“But where have you been all the time?” I allowed myself to ask in a mildly rebuking tone, despite the difference in age between us. “Where? With Dori, of course,” she answered immediately. “Somebody had to help her organize things.”
“What things?” I asked, a thrill of pleasure running through me. It turned out that she meant very ordinary, simple things, such as bank accounts, Lazar’s insurance policy, the papers for the car, and various bills which Miss Kolby had taken it upon herself to settle, for who knew as well as she did that Lazar’s wife was utterly helpless in such matters? “What do you mean, helpless?” I protested, leaping to Dori’s defense. “She’s a partner in a big legal firm.”
“Precisely,” said Miss Kolby. “It’s a big firm with a whole battery of accountants and secretaries, who take the practical side of things off her hands. And at home Lazar would take care of everything, of course.”
“And the children?”
“The children are gone,” she announced briskly. “Einat went back to her apartment, and the boy went back to the army. Someone has to help her.”
“She’s alone now?” I whispered, my anxiety mingled with a hint of pleasure. Miss Kolby looked at me curiously, to see if I was aware of the deeper implications of my words, and then she admitted that for the last three nights, ever since the soldier had returned to his base, she had been sleeping in the apartment with Mrs. Lazar. “You’re sleeping there!” I said with a feeling of relief. “And it doesn’t inconvenience you?”
“What if it does?” she replied evasively. “Someone has to help her, until a more radical solution is found.”
“Radical?” I sniggered, for the word seemed extreme to me, and it was indeed inappropriate for the simple solutions imagined by the secretary, such as Dori’s mother coming to live with her, or Einat agreeing to return home for a while, or Dori renting a room to a student until her son completed his military service in six months’ time and decided if he too, like his sister, wanted to travel to distant lands. “I thought you had something more radical in mind.” I lowered my eyes and released the catch under the chair so that I could rock slightly to and fro. “Yes, that would make things easier for everyone,” Miss Kolby replied, to my surprise, without hesitation or hypocrisy, in the practical spirit she had gained from Lazar during all their years of working together. But she immediately added a reservation: “But it would have to be with someone like Lazar. Someone who knows how to pamper her and take care of everything for her, so that she can keep her spirits up and go on smiling good-naturedly at everyone and listening to everybody’s troubles. Because even you wouldn’t believe it if I told you how she can sometimes behave like a frightened little girl, but obstinate too, and how helpless and almost stupid she can be when she has to deal with anything technical, even something as simple as a household appliance.” She stopped for a minute, hesitating about whether to confide the secrets she had discovered over the past few days to me. “Even I, who knew them both well, had no idea of how much Lazar took care of everything for her. Would you believe that she doesn’t even know how to work her own washing machine?”
Miss Kolby burst into astonished laughter at the new task she had taken on herself, as if the ghost of her ex-boss were still issuing a stream of domestic instructions to her now that the administrative instructions had ceased. I joined warmly in her laughter. I was delighted with this conversation about the touching helplessness of the beloved woman who from hour to hour was becoming more possible for me. And the thought that maybe at this very moment on this chilly autumn evening she was home from the office and wandering around the apartment alone, helpless and despairing before the washing machine and the big dryer, and also the stove, which refused to light, and the stereo system, which refused to play, did not give rise in me, as in Lazar’s secretary, to pity mixed with something like disgust or disbelief, but to powerful longings. For a moment I was tempted to throw caution to the wind and confess my stubborn, mysterious love to the worried secretary, and thereby notify her that another shoulder was ready and willing to share the burden. But even though I was prepared to expose myself, I wasn’t sure that I had the right to expose Dori too, not even to this close family friend. “Are you going to sleep there tonight as well?” I asked carefully, unable to control the slight tremor of desire in my voice. She hadn’t decided yet. Dori insisted that she no longer needed a constant companion, since the worst was already behind her and she was recovering and coping on her own, and perhaps it would be for the best and for her own good to leave her to her own devices, but on the other hand she had caught a cold two days ago and yesterday she had even had a fever, and this being the case, Miss Kolby thought that she should drop in to see how she was managing. Not to sleep there, but just to check up on her. In fact, she was going to get in touch right now.
