A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

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 unabashed, 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.”