I could have stopped my pursuit then, got off my bike and taken shelter in one of the building entrances until the rain stopped, and then returned to the hospital; or I could have approached them as if it were an accidental meeting, given them the envelope with the photos, said a few words holding out a promise for the future, and gone away. But instead I remained on the bike in my light jacket, masked by my helmet, and waited for them to start off so I could go on following them—this time from a greater distance, for I was afraid of her turning around. I rode behind them, saw them stop at a bakery, and watched her go in and come out with a rectangular white box tied up with a blue ribbon, which reminded me of the shoe box I had voluntarily stored in my suitcase. From there they continued to a fruit-and-vegetable stall, where they stopped after an apparent argument, and an Arab youth came out and loaded bursting bags into the car. So they’re still cultivating their round bellies, I thought sarcastically, and although I was already soaking wet I kept on their tail, because I wanted to see them with my own eyes arrive at their apartment in Chen Avenue, get out of the car, help each other carry the bags and boxes, and disappear through the big glass door. So she won’t be left alone during her lunch break, I thought, and I felt a kind of relief.
But I didn’t hand over the photographs that day, even though Lazar returned to his office at four o’clock. And I didn’t take them to him the next day either, but set off to follow him again, to see if this time too he would be careful not to leave his wife alone at home during her lunch break. It was pouring, and instead of the short skirt and high heels she was wearing boots and tight trousers, and a black cape which gave her a new profile. How is this going to end? I scolded myself in despair, returning to the hospital drenched to the skin after they had disappeared into the door of their apartment building. It was my last day in the surgical department, and since nothing had yet been agreed with Professor Levine, who had been absent for two weeks with some mysterious disease, I felt, perhaps for the first time in my life, up in the air, without a patron or a framework. I therefore decided that in the afternoon, when Lazar returned, I would go to his office and give him the photographs and ask him one or two questions about the rights of a temporary, substitute doctor. But this time, although the secretary, Miss Kolby, was friendly, she was unable to find any free time in his tight schedule of afternoon appointments. Only when darkness fell, as I was going from bed to bed on a private final round of farewells—without telling any of the patients that this was my last visit, because I didn’t want them to feel abandoned or betrayed during the long, hard night ahead of them—did the secretary phone the ward to look for me and tell me that Lazar had finally finished all his appointments and that he would be very glad to see me in his office.
Once more I found myself in the large, elegant room with its flowered curtains and flourishing plants, which now, at this late hour, looked very different from all the doctors’ offices in the hospital, like some cozy domestic interior, protected from all the diseases, the smells, the drugs, and the medical instruments, remote too from all the paperwork, the forms and the files, as if it were not the center from which the hospital was run but a refuge in which to escape it. Lazar sat behind his vast desk, his curly head, which had served as an effective signpost among the heads of the Indian crowds, wagging against the high back of his executive chair as he conducted an animated conversation with Miss Kolby, his devoted thirty-five-year-old secretary, who was standing beside him. “Aha!” he cried in friendly rebuke. “At last! Where did you disappear to?”
“I disappeared?” I repeated with a surprised smile, for during the past three weeks it had seemed to me that he and his wife had been my constant companions by day and by night. “I’ve been here all the time, in the hospital.” “I know you’ve been here,” he said with genuine friendliness, “but we haven’t seen you. Dori is already convinced that you must have taken offense at something, because ever since we parted at the airport you’ve shown no sign of life.”
“But I phoned one evening,” I protested, filled with joy at this new proof of her interest. “Didn’t Einat tell you? She said that Hishin and Professor Levine had already seen her, and I understood that I didn’t have anything to worry about anymore.”
“You’ve still got something to worry about.” Lazar laughed jovially. “But I’m not talking about Einati, even though she’s not completely out of the woods yet, and Levine, who wanted to hospitalize her in his ward and run further tests on her, is sick himself. No, I mean you should worry about yourself, because we’ve still got some outstanding business to clear up between us.”
“Business?” I asked innocently. He folded his hands on the desk and looked right at me. “The fee we owe you for the journey to India.”
