A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

When the operation was over we saw that dawn had already stolen through the folds of the drapes. The two surgeons and the nurses left the room, and the patient was wheeled into the recovery room. Nakash sat next to him for a while and then went to see to the arrangements for us to be paid, leaving me to wait for the “landing”—in other words, to watch the respirator for the first signs that the patient was beginning to breathe independently. I now felt no tiredness. I parted the curtains and let my eyes wander from the respirator to the sunrise painting the sea in soft pastel colors. My hands were clean, without any blood or smell of drugs, without the warmth of the depths of the human body, which I was used to feeling on my fingers after an operation, even if I had played a very minor role in it. And although I hadn’t even seen the tumor with my own eyes before it was sent for the biopsy, I felt a sense of profound satisfaction, as if I had truly taken part in the battle. I went up to the patient and raised his eyelids, as I had observed Nakash doing to his patients, but without knowing what exactly I wanted to see there. A new, very pretty nurse, who hadn’t been present during the operation, came into the room and sat down next to me and said, “Dr. Nakash sent me to take over from you, so that you can go and sign for the fee.” I didn’t want to leave the patient; I felt that I wanted to see for myself how the undercarriage of the soul touched the solid ground of the body. The nurse’s frank reference to the financial arrangements between myself and the hospital jarred me. But I was new here and I didn’t want to step out of line. I thus went to the secretary’s office, where a check for eight hundred shekels was waiting for me, together with an elegantly printed page setting out the details of the fee and the various deductions. Nakash examined my check and asked if everything was all right. Then he sent me home. “I’ll see that our patient lands safely,” he said with a smile. I went to the changing rooms, and even though I had not been soiled by the operation, I couldn’t resist the magnificent facilities, and I took a long shower. Then I dressed, tucked my crash helmet under my arm, and prepared to leave the hospital, but before doing so I couldn’t help going into the recovery room to see if the landing was over. It was, and the patient was now alone. Nakash had disappeared. The beautiful nurse was gone too. The anesthesia machine had been wheeled into a corner of the room. The soul had returned to the body. The patient was breathing by himself.

I reached my apartment without any problems, leaving behind me rows of despairing cars struggling to enter Tel Aviv. The check was in my pocket, about a quarter of my monthly salary at the hospital. Now I thought about Dori. Should I wait until my parents had signed the guarantee, or should I try to make contact without any actual pretext for doing so? Children in school uniforms were coming down the stairs. Neighbors examined me suspiciously when they saw me standing in my black leather jacket and crash helmet, opening the door to my apartment, but no one dared to say anything to me. I made myself a big breakfast, and then I let down the blinds and prepared for a sweet sleep without any disturbances, not even the chance ringing of the phone. But while I was fast asleep the line was reconnected, and at one o’clock in the afternoon the phone rang insistently. It was my mother, who was glad to see that her efforts on my behalf with the phone company had borne fruit and who asked me when I intended to arrive the next day. “Early,” I said immediately, because I knew that I had to compensate them for missing their visit to Tel Aviv. And indeed, I arrived in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon before my father came home from work and told my mother about the interview with Professor Levine and my final banishment from the hospital. At first she listened in silence. Whenever I was involved in a quarrel, she was always careful not to get carried away and blame the other party, and even when it was clear to her that they were in the wrong and had treated me unjustly, she would examine what it was in me and my behavior that had caused them to wrong me. Now, too, she tried to interrogate me tactfully but insistently — was I sure that the blood transfusion had been essential? And how had I felt when I was performing it? I felt sorry for her. She was groping in the dark, looking for something that she could never have imagined was actually there. But I was afraid that she might discover something, so I deliberately increased the darkness in which she was floundering. In the end my father arrived. I wanted to spare him the bad news for a while, but my mother immediately told him. At first he turned a little pale, then he recovered and listened with unseemly gratification to Dr. Nakash’s pithy definitions of Professor Levine’s mental illness. The fact that Hishin had not challenged the transfusion appeared to him to confirm my innocence of any wrongdoing, and he seemed satisfied. He was also very impressed by my descriptions of the private hospital in Herzliah, and was amazed at the high fee I had received for one night’s work. “Dealing with the soul is more important and expensive than dealing only with the body,” I said with a smile, “because in the end the legal responsibility falls on the anesthetist. If something happens to the patient, who will they blame? Who’ll have the strength to open up the stomach or the brain again to poke around in there and decide what was cut right or wrong?” My mother sank into a profound silence and gave me a searching look. I felt that for some reason she was dissatisfied with me, but I also knew that she was incapable of putting her finger on the precise source of her complaints.

When my father and I finally finished chatting about the salaries of doctors and possible complications in surgery, my mother held out a white envelope with my name written on it, which contained an invitation to Eyal’s wedding, which was to take place in three weeks’ time in Kibbutz Ein Zohar in the Arava. My parents had received a separate invitation, and Eyal himself had called to urge them to come. His mother had joined in the request, and even Hadas had taken the receiver and added a few friendly words. It seemed that it was important to them for my parents, who had known Eyal since he was a child, to be at the wedding. “You’re not thinking of traveling all the way to the Arava?” I asked in surprise, but it turned out that they had already promised Eyal they would go, and that they intended to drive down in their own car, for after the wedding they intended to continue on to one of the spa hotels on the banks of the Dead Sea and spend a few days there. Their disappointment at the cancellation of the visit to Tel Aviv had apparently only intensified their hunger for travel, for instead of waiting to consult me about their plans, as they usually did, they had arranged it all themselves, and even reserved rooms in a hotel. “What will you do at a wedding for young people on a kibbutz?” I asked with a faint smile. “Why on earth should you travel all the way there, and in the old car on top of everything?” But my mother was determined to go. Eyal had asked them to be present at his wedding, and they didn’t want to hurt his feelings. They remembered him hanging around in our house, and there had been times, especially after his father committed suicide, when they had considered him almost a second son. And besides, they had every intention of enjoying the wedding, the trip to the desert, the kibbutz. I would join them in Jerusalem, or they would come and pick me up in Tel Aviv, and we would drive down together to the Arava, and after the kibbutz we would all go to the hotel on the banks of the Dead Sea. They had already booked a room for me, and really, why shouldn’t I take a few days’ vacation? But I didn’t want to meet my old friends with my parents hovering at my elbow, and I immediately rejected their invitation to join them at the Dead Sea, even for one night. I did my best to discourage the whole idea, and told them that they would have to reach the Arava under their own steam, because I intended to ride down on my motorcycle in order to be free to return to Tel Aviv without having to depend on anyone else. “But you have no commitments to the hospital anymore,” my mother said, offended by my refusal to accompany them on their holiday. “I have other commitments,” I said, without explaining. They were very disappointed by my negative reaction to their plans, especially my mother, who was not enthusiastic about traveling alone on the desert roads and was afraid that my father would get lost, since he had a habit of misreading road maps and was too proud to stop and ask for directions. But when I saw that all the obstacles I put in their way would not deter them from keeping their promise to Eyal, I softened a little and promised to meet them at the exit from Beersheba and ride in front of them to the kibbutz, and also to guide them to their hotel later that night. At this my mother relaxed, and we passed a pleasant Shabbat together. I described the complicated brain surgery again at length, and told them about the new feelings I had experienced as an anesthetist. I also reminisced about India, and this time I was more generous with my stories about Calcutta and the ghats of Varanasi, but I hardly mentioned the Lazars. I didn’t say anything about the guarantee either, and it was only on Saturday afternoon, before I set out for Tel Aviv, while my mother was taking a nap, that I got my father to sign it, quickly adding my mother’s signature myself.