A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

I pocketed the signed guarantee with the feeling that I had succeeded in lassoing Dori from a distance with one more slender thread. But how absurd, I thought in despair, that after my daring confession, and after I had succeeded in going to bed with her, I should still feel as if I were standing at the starting point, needing some unimportant piece of paper as an excuse for meeting her. I knew that if I called her on the phone I would give her an opening to evade me, even if she wasn’t yet sure herself of what she really wanted. If it was true that this was the first time she had been unfaithful to her husband — and I knew just how deeply she was attached to him — she must surely be full of remorse and self-reproach at what she had done, even if she was a little bit in love with me or felt at least some longing for what had happened between us. Accordingly, I must on no account give her the chance to break off the connection between us before we met again, a meeting I decided to effect by the simple means of walking confidently into her office, like an old client who didn’t need an appointment to be granted an interview, however brief. And even though I suspected that she might be startled to see me, I was sure that she would soon realize that my only motive in surprising her in her office was to show her that she could trust me completely, just as I had taken off all my clothes and placed myself at her disposal, giving her the choice to do whatever she wanted with me. Yes, I would meet her on her own territory, where she was protected from any improper gesture or word that might escape me, but I was doing it not just to calm any fears of harassment but also in order to show her that my intentions were not only sexual but deeper than that, as if the guarantee I had come to give her was also a testimony to her tenant’s good character. Perhaps precisely because of the significance I attached to my sudden entry into her office, I put it off, even though I had plenty of time on my hands now to haunt the little streets around her building, or to watch her strenuous maneuvers to get in or out of a forbidden parking place — I still delayed my entry, still hesitated to insert myself between one client and the next, to hand over the guarantee and relinquish the sweet thread of hope I held in my hand. Until one day when she appeared in a dream I had in the middle of the day, for now that my time was my own I had gotten into the habit of taking long, deep naps in the afternoon. In my dream she was standing and talking in her friendly, affectionate way to Hishin, who was lying, apparently as a joke, on one of the beds in the ward. And this simple dream for some reason agitated me so much that the same day, late in the afternoon, I bought a brightly colored Indian silk scarf which I found in a little knickknack shop in Basle Street, and I walked straight into her office and asked the dark-haired secretary, who remembered me from the morning when we ran around organizing things for the trip, and greeted me warmly, to let me in to see her for a minute as soon as she was free. But as it happened she was already free, and I went in and shut the door behind me and sat down opposite her, without waiting for her permission, and with lowered eyes I handed her the guarantee with my parents’ signatures on it and said, “Here’s the guarantee you asked for.”

Her eyes lit up in her usual smile, and she seemed quite calm, as if she had been expecting this sudden intrusion, and at that moment I didn’t know if she was calm because she was sure that what had happened between us was only a passing episode and it was all over now, or the opposite — she had become calm on seeing that I had not taken her words seriously and that I was bringing her the guarantee in person because I didn’t want to give her up. She took the guarantee and folded it as if she were about to tear it in half, but then hesitated and stopped herself, as if the lawyer in her were warning her of unpleasant eventualities in the future. But then she changed her mind again and tore it into shreds, which she dropped into the wastepaper basket, saying as she did so, “Never mind, I trust you.” Then she raised her laughing eyes to me and said, “So how are you? Have you recovered?” She blushed slightly, afraid perhaps of what I was about to say, and I said innocently, “From what?” and she said, “You know. From something that is quite impossible and will never happen again.” I kept quiet, afraid that my rising lust would cloud the wits I needed for this confrontation, but I looked straight at her. She was wearing a gray suit like the ones hanging in her mother’s closet. Her bun was beginning to come loose, and locks of hair had fallen onto her neck. The shade of her hair was darker than I remembered from the week before, and I wondered whether she had dyed it again or whether the light in the room was deceiving me. Her makeup, too, had faded during the day, exposing the cute freckles on her cheekbones. Her breasts looked smaller now, outlined separately under her white blouse. And behind the desk I caught a glimpse of the pampered little paunch. She certainly wasn’t beautiful, I thought to myself, and a vague memory of my afternoon dream crossed my mind. But she had a warmth and liveliness and directness that I badly needed now, and if she insisted on thinking that it was over between us, she had every right to do so, for I had not yet succeeded in convincing her that only the one who had started it had the right to end it. And then, in a gloomy silence, I took the gift-wrapped scarf out of my pocket and put it in front of her on the desk, whispering hoarsely, “I got this for you. Maybe because it reminds me of India. I don’t know.” She was now stunned and overcome with agitation, as if neither my declaration of love nor my standing naked before her had persuaded her of the seriousness of my intentions as much as this little scarf. She closed her eyes tight, and then she pressed her fist to her mouth again, as if she wanted to hit herself for what she had done to me and to herself. She unwrapped the colored paper and spread the scarf out in silence, and then she smiled distractedly and said, “Tell me, Benjy, what do you really want? I’ll soon be fifty. I don’t understand. What was it there in India that threw you off balance? What happened? True, I made a mistake too. I was flattered by the thought of being desired by such a young man. But that’s all. What can it lead to? It’s impossible. And you know it.”

“Yes, I know,” I admitted somberly, and I went on with miserable stubbornness, “but I’m only asking for one more time.”

“No,” she said immediately and vehemently, without thinking, “there’s no point. Even though it was very sweet for me too. It makes no difference. What will one more time give us? It will only make you want more, and you’ll come back and pester me again. And why not — you’re a free agent, you’ve got no obligations to anyone. You misled me when you asked to rent my mother’s apartment, I believed you when you said that you wanted to get married.”

“But I really do want to get married,” I replied quickly.

The secretary knocked at the door, and without waiting she opened it and came in and announced the name of a client who had just arrived. “Right away,” said Dori, rising from her seat, and carried forward on her high heels, she made for the door, flooding me with a wave of love as she paused by my side. She wanted to say something to me, perhaps to console me, but the client, an elderly, elegantly dressed man who was apparently too agitated to wait, opened the door and stepped into the room without waiting to be asked. She immediately flashed him one of her automatic smiles, and for some reason she introduced me to him, as if to banish any possible suspicion. “This is Dr. Rubin, who’s like a family doctor to us. Please come in and sit down.” The client nodded his head at me distractedly and sat down. She accompanied me to the hallway and said, “I understand that things didn’t work out with Professor Levine.”