A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

More than ten days had already passed since the week of mourning, and I decided to go and look for the wandering secretary again. I was already dressed in my ordinary clothes and on my way home. In the darkness of the corridor her room looked deserted like the others, but I tried the handle of the door anyway, and found her sitting alone at her desk with a pile of accounts in front of her. I took the faint scream uttered by the pale and wilted Miss Kolby as more than met the eye. True, I had come upon her unexpectedly, at an hour of the evening when the administrative wing was empty and most of the office doors had long been locked. We both apologized immediately, I for bursting in without knocking and she for not having contacted me after hearing that I had been looking for her. She stood up and gripped my wrist, speaking directly and with deep emotion. “Yes, after what happened here I can’t settle down. I keep wandering around and thinking, why weren’t we more careful? Why didn’t we pay more attention? And why did we fail to read the obvious signs? Every day I feel guiltier for not being firmer.”

“Firmer with who?” I asked. “With everyone. Including Dori, who gave in to them in the end. But above all with him. Because he’s definitely to blame as well.”

“He?” I pretended not to know who she was talking about, because I wanted to hear her say his name. “Yes, Lazar is definitely to blame too,” she said, going on bitterly and bravely with her accusation. “Why shouldn’t he be to blame? I warned him against the designs of Professor Hishin, who in the end thinks of nothing but himself and his department. And you?” She fixed her eyes on me. “You too, Dr. Rubin, are to blame, because you knew and you kept quiet.”

“What did I know?” I said, my face red. “Everything,” she replied without hesitation. “Although it’s true that you may not have had the power to stop them. But let’s sit down.” She opened the door to Lazar’s room and led me into it in the most natural way in the world, as if Lazar were sitting there and waiting for us in order to set his administrative seal on the collective guilt that had led to his death.

What did I know, I wanted to ask her again, but I stopped myself, both because I didn’t want to get into a confrontation with her now about the depth of my knowledge and because I felt a need to take on some of the guilt that this good woman was dishing out so liberally. She switched on the light in the large, elegant room, which, apart from the fact that the big sofa had for some reason been removed, taking with it some of the room’s previous coziness, was exactly the same as before. The soil in the big planters was dry and cracked, but the plants themselves were still green. Miss Kolby sat down, with a proprietary air, in the armchair opposite the big desk, her usual place when she took dictation from Lazar, after bringing up one of the chairs standing against the wall for me. But when she saw that she had underestimated my height, which forced her to look up at me from below, she changed her mind, rose from her chair, and with a dry, businesslike air wheeled Lazar’s big executive armchair out from behind his desk so that I could sit not only more comfortably but at her eye level. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said, encouraging me to sit in the armchair, although I had not shown any signs of hesitation. In contrast to her pale face and tired eyes, her movements became brisker and more alert, as if with my appearance the death had turned from a fait accompli to a kind of misadventure, which decisive intervention might still be able to correct. And thus, while a shock of happiness surged through my being, her eyes began to focus intently on mine, as if to prevent the soul already trapped inside me from slipping away. As expected, she began to talk about the deceased and the interest he had taken in me. Even though he had not succeeded in persuading Hishin to keep me on in the surgical department, at least he had found a way to secure my place among the anesthetists. Again I saw how Lazar’s affection and concern had sheltered me over the past two years, like a kind of invisible insurance policy hovering over my head, whose value I was only able to appreciate now that it had been lost. She too, of course, had lost her insurance policy, and her position as the secretary attached to the source of power in the administrative wing was now in danger of collapsing completely. Nevertheless, she did not appear depressed but rather in the grip of an inner enthusiasm — the enthusiasm of a woman no longer young who suddenly discovers that the borders of despair, which she thought she had long ago crossed, have moved.

“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?”