A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

A faint, ironic smile crossed Michaela’s lips. It was impossible to tell whether it was occasioned by Hishin’s words themselves or by my efforts to quote him word for word. “So that’s how he thinks he’ll get out of it,” she said softly, without explaining what she meant, and her great eyes tried again to meet mine, which had been avoiding her ever since I met her at the airport and which were now scanning the familiar streets around our apartment, looking for a parking place. In the apartment too, where I had not yet rearranged the furniture moved by Amnon, Michaela went on trying to meet my eyes, to make me repeat the dramatic announcement I had made in my excitement when I had called her from Lazar’s office a few hours after his death, an announcement that was so important that without a second thought she had cut her stay short, canceled her trip to the Isle of Skye, and returned home. But I went on avoiding her eyes, and she put Shivi down in the little playpen my parents had bought her the week before and followed me into the kitchen, where I was standing in front of the sink, and put her arms around me and kissed me, not only with the lust aroused in her by every change in location — and the apartment could be considered a new locale after a year’s absence — but also in order to let me know that the bizarre and mysterious message I had conveyed to her that night was both credible and attractive to her. A new warmth and sweetness began streaming into me from Michaela’s strong arms clasping me to her body and from the long tongue licking my face. And the desire that I had forgotten in the anger of our parting and in the drama and distress of Lazar’s illness and death surged up in me with such force that I almost choked in my enthusiasm as I tried to swallow her tongue and to cover her eyes with kisses, if only to hide the penetrating look she still beseeched me with in order to hear again the wild confession which had compelled her to hurry back to Israel. I picked her up in my arms, and while Shivi raised her head to follow our movements, I carried her into the other room, which because of Amnon’s love for the sea had turned from the grandmother’s bedroom into the living room. I laid her on the narrow couch, and without stopping to open it up and double its size, I took off her clothes and knelt down to caress and kiss her private parts, trying to find some sign of her unfaithfulness to me in England or Scotland. But I found no such sign, and I stood up and lay down next to her and made love to her at length, pleasurably and generously, as on that night in the desert, overlooking Eyal’s wedding. And we only stopped when Shivi’s whimpering turned into a demanding cry.

“Did I make love to Lazar too?” she asked me with a hint of laughter in her eyes when she came out of the shower, shaking her wet hair. She watched me affectionately as I fed Shivi, who was sitting in her high chair facing the glow of the sunset in the kitchen window. Her air of amusement made it easier for me to answer her question. “You’ve just made love to a lot of people, alive and dead,” I said quietly, “and among them perhaps — why not? — Lazar too.” And in the darkness of the evening descending on us, next to the baby listening and playing with her empty bowl, I told Michaela the whole story of the drama of his death: the diagnosis, the surgery, the recovery, and the sudden collapse. I spoke not as a doctor intent on proving the superiority of his diagnosis but with the profound emotion of a young man who had seen the steadfast heart of his friend open like a book and did not want to leave him alone even after it had ceased to beat. “You didn’t want to leave him alone?” said Michaela in surprise, with a note of disappointment in her voice, as if she had expected something more definite but also more mysterious. “Exactly,” I said, wondering whether to switch on the light in the kitchen, which was already full of shadows. “That’s what I meant. What did you think I meant?” I laughed lightly. “That I really thought Lazar’s soul could migrate into mine?”

“Why not?” replied Michaela almost in a whisper, and she began delicately stroking Shivi’s forehead in the area between her eyes in a caress she had evidently perfected during the two weeks she had spent alone with the baby in London, which Shivi appeared to enjoy as if she were a cat. “If you succeeded in incorporating the midwife’s soul on the night of the birth, why shouldn’t you incorporate Lazar’s soul too?” She was treading a fine line between irony and profound seriousness, as always when trying out an idea that held a hidden educational intention. “The midwife’s soul?” I laughed. “Who said so?”

“She did,” replied Michaela. “Don’t you remember? When we were all admiring the way you delivered Shivi so perfectly?” I was silent. It gave me a kick to hear her call my delivery of the baby perfect, but I didn’t want to go on discussing Lazar, who in any case couldn’t rise from his grave to betray me.

The next day I took Michaela to pay a condolence call on the Lazars. I insisted that she come with me to console Einat, who had almost been an eyewitness to her father’s death. We didn’t know if it was proper to take a baby to a house of mourning, but we took Shivi with us anyway, since we did not yet have a babysitter and I didn’t want Michaela to go without me to the apartment I visited so often in my imagination. Again I found the living room full of people, many of them familiar faces from the hospital, who had put off their condolence calls to the last days of the week of mourning. They could not possibly have all been in daily contact with Lazar, but they had all felt themselves to be under the shelter of his eagle eye, and now that the shelter was gone, they wanted to examine the extent of the gap yawning over their heads. I found Hishin there too, sitting in the same place as before, at Dori’s right hand. The shabby black cap that he had worn to the funeral was perched on his head again, like a symbol of his private mourning. His young companion, whom he had brought back with him from one of his trips to Europe, had been replaced by a short man, rather sloppily dressed in sportswear, who from a distance seemed familiar. When I went closer, it turned out, to my surprise, to be Professor Adler, the Jerusalem master surgeon. Although it was not the usual thing for a surgeon to pay a condolence call on a family mourning the death of his patient, Hishin had insisted on bringing him here, in order to prove to everyone that in spite of the unfortunate outcome, he was convinced that his friend had performed the surgery successfully. He had brought him directly from the airport, on his way home to Jerusalem. With the baby hanging on Michaela’s stomach in her sling, we hesitantly approached Einat and Dori, who, free of her husband’s reprimanding eye, was smoking one slender cigarette after another as she listened, without concentrating and without smiling, to Professor Adler’s patient and methodical exposition of his guiltless role in her catastrophe. Einat, whose face was very pale, rose immediately to greet Michaela, and she hugged and kissed her so warmly and lovingly that Shivi was almost crushed between them. Dori stopped listening and transferred her attention to her daughter, who was weeping around Michaela’s neck. I was alarmed to see a silent tear rolling down her cheek and the ash of her cigarette almost falling onto the carpet, and I instinctively bent down to move the ashtray closer. Now Professor Adler recognized me and smiled at me encouragingly. Would he also remember the ventricular tachycardia? I wouldn’t be surprised, for judging by the direct, intelligent look in his eye, it seemed that if he had not been in a hurry to get back to Jerusalem then, he would have listened with patience and respect even to the words of an insignificant junior physician like me. Accordingly, when Einat took Michaela and Shivi into her room, I sat down boldly in the place she had vacated, next to the two professors and Dori. As if my presence had the power to soothe Dori’s pain and distress, I saw the old, involuntary smile flashing dimly in her eyes again — a smile she may have felt the need to justify, for she immediately told Hishin and his Jerusalem friend how fond Lazar had been of me, while I, who felt not only his fondness but also his love like a leaden weight inside me, bowed my head like a young boy listening proudly but also impatiently to his mother praising him in front of strangers. Then, unable to restrain myself, I turned to Professor Adler and asked him how he explained what had happened to Lazar’s heart after the surgery, which I myself could humbly testify had succeeded. But although he tried to explain, and even sketched the heart that had failed and died on a large sheet of paper, it seemed that the expert surgeon who had so briskly and firmly sawed Lazar’s chest open was not capable of producing even one convincing reason for his sudden death, but only of piling one lengthy explanation on another in an attempt to disguise their essential weakness. Dori tried to listen to him, but the arrival of a delegation of her colleagues, judges and lawyers in black gowns, distracted her. And who could blame her? Even if the real cause of her husband’s death was discovered, it would not bring him back to life.