Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  But even if such harsh thoughts crossed her mind, she repressed them and said nothing, perhaps in the hope of stopping the spate of my confession and not giving me any more opportunities to reveal further details about the love that aroused such antipathy in her. The minute I grasped the power of the truth in my hands, I took pity on her and kept quiet. “But now, Benjy, you say it’s all over?” she suddenly asked with great delicacy. I bowed my head in confirmation. “But why? Now that Lazar’s dead?” asked my mother in surprise, logical to the end in spite of her revulsion. And something like a faint smile began breaking inside me, as I tried to explain the woman who wanted to test her ability to be a self-sufficient, independent human being. Even her response to me had only resulted from her wish to lighten the burden of her husband’s suffocating love, which because of her inability to be alone had twined about her like a strong, stubborn vine. My mother’s thin mouth parted a little in amazement as she listened to me, and it was now possible to discern, beneath the wrinkles on her face, the straight and delicate features of the naive Scottish girl she had once been. “But I thought …” she stammered. “So did I,” I interrupted without letting her finish her sentence, without knowing what she wanted to say—trying with all my strength to avoid her small, slightly bloodshot eyes. “And maybe that’s the reason I’m so miserable and confused. Because now that I feel his love forcing me to dominate her too, I know she’s right.” A deathly pallor spread over my mother’s face, as if the mysterious and absurd thing I had just said was far more dangerous in her eyes than my lost love for the woman who was only nine years her junior. And then my mother, the epitome of restraint and composure, couldn’t sit still any longer, and she jumped up in a storm of agitation, her stooped back turning her into a dangerous bird, her braided bun coming loose without her being aware of it and falling onto her shoulders, and with her arms folded on her chest, perhaps in order to muffle the pounding of her heart, she began pacing up and down the big room, looking all the time at the clock on the wall, until she recovered her self-control and stood before me in a calmer frame of mind and suggested that I go and have my breakfast, as if the egg, the cheese, the coffee, and the toast would do more than any words at her command to return me, and perhaps her too, to the only reality she considered worthy of the name.

  When she saw me hesitate, she added, “Come on, I could do with a cup of coffee too.” I stood up and followed her into the kitchen, sat down in my usual place, and looked at the piece of butter beginning to melt in the black pan. She broke an egg, dropped it into the pan, and surrounded it with pieces of salami. Should I take pity on her and stop now? I asked myself. Or should I remain faithful to the truth? The egg began to bubble; the slices of salami began sinking into its edges. She sliced bread and put it in the toaster; then she dished up some of the Quaker Oats my father had prepared for himself before setting out early in the morning, to fortify himself for the long hours in the synagogue. She put the bowl of oats in front of me without asking if I wanted it, apparently in the belief that the traditional breakfast of my childhood would bring me back to my senses. But the pleasant smell of the cinnamon strewn over the wrinkled white surface of the oats, the smell of the childhood of an only son, who knew that whether he liked it or not, in the course of his life he would become the be-all and end-all of his parents’ existence, made me so profoundly sad that my eyes suddenly darkened. I put the spoon down, feeling that all I wanted was to go back to bed and sink into a long sleep. My mother noticed the spoon slipping from my hand, and without saying anything she moved the bowl away carefully and smiled at me. In spite of everything, the news of my breakup with Dori had appeased her and brought her some relief. But her relief only sharpened my pain, and I felt my hunger vanish, and without looking at her I pushed away the big plate she now placed in front of me, with the fried egg surrounded by the red salami, which in my childhood I saw in my imagination as the huge eye of a prehistoric beast, and I started to talk to my mother frankly, to warn her of what was happening inside me. Even though I had always accepted her teachings about not wasting time on the impossible and always doing only the right and proper thing, now, after Lazar’s death, I saw that what had once seemed fantastic and impossible might be real and possible. Without deciding the question of whether the soul as such existed or there was no such thing, as Hishin had argued in his eulogy next to Lazar’s grave, I felt that whatever had taken possession of me, real or imaginary, had turned my love into the only thing worth living for, and without it life would be bitter and lonely, frightening and superfluous. Now that Michaela had gone and taken Shivi with her, I felt that I was losing my ability to stay by myself, an ability that I had always had and that I could always rely on. For a number of nights now I hadn’t been able to sleep. And I felt nervous and exhausted all the time. I knew that I could easily put myself to sleep, just as I put other people to sleep every day on the operating table. Without pain, in a state of complete relaxation—the absolute sleep that a doctor could bestow on himself in exchange for all his years of study and experience.

