A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

“Did you guess about my impossible love affair too?” I couldn’t resist asking him, without looking him in the eye, my head bent over the papers strewn on the table in an attempt to identify something familiar in his equations and charts. He was surprised by the unexpected confidence I was placing in him. No, he admitted honestly. He had heard about it for the first time from Michaela when they said good-bye. He had guessed that something which affected me deeply had happened in India, but he thought it was connected with Einat and not her mother. Yes, at first he had sensed that something had opened up in me when I came back from India, but on the way back from Eyal’s wedding, when we had stopped on the little hill on the road from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem and I had begun holding forth about my own private theory of the contraction of the universe and how spirit was going to shrink matter until there was nothing left of it, he had begun to worry about me. I had always been the good friend whom nobody had to worry about, the successful student who homed in steadily and accurately on the target his parents had set for him. But when he saw the speed with which I decided to marry Michaela — whom, if I didn’t mind his saying so, I didn’t really love enough — he began to feel that I might be following in his footsteps and losing my way. Even now, if I had come to visit him here in the middle of the night, it meant that I wasn’t in the greatest shape. While he himself was stuck and buried in the ground, maybe because of his brother — yes, because of his poor little brother — I, who had always seemed to him the ideal, well-balanced man, had turned into a kind of spaceship which had gone out of orbit and was now spinning aimlessly among the stars. But a spaceship that could be brought back on course. I myself must have seen how astronauts left their shuttles to return straying objects to their original course. Because that was the great advantage of space — nothing crashed there.

For a moment he was silent, astonished at himself for having blamed his failure on his retarded brother. And then, as if unable to contain his emotion, he stood up and hugged me warmly again, pressing the revolver on his belt against my chest until I too had to stand up and return his hug. Thus we stood embracing in the little watchman’s hut, listening in the silence to the wind howling outside, accompanied by the unearthly whistles of the walkie-talkie. Although my heart genuinely ached for him, I felt repelled by the sentimentality that had been overpowering him of late. God save me from deteriorating into this kind of pain and self-pity, I thought with increasing disgust. Better to be detached — not depression but Nirvana, which is the end of all incarnations. I was already thinking of Nakash’s sleeping pills, which would sweeten the night for me. You can always rely on Nakash, Hishin used to say. The news that Dori was going to travel to Europe by herself continued to astound me. Was it possible? I thought in anger and envy. Mightn’t it be dangerous? And a new thought came into my mind. I had to find Einat and talk to her. Gently but decisively I extricated myself from Amnon’s emotional embrace, and although I had the telephone number of Einat’s apartment, I asked him if he knew what she was up to. He hadn’t bumped into her since the night of Michaela’s departure, but he thought she was still working as a waitress in the same pub where she had worked before.

In spite of his detailed explanations, I did not find the place easily. The savage wind buffeting the motorcycle led me astray in the little streets close to the sea in the north of the city, and it was a long time before I found myself standing in front of the red-painted wooden door with the name of the pub emblazoned on it. It was a small place, apparently not very popular, for even on a night like this only a handful of people had taken refuge in it, and even they were sitting in a noncommittal way, as if they were still making up their minds whether to stay. The music was not too loud and pleasant enough, and I didn’t have to look far for Einat, in jeans and a red tee shirt with the name of the place printed on it, collecting glasses from one of the tables. Remembering her panic on the night I took her home after we said good-bye to Michaela, I didn’t go up to her at once, but only waved to her from a distance and sat down in a quiet corner where we would be able to talk later. Although she must have realized that I had gone there looking for her, she didn’t come up to me but sent the second waitress to take my order while she went to stand behind the bar, as if to place an additional barrier between us. She knows everything, I thought fearfully. After I had traveled to the ends of the earth to take care of her, and may have saved her life at a certain moment, could she really want to sever all contact with me? Even now I could remember the results of her blood tests, and my hands still remembered her swollen liver. I couldn’t help myself. I took my beer from the waitress and carried it over to the bar, to sit opposite her and force her to listen to what I had to say. But Einat, who had obviously been watching my every move, hurried to a remote corner of the pub and began talking to the people sitting at one of the tables. The few people and low music made it impossible to force her to face me and listen to at least one question without arousing attention. I therefore remained standing at the bar, sipping my beer slowly, knowing that sooner or later she would have to come back. But instead she disappeared. I asked the other waitress where she had gone, but she said she didn’t know. I waited a few minutes and then asked for my glass to be refilled and returned to my table. But Einat didn’t come back, and since no new customers showed up, the second waitress did not seem bothered by her disappearance.

Half an hour passed. One of the customers requested rock and roll, and the second waitress immediately complied with his wishes. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t used to drinking, and the two beers had made me slightly light-headed. I decided to leave, but not before visiting the bathroom. It was deserted, but next to it was a door leading to the little neon-lit kitchen. I saw her immediately, sitting in the corner next to a big refrigerator and holding a glass of milk. Presumably it hadn’t occurred to her that I would pursue her, for when she saw me she turned very pale, as if she had seen a ghost, jumped up from her chair, and held her slender hand up to stop me with a desperate, pathetic gesture, which I immediately respected. She looked frantic, afraid to meet my eyes, her fingers nervously pleating the edges of the big red tee shirt, hoping against hope that someone would come in to save her from confronting me. But nobody came in, and the savage new music grew louder inside the pub.

“Tell me, Einat, did I make a mistake when I fell in love with your mother instead of falling in love with you?” I asked her in a quiet voice, without beating around the bush. Her face, which looked even purer than usual against the gaudy background of the colored bottles on the wall, turned bright red. She shook her head quickly, as if trying to repulse me, and mumbled, “No, you didn’t make a mistake.”

“Your mother and father took me to India to fall in love with you, and I behaved like a doctor,” I went on. “Was I wrong? Tell me, was I wrong?” She went on shaking her head with a tormented expression on her face and said, “No, you weren’t wrong. You couldn’t have behaved any differently.” Now a deep calm descended on me, as if I had received her approval for the oblivion I sought. But she didn’t know what I intended to do, and fearing a continuation of the conversation, she slipped nimbly past me like a little squirrel, taking great care not to touch me. She hurried up the steps and just as she was, in the thin tee shirt, opened the wooden door, letting in a wild gust of wind, and disappeared, perhaps into the pub next door.