Open Heart

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Eight

  But in fact, how do marriages come about? Why should two separate creatures wish to tie themselves to each other with one chain, however slender and delicate? Is it the mystery—which in the dead of night smuggles a schoolgirl in a pale blue uniform with a badge pinned to her heart into the house, where she sits bowed over her books and workbooks at the kitchen table, waiting for an empty bed—is it the mystery which clouds their minds and ties them to each other, in order to turn itself into their subject, their willing slave, seeking to take responsibility for something that may prove too much for its powers?

  Here they are, sailing serenely down the river while the hidden chain joining them underneath the water is slowly covered with rust, like a film. And even when they step onto the green land and begin combing methodically for invisible seeds and grubs, their free and natural gait still disguises the fixed distance between them, strictly maintained by the figure which has taken off its cracked metal-framed glasses and settled down with its eyes closed on a little mound of hay next to the river, exposing its weak chest to the warm spring sun.

  Do they know how to fly too? And who will take care that in the air too they remain unseparated? The pair approaches us; a solemn creature thrusts a long, black, glistening neck toward us, and a one-eyed stare—whether it belongs to a male or a female, we will never know—pierces us. And before the answer we await is given to us, a beak as big and strong as a sword stabs the weak chest which the mystery has abandoned to the warm spring sun, and four great gray wings are opened and stretched as far as they will go, and with one mighty flap they fly high into the sky, to tear whatever held them together to tatters.

  I raced back home, cleaving the clear night air with the roar of my motorcycle, which as always was infected by the excitement inside me; I had thrown this woman another thread, which if it indeed lassoed her would not easily be undone. If I were a tenant, the connection between us would no longer depend on occasional medical matters or chance encounters in the hospital, nor would it depend on the wishes or the presence of Lazar; it would be based on a clear legal contract, which she herself would probably draw up, and would include not only payments, promissory notes, and deposits, but also a regular correspondence, municipal taxes, broken boilers, leaking pipes, and perhaps even complaints by neighbors, if I decided to throw a party for my friends, for example. In short, a new and independent bond, which would override the memories of the trip to India and its weakening aftermath, and for the sake of a bond like this it would be worth paying a higher rent and doing night shifts at the MADA First Aid Station, as I’d done in my student days, to make ends meet. After all, I would have more time now, for the enthusiasm and devotion that had tied me to Hishin and his department would not be necessary in the internal medicine department, if indeed Professor Levine agreed to take me on after he recovered from his mysterious disease and we resolved whatever issues lingered between us over the blood transfusion.

  But would she want to rent me the apartment after what I had said? If she was thinking about that sentence now, it must be causing her a lot of confusion, and I doubted if she would tell Lazar, who was probably waiting up in bed. It was hard to imagine that after she explained why she was so late and described the thorough medical examination I had given her mother, she would add with a mysterious smile, “Guess what, I already have a tenant for Mother’s apartment.” Even if there were no secrets between them, not even concerning something as obscure and ambiguous as my parting words, it was inconceivable that Lazar would have remained under the blanket, looking out from the sleepy slits of his eyes. No, he would sit up, rumpling the bedclothes still further, as I had seen him do on the first night in New Delhi when I had peeped into their room, and exclaim, “Really? He wants that apartment? How come? He really likes it?” imagining instead that all I really wanted was to keep up the connection with him, hoping he could influence Hishin to change his mind. Lazar probably thought that I considered him all-powerful in the hospital, whereas I knew that even if he could do something, he would never interfere in professional appointments, precisely to save his clout for more important things. Then she would undo her bun, loosen her tresses, take off her glasses and put them on the bedside table, and stick her head through the neck of the nightgown spotted with sprigs of pale yellow flowers. She’d sit down to rub cream into her long naked legs and massage her bare feet, utterly rejecting her husband’s interpretation in her heart, because she would have already felt that it was she I meant, only she, and in the midst of the astonishment flooding her, perhaps a little wave of pity for me would well up too, as if now she understood that something had upset my balance during the trip we took to India together. Therefore, she’d decide to keep her counsel and not to tell her husband anything about what had passed between us, but to let him go on lying under the blanket, the tired slits of his eyes turning into two little sparks, and she’d prick up her ears to listen to Einat, who was still dragging out the last of her hepatitis and who had now awakened and gone into the kitchen. Then she’d slip in next to her husband, tickle him a little, and say, “Wait, wait, don’t go to sleep yet, give me a hug, warm me up,” and she’d put two cold little feet onto his warm thighs.

  But I was pleased with myself and with the first clear sign of the emotion that I had succeeded in conveying to this woman. Although I knew it was all hopeless and absurd—and even if it had a chance, it wouldn’t lead anywhere—I still refused to crush my love with my own hands but wanted this woman, who had appeared after long years of emotional desolation, of lovelessness, to crush it herself, with the same charm with which she crushed those long cigarettes of hers, which Lazar regarded with hostility and sometimes with outright protest. Therefore I said to myself, You have to rent that apartment, come what may. And since I found it difficult to go to sleep anyway after my day of deep rest, and the view from my window showed clearly that the storm was finally over, I could not resist putting on my leather coat and helmet and riding at a leisurely pace back to the street and the building where I already saw myself as a tenant. In the dark I inspected the neighborhood and the shops, and figured out whether I would be able to park the Honda under the building’s pillars. I was pleased by everything I saw, including the short distance from the apartment to the sea, which I covered in a few minutes as I drove right down to the beach, where I stood for a long time opposite the waves breaking enthusiastically on the shore, still faithful to the storm which had disappeared without a trace.