Although as a physician-friend I could have stolen in through this loophole, I held my tongue and did not ask to speak to Dori. Ever since the night when I had stood silently outside her front door, I had been determined that the signal to renew contact should come from her, not me. Now that the natural protection bestowed on her by Lazar was gone and she was left exposed and vulnerable and by herself I had to restrain myself severely and be attentive to her wishes only, not to mine, as if it were incumbent on the alien soul that had taken up residence inside me to protect her from the longings and passions of its host. Thus, while Miss Kolby spoke to Dori on the phone, I went over to the window and lifted the curtain and stood behind it, half listening to the conversation and drinking in the clear autumn light bathing people who were now streaming out of the hospital with empty hands and a feeling of relief after visiting the sick. Throughout the conversation I was careful to remain in the background, so that the secretary would not feel obligated to mention my name and give Dori the impression that I was trying to get to her through her friends. She had to feel free, precisely because any contact between us now was apt to be fateful. When I emerged from my hiding place behind the curtain, before I could ask how Dori was feeling, the secretary turned to me with a serious expression and said, “She’s looking for you.” As if she suspected that I had not grasped the importance of the summons, she repeated emphatically, “Dori’s looking for you,” as if this were the gist and conclusion of the conversation between them. “So why didn’t you call me to the phone?” I asked with a smile of surprise. She shrugged her shoulders and maintained an embarrassed silence. Accustomed for years to protecting Lazar and keeping his presence in the office a secret from callers until she had his express permission to reveal it, she had left it up to me to decide if I wanted to reply or not. Even the pencil poised between her fingers seemed to be waiting for some clear instruction from me.
But did I have any clear instructions for this faithful secretary, who had surprised me by her sensitivity, since I didn’t know myself if this was indeed the signal I was waiting for or simply a call from a woman with a bad cold to a physician who had acted for a short time as her family doctor? Because if it was the signal calling me to come to her, it had arrived more swiftly than I could have imagined, though that was understandable in a woman incapable of staying by herself. I nevertheless found it startling. Was I ready for her call? I asked myself frantically as I hurried home, where Michaela was waiting for me to take her to the movies. I didn’t get in touch with Dori, and we went to an early show, where I watched the vicissitudes of the love affair on the screen and tried to see if the solutions proposed by the director would suit my case. But my thoughts kept straying to the woman waiting for me to get in touch with her and prevented me from studying these solutions, which did not seem to suit the characters in the movie either, so the director had to pervert and contort every plausible and natural feeling in order to bring his movie to a satisfactory conclusion. “Completely idiotic,” pronounced Michaela when the lights went on, and she took the glasses off her beautiful eyes and put them away in her pocket. “Like an Indian movie, but there at least the kitsch is open and un
abashed, without these sophisticated tricks.” I agreed with her, and told her about the movie I had seen in Calcutta. She was astonished to hear that I had wasted my few hours in Calcutta on a silly Indian movie, a few of whose colorful scenes had nevertheless remained in my memory. “You’re right,” I admitted, “but Calcutta made me panic, and I was afraid of getting lost.” I told her about the dream I had had more than two years before on the flight from Bodhgaya to Calcutta, and I described the details so vividly that I seemed to have just woken up from dreaming it again in the darkness of the movie theater. “But it’s impossible to get lost in Calcutta,” said Michaela, and she began to describe the unique construction of the city, which made it very easy to find its center. I was unable to follow the thread of her words, not only because of the ethereal note she often struck when she was talking about India but because I was preoccupied by the thought that Dori was ill and suffering and perhaps still looking for me.
