A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

I had no doubt whatsoever that we would return at the end of the year. Otherwise I might lose the secret back door through which, according to Lazar and his bureaucratic metaphor, I had already returned to the hospital. He also promised to come and visit us during our year in England. “That would be wonderful,” I said with genuine delight. “We’ll be happy to put you up, or both of you, if Dori comes with you.”

“Of course she’ll come,” said Lazar immediately. “If she insisted on going along to India, do you think she won’t insist on coming to England? You’ve already seen for yourself how hard it is for her to stay by herself.” Indeed I had, and the thought of a possible meeting in England gave me the confidence to notify Dr. Nakash that I was resigning from the remunerative work as his assistant anesthetist. To his credit, Nakash encouraged me to go. “Try to gain experience in anesthesiology there, together with your work in internal medicine,” he advised me. “The subjects are connected. It may be an old hospital with obsolete equipment, but you’ll always find someone unexpected whom you can learn something from.” My parents were of course delighted at our approaching trip to England, in spite of the separation; but when I told them, in Michaela’s absence, about the expected birth in six months’ time, and tried, not without difficulty, to convince them that I myself had been ignorant of the pregnancy until after the wedding, because Michaela hadn’t wanted to influence my decision to marry her, they were flabbergasted, as if they had only now grasped the wild side of Michaela’s nature, in addition to the ethical and independent aspects of her character. But their joy at being grandparents soon asserted itself and overcame everything else. They immediately decided to postpone their visit to England. Instead of arriving in three months’ time, in the autumn, they would arrive in the middle of winter, for the birth, and they would also stay longer than they had originally planned. The idea that their granddaughter would be born in the land of their birth amused them, but also excited them. “It will be as if we returned to England,” said my father, turning red with pleasure and embarrassment at the curious thought. “Exactly,” I laughed. “Shiva. Return. That’s exactly the name Michaela wants to give the baby, not because of you but because of its Indian sound.”

Michaela, flushed from the long walk she had taken to give me a chance to be alone with my parents, came in and gave us a deep, proud, triumphant look. My father couldn’t resist hugging and kissing her as soon as she came in, forgetting his shyness now that a part of his own flesh and blood was inside her. My mother too went up to embrace her, even though I knew that she was secretly upset by Michaela’s deception. The speed of my transformation from a stubborn bachelor to the father of a child seemed to her unwise, and perhaps too much for me to cope with. But the news flooded her with joy nevertheless. I told Michaela that I had already confided the strange name she wanted to give the baby to my parents, and she was insulted and protested indignantly, “It’s not strange at all. That’s what we’re going to call her, Shiva, whether with a vav or a beth we’ll decide later,” and she explained to my parents the mythological meaning of the god Shiva, the Destroyer, and how he complemented the god Brahma, the Creator, and Vishnu, the Preserver. My parents smiled. “Don’t argue about it now, it’s silly. There’s plenty of time to decide. You’ll change your minds a thousand times,” they said, but I already felt that this would be my daughter’s name, and all I could do now was fight for it to be spelled with a beth and not with a vav , like the Indian god, whose name I remembered calling out to the barefoot boatman rowing me out between the ghats of Varanasi. Meanwhile we had to hide the fact of Michaela’s pregnancy from Lazar so he would not relax his pressure on his English colleague to find her a part-time job, not for fear that she would be bored in London, since Michaela always found something to interest her, but to supplement my salary, which would, it transpired, be extremely modest, since it would be calculated according to the shekel salary I would have received if I had remained at the hospital.

But it was too late to change our minds, or even to grumble. We were both young, and our needs were modest. My parents, though, after telephone consultations with the family in England, decided to break into a savings account and give us some cash to tide us over until I received my first paycheck. With the money from the sale of the motorcycle we bought the plane tickets and good winter clothes, and the remainder we deposited in my bank account to cover the postdated checks for my share of the rent. In the plane Michaela was exuberant; leaving Israel had made her spirits soar, even though we were sailing west and not east. She believed that India was spiritually and intellectually closer to England than it was to Israel. I, in contrast, sat next to her in the doldrums, nervous and anxious about the future. Ever since my mysterious infatuation with Dori had begun, my life had been flowing along a crooked, winding course, because of the contradictory and ambivalent signals I received from the impossible object of my desire. Now I was being swept far away from her, and apart from Lazar’s promise that they might come for a short visit to England, I had nothing to hang on to. And it was supposed to be all for her: the hasty marriage, the rented apartment, even the growing dependence on Lazar and his schemes. I thought again of all the people putting themselves out for me, especially my parents, who knew nothing of my real motives. It would have been more honest to confess to them and ease my conscience. I looked at Michaela, whose great clear eyes reflected the radiant blue sky shining above the clouds. If I suddenly told her that I had fallen in love with Lazar’s wife, what would she say? Would the broad, magnanimous spirit of her Hindu or Buddhist beliefs calm and soothe the pain of this passion and absorb it into the common stream of our marriage?

Because this was how Michaela defined marriage: it was a “common stream,” and that’s all it was. In the framework of such a tolerant definition, even a sudden confession of the kind I had in mind was entitled to be carried along on the current, like an uprooted tree trunk. But I decided to hold my peace. Nor, in fact, did I have anything to confess, for in the hectic month since our marriage I had had no contact with Dori except for one telephone call, in which I had asked her if we could sublet the apartment to Amnon until we returned from England. About the expected birth I said nothing, not only because I was afraid she might not want to continue the lease, which was intended for a single tenant and not an expanding family, but also because I didn’t want to draw attention to my sexual life with Michaela and give her an excuse for breaking off relations with me — as if our marriage were a mere formality. And indeed, although I could hear people going in and out of her office, she was very friendly, and her joyful, tender voice filled me with such lust that when I put the receiver down I felt drops of moisture on my penis, as if it were weeping. She too, like my parents’ friends, recalled the wedding as an exceptionally enjoyable occasion, perhaps because of the high spirits of our family from Scotland. Even the strictness of the young rabbi, whose beauty she remarked on, did not seem to her annoying or out of place. “It’s a good thing to be serious about the world sometimes,” she said, and her laughter flooded the receiver. Then she praised me for taking up her husband’s offer and admitted that she had had something to do with it. It was her legal mind that had remembered my English passport when Lazar told her about the complications they had run into with the exchange program in London. “Maybe you just wanted to get rid of me?” I asked in suspense, but without anger. She laughed again. “Maybe I did. But is it possible? I see that you’re putting your friend into the apartment to make sure it’s there when you come back.”