A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

When Eyal and Hadas arrived after a considerable delay, the three of us were unable to enjoy the reunion as we had hoped. Even though Eyal was very tired from a hard day at the hospital, he didn’t want to talk about anything not connected to medicine and his work. He was particularly interested in finding out what had happened in Lazar’s open heart surgery, and if anything in my position could change for the worse now that the director who had taken me under his wing had gone. But still a little dazed and slow from my unexpected nap, I answered in general terms, which did not satisfy Eyal, eager for gossip about dramatic confrontations between doctors to rouse his overworked soul from its lethargy. Only his mother was now wide awake, and she even got out of her wheelchair to give us a little midnight snack, including warm cookies fresh from the oven, which I polished off despite how late it was. When I reached home after midnight, I did not make for the kitchen as usual to look for something before I went to bed, but sat for a while in the dark living room, brooding about the fact that although I knew my mother was lying awake in bed, she did not dare to come out to me as usual, as if she were afraid of facing me. I myself would not have objected to holding the impossible but essential clarification between us right now, in the middle of the night. My father’s prayer shawl, which was lying on the table, ironed and neatly folded, testified to the fact that his determination had overcome her fears of being alone with me, and tomorrow, whether we wanted to or not, his absence would force us to confront one another. This being the case, I averted my face when I walked past their open bedroom door, so I wouldn’t see her lying there awake, and went straight to bed. And in complete contrast to the torments of insomnia that I had suffered in recent nights, even before I could curl up in the fetal position to look for help in the memory of that primal sleep, the flicker of consciousness went out, as if the presence of my parents in the next room, even though they were hostile to me at the moment, acted on my nerves like a shot of dormicum.

Perhaps because sleep came to me so immediately, I felt no pleasure on waking but only a sudden oppression, exacerbated by the sound of my mother’s soft but unquiet steps pacing around the house. It was very late, and the fact that my mother had failed to wake me before my father left was a sign not of her consideration for my tiredness but of her fear of listening to my story. To make things easier for her, I didn’t go straight to the kitchen to have breakfast. Instead I went to the bathroom to take a shower and shave and then back to my bedroom to get dressed, and only then, washed and dressed, as in the movies, where the perfectly groomed appearance of the hero at the breakfast table is a declaration of his decency and stability, I looked into the living room, which was bathed in the quiet light of a winter Sabbath in Jerusalem. She was sitting in the corner of the sofa, upholstered with green floral fabric that they had bought on their last visit to England. She was holding her book at a great distance from her upright head, which was as sharp as the head of a sad, tired bird. Vocal music full of emotion was pouring out of the radio, interrupted by the conceited voice of the director of the Saturday morning musical quiz. She sensed my presence immediately, and she looked straight at me, although from a distance, and said, “Everything’s ready on the table, Benjy. Eat first and then we’ll talk.” This strange and definite separation between breakfast and the conversation about to take place was a clearer indication than anything else of her fear that talking about my love would dirty us. I stopped in my tracks, and despite the dryness in my throat and my craving for coffee, I walked into the living room and said, “Never mind. I’ll eat later. Father might be back at any moment. Let’s talk now.” I switched off the radio, and for no apparent reason, without asking her permission, I shut the book which she had placed open on the table — an English translation of a Hebrew novel she had mentioned admiringly at dinner last night. Then I lowered myself slowly into an armchair and asked, “Are you angry with me?” Before she had a chance to answer I added, “If you’re angry or worried, there’s no more reason for you to be. The relationship I told you about has already been broken off. And anyway, what did you think? That there was any chance for a love like that?” It was possible to sense the deep shock that passed through her at the sound of the word “love” coming from my mouth. “What are you talking about?” she asked, as if she could hardly breathe. “About my love for that woman,” I replied firmly and quickly, trying to fix her eyes on mine and not let her evade me anymore. “But how can it be possible?” She dropped her eyes with a forgiving smile, as if struggling with the strange obstinacy of a child. “It’s possible,” I stated in a voice that was quiet but full of anger. “I’m telling you so. Listen to me. I’m very unhappy, because I fell in love with that woman with all my heart and soul.” My mother clenched her hand and raised it to her mouth in a gesture of obvious distress. A long silence ensued. “But when did it begin? This love of yours?” she asked in the end, and a very thin, twisted smile passed over her lips, as if only by twisting them could she force her lips to pronounce the word in whose reality she had up to now refused to believe in — perhaps for herself as well. “When?” I was at a loss, because it suddenly seemed to me that we were talking about something very ancient. “Apparently on our trip to India. But not at the beginning, only toward the end. At first she got on my nerves. But at the end my feelings underwent a transformation. Maybe they took a young doctor with them so that he would fall in love with Einat, but I fell in love with her instead.” My mother listened to me with concentrated attention, nodding her head slightly. “But what do you want now?” she asked gently, the shy little girl’s fist still by her mouth. “What you always want when you love somebody. Everything,” I answered calmly, suddenly feeling that only the whole truth, that truth which had always been a supreme value in this house, would protect me from her disgust, even if I revealed everything that had happened over the past two years to her. “Yes, everything,” I repeated firmly, “because I already had everything. Because I’ve already been with her. Even before Lazar’s death. Even before my marriage to Michaela, but afterward too. A few times. In England, for example, when you were away, in the house where you stayed — but not in your room, in another room further inside the house.” My mother’s face now turned very red, as if the indication of the exact spot made the act so powerfully real that it made her giddy. She averted her face, in profound agitation but not in anger. Did she think that what had happened a few feet from the room where she had stayed with my father had caused Lazar’s death and compelled Michaela to take Shivi and escape to India?

But even if such harsh thoughts crossed her mind, she repressed them and said nothing, perhaps in the hope of stopping the spate of my confession and not giving me any more opportunities to reveal further details about the love that aroused such antipathy in her. The minute I grasped the power of the truth in my hands, I took pity on her and kept quiet. “But now, Benjy, you say it’s all over?” she suddenly asked with great delicacy. I bowed my head in confirmation. “But why? Now that Lazar’s dead?” asked my mother in surprise, logical to the end in spite of her revulsion. And something like a faint smile began breaking inside me, as I tried to explain the woman who wanted to test her ability to be a self-sufficient, independent human being. Even her response to me had only resulted from her wish to lighten the burden of her husband’s suffocating love, which because of her inability to be alone had twined about her like a strong, stubborn vine. My mother’s thin mouth parted a little in amazement as she listened to me, and it was now possible to discern, beneath the wrinkles on her face, the straight and delicate features of the naive Scottish girl she had once been. “But I thought …” she stammered. “So did I,” I interrupted without letting her finish her sentence, without knowing what she wanted to say — trying with all my strength to avoid her small, slightly bloodshot eyes. “And maybe that’s the reason I’m so miserable and confused. Because now that I feel his love forcing me to dominate her too, I know she’s right.” A deathly pallor spread over my mother’s face, as if the mysterious and absurd thing I had just said was far more dangerous in her eyes than my lost love for the woman who was only nine years her junior. And then my mother, the epitome of restraint and composure, couldn’t sit still any longer, and she jumped up in a storm of agitation, her stooped back turning her into a dangerous bird, her braided bun coming loose without her being aware of it and falling onto her shoulders, and with her arms folded on her chest, perhaps in order to muffle the pounding of her heart, she began pacing up and down the big room, looking all the time at the clock on the wall, until she recovered her self-control and stood before me in a calmer frame of mind and suggested that I go and have my breakfast, as if the egg, the cheese, the coffee, and the toast would do more than any words at her command to return me, and perhaps her too, to the only reality she considered worthy of the name.