Indeed, our baby-sitter, a cute and intelligent little girl of about twelve who was the daughter of Hagit, Michaela’s girlhood friend, and an unknown father, whose tender years caused us to go to the first show instead of the second, informed us as soon as we came home that “Lazar’s wife is looking for you.”
“Lazar’s wife?” I repeated in surprise. “Is that how she referred to herself?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what she said,” the child replied confidently. Michaela gave me a look of mild astonishment when she saw that instead of going at once to the telephone, I started examining and even correcting the arithmetic exercises in our babysitter’s notebook, and while she dug into the dish of multicolored ice cream sprinkled with flakes of chocolate that Michaela set before her—the only payment her mother permitted her to take from us—I also arranged her schoolbag for her, in place of her absentee father, smoothing out the creased papers and disposing of an old sandwich as I waited for her to say good-bye to Shivi so I could take her home. “Aren’t you going to call Mrs. Lazar back?” Michaela finally asked, when I was standing at the door. “There’s no need,” I answered immediately, without even raising my eyes. “I know exactly what she wants. She’s sick and she’s looking for a doctor,” and I told her about the conversation with the secretary who had taken Dori under her wing and was sleeping in her apartment. “If she’s already taking to her bed,” said Michaela sadly, straightening the collar of the little girl’s wind-breaker and making faces to amuse Shivi, “we can expect the mourning to be a heavy, long-drawn-out affair.”
“Heavy, yes, that’s only natural,” I agreed, “but long-drawn-out? I’m not so sure.” Michaela listened to me attentively, still trying unsuccessfully to catch my eye. “What do you intend to do about the phone call?” she pressed me before I shut the door behind me. “You can’t just ignore her.”
“I know,” I reassured her, and I promised that I would drop in on her on my way home. When I went back inside and took my medical bag out of the closet, Michaela looked relieved.
I didn’t call Dori, mostly because I was afraid that if I did, she would content herself with asking a couple of questions and reject my offer to go over and examine her. I was determined not to allow my role as doctor to replace my true role, which was becoming more possible from minute to minute, and which so flooded me with anxiety and desire that I didn’t even wait for our baby-sitter to wave to me from her window, but drove off the moment her curly head disappeared into the stairwell, in a hurry to arrive before something inside me could subvert my decision to interpret Dori’s phone call as the true call for which I had been waiting. Accordingly, I decided to leave my medical bag in the car, and as I soared to the top floor in the elevator, I knew that I needed no external confirmation in order to go in to her. I was impelled forward by the presence that had been stirring inside me ever since the death of Lazar, and as I stood in front of the door, surrounded by blossoming plants, I actually put my hand into my pocket to look for the key. When no key was forthcoming, I pressed the bell. It immediately uttered a shrill, piercing, birdlike whistle, but nobody seemed to hear it or to pay any attention to it. There was silence. The door was one of those heavy, opaque security doors, and left no crack to reveal if there was a light on behind it. I again pressed the bell, which the Lazars must have installed after they returned from India, for I didn’t recall such a piercing whistle the first time I visited them, and during the week of mourning I had had no opportunity to hear it because the door had been left open to accommodate the constant stream of visitors.
In the distance I could hear her footsteps hesitating. And rightly so, for how could she have guessed that I would turn up unannounced on her doorstep at an hour like this? But when I sensed her hesitating on the other side of the door, unable to make up her mind whether to ignore the visitor or to ask who it was, I pressed the whistling doorbell again and called out, “It’s only me.” And in order not to let her off the hook, I added, “You were looking for me?” Then the door opened, and she stood there clumsily attired in a flannel nightgown and a thick green sweater of Lazar’s. Her hair was disheveled, and by the red spots on her cheeks and the dull glitter of her eyes I could see that she had a real temperature, which actually reassured me, for even if it turned out that no love-call had been or could have been intended, it was still a good thing that I had come. “They’ve left you alone!” This strange cry escaped my lips, intended only as an exclamation of astonishment, but it also, to my surprise, contained a note of pain. “Who left me?” she asked with a frown, an expression of resentment crossing her face, perhaps because she sensed that in the depths of my heart I still insisted on thinking of Lazar as someone who might not have left her alone. “I mean,” I stammered, “Einat, or …” and I couldn’t remember the name of her son. But she immediately understood and leapt to his defense. “He had to return to his base,” she said, still without a single smile, almost with hostility. Was it possible that she was angry at me? I felt a thrill of happiness, accompanied by a shadow of fear, as I identified the note of impatience with which she had sometimes addressed her husband in India. “Were you looking for me?” I repeated stubbornly, without even mentioning her obvious illness, in order to force her to address me as a young lover whose way was suddenly clear before him, not as a doctor on house call.