  Now a period of uncertainty began. In the personnel department of the hospital I was registered as an employee on vacation, but in actual fact I was up in the air, waiting for Professor Levine to recover from an illness whose nature suddenly seemed suspect. The secretary of the department and also the nurses put me off with vague replies on the telephone, until I decided to go to the hospital myself and have lunch in the staff cafeteria in order to bump into someone from internal medicine who would be able to shed some light on the situation. At first I thought of dropping into the surgical ward and retrieving the coat with my name embroidered on it before it disappeared, as personal possessions had a way of disappearing in the hospital. But at the last minute I changed my mind, because I didn’t want to bump into Hishin or any of the other doctors, who would ask me questions about my unclear future. So I entered the cafeteria without my white coat, wearing my black leather jacket and holding my crash helmet in my hand. As soon as I walked in I saw Hishin sitting over the remains of his meal with other doctors and nurses from the department, smoking, arguing, and gesticulating. I tried to keep out of sight and took my tray to the opposite corner, where I looked for a familiar face from the internal medicine department. But I couldn’t see any internists I knew. I sat down at a little table that was still covered with what was left of someone else’s meal, and for the first time I found myself feeling faintly nauseated by the hospital smell rising from the food in front of me. The cafeteria, which I had always regarded as a pleasant refuge, now seemed to
me, after the quiet days I had spent in my apartment, noisy and ugly. I left most of the food on my plate, and slowly ate the pink pudding which I had always enjoyed. Suddenly a hand came down on my shoulder, and even before turning my head I knew by the lightness of its touch that it belonged to Hishin. He was standing over me with his entire team, even the old anesthetist Dr. Nakash, all in the green uniforms of the operating room. They looked pleased with themselves, as if they had just successfully concluded a complicated operation. “What’s the matter with you? Are you boycotting us?” he asked gently, bending down and looking at me with pitying, sympathetic eyes. And before I could reply, he shook his head sadly and said, “Don’t be angry with everyone because of me. They’re not to blame.” Now I realized that it had been a mistake to ignore them and sit by myself. “And you are to blame?” I decided to adopt a tone of indignant protest and honest surprise. “You’re quite wrong. I’ve got no complaints. The trip to India turned out to be fantastic. Why should I be angry with you when I know that you’ve got my best interests at heart?” I looked straight into his eyes. He was taken aback by my words; in spite of the seriousness and sincerity of my tone, he was sure that they hid a subtle sarcasm he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He looked around at his team, trying to read my intention on their faces, but they all looked away, as embarrassed as he was. Then he apparently decided to take my words at face value, and placed his hand lightly on my shoulder again, nodded his head, and took off with the rest of them, except for the anesthetist, who wanted to talk to me. Dr. Nakash was a man of about sixty-five, thin and bony, whose white hair, clustered around his bald pate, becomingly contrasted the darkness of his complexion. In India I had seen quite a few people who reminded me of Nakash, which gave me a feeling of sympathic closeness with him. Hishin respected him and preferred to work with him, even though he was not the most senior of the anesthetists. “Nakash doesn’t always understand what’s going on in the operation,” Hishin would say behind his back, “but he’s always alert, even in ten-hour operations. And that’s the most important thing. Because the patient abandons himself not to the hands of his surgeon but to the hands of his anesthetist.”

  Now Nakash asked me when I was starting work in internal medicine. I told him that I was waiting for Professor Levine to recover. “Isn’t he out of there yet?” said Nakash in surprise. “Out of where?” I asked, and Nakash revealed with complete naturalness the secret that up to now everyone had succeeded in keeping from me: “They clean his head out,” he said in his direct, simple way, “and he comes out fresh and new, until he gets depressed and commits himself again. What can he do? His patients depress him, and he can’t cut them open like Hishin does.” After that he asked me if I was interested in having work as his assistant in operations at a private hospital. Lately they had been very strict about the anesthetist having an assistant. The pay was strictly by the hour, without all the extras and under-the-counter payments, but the fee was high, tax-free, and unambiguous. “But I have no training as an anesthetist,” I said, surprised. Nakash insisted, though, that the art of anesthesiology was not beyond my understanding; the technical side was simple and could be quickly learned, and the main thing was not to abandon the patient, to think of his soul and not only of his breathing.

  While the surgeon and his team concentrate on a small part of the patient, he explained, only the anesthetist is thinking all the time of the patient as a whole, not as a collection of parts. The anesthetist is the real internist, no matter how much the surgeon pokes around in the patient’s innermost organs. “And you,” Nakash added, concluding his little speech, which surprised me by its eloquence, “want to be an internist.”

