A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

“How long has your mother been living here?” I inquired in a friendly tone. “Not long. Seven years. Since my father died. But she loved this apartment. And she invested a lot in it. It’s a shame; she could have stayed here for a few years longer. I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that she won’t be living here anymore. That’s why I wasn’t in a hurry to get in touch with you. I hoped that she would change her mind and come back. But now you’ve forced me to hand it over.” The surprising admission that she had actually surrendered to my demands flooded me with such a strong and unexpected wave of pleasure that I had to bow my head and close my eyes, which she interpreted as a sign that she had offended me. “If your mother changes her mind and wants to come back, I’ll move out immediately,” I said gallantly, in an attempt to make myself into an even more desirable tenant. But she shook her head firmly. “There won’t be any need for that. Don’t worry. So far she’s very happy there.” And then I couldn’t resist saying, “I know,” and proceeded to tell her about the telephone conversation. She listened in silence. A pleasant smile hovered on her lips, but her eyes were fixed in a hard, suspicious expression, as if intent on assessing the precise degree of danger posed by my determination to invade her life.

Meanwhile the apartment was growing dark and the golden powder was losing its glow, fading into shadowy hieroglyphics on dull yellow parchment. She dropped onto the sofa at my side and crossed her legs. Her little double chin sagged. From a shabby cardboard file containing telephone, gas, and electricity bills, she took out a sheet of paper with a few words written on it, and said despairingly, “I have to make an inventory of the contents of the apartment for the contract between us. And I don’t have any idea where to begin. We’ve never rented an apartment to strangers before. Some people write down everything, including closets and sinks, but you’re not planning to remove the furniture and sell it, are you? Or dismantle the lavatory and the sink, right?” She spoke without humor, and I shook my head solemnly in reply. I was hypnotized by the rapidly darkening room. “So we’ll just list the really important things,” she suggested, “the carpet and the more valuable dishes, and one or two pictures. And we’ll write down the number on the electricity meter, and get the phone company to read the phone meter, and that will more or less cover everything. As for the clothing and stuff of my mother’s that she left here — are you sure you don’t mind? At least come and look at the space we’ve left for you and see if it’ll be enough.” She stood up, but to my surprise she didn’t switch on the light in the apartment, which was growing darker from minute to minute, not only because of the fading light outside but because of the darkness welling up inside the apartment itself. Between the kitchen and the bathroom, from an alcove where the brooms and mops were standing, a fresh, dense darkness was steadily flowing and gradually spreading into the two rooms. When I followed her into her mother’s bedroom I noticed that the glass goblets, from which the soapsuds had disappeared, were shining on the white marble with a ruby-colored radiance. The window above the sink was set in the wall at just the right angle to catch the rays of the setting sun. I wanted to draw her attention to this little discovery of mine, but she was already standing next to her mother’s double bed, which was covered with a red bedspread and piled with fat cushions with flowery covers, and opening the doors of two empty closets to show me the space already at my disposal. Then, with a gesture of resignation, she opened the two full closets too. In one of them I saw gray suits, all alike, hanging, and in the other I found myself standing, as in a familiar dream, in front of stacks of white shoe boxes, in which various objects had no doubt been stored. “There’s plenty of room,” I said in a whisper behind her broad back, in an attempt to reassure her. “Don’t worry, we’ll clear it all away. Just give us a little time to breathe,” she said in a hoarse voice, looking at me again with that suspicious, hostile look, which, far from discouraging me, turned me on so much that my penis began to swell. If only I could talk to her now about some shared memory from our trip to India, I thought quickly, I might be able to lighten the atmosphere a little. But the lust boiling inside me paralyzed me. Only now I realized that the darkness she insisted on preserving in the apartment was flattering to her. For I no longer saw the creases in her neck, nor the wrinkles around her eyes, and even her little paunch had disappeared, leaving only the impression of a mature, ripe woman. Maybe she wants to seduce me? I asked myself when I saw her turning back in the direction of the living room, where a new stream of light, pouring out of the tatters of a flimsy cloud, was now struggling against the darkness. “Now we have to talk about the rent.” She sighed and dropped heavily onto the sofa, crossing one long leg over the other while the silent battle between light and darkness raging in the room drew delicate pale golden arabesques on her stockings. The only thing I’m going to get out of falling in love with this woman, I thought anxiously to myself, is an exorbitant rent that comes from the lack of experience of a new landlady. “What figure did you have in mind?” she asked me unexpectedly. “Me?” I laughed. “I don’t have any figure in mind. But don’t worry, you’ve already warned me that the rent will be higher than what I’m paying now.”

“Yes.” She smiled to herself in satisfaction. “I already warned you. Even though I’ve already forgotten what it was.” I told her the sum. She remembered and looked slightly disappointed, sunk in thought, her face appearing and disappearing in the darkness flowing from the bedroom and coming to join the darkness in the living room. “If we add ten percent to your present rent — would that be fair?” She asked me in her clear voice, which always contained a natural assertiveness. “I still feel guilty that you didn’t get anything for the trip to India.”

“But I did,” I protested, bitterly but also with a feeling of inner satisfaction, since I had feared a far higher rent. “The trip itself, and meeting the two of you. And now this apartment. And you,” I added softly, “as my landlady.” She didn’t answer, only withdrew into the protection of the darkness that she had gone to so much trouble to surround us with, perhaps precisely because of an embarrassing moment like this. I didn’t know what to do with it either, except to let it sink into her soul like a little warning from me, like the warning she had given me about the rent, which she had raised by just ten percent. I didn’t dare add anything to clarify my feelings, I only knew that in the silence now filling the room, the tension stemming from the age difference between us was slowly, and for the first time, melting, and the fact that she was apparently only nine years younger than my mother and ten years younger than my father, and her daughter was only four years younger than me, had lost its power.

This too could be the meaning of A Brief History of Time , I reflected as she finally stood up and went to the kitchen to switch on the light, illuminating the living room only indirectly. Without looking at me and without smiling, she announced that tomorrow or the next day, she would prepare a standard lease in her office, and she wrote down my ID number in a little notebook and asked me to get my parents to sign a guarantee, and we agreed that I would call her tomorrow or the next day to set a date for signing the contract and handing over the key. In the meantime, she promised, her maid would come to clean the apartment for me. “Do you by any chance remember where the valve is that connects the apartment to the water main?” I asked when I was already standing at the door, and a faint tremor of anxiety ran through me at the thought that I was leaving her alone. She tried to remember, going to look for it first under the kitchen sink and then in the bathroom, but she couldn’t find the valve, which as in all old apartments was apparently hidden in some unexpected place. “I’ll ask my mother; perhaps she knows. And if not, Lazar will find it,” she said, and she flashed me one of her automatic smiles, impossible to read, and thus we parted without any response on my part, apart from uttering the word “wonderful,” which was all I had to attach this woman to me until our next meeting — at which, I vowed to myself as I slowly rode my motorcycle through the bustling, wintry Tel Aviv evening, I would definitely confess my feelings.