A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

But Michaela had no desire to notice unexpected tears pooling in her husband’s eyes. She was full of happiness at being in London, delighting in her freedom to roam where she would, meeting people connected with India, and dreaming about another trip there herself. And so when I got into bed after having a long soak in the bath to cleanse my soul of the blood and pus, I would find her fast asleep, preparing herself for her little morning job, her only obligation — sweeping and mopping the floor of the little chapel and tidying the seats for the congregation coming to pray or tourists coming to admire the quaint old building. She was quite satisfied with this simple manual labor, for which she earned a relatively handsome sum, leading me to suspect a hidden subsidy from Sir Geoffrey, to bolster my low salary. She would bring home candle-ends from the chapel too, and light them from time to time to create a festive atmosphere. Sometimes, when I emerged from the bathroom at the gray hour before dawn, I would see that before she had gone back to sleep she had set a half or third of a candle by my bedside, to dispel my loneliness before I too fell asleep, and in fact the flickering light would gradually calm my agitated spirit and lull me to sleep, or at least show me when it was five o’clock in the morning, when I would sometimes call my parents before they went to work, at the reduced nighttime rates. In the beginning I phoned often, because I hadn’t heard anything from Amnon and I was worried about his paying the rent on time. The two-hour time difference between London and Jerusalem ensured that I would always find my parents at home, fresh and alert, ready with news about themselves and the country but mainly eager to hear about what was going on in my life, and how Michaela’s pregnancy was progressing, and if there were any signs of an early birth. They had already reserved their flight and paid for their tickets, and Michaela had undertaken to find them a room near our apartment. Although they were careful not to drag out the telephone conversations that I paid for, they couldn’t resist asking for more information about rooms for rent in the area so they could decide what might suit them. They sounded excited, not only in anticipation of the birth of their grandchild and the meeting with us but also because of the long stay they planned in England, to which they had paid only brief visits since they had emigrated to Israel. They were now going to stay for two whole months; it was as if they were coming home, back to the land of their birth.

Sometimes dust collects on the little statuette, until its original color is dulled. And if nobody comes to wipe it off occasionally with a soft cloth, a skinny spider will finally descend from the ceiling to patiently weave a great complex web of dense transparentthreads around it, like a delicate lacydress — until a sunbeam borne on the breeze floating in from the open window transforms the forgotten statuette into a dusty little girl, her shining dress ruffling softly around her, ready to dance with anyone who asks her.

But who will ask her? Who can forget that death is death, however it disguises itself?

The birth took place on a freezing winter night in our own little apartment, a few hundred yards from the hospital. I still can’t understand how Michaela succeeded in persuading me, and especially my parents, to agree. But were we really persuaded, or did we simply give in to her determination to give birth at home with only a midwife present? For what, indeed, could we do? We couldn’t force her to have the baby in the hospital. “I’m sorry,” she announced with a tolerant smile at the sight of our misgivings, “but it was me, not you, who carried the baby all this time, so I think I have the right to decide where to bring her into the world.” And with these words the argument was closed. Nevertheless, I don’t think we tried hard enough to change her mind, as if we had resigned ourselves to the fact that she had a few private eccentricities that we had to accept in return for her many virtues, which in London took on a very practical aspect. Not only did she find an excellent apartment for my parents at a reasonable rent, with a separate entrance and a little kitchenette, only a few streets away from us — a room attached to a small house surrounded by a little garden, whose owners were away on a long vacation in Italy — but she also prepared a very warm welcome for them when they arrived. Although she was in the middle of her ninth month, she insisted on going to the airport to meet them and from there bringing them back to our house, where a rich repast awaited them, with all kinds of sausages and cheeses that she knew my father liked. She surprised my mother, who was not a big eater, with a dish that had been a favorite of hers as a child — raspberries and cream, something she had picked up from a chance remark made by my Glasgow aunt. The day before they arrived, Michaela made the beds in their room with fresh, spotless linen, and she added an extra pillow to my mother’s bed, which in this room was next to my father’s, so that she could sleep with her head raised, as she did in Jerusalem. And on top of everything else she had borrowed two hot water bottles from her new friend Stephanie, in case the English heating was insufficient for my parents, especially since an intense cold had descended on the whole country in the week of their arrival, at the beginning of January.

This Stephanie, a mature woman from South Africa whom Michaela had met in the neighborhood choir and had become very friendly with, was the source of some of her new ideas, including the idea of giving birth at home with a midwife, which apparently was fashionable then among young women in North London, who besides relying on their own sturdy health were looking for some kind of meaning in the simpler ways of former generations. I knew that Michaela was searching for something; she wanted to experience the birth on a basic, elemental level, and if half the human race was still giving birth at home without making a fuss about it, there really was no reason for me to be concerned. Her pregnancy had been absolutely normal, and she herself was a strong, healthy young woman. She had also participated in a Lamaze course, and she knew what to expect; in case of an emergency the hospital was just around the corner, and I myself was a doctor after all, as Michaela reminded me in a slightly mocking tone, for it amused her that a doctor, and a young one at that, should be prey to fears that would never even occur to a layman. It was true that I had accumulated plenty of experience over the past few months in the little operating room next to the emergency room, but I had never delivered a baby — let alone this particular one, whom I was already calling Shiva to myself, but with a beth, not with a vav . This was my condition for agreeing to the birth at home, and Michaela was forced to accept it, in spite of her protests. “You’re wrong, Benjy,” she said. “Shiva with a vav is more elegant than Shiva with a beth. And it’s also connected to the word shivayon, equality, or even, if you want, to something religious like Shiviti elohim l’negdi, ‘I have set God always before me.’”

“But you mean a completely different god,” I said immediately. “Why different?” she wondered. “It’s always the same god, Benjy. Why can’t you understand? But never mind, let it be with a beth in the meantime, and when she learns to read and write she can decide for herself how to spell her name. In any case, in English it’s the same, and that’s the important thing,” and this concluded the negotiations between us, with an echo of her refusal to go home to Israel after the year was over.