  “Want? Not exactly,” I said with a bitter smile. “I haven’t got a choice.”

  “I thought you were being sincere when you admitted that Hishin made the right decision. Believe me, Benjy, I’ve been through a lot of surgeons in my time. Who knows them as I do? And I’m telling you, I’ve seen you at work, and it’s not for you. Your scalpel hesitates, because it thinks too much. Not because you’re inexperienced, but because you’re too responsible. And in surgery too much responsibility is fatal. You have to take a risk; to cut a person up and still tell him it’s good for him, you have to be partly a charlatan and partly a gambler. Look at Hishin—who, by the way, also performs private operations sometimes, so you’ll be able to stand next to him in the operating room again, if you miss it so much.” The offer was so tempting that I didn’t even ask for time to think it over, and said immediately yes. Nakash was not surprised. “I knew you’d like the idea, and anyway you’re at loose ends until Professor Levine gets out and finds time to cross-examine you about that blood transfusion you performed in India. He’s a difficult customer; he’s always trying to depress his colleagues in the department, and when he doesn’t succeed he gets depressed himself. So if I were you, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to fall into his hands.” I wrote down Nakash’s phone number at home, and he wrote down mine. “But it’s only temporary,” I warned him. “I’m moving into a new apartment soon.”

  That evening I informed my landlady, according to the agreement between us, that I intended to leave at the end of the month. She was very sorry. I knew that I was a highly desirable tenant in her eyes; the fact that I was a doctor apparently filled her with confidence, even though she had never consulted me on personal problems up to now, but only on general medical questions. “May I know why you’re leaving?” she couldn’t resist asking. “I need a change,” I said, with an honesty I immediately regretted, for I saw a shadow of pain cross her sharp face. “But what change?” she insisted, inexplicably angry. “A change.” I stubbornly repeated the word, which I may have chosen by mistake but was now stuck with. “Just a change.” I lowered my head and went away without any further discussion. That same evening when I phoned my parents to tell them about Nakash’s offer, I couldn’t resist telling them about my plans to rent Lazar’s mother-in-law’s apartment as well. They were immediately worried. The idea of transforming the Lazars into my landlords struck them as a very bad one. “Why go and complicate your relations with Lazar now, after having won him over on the trip to India?” said my mother crossly. “But I’ll be reliable as a tenant too,” I argued, “and besides, it’s not exactly with him, but with his wife.”

  “That makes it even worse,” my mother burst out vehemently, trying as hard as she could to dissuade me from the idea. “If you break something in the apartment, or if you demand money for repairs, she’ll complain about you, and that will count against you at the hospital too. And believe me,” she added with unexpected venom, “she knows how to look out for number one. Anyway, you should never mix business with friendship.” My father lectured me too. “I don’t understand,” he began in his quiet voice, which revealed signs of emotion. “Are you trying to get a quid pro quo for what you did for them in India?”

  “Certainly not,” I retorted angrily. “I’ll pay more for that apartment than I’m paying now.”

  “You’ll pay more?” said my father in astonishment. “How much?” When they heard that no rent had yet been agreed on, their disapproval increased. And then a kind of cry of protest burst out of me: “My dear mother and father, I’m twenty-nine years old—do me a favor and trust me to decide what’s best for me!” This outburst silenced them. It wasn’t really fair of me, because in fact they always trusted me, and their anger with me this time stemmed only from the fact that I had confused them by hiding my real motives. I immediately took pity on them. I didn’t know how to appease them without getting further embroiled in lies. “I need a change,” I said gently. “I saw the apartment by chance and I liked it. It’s close to the sea, it’s on a nice quiet street. I won’t make problems with Lazar or his wife. You know me.” They listened attentively, trying to accept my inexplicable decision because of their love and respect for me. “The fact that you want a change,” said my mother finally, “is all to the good, because you definitely need one.
Just be careful it’s not more of a change than you bargained for.”

  When a week went by without any sign from Lazar’s wife, I wondered anxiously if I had been in too much of a hurry to announce the change in my life. Had she forgotten me, or, on the contrary, had she decided to beware of me? I knew that her mother had already moved into the old folks’ home. I had called her there myself to ask if the new dosage had indeed given her the hoped-for relief. She was very excited by the telephone call and happy to talk to me. Her chronic constipation had indeed been relieved, perhaps not only because of the change in her medication but thanks to the peace and quiet of her new home, which she spoke of admiringly, inviting me to come and visit her there. “Do you know,” I said to her in the end, “that I’m going to rent your apartment?” To my astonishment, she knew nothing about it. Her daughter hadn’t said anything. So, I said to myself, it’s a good thing I talked to the old lady. Now I can expect a clear sign one way or the other. If Dori has changed her mind, or found some other tenant, then okay, that’s it, let her go ahead and crush my love. In the meantime my landlady had found a couple to rent my apartment, whom she agreed to let in without consulting me, to take preliminary measurements. One day she stopped me on the stairs and demanded coldly that I move out before the end of the month.