“There’s no need for any fee,” I said immediately, and lowered my eyes so that he wouldn’t sense any hesitation in them. Lazar tried to insist and I repeated firmly, “I don’t want you to pay me anything.” I looked into the bright, penetrating eyes of his secretary, who was still standing next to us. “The trip was payment enough.” And then I felt a pang, not only because of the payment, which I had finally waived, but also because of the brevity and haste of the trip. “I only came to bring you these,” I added weakly, holding out the envelope with the photographs. “Ah, our pictures,” he cried happily, and snatched the envelope from my hand and took out the photographs, which he glanced at rapidly, smiling and immediately passing them on to the secretary, who took them reverently and studied them slowly and thoroughly. “Dori always comes out wonderfully in photos,” she said in an intimate, familiar way. “Yes,” Lazar agreed with a sigh, “that’s because she’s serene inside herself, not like me. And that always makes the lines sharp and clear,” and he nodded his head at me as if to apologize for having to praise his wife in front of strangers. “But how much do I owe you for the pictures?” He whipped out his wallet. “Nonsense,” I said, shrinking. “Why nonsense?” he protested. “I can’t let you refuse everything here. Tell me how much they cost or I won’t take them.” And he took out a fifty-shekel note and put it on the desk. With my heart aching at the thought of parting from the pictures, I shook my head firmly and explained that my parents had paid for the two rolls of film to be developed. “It’s a present from them, to both of you.” This persuaded him to accept the photographs without paying for them. “A present from your parents?” he repeated, as if to obtain my confirmation. “Mind you don’t forget to thank them,” and he made haste to return the money to his pocket, and turned to his secretary. “Dori’ll be thrilled to get them—she loves photographs, and now we’ll have something to remind us of the trip, which, believe me, we’ve already forgotten completely.” Then he glanced at his watch and said with an air of surprise, “But she should have been here by now.” When he saw me beginning to edge toward the door—and maybe he also sensed my inner turmoil—he stood up to stop me. “Wait a minute and say hello to her. She asked about you.” I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past seven. My last hour in the surgical department was already over. “I don’t know.” I hesitated. “I still have to get back to the ward.”
‘The ward?” exclaimed Lazar. “But today is your last day there!”
“You know that too?” I cried in genuine admiration. “And even smaller and less significant details too,” said Lazar with a sigh, and closed his eyes in agreeable weariness. “That’s what I’m here for. I also know, for example, that Professor Levine might employ you as a substitute in his department until June.” “July,” I said, trying weakly to correct him. “No, only until June,” he stated decisively. “The position’s only available until June. But what does it matter—June, July, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime we’ll have to wait until he gets better, because he insists on clarifying some little thing with you.” “Clarifying?” I whispered. “It’s no big deal,” said Lazar dismissively. “Didn’t Hishin tell you? He’s bothered by the blood transfusion you gave Einat.”
; “Yes, so I’ve heard, but I don’t understand what bothers him about it.”
“I don’t understand what his problem is either. Hishin didn’t get it either. So you’ll have to talk to him yourself and explain exactly what your intention was. He’s a fair man, but impatient.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked. “Something or other,” said Lazar, smiling faintly to himself. “But what exactly?” I persisted, consumed with curiosity about my future employer’s mysterious disease. Lazar exchanged a glance with his secretary, who apparently knew the secret of Levine’s disease but warned Lazar with a look not to reveal it to me. “Never mind, never mind.” He waved his hand to silence me, and all of a sudden he cocked his head in a gesture of profound attention. “Here comes Dori, I can hear her footsteps.” Neither I nor the secretary, who also inclined her head slightly, could hear any footsteps—on the contrary, the silence in the wing only seemed to deepen. But Lazar insisted that he could hear his wife’s footsteps in the distance, by virtue of the strong bond between them, which had upset and excited me during the trip to India. And sure enough, we soon heard the sound of footsteps, soft but self-confident, and joy flooded me as I discovered that I too was able to recognize them. She hesitated slightly outside the door of the next room, but then advanced briskly toward the door of her husband’s office, which she opened quietly but without any hesitation, smiling her warm smile. She entered the room, dragging her left foot slightly and definitely surprised to see me, but greeted the secretary with an affectionate hug and kiss before she turned to me and asked, repeating her husband’s formula, in the same tone of mild rebuke, “What have you been up to? Where did you disappear to?”
