A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

But Michaela was not able to penetrate my thoughts any further, nor to take advantage of my momentary indecision and sweep me along with her. And perhaps she didn’t want to. She immediately took my silence for a refusal, and without asking me what I was going to do for the next couple of hours she said good-bye, without telling me when she was coming home — as usual. I switched on the light in the kitchen, not only in order to banish the gloom but also to look for my old crash helmet in the storage space between the kitchen and the bathroom. I wasn’t angry with Michaela for selling the car to finance her trip; I knew there was no other way we could pay for it, and although my parents had given the car to me to replace my motorcycle, it was still our joint property, like everything else we possessed. Her offer to buy me a motorcycle with part of the money she got for the car seemed fair to me too, and I even liked the idea, although I knew that seeing me on a motorcycle again would upset my parents, whose continued absence from their house on a day like this surprised me. When I heard my father’s excited voice on the answering machine again, I was careful not to say anything, in order not to alarm them by leaving two messages in a row, and I quietly replaced the receiver and put on the black helmet, which during the year and a half of lying in storage had absorbed the bitter smell of mold brought by winds from the nearby sea. In the mirror I saw my previous self, young and carefree. Wouldn’t the motorcycle make things more difficult for me in the battle I had commenced today with the world around me? Naturally I couldn’t expect a woman of mature years to put on the second helmet like Michaela and ride behind me to visit my parents in Jerusalem. But it was quite possible that on some hot summer evening when the streets were jammed with traffic and parking places were hard to find, she might be persuaded to mount the pillion in order to arrive at the movies on time. The mere thought of this filled me with yearning to see her now, and although it was not a hot summer evening but a rainy winter one, I couldn’t bear to stay in the apartment alone any longer, and I took an old umbrella that the granny had left in a corner with the mop and the broom and went outside.

There was no doubt that the big black umbrella had belonged not to the dainty little granny herself but to her husband, and I was glad to see that in spite of long disuse it opened easily and gave me plenty of protection from the rain. I decided to continue by foot, remembering with a smile the Indians who never parted from their umbrellas, rain or shine, by day and sometimes even by night, as if the black shelter above their heads were intended not only for physical protection from the elements but also for spiritual elevation. Indeed, I too felt elevated when I arrived almost completely dry at Dori’s office, which I found very crowded and busy at this early evening hour. The lights were on in all her colleagues’ rooms, and there were a number of people in the waiting room. I had to wait until one of the three secretaries opened Dori’s door to usher in two clients who had been sitting conspicuously apart in the waiting room, and then I let her know I was there and asked her how she was feeling, in my capacity as a fussy family doctor. Even if she was embarrassed and confused by my sudden appearance, she maintained her composure and greeted me with the old automatic smile, as if I were one of the clerks here. A silver-haired gentleman in an elegant suit who looked like a lawyer drew his chair up to hers, apparently to equalize their positions vis-à-vis the two clients who entered the room, presumably for the purpose of reaching a compromise. She took advantage of the brief pause and came over to me, confident that I would not try to draw her into a long discussion just now. She was wearing black, as she often had before Lazar’s death. But this time I did not recognize her outfit, which consisted of a black sweater with a high collar and a slightly too-tight skirt, which made her stomach stick out with an ugliness than even her long shapely legs, in high-heeled boots, did not make up for. Was she really better? I asked myself. Or maybe she had never been ill? But the night before I had felt her fever in every part of my body. She evidently had no intention of introducing me either to her colleague, who was obviously wondering who I was, or to the unfamiliar secretary who tried to bar my way and find out whether I wanted Dori or one of the other partners. I did not want to get involved in a long discussion either, but only to tell her my big news: that Michaela knew, that she was going abroad, and that very soon I would be free to make myself entirely available to Dori until … who knows? Even marriage was possible. But it was impossible to say any of this in the presence of so many strangers, so I stuck to the role of the devoted doctor dropping in on his patient on his way home from work to ask if the medication had helped. “Everything’s fine. The fever’s gone down completely,” she said, smiling in embarrassment, and when she saw that I was not content with such an optimistic report, she added, “It’s just that I’ve started to cough. I’ll try to pick up something on my way home. Symphocal, or something like that.”