“Yes, I was looking for you,” she admitted somberly, also ignoring the illness that had her in its grip. As if it were now my job to be at her beck and call, and she added resentfully, “Where have you been hiding from us?”
Outraged by the light shed on my situation by the last word in this short sentence, I did not hesitate, and with the feeling of confidence that had been swelling inside me ever since the first sign I had received from the secretary at the beginning of the evening, I clasped her to me in a firm embrace, her heaviness feeling curiously weightless in my arms. Whether it was the ardor burning in her limbs which gave her this new lightness or the strength of Lazar’s soul bursting out of me, it was impossible to tell. Now, when I touched her, I realized that her fever was high and worrying, and that she herself was apparently unaware of how high it was. Her skin, which was very dry, without a trace of perspiration, seemed to show signs of a viral infection, which no antibiotic, including those in my bag downstairs, would be effective against. In spite of Lazar’s heavy sweater wrapped around the upper part of her body, she was shivering, and I knew that if I insisted on removing it now and taking off her nightgown, the shivering would increase. I therefore knelt down in front of her and put my head on her stomach in the hope of kindling her desire.
But she didn’t want any part of it, and with a savage gesture she pulled my hair as if to raise me to my feet and demanded clear protestations of love from me, as if she were no longer prepared to put up with the panic-stricken silence of our last encounter in bed. Because her feverish weakness gave this unexpected demand strength, I began, without releasing my grip on her, kissing and stroking her face and her hair and groping my way down the hallway to the bedroom, which seemed to have
been taken over by chaos again, I began to seek and also to find new words, not only to describe my impossible love for her but also to try to tell her of the passionate desire aroused in me by the new obligation I felt not to leave her alone. “I know why you’re looking for me. I know exactly why,” I repeated in my emotion, and I helped her get back into the big bed, torn between the natural desire of a doctor to cover her with the blanket and balance the inner heat of her body with the heat of the air around her and the impulse to go on exposing her flesh, to undo the buttons of the thick old sweater so that I could pull up the nightgown and look at the strong breasts resting peacefully and abundantly above that round, pampered belly. And for the first time since my arrival, I saw a weak smile crossing her face, and although she seemed willing to postpone covering herself with the blanket, she was not ready to allow me to make love to her before I told her how much I loved her or explained my attraction to her in the light of the deepest secret of her being.
“It was Lazar.” I couldn’t resist betraying her dead husband as I went on stroking and kissing her arms and her bare legs. “Right at the beginning, when I wanted to know the real reason that you insisted on coming with us to India.” She tried to open her eyes, heavy with both sickness and desire. “Even though he spoke about it complainingly, it was interesting to see how attracted he was, too, by your fear of abandonment.” I went on talking, gradually lowering my body onto the big double bed to bring my head closer to her and slowly slide it down between her thighs, to be engulfed by the source of warmth itself. She was surprised to hear that Lazar had spoken about her so intimately to a stranger, even before the beginning of our trip. But now she understood too why sometimes at train stations I had tried to help him by staying with her in his place, not understanding that for her there was no difference between “being left alone” and “being left without him.”
Open Heart Page 49