“Where did you disappear to?” Lazar interrupted her angrily. “What took you so long? You said you’d be here by six and it’s already twenty past seven!” “Don’t get excited.” A tender smile spread over her plump face. “You can’t tell me you didn’t have plenty to keep you busy in the meantime.”
“That’s not the point,” he said petulantly. But he was obviously pleased by her answer, and he stood up to collect his belongings. “Tomorrow I’ve got a crazy day. But look at the nice present we’ve got for you here.” He handed her the photographs, which she snatched from him with a childish cry of delight, and still without meeting my eyes, she slipped her cape off her shoulders and said enthusiastically, “And we thought that we must have overexposed the film by mistake.” She immediately opened her umbrella to dry in a corner of the room, sat down calmly in the armchair between the two giant plants, took off her glasses, and began to examine the pictures one by one, at the same time gladly accepting the secretary’s offer of a cup of tea and overcoming Lazar’s objections that they were in a hurry to get home with a smiling protest: “Just a minute, let me me relax for a minute, I’m freezing to death.” The secretary, who seemed happy to wait on her, now turned politely to me to ask me if I would join them, and although I was already standing poised on one foot, ready and perhaps also eager to leave, I couldn’t refuse, and suddenly I felt the full power of the hypnotic mystery riveting me to this woman, clumsy in her winter clothes, her freckled face flushed, her bun coming unraveled again, crossing her legs, which the black boots made even longer, and studying with open enjoyment and occasional soft laughter the pictures of herself and her husband on the trip, which according to him they had already almost forgotten.
The quick-thinking secretary, who judging by her bare fingers and the time she had on her hands was presumably single, brought in a tray with three cups of tea and slices of a cream cake left over from some private party in the administrative wing. Lazar’s wife thanked her in her usual enthusiastic and exaggerated style. “You’ve saved my life, I’m completely parched. All afternoon I’ve been running around with my mother making arrangements for an old-age home.”
“Your mother’s going into an old-age home?” the secretary asked in surprise. “Why? I met her in a café a month ago and she looked wonderful.”
“Yes,” said Dori complacently, as if she were personally responsible for her mother’s appearance, “she’s just fine, she manages by herself, but when we were in India she heard that a place had become available in an old-age home she had put her name down for a few years ago. We’d almost forgotten about it, because nobody seems to die there, and even though she’s independent and she could go on living alone in her apartment, she’s afraid to lose her place there. What can I do? We have to respect their wishes.” She turned her face to me, as if surprised by my silent presence, and in the almost intimate tone which had come into being among the three of us in the last days of the trip, she repeated the question I had not yet answered: “Well, what have you been up to?” When she saw that I was groping for an answer, as if I weren’t sure what she had in mind, she went on to ask companionably, “Have you recovered from our trip yet?” Although I was gratified by her use of the word “our,” I was still unable to come up with a graceful reply, and I stammered awkwardly, “In what sense?”
“In what sense?” she repeated, perplexed by my pedantic question. “I don’t know … You looked a little sad and depressed at the end.”
“Depressed?” I whispered, completely taken aback, and somewhat hurt by the fact that my secret love had transmitted not warmth but depression. But I was nevertheless pleased that she took an interest in my moods. “Sad?” I smiled at her with faint irony. “Why sad?” Her eyes immediately looked around for her husband, to have her feelings confirmed. But he had lost patience with this idle chatter, and after clearing the papers and files off his desk and snapping his briefcase shut, he stood up and ostentatiously switched off his desk lamp and sent a look of open hostility in the direction of his wife, who was still eating her slice of cake. “We thought you were sad,” continued Dori, “because of losing your place in Hishin’s department.” Lazar, who was already putting on his short khaki raincoat and briskly pulling a funny fur hat onto his head, interrupted confidently, “Don’t worry, we’ve found him a temporary job in Levine’s department.”