“Symphocal is good for children,” I responded quickly, even though it was effective with adults too. “I’ll bring you something better. When are you leaving here? Because I haven’t got the car.” She touched my arm lightly with her fingertips to bring me to my senses. She didn’t have a car either. Someone from the office would take her home, or perhaps Hishin would pick her up, because he wanted to come over and look for some papers Lazar had taken home with him. “So if not here,” I said, retreating, “I’ll take it around to your apartment.” And with those words I took the keys out of my pocket, to show her that I was serious.

Upon seeing them, she uttered a strange cry of relief, as if she had been looking for them everywhere, and reached out and snatched the key ring nimbly from my fingers. In spite of her patience with me, in the face of the growing irritation of the other people in the room — and her confidence that my youth would prevent the inquisitive secretary from guessing the nature of our relationship — she wanted to restrain me and draw clear limits, which I immediately showed myself willing to accept, and in spite of my disappointment at having the keys taken away from me, I said good-bye pleasantly and left. Outside, the rain had stopped, but I opened the umbrella anyway. I soon found a pharmacy, where my physician’s card enabled me to obtain a powerful cough medicine from the restricted-medicines cabinet, a drug that Nakash liked to use to nip colds and influenzas in the bud. Although I could have gone back to Dori’s office and left the cough medicine with her secretary, I felt a strong urge to return to the Lazars’ apartment. Seeing that the lull in the rain was continuing and the radiant, sparkling air was bringing many people out to walk happily in the streets, even though they had to negotiate between the puddles, I decided to continue on my way, taking a shortcut across town and thinking of the letter I would leave for my love along with the medicine. Soon, as if I had been coming home here for years, I could recognize in the white light the distant silvery tops of the trees in the boulevard next to the house, and even though the slot in the Lazars’ mailbox was big enough to accommodate the package, I folded my umbrella and took the elevator to the top floor, knowing that perhaps in doing so I was entering a battle for my love against its most fanatical, if still unknown, opponent.

But he had not yet come home from the army. The door was opened by Einat, with the sound of the washing machine spinning in the background. She had come home to do her laundry, and she now stood in the doorway, surprised and even a little alarmed to see me holding the medicine bottle in my hand, not only because she did not know her mother had been ill but also because she had thought that her father’s death would put an end to my relations with the family, not the opposite. Now that her face was so pale and her beauty had faded, I noticed a resemblance to Lazar that had not been evident before, as if the painful memory of seeing her father die before her eyes had carved his image secretly on her face. She was sloppily dressed in a greenish sweater and a pair of jeans that were too big for her. When she took the bottle hesitantly from my hand, careful not to touch me, I was afraid that in her distraction she was liable to send me away. I asked her if I could call the hospital. Without a word, still fearful, she showed me the way to the living room, which was now perfectly clean and tidy — no doubt the work of the maid. Einat went into the kitchen and shut the door behind her, ostensibly to give me privacy but actually to quickly finish eating the improvised meal I had interrupted. I phoned the internal medicine ward to ask about the patient whose surgery I had prevented at the last minute. Although I didn’t know his name, the nurse immediately knew who I was talking about, not by the details of his medical condition or his age but by his red hair, which had apparently made an impression on her too. It turned out that he had been returned to the operating room after a heated argument between Professor Levine and Professor Hishin, who had suddenly appeared in the ward and insisted that the operation take place. “So they did it anyway,” I said softly, thinking remorsefully that my excessive anxiety had led to a renewed outbreak of the rivalry between the two friends. “Did they mention my name, by any chance?” I asked. “Yes, Dr. Rubin,” said the nurse. “They’re angry with you and with Dr. Vardi for playing hooky.”