A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

“I’m bothering you,” I whispered when I saw her putting on her glasses to see me better. “No,” she said at once in a clear, wakeful voice, as if she had not been sleeping for the past hour. And when I kept quiet, as if I thought she was only being polite, she raised her head from the pillow and said, “You’ve never bothered me.” Then, as if to reinforce her words, she added, “You never bothered Lazar either. Before the trip we were wondering whether to take a doctor with us, because you know how it was with us, always together, wanting to be alone together. But already on that first evening, from the minute you came in, we felt that we would be able to get along with you. And we weren’t wrong. Throughout the trip we marveled at how you always managed to be at our side without bothering us. Is it all due to the English manners you learned at home? The British temperament you inherited from your family? Is that what keeps you from getting on people’s nerves, from pushing yourself forward, even though you too want to go far?”

“Far to where?”

“Very far.” Her voice rose clearly in the silence of the night. “Very far?” I snickered. “Yes, very far,” she repeated without hesitation. “Lazar always used to say about you, That’s a man who wants to go very far, and he’ll get there too, but quietly, the way I like.” She fell silent for a moment, her eyes closed, as if she were about to go to sleep again. “But go where?” I insisted, a new fear stirring inside me. “Far to where?” She bowed her head patiently, like a mother facing a son who demands explanations for things that can’t be explained. “Far, the way he saw himself going far.” “You mean in the hospital?” I demanded with a tremor in my voice. “Yes, in the hospital too, of course,” she said. “That’s why he insisted on fixing you up with a permanent job, even if only half-time. When Hishin let you go, he was afraid that you would leave and go to another hospital. Because like him, you not only notice things that other people don’t notice, but you also know how to absorb them and contain them in yourself, so that when you need them they’ll always be there, without your having to worry about it.”

“Without my having to worry about it.” I echoed her words in excitement, not actually understanding what she meant. “But what made him talk about me at all?” She straightened her pillow behind her head and smiled. “Perhaps because right at the beginning, when Hishin suggested you, he said, ‘This is the ideal man for you,’ and Lazar, who was influenced by Hishin, began to believe it, especially after you confronted us at the airport and forced us to interrupt our flight and insisted on going to a hotel and giving Einat that blood transfusion, which even after all the clarifications we never really understood. But Lazar always said, Never mind, let it be arbitrary, let it even be completely mysterious. I know and feel that it saved her life.” I had already heard Einat speak about her father’s positive attitude toward the blood transfusion I had given her, but the explicit word “mysterious,” uttered now in the darkness in the name of the dead director, filled me with happiness, in spite of the contempt it might have implied. And I felt a pressing desire to hear this word repeated in Lazar’s name, until I was unable to contain myself any longer and I stepped forward, and without warning, in a trance of exhaustion, I lifted the blankets to join myself to the warm source of the mystery. At the first touch I knew that the two pills I had given her to take before she went to sleep had done their work; her body temperature was normal. If I really had another soul inside me, I thought feverishly, it needed its turn too, and I began passionately embracing and kissing Dori once again. She was startled and began to struggle, but even in the depths of my fatigue I was stronger than she was. And again she pleaded with me not to be silent, to speak of my love, as if making love in silence, and in the stillness of the night, was the worst kind of betrayal. I repeated the words I had said at the beginning of the evening and felt her ripe, mature body relaxing between my hands.

In the end she fell into a deep sleep, and I lay behind her back with my arms around her stomach, in the same position in which I had seen the Lazars sleeping in the hotel room overlooking the Ganges. I thought about Michaela, asking myself if she had stayed awake up to now to accompany me in her thoughts or if she had given up and gone to sleep. In either case, there was no need for me to hurry home. Even though I knew that I must not lose control over my conscious mind in this most intimate place, lying where the dead director lay, I could not overcome the deep impulse to go on holding her sleeping body in my arms, if not to sleep, then at least to dream a little, perhaps the very same dream I had dreamed in the big old propeller-driven plane flying from Gaya to Calcutta. But I couldn’t remember the dream, only the interior of the plane, with the many Indians crowded into it. Then I tried to remember the movie I had seen with Michaela at the beginning of the evening, but it had evaporated from my mind. Thus I had no option but to surrender to the sleep overpowering me. But not for long. About three hours later, at five o’clock in the morning, I woke up in the same position in which I had fallen alseep, wide awake, as if this short sleep had satisfied me completely. I carefully disentangled my arms, slid off the bed, got dressed, and left the room, closing the door behind me. I felt light and spiritual, relieved of the inner weight that had been oppressing me for so long. In the living room windows the first lines of light were visible, and I wandered around the silent rooms, trying to identify the source of the anxiety threatening the woman I now had to leave alone. At seven I had to be at the hospital for my shift, and before then I had to go home to shave and change my clothes. But I didn’t want to go home to Michaela like this, sticky and rumpled from the long night, and I was also afraid that I might have caught Dori’s virus, if it was a virus, in the course of our lovemaking. I went to the bathroom, planning just to clean myself up with a washcloth. But the water heater was boiling, and I gave in to the temptation, got undressed, and took a shower. Lazar’s toilet aricles were still scattered over the shelves, and his presence made itself felt in all kinds of things: his toothbrush, his shaving kit, his aftershave lotion, his bathrobe hanging behind the door. He had been right about my talent for noticing insignificant details and absorbing them into myself, for I now found myself recognizing many of the things he had taken with him to India, easily distinguishing them from the articles belonging to other members of the household. This being the case, I unhesitatingly, and without any feeling of strangeness, wrapped myself in his bathrobe, shaved myself with his shaving gear, and brushed my teeth with his toothbrush. I felt no need to say good-bye before leaving the apartment, for I was determined to return to Dori as soon as possible. I even took the key.

How strange it was, after such a night, to emerge into the bright Tel Aviv morning, which held not one single hint of mystery. I looked at the broad, familiar boulevard, at the cars covered with wet leaves torn from the trees by the tempestuous winds of the night, the crates full of milk standing outside the little supermarket, the newspaper boys, their rounds over, racing down the street on their Vespas. If only I too could race straight to the hospital, which was waiting for me now no less than it had once waited for Lazar. But I knew that even though I had already bathed and shaved, I had to show myself to the woman waiting for me in the kitchen, and to my surprise not alone, but with sweet little Shivi, who had already woken up and was sitting in her high chair, her mane of hair wild and a red third eye painted between her eyes — a sure sign of her mother’s surging longings. And when Shivi saw me enter the room she put her two little hands together on her lips in the Indian greeting, as Michaela had taught her, in order to welcome the new Brahmin who had risen from the underworld.