real world, which was currently filled with drops of fine, fresh rain that turned the lights of the cars in front of us into trembling diamonds. Shivi sat up on Michaela’s lap, drawn to the movement of the windshield wipers starting and stopping again. I noticed that Michaela had left Shivi’s sling in Einat’s room. But I said nothing, not wanting to turn back and preferring to return later in the evening to see who was going to stay with Dori during the night. “Did you say anything to Einat about me?” I asked, without going into detail, but Michaela knew right away what I was talking about. “No,” she said immediately, her great eyes shining with a secret smile. “If she doesn’t realize what’s happened for herself, what good will my words do?” And then she added in a whisper, “Didn’t you see how she trembled when you came into the room?” I slowed down and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. Did she have any idea of what she was leading me into with this kind of talk? “I see you’re trying to fan the fire,” I mumbled, gripping the steering wheel tightly and wondering at the word “fire,” which had slipped out of my mouth. “But the fire’s already broken out, Benjy,” said Michaela in a quiet, steady voice. “That night when you phoned and asked me to come home and you weren’t afraid to admit what you felt, you rose in my estimation to the level of a Brahmin, and that’s why I didn’t hesitate to interrupt my trip and come home, even though I suspected that you would try to deny later what broke out of you then with such spontaneous beauty and power.” I kept quiet, smiling in astonishment at Shivi, who turned her eyes from the wipers and gave me an inquiring look, as if wondering why I didn’t respond to Michaela, who was now in the grip of real enthusiasm as she tried to persuade me to stop denying what had happened to me. She had no intention of belittling my medical understanding, she said, which was in no way inferior to that of my professors, including the little Jerusalemite, who in spite of all his expertise was blind to the approaching death of Lazar, lying open before him on the operating table. She said she knew that I had already sensed Lazar’s death in England, knew it was the reason I had hurried back, like a man seeing the flicker of flames on the horizon of a distant field who hurries toward the fire, not to put it out but to obtain inspiration from it, for it is a sacred fire in which the dead are burned and the soul is liberated from the body. Michaela knew how powerful that fire was, how its attraction can call the widow to throw herself atop its blaze.

  “The widow?” I whispered, surprised and amused by the wealth of Michaela’s Indian associations. But Michaela, it turned out, wasn’t just talking—she had actually seen a widow being burned when she was in India, and she would never forget it as long as she lived. Although this rite was forbidden by law and took place rarely and clandestinely, and even though strangers were never permitted to approach it, the sidewalk doctors and their helpers in Calcutta had gained the confidence of two Indian ethnologists who wanted to reward their devotion to the sick and maimed by showing them something that was not only shocking and horrifying but that went to the very heart of the national identity. Not all the doctors and nurses invited were enthusiastic about the idea of traveling for two days on rough roads to a remote village, which for all its primitiveness had already been invaded by a miasma of tourism and commercialism. But nothing would have prevented Michaela from taking advantage of the opportunity to see this ancient ritual, which the British had done everything in their power to stamp out, for she knew that anyone who shrank from the sight of death in India was resisting the true spirit of the place and had no business being there. The ceremony took place on the outskirts of the village, in a hidden hollow, and all the spectators had to keep their distance, especially the strangers among them. The widow was a woman of about fifty, supple and strong, who they were assured had chosen of her own free will and in perfect faith to be burned alive. The memory of the bright, distant flame slowly consuming her would never be forgotten by Michaela or by Einat, whom she had persuaded to accompany her. “I’m constantly amazed to discover how much time you spent together,” I said to Michaela, who was carrying Shivi upstairs and had still not felt the absence of the sling, which I would soon “remember” so I could set out once more, full of happiness and excitement, for the home of another widow, whom no one would ever ask to throw herself on a funeral pyre in order to show the world what an honorable woman she was and how much she had loved her husband.

  “Yes,” said Michaela, shaking the raindrops from her hair and entering the apartment, “we hung around a lot together, but our reactions were always very different. Even though it was terrible to watch, I left that place with a feeling of elation, just like the Indians who had taken us there and who you can be sure were no less sophisticated and modern than you and me. But Einat was so upset and shocked, so confused and horrified and even angry with me for taking her, that I think it began then.”

  “What began then?”

  “Her illness. The hepatitis. The deterioration.”