“The internal medicine department?” said his wife enthusiastically, and turned to me: “Well, are you pleased?”
“Yes,” Lazar answered for me, “why shouldn’t he be pleased? You heard for yourself what Hishin said about him all the time: he’s a born internist, and he’ll be able to do a good job there.” And when he saw that his wife was still slowly sipping her tea, he said impatiently, “Come on, Dori, you’ve had enough, we have to get home.”
But she went on sipping the last drops of tea in her cup, as if intent on stressing her independence and showing that she could be satisfied with herself and cope very well with the world around her, as long as she wasn’t left alone. Finally she stood up slowly, draped the long black cape negligently around her shoulders, took a blue scarf out of her pocket and then a sheet of paper, which she held out to the secretary, who appeared to hesitate between her natural loyalty to Lazar and her admiration for his wife. And Dori gave her a friendly smile and asked, “Do you think I could leave this medical report for my mother’s old-age home with you for Professor Levine to fill in? I’ll phone him this evening and explain.”
“It will have to wait,” Lazar intervened, with what sounded like a note of malicious satisfaction in his voice. “Levine isn’t here. He’s sick.”
“Levine’s sick again?” cried his wife, who judging by the faint alarm in her voice apparently knew the secret of his mysterious disease. “So what will we do? We have to return the questionnaire the day after tomorrow.”
“Nothing terrible will happen if your mother goes to the Health Service doctor for once,” said Lazar firmly. “She pays her dues every month and she never goes near the place.”
“Out of the question!” His wife dismissed this possibility angrily, turning to the secretary for support. “How can she go by herself to the Health Service? And who will she see there? She hasn’t seen a doctor there for years.” But Lazar seemed too tired after a hard day’s work to deal
with this problem, and he grabbed his wife’s umbrella, collected the empty cups and put them on the tray, quickly cramming the remains of his wife’s cream cake into his mouth as he did so, and hurried toward the door, where I was waiting for an opportunity to take my leave. “Perhaps some other doctor in the internal medicine department could do it instead of Professor Levine,” suggested the secretary carefully. “I can’t ask anyone to do it,” snapped Lazar. “This isn’t my private hospital, and the doctors aren’t my servants. Levine is a friend of mine, and he looks after her mother out of friendship. Nothing terrible will happen,” he said, turning to his wife again, still in a faintly spiteful tone, “if your mother goes to the Health Service for once. It won’t kill her.” And he switched off the light in the room, even though the two women were still in it; and I, having already advanced into the illuminated secretaries’ office, looked back and saw the heavy shadow on the wall, trapped between the shadows of the foliage of the two big plants, and once again my heart was struck with bafflement at this inexplicable attraction, and still I hesitated, waiting for the right moment to say good-bye without making it final. They were leaving through the brightly lit office cubicles, stepping between computers and gray-covered typewriters, and I waited politely for her to pass me. To my surprise, I smelled the sharp, sweet scent of the perfume she had bought at the airport when we arrived at New Delhi, where she had asked our opinion of it. Now she was listening to the secretary telling her some long, complicated, personal story which Lazar had apparently already heard during the course of the day, and I went on trailing behind them—a young doctor whose position in the hospital may have deteriorated recently, but whose participation in the trip to India nevertheless gave him the status of a kind of distant member of the family, if not in the eyes of the devoted secretary—to whom it had not even occurred, for example, to propose me as a substitute for Dr. Levine, to spare that nice grandmother the misery of going to the Health Service the next day in the pouring rain and waiting for hours in line in order to coax a medical certificate out of some rigid bureaucrat of a doctor. But as we were standing in the corridor, about to say good-bye, my heart suddenly pounded with joy at the thought that I didn’t need any favors from the secretary: I could offer my services myself, and thus wind a flimsy thread—for I was well aware of the flimsiness of all these threads—around this impossible woman.
Open Heart Page 20
