A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

But as things turned out, Lazar recognized me before I spotted them and immediately embraced me. His wife did not blush with surprise at the sudden meeting either, and, radiant as usual, she held out her arms for a hug with a naturalness that astonished me, and kissed me on both cheeks. And even though I knew it was only a friendly kiss, the result of her excitement at the flight and the landing, and the same kind of reception Sir Geoffrey would have received if he had come to meet them, I couldn’t control the violent trembling that took hold of me, as if this simple, smiling kiss, bestowed on me so naturally by my beloved in the presence of her husband, held out the promise of something real and significant occurring in the course of this visit, which began in the soft light of a welcoming London sky. It was presumably these thoughts running through my head, and not her presence at my side, looking for a place to put her long legs in the cramped space of the little car, which caused me to get lost on the way from the airport to their hotel, to the annoyance of Lazar, who was tired and in a hurry as usual. “You were better at finding your way in New Delhi,” he remarked sarcastically, sitting in the backseat squeezed next to a suitcase that didn’t fit into the trunk, looking at the unfamiliar London streets, which he was sure he would have negotiated more successfully than I was, if he had been sitting at the steering wheel in my place. When we finally reached the hotel and I took the second suitcase out of the trunk, I suddenly recognized it as one of those that had accompanied us to India, and with a mysterious feeling of inexplicable joy I bent down to stroke the slightly shabby leather, which still seemed to be covered with the reddish yellow dust of the dirt roads next to the temples of Bodhgaya. Lazar wanted to open this suitcase in the hotel lobby, to take out the gift they had brought for the baby, but Dori stopped him. “Later, there’s plenty of time. We’ll give it to the baby herself,” she said, and asked about Shiva’s unusual name. When I explained why Michaela had chosen the name, she seemed stirred and excited, immediately grasping the deep Indian connection, which included her too. I wanted to tell them my reservations about calling my daughter after a god who wanted to destroy the entire universe, and my preference for a more modest Israeli context and for the spelling of the Hebrew word “return,” but it seemed too complicated to explain to two tired people eager to go up to their room and rest after their journey.

When I got home, Michaela wasn’t there. In spite of the baby’s cold she had decided to take her out. I was annoyed with her for ignoring my medical diagnosis, and I even saw it as a little act of revenge for what she saw as my exaggerated and superfluous favors to the Lazars. The truth was that in spite of the skill I had displayed in delivering the baby, Michaela refused to allow me to extend my medical authority to her. “As far as she’s concerned, you’re only her father, not her doctor,” she warned me in the commanding tone she could sometimes use. It was obviously important to her not to give me any advantage as far as responsibility for the baby’s welfare was concerned, and in principle she was right. But I was afraid that wandering around in the cold might make the baby develop an infection and keep us at home now, exactly when I wanted to be as free as possible to cultivate my relations with the woman who, from the moment I had set eyes on her again, I knew I could not give up — could not and would not. Giving her up, even in my thoughts, might damage a vital artery that was sustaining me and giving me strength to cope with Michaela and the baby and even with my parents, who had recently become soft and sentimental, hanging on my every word and doing everything I told them to. And I didn’t need much to sustain the obsession that haunted me day and night: all I needed was an occasional smile from her to give me the courage to go into her office again and confess my love with a boldness and desperation that would cause her not only astonishment and remorse but mainly admiration of herself for sending a young man like me into a state of such tender confusion. And that was liable to fire her with a different passion from the kind aroused in her by her devoted husband, who kissed and caressed her without stopping.

But when Michaela returned with the baby, who was healthy and rosy from the walk in the wintry air, without a trace of the morning’s cold, I had to admire the maternal instinct that had so confidently and accurately diagnosed the superficiality of the sniffles that I had thought so important. And again I realized how right my mother had been the first time I brought Michaela home, when she predicted that the moment Michaela had a child she would stop looking for herself and find her proper place in the world, so much so that even her lack of a high school diploma wouldn’t matter. She seemed so attractive to me now, as she competently changed the baby’s diaper and began breastfeeding her, that I hinted at the possibility of a quick session in bed before I had to go to my night shift at the hospital; perhaps it would help to relieve the lust I already felt for the woman who had just arrived in the country, whom we would have to invite to tea soon, with her husband, so that they could have a look at the baby and give her the present they had brought — and give me the opportunity to put out a few feelers about plans for my return to the hospital in Israel, in order to make sure that the English door really led back home and wasn’t locked behind us. But Michaela wasn’t at all interested. Her friend the midwife recommended refraining from full sexual intercourse for three months after the birth, in order to give all the tears time to mend and allow everything to settle down again after the shock. Although I couldn’t really argue with the midwife’s logic, I remained so full of tension that I couldn’t sleep after my night shift, so I went back to the hospital early in the afternoon. I left Shiva at the nursery and walked up and down outside Sir Geoffrey’s office, hoping to bump into the Lazars. And so I did. I easily recognized Dori’s confident steps in the distance, and soon after that her eyes were imploring me anxiously, for she realized that I was hanging around in the corridor outside Sir Geoffrey’s office in order to meet her again. If it hadn’t occurred to me on the spur of the moment to ask her to come and see Shiva, she would no doubt have followed her husband like a little puppy dog into his meeting with Sir Geoffrey, who intended, as Lazar had already told me the day before, to offer the Tel Aviv hospital used dialysis and anesthesia equipment from the English hospital’s surplus stock for next to nothing. I saw immediately that the invitation to come and see the baby attracted her, and Lazar, who wanted to examine the offer in depth and make sure that Sir Geoffrey’s good intentions wouldn’t lead to more trouble than the equipment was worth, encouraged her to go with me. “But why not, Dori? Go and see the baby, and if Benjy has the time, perhaps he’ll take you to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, which you wanted to see today. I’m afraid that it’s going to take a long time here, and after that I have to meet the man who’s organizing the evening for the Friends.”

“And when will you see the baby?” she cried in a scandalized tone, as if it were a duty or a pleasure that couldn’t be missed. But I, thrilled at the opportunity to be alone with her, which had come my way so easily, hastily reassured them on this score. “You’ll still have plenty of opportunities to see the baby,” I repeatedly promised Lazar, who didn’t seem in the least enthusiastic, and we arranged that I would bring Dori back to Sir Geoffrey’s office in two hours’ time. Thus, by an unexpected coincidence, she was suddenly in my charge, albeit for only two hours, but in a place completely unfamiliar to her, wrapped in the blue velvet tunic I remembered from India, which apparently belonged to the category of clothes that could be worn anywhere. With her high heels drumming a sure and steady rhythm, she began to walk beside me — a plump, ripe, middle-aged woman, who by the time I reached her age might have already departed from this world. This new thought filled me not only with sadness but also with a tender pleasure. In a friendly way, but maintaining a discreet distance, as if we had never lain together naked, I began to ask her about her mother and how she was getting on in the old folks’ home, a subject I knew she enjoyed talking about and one that I felt hinted at the intimacy between us as well. When we went quietly into the nursery and I received permission to take Dori into the babies’ room for a minute, I wasn’t satisfied with pointing out Shiva’s crib to her, but I woke the baby up and put her in Dori’s arms, so that she would hold something that was part of my flesh and blood.