A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

From that moment on, this principle ruled the relations between my mother and me. I was silent, and any initiative for further clarification was in her hands, just as the initiative for setting the date for the journey to India was in Michaela’s hands, and the only initiative left to me was in the pursuit of my relationship with Dori. But while my mother and I seemed to have been struck by a slight paralysis, Michaela continued her preparations energetically and efficiently, until the trip to India was drawn tight as a bow and all that had to be done to deliver the arrow was touch the string. Deliver in the sense of redeem, for Michaela’s devotion to the dream of the return to India was so great that it gave her journey a spiritual, almost religious status. Not redemption from me, of course, but from the materialistic and achievement-oriented reality around us, which Michaela was not yet resigned to spending the rest of her life in. And her joy was intensified by the fact that she was enabling others to benefit from the journey too. Not only Stephanie, who was calling us almost every day from London, but even Shivi, whose tender mind Michaela believed would absorb impressions that would last for the rest of her life.

In order to prepare Shivi for the journey, Michaela painted a third eye on her forehead every morning, red, blue, or green, which made her look adorable and increased her excitement over their departure. I tried to spend as much time as possible with her, picking her up whenever she held out her little arms to me. Michaela often could not take her along when she went about the business of preparing for the trip, since the car had already been sold, half the proceeds going to the trip and the other half to buying a motorcycle for me, not as big and strong as my old one but quick and light enough to be effective on the flat, clogged roads of the city. When Stephanie arrived on a charter flight from London in the middle of a clear winter’s night, I saw no problem in taking the motorcycle to the airport to pick her up, for her luggage consisted only of a backpack, which even my modest little motorcycle could take with ease.

Indeed, there was a kind of lightness hovering over all the preparations for the trip. The date had been set, and since Michaela had chosen to fly from Cairo, which could be reached by a cheap bus ride, the tickets turned out to be exceptionally inexpensive, especially in view of the fact that Shivi was not yet one year old and was thus entitled to fly for free. This was Michaela’s reason for refusing my mother’s request to postpone the flight until after Shivi’s first birthday party, which might have consoled them a little for the separation from their granddaughter, the bulletin of whose doings was the high point of their day. Although they relied, as I did, on Michaela’s resourcefulness and experience and her grasp of the mysteries of the Indian mentality, the fact that the trip was open-ended naturally caused them profound anxiety, which Michaela tried to assuage to the best of her ability, not only because she was fond of them but also because she had learned to respect and appreciate them when they had visited us in London. Accordingly, she found the time to take Shivi to Jerusalem and spend a day with my parents to say good-bye and set their minds at rest with a detailed and practical discussion of the solutions to all kinds of problems that might crop up. In order to reassure them even further, she took Stephanie with her, to remind them of the solid common sense of her friend from London, who would act as both her traveling companion and a substitute mother for Shivi if, God forbid, something happened to Michaela, or if she simply felt like taking off for a couple of days to places unsuitable for small children.

As I could have predicted, my mother succeeded in persuading Stephanie to accompany my father and Shivi on a walk in the park so that she could remain alone with Michaela and tactfully try to find out what had really happened between us and whether there was any substance to my declaration of love for the “older woman,” whose name my mother still refrained from mentioning, even though she knew very well who she was. Michaela’s replies to her questions astounded her, not only because they were frank and explicit, for which she may have been prepared, but because they were given in terms of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, as if the trip to India had already begun and Michaela were sitting with her friend on the banks of the Ganges, not in a Jerusalem neighborhood opposite a woman whose mind was as uncompromisingly clear as the Israeli light coming through the windows. My mother had grown used to Michaela’s rather obscure and esoteric manner of analyzing human situations in London, and as long as it concerned other people, usually unknown to her, she could react with tolerance, but now they were talking about me, her only child, and my marriage, which was in danger of breaking up completely. But my mother understood that the infidelity was only a pretext for Michaela to realize her dream of going back to India, a dream that had been hovering over our marriage from the first day. In the middle of the conversation she therefore changed her tactics, suggesting to Michaela that her trip with Shivi was not something that must necessarily deepen the rift in our marriage but rather something that could open the way to a future reconciliation. Michaela agreed immediately, perhaps because she suddenly pitied this stoic woman who was longing for reconciliation and suffering torments of guilt over my behavior. And in order to gain my mother’s support for her trip, she explained how her and Shivi’s absence for the next few months could help me to extricate myself from a situation that would probably lead to suffering and misery. She believed that my feelings, if only for Shivi, would take me to India too, where it would be possible to strengthen me, precisely because reincarnation and rebirth were a natural part of daily existence there. “The two of you are welcome to come with him,” added Michaela in complete seriousness. “We’ll be happy to have you.” And her great light eyes were radiant with generous hospitality, as if the expanses of India were rooms in her private home. “It would be really wonderful to meet there, as we said we would in London.”

My mother hurried to report this conversation to me before Michaela, Stephanie, and Shivi returned to Tel Aviv. She even went out to buy another carton of milk, and called me from a pay phone on the way so that my father would not overhear. Her anxiety was no longer for my endangered marriage, nor for my love for Lazar’s wife, which she still saw as a passing and unrealistic fantasy. Her anxiety was now focused on Shivi, for this was the main thing she grasped in all Michaela’s confused eloquence: that Michaela wanted to use Shivi as bait to draw me, and perhaps my parents too, after her, even at the price of dragging Shivi irresponsibly around India, in places full of sickness and suffering. And so she suddenly demanded, in a tone that was almost hysterical, that I put a stop to the trip immediately, or at least prevent Michaela from taking Shivi. “It’s impossible, Mother, to prevent a mother from taking her baby with her,” I replied quietly, trying to maintain my composure, my heart aching at this display of irrationality on the part of so rational a woman. But I promised her that I would make arrangements with Michaela so I could send for Shivi if I decided at any stage to do so. In spite of my sorrow at the idea of parting from her, which grew as the date of their departure drew closer, it was not of Shivi that I was thinking now but of another baby, whose helplessness, which Lazar had tried to make light of and conceal, only fanned the embers of my desire, which had remained alive and burning ever since the unexpected lovemaking on her sickbed. If my mother had really succeeded in persuading Michaela to leave Shivi with me, I would have lost my freedom and flexibility in the battle for my love, which kept returning to its starting point and leaving me at square one again, especially since Dori had once more succeeded in surrounding herself with loving companions so she would not have to be alone. Not only had her son found a way of coming home every night from his base, but Hishin too was a frequent caller in the evenings, and who knew if she hadn’t succeeded, with the power of her ingratiating smiles, in persuading even her mother to stay over from time to time, in order to introduce a little structure into the accumulating chaos that gathered in her bedroom and close the open drawers behind her.