  “But in what sense?” I pressed her, excited by the thought that I was close to identifying the source of the mystery that had been disrupting my life. “I don’t know.” Michaela shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe her immune system was weakened when she saw a middle-aged woman like her mother slowly going up in flames. And once that happens, in all that filth, it’s easy enough for some vicious virus to take hold in you.” When Michaela saw how interested I was in the ritual widow-burning, she promised to look for a couple of photographs that one of her friends had managed to take in secret before a number of soldiers had arrived to disperse the crowd. But they had been unable to save the woman, who had already turned to ashes.

  The doorbell rang. It was Amnon, who had come to welcome Michaela home before his night shift began. We were both glad to see him and insisted that he stay for supper, after watching us bathe Shivi, which, he said, might even tempt him to have a baby of his own. In order to suppress the excitement mounting inside me at the thought of returning to the Lazars’ apartment, I demanded his help in putting the furniture back where it belonged. Michaela tried to dissuade me at first, on the grounds that the present arrangement was worth a try at least, but I held on my opinion that it might be okay for a bachelor but not for a married couple, and the front room should be reserved for guests, not converted into a bedroom. Neither of them was convinced, but I, as “the original tenant who signed the lease, and therefore as the true representative of the landlady,” insisted on restoring order, and we dragged the big bed back into its place and set the narrow couch opposite the big window from which it was possible to catch a glimpse of the sea, but certainly not on a night like this, which was full of fog and rain. Considering the weather, and how late it was, Michaela was very surprised when I insisted on going to get the forgotten sling, as if we could not do without it until the following day.

  Was Hishin’s guilt really so great that on his way back from Jerusalem he had returned to visit the grief-stricken family a
gain? I wondered anxiously when I recognized his car parked next to the Lazars’. I ran up the stairs and knocked lightly on the door, rehearsing a short sentence of apology, which I delivered to the granny, who greeted me with a welcoming smile, fresh and neat in a white blouse and a tailored tartan skirt. The apartment, which a few hours before had been crowded with people, was now empty and a little dark, and the many chairs, which had apparently been borrowed from neighbors, were scattered without order all over the room, expressing the mourning that had descended on the house better than any words could have done. Without wasting words, the granny led me down the dark hallway to Einat’s room to look for the forgotten sling while Dori’s sobs, coming from the direction of the kitchen, pierced me like a knife. The open door of her dark bedroom revealed renewed chaos. There was a light on in the soldier’s room, but it was empty except for a rifle leaning against the wall. The door to Einat’s room was closed, and the granny first knocked lightly, and when there was no reply she carefully opened the door. Einat, who was curled up, fully dressed, asleep on her bed, with a little reading light shining on her face, opened her eyes immediately, as if she had been expecting my return, and pulled Shivi’s sling out from under the bed. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and stepped forward to take it from her hand. She smiled and nodded her head. “Give Shivi a kiss from me,” she said, and curled up into herself again like a sad fetus, limply allowing her grandmother to take off her shoes. I retreated into the hallway, refusing to resign myself to leaving the apartment without catching a single glimpse of Dori. It occurred to me to ask the granny, “Are you sleeping here?” “No,” she said in an apologetic and slightly embarrassed tone. She spent all day here, but at night she went back to the retirement home to sleep. At her age it was hard to get used to a strange bed. Now she was waiting for her grandson, who had gone out for a breath of fresh air with his friends, to come and drive her home. I kept quiet, slowing my footsteps and keeping my ears cocked for Dori’s tearstained voice as she spoke to Hishin in the kitchen. “I can take you,” I offered immediately, leaning forward to examine the granny’s face in the dim light. “Thank you very much,” she replied without hesitation, careful not to let the offer slip through her fingers after her exhausting day. “But is it on your way?” she asked. “I’ll put it on my way,” I said decisively, and followed her into the kitchen to inform Dori and Hishin that I was taking her home. They were sitting at the kitchen table in a pool of sad neon light. Among the dirty cups and glasses on the table lay Dori’s eyeglasses and several crumpled tissues. Her eyes were as telling as when I had made love to her, but now they were red and swollen. For the first time since the death I was able to grasp the depths of pain to which she had sunk. Hishin sat at a little distance from her, his face gloomy and thoughtful, his long legs stretched out in front of him. The black baseball cap was lying on the table. In front of him was a plate containing the remains of his supper, and between his long fingers was one of Dori’s slender cigarettes, which he was apparently smoking in a gesture of solidarity with her sorrow and despair, for I had never seen him smoke before. They both looked up at me without any surprise or question, as if it were only natural that I should be wandering around the apartment at this late hour. Dori made no attempt to hide the traces of her weeping, but instead she lifted her head as if to show me her tearstained face and demand from me too some clear, strong word of consolation or hope, so that she could restore herself, if not her husband.