  She turned off the gas under the boiling kettle and poured herself a cup of coffee. Her head was bowed and her face was so mournful that I asked myself whether she saw my thoughts of death, which I had thrown at her simply to show her how miserable I was, as an actual possibility. Did she recognize a catastrophe inside me of which I myself was not yet aware? Without consulting me, she took the plate I had pushed away, slid the wounded eye back into the frying pan, and asked me, “Is it possible that you’re really thinking of it?” I saw that she didn’t have the courage to say the word itself, and I asked her, “Of what?” in order to force her to say it. And she said it, holding the cup between her hands, careful not to touch it with her lips, as if death had settled into the black liquid. “Yes, Mother,” I answered calmly. “Already in India I was drawn to the riverbanks to see the cremation of the dead, for even if death seems more natural and less tragic there, it is very far from being empty.” My mother’s face was now so grave that she really seemed to be taking my threat seriously. And the thought suddenly flashed through my mind, Why couldn’t I have used the same threat with Dori? At least when I had insisted on accompanying her down the dark stairs to her car, which was parked in a nearby street whose darkness was interrupted by the flickering light of oil or gas lights. They reminded me of the dim lights in the ring-shaped street in New Delhi where I had gone around in circles on my way back from the Red Fort, without arriving at the hotel where she lay dozing, not because she was tired but out of loyalty to her husband, who had fallen exhausted onto his hotel bed after spending a sleepless night on the plane. I had pointed the lamps out to her and reminded her of New Delhi, but she smiled without remembering. Her flat shoes made her look shorter and clumsier, but also younger, perhaps because the new black hat was no longer on her head but at her nape, tied around her neck with the ends of the scarf dangling from it. I should have done it then, in the dark Tel Aviv street, which was full of a real, powerful mystery; I should have threatened this woman who wanted to cut herself off from me and stay by herself. If it had been the opposite, if I had wanted to leave and she had asked me to stay, I would not have hurt her as she was hurting me. But I said nothing then, for I knew that she would smile and dismiss my threat like dust. Only my mother, who knew me better than anyone else, knew that I had never, not even when I was a small child, uttered a threat that wasn’t real to me. And as she stood now with the cup of coffee between her hands, she did not have to wonder whether the threat was real or imaginary, but only to say in a low voice, “How dare you even think of such a thing? There are people who depend on you.”

  “Not you,” I replied quietly but vehemently. “Certainly not you. The only person who depends on me is Shivi, and she’s got Michaela, who’ll always take care of her because she sees her as part of herself.”

  My father’s footsteps were now heard, and judging by the speed with which the front door opened and the way he called my mother
’s name, I guessed that he had come back cheerful and content, if not with the ceremony at the synagogue, at least with his own good deed, and perhaps also at not having lost his way. His face was blotched with red, a sure sign that he had been drinking wine. “You came back so soon?” said my mother, getting up quickly and going to meet him in the hallway, to prevent him from coming into the kitchen, presumably to give me time to recover and wipe the glum expression from my face. “Why soon?” said my father in an offended tone, as if he had forgotten his worries during the morning’s little adventure. “I left the house at seven o’clock this morning, and how long can they drag out their prayers?” It turned out that he had found his way without too much difficulty, and since he was the only one of the office staff to put in an appearance, he was greeted with respect and enthusiasm and also given the honor of reading from the Torah. “It was important for me to go,” he affirmed, if not to us then at least to himself, and he took off his hat and entered the kitchen. When he noticed the primeval wounded eye, which had shriveled a little in the pan, he said, “Is that for me?”

