A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

When she saw me hesitate, she added, “Come on, I could do with a cup of coffee too.” I stood up and followed her into the kitchen, sat down in my usual place, and looked at the piece of butter beginning to melt in the black pan. She broke an egg, dropped it into the pan, and surrounded it with pieces of salami. Should I take pity on her and stop now? I asked myself. Or should I remain faithful to the truth? The egg began to bubble; the slices of salami began sinking into its edges. She sliced bread and put it in the toaster; then she dished up some of the Quaker Oats my father had prepared for himself before setting out early in the morning, to fortify himself for the long hours in the synagogue. She put the bowl of oats in front of me without asking if I wanted it, apparently in the belief that the traditional breakfast of my childhood would bring me back to my senses. But the pleasant smell of the cinnamon strewn over the wrinkled white surface of the oats, the smell of the childhood of an only son, who knew that whether he liked it or not, in the course of his life he would become the be-all and end-all of his parents’ existence, made me so profoundly sad that my eyes suddenly darkened. I put the spoon down, feeling that all I wanted was to go back to bed and sink into a long sleep. My mother noticed the spoon slipping from my hand, and without saying anything she moved the bowl away carefully and smiled at me. In spite of everything, the news of my breakup with Dori had appeased her and brought her some relief. But her relief only sharpened my pain, and I felt my hunger vanish, and without looking at her I pushed away the big plate she now placed in front of me, with the fried egg surrounded by the red salami, which in my childhood I saw in my imagination as the huge eye of a prehistoric beast, and I started to talk to my mother frankly, to warn her of what was happening inside me. Even though I had always accepted her teachings about not wasting time on the impossible and always doing only the right and proper thing, now, after Lazar’s death, I saw that what had once seemed fantastic and impossible might be real and possible. Without deciding the question of whether the soul as such existed or there was no such thing, as Hishin had argued in his eulogy next to Lazar’s grave, I felt that whatever had taken possession of me, real or imaginary, had turned my love into the only thing worth living for, and without it life would be bitter and lonely, frightening and superfluous. Now that Michaela had gone and taken Shivi with her, I felt that I was losing my ability to stay by myself, an ability that I had always had and that I could always rely on. For a number of nights now I hadn’t been able to sleep. And I felt nervous and exhausted all the time. I knew that I could easily put myself to sleep, just as I put other people to sleep every day on the operating table. Without pain, in a state of complete relaxation — the absolute sleep that a doctor could bestow on himself in exchange for all his years of study and experience.

She turned off the gas under the boiling kettle and poured herself a cup of coffee. Her head was bowed and her face was so mournful that I asked myself whether she saw my thoughts of death, which I had thrown at her simply to show her how miserable I was, as an actual possibility. Did she recognize a catastrophe inside me of which I myself was not yet aware? Without consulting me, she took the plate I had pushed away, slid the wounded eye back into the frying pan, and asked me, “Is it possible that you’re really thinking of it?” I saw that she didn’t have the courage to say the word itself, and I asked her, “Of what?” in order to force her to say it. And she said it, holding the cup between her hands, careful not to touch it with her lips, as if death had settled into the black liquid. “Yes, Mother,” I answered calmly. “Already in India I was drawn to the riverbanks to see the cremation of the dead, for even if death seems more natural and less tragic there, it is very far from being empty.” My mother’s face was now so grave that she really seemed to be taking my threat seriously. And the thought suddenly flashed through my mind, Why couldn’t I have used the same threat with Dori? At least when I had insisted on accompanying her down the dark stairs to her car, which was parked in a nearby street whose darkness was interrupted by the flickering light of oil or gas lights. They reminded me of the dim lights in the ring-shaped street in New Delhi where I had gone around in circles on my way back from the Red Fort, without arriving at the hotel where she lay dozing, not because she was tired but out of loyalty to her husband, who had fallen exhausted onto his hotel bed after spending a sleepless night on the plane. I had pointed the lamps out to her and reminded her of New Delhi, but she smiled without remembering. Her flat shoes made her look shorter and clumsier, but also younger, perhaps because the new black hat was no longer on her head but at her nape, tied around her neck with the ends of the scarf dangling from it. I should have done it then, in the dark Tel Aviv street, which was full of a real, powerful mystery; I should have threatened this woman who wanted to cut herself off from me and stay by herself. If it had been the opposite, if I had wanted to leave and she had asked me to stay, I would not have hurt her as she was hurting me. But I said nothing then, for I knew that she would smile and dismiss my threat like dust. Only my mother, who knew me better than anyone else, knew that I had never, not even when I was a small child, uttered a threat that wasn’t real to me. And as she stood now with the cup of coffee between her hands, she did not have to wonder whether the threat was real or imaginary, but only to say in a low voice, “How dare you even think of such a thing? There are people who depend on you.”

“Not you,” I replied quietly but vehemently. “Certainly not you. The only person who depends on me is Shivi, and she’s got Michaela, who’ll always take care of her because she sees her as part of herself.”

My father’s footsteps were now heard, and judging by the speed with which the front door opened and the way he called my mother’s name, I guessed that he had come back cheerful and content, if not with the ceremony at the synagogue, at least with his own good deed, and perhaps also at not having lost his way. His face was blotched with red, a sure sign that he had been drinking wine. “You came back so soon?” said my mother, getting up quickly and going to meet him in the hallway, to prevent him from coming into the kitchen, presumably to give me time to recover and wipe the glum expression from my face. “Why soon?” said my father in an offended tone, as if he had forgotten his worries during the morning’s little adventure. “I left the house at seven o’clock this morning, and how long can they drag out their prayers?” It turned out that he had found his way without too much difficulty, and since he was the only one of the office staff to put in an appearance, he was greeted with respect and enthusiasm and also given the honor of reading from the Torah. “It was important for me to go,” he affirmed, if not to us then at least to himself, and he took off his hat and entered the kitchen. When he noticed the primeval wounded eye, which had shriveled a little in the pan, he said, “Is that for me?”

“Yes,” said my mother, “if you want it. Benjy didn’t feel like eating this morning.” He sat down immediately and ate my breakfast with relish, even though he had had refreshments at the synagogue too. He realized from our silence that something important had been said between us during his absence, but he was too full of his own experiences to try to find out what it was, and I soon left to wander around the neighborhood until lunch and breathe the dry, cold air of the radiant Sabbath morning. Strange how rarely I had set out on foot in recent years, I thought, and a sweet melancholy descended on me with the memory of the rainy evening when I had walked across Tel Aviv holding a big black umbrella over my head. But how different the Jerusalem streets were from the straight, open streets of Tel Aviv. Where could you find in the whole of Tel Aviv a steep narrow lane like this, running along the wall of the Lepers’ Hospital and suddenly opening out into the plaza fronting the Jerusalem Theater? What a pity that I couldn’t test the true power of the new motorcycle on an incline like this, I thought regretfully, as if I were about to leave the place forever. And thus, with a feeling of parting, perhaps genuine, perhaps imaginary, I continued along the street of the foreign consulates, which I had taken every day to school, examining the familiar facades of the houses and stopping to read the signs on the gates. Among them were many brass plates with the names of physicians, mentioning degrees and specializations, and I was surprised to see how many of them I still remembered from my schooldays, such as the big old sign bearing the name of the famous cardiologist Professor Ziegfried Adler, and next to it a small new one, PROFESSOR AVRAHAM ADLER, CARDIAC SURGEON. So this is where Bouma lives, I said to myself, the master-surgeon who came down from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to kill the administrative director and send his soul flying into mine in order to ruin my love affair. And all the arguments Bouma had piled on top of each other hadn’t torn off the veil of mystery surrounding that death.