A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

However, I had no option but to keep Michaela’s promise, and I sullenly gave the two English girls the key, wrote the address down clearly in both languages, and warned them to be careful in the apartment, since it did not belong to me. I also asked them not to stay longer than one or two days. “You won’t want to hang around in Tel Aviv anyway,” I warned them gloomily. “It’s a filthy place. Go down to the desert, take a bus to Eilat — that’s where you’ll find the real pleasures Israel has to offer.” I strapped Shiva into the special seat I had bought and installed in my father’s car, and with her sitting next to me but facing in the opposite direction, I drove to Jerusalem to leave her for seven days with my mother, who had taken a week’s vacation as an advance on her next year’s leave, since she had already used up all her vacation on the trip to England. On the way to Jerusalem Shivi gave me an inquiring look, as if trying to remember who I was. She was still too young to remember me clearly after an absence of two weeks, but she was old enough not to have forgotten me entirely. And thus, on the border between memory and forgetfulness, she stared at me suspiciously, but so sweetly that I couldn’t resist bending down to kiss her whenever traffic permitted, while keeping up a stream of chatter, telling her about my plans for the future and sometimes even bursting into forgotten old songs, to amuse her and also to raise my own spirits. Ever since Lazar’s surgery I had been confused, as if the bypasses planted in his heart had somehow wound their way into mine as well, and sometimes I would even feel a sharp pain in my chest, as if it too had been split open with an electric saw.

But when I reached my parents’ home in Jerusalem, I immediately stopped concentrating on my inner sensations in order to be free to give all my attention to their concerns. In spite of their joy at seeing their granddaughter again, they were worried about their ability to take care of her for a week, especially my mother, who was usually so calm and composed about everything. It was clear that she was full of secret resentment against Michaela, and even suspected that she would not return when she had promised to. But I reassured her. Michaela always kept her promises, and since it was only because of my insistence that she had agreed against her will to return to Israel instead of extending our stay in London, I could hardly object if she permitted herself one last little fling: two weeks on her own to enjoy her liberty and independence to the fullest. After putting Shivi down in the crib my father had borrowed from a young colleague at his office and giving my parents detailed instructions about feeding and bathing her, as well as telling them a little about Lazar’s successful surgery and my own prospects at the hospital, I went to bed early and immediately fell into a deep sleep, which for some reason was so haunted by recurrent nightmares that I got up before dawn, said a whispered good-bye, and set out for the return journey to Tel Aviv and to my first day of work at the hospital as a permanent, albeit half-time, member of the medical staff.

Since I had given the keys to the English girls, I was forced to stand outside banging on the door of the apartment until one of them, in short pants and a blouse that barely covered her breasts, woke up and let me in. They had misunderstood my instructions and unrolled their sleeping bags in the bedroom instead of the living room, but apart from this mistake I saw that they had not disturbed anything in the apartment and had left the kitchen clean and tidy. Nevertheless, I urged them again to go down to the desert and enjoy an experience which they could never have in England. At close quarters, I saw that they were not as young as I had imagined them to be at the airport. They were my age, and in the spare, athletic build of their bodies they reminded me of Michaela, whose depression when she landed in Israel in two weeks’ time I could already imagine. I drove to the hospital, and since I didn’t yet have a parking space, I had to park a long way off and walk. Although autumn had officially begun, the morning light was still so bright that I had to put on my sunglasses so my eyes could make the transition from English to Israeli light. First I went to the anesthesiology department, to introduce myself to its head, an energetic middle-aged woman with a sharp, ironic tongue, whom Lazar had informed of my appointment a week before and who was ready, although the official confirmation had not yet arrived, to fit me into the night shifts in the operating rooms. Strange, I thought, that here too I was beginning with night duty, as in London, but I accepted her offer, not only to cut my contact with the English girls down to a minimum but also to enable me to keep an eye on Lazar and perhaps alleviate his loneliness. In the cafeteria I came across Nakash and asked him about Lazar. His recovery was proceeding as expected. He had already been disconnected from most of the equipment and transferred to the ninth floor, to a private room in Levine’s department, where Levine could also take an active part in treating him. In three or four days’ time he would be able to go home. There you are, I said to myself, what were you so frightened of? But I refrained from going up to visit him, knowing that the room would be crowded with visitors from the hospital and from outside. I decided to postpone my visit until the evening, before my night shift began.

I returned to the apartment in the hope of finding my two visitors already gone, but it seemed that they had just woken up, and, wearing bathrobes over their bathing suits, they asked me the way to the beach and invited me to go with them. I was about to refuse, but suddenly I said to myself, Why not? Perhaps a soothing dip in the sea was just what I needed to banish the oppression from my heart. I began to look for my trunks, which I had not worn for ages, and which, judging by the amused looks of the English girls, had indeed gone out of fashion long ago. It was a strange feeling to find myself walking down the busy Tel Aviv street in the middle of the day in a pair of trunks and a light summer shirt, like a teenager, in the company of these two strange English girls, who turned out to be cousins who liked traveling the world together. “Have you been to India?” I asked. No, they hadn’t been to India yet. I immediately urged them to go. Yes, they heard praises of India everywhere, including, of course, from Michaela. In fact, they were considering joining us when we went, to help us look after dear little Shivi. We entered the sea, which was warm and gentle, without any waves. For a moment the smell of the water reminded me of the smell of the amniotic fluid in the London apartment, perhaps because there was an amniotic element in the algae constantly breaking up in the water. But the smell didn’t stop me from enjoying diving into the water and racing one of the English girls. Now I began to feel lighter, as if whatever had been weighing on me since Lazar’s operation had been swallowed up and dissolved inside me. After emerging from the sea and drying myself, I invited the English girls to join me for hot corn on the cob. On the beach I found Amnon playing ball with an intelligent-looking boy. “Now I know why your thesis is stuck,” I couldn’t help saying, scolding him, but I immediately regretted it. However, he did not seem hurt by my remark, and he was very interested in the two girls. “Ah,” he said with a bitter laugh, “now I know why you were in such a hurry to get me out of the apartment.” I had a hard time convincing him that they had descended on me without any warning, and feeling the need to make some kind of gesture, I didn’t object when he suggested returning to the apartment with us. It was now four o’clock in the afternoon, and Amnon and the girls, still in their swimsuits, began putting together an improvised meal. “I’m sorry, but tomorrow you’ll have to leave the apartment,” I warned the girls again, this time without mentioning the desert. “Because it looks as if I’m going to bring the baby back tomorrow, and she needs peace and quiet,” I suddenly added, in order to provide a logical-sounding pretext for the evacuation order. Amnon immediately invited them to go and stay with him, and they accepted the invitation gladly. They didn’t look like promiscuous women to me, but perhaps their blood relationship gave them a boldness and confidence to embark on secret adventures together that ordinary girlfriends wouldn’t have had. They weren’t pretty, even though their bodies were smooth and appealing. Taken separately, neither of them seemed particularly attractive, not even to a man like me, who hadn’t slept with his wife for over two weeks now, but the sudden thought that perhaps Amnon would go to bed with both of them at once immediately aroused me, even though the fantasy of making love to two women at once was not among my favorites.