  “Yes,” said my mother, “if you want it. Benjy didn’t feel like eating this morning.” He sat down immediately and ate my breakfast with relish, even though he had had refreshments at the synagogue too. He realized from our silence that something important had been said between us during his absence, but he was too full of his own experiences to try to find out what it was, and I soon left to wander around the neighborhood until lunch and breathe the dry, cold air of the radiant Sabbath morning. Strange how rarely I had set out on foot in recent years, I thought, and a sweet melancholy descended on me with the memory of the rainy evening when I had walked across Tel Aviv holding a big black umbrella over my head. But how different the Jerusalem streets were from the straight, open streets of Tel Aviv. Where could you find in the whole of Tel Aviv a steep narrow lane like this, running along the wall of the Lepers’ Hospital and suddenly opening out into the plaza fronting the Jerusalem Theater? What a pity that I couldn’t test the true power of the new motorcycle on an incline like this, I thought regretfully, as if I were about to leave the place forever. And thus, with a feeling of parting, perhaps genuine, perhaps imaginary, I continued along the street of the foreign consulates, which I had taken every day to school, examining the familiar facades of the houses and stopping to read the signs on the gates. Among them were many brass plates with the names of physicians, mentioning degrees and specializations, and I was surprised to see how many of them I still remembered from my schooldays, such as the big old sign bearing the name of the famous cardiologist Professor Ziegfried Adler, and next to it a small new one, PROFESSOR AVRAHAM ADLER, CARDIAC SURGEON. So this is where Bouma lives, I said to myself, the master-surgeon who came down from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to kill the administrative director and send his soul flying into mine in order to ruin my love affair. And all the arguments Bouma had piled on top of each other hadn’t torn off the veil of mystery surrounding that death.

  I felt an urge to go inside and see the house. After all, I had promised Professor Adler to drop in to see him when I was in Jerusalem, so we could continue our discussion about Lazar’s sudden cardiac fibrillation. He seemed like a serious doctor who was interested in hearing the questions and observations of a younger colleague. It was almost noon. Even the laziest people were already up, and the most industrious could afford an hour of idleness at this time of day on a Saturday. Was it possible that the son, the successful professor, stayed in the same old apartment as his father? I wondered when I saw that there was only one entrance to the house, with an old sign simply saying ADLER, without any first names on the door. I was sure it couldn’t be where my Adler lived. But since the music pouring out of the house had a welcoming sound, I knocked on the door, and a sprightly old German Jew in a sporty sweater opened it. I explained not only who I was and who I was looking for, but also why. It turned out that Adler Junior did not live here but in Ein Karem, near the hospital; only his clinic was here, next to his father’s clinic and residence. In the meantime Professor Adler’s mother came out too, a stout, confident German who had bequeathed her plumpness to her son. What a pity, exclaimed both Adlers, who seemed very suited to each other; they would have phoned their son at home to ask if he could see me, but he had flown to a conference in England yesterday and would only be returning in a few days’ time. “A pity,” repeated the pleasant old man, the well-known cardiologist. “I’m sure he would have wanted to talk to you, Dr. Rubin, about Mr. Lazar’s operation, which we were all very sorry about. I know who you are; he mentioned the fact that you were present at the operation and that you thought of the ventricular tachycardia. He spoke to me a lot about that operation, and although it wasn’t his fault, he was left with an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. True, it isn’t exactly his specialization, it’s more my specialization, but he wants to go into the subject more deeply, in order not to be taken by surprise …” He laid his gnarled old hand on his sweater in the area of the heart, as if he felt a pain there. “I know,” I interrupted him, “Koch’s triangle.” The old man’s face lit up, and his brown eyes, full of humanity, gave me a warm look of acknowledgment. “Yes, Koch’s triangle,” he repeated happily and in an intimate tone, as if he had been personally acquainted with the learned Koch, who had identified the tiny invisible command post of the heart. He invited me in. But the conversation with Professor Adler Senior, which continued for a whole hour in his big study, where the somber library consisted mainly of history and literature rather than medical books, did not help to solve the mystery of Lazar’s death but only increased it. During the course of the conversation I discovered that this famous cardiologist, who had been one of the great names of Hadassah Hospital in his day, was not really interested in the cause of Lazar’s death, having never met the man. His only aim was to protect the reputation of his son, and with this in mind he began to tell me about all kinds of cases of sudden ventricular fibrillations that he had come across in the course of his long career and tried to connect them to Lazar. His wife, who sat next to us and listened attentively to our conversation, interrupted from time to time to mention patients of her husband’s whom she recalled. Although it was very pleasant to sit there between the two kindly old people, protected from the bright midday light outside, and to impress them with both my knowledge and understanding and with my interest and questions, I could not keep my parents from their